Military Misfortunes

by Eliot A Cohen

  By early September the tide had turned. Reinforcements streamed in from the United States and Japan; American aircraft—including propeller-driven P-51 Mustangs left over from World War II—harried the enemy; the ROK forces reorganized, and the first foreign contingents began to arrive. Under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur, who served as commander in chief, Far East Command (CINCFE) and commander in chief, United Nations Command (CINCUNC), UN forces ground down the NKPA. The Eighth Army, which consisted of all U.S., Allied, and ROK forces in the Pusan perimeter held the enemy in check, while a new force, X Corps, spearheaded by the First Marine Division, prepared to outflank the enemy.

  Despite the reservations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and most of his subordinates, MacArthur launched X Corps at Inchon, high up the west coast of Korea, on September 15th. This bold maneuver succeeded: A formidable force of some 70,000 men, including the First Marine Division and Seventh Infantry Division, plus supporting troops and ROK marines, planted itself deep in the enemy rear. After still more bitter fighting along the Pusan perimeter, the Eighth Army broke through on September 22, scattering NKPA forces to the hills—where many would later regroup to form guerrilla bands. On September 27, X Corps linked up with the Eighth Army near Osan, South Korea.

  MacArthur, with the consent of his superiors in Washington, now planned to complete the destruction of Communist forces in Korea, to cross the 38th Parallel, which had once divided South and North Korea, and to reunify Korea under President Syngman Rhee. MacArthur’s Washington superiors, like CINCUNC himself, paid little attention to warnings from the newly created People’s Republic of China that it would not tolerate the movement of UN forces north to the Yalu—indeed, past the 38th Parallel. Little attention, but some. The Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed MacArthur to proceed carefully, but in late September they and the secretary of defense instructed him: “We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th parallel.”2

  By the end of September UN forces had liberated Seoul and shortly thereafter began to prepare for a push north to the Yalu and the Chinese border. On October 19 the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, fell, and photographers took snapshots of grinning American officers sitting behind Kim II Sung’s massive desk. Problems of supply and steady, if weakening, NKPA resistance slowed the UN advance, but by late October US, ROK, and Allied forces prepared for a move farther north. X Corps had withdrawn through Inchon harbor and, on October 26, began landing on the east coast of Korea, after long delays caused by the heavy, Soviet-directed mining of Wonsan harbor. From October 25 to November 6, however elements of the Eighth Army and X Corps got a taste of things to come, in what the Chinese would call their First Phase Offensive. Chinese forces struck suddenly from the hills and then withdrew, after inflicting heavy casualties on ROK units and one American infantry regiment. Sobered a bit, UN forces paused once more and then began their final push north. The UN offensive ended barely a day after it began, as Chinese attacks slammed into the Eighth Army and X Corps on the night of November 26–27, 1950.

  UN Breakout and Linkup Attack and Pursuit, September 15 to October 26, 1950

  SOURCE: Map from The Korean War by Matthew B. Ridgway. Copyright © 1967 by Matthew B. Ridgway. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  Within days it became clear, in MacArthur’s words, that “we face an entirely new war.”3 ROK divisions simply disappeared from the situation maps. For the first time since the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, official reports referred to whole American divisions as “combat ineffective.” Chinese units surrounded the First Marine Division and parts of the Seventh Infantry Division in the east and the Second Infantry Division in the west. American and ROK units began to retreat under appalling conditions, which in the east took the form of a sudden onset of the Siberian winter. UN forces tumbled south, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized MacArthur to begin planning for the liquidation of the Korean commitment.

  A letup in the Chinese attack, however, and the replacement of the Eighth Army commander, General Walton Walker (killed in a car accident) by General Matthew Ridgway, soon changed the situation. Ridgway received from MacArthur complete control of X Corps as well as the Eighth Army, and although he had to lead his men south of Seoul, by January he had restored the fighting spirit of UN forces. Following a Chinese New Year’s offensive, a series of UN counterattacks increased in size and scope until, in the spring of 1951, UN forces liberated Seoul and had before them the prospect of Chinese armies retreating and surrendering in numbers as high as 10,000 men a day.

  The memory of the debacle in North Korea in late November and December of 1950 remains vivid. At the time, it came as a great-enough shock: Afterward, the puzzle became even greater. It transpired that the Chinese had warned the West in a variety of ways, particularly through propaganda and messages conveyed by the Indian ambassador to Peking, K.M. Panikkar, that they would intervene in force should UN forces move north.4 Examination of Far East Command and Eight Army intelligence reports reveals that more direct sources of information kept UN forces reasonably well apprised of the size of Chinese forces moving to the Yalu border, though not over it. In addition, before the Chinese struck in late November, the Eighth Army alone had taken nearly one hundred Chinese prisoners of war, and these had proved remarkably cooperative in describing the order of battle and even the plans of the Chinese armies massing in the north.

  The disaster in North Korea—which remains the largest defeat suffered by American arms since the Battle of the Bulge—reflected a double failure. American forces failed first to anticipate the probable behavior of the enemy. In retrospect the signs of large-scale Chinese intervention seem unambiguous. Intelligence from a variety of sources—direct communications from the enemy, espionage, prisoner-of-war interrogation, and others—pointed to a massive Chinese intervention in the war. The American experience suggests as well a failure of organizational learning, because UN forces had had at least one direct experience with Chinese forces a month before the real onslaught. Moreover, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had demonstrated its abilities in the course of protracted war with both the Japanese and the government of Chiang Kai-shek: the seeming lightheartedness with which American commanders viewed their intervention seems all the more puzzling.

  What Was the Disaster?

  Although many have written about the failure of November-December 1950, few have defined it precisely. Was it the failure to anticipate any kind of Chinese intervention, or just the kind that transpired? Was it, more narrowly, the operational failure that ensued, the humiliating rout of UN and, most notably, U.S. forces? Or was it the years of stalemate that followed, in which American, ROK, and Allied forces seemed to suffer for no purpose? No matter how they define the failure, though, most students of the Korean War have little trouble in assigning blame for the debacle to Douglas MacArthur.5 Even as thorough and thoughtful a chronicler of the Korean War as Clay Blair denounces MacArthur’s “reckless, egotistical strategy after Inchon . . . an arrogant, blind march to disaster.”6

  MacArthur has probably attracted more praise and damnation than any other twentieth-century American military figure. One may choose which episodes in his career to look at—a brilliant record as a divisional commander in World War I, the unreadiness of his forces in the Philippines in 1941, the island-hopping drive from the Southwest Pacific in 1943–45, his benign dictatorship over occupied Japan, the Inchon landing, the final clash with President Truman and his relief from command—each suggests different views of him as a commander and a man. Revealingly, Matthew Ridgway concluded an unsparing discussion of MacArthur’s faults with the remark “when Fate suddenly decided that I would serve directly under him in Korea I welcomed the chance to associate once again with one of the few geniuses it has been my privilege to know.”7 Wisely, perhaps, MacArthur’s chief biographer decided to tell the story as straightforwardly as possible without condemnation
or praise, because there is plenty of room for both.8

  But should MacArthur be the “man in the dock”? To decide this we must examine more closely the nature of the events of early winter 1950, answering at least two questions. Did MacArthur’s decisions alone, or even chiefly, provoke the large-scale Chinese intervention? Did the operational failure—the collapse of some American units (most notably the Second Infantry Division) and the subsequent retreat south—result from MacArthur’s dispositions and pressure on his commanders to complete the advance to the Yalu?

  The precise chain of arguments and events by which the Chinese decided to intervene in the Korean War remains unclear, although the reasons may be less obscure than they seemed at the time.9 In October 1950 Washington intelligence agencies worried chiefly that China would intervene if American troops appeared likely to threaten Manchuria. In particular, they believed that should American (rather than ROK) troops approach the Yalu, the Chinese would react strongly out of anxiety about their hydroelectric complexes along that river and industry farther north. On the whole, the Americans believed that Chinese anxieties would take a narrow and traditional hue.10 The Office of Chinese Affairs in the Department of State thought that the Chinese might act out of broader ideological concerns, but the views of the Central Intelligence Agency (and above all its director, General Walter Bedell Smith) predominated. These focused on the supposed importance to China of a cordon sanitaire south of Manchuria.11

  The instructions the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent to MacArthur indicated that they read the situation no differently than did the CIA. They ordered MacArthur not to bomb targets within 5 miles of the Manchurian border, and to refrain from sending American troops to the Yalu. The JCS made their reasoning explicit to Secretary of Defense Marshall, arguing that although they did not know Chinese objectives, the most logical ones were the safeguarding of the Yalu border and the power complexes nearby.12 If one accepts this view, MacArthur’s violation of JCS directives (including his use of American troops in the advance to the Yalu) seemed responsible for the Chinese attack. The resulting confusion extends even to one American official historian, who writes:

  It was this suspicion of all communists everywhere which impaired the ability of American leaders to deal with the communist powers as ordinary states with interests, limitations and needs; the communist states were seen as Principalities of Darkness which could be given no quarter. . . . It was this [belief] which produced the feeling among many military leaders, most especially General MacArthur, that the war should be pursued to total victory, no matter what the cost.13

  In fact, however, CIA and JCS assessment before November 27 reflected just the reverse—a sense that the Chinese had limited, reasonable, and indeed “ordinary” interests. But Chinese propaganda broadcasts and warnings to Ambassador Panikkar suggested that the crossing by UN forces of the 38th Parallel, and their determination to reunify Korea, constituted the casus belli in Chinese eyes.14 Moreover, prisoner of war interrogation reports suggest that the Chinese expected a complete victory, as a result of which they would expel UN forces from Korea and reunify it on their terms.15 All evidence indicates that the Chinese did not intend merely to restore the status quo ante, but to drive the UN out of Korea, and perhaps to force Western influence out of other regions of Asia as well.16

  Why, then, did the Chinese delay their full-fledged entry in the war until late November, if UN forces made known their decision to cross the 38th Parallel almost two months earlier? The answers seem fairly simple: Before Inchon the Chinese did not expect the NKPA to fall apart and certainly not as quickly as it did, and it took time to make adequate war preparations. The Chinese politburo’s decision for full-fledged intervention in the Korean War was not made until October 4, and even then, with some hesitations.17 The Chinese had to move hundreds of thousands of troops into position; moreover, they required sophisticated civil defense, logistical, and even propaganda preparations before they began a war with a formidable foe. Even the Spartan PLA could not concentrate its forces (many deployed in the interior or opposite Taiwan) within days or weeks—months were required, and indeed, MacArthur may have been correct (if self-interested) when he declared that the final assault of late November began before the Chinese had completely prepared for battle. We cannot hold MacArthur solely or even primarily responsible for provoking the Chinese into attacking UN forces. Once the UN, and above all the American government, had adopted the goal of unifying Korea, it set in motion the Chinese intervention. MacArthur shared, no doubt, in the making of a flawed policy, but he did not initiate or determine it. We will, moreover, exclude that larger failure from our analysis here, for it is distinct from the second and equally disturbing one: the operational failure.

  What, then, of MacArthur’s responsibility for the costly and humiliating defeats of November-December 1950? Here the question becomes more complicated. We should note first a point raised above in chapter 3: Disasters are heterogeneous. The experiences of the First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir and the Second Infantry Division at Ku-nu-ri offer instructive contrasts. The former retreated in good order, bringing their dead and wounded and all their equipment with them. Casualties were heavy, but the Chinese forces opposite them suffered far more heavily, losing tens of thousands of men to Marine firepower and the bitter winter. When the Marines finally withdrew by sea from Hungnam on the Korean east coast they did so in the absence of enemy pressure. By dint of stout fighting a force some 25,000 strong, or barely a sixth of U.S. forces in Korea (and a twentieth of all UN forces), had disabled approximately between a quarter and a third of all Chinese forces in Korea. The Second Infantry Division, by way of contrast, suffered approximately 30 percent casualties, lost virtually all its equipment, and escaped the gauntlet, as S. L. A. Marshall described it, a collection of small, desperate groups of men.18 Although it surely inflicted damage on its Chinese opponents, it had nothing like the success of the marines. Marshall, perhaps the greatest of all American combat historians and the author of the most important studies of combat in this phase of the Korean War, concluded that systemic—and unnecessary—differences between army and marine methods accounted for the very different outcomes.19

