On July 7, a short time after the North Korean Army invaded South Korea, 32 men of the 502nd Reconnaissance Platoon learned they were to go to Korea at once. Hurst was one of them. The next day he was one of an advance detail of ten men leaving by plane for Korea. On 9 July the advance group landed at Taejon. There the group reported to General Dean's 24th Division Headquarters. But they learned they were at the wrong place. They returned to the airfield and took off for Taegu, where Eighth Army's Headquarters opened that day. General Walker arrived at Taegu on 13 July, and Hurst says he was the first guard to go on duty at the general's door. From that time on he was one of those who guarded the general and stood guard post at his CP or at his residence. Hurst felt from what he saw and heard that two older officers on the general's staff, Cols. William A. Collier and Eugene M. Landrum, ran the headquarters. General Walker always called Landrum "General Landrum." Walker's and Landrum's offices and homes were always adjacent to each other, he said. Hurst considered General Walker a very moral and conventional person and strictly "business" with everyone.
General Walker used two special jeeps in dashing around to his troop positions in the battles of the Pusan perimeter. He followed much the same pattern in North Korea most of the time. Often Hurst's job was to handle the .50-caliber machine gun in the second jeep, which carried a guard detail to protect the general. These trips were always marked by fast driving to keep up with the general's jeep, which was driven by M. Sgt. George Belton, who was considered by the others to be an extremely fast and sometimes reckless driver.
Corporal Hurst reached Pyongyang on or about 12 November, and thereafter often stood guard at the post just outside the general's door if the general was in his office, or, if the general was absent, he stood guard inside the office. He often looked at the general's desk, formerly used by Kim II Sung, and gazed at Joseph Stalin's portrait on the wall behind the desk.
Hurst said that security at the Eighth Army Headquarters in Pyongyang was tight. The 502nd Reconnaissance Platoon used two tanks in their perimeter guard posts, and at night the motor of one of them was always kept warmed up. Hurst said that Walker was not in his office much of the time in November -perhaps he would be there for a short time half of the days. And after 24 November, when Eighth Army's attack to the border started, he was seldom there. The impression in the guard platoon was that he was somewhere in the Anju area and that he traveled almost entirely by plane wherever he had to go.
Hurst describes the Pyongyang Army Headquarters building as having a large marble lobby just inside the entrance. At the back of the lobby a large staircase curved up from either side to the second floor. The offices of General Walker and his principal staff were on the second floor. From the staircase landing, Colonel Collier's office came first on the right along the hallway that ran the length of the second floor. General Walker's office was just beyond it at the end of the hallway. A guard, usually from the Military Police, stood at the bottom of the staircase on the first floor; another, from the 502nd Reconnaissance Platoon, stood either just outside Walker's door if he was inside or in the room if the general was absent."
On 3 December, Lt. George Duckworth, commander of the 502nd Reconnaissance Platoon, came to Hurst, who was walking guard around General Walker's residence, and told him that he and another member of the platoon, Corporal Barns, would have to stay in Pyongyang another night. The two of them would have to provide security for a group of Eighth Army Headquarters Company who had been left to ransack the building for any documents left behind when the headquarters departed. When this group finished its work and left, then Hurst and Barns could go.
Hurst and Barns had a jeep from their rifle section, with a .50-caliber machinegun pedestal mounted on it. Barns had loaded the jeep with his and Hurst's gear, and he was waiting for him at the front steps of the capitol building. The Eighth Army Headquarters officer, a captain, Duckworth said, would tell him when to cease guard duty at the residence. Then Lieutenant Duckworth said, "Goodbye, Randy; I'll see you in Seoul." Shortly after noon Hurst saw a captain walking toward him from the capitol building. He came directly to Hurst and said, "Corporal Hurst, you are relieved of duty at this guard post." Hurst saluted and headed for Barns."'
