The Great Bug Out

Members of the Turkish Brigade move into position in December 1950,
shortly after suffering severe casualties attempting to block the encirclement
of the US 2nd Division at the Chongchon River in North Korea.

Turkish troops searching captured Chinese soldiers. When the Turks
first went into action they mistook retreating South Korean troops for the
enemy and killed many of them. The Turkish forces, composed mainly of tough
country boys who had, for the most part, never before left their villages,
gained a fearsome reputation in close combat and rarely showed mercy to their
foes, so much so that only about 100 were taken prisoner by the communists.
Their brave defensive actions saved the US 2nd Division from annihilation.

31 December 1950 – 8
July 1951

The Second Chinese offensive had eventually petered out as
they ran short of supplies. The units on the western front had fewer than 300
trucks to carry supplies for 300,000 troops and the Ninth Army Group was
disabled due to frostbite. General Peng requested a pause of a few months until
the spring and wanted to confine his forthcoming campaign to areas north of the
38th Parallel. The UN had proposed a cease-fire to the Chinese on 1 December,
which Mao interpreted as a weakness that China should exploit. Mao overruled
Peng and ordered him to plan a third campaign across the 38th Parallel against
UN forces entrenched across the entire peninsula. It would stretch the fragile
Chinese supply lines to breaking point and allow Eighth Army to inflict severe
losses on them in the spring of 1951.

The Chinese soldiers subsisted on Shaoping, a hard,
unleavened bread. Each man carried his own measure of a concoction of sorghum,
millet, lima beans and wheat flour from which he prepared the bread, eating
while on the move. The Chinese soldiers had little opportunity to enjoy hot
food because the UN air superiority and continual air reconnaissance prevented
them from building fires. This unvaried diet of cold food caused large numbers
of Chinese soldiers to suffer diseases of the digestive tract.

The South Korean soldiers lived off a basic dish of steamed
rice, often mixed with barley and supplemented with salted fish and soybean and
red pepper paste. They ate very little meat, but made soup from boiled
vegetables or bean sprouts. With the virtual absence of communist aircraft over
the battlefield, the ROK troops had no trouble building fires to cook their
meals.

The American soldiers consumed three grades of rations: A, B
and C. The A rations were top quality western food including steak; B rations
were simpler foods like sausage, that could be heated and eaten by an
individual or prepared for a unit. The famous C rations were field rations,
canned and easily carried in the field.

As of January 1951 the Eighth Army consisted of 178,000
American soldiers and Marines, 224,000 ROK Army troops and contingents from the
United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Turkey and many other countries. They were
organized into five corps, from west to east: I Corps, IX Corps and X Corps and
the ROK III and I Corps. Generally, the ROK units held the more easily
defended, rugged terrain in the east, while the US forces were positioned on
the lower, flatter areas in the west, where their greater firepower and
mobility were more decisive.

Opposing the UN forces were some 290,000 Chinese and North
Korean soldiers. The Chinese were organized into seven Corps-sized armies and
twenty-two divisions totalling 204,000 troops, primarily holding the western
and central portions of the front. Around 50,000 North Korean soldiers in three
Corps and fourteen under-strength divisions, held the eastern sector. In
addition, a further 30,000 North Korean guerillas were still behind the UN
lines in the mountainous areas of eastern South Korea.

The Chinese method of attacking eventually became clear to
the UN Command. They would aim for the juncture of two UN forces, where it was
difficult for one to support the other by fire, or for a point where the
defences were not very deep. Before the communist troops moved on foot to the
attack point, they were issued with five to seven days’ combat rations and were
warned not to eat them until needed. Basic loads of ammunition were also issued
and the troops were told to use captured UN material whenever possible. At this
assembly area the battalion commanders were given their zones of attack. Their
men would advance in columns of battalions to the attack point at about 2,500
yards per hour. About 2,000 metres from the enemy front lines the communist
troops would be given a short rest and allowed to eat one combat ration. At
this point, company commanders were given their orders and took over from the
battalion commanders. The method of attack and the time element would be
controlled by the divisional commander. No flexibility was permitted to the
battalion and company commanders. When the order to attack was given, the
company and platoon commanders would give their orders by whistle or bugle and
the infantry would close with the enemy as quickly as possible to avoid the
defensive artillery fire and overwhelm them with superior numbers.

