The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 44 Incheon Gambling Win (7)
Incredibly, the North Korean People's Army Command still seems unaware of the catastrophe that has befallen the Incheon defenders.At dawn, 8 Corsair planes left the "Sicily" aircraft carrier and cruised along the Jingren Highway to find the target.They found the target easily, and six T-6 tanks formed a single column, swaggeringly rumbling along the road to Incheon.Flight formation commander Robert Flock led the attack, and his wingman and other pilots followed him in a roll, a dive, and a horizontal exit.His napalm hit the lead tank right in the middle, and the tank burst into orange flames.The Corsair that followed him destroyed two tanks behind him, and a stray bullet from the North Korean People's Army caused an American plane to plummet to the ground with smoke.Another squadron of Corsairs followed, knocking out two other tanks and hitting North Korean soldiers and vehicles hiding in thatched huts.The burning of napalm made the smoke billowing around Incheon unabated.

The Marines advanced about 10 miles east along the Gyeongin Highway during the first day's offensive.At night, D Company, the leading 5nd Battalion of the 2th Marine Regiment, dug a trench on a bare hill next to the abandoned quarry by the road.The narrow road snaked to the right around a large hill ahead of the Marines.

All night, the soldiers of D Company cursed the blinding light from the North Korean flares in the distance, making their sleep uncomfortable.The next day, September 9, the Marines were to press on with the support of five newly arrived Pershing tanks.The company commander, Lieutenant Smith, insisted on strengthening the fortifications and preparing to spend the night.Smith, a cautious officer, believed that every moment the North Koreans would strike back.He sent a machine gun unit and a 17-inch rocket launcher forward onto a hill overlooking a bend in the road, and deployed a 5mm recoilless gun and a 2.36-inch heavy rocket launcher on the main defile a few hundred yards behind D Company. . Company D is ready for any eventuality.

Shortly before dawn, the soldiers of D Company heard a muffled mechanical sound in the distance that sounded like a farm tractor rumbling down a Midwestern highway.Word of the situation quickly reached the battalion command post, which initially refused to believe that the North Korean People's Army had been bold—or foolish enough—to drive tanks straight to the Marines' positions with forward patrols.

However, the first Soviet-made T-34 tank quickly and carefully rounded the detour, and according to an eyewitness, "it was still covered with morning light."Another tank followed.Their turrets turned, like the tentacles of a huge black ant testing the still morning air in the morning light.Another tank appeared behind, and a total of 6 tanks were fully exposed under the muzzle of the Marine Corps.

Behind the tanks were the infantry, some in chaotic formation, talking and laughing as they walked; others were sitting on the sides of the tanks having breakfast.

Lieutenant Lee Howard, the leader of the vanguard platoon, spared the vanguard of the column.He didn't give the order until the tanks started rounding the bend and headed straight for D Company's main position, and his men opened fire with machine guns, rifles, and Browning automatic rifles.The North Korean infantry fell like mowing grass, and the soldiers on the tanks were beaten to the ground. Many people died when the heavy tanks turned around to escape the ambush.

A corporal named Okay Douglas crawled from the top of the mountain to the mountainside, and used his 2.36-inch rocket launcher to fire at the leading T-70 tank at a distance of 34 yards, and the tank suddenly burst into flames.Douglas aimed at the second tank and knocked it out as the American artillery opened fire.

The violent shooting lasted only a few minutes.Some of the tanks drove off the road in an attempt to escape through the adjacent rice fields, and in doing so they came into direct contact with the Marines' M-26 Pershing tanks.The tank commander, Lieutenant William Pomeroy, brought them down to 600 yards before firing, at which point the recoilless guns also fired.

All six T-6 tanks were reduced to a heap of burning scrap metal, with more than 34 dead North Korean soldiers scattered among them.The ambush was a complete success, and only one Marine was slightly injured.