It was noon or a little after on 3 December, when Hurst walked over to Barns's jeep in front of the North Korean capitol building. Hurst's words pick up his story:
The 502 Rec had departed at least by 1000, and many units of 8th Army Headquarters had departed the day before. Barns and I ended up sitting on our jeep right in front of the front steps of the NK Capitol building watching the last of 8th Army Headquarters leave. We made C-ration coffee on our little Coleman stove on the hood of our jeep and watched Col. Collier and several of the G-staff officers climb into a jeep and roll away. Col. Collier sat in the rear of the jeep and at least two generals were in the jeep with him. I do not recall who drove the jeep. After that we saw the last 519th MP jeep leave and I think Pvt Hollis was driving it. Pvt Hollis was formerly Sgt Hollis of Company C, 519th Battalion. I do not recall what he got busted for. Pvt Hollis did not know Barns, but knew me and shouted, "See you in Seoul, Randy," and away he went.
Barns and I chaffed [chafed] as we sat in front of the NK Cap building. We wanted to be on the road to Seoul like everyone else. As the afternoon wore on, on that hitter cold day, the area got strangely quiet. Pretty soon there was no one moving about anywhere. During the preceding 18 days, the traffic circle in front of the NK Cap building was quite busy and required traffic control by C Company MPs. British, Turks, South Korean officers, war correspondents, and people from I Corps and divisions forward were constantly coming and going in that traffic circle. Bed Check Charlie even visited us nearly every night, drawing fire from all the 40 mm in town. But now the place was deathly quiet. No civilians in sight anywhere. All buildings were deserted in the area except the NK Cap building. Very late in the afternoon, a fat master sergeant leaned over the 2nd floor balcony railing ... and said to us, "What's the matter with you guys?" Barns replied, "We want to get going to Seoul." The fat m/sgt replied, "You guys come on up and have a beer." So Barns and I went up on the 2nd floor and drank beer and sat on desk tops while the pencil pushers were bundling up papers and junk to take with them to Seoul. Nothing, not even toilet paper, was being left in that building. Finally, when it was dark, the fat m/sgt said that the task was completed and every one could head for Seoul. There were no commissioned officers present at A. I mean none anywhere. The pencil pushers had a lot of beer. We all ended up on the ground floor in the left wing.... Barns and I decided to drive down to the bridge across the Taedong River and see if we could get across. That bridge was the standard Army plank bridge. One of our exercises in drafting training at Ft. Belvoir, Va., was to draw the profile plan of that bridge. When we got to the highway that crossed that bridge, we found it jammed with traffic bumper to bumper ... just an incredible procession of vehicles crossing that bridge and going south. The I Corps MPs guarding the bridge were surly and Auld not let us break into the traffic crossing the bridge. They had never heard of our outfit and thought all of 8th Army Headquarters had gone south days ago. Finally, Rams and I drove back to the NK Cap building to spend the night. We fell in with some other I Corps MPs who were wandering around. We all parked our jeeps in front of the NK Cap building and are C-rations in the offices and in the lobby of the building.
As it grew dark, that night of 3 December 1950, I wondered if we should not check out the upper floors of the building. There were no commissioned officers anywhere. There were about 20 pencil pushers and maybe 5 or 6 I Corps MPs, all enlisted men, some drunk, and none too much worried about security until it got dark. Barns and I talked it over with the MPs and we agreed that Barns and I would guard until midnight, then the MPs would guard until daylight, then we would all leave. At this point I decided to check out the upper floors of the building. I took my M-3 submachine gun with two mags (60 rounds), my .45 caliber pistol, and two frag grenades with me, and be
fore I ascended the stairs, I warned everybody not to come up because I planned to work from the top down and I would riddle anything moving on any upper floor. All agreed to remain on ground floor. So then I went to the very top floor of the building ... and checked out every office and every corridor in that whole building. I did not go up on the roof because I could not find the way up there. It was as cold inside the building as it was outside. I had cover open and bolt back on that submachine gun so I could shoot with one trigger pull, and I poked my nose and my submachine gun into every room in that whole building, including the General's office.... I found no one. The place was just a huge haunted house. It was an eerie experience and well after dark by the time I descended to the first floor for the last time. I told the group gathered around the hibachi that the NKs had not moved in above us yet.
