A Question of Tomatoes

"We are going to fix bayonets and charge. Fire and keep firing. We've been after these guys a long time. This is our chance. Let's go!"

One morning before dawn, under a quarter moon, Captain Frederick T. Griffiths of Cleveland shouted these brave words to his combat-green company. The Communist enemy was swarming down on them from the crest of a ridge. After the astonished Reds had been chased off the hill, down the far slope and off another hill, Captain Griffiths exulted:

"It's like a tomato fight. If the other guy has the tomatoes and you've got nothing to throw at him, you get murdered. But if you keep hurling tomatoes too, and you've got better aim, he gets murdered. This time we had more tomatoes and better aim."

Heat & Thirst. Such spirit helped to keep General Walker's "limited offensive" going on the south coast, in spite of appalling difficulties. Advancing on two winding roads through rugged country, the U.S. columns rarely had the flank protection they should have had. The enemy seemed to know just what the U.S. commanders were up to.

As "Task Force Kean"* (the 35th Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, the 5th Regimental Combat Team and elements of the 1st Marine Division which landed last fortnight) jumped off, Negro units holding a flanking ridge were due to be relieved by marines. But alert North Koreans slipped in, beat back the marines, brought up machine guns and artillery, opened fire on the vehicle-crammed road and on U.S. artillery positions and command posts.

Combing out this enemy pocket and others on crests over 3,000-ft. high, in 100DEG heat, the marines found themselves suffering from thirst and dropping from heat exhaustion. Some marines were sent to relieve an infantry company which was cut off and being supplied with ammunition and water by air drop. Some of the dropped material fell too far away to recover; some of the water containers burst when they hit the ground.

Like Civil War Prints. General Walker appeared in his fast-moving, heavily armed, two-jeep convoy and ordered the attack speeded up. A U.S. night attack--hitherto a North Korean specialty--helped. As enemy frontal resistance lessened, headquarters spokesmen in Tokyo talked confidently of U.S. "pursuit," of an enemy "rout." This was an exaggeration. The forward speed of the U.S. drive was painfully slow and enemy pockets on the flanks had to be rooted out laboriously.

Correspondent Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune told what happened when several hundred trapped Reds stormed two U.S. artillery batteries. "In action of a type seldom seen outside American Civil War prints, the artillerymen leveled their 105-mm. howitzers at enemy troops which at times penetrated within a hundred yards of the guns. With fuses set at zero, the artillerymen were using Charge 7--the maximum powder charge a 105 will take. Charge 7 is almost as rough on the guns as it was today on the Reds." Three out of the batteries' four guns were burned out, but the Reds failed to take them.

Finally, while the marines reached Kosong on the south and dug in on the far side, the 5th and 35th regimental teams joined forces and stopped on high ground four miles east of Chinju. This was revealed as their objective. It was a logical anchor--if it could be held--for the left flank of the Allied beachhead in Korea.

Screaming Tanks. The North Koreans had had their kettle knocked off the stove in the south, but in the center and east they had other pots to put on the fire. Red guerrillas, some of them disguised as civilians, had sporadically fired on the important U.S. airport at Pohang on the east coast (nicknamed Cleveland Municipal Airport by the home-town boosters who were based there). The guerrilla force had for several weeks showed up on operational maps as an ominous red circle, but U.S. officers dismissed it with: "Just a bunch of gooks scattered in the hills." Last week the irregulars suddenly increased in number, and they were joined by a large force (about 10,000) of North Korean regulars who slipped south from the Yongdok area through a gap in the South Korean lines.

The South Koreans, who had fought extremely well in recent weeks, were frightened by enemy tanks which rushed at them with screaming sirens. The psychological effect was described by a U.S. officer as something like that of German Stukas (dive bombers) in the early phases of World War II.

Fighter pilots, taking off under fire from the U.S. airstrip, began strafing the encircling Reds almost before their wheels were up. For safety they spent the first night at Taegu airfield, but came back to Pohang to fight again the next day. After delays due to a broken bridge and enemy ambushes, a U.S. armored rescue force arrived, led by Brigadier General J. Sladen Bradley, a tough fighter who rides into battle in his undershirt. But when Bradley got there, the Reds were in the town of Pohang, a burning ruin. Southeast of the town, ground crews, clerks and cooks were still defending the airstrip against the enemy. This week the Air Force evacuated its planes. The loss of the field--perhaps only temporary--was a serious blow to U.S. airpower in Korea.

Persistent Rats. One of the two remaining airfields in the beachhead was at Taegu--and Taegu itself was gravely threatened. On the central front, it seemed as hard to prevent the Reds from crossing the Naktong as to stop rats from boarding a moored ship. In some places, the sluggish green water was shallow enough to wade across. At night, free from Allied air attack, the North Koreans put tanks across on barges and hastily built log and stone causeways, whose top surfaces were a foot under water and hard to see from the air. Once, in full daylight, under U.S. artillery fire, they put armor across on a pontoon bridge. Time & again, U.S. counterattacks whittled down or obliterated the Communists' east-bank footholds, but they kept on coming.

At week's end, they had put three regiments--a full division--across at Changnyong, roadblocked a secondary supply route and threatened the rail-and-road line from Taegu to Pusan. This week the brave, battered 24th Division, which had been fighting steadily for six weeks, moved to the counterattack behind hard-hitting Pershing tanks. The division commander, Major General John H. Church,* said he intended to "drive the enemy back across the river or destroy him on this side." But it was not certain that John Church and his men had enough tomatoes for that.

*Church replaced Major General William F. Dean, reported missing in action during the battle for Taejon.

-The task force is named for its commander, Major General William B. Kean of the 25th Infantry Division.

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