Americans retired.
By New Year's Eve, Mount's Company was dug in along the 38th parallel some fifteen miles north of Seoul, a broad valley stretching out before them. It was as cold as hell, and nobody was in a celebrating mood.
In front of them were more Chinese than Mount or anyone else liked to think about.
Mount was aid man with the 2nd Platoon, Lieutenant Pritchard. Pritchard was a West Pointer, of the recent class that had been pretty well decimated already in Korea. Mount understood that the losses in this class had been a matter of argument at home—as if the public thought the function of a military academy was to make future generals rather than men capable of ably leading platoons in action.
Mount himself knew that battle was a series of platoon actions, each of which went toward deciding the battle as a whole. The best general in the world couldn't succeed without good men in his small units, however high the loss of skilled manpower. And realistically, Mount knew that the men who survived platoon combat would make better generals, however many were killed.
The 2nd Platoon was centered on high ground to the right of the Seoul highway. Across the road, on the left, stood some old Quonset huts that had been used by the occupation forces years ago.
About dark, artillery began to search Item Company's lines. Fortunately, most of the incoming stuff fell behind them. But snipers had moved in close, under the shelling, and two enlisted men of 2nd Platoon had been killed. As Mount and an aid man from an adjoining platoon struggled with a third man, shot through the shoulder, a bullet clipped the other aid man in the heel. Then Mount had two casualties on his hands.
Captain Porter, who had taken the company upon the former commander's breakdown, was hit in the leg by the first round that came in. Porter refused to stop long enough for an aid man to look at him, hobbling up and down furiously.
As dark deepened, all the company could hear heavy firing off to the left, where the 19th Infantry held their flank. It sounded like the 19th was getting clobbered.
The company radio man reported, 'I've lost all contact with the 19th—'
Porter sent out patrols to try to contact the units on his left flank. The patrols went as far as they dared, came back to report no contact. 'Hell,' said Porter, 'get in your holes and stay there. Shoot anything that moves!'
Mount, sticking tight now with Pritchard's platoon, heard one report come to the lieutenant from company HQ. 'There's 50,000 Chinks out there. Stay loose!' The boys at Company were getting puckered.
The night grew colder. With Pritchard, Mount helped check the outposts. In the bitter weather, the sentries were having trouble staying alert. It was cold enough to keep a man's teeth chattering all night long—but Pritchard had learned a lesson earlier in the campaign. At first, every man had been issued a sleeping bag—and this had proved a mistake, fatal for a lot of Americans who could not resist the temptation to crawl in the bag, even on guard, and fall asleep.
The Chinese had learned the expensiveness of bugling and tootling their way into American lines. Now they came quietly, padding on rubber-soled feet. The only way for the outposts to have a chance was to issue only one arctic sleeping bag to each two men. This way, one man would be too miserable to go to sleep, and he would damn well see to it that his buddy didn't sleep too long.
It was not a popular ruling, but it saved lives.
Shivering but alert, Item Company held during the night. At daybreak, Porter found that the units adjacent to him had pulled out. He checked for a reading with Battalion, and was ordered to pull back, too.
The company moved out after New Year's Day dinner, which for the line companies was a fiasco. Mount got no dinner, but did grab a handful of cigars, which he preferred. Now the regiment pulled back to a line five miles north of Seoul, from which it was ordered to retreat no farther. A thorough defensive position was completed— holes, wire, minefields.
But immediately the regiment was hard hit by Chinese. Neither air nor artillery could completely stop them from scrambling over the ridges, dropping down into the valleys. Mount saw that some attacking Chinese had no rifles; as they advanced, they waited until a companion was hit, then took his weapon.
But they had plenty of manpower, and manpower—and the grayness that was sinking over Eighth Army— pushed them out.
They held north of the Han exactly four days. When they withdrew, they went back thirty miles.
On a gray day in December 1950, riding in his jeep with its handrail and autoloading shotgun, Walton Walker was spilled and killed in a collision on the dusty road.
Walker, dying on the frozen dirt, was spared a worse fate. For days a whisper had run through command channels of the Eighth Army that Walker was through.
The reverse of the coin that nothing succeeds like success is that in battle there is no prize for second place.
Walker, an armored leader of some note in the big war, had done his best, against great odds, in Korea. He fought in a way completely new to his experience, with an army passionately preferring not to fight. Before Pusan, his blunt, bulldog outspokenness and stubbornness had much to do with the successful defense of the Perimeter.
Given his plan of maneuver in the North, it is doubtful that any leader, with the same troops, could have done much better. But the one thing a democracy has in common with a dictatorship is that when there is military failure, heads must roll. Perhaps, as Voltaire remarked, it is not a bad policy, since it tends to encourage the remaining leaders.
Some days before, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, CG in the Canal Zone, had been briefed for Korea. But with Walker's death, this would never be publicized.
But the man who could dissipate the grayness arrived in Korea, to assume command of the Eighth Army.
History has tended to prove that, like bishops, generals need a certain flamboyance for public success. Walker had none; he could never have been a public figure, win or lose.
Flamboyance in itself is worth nothing, but when it is coupled with genuine ability, history records the passage of a great leader across the lives of men. It is no accident that the names of Clausewitz, Jomini, von Franqois, or Gruenther—brilliant minds all—are known only to students of warfare, while all the world remembers Ney and his grenadiers, Patton's pearl-handled pistols, and Matt Ridgway's taped grenades.
For while Karl von Clausewitz, Henri Jomini, and Kurt von Francois influenced the history of warfare, Patton and Ridgway made an indelible mark upon the hearts of men.
Ridgway, a well-built, bald soldier with the look of eagles about his strong-nosed face, was the kind of leader the Eighth Army needed. For as the commandos say, 'It is all in the mind and in the heart,' and battles, more often, are won not on the drawing boards but in the hearts of men. Ridgway was a strong man, and an articulate one. He could think, and he could put his thoughts across with pen and tongue.
He was possessed of such personal courage that, caught in artillery shell-fire, he was always the first man out of the ditch—a habit that caused his aide, a Medal of Honor winner, once to remark, 'Oh, Jesus, I wish the Old Man would wait a little longer!'
Ridgway came to an army gray with the habit of defeat, strong but no longer sure of itself. He said to his staff, who had caught enough brickbats to last them a lifetime in the past weeks, and had grown cautious: 'There will be no more discussion of retreat. We're going back!'
But habits are hard to break. Shortly after this, Ridgway's G-3, Dabney, said, 'Here, General, are our contingency plans for retreat—'
Ridgway relieved him upon the spot.
The staff got the message. It took only a little longer for it to seep down to the ranks. Seventy-five miles below the 38th parallel, the U.N. line got 'straightened out.' It would never move south again, except under local pressure, for the balance of the war.
Into Frank Munoz's new George Company flowed dozens of replacements, many of them recalled reservists from the States. These last, as Munoz said later, didn't want to be there.
He integrated and oriented his newcomers. He told the N.C.O's and old men: 'No war stories to scare hell out of these people. I don't want a bunch of scared rabbits. Let's get 'em trained and on the team.'
