Space for Blood

The Eighth Army moved back fast enough to keep out of serious trouble, slowly enough to inflict vast damage on the Chinese. The Eighth was trading space for enemy blood -- all that the U.N. forces could do in Korea. In a valley south of Chorwon, where hundreds of Reds were ambushed, other Reds slipped and staggered in puddles of blood while trying to remove their dead.

Said a front-line officer, after three days of fighting: "They attack, and we shoot them down. Then we pull back, and they have to do it all over again. They have no tanks and no airplanes, and we've been killing their infantry like flies." Said another officer: "They're spending people the way we spend ammunition."

Rolling with the Punch. The Americans were spending plenty of ammunition. Some busy gun crews, stripped to the waist in the warm, weather, hardly had time for a drink of water. Their howitzers and Long Tom rifles hurled hundreds of thousands of shells. Mortar ammo was in such plentiful supply that one crew lobbed 100 shells at a single Chinese silhouetted on a ridge line.

In four days of sunny weather before the rains came, allied airmen flew round the clock. The Chinese apparently did not dare lose momentum by holing up during the day, and the U.N. pilots caught them on roads and in fields. The air was full of plane-to-plane chatter as pilots identified friendly forces, picked up enemy targets and divided up the work.

The killing was not altogether one-sided, although allied losses were only a small fraction of Red casualties. It took a little time to get "rolling with the punch" (one of last week's favorite expressions in Korea). In the first Red onrush, some allied units were overrun or cut off--notably Britain's gallant Gloucesters (see Men at War). Allied ambulances raced past southbound truck columns that rolled, bumper to bumper, through choking clouds of dust.

Out of Steam. On the central front, the 1st Marine Division added another bright chapter to its history.

On the marines' left, in the Hwachon area, an R.O.K. division was holding eight miles of front. Although this Korean unit had fought well in other battles, its men were frightened by the heaviest artillery, mortar and small-arms fire they had ever seen, and completely demoralized by the Reds' attack signals: bugles, whistles, green flares. The ROKs broke and ran.

Swarms of Chinese poured through, exposing the marines to attacks on their flank and rear. But they stood fast.

Many of the fleeing South Koreans tossed their weapons away, on the road back to Chunchon. Others drove calves and oxen before them. Army and Marine truck drivers were trying to get their six-by-sixes up the road with rations and ammunition for the front. The grunts and lowing of the cattle mingled with shouts, curses, and the clash of transmission gears. Desperate marines tried to turn the fleeing ROKs around--but failed.

For four days the marines fought off Red attacks from three sides. Then a British brigade and a regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division arrived, and helped them seal off the penetration. The Chinese managed to cut the Seoul-Chunchon highway, but after that they "ran out of steam." They had vast reinforcements moving up, but apparently they needed to leapfrog them through the units that had already been mauled, and that took time.

Again, Seoul. The main weight of the Red offensive shifted to the west, where the enemy had some 30 or 40 divisions assembled for an all-out onslaught on Seoul. The U.N. forces broke contact and retreated rapidly, forcing the Chinese to advance over a no man's land that was kept under merciless allied artillery fire. After Munsan and Uijongbu had been abandoned to the Reds, the Reds reached the Han, between Seoul and the sea, and started a drive (the southern prong of a three-pronged attack) on the capital. Allied guns fired on them from the city's streets, and warships standing off the Han's mouth, including the cruiser Toledo, added their salvos.

The south bank of the Han seemed the logical place to make a stand, abandoning the capital to the enemy. But General Van Fleet, who had taken over command of the Eighth Army only two weeks before, announced his bold decision to defend Seoul. Said he last week: "[We] welcome the opportunity to destroy the Communist army north of the Han." At night, as the Reds massed for their assault on Seoul, allied night-flying planes spotted no fewer than 3,000 enemy trucks driving south with their lights on, smashed 250.

As the fighting approached the capital, its pitiful inhabitants for the third time crossed the river and plodded south, on roads now turned to quagmires by pouring rains. The government had warned them not to re-enter Seoul after its second capture by the allies, but 200,000 had gone back, anyway.

On the central front, where the Chinese had momentarily stalled, the marines broke contact and pulled out of Chunchon to the south. Before quitting the town, they left a grisly token for the Chinese. On the pillars at the north end of a bridge, they placed two Chinese skulls wearing bullet-punctured Russian helmets.

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