Bloodshed in the Hills

At one grim stage in the struggle for Triangle Hill, American wounded flowing down the south slopes were fired on by Communist mortars and wounded again or killed. Some of the walking wounded were using their rifles for crutches. One grey-haired lieutenant colonel who had gone out on an artillery reconnaissance found himself leading a charge, died in the enemy trenches.

Triangle Hill is just north of Kumhwa, on the east face of the "Iron Triangle" (Kumhwa-Chorwon-Pyongyang). Two miles east of Triangle is Sniper Ridge. Beyond them to the north towers a much higher peak called Papa-san; the three together form a strong Communist bastion on the rugged central front. Last week the 31st Regiment of the U.S. 7th Division attacked Triangle, while South Koreans of the 2nd ROK Division stormed Sniper.

The first day's assault on Triangle went badly, and the 7th's doughfeet were pinned on the steep, sandy slopes. Eventually they drove the Chinese off the top and dug in behind barbed wire and sandbags, hauled up on a hastily built cable railway. Thus protected, their machine-gunners mowed down wave after wave of counterattacking Chinese. Their mortar-men put smoke shells on Papa-san to blind the enemy spotters there, and U.N. planes blasted the Chinese assembly points. This week the Reds drove the Americans and ROKs back in a desperate night counterattack; but when day came, the U.N. troops won back most of the lost ground.

Meanwhile, on the Iron Triangle's west face, the brave and weary ROK 9th Division was mopping up on White Horse Hill (TIME, Oct. 20). The South Koreans had found that they could hold the crest if they kept the Chinese off the neighboring knobs; and the enemy was holding by his fingernails only to three knobs, known as the Three Sisters. The Koreans tunneled under the Three Sisters, laid massive charges of TNT, and blew the knobs and most of the Chinese on them to smithereens. After that, White Horse seemed secure.

Fighting flared up last week at other points along the central and western fronts--at Bunker Hill, of bloody memory (TIME, Aug. 25), at places called Finger Ridge and Iron Horse. Correspondents who saw last week's battles reported severe U.N. casualties--especially in U.S. dead and wounded on Triangle Hill.

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