MacArthur Landing
No sooner had D Company left than it was pure coincidence that a contingent of jeeps headed straight for the battlefield and parked next to the still burning North Korean tanks.There were dead enemy soldiers everywhere, and according to Marine General Lemuel Shepard, who was in the jeep line, some were "almost roasted dead on several tanks."The air was filled with the acrid stench of smokeless gunpowder and high explosives, and General Douglas MacArthur sniffled as he stepped out of the jeep.

The general landed shortly after dawn to admire his masterpiece.After looking at the destroyed North Korean People's Army positions and corpses in the beachhead area, he hurried inland. (Pointing to the corpse of an enemy soldier, he joked to his personal physician, "You'll never see this patient again.")
This "inspection" is not so much to let MacArthur see the battlefield, but rather to give him the opportunity to appear in front of the media gathered here.Reporters and photographers scrambled to grab seats in open-top Jeeps, and the triumphant general was the central target of the frenzy.He even stopped to chat amicably with Colonel Alpha Bowser at the command post of the 1st Marine Division.He had never met Bowser, although he knew the Marine officer was the main opponent of Operation Chrome.MacArthur could not stand even mild criticism. "He (MacArthur) said he still thinks he's right," Bowser said. "Our presence here is a testament to the fact that what he thought could be done has happened."

MacArthur called together the generals and other senior officers and announced that he wanted to find a Marine commander, Colonel Lewis "The Proud" Pooler, and award him a Silver Star for his service at the time of the landing. Acts of bravery (Poleer doesn't even mention in his autobiography what exactly he did in the first two days to deserve a medal).There may be an element of nostalgia here, because MacArthur has paid tribute to the tough guy Puller who has repeatedly built military exploits since World War II.But he was busy taking a ridge when a radio call called for a meeting with the general.

"Telegram them that we're fighting every inch of land," Puller snapped at one of his subordinates. "I can't get out of here. If he's going to be honored, he's going to have to come here."

Puller's arrogance seemed to please MacArthur. "Get in the car," he said, "and we'll visit Puller in the field."

MacArthur and his party soon arrived at a farmhouse near the front line, where Puller's command post was located.The movement of people around the house and the criss-crossing of telephone wires show that this farmhouse is not an ordinary one.But there was no sign of Puller.The Marine pointed to the ridge above, where gunshots rang out.MacArthur waved his hand, and the jeep roared up.

Looking down from the hill, Puller's assistant saw the convoy speeding through the smoke. "General MacArthur is here!" he called to Puller.

"How do you know?" asked the Colonel.

"Who in North Korea can use so many jeeps to do such nonsense? Who can make an insignificant colonel piss off the front line?"

Near the top of the mountain, the slope was so steep that the jeep had to stop and everyone got out and walked.MacArthur was out of breath, but smiled at the photographers in front of him.He and Puller greeted each other happily.One of MacArthur's staff officers told Puller that they had expected to find him at the command post, obliquely suggesting that Puller should have gone down the mountain.

Puller grinned, then tapped the map folded in his hip pocket and replied, "This is my command post."

MacArthur searched all his pockets, but did not find a Silver Star. "Write this down," he told the tightly packed reporters that the medals would be delivered later.

When MacArthur and his party returned to the road down the mountain, they encountered a North Korean tank that had been destroyed by a Corsair fighter jet the day before. "Fortunately, they are still made in Russia," MacArthur laughed, "I hope they are like this."

A Marine Corps lieutenant colonel named Raymond Murray said: "Oh, this was destroyed yesterday, if you want to see the tanks destroyed today, we have some on the road over there." Pointing to the road leading to the position D Company had just occupied a few hours earlier.

General Oliver Smith, a senior Marine officer in the entourage, shuddered.Small arms fire was still going on there, and he didn't want his supreme commander killed, especially in the Marines' area of ​​operations.MacArthur took it for granted that this was a great idea, so he drove there.They had advanced a few yards when an excited Marine officer ran forward with a wave. "General," he shouted, "you can't come here!"

