The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 43 Incheon Gambling Win (6)
North Koreans everywhere dropped their arms and stopped resisting.Some begged for mercy: "Help me (Korean)." A badly wounded man begged Frank Gibney, who had all his clothes off except his leather boots and died soon after.The Marines ordered the POWs to strip naked so they wouldn't hide their weapons and marched to the beach.The defeated North Koreans thought they were going to be executed. One man knelt on the road with his hands folded and begged, "Don't kill me, I'm a Christian."

At 8 a.m., all resistance on Wolmido ceased.Word reached the "McKinley Hill" that the Marines had seized the choke point leading to the port of Incheon.MacArthur walked into the cabin and wrote a telegram to Vice Admiral Struble on the "Rochester": "The Navy and Marine Corps have never performed so well as this morning."

麦克阿瑟“以1对10”的赌注的第一步超乎想象地大获全胜。只有17名陆战队员受轻伤。北朝鲜人民军108人阵亡，136人被俘，估计还有150多人被掩埋在石土之下。

Now it's time to attack Incheon.

Main attack
For the rest of the morning, the assault force of the Marine Corps watched nervously as the tide receded.At 1:[-] p.m., the Marines realized that although they captured Moonmid Island, they were surrounded by mudflats.Lieutenant Colonel Robert Tapulet, in command, had several possibilities in mind: a North Korean People's Army unit would suddenly appear on the seemingly deserted streets of Incheon and attack with all its strength; or a column of Communist tanks would drive past Causeway, destroying his troops.

However, there was no movement all afternoon.One of the few signs of activity in Incheon is the looting of rice shops by ordinary people.A group of North Korean soldiers was seen in a ditch, but the destroyer HMS Mansfield quickly buried them with 30 rounds of 5-inch shells.Tapulet was so confident that at around 3 p.m., he asked for a tank and infantry unit to attack downtown Incheon through the causeway.But his bosses weren't prepared to take that risk. The "McKinley Hill" replied: "Not approved."

In the late afternoon, Tapulet's men again prepared to advance, this time in the direction of Incheon.Despite orders to bombard military targets only, many bombs and shells missed their targets, setting the city on fire and filling the sky with smoke.To the west, however, the setting sun tinted a patch of sky golden.A military chaplain, standing next to Time magazine reporter Frank Gibney, looked first at the chaos in Incheon, then at the sky, and said, "Heaven on one side and hell on the other." From the captured There was indeed encouraging news from the interrogation of North Korean soldiers: the North Korean People's Army in the Incheon area numbered only 1 troops, most of them newly conscripted, poorly trained, inexperienced, and demoralized.Now, for the first time, they are getting a taste of the formidable firepower of the modern combined service.

When the tide rose in the late afternoon, the Marines' landing craft rushed to land again through Flying Fish Gap, and the soldiers immediately felt panicked, tired and unwell.For the 1st and 3rd Battalion, even fighting seemed more comfortable than aboard the old wreck they used to cross the Sea of ​​Japan.Only two weeks ago, the ship was reconscripted from the Japanese coastal shipping industry, and Technical Sergeant Alan Meynard recalled that the ship was "replete with a fishy smell" and rats the size of cats scurrying about the deck go.The boat encountered small boats packed with fleeing North Koreans carrying only their meager possessions, and a mother stood on a small sailboat lifting her child. "Her words were difficult to understand, but her meaning was self-explanatory," recalls Meynard.The city behind them was shrouded in a blanket of smoke.Air and sea bombing began again.The cannons on Wolmido Island had been silenced, and the destroyer approached the port.

On the bridge of the "McKinley Hill", General MacArthur sat in his swivel chair again, raising his binoculars to observe the final bombardment of the rocket launcher.Over the course of 20 minutes, 6 rockets rained down on the port of Incheon.The artillery fire made the defenders dizzy, but it also made the smoke and dust in the sky thicker and thicker.When the other two marine regiments (not including the marine battalion that landed on Wolmido Island) finally landed on the smoky land, what would be waiting for them?Was it the morning's senseless resistance, or a bloody Tarawa-style battle in the muddy rice fields and the dark, crooked streets of this strange port city?A sudden storm made the chaos unabated.The Marines are now starting to descend from the transport to the small landing craft, this time also loaded with a fleet of amphibious tractors, which they are counting on to get through the mudflats if the tide doesn't rise high enough.

The planes kept strafing until the landing craft were less than 30 yards from the landing point. They shook their wings at the marines below and flew away quickly to attack the reinforcement convoy on the Seoul-Incheon highway.The North Korean People's Army Command has finally realized that the thunder and lightning of the past few days is by no means just random events.

