commanding the 9th Regiment and all other combat forces within the Bulge, had no reserve left, and no hope of maneuver.
Both he and General Church, 24th Division CG, agreed that at the moment all that could be accomplished was a continued defense in place. By 15 August they were having their hands full just to contain the Bulge, without thought of erasing it. Earlier, on the 13th, Church had tried to tell General Walker that the entire NKPA 4th Division was across the Naktong—but this Walker steadfastly refused to believe until after the bloody stalemate along the ridge had become apparent.
Walker at this time was edgy, impatient, and abrupt—but Johnny Walker had his problems. There was trouble everywhere on Eighth Army's front, and everybody was squalling for help.
On 12 August the first United Nations counterattack, Task Force Kean, had run into serious trouble at the valley called Bloody Gulch. The front to the extreme south was in a bad way. And at the same time the Bulge was getting fatter in the west, the NKPA had also forced the Naktong in front of Taegu, and were converging on that vital center. And on the far northeast, the ROK divisions on the coast were being steadily driven southward.
There was, from the second week of August, combat everywhere, and Walton Walker lived in crisis. His command decisions had to be never-ending series of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Faced with danger everywhere along his line, he had to guess where the greatest peril lay, and guess correctly, for in war there is no prize for being almost right.
Walker's military reputation will be secure, for he made the right decisions.
On 15 August, considering the Yongsan-Miryang area the most dangerous enemy axis of attack—a feeling shared by the NKPA—he told Church abruptly: 'I am going to give you the Marine Brigade. I want this situation cleaned up, and quick!'
The Marine Brigade, under General Craig, USMC, had newly arrived from the States. MacArthur had wanted to hold it back for future amphibious operations, but the situation along the Naktong had been too critical; the Marines were needed for a fire brigade. At this time, the 5,000-man Marine force was Walker's principal reserve.
While 9th Infantry was being bled and battered on the hill, the Marines were ordered to attack 17 August to erase the enemy bulge east of the Naktong.
While the U.N. situation within the Pusan Perimeter looked black indeed during these critical days, it can be truly evaluated only in the light of what was occurring with the enemy. On the other side of the hill from American forces, Major General Lee Kwon Mu's 4th 'Seoul' Division faced enormous difficulties.
Attacking with three rifle regiments of approximately 1,500 men each, the 4th Division had suffered frightful casualties against the stubborn American defense in front of Cloverleaf and Obong-ni. The division received replacements—often men dragged from the villages of South Korea—but many of these arrived at the front without weapons, let alone military training. As many as 40 percent of these men deserted at the earliest opportunity. The remainder, unfit for the assault elements, were used as general labor troops, digging holes, carrying ammunition, foraging, and the like.
And east of the Naktong, Lee Kwon Mu was experiencing tremendously logistical difficulties. Food was scarce. Ammunition was increasingly difficult to get to the engaged units across the water barrier—not only had the original supply brought out of the North been exhausted, but American air interdiction was beginning to strangle his overextended lines.
Chang Ky Dok's 18th Regiment, holding critical Obong-ni Ridge, was able to procure no resupply of ammunition after 14 August.
Men of the division who were only slightly wounded were returned to duty, without medical attention. There was no way to aid those hurt more severely, and without care these men were dying in high numbers.
But the morale of the North Korean squad and platoon leaders, the men who had fought in China and Manchuria, was still firm. As long as Lee Kwon Mu and Colonel Chang Ky Dok could count on their junior officers and NCO's, they could count on the performance of their units.
Courage and fighting ability come in many creeds and colors. Whatever Americans might feel toward Lee and Chang's cruel and tyrannical system, they could not deny that the Communists' courage remained high.
Lee Kwon Mu, Hero of the People's Republic of Korea, Order of the National Flag, First Class, had no intention of withdrawing.
When the Korean War broke, somewhat less than 10 percent of the small United States Marine Corps had seen combat. But fortunately for the Corps, the percentage was highly concentrated within officer and key NCO grades; most of the Marine troop leaders knew what war was like.
And the Marines, who had always been largely a volunteer organization, had escaped the damaging reforms instituted within the United States Army at the end of World War II. The public clamor rose against the Army, during the war twenty times the small, parochial Corps' size, and ignored the Marines.
In 1950 a Marine Corps officer was still an officer, and a sergeant behaved the way good sergeants had behaved since the time of Caesar, expecting no nonsense, allowing none. And Marine leaders had never lost sight of their primary—their only—mission, which was to fight.
The Marine Corps was not made pleasant for men who served in it. It remained the same hard, dirty, brutal way of life it had always been.
The Marines may take little credit, either for courage or foresight, in remaining the way they were. The public pressure simply never developed against them in the years after the war, pushing their commanders into acquiescence with the ideals of society. Not long after the end of the Korean conflict, after an unfortunate incident one night at a place called Ribbon Creek, the commandant of the Corps showed no more ability to stand up for his rights in front of a congressional committee than had the generals of the Army.
It is admittedly terrible to force men to suffer during training, or even sometimes, through accident, to kill them. But there is no other way to prepare them for the immensely greater horror of combat.
In 1950 the Marines, both active and reserve, were better prepared to die on the field of battle than the Army.
Asked immediately for a full division by the Joint Chiefs, the Corps could at first put together only a brigade out of the 1st Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force. Ships and shore were scoured for men; all ground reserves were called to the colors. While the Corps made every effort not to send unprepared men into combat, it was still forced to consider the needs of the service first; a certain number of new recruits with less than desired training sailed for the Orient, both in the summer of 1950 and later. And a large number of reservists, just getting started in civilian life, found the callup just as painful as the reserves of other services.
Bitter feelings remain in the Corps, as in other arms, but they have not been so well publicized.
But bitter or not, believing in the reasons for the war or not, the Marines went, and they obeyed orders.
The 5th Marines, Lieutenant Colonel Raymond L. Murray, moved from dusty Masan in the south to Miryang. Here Murray and General Craig discussed their attack plans, while the tired and sweaty Marines bathed in the brownish waters of Miryang's river, received new clothing and equipment to replace that which had rotted in the slime of rice paddies, and speculated on their mission.
These men had seen only limited combat in the south, but they had already sweated off their shipboard fat, and were beginning to lick the heat. At first they had been no better prepared for the violent sun than had the Army, but, like the Army, they were adjusting.
And these men walked with a certain confidence and swagger. They were only young men like those about them in Korea, but they were conscious of a standard to live up to, because they had had good training, and it had been impressed upon them that they were United States Marines.
Except in holy wars, or in defense of their native soil, men fight well only because of pride and training—pride in themselves and their service, enough training to absorb the rough blows of war and to know what to do. Few men, of any breed, really prefer to kill or be killed. These Marines had pride in their service, which had been carefully instilled in them, and they had pride in themselves, because each man had made the grade in a hard occupation. They would not lightly let their comrades down. And they had discipline, which in essence is the ability not to question orders but to carry them out as intelligently as possible.
Marine human material was not one whit better than that of the human society from which it came. But it had been hammered into form in a different forge, hardened with a different fire. The Marines were the closest