MacArthur looked at the young officer and couldn't help but smile. "Why not?" he asked.

"We just knocked out six communist tanks on top of this hill," said the Marine.

"Just do it." MacArthur said, and the jeep moved on.He stepped out of his jeep at the ambush area and stood on a culvert to get a better look at the still burning wreckage of the tank, then turned to face the photographer.He pored over the dead North Koreans with indifference and poked his finger through a shell hole in a tank.

General Almond, who came with him, was secretly sullen. He felt that the sights before him were too spectacular to be believed, and even if they were true, he suspected that they were concocted by the well-deserved Marine Corps public relations agency.He half-jokingly told Gen. Lemuel Sheppard: "You bloody Marines! You always seem to be in the right place at the right time. Hell, our Army keeps fighting (he refers to the pre-Incheon wars) battle), but MacArthur just happened to be here after the Marines had just knocked out six enemy tanks." Sheppard smiled and said nothing.

A few minutes after MacArthur and his party left the ambush site, a lieutenant heard a suspicious sound coming from under the culvert where the general had just stood to inspect the destroyed tanks.He called a squad, fired a few shots and blasted out seven heavily armed North Korean People's Army soldiers, who surrendered after a little resistance.Upon interrogation, it was learned that they were infantrymen who had survived that morning's battle.After the battle, they did stay in this culvert.

After returning to downtown Incheon, MacArthur planned to inspect the landing area by boat.After looking at the channel leading to Moonmi Island and Blue Beach, he pointed to an area beside the guide where the sound of rifles could still be heard.General Sheppard finally spoke: "I don't think it's safe to bring the Supreme Commander of this theater here and expose him to sporadic rifle and mortar fire." He said: "I think we should make the general The ship left the dangerous area."

Admiral Struble (whom Shepard dubbed "Old Struble") commented that Shepard was "terrified of going to the beach".Sheppard also fired back at him.But Sheppard's opinion was adopted, and MacArthur and his party returned to the "McKinley Hill" warship in a tense and dull atmosphere.However, for MacArthur, this day he achieved his goal: he witnessed his brilliant victory.

The 8th Army rushed out of Pusan

The southern front is also about 180 air miles from the closest point of the Seoul-Incheon front, and it will be farther if it passes through the winding mountain roads.The breakout plan drawn up by General Walton Walker called for the Eighth Army to advance north along the central axis the North Koreans had used to advance south—the road linking Taegu, Kimcheon, Daejeon, and Suwon.Walker estimated that once the North Koreans learned the news of the U.S. invasion of Incheon, their morale would plummet and they would become vulnerable, so he set the breakout time for September 8, the day after the Incheon landing.

Eighth Army staff officers were not very optimistic about MacArthur's anvil and hammer strategy.Despite the 8th Army's continued buildup of men and materiel within the defensive circle, its forces were at best able to thwart North Korean attacks and mount limited counterattacks.Ammunition shortages were so severe that the artillery was limited to fifty rounds per gun per day for the main attack.Furthermore, although the northward advance required the Eighth Army to cross a series of rivers, the sappers lacked the bridging equipment.Intelligence agencies estimated North Korean troop strength in the area around the Pusan ​​beachhead at 8.Although the U.S. and South Korean forces combined totaled 50, some South Koreans were rendered ineffective due to lack of leadership and training.The 8th Army's combat plan pessimistically reads: "The enemy is currently on the offensive and will maintain this capability in all parts of the defensive circle. This capability is not expected to decrease in the near future."

The Eighth Army launched an offensive in cloudy and rainy weather at 8 am on September 9 as planned.The weather was so bad that the air force had to abandon the saturation bombing of the first target area near Wakan.Things did not go as planned as the North Koreans also chose the same day to launch a new offensive.In this way, instead of turning to the offensive, the U.S. military was once again in a passive position of position defense. (North Korean prisoners captