The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

by David Halberstam

  It was a disaster in the making, a curious repeat of what had happened in late November when the main Chinese attack had come. As the ROK units collapsed, a number of units in Tenth Corps, especially the First and the Third battalions of the Thirty-eighth Regiment, were immediately cut off. What made the problem worse was Almond’s bizarre command structure and the fact that so many of his subordinate commanders were so fearful of him and were slow to make their own decisions. Lieutenant Colonel John Keith, commander of the Fifteenth Field Artillery Battalion, which had been assigned to support ROK troops, immediately found himself in danger of being cut off. He called headquarters about 1:30 A.M. on February 12, knowing everything was collapsing on him, and asked Brigadier General Loyal Haynes, the division artillery commander, for permission to pull back. Haynes, a timid officer, was unable to give him an answer; he had to clear it with Ruffner or Corps. By the time the approval came through from Almond himself an hour and a half later, it was too late; the Chinese troops had completely cut Keith off, with all his unit’s heavy gear and giant trucks. The ROKs whom Keith was supposed to protect (and who in turn in a situation like this were supposed to help protect him) were long gone. Keith’s only road out was narrow and mountainous, and controlled by the Chinese. He soon joined up with a battalion of the Thirty-eighth Regiment, also under heavy attack and just as badly cut off. Together they tried the road, but as Clay Blair noted, the Chinese troops “had created a gauntlet, not unlike that which the 38th Infantry had run below Kunuri.” In the end, on the way south to Hoengsong, the Fifteenth Field Artillery Battalion lost five howitzers, four 155s, and one 105.

  Just before dawn on February 12, what was left of the badly banged up First Battalion and Keith’s artillerymen reached the Third Battalion of the Thirty-eighth, just north of Hoengsong. But here too the Chinese were pressing in and the American perimeter was fast shrinking. Just south of them the Chinese had yet again cut the road. At Corps everyone was aware of one order above all others from Ridgway—they were not to lose any more artillery pieces. If the Chinese overran Keith and his men and took more heavy guns, the ramifications for Corps were going to be very serious. Keith was ordered to continue south to Hoengsong where, it was hoped, he and the units with him would be able to create a strong defensive position. So the artillerymen moved out, accompanied by the remaining troops from the First Battalion. But after going about a half mile south, they were hit so hard by the Chinese that no one could move, and they were pinned down for some four hours. Finally Corps ordered the Third Battalion to leave its perimeter, join up with the other two units, and help drive through the Chinese blockade. At the same time, Corps ordered an armored infantry relief column from the 187th Regimental Combat Team to fight its way north and link up with them. It too was hit hard by the Chinese, but eventually broke through. It was dark now and the Chinese still controlled the road. Yet there was some hope that the larger combined force by now led by the 187th could break out again and make it south. Then one of the lead trucks in the convoy, which was towing a 105 howitzer, flipped over, blocking the road. That was the worst possible news for the men trying to get out.

  From the start the Chinese believed they could control the road simply by disabling the larger Americans vehicles just as they had below Kunuri. They concentrated their fire on the driver compartments of the big trucks. Their fire was so heavy and so well concentrated that there was no possibility of clearing the road. Most of the big guns would have to be left behind. Fourteen 105s and five 155s were abandoned, along with 120 trucks, some of them carrying wounded. It was in all ways a disaster. Colonel Keith was first listed as missing in action and then as probably having died in a prison camp. Fortunately, the Dutch battalion fighting hard at Hoengsong managed to hold; and the varying forces of the Thirty-eighth along with some of the artillery men managed to retreat through Hoengsong and back to Wonju. The losses had been devastating: the two battalions along with the Dutch battalion suffered more than two thousand casualties. There were about ten thousand ROK casualties as well. Ridgway, hearing the news, was furious, and soon showed up at Tenth Corps headquarters and gave Almond a ferocious blistering. It was, said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Chiles, who was an Almond deputy at the time, the worst ass-chewing he had ever heard. Ridgway did not yet know of the full casualties in the battle, but he knew how many artillery pieces they had lost, and that in his book was sinful, the loss of big guns to the enemy. There was a great deal of talk about reckless misuse of artillery, and a great deal of emphasis, Chiles said, “that this will never happen again!” But for whatever reason—fear of upsetting MacArthur, the incompetence of his other corps commanders—Ridgway did not relieve Almond.

  The knowledge that the equivalent of an entire battalion had been lost was brutal enough, but a month later, during another American offensive, some Marines went through the same valley and discovered that the battlefield was littered with American bodies, those of the men of the Thirty-eighth Regiment who had been killed trying to get back to Wonju. Salvage and recovery troops were sent in and recovered more than 250 American and a large number of Dutch bodies, including that of their battalion commander, Marinus den Ouden. Most of the men had multiple bullet wounds—a sign that they had fought to the last and had eventually been overrun. After the war was over and a more careful accounting was done, the regiment’s death toll for the three days of battle was placed at 468. Of that total 255 died on the battlefield and another 213 in captivity. Keith’s Fifteenth Field Artillery Battalion lost 83 men killed that night, and another 128 in Communist prison camps. “Massacre Valley,” the Marines called the area. One Marine posted a sign that reflected, among other things, the bitterness over the nomenclature chosen for the war: “MASSACRE VALLEY/SCENE OF HARRY TRUMAN’S POLICE ACTION/ NICE GOING HARRY.”

  THE COMMUNIST SUCCESSES in the central sector were mounting. Three days into what had started as an American offensive, the Chinese were now moving in on two of the prizes they had sought from the start, Wonju and Chipyongni. As the Chinese seemed ready to take Wonju, fears for Chipyongni grew. So far almost everything the Americans had done in Wonju had gone wrong, and the Communist victories had seemed like a continuation of what had happened around the Chongchon. Then, with both Wonju and Chipyongni at stake, the Americans caught a major break, the kind that can turn defeat into victory.

  On the morning of February 14, a small artillery spotter plane was flying over the Som River, which cut its way through the mountains northwest of Wonju. One of the observers, Lieutenant Lee Hartell of the Fifteenth Field Artillery Battalion, happened to look out. There, along the sandy beach of the river, was an unusually heavy tree line, or so he thought at first, a lot more trees than one usually saw in that area. He decided to look again. This time he noticed that the tree line was moving. It was not a tree line, he suddenly understood, but a vast Chinese force, seemingly well camouflaged, and so confident that they were moving en masse in daylight as they almost never did, and did not even freeze as they were supposed to when a plane came over. With victory so close and time so precious, they now had too little respect for their enemies and had simply ignored the spotter plane. Hartell and his stunned pilot placed the force at as many as two divisions, perhaps fourteen thousand men moving four abreast, almost surely on their way to the final battle for Wonju. Hartell radioed in his find and called for artillery fire. The battle was soon to be memorialized by the Americans as the Wonju Shoot.

  The first round was a white phosphorous marker, and with that, the Wonju Shoot began, as the Americans poured in a brutal barrage of artillery fire on the Chinese. The Americans had massive artillery ready to fire on the Chinese force—some 130 big guns, thirty 155s and one hundred 105s—and a commander, Brigadier General George Stewart, who, though not an artillery officer, knew how to exploit a stunning break like this. If there was one senior officer in the entire corps who stepped forward and acted professionally in the midst of the larger battle of Wonju and Hongchon and Hoengsong, it was Stewa
rt. Among the men of the Second Division he was considered the most rational, professional, thoughtful, and perhaps most important of all, independent senior officer.

