The Combined Forces J-3, Major General Barret Smith, moved up beside him, tamping tobacco into his pipe.
“How much longer, Barney?”
Smith lit a match and puffed his pipe into life. “The Met boys say this latest cold snap should lift by morning. Their satellites show another warm front moving through by then, and that could raise temperatures by up to forty degrees.”
“Still be below freezing, then?”
The dour-faced New Englander nodded.
“More snow expected?”
“Yes.”
McLaren frowned. Now that the UN forces had achieved almost complete air superiority, he begrudged every snowstorm. They limited his air support to the available all-weather attack squadrons — several of which had been worn down to uselessness by cumulative losses. He wanted clear skies so his fighter-bombers could hammer the NK columns from the air and see the SAMs reaching up for them from the ground. Every hour of limited visibility gave the North Koreans time to recover from previous aerial poundings, and McLaren didn’t want to give them a minute’s rest.
Smith interrupted his thoughts. “Staff’s ready for the briefing, Jack.”
“Coming.” He turned on his heel and strode back to the main table — now covered with charts showing the rugged hills around Ch’onan. McLaren’s eyes narrowed as he saw the markings of planned defensive positions scattered across the maps, but he stayed silent. Instead, he looked around the table at the shadowed faces of his senior staff. They looked tired, but not as exhausted as they had in the first days following North Korea’s surprise attack. War, like all other human occupations, had its own rhythms, and his officers were beginning to adjust to them. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s get down to it.”
Smith stepped further into the light. “Certainly, General.” He bent over the map table. “Now, as you can see, we’ve laid out a proposed — ”
“Hold it, Barney.” McLaren shook his head. “Let’s start at the top first. I want an overall brief before we get into the small-scale stuff.”
The J-3 took the pipe out of his mouth, surprised. But he recovered fast enough. “Of course, Jack, whatever you say. Colonel Logan?”
Logan took Smith’s place under the light and launched into a detailed evaluation of the military situation across the whole Korean peninsula. The J-2 spoke plainly, only occasionally referring to his notes when McLaren asked an unexpected question. Of all the headquarters staff, the colonel had been the most changed by the war. His old, lazy, “get along, go along” attitude toward the job had sloughed off — replaced by a hard-driving determination to get the facts, no matter what the cost in sleepless hours or even lives. It was as if Logan were burning himself up from within to make up for his failure to predict North Korea’s invasion.
The picture he painted was mixed.
First, Seoul had not been seriously attacked, despite being surrounded on all sides. Instead, the five second- line North Korean infantry divisions besieging the South Korean capital had contented themselves with heavy artillery bombardments directed at suspected UN defensive positions and with halfhearted thrusts aimed at the city’s water and power supplies. All had been repulsed. On the other hand, civilian casualties in Seoul were growing, and all attempts at air resupply had failed miserably. Even so, the South Korean garrison commander estimated he could hold out for several weeks under the present conditions. And the raids launched by his Special Forces units were tying down a large number of NK troops needed at the front.
Conditions were similar along the rugged eastern half of the DMZ. The ROK units there had thrown back every North Korean attack on their positions and saw no difficulty in holding their ground indefinitely. At the same time, their commanders saw little prospect of being able to go over onto the offensive. Neither side could hope to make significant gains in an area so crisscrossed by natural and man-made defenses.
The news in the air war was less ambiguous. After fourteen days of unpleasant surprises and heavy losses, the UN edge in equipment and air combat training was beginning to pay off. North Korea’s most modern fighter and ground-attack squadrons had been decimated, and its small force of surviving pilots and planes had been almost completely withdrawn from combat — pulled back to defend Pyongyang and the North’s other cities. Kim Jong-Il and his marshals clearly expected the Americans to repeat the devastating strategic bombing campaigns that had been so successful during the first Korean War. McLaren’s U.S. Air Force liaison officer smiled sourly at that. He’d just gotten off the phone with the USAF Chief of Staff. Growing tension with the Soviet Union had forced the President to cancel the planned transfer of an F-111 bomber wing from Europe. So there wouldn’t be any bombing of North Korean cities — not for the foreseeable future. This air war would be waged solely on the tactical level.
The war at sea was also being won. The carrier air wings operating off
All of which brought Logan to the most important theater of the war — the land battle along South Korea’s western coast. Everything else hinged on the outcome there. Victory against North Korea’s armored spearheads would ratify the UN Command’s hard-won successes in the air and at sea. Defeat would render them meaningless.
Logan’s verdict was short and painfully blunt. “That’s where we’re getting our ass kicked, General. The troops we’ve committed to this area are just plain fought out. They’ve been in action for two weeks now and they need help. Oh, sure, supplies are getting through for once, that doesn’t change the fact that our boys are outnumbered, outgunned, and out of luck.”
Several of his South Korean staff officers murmured at Logan’s lack of tact, but McLaren simply smiled. The colonel was absolutely right. He looked at Smith. “Recommendation, Barney?”
The tall New Englander came back to the map table. “Simply this, General. We’ve been surrendering eight to ten kilometers of ground every day, just to keep from being surrounded and crushed. That’s got to stop, and we” — he gestured at the assembled staff officers — ”believe this is the place to do it.” His pipe rested on the map showing the ridges and hills around Ch’onan.
“Oh?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve made the calculations and believe that, by using the divisions held out thus far as reserves, we could hold these positions indefinitely.” Smith’s hand traced the line of ridges. He stepped back a pace and stood waiting.
McLaren shook his head decisively. “No.”
Several officers moved forward in protest. “But General, if you’d just…”
“We could stop ’em cold on…”
“Sir, we’ve got to do someth…”
He held up a hand. “Gentlemen.” They shut up. “I’m not interested in just holding our ground. That’s how we got into this mess the first war around, back in ’52 and ’53. I don’t want a replay of that stalemate. I want victory.”
His eyes settled on a figure waiting quietly off to the side. “Doug, go ahead and start setting up my dog- and-pony show.”
As his aide moved forward to the table, McLaren continued, “Gentlemen, what I’m about to tell you must not go outside this tent. The maps Captain Hansen is laying out contain the bare-bones outlines of an operation I’ve code-named Thunderbolt. And if I hear any one of you so much a whisper that name anywhere but here, I’ll personally kick your ass. Is that clear?”
Heads nodded.
Hansen finished and stepped back, clearing the way for the others to study his handiwork. McLaren heard gasps from around the table.
He grinned. “I’m gonna start by telling you that the trouble isn’t that our troops have been giving up too much ground. The trouble is they’ve been giving up too little ground. Now, here’s what I mean by that…”
McLaren spoke for nearly half an hour, without notes and with complete conviction, stabbing the maps with an unlit cigar to emphasize particular points. While speaking, he kept his eyes fixed on the faces of all around him,
