Charles Willoughby, while devoted to MacArthur, had always been personally unpopular in the American Army. The time would come when the storm would break over his head—because General Willoughby, in truth, was wrong.
But it should never be overlooked that FECOM's views, as stated by Willoughby, were never contested by Washington.
It was true that Washington had no pipeline—not then, not later—into the Kremlin. It was true that the CIA had become woefully spotty in East Asia since the Communist takeover. It was true that the picture of both Peiping and Moscow remained vague, distorted, and open to argument in Western capitals. Nevertheless, the responsibility to evaluate intelligence touching the highest political levels remained in Washington.
Yet throughout the whole uneasy fall of 1950, Washington kept relaying information to Tokyo. And Tokyo, very early, had made up its mind, as expressed by MacArthur:
Because Washington permitted soldiers to make and to act on decisions that were beyond the purview of the military, because it forced them to bring purely military thinking into matters that remained in essence political—in short, because Washington still sometimes acted as if there could be a separation between war and politics, the United States, intoxicated with the heady taste of triumph, was heading for disaster.
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18
In the Never-Never Land
— Lieutenant General Walton W. Walker, Commanding Eighth Army, Korea, November, 1950.
AS OCTOBER waned, and the winds blowing off the roof of the world down into the mountains of North Korea turned dry and cold, American and ROK forces advanced steadily northward. Beating its drums, proclaiming its every objective and movement to the world, its every detail, composition, and minute location reported faithfully by its war correspondents, the United Nations Force raced to the Yalu. The war that was not a war continued, but everyone agreed that it was almost over. Somehow, even the men had read MacArthur's words at Wake Island, and everyone expected to be home—or at least in Japan—by Christmas.
But behind the open book of the armies' progress, behind the glowing communiques, were controversy and confusion.
When the Eighth Army had approached the Han in September, General Walker had begun to worry about the future of X Corps, which had been created to command the Inch'on invasion forces. He felt that it should now cease to report separately to Tokyo and come under his command. But while Walton Walker expressed himself to his staff, he did not formally put his ideas in writing to MacArthur's GHQ.
But on 26 September MacArthur dashed whatever hopes the Eighth Army commander may have had, by informing him that X Corps would pass into GHQ reserve and ready itself to proceed with a GHQ-directed mission, of which Johnny Walker would be apprised in due course.
Instead of merging X Corps with Eighth Army, MacArthur decided to employ it on the east coast of Korea, and to keep it subordinate not to Walker but to himself in Tokyo. The X Corps was embarked for Wonsan, an important port of North Korea on the Sea of Japan—though the ROK Army, moving overland, beat it there—and then went into action, marching toward the far reaches of the north, where the Yalu roared through its gloomy gorges, and where Korea touched Manchuria and the maritime province of Siberia.
No decision was to come under such controversy as this splitting of the U.N. Command on the ground. For as Schlieffen had written, 'It is better to surrender a province than to split an army.' But MacArthur felt he could coordinate the advance of each column, Eighth Army in the west, X Corps in the east, better from Tokyo than could Walker from Korea. MacArthur's reasoning was based, simply enough, on the Korean terrain.
Above the Seoul-Wonsan Corridor, there is only one good lateral route of communication running across Korea—the P'yongyang-Wonsan road and rail line. North of this, the Taebaek Mountains rise to dizzy heights. Running north and south, they cross the land with rugged crests and vast, dark gorges, forming a trackless waste across which even Koreans do not go. Until the valley of the Yalu is reached, there is no lateral road connecting east and west.
The only routes of advance to the north are in the valleys on either coast. Up these, Walker on the west, Almond on the east, the main bodies had to advance, with junction possible only on the Yalu itself.
Because of the horrendous mountains in east central Korea, contact between the two forces was tenuous, at best. Japan, remaining the staging base, supplied both forces.
Whatever the order of battle, X Corps and Eighth Army were forced to live, advance, and fight in virtual isolation from each other. No matter who had been given command, the mountains would have remained.
As the U.N. advanced to the Yalu, this mountainous gap, approaching sixty miles in places, drew apprehension from the JCS and military men all over the world. But it was never important. The enemy, already in Korea, never utilized it in his plan of action, because the terrain was virtually impassable.
More important than the gap separating Eighth Army and X Corps were the maneuver formations of the armies themselves. The farther north they marched, the more nonexistent roads became. The advance had to proceed up single dirt roads, along parallel valleys. Nothing like a contiguous line or solid front could be maintained. Within regiments and battalions, units began to live and move in virtual isolation, separated by the ever-present hills. As they neared the Yalu, divisions were strung out, as Ned Almond put it, from hell to breakfast.
What the U.N. did, it did in the light of the restricting terrain, and in the view that no real enemy opposed it. And above all else, it was the terrain and a complete failure of Intelligence that brought disaster. Marching north, the U.N. trumpeted to the world its composition, its battle plan, and even the hour of its execution.
Without effort, the enemy knew everything there was to know about the U.N. forces.
The U.N., in turn, never knew the enemy existed—until it was much too late.
For more generations than men could count, soldiers in the Middle Kingdom had ranked low in the orders of society, far down the scale from the scholar and the poet. And for more generations than men could count, China had had no skill or success in war. For more than a hundred years, Chinese military forces had been objects of contempt, possessing neither skill, means, nor the will to fight.
Meanwhile, China had been humbled by one foe after another. Japan and the Western powers took from her what they wanted, as they pleased.
On! 1 August 1927 the newly formed Communist Party of China began the fight against Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang. This date is still carried on CCF battle flags as the date of the Communist Army's founding.
For decades the battle raged across China. In 1934, when it seemed that the Nationalist Army had the CCF ringed, approximately 100,000 CCF soldiers retreated north for Kiangsi Province into Shensi, to far Yenan. It was a march without parallel in history, and one almost without parallel for hardships.
One year later, after crossing 6,000 miles, eighteen mountain ranges, twenty-four rivers, and twelve provinces, 20,000 survivors under a general named Lin Piao made juncture with other Communist forces in Yenan.
During the actual time of march, Lin Piao's forces had averaged twenty-four miles per day, on foot.
In Shensi Province, far removed from the Nationalists and the eyes of the world, the Communist Chinese began to rebuild their base of power. They began to wage guerrilla warfare against the Nationalists.
They were led by men who were now hardened soldiers, men who wanted above all else for China to be again a great power, and who felt that Marxism held out the only hope for its accomplishment.
The vast areas of China were still feudal; there had never been any true capitalism except that administered by foreigners in the coastal cities. And the pattern of Sinic culture had frozen five thousand years earlier.