Several times that evening I strolled along the front of the building, looking around. There was no one anywhere. Traffic was moving on the road south, but that road was not near enough to the NK Cap building for us to hear or see the traffic, as I recall. I do not recall hearing or seeing it. Barns set up our cots in an office on the right of the front entrance.... I continued to circulate around the ground floor of the building until midnight. Several pencil pushers and MPs were worried. The fat m/sgt was sound asleep in a hammock he had improvised. At midnight the MPs supposedly took over the guard, and Barns and I sacked out in our sleeping bags in that office.
Barns and I awoke when a terrific blast shook the building. I jumped out of the sack in my long handles and stocking feet, grabbed my M-3 submachine gun, and ran out into the lobby. The pencil pushers and MPs had left. There was no one in that whole building but Barns and me. Our jeep was still in front. We had removed the bug so it was inoperable. We pulled on our clothes and boots, rolled up sleeping bags, folded up our cots, gathered all our stuff, and piled it all on the jeep. We saw no one. Several more heavy explosions occured as Barns and I were frantically getting ready to roll. It must have been about 0600 4 December, and it was bitter, bitter cold. The explosions were across town. Each one lit up the sky briefly. Barns and I were scared. There was just no one in sight.... I loaded the gun [.50 caliber machine gun on pedestal mount]....
... When Barns and I arrived at the bridge, we stopped to talk to the MPs. They had a bonfire going. I unloaded our 50 cal as I did not want an accident. Then some jeeps approached from the north and we started across the bridge behind them. Here is what happened. The jeep in front of us suddenly spun around on the icy bridge and the left front wheel jumped over the bridge rail, which was a low rail made out of timber. The whole bridge was a timber bridge.... Barns and I stopped to help the driver of the jeep that spun around. But when I looked under the canvas top of that jeep, there was no one behind the wheel. Another jeep stopped behind ours and we were all mystified. Then a man came walking toward us from the south end of the bridge and he was moaning. (It was dark and cold, mind you.) One of the men from the jeep that had stopped behind us shouted, "What the hell you doing?" The man who was moaning and walking toward us said, "I was thrown clear out of the jeep and landed on the ice down there." We looked over the edge of the bridge and there was ice on the river about 15 feet below. When the jeep spun around, the driver, alone in the jeep, was pitched out and over the rail onto the ice below. He fell about 15 feet. He was not hurt, apparently, but badly shaken. We lifted his wheel off the rail of the bridge, turned his jeep around, and he drove off. Barns and I climbed back into our jeep and headed south....
... We soon overtook vehicles as the road south of us was couple of pirates. jammed. Barns and I were a We passed everyone. Officers for doubling yelled at us. The MPs stopped us several times and chewed us out the convoy, etc. We just kept going. We had great difficulty passing M-26 tanks. All of them are nearly 10 feet wide and they used both sides of the road. and they They all had infantry on their fenders, were bedraggled looking infantry too. Barns and I did not try to read any bumper numbers or tank numbers. We didn't care whom we were passing. We just passed at every opportunity. Several times we saw overturned vehicles along the sides of the road. Also, pitifully, we saw refugees trudging along the road carrying all their possessions on their backs. I felt sorry for those wretched people. We offered no rides to anyone. We just kept Foinp
was going south until we got down below Kaesong, and then we encountered long truck convoys carrying infantry north. Again I did not read any bumper numbers. I have no idea who they were except that they were American troops, all infantry, going north somewhere south of Kaesong. The highway was now quite congested. Traffic going north and traffic going south at the same time.
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I forgot to mention one fatality we saw on the road near Sariwon, I believe. This incident occurred about noon or shortly after. (It took all day to drive the 140 miles to Seoul.) We caught up with 2 DUKWs [amphibious trucks] laboring along the highway. They stopped in front of us and we saw a man lying in the road behind one of the DUKWs. He turned out to be a South Korean soldier who was one of a group who had thumbed a ride on the DUKWs. He fell off the rear deck onto the road and his friends shouted at the DUKW drivers so loudly that both vehicles stopped. Barns and I stopped also. No one attempted to help the man in the road. Everyone just stood around looking at him. He was lying on his back and not moving. So, I took his pulse, or tried to take it, and found none. The fellow was a young South Korean soldier, tall and slender in build. He sure seemed dead to me. Barns and I got back into our jeep, passed the DUKWs, and caught up with a Lt. Col. whose jeep was stopped way up ahead, and he was looking back at the DUKWs. We told him what had happened and then went on....
