Disaster in Korea
Page 71
81. Schnabel, Polity and Direction, pp. 299-300; New York Times, 16 Dec 50, p. 1, col. 8, and 17 Dec 50, p. 1, col. 8
Chapter 19
1. Maj. Gen. John B. Coulter (CG of HQ at Uijongbu and of IX Corps at the time of the accident), interview with author, 3 Apr 53; Bartlett, With the Australians in Korra, p. 58; Barclay, The First Commonwealth Division in Korea, pp. 39-40; Eighth Army Comd. Rpt., Narr., Dec 1950, Box 1134.
2. Coulter, interview with author, 3 Apr 53.
3. Hurst, MS, binder 1, pp. 25-37. Hurst often rode behind the .50-caliber machine gun in Jeep No. 2. He was expert with the machine gun and also with the M-1 rifle.
4. Randle M. Hurst, letters to author, 17 May and 13 June 77; Hurst, letter to Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Hurst, 25 Dec 50; Hurst, MS, binder 1, pp. 84-85. Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond came to Seoul on 27 Dec 50 to meet Gen. Ridgway and later flew to Eighth Army Main HQ at Taegu, where he had dinner at the commander's mess with Maj. Gen. Leven Allen, Col. Landrum, and others. In his diary entries for the day he wrote, "Col. Landrum stated that he felt Gen. Walker's death was primarily the result of reckless driving with excessive speed on the part of the vehicle. He said that General Walker's jeep was struck by a 3/4 ton truck travelling in the opposite direction which caught the rear of his vehicle and caused it to roll over twice . . ." (Almond Diary, 27 Dec 50, entry at 8:30 P.m.). In his letter to his parents on 25 Dec 50, Hurst wrote that Cpl. Rcenan suffered a broken leg, the most minor injury sustained among the four men in the lead jeep.
5. Gen. Chang Chang Kuk, interview with author, in the Korean Embassy, Washington, D.C., 14 Oct. 53. Gen. Chang was then a member of the embassy staff. Gen. Chang drew a sketch of the road at the scene and the relative travel courses of the two cars involved in the accident. I had heard stories from American sources that the ROK Army executed the driver of the jeep. I asked General Chang if this was true. Gen. Chang replied, "No, but the driver was punished." I asked him the nature of the punishment, but he would not comment further.
6. Hurst, letter to Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Hurst, 25 Dec 50. Hurst said that he thought this letter was published in the Oklahoman and Times in Jan 1951. A Christmas card from Hurst to me, 19 Dec 78, comments further on this event, in which he praised the performance of the South Korean hand.
7. Letter from Asst. Secy. to Gen. Staff to Gen. Hickey FEC, 28 Jan 51, Box 16, in Ridgway Papers (USMHRC); Hearings, Subcommittee to Inrrstu{ate Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., Testimony, 29 Sept 54, p. 2026.
8. Eighth Army Comd. Rpt., Narr., 23 Dec 50, Box 1134, nd G-3 Sec., 23 Dec 50, Box 1136; 24th Div., Comd. Rpt. Narr., Box 3766.
9. FEC DIS No. 3031, 27 Dec 50, Box 99, covering situation of 24 Dec 50 in Korea; Eighth Army Comd. Rpt., G-3 Sec., 24 Dec 50, Box 1136; I Corps Comd. Rpt., 24 Dec 50, 1502; IX Corps Comd. Rpt., Narr. 24 Dec 50, Box 1772.
10. FEC DIS No. 3029, 25 Dcc 50, Box 99; Eighth Army Comd. Rpt. Summ., 24- 25 Dec 50, Box 1134.
11. FEC DIS No. 3029, 25 Dec 50, Box 99; Eighth Army Comd. Rpt., Summ., 25 Dec 50, Box 1134.
12. 2nd Inf. Div. Comd. Rpt., Narr. Summ., Dec 1950, pp. 10-11, and Appendix D-1f, J-5, G-3 Jnl., 23-25 Dec 50.
