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The Battle Of Chosin. Part 2: Into The Trap

   DailyWire.com

As part of the final push to end the war in what MacArthur came to exuberantly call his “Home-By-Christmas Offensive,” he sent the U.S. Eighth Army and ROK units advancing up the western side of the peninsula, while the U.S. X Corps, under Army General Ned Almond, landed on the east coast at Wonson and marched north toward the Yalu. The First Marines, fresh from success at Inchon, made up a bulk of the X Corps force and spearheaded the drive up the mountains into the North Korean hinterland.

By late November 1950, forward elements of X Corps were positioned on either side of the amoeba-shaped Chosin Reservoir (the Japanese colonial bastardization of the Korean Changjin) high up in the desolate, jagged hills. The Marines were stretched out over twenty-five miles along a single winding road they dubbed the Main Supply Route (MSR). This single road was in places barely twelve feet wide and bordered by steep cliffs on one side and sheer precipices on the other. It snaked through the mountain passes from the hut villages of Kot’o-Ri south of the reservoir, past Hagaru-Ri on the southern-most shore, slicing through the strategic Toktong Pass, and up to the farthest north positions at Yudam-ni on the west bank of Chosin. The Army unit found itself on the eastern side of the reservoir covering the main drive’s flank.

As the Marines prepared for the final push to the Yalu, things were eerily quiet. But the soft-spoken and highly intelligent Marine division commander, Major General Oliver P. Smith, was wary. He sensed danger in the seemingly empty landscape into which his Marines were being sent. So did many in the rank and file who dubbed it “Injun country.” North Korean deserters, civilians, even captured Chinese told of massive PVA formations out there, somewhere along the Yalu. Smith’s men noticed that the Korean children who’d been constantly begging for candy and chewing gum had disappeared, and deer were coming down off the ridges as if being displaced by something. In fact, the Chinese had already launched a series of probing attacks against U.N. forces in late October and bloodied them. The Marines themselves briefly engaged them on November 2 at Sudong Gorge during the march north. Mao’s troops seemed to materialize out of what was thought to be barren terrain. The attacks had been sharp, disciplined, and violent. But then the Chinese just disappeared into the hills. It was an uneasy portent of what might lay ahead. Still, X Corps commander Almond was incredulous, believing MacArthur’s assessment that Mao would not enter the war. “If the Chinese attempt to move down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter,” MacArthur assured Truman during their brief Wake Island meeting on October 15. Smith, thought Almond, was being too cautious.

But Smith, who had little use for Almond, was right to be worried.

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Throughout the summer, Mao had been closely monitoring the action in the nation bordering his own. His mistrust of America stemmed from its support for the Nationalists against him in the just-concluded Chinese Civil War. As the arrows on his maps stopped moving south and abruptly turned northward, his anxiety grew. By the time those U.N. arrows were across of the 38th Parallel and headed for the Yalu bordering Manchuria, Mao let it be known through neutral diplomatic channels that China would intervene if the U.N. continued its advance northwards. When his warnings were dismissed as bluster by MacArthur’s Tokyo headquarters and Truman’s White House, Mao set his battle plan in motion. The Chinese dictator took the measure of his brilliant but arrogant opponent and shrewdly opted to use MacArthur’s own over-confidence against him. Beginning in the last week of October, he quietly sent four army groups across the Yalu into Korea to attack the approaching U.N. forces. But after a series of sharp engagements first with ROK then U.S. elements, he had his men pull back into the hills. Believing the Chinese must have withdrawn, MacArthur moved farther north, declaring: “This [offensive] should for all intents and purposes end the war.”

But he was actually moving deeper into a trap . . . and he committed a strategic blunder along the way. He allowed his Eighth Army in the west and X Corps in the east to operate as two sides of a giant pincer, unconcerned about the rugged Taebek Mountain range that divided his commands by as much as eighty miles. In 1950 the PVA was a foot-soldier army. Unlike their American adversaries whose armed forces were bound to the roads to move their heavy artillery, tanks, and trucks, the Chinese traveled light and so could slip into the gap between Eighth Army and X Corps. They would move by night, traversing terrain that would be impassable to the heavy columns they were preparing to ambush, and hide in the mountain folds by day. They remained undetected by U.S. reconnaissance planes whose observers peered down into a what appeared to be a vast emptiness of dun-colored and snow-capped ridges. The advancing U.N. columns had no idea they were marching right into the embracing tentacles of 300,000 Chinese now waiting in the hills and poised to strike.

On November 25, the Chinese struck against the Eighth Army and the western pincer of MacArthur’s advance was stopped cold. Soon the Army and ROK units on that side of the peninsula would be in full retreat in the face of human waves of Chinese. And yet, the attack on the eastern side of the Taebek Mountains was still a go.

On the eastern flank, MacArthur sacrificed caution for speed and sent the Marines into the mountains. On the eve of their final offensive, they found themselves tethered to the single MSR that strung out eighty miles from the port of Hungam to the hilltop village of Yudam-ni where the bulk of the division, some 8,000 Marines, were encamped along the west bank of the Chosin Reservoir. Fourteen miles to the south at Hagaru-ri, where Smith’s division headquarters and a much-needed airstrip were taking shape, were 3,600 Marines. Between them, roughly equidistant, 240 Marines of Fox Company held the high ground over the Toktong Pass through which the single road, their only line of supply — or retreat from Yadam-ni should it come to that — had to navigate. East of the reservoir was the 2,500-man Army regimental combat team and a few hundred ROK nationals. The bulk of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division maintained the line farther south to Hungnam.

By the last week in November, two 10,000-man divisions were quietly surrounding Kot’o-Ri, another two enveloping Hagaru-Ri, and three more swarming around the ridges of Yudam-Ni. Many in the PLA now gearing up to attack the Marines along the Chosin were hardened veterans of the Chinese Civil War, some of whom had been with Mao during his famous Long March in 1934. Their main weapon was the Mauser rifle, although some carried the deadly Russian Burp sub-machine gun. They had no artillery or air cover, just long-stick hand grenades the Americans called “potato mashers” and small caliber mortars. What they did have was a ten-to-one superiority in numbers, the element of surprise, and a determination to drive off the Americans whom propaganda had taught them were the successors to the hated Japanese as Asia’s worst exploiters. They also had utter contempt for the American soldier. A captured Chinese pamphlet declared: “Their infantry is weak. These men are afraid to die, and will neither press home a bold attack or defend to the death.” As for their feelings toward the Marines, another captured document circulated among the hands read as follows: “Soon we will meet the American Marines in battle. We will destroy them. When they are defeated the Americans will collapse and our country will be free from the threat of aggression. Kill these Marines as you would snakes in your homes!”

Brad Schaeffer is an historian, author, musician, and trader. His eclectic body of writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, and a variety of well-read blogs and news outlets. Of Another Time and Place is his first novel, which takes place in World War II Germany and the deadly skies over the Western Front. You can pre-order his book here:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2FEnCb0
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/of-another-time-and-place-brad-schaeffer/1128170819?ean=9781682616635

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