Margaret Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune sailed to Red Beach with the 5st Battalion, 1th Marines, and as she passed Moonmid Island, she saw it "as if it had just been ravaged by a forest fire." ’, she wrote: ‘Red Beach ahead. We looked out to get a better view when a rocket hit a circular oil storage tower and a huge, scary ring of smoke rose into the sky The buildings on the pier side were lit up by the flames. Looking through the raging fire, it seemed that the whole city was burning.  …”

The Marines began to transfer to small landing craft, each carrying 20 soldiers and 2 ladders. According to James Bell of Time, who was on the boat with the third attack wave, Red Beach's 1000-foot seawall "looks as tall as the RCA building."

The 4 landing craft of the first attack wave lined up and approached the sea wall around 5:30 pm. When the bow of the boat hit the hard stone wall heavily, the hull stopped suddenly.Despite the high tide, the sea wall loomed four feet above the bow door.While setting up the ladder, the marines threw grenades across the embankment regardless of whether there were any enemies behind.Rough waters rocked the landing craft and the ladders slid back and forth. "Up the stairs to the embankment!" shouted Ensign Edwin Deputra.At 4:21 in the afternoon, the No.5 marines finally landed on the land of Incheon.

Others filed up, some venturing up the increasingly shaking ladders, others simply throwing their field packs into the darkness and grabbing the outstretched arms of those already ashore and climbing up the embankment. .Only intermittent stray bullets crackled in the air, and Deputra's platoon quickly gained control of their first target, a small plateau a few hundred yards heading inland.

Deputra's company commander, Sam Jaskilka, was operating with the third attack wave, and just a few minutes before his landing craft touched the sea wall, he whispered the order in a calm tone: "You know What to do, keep your goddamn heads down. There's a ditch on the other side of the sea wall, and you're going to climb over the sea wall and go down into the ditch, then get up right away and head for the beach on the right. Good luck to you all."

But this time the resistance intensified.A machine gun in a bunker north of the sea wall opened fire, and rifles and machine guns also began firing from a few dozen yards behind the bunker, and some marines who had climbed over the sea wall were suddenly caught in the fire net.

Lieutenant Bodomero Lopez, an Annapolis Naval Academy graduate and WWII veteran, crawls toward an enemy bunker with machine guns.Lopez came to Incheon voluntarily.Just as the Marines at Camp Pendleton were being ordered to North Korea, Lopez was being ordered to report to the Marine Corps Academy in Cantice, Virginia, for advanced training.Lopez protested to his commanding officer, and the order to Cantique was canceled.Today, two months later, he has come face-to-face with the enemy.He knocked out one of the bunkers with one grenade, pulled the safety catch of the other grenade, and prepared to throw it at the second bunker.A sudden burst of machine gun fire wounded his right arm and shoulder, and he fell to the ground, out of reach of the sizzling grenade. "Grenade!" he yelled, before swooping in, elbowing the grenade under his body and killing him.

Despite eight casualties in the first 10 minutes of the attack, the advance to objectives beyond Red Beach went well.The Marine Corps has advanced to the cemetery highland, the commanding height in the center of Incheon, and captured the tall factory building of the Aishan Brewery.An officer once promised that if he took it intact, he would be able to drink to his heart's content.However, the effect of the rocket bombardment was overdone.Not a single bottle of beer was left undamaged, and the fermentation tanks were a heap of broken bricks.

At the same time, the water several hundred yards leading to the landing area was in chaos.Navy doctrine calls for an amphibious operation on the scale of Incheon to require 32 command boats equipped with rangefinders, radios and other sophisticated navigation equipment to ensure that the lumbering landing craft stay in formation and land at their intended location, but the Navy only Eight command boats could be found for the Incheon landing.In this way, the follow-up troops of the attack were aimless and in a mess, trying their best to sail towards the land filled with fireworks in the gradually falling night.A major named Edwin Simonson couldn't wait for the command boat, so he called for help from a nearby vehicle and personnel landing ship.It happened that there were many North Korean translators on board the landing ship, and two of them hurriedly boarded Simonsen's warship.They can speak Korean and Japanese, but not English.Simonsen then called out to a naval officer on another nearby ship, asking about the navigation route to Landing Area 8 on Blue Beach, but the naval officer merely waved his hand indistinctly through the smoke.When Simonsen pulled out a map and asked a sailor who was driving an amphibian if he could read it, the sailor stared dejectedly at his dashboard. "I can't," he said, "six weeks ago I was driving a truck in San Francisco." A battalion landed on Blue Beach two miles off target.

Even Admiral Struble inadvertently contributed to the confusion.He wanted to see the situation on the blue beach, so he asked General Shepard and General Almond to go there in his special motorboat.Almond was witnessing an amphibious operation for the first time, and Struble and Sheppard wanted him to see it for himself, not the "mechanical operation" he had mocked a few weeks earlier.

By the time they reached the sea wall, Marine engineers were about to blast a breach in the wall to allow tracked vehicles to land.

"Go away, you idiots," a marine sergeant called to the launch. "We're going to blow the embankment."

The captain of the launch replied: "This is Admiral Struble's launch."