Barnes and I found the 502 Ream back in the Women's Med College where we had been before.... The 502 Recon had resumed pulling guard at the office, the General's van (where he was staying each night), at the residence provided by the Repub of Korea ... and around our own area. Everyone was gloomy."
Chinese Enter Pyongyang on 6 December
Air observers covered the city of Pyongyang and the areas north and cast of it all day of 5 December to report on enemy movements. There are many reports of enemy troop movements on the right (east) flank of Eighth Army, and several observers reported enemy troops crossing the Taedong River to the south side during the day. By noon, these reports said, Chinese troops had occupied two abandoned airfields east of Pyongyang. One observer reported 500 enemy troops with five camels in view below him farther east. As early as 10:10 A.M. on the fifth, an aerial observer reported enemy troops were moving onto the main Pyongyang airfield. An hour later he reported large numbers of others crossing the Taedong River, headed for the airfield. About 12:25 P.M., other reports said that UN air attacks killed an estimated 200 to 250 enemy troops at the river-crossing sites four miles cast of the airfield. Two hours later another aerial report stated that strafing attacks killed an estimated 300 more enemy at the same river crossings. Still other aerial reports said five boatloads of enemy troops were destroyed at 5 P.M. at river crossing attempts 11 miles east of Pyongyang.45
It seems clear from aerial observer intelligence that large numbers of Chinese troops were crossing the Taedong River cast of Pyongyang and that they had occupied the airfields on that side of the city during the afternoon and evening of 5 December. There is no proof, however, that they entered Pyongyang itself during the day. Korean civilian agents left behind in the city reported the Chinese did not enter the city until 6 December.`°
On 5 December the Operations Section of Eighth Army gave its interpretation of the situation at that time as follows: "Major concern at the present time is the intentions of the enemy. Very little contact has been made with the enemy and his capabilities include envelopment around the east flank and complete occupation of Southern Korea. All plans and orders are designed to discover the enemy's movements and to delay him without becoming inextricably involved with his numerically superior forces."" This can be interpreted to mean that Eighth Army had no intention of fighting a major eng
agement with the CCF in the foreseeable future or of trying to halt its advance southward.
In military action the narrow part of a peninsula always has tactical significance, especially for defensive action. From the narrow section of Korea's "waist" there is an ever-widening bulge northward, where it expands toward the east and the west until it joins the vast expanse of Asia, at Korea's 700-mile border. There is also a widening bulge south of the waist that becomes a thick finger with its tip at the port of Pusan, where the Korean Strait separates the peninsula from Japan. The waist of Korea did not play the important military role in the Korean War that it might have because General MacArthur wanted to unify all of Korea, and that plan meant carrying the sword all the way to the northern border.
Had the UN and the American forces stopped at the waist of Korea, they would have had the best defensive line north of the 38th Parallel to defend what had been gained. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff in the fall of 1950 thought the waist of Korea should have been the limit of UN advance. Great Britain thought the same thing. One question is paramount-could General Walker have made a stand there and have fought a successful battle to hold the waist of Korea at the beginning of December 1950, instead of retreating all the way to Seoul and giving up all of North Korea to the Communists, with the result that the UN might have to withdraw entirely from Korea?
General Walker adopted the military precept that, if he had to withdraw to save Eighth Army, he had to break contact with the enemy sharply and then withdraw as rapidly as possible over the full extent of the line and outrun pursuit to a considerable distance, where he might have time to reorganize his troops and to establish a defense line. That is what he did.
A good general description of the topography in the waist of Korea is found in an early American government report. It suggests why lateral travel across the peninsula was difficult almost everywhere, especially in the northern half of the country, where the Northern Taebaek Range of mountains, a southern extension of the Northern Korean Highlands, which extend across the Yalu into Manchuria, is the dominant geographic feature of the land.
Disaster in Korea Page 54