On New Years Eve 1950 the CPVF launched its Third Campaign
and in a matter of eight days had crossed the 38th Parallel, recaptured Seoul
without a fight and pushed the UN forces back to the 37th Parallel. The UN
forces destroyed or abandoned huge supply dumps as they retreated, to be
pillaged by passing friendly troops or the advancing Chinese. American sleeping
bags were favoured by the Chinese, who suffered more casualties as a result of
the extreme weather than American guns.

On the morning of 3 January 1951, it was the turn of the
British 29th Independent Infantry Brigade to face the Chinese as they swarmed
southwards. They were near Koyang, twelve miles north-west of Seoul. The snow
lay thick on the ground and a bitter wind howled in from Manchuria as they took
up their positions, to the right of the US 35th Infantry Regiment. The
Americans were the first to engage the Chinese as they advanced blowing
whistles and bugles, then they fell upon the Irishmen of the 1st Royal Ulster
Rifles. Two platoons were overrun and acting battalion commander Major Tony
Blake called in artillery and air support before a counter-attack was launched
and hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, hand grenades, sten guns, boots and
fists spread across the hill. As dawn approached the Chinese withdrew, leaving
300 dead behind them. By the time the order to withdraw reached the Ulstermen,
they would be the last UN unit to withdraw; the American infantry had already
pulled out and the hills were swarming with Chinese.

Their line of retreat would lead them down a valley
overlooked by the Chinese. The retreat began on a frozen, moonless night and
the columns of soldiers, their vehicles in the centre, moved stealthily down
the steel-hard track. An armoured force of a dozen Cromwell tanks from Cooper
Force was following them, their tracks squealing and slipping on the ice.
Suddenly, just as the leading company met up with the waiting American trucks
at the valley mouth, an American plane appeared overhead and dropped flares
into the valley. The column was bathed in an eerie white light as the Irishmen
swore under their breaths. The enemy could not fail to spot them and opened up
with their mortars and machine guns. Then hundreds of Chinese poured down the
hills to seize a village on the southern track, blocking the route.

Major John Shaw, the Support Company commander led a charge
through the blazing village and into the hills. In the meantime the Cromwell
tanks tried to clear the six mile long icy track that the infantry had to
negotiate to join the main highway. They were unsuccessful; some of the tanks
ran off the road and became stuck and others were destroyed by the Chinese
infantry. Of the sixty-five men in the tank crews, only eleven escaped the
carnage in ‘Happy Valley’. The rest were killed or captured. Over 150 of the
Irishmen were lost during the battle, as they fought their way clear of the
trap and on to the waiting US trucks for a ride across the Han River pontoon
bridge to safety. They were the last unit to cross the river before the bridges
were blown up behind them.

On 25 January 1951, only seventeen days after the CPVF
stopped its pursuit, General Ridgway ordered the launch of Operation
Thunderbolt and by 31 January the US I and IX Corps had moved up to twenty
miles into the area south of Seoul. Generally opposition was light and the
Chinese merely fought rearguard actions, rather than holding their ground. As
January came to an end, Chinese resistance began to increase, indicating that
the main enemy defensive line had almost been reached. On 27 January, the US
3rd Division joined the attack in the I Corps sector and two days later Ridgway
ordered a full scale offensive with X Corps joining in on its eastern flank. I
and IX Corps continued a steady advance to the Han River against heavier
Chinese defences. On 9 February, the enemy line of defence opposite I and IX
Corps gave way and the UN forces raced ahead. The 25th Infantry Division retook
Inchon and Kimpo airfield, while elements of I Corps reached the south bank of
the Han River opposite Seoul.

With the three US Corps advancing in the west and centre of
the country, Ridgway ordered the ROK III Corps to begin Operation Roundup. The
ROK 5th and 8th Infantry Divisions were to retake Hongchon and destroy the
North Korean forces in that area. They were supported by the US 2nd and 7th
Infantry Divisions and the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team.

As the UN forces advanced steadily, the Chinese were
preparing a counter-offensive, massing in the central sector north of
Hoengsong. On the night of 11–12 February, the enemy began his Fourth Campaign
with five Chinese Armies and two North Korean Corps, numbering 135,000 men.
Their main effort was against the ROK divisions, particularly the 8th Division
which suffered heavy losses and they retreated south-east through the
snow-covered passes in the rugged mountains. They were being supported by the
US 15th Field Artillery Battalion which was also overrun by the Chinese despite
the best efforts of their quad-50 machine guns, although they disabled their
105mm howitzers before retreating. One of the gunners taken prisoner that day
was Oscar Cortez, who recalled: ‘The South Koreans were passing by in a hurry
and right after I heard the Chinese bugles and our quad fifties start firing.
All hell broke loose. We got our march order, hooked up our 105s and were ready
to move out. It was night and we waited for daylight, but we couldn’t move
because we were pinned down. We finally broke out and we received machine-gun
fire along the way. Bullets came close to my head but I was lucky, they didn’t
reach me, maybe because the truck was moving pretty fast. We stopped along the
way in an open field and started firing point-blank at the swarm of oncoming Chinese.
Since the ground was frozen and we couldn’t dig in the trails of our 105, I had
to stand on the trail itself and fire the gun. The recoil would send the gun
sliding back, so I had to push the gun back into firing position and do it all
over again until we ran out of ammo.’

Oscar Cortez was one of many prisoners captured by the
Chinese and joined one of the columns of POWs trudging northwards. They would
find little comfort in the prisoner of war camps. Around the first week of
February fifty prisoners were marched out onto the frozen parade ground of
Compound 105 in Camp 5 near Pyoktong. They were made to stand for four hours
exposed to the extreme cold as punishment for losing two propaganda pamphlets
that the Chinese had tried to force them to read. As a result many of them
suffered exposure and caught pneumonia, a potentially fatal illness when you
are half-starved and exhausted. It was between twenty and thirty degrees below
freezing in the unheated buildings and there were never less than 350 cases of
pneumonia a day in the camp. Between twenty-eight and thirty-five men died
every day and the bodies of hundreds of prisoners are still buried in the hills
above the camp.

As the enemy turned the right flank of the UN offensive, a
general withdrawal began in the centre section and most of the recently won
terrain was given up again. On 13 February, the Chinese moved against the US
2nd Infantry Division positions near Chipyong-ni on the left of the X Corps
front. A key road junction, surrounded by a ring of small hills, Chipyong-ni
would give the Chinese access to the nearby Han River Valley, where they would
threaten the positions of the I and IX Corps west of the river. The 23rd
Infantry Regiment and its attached French Battalion dug in and were soon surrounded.
The Air Force supplied close air support and flew resupply missions for the
beleaguered defenders. That night three Chinese divisions, supported by
artillery, assaulted the two-mile perimeter. The attackers were stopped on the
edge of the American positions only by extensive artillery support and
automatic weapons fire from an attached anti-aircraft battalion.

To the south-east, the situation was grave as the enemy
exploited the large gaps in the UN line until the 27th British Commonwealth
Brigade and the ROK 6th Division moved into the gap south of Chipyong-ni. The
5th Cavalry Regiment, reinforced with field artillery and tank units eventually
broke through the Chinese lines to relieve the 23rd Infantry at Chipyong-ni.
Captured documents indicated that the Chinese had lost 5,000 men trying to take
the area.

By 18 February, the communist offensive was spent and UN
reinforcements had stabilized the line. Rather than attempting to hold the land
they had won, the Chinese began withdrawing to the north, where they could
resupply and replace their casualties and move away from the strong UN
firepower. Ridgway decided to continue to pursue the retreating Chinese and
Operation Killer began on 20 February with all five Corps slowly moving forward
through the mud and rain. He hoped that the name ‘Killer’ would help encourage
the offensive spirit of the Eighth Army, which had taken a battering over the
last couple of months. By 28 February, all units had reached their objectives
and had eliminated all enemy forces south of the Han River.

Operation Ripper was launched on 7 March, to continue the
advance for a further twenty or thirty miles, to recapture Seoul and the towns
of Hongchon, fifty miles west of Seoul and Chunchon, fifteen miles farther to
the north. Ridgway’s objective now was to restore South Korea’s pre-war
boundaries and to destroy as much of the enemy’s forces as possible. The
offensive was preceded by one of the largest UN artillery bombardments of the
war. On the left of the UN front, the US 25th Infantry Division crossed the Han
River and established a bridgehead. During the night of 14–15 March, units of
the ROK 1st Division and the US 3rd Infantry Division recaptured Seoul, the
capital city changing hands for the fourth and last time in the war.