"I don't care whose launch it is," the sergeant shouted, "get out of here, I'm going to blow up the embankment." The embankment was cut off in the middle.

It took nearly an hour after the offensive was launched for North Korean gunners to finally open fire on the sea targets—eight tank landing ships, loaded with ammunition, gasoline, and napalm, in a file and approaching the shore.The heavy, slow tank landing ships rumbled into the fire net of machine guns and mortars in neat formation.A fire started near an ammunition truck on one ship but was quickly contained by the crew and marines. (When they landed a few hours later, the Marines found some gasoline drums pierced by machine gun bullets. Surprisingly, the drums did not explode.)
8艘军舰中有7艘立即用40毫米和20毫米的火炮回击公墓高地、观察高地以及滩头右翼的目标，但炮弹却径直落到陆战队的阵地上。其中一个营被海军的炮火击毙1人，击伤23人，这比当天晚上北朝鲜人民军给该营造成的伤亡还多。

Reporter Margaret Higgins landed just in time for the "friendly" fire to begin, and she saw the bullets—

Splashes all around us.We jumped over the high steel side of the ship, using the side of the boat for cover as best we could, and crawled to the bottom of a rocky seawall.Regardless of the luck of the first four attack waves, we were relentlessly overwhelmed by rifle and automatic weapon fire from another high slope on the right flank. ...

A wave broke suddenly at the bottom of the seawall, and we saw a huge LST heading towards us, its bow doors halfway open.Another 6 yards and the warship would crush 20 men to pieces.The warning call made everyone flee the sea wall, dodge the tank landing craft, and dodge the bullets.

When the landing craft approached the beach, the shouted command finally made the landing craft stop firing.

However, the two young sailors were so enraged that they told Sergeant Sergeant Robert Tarrant, a field correspondent for the Marine Corps Monthly, that they were going to "seek out the Communists" themselves.Armed with M-1 rifles, bullet pouches and some hand grenades, they trudged onto the beach despite Tarrant's warnings. "They came back quickly, but they had lost their weapons, covered in mud and trembling, and they told all the team that some blind people had made them a target."

Throughout Blue Beach, mudflats are the main problem.Some of the amphibious landing vehicles and tanks made it to the beach, while others were stuck within 300 yards of the beach, screaming and wading through the mud to dry land.The battalion of marines landing on Blue Beach also suffered from poor naval guidance, with several landing waves out of order and far from the designated landing points.After landing, the heavily armored tractor was unable to move due to terrain restrictions, and was in a dilemma in the sand.

Despite all the delays and mishaps, the first few landing forces cleared the beachhead quickly, with only one machine-gun emplacement hidden in a tower 500 yards inland inflicting a few casualties on the troops.The Marines silenced the firing point and entered a labyrinth of urban areas of burning buildings and smoky streets.

The North Korean People's Army's firing gradually ceased, and the Marines began to clear the battle.As planned, they captured the city center, the roads west of the city and all commanding heights and tall buildings.Their total casualties were 196: 20 killed, 1 unaccounted for, 1 missing, and 174 wounded.KPA losses were estimated at 1 killed, wounded or captured.

MacArthur won the bet.By the end of the night, some 1.8 U.S. troops had landed, along with tons of supplies and dozens of tanks and other vehicles.Now the attacking force could move on to its second objective: the capture of Seoul and the arteries through it.At this time, MacArthur not only had the opportunity to recapture the South Korean capital, but also swept the entire Korean peninsula eastward, trapping the North Korean army in the south.

MacArthur's clever stroke appears to have changed the course of the war.He was praised from all sides, including the praise of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but these praises often avoided mentioning the two facts that the landing was successful: the heavy bombardment of the naval artillery before the landing, the rain of bombs and rockets, making the moon Ojima and Incheon were a smoke-filled ruin; moreover, the North Koreans left only a garrison force to defend the city.Clearly, the North Korean People's Army was far more determined to drive the 8th Army out of the Pusan ​​perimeter than to defend Incheon.The North Koreans are now under attack, and a powerful American army is sweeping across North Korea.

Marines advance inland

The day after the landing day, the Marine Corps planned to leave Incheon as soon as possible, and the South Korean Marine Corps, which arrived by boat starting on the morning of September 9, took over the city.

In North Korea, terrain often determines tactics.Incheon is situated on a gnarled peninsula. Three miles inland, tidal bays, sticky mudflats, and salt pans appear on the north and south sides of the peninsula, making the peninsula narrow and passable on firm ground. Only 3 mile wide.The 1-mile narrow gravel road from Incheon to Seoul runs parallel to a railway.The road and rail pass first through Susa, the American "new city" of corrugated iron prefabs and warehouses that the military has long used as a logistics base; then to Gimpo Airport, Seoul's main airport .The Marines' goal was to traverse the 25-mile strip and capture Seoul before the North Korean People's Army brought in reserves to smash the beachhead.

(End of this chapter)