  Stewart had become the assistant division commander almost by chance. He was someone who had always thought he would be an infantry officer, had graduated from West Point in 1923, but had not managed to get an infantry command. When World War II started, he was too old for a junior command and did not have enough going for him to get a more senior one. Instead he had been given one of those vital assignments no one really wants, but which need to be done and done well. He was made chief of transportation for the Allied forces, first in North Africa, then in Italy, next in the Southwest Pacific, and he was in charge of transportation for the invasion of Japan when the war ended. He had performed brilliantly at his various tasks, an irreplaceable man in two theaters of war. But his abilities worked against his career ambitions. He was too badly needed elsewhere to get the infantry commands he always wanted. He had ended the war as a brigadier general, had been bumped down to colonel during the demobe, and then promoted back to brigadier in January 1947. He was, thought Ken Hamburger, the soldier, historian, and teacher, “one of those special men the Army produces, talented and brave and thoughtful, all in all an exceptional officer, but not quite ruthless enough to be a great general. The great generals, men like Ridgway, though they are not reckless, know when the moment arrives when you have to risk the lives of your men in the call of duty.” Stewart in 1950 was still doing logistics and had overseen the logistics of the Inchon landing, still longing for that infantry command that was always just out of reach.

  In early December, as the Chinese drove south, Stewart was told that—lest the Chinese overrun it—his logistics command would move south to Pusan. He wanted no part of the move. His son, George Stewart, Jr., a 1945 graduate of West Point, was a lieutenant in the 187th Regimental Combat Team. The idea that he would be operating from a safe slot in a safe haven while his son was in harm’s way the elder Stewart found singularly offensive. He visited the Eighth Army chief of staff, Lev Allen, and asked for a different assignment. Allen told him to get on with his assignment and get to Pusan. But on his way out of Allen’s office Stewart ran into Bob McClure, who had just been given command of the Second Division. On a whim, he asked McClure whether he needed a good assistant division commander. Because the then-ADC, Sladen Bradley, was in the hospital, Stewart was given the job, at first on a temporary basis, eventually permanently. His position in the hierarchy was vulnerable, more so after McClure, his sponsor, was so quickly relieved. Stewart had limited authority, more adviser than commander; he was to give no commands on his own. Everything he did had to be cleared with Ruffner, who had replaced McClure, and that meant, in effect, with Almond, who wanted him gone.

  Earlier, with Wonju about to be assaulted by Chinese forces, the size of which they were just beginning to comprehend at Corps, Almond had put Stewart in charge of the town’s defense, and he did it in a distinctly Almondesque fashion. He ordered Stewart to Wonju late on the day of February 13, the day before Hartell spotted the two divisions, and left behind for him quite specific instructions on how to fight the battle: “General Almond directs that you take command of all the troops in the vicinity of Wonju, defend and hold that important road junction at all costs. The General believes that the Chinese will attack on your right, BUT THE DECISION IS YOURS. The General believes you should place the one intact BN of the 38th on the line, BUT THE DECISION IS YOURS.” Then, having passed on the orders, the G-3, as Stewart noted, immediately departed the endangered post.

  The instructions, Stewart decided, were completely worthless. He had studied the terrain and, with the limited intelligence he had, decided the attack would come from the left—in this he was correct—and so he held in reserve the one good battalion of the Thirty-eighth that remained. Though he was an infantry officer and not an artillery man, he was exceptionally knowledgeable about the uses of artillery because of some cross training he had done in the 1930s. Now, with a relatively small defensive force under his command and perhaps as many as four divisions on the attack, he knew he was going to need all the expertise in big guns that he could muster, and he was shrewd enough not to count on any help from Loyal Haynes, the division artillery commander, whom he, like many other men, considered an exceptionally weak officer. Upon arrival, even before the battle started, he ordered Haynes to have his men prepare data so that they could fire on critical points of approach upon command; he wanted map overlays prepared that could allow his artillery to hit different points simply by using a preselected number. In effect, he wanted to be able to call in massive fire instantaneously without any calculation in the middle of battle. No time was to be wasted.

  Thus, when Hartell first spotted the Chinese, Stewart and his guns were ready. Catching a giant Chinese force in the open with so many artillery tubes at his disposal, he intended to maximize his advantage. On several occasions that day Haynes tried to slow Stewart down, but he was ignored. With Lieutenant Hartell still able to fly over the scene and call in adjustments, the artillery men very systematically poured shell after shell on the Chinese. And yet the Chinese kept coming. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them, not even this merciless hail of fire. For this was one of their great weaknesses at that point in the war: once a battle was initiated, they had little ability to make adjustments. So the artillery shoot went on for more than three hours. At one point Haynes asked Stewart to stop because they were running low on ammo—but Stewart, knowing this was a chance he might never have again, waved him off. “Keep firing until the last shell is used,” he said. He then ordered up an immediate ammo resupply from Japan. It was, as J. D. Coleman pointed out, in its logistics a stunning symbol of a most unlikely American advantage. Additional artillery shells could arrive for the Wonju garrison in hours—whereas for the Chinese it often took several days or more to get more ammunition to a battle. A little later Haynes called Stewart to insist that they had to slow down because his guns were overheating. Again Stewart paid no attention. “Keep firing until the gun barrels melt,” he ordered.

  It was the turning point in the battle. An estimated five thousand Chinese were killed and thousands more wounded. Though there was more hard fighting to come, Wonju had been saved. The Chinese losses in the central corridor were monstrous, possibly as high as twenty thousand killed and wounded. At the command level there was no doubt that Stewart was the hero of the battle, though Almond, he eventually noted, seemed quite unappreciative. Late in the afternoon, when the artillery shoot was over, Brigadier General William Bowen, the commander of the 187th RCT, arrived at Wonju CP headquarters, and Stewart was ordered rather peremptorily to return to Division headquarters. (“Corps felt my presence was no longer necessary,” he dryly noted.) Almond awarded Bowen a Silver Star for his part in the battle but awarded nothing to Stewart. Honoring him, after all, would mean that Stewart had correctly reversed Almond’s own erroneous instructions on how to fight, and more important, that he was a worthy ADC and would henceforth have to be taken seriously in the division hierarchy.

  Though the Chinese offensive had been blunted at Wonju, Chipyongni still stood exposed.

  44

  LIEUTENANT PAUL MCGEE of Belmont, North Carolina, had finally gotten his first real taste of combat when George Company of the Second Battalion of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment relieved a French company on the top of the ridge at Twin Tunnels. McGee commanded George Company’s Third Platoon. It had taken long enough—he had tried to join the Marines on December 8, 1941, when he was seventeen, but had been rejected by the Corps because he was color-blind. His subsequent service in World War II had somehow disappointed him. Only when he and his men climbed the hill at Twin Tunnels to relieve the French was McGee struck by how brutal war truly was, and how callous it seemed to make the men who did the fighting. George Company had arrived after the fight was over, just in time to survey the carnage of a terribly hard-fought battle. McGee could unde
rstand much of the battle just by letting his eyes follow the trail of Chinese bodies, hundreds of them it seemed, representing the early waves of the enemy’s assault, corpses that were now frozen, fixed permanently in the final moments of their lives. It was as if he had discovered a giant, open-faced Chinese burial ground. As he and his men climbed the hill, it only got worse: French soldiers were coming down, carrying their dead on a path so narrow they had no choice but to descend single file, two-man teams hauling out the dead, using the most primitive kinds of slings, the body being dragged on the ground on a rope between two men.

  What struck McGee was how casual the living seemed about what they were doing, how immune to death they were. The French soldiers were talking—laughing, sometimes—as if nothing had happened, and yet the bodies they were carrying had been their buddies just the day before. There was no sign of mourning. He wondered if the French were different from American soldiers, or whether this was part of the secret ritual of survival, known only to other combat troops who had made it through their own small hells, because if you thought about it too much, you could no longer function. McGee pondered that again at the top of the ridge, where the French position had been. The word was that the French tended to dig deeper foxholes than the Americans, but because of the rocks and the ice, their holes were not very impressive, in some places just a couple of inches deep, and everywhere on the ground was blood; in some cases, brains spilled out. For the first time McGee wondered what he had gotten himself into.