Although the operation recaptured lost ground, the Chinese
pulled back before they suffered too many casualties, so Operation Courageous
was prepared, with the aim of trapping the Chinese and North Korean forces
north of Seoul, in the area between the Han and Imjin Rivers. The 187th
Airborne Regimental Combat Team would drop from 100 C-119 Boxcar aircraft onto
the south bank of the Imjin River, twenty miles north of the current front
line. In the meantime Task Force Growdon, made up of armoured units from the
6th Medium Tank Battalion from the US 24th Infantry Division and infantry from
the US 3rd Infantry Division negotiated their way through enemy minefields to
link up with the paratroopers on the 23 March. One of the main objectives of
the airborne operation was to cut off and destroy some 6,000 men of the newly
organized NKPA I Corps. However, the enemy had continued to retreat faster than
the UN forces could advance and most of them escaped.

By the end of March, the Eighth Army units were nearing the 38th
Parallel, but there were signs that the Chinese and North Koreans were
preparing to launch their own spring offensive. Before it began, Ridgway,
backed by General MacArthur and President Truman decided to move even further
north to take over more defensible positions. Operation Rugged was planned to
secure a new line, Kansas, just north of the 38th Parallel, while Operation
Dauntless would extend the front line a further twenty miles northwards to line
Wyoming. The new front line would be heavily defended and when the communist
offensive was launched, the defenders would conduct a fighting withdrawal to
Line Kansas, while causing the maximum amount of casualties to the enemy. The
main defensive battle would then be fought along Line Kansas.

By 20 April, the UN forces were established along Line
Kansas, but before Operation Rugged could commence, the communist forces
launched their spring offensive across the entire UN front on 22 April. By now
General MacArthur had been relieved by President Truman and replaced by General
Matthew B. Ridgway. Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet took over command of
the US Eighth Army.

The new Chinese offensive, aimed at the recapture of Seoul,
was their fifth of the war and its impact was felt along the 116 mile length of
Line Kansas. Three Army Groups of almost 700,000 men were moving southwards and
US I Corps was their first objective. The ROK 6th Division bore the brunt of
the initial assault, west of the Hwachon Reservoir and when the enemy broke
through, it exposed the flanks of the US 24th Infantry Division and the 1st
Marine Division. The next day the Chinese completed the rout of the ROK
division and poured through the gap, advancing twenty miles south-west of the
Hwachon Reservoir. They ran into the British 27th Brigade and its attached US
72nd Tank Battalion which held them off while the UN forces withdrew. A series
of intense battles were fought by US and multinational forces as the enemy
crossed the Imjin River and established bridgeheads on the southern bank.

The Hwachon Reservoir and Dam was an important strategic
objective for both sides. When the Chinese captured the reservoir they opened
the crest spillway gates on the dam and the quantity of water released raised
the level of the Han River by four feet and destroyed two UN bridges. The 4th
Ranger Company of the 1st Cavalry Division was dispatched to conduct a raid on
the dam and disable the gates but its efforts failed. The 7th Cavalry Regiment
tried next and got to within half a mile of the dam before the stubborn defence
of two Chinese companies halted their advance. There was limited artillery
support for the attack due to poor roads and the division was suffering from
low morale and was about to be pulled out of the line. The dam gates were
eventually disabled in an attack by Navy Skyraider aircraft using torpedoes
left over from the Second World War.

The 29th British Independent Brigade had taken up positions
early in 1951 along the line of the Imjin River. The four infantry battalions –
1st Battalion, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers; 1st Battalion, the Gloucester
Regiment; 1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles and an attached Belgian battalion
– had a nine-mile front to cover and would be spread very thinly. The enemy was
nowhere to be found and fighting patrols were sent out across the river to look
for them. They were there, but well hidden. The Chinese 63rd Army was waiting
for the order to attack the British sector, destroy the brigade and push on to
Seoul to cut off the UN forces to the east.

On the night of 22 April, the Chinese arrived at the river
after a twenty-mile march in full battle order. As they began to wade across
the 150 yard wide river, a patrol from the Glosters opened fire on them and
began to call in mortar and artillery fire. When they ran low on ammunition the
Glosters withdrew to Castle Hill and the Chinese assault began. For two days
the brigade delayed the Chinese advance, but by the time their American
commanders ordered their withdrawal it was too late. The Glosters were
surrounded and eventually overrun, losing twenty dead, thirty-five wounded and
575 missing presumed captured. Their neighbouring battalions retreated in
chaos, supported by the Centurion tanks of the 8th Hussars. The fighting was
fierce. The tanks crushed the enemy under their tracks and swivelled their
turrets to machine-gun the Chinese off each other’s tanks. By the end of the
day their armour ran red with the blood of the enemy. Sergeant Cadman found a
Chinese man battering at his turret to get in, and drove his tank straight
through the wall of a house, to brush him off, and then ran over a machine gun
post at the side of the road. Some tanks left the road and took to the rice
paddy and were ploughing-in Chinese infantrymen who were crouched under every
bank. Very few of the British infantrymen clinging to the tanks, survived the
hail of enemy fire.

The success of the Chinese offensive in breaching Line
Kansas, led to a withdrawal of the whole Eighth Army to No Name Line, closer to
Seoul. The fighting was extremely intensive and over a three day period of
24–26 April 1951, six American soldiers earned Medals of Honour, including four
awarded to the 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. The rain hindered
the Chinese advance, which petered out as it reached the new UN defensive
positions, a mere six miles north of Seoul.

As April came to an end Van Fleet moved started moving his
forces westwards, to reinforce the defences around the capital. This left the
east of the country defended by X Corps and the ROK III Corps, a fact that did
not go unnoticed by the Chinese. From 10–16 May they moved five armies eastward
and launched an attack across the Soyang River against four ROK divisions. X
Corps withdrew the ROK 5th and 7th Divisions under its command, but the ROK III
Corps failed to do the same with its 3rd and 9th Divisions and the Chinese
quickly destroyed both divisions and poured through the gap in the line. The
Chinese had skilfully aimed their main offensive at the village of Namjon,
which marked the boundary between the ROK 7th and 9th Divisions and between the
US X Corps and the ROK III Corps. By nightfall they had severed the road which
supplied the two divisions of III Corps and were preparing to attack III Corps
from both the front and the rear.

Faced with a fight to the death or withdrawal, the two
divisions chose the latter course of action. They discarded their trucks and
artillery and fled south on foot through the Pangdae Mountains. Reports reached
the neighbouring ROK I Corps that many personnel abandoned their personal
weapons while officers ripped off their insignia of rank in case they were
captured. The collapse of III Corps forced a huge bulge in the UN line and the
US 3rd Infantry Division in reserve was rushed over a hundred miles to plug the
gap. As a result of this debacle all ROK divisions were now attached to
American Corps, with the exception of the three divisions of I Corps, now
commanded by the recently promoted General Paik Sun Yup. ROK Army Headquarters
was now limited to personnel, administrative, logistical and training matters
and was no longer involved in operations.

The deployment of the US 3rd Infantry Division from Seoul to
cover the retreat of the ROK III Corps and the orderly withdrawal of the ROK I
Corps helped halt the communist advance. It was to be the last major Chinese
offensive of the war and it failed, like most of the others due to a
combination of heavy casualties and poor resupply. General Van Fleet recognized
that the Chinese were exhausted and ordered a counter-attack. The goal was to
regain the better defensive positions of Line Kansas north of the 38th Parallel
and inflict maximum casualties on the enemy. They managed to encircle the 180th
Division of the 60th Army and after days of hard fighting, broke up the
division and the regiments fled in all directions. Soldiers either deserted or
were abandoned by their officers and 5,000 prisoners were taken. The division
commander and other officers who escaped were subsequently demoted back in
China. By the time the mud and the rain had brought the counter-attack to an
end 17,000 POWs had been taken by the UN forces, representing 80 per cent of
the total Chinese POWs taken during the whole war.

By 10 June 1951 both sides had come to a halt and were
taking up defensive positions roughly along the line of the 38th Parallel, from
where the war had begun a year earlier. The Air Force then began Operation
Strangle, a massive effort to destroy the Communist supply lines by air. On 23
June the Soviet ambassador to the UN called for cease-fire negotiations. The US
Secretary of State Dean Acheson indicated US willingness to accept a cease-fire
line in the vicinity of the 38th Parallel and on 2 July the Chinese and North
Koreans finally agreed to begin negotiations at Kaesong, a village north of the
front line in enemy territory. However, two more years would pass before they
came to a conclusion.