13. FEC DIS No. 3030, 26 Dec 50 (covering 25 Dec), Box 99.
14. FEC DIS No. 3031, 27 Dec 50, pp. 3-8, Box 99.
Only two or three published works, listed here, relate closely to the subject of this volume. The most important is perhaps S. L. A. Marshall, The River and the Gauntlet: Defeat of the Eighth Army by the Chinese Communist Forces, Nommher 1950, in the Battle of the Chongchon River (New York: William Morrow, 1953). It is a work of uneven proportions, a disconnected series of narratives about small-unit actions of the US 25th and 2nd infantry divisions in the late November 1950 battles between Chinese and American forces along the Chongchon River. Colonel Marshall went to Korea in December 1950 as an analyst for an organization that had a contract with the US Army to study and report on its actions. In this capacity he extensively interviewed platoons and companies of the two infantry divisions on a selective basis to cover many of their more significant actions. In these interviews he obtained detailed accounts of many of the actions. His book is in no sense a connected narrative of the Eighth Army's conduct of the campaign, and it must be used with discretion. If used in that manner, it can supply detail about certain aspects of the operations that are nowhere else available. The book does have occasional errors, a few of them major. One such error is his statement that General Keiser, commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, gave Colonel Freeman of the 23rd Infantry Regiment the authority to leave his station as rear guard of the withdrawing division at Kunu-ri and take the Anju road out of the battle area. General Keiser did not give Freeman that authority; it was given by the assistant division commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph S. Bradley, as the latter has stated in a letter to me that described the event. This authorization to Colonel Freeman was a very controversial action. I have used Marshall's book extensively for certain details of action, but always with discretion and in comparison with the other information in official records, from interviews, and from correspondence with participants.
A second book that relates to the action is Capt. Russell A. Gugeler's Combat Actions in Kota: Infantry, Artillery, and Armor (Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press, Association of the US Army, 1954). This book discusses a series of smallunit actions. The information is all based on interviews conducted in 1951 and later by Captain Gugeler and the nine officers who were members of historical detachments attached to the major commands in the US Army in Korea. A few of the accounts relate to the series of actions along the Chongchon River in November 1950. This is a generally reliable work, although some of its accounts are incomplete.
Eric Linklatcr, an Englishman, published Our Men in Korea (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1952), a small book that recounts the highlights of the British 27th Brigade, which was sent to Korea in 1950 as a United Nations force. Under the command of Brig. Basil Coad, it consisted of the 1st Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment. The 45th Field Artillery Regiment, Royal Artillery, was also a part of the brigade. A battalion of Australian volunteers was added to the brigade during the autumn of 1950. These UN troops saw limited action in the battles along the Chongchon and the subsequent retreat.
The only other publication used extensively in the writing of this volume was an article entitled "The Lost Corps," by Lt. Col. Robert E. Cameron, in Military Review 33, no. 2, (May 1953). Colonel Cameron had been senior advisor to the ROK 10th Regiment, ROK 8th Division, in November 1950 and was subsequently advisor to the ROK 8th Division, ROK II Corps. He was present in the Tokchon area with the ROK 10th Regiment when the Chinese attacked and almost immediately overran the ROK II Corps on the right flank of Eighth Army in the battles of the Chongchon, leaving the army line exposed in the center. Cameron's article is invaluable in reconstructing what happened in this disaster at the very beginning of the Chinese counterattack against Eighth Army. I have based my account of the destruction of the ROK II Corps on it. There is no other comparable source.
Other than these four publications, the sources used are the war diaries, command reports, and the special action reports of the units of Eighth Army, supplemented by numerous interviews and much correspondence with survivors. The narrative is thoroughly documented with notes.
All units of battalion strength or higher were required to prepare and submit for the adjutant general's records monthly reports of their activities. Independent units of battalion strength also submitted such reports. Sometimes units also prepared special action reports. The accumulated reports of companies, battalions, regiments, divisions, corps, army, and the independent battalions, together with the mass of intelligence material and the S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4, G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 section reports and the G-2 and G-3 journals and journal message files combined, represent a
mountain of material that was read and sifted for relevant information.
But only by studying all this information and plotting actions on overlay maps, usually on 1:50,000-scale tactical maps of the area concerned, can one understand the events of actual combat and their importance. Nearly all the books published on the Korean War have confined themselves to generalities or repetitions of previous publications of the same kind or have been based on contemporary newspapers or periodical reports of war correspondents and on the writing of armchair analysts who never saw the inside of an operations journal or message file. I know of at least one widely distributed work that is little more than a plagiarized version of official Department of the Army publications, with no credit given either to the authors or to the Army.
All the unit reports of the Eighth Army engaged in ground combat in Korea are preserved in the National Archives, Federal Records Center, in Records Group 407, in Federal Building 1, 4205 Suitland Road, Suitland, Maryland, 20409. To avoid needless repetition in the notes, I have eliminated "Records Group 407" and used only the box number in which documents are located.
(Italicized page numbers refer to photographs.)
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