  MacArthur did indeed urge his men forward in late November 1950, and thus precipitated the disaster before the Yalu. He did so despite the reservations of some of his commanders, most notably Major General Oliver P. Smith, commander of the First Marine Division. He urged the Eighth Army and X Corps forward, however, not out of sheer fecklessness but in order to gain the Yalu River before it froze, after which the Chinese would find it easier to cross and bombing of the bridges across it would be pointless. General Walker, commander of the Eighth Army, expressed some reservations about the move but nowhere nearly as forcefully as General Smith. The records of the Eighth Army, including intelligence reports, operations orders, and war diaries, reveal concern but no enormous anxiety about an (under)estimated Chinese force of some 100,000 to 150,000 men between themselves and the Yalu.20 As late as November 27, for example, after the Chinese attack had begun, the G-l (personnel) section of the Eighth Army was worried chiefly about shortages of stationery and razor blades, and about making preparations for Operation Relax, a rotation of U.S. forces to Japan for rest and recreation.21 On the whole, the Eighth Army expected some resistance from Chinese forces but nothing overwhelming. G-2 (intelligence) at Far East Command in Tokyo took a similar view, declaring on November 26 that UN forces faced between nine and twelve Chinese divisions and the scattered remnants of NKPA forces—a maximum of 150,000 men.22 Opposing them were some 153,000 American soldiers, 25,000 marines, 20,000 Allied forces (including 11,000 British and 5,000 Turkish troops), and some 224,000 ROK troops—a grand total of more than 422,000 combat troops, backed by ample air power.23 With few exceptions, American commanders ordered their forces forward warily but not reluctantly: Their commander-in-chief’s tempered confidence did not greatly exceed their own. Intelligence underestimated Chinese force
s in Korea, but its estimates of overall Chinese strength along the border was fairly good.

  After the Chinese First Phase Offensive, MacArthur curtailed the drawdown of manpower and supplies that had gone on in anticipation of an early end to the war. He pressed for special measures—above all, an intensive air campaign against the Yalu bridges and the area between the river and UN forces—to cope with the growing Chinese threat. By no means did he simply disregard disagreeable intelligence or convince subordinates to “cook” it. Moreover, MacArthur appears to have read Chinese motives better than did George Marshall, the secretary of defense, informing the latter on November 8, 1950:

  I do not believe that the hydroelectric system is the dominant consideration animating the Communist intervention in Korea. . . . they [the Chinese] now make first-class soldiers and are gradually developing competent staffs and commanders. This has produced a new and dominant power in Asia which for its own purposes is allied with Soviet Russia, but which in its own concepts and methods has become aggressively imperialistic with a lust for expansion and increased power normal to this type of imperialism.24

  There were two quite distinct failures in Korea in the summer and fall of 1950. The first, which involved not just MacArthur but the entire American government, stemmed from the misjudgment of Chinese willingness to fight a large war to prevent unification of Korea. Whether or not this failure was a culpable one or not, it clearly concerned all who participated in the decision to allow UN forces north of the 38th Parallel. The second failure, which concerns us here, is the operational one. Why did American forces suffer so badly at the hands of the Chinese? Why did only the First Marine Division inflict on the enemy the kind of damage that, by rights, it should have suffered from the Eighth Army as well? As an exasperated Ridgway told his subordinates on January 8, 1951, “We have almost every advantage except that of numbers and it is difficult to believe that with all we have, we can’t defeat the enemy.”25 Given that war with China in Korea probably became inevitable after the decision to move north of the 38th Parallel, why did most U.S. forces come off so badly in its first few months?