'Then fire—that's why the hell we're here!'
In each and every war, Americans must learn the hard way.
It had been a long, hard road. And when they had broken out, and the shooting was good, they had passed a little knoll, on which had been dug fifteen or sixteen trenches. Hearing the men talk, Captain Roberson went up to look.
Buried waist-deep, hands wired behind their backs, agony imprinted on their stark faces, were 500 ROK soldiers and 86 GI's. Some had been bayoneted to death; some had been clubbed; some mercifully, shot.
Doc Phelps, looking ill, determined the men had been killed the evening before the battalion passed.
Now, thinking of the long, dusty, bloody road, Roberson pulled the stopper on the bottle. 'Doc, this calls for a drink.'
Phelps was a teetotaler. Furthermore, he was married to the daughter of Dr. Godbold, famous pastor of the St. Louis First Baptist Church, who had strong opinions on alcohol. Doc Phelps hesitated, then took the bottle.
'To heck with Dr. Godbold—this calls for a drink—'
Worsham Roberson figured Dr. Godbold would understand, this once.
When it had voted, 7 to 0, with 3 abstentions, 1 absence, to form a unified command in Korea, to permit the United States Government to appoint the U.N. commander, and to use the U.N. flag, the Unites Nations on 7 July 1950 had in effect given the United States something very close to carte blanche for the conduct of the war.
The U.N. Commander, MacArthur, was requested to send, through his government, appropriate reports on whatever action he took.
At this time, the majority of the United Nations were either Western nations or pro-Western; only a handful of the so-called neutrals had been admitted to membership. And, shocked by the overt Communist action, these nations realized that only the United States was capable of effectual opposition to Communist power.
When the Inmun Gun collapsed, the U.N. was prepared to continue its backing of United States policy. The United States was riding a crest of suc-cess, and in October 1950 Americans were happily discovering that world opinion, for whatever it is worth, tends to follow power and success. Later, after Hungary and Tibet, they would again rediscover the fact, this time less happily.
As long as the United States was winning, and its aim did not seem to lead to general war or to sacrifices for the war-weary friendly nations, the U.N. as then constituted was content to follow.
But this was the last time the United States was to find general agreement.
There is every indication that, just as they had not expected that the United States would intervene in Korea in June, the North Koreans did not anticipate the U.N. offensive over the parallel. The shattered Inmun Gun had not been reconstituted after its retreat, and the extensively prepared positions along the border were not heavily defended.
When the Eighth Army smashed across Kaesong in the west, and the ROK's galloped northward to the east, formal resistance almost dissolved. Within a week, despite small pockets of violent resistance here and there, there no longer existed an organized North Korean front, and only remnants of the North Korean Army fled toward the Yalu.
Kim II Sung's broadcast to his forces 14 October is highly revealing. He stated that the new disaster was due to his government's expectation that the U.N. would not move north and that 'many of our officers have been thrown into confusion by this new situation. They have thrown away their arms and left their positions without orders.'
Kim II Sung further proclaimed resistance to the last. Traitors and agitators were to be shot on the spot, regardless of rank, and a new 'Supervising Army' of politically reliable veterans was to be formed.
When it dragged its bleeding forces hastily back across the parallel, the Communist world had apparently been ready to accept a temporary defeat. It was Communist doctrine to exploit success, but it was also considered folly to support failure.
The move in Korea had failed; now they would drop it, wait till a better day. In New York on 2 October the Soviet delegate to the Security Council proposed a cease-fire along the parallel, and a withdrawal of all foreign troops from the peninsula.
Instead, he had a new American challenge thrown into his teeth.
On a balmy Sunday, 15 October, just as the Korean War was turning into a sort of American fox hunt, a star- studded group conferred on Wake Island. Peppery, sharp-eyed President Truman had flown halfway across the Pacific to discuss the final phases of the action with his patrician proconsul of American power in the East, Douglas MacArthur.
Oddly, a fact much noted, it was almost a meeting of two sovereigns rather than of Chief of State and field commander.
The architects of American policy were represented, from homely, keen-faced Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, talking in the same Missouri Valley twang as the President but the finest Army group commander America had produced, to quiet, self-effacing Dean Rusk of the State Department.
The conference was high-level, and five-star General Bradley took its notes.
There was very little talk about the fighting. It was taken for granted that the conflict was almost over and that now the main concern was the rehabilitation of Korea, north and south, most of which lay in ruins.
MacArthur said he expected formal resistance would end around Thanks-giving. He hoped to have the Eighth Army back in Japan by Christmas.
General Bradley, with problems around the world, wanted to know when MacArthur might be able to release a division for Europe.
Then the talk came around to a different matter. 'What,' asked Harry Truman, 'are the chances for Chinese or Soviet intervention?'
Sonorously, MacArthur replied, 'Very little.'
He went on to say that had they interfered during the first or second months it would have been decisive. 'But we are no longer fearful of their intervention. We no longer stand with hat in hand.'
He mentioned that the Chinese had 300,000 men in Manchuria, of which not more than 200,000 were along the Yalu River. Of these, not more than 60,000 could be got across.
'The Chinese have no air force. If the Chinese try to get down to P'yongyang there will be the greatest slaughter.'
No one, civilian or military, disagreed with MacArthur's view.
But it was not what was said, but what was left unsaid on Wake Island, Sunday, 15 October, that would change the course of history.
General MacArthur was operating on purely military assumptions that the Chinese did not have the ability to intervene. And one of these assumptions was that, if the Chinese dared oppose the righteous march of U.N. forces, the United States would retaliate with all its righteous wrath and fury—that American air would strike at China, interdict its long and painfully vulnerable supply lines across Manchuria, destroy the fledgling industry of which the Chinese were so proud.
He firmly believed such a fear would deter the Chinese from action. He firmly believed, also, that upon a Chinese move, America would cry havoc and loose the dogs of war. China, even with its millions, could not hope to gain by general war with the West.
These things he believed, but did not mention.
Quiet, modest Omar Bradley, with one of the best military brains in the business, was thinking of the massive Soviet divisions—at least 175 in the Satellite countries alone—positioned in Europe. To him, all-out war with China would be war with the wrong enemy, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. The United States had to bear the load in Asia, true, but its vital interest lay in Europe, and its greatest danger in Soviet Russia.
There was no occasion to discuss the matter.
And President Truman, with his civilian advisers, the architects of containment, had his own ideas. He saw no hope of, or profit in, America's trying to subdue the endless land masses of Russia and China. It could only be done—if at all—by such holocaust as mankind had never known.
Harry Truman was ready to defend his country at all costs. If the enemy attacked the United States, or its treaty allies, America would go to war, at once. But Harry Truman would do nothing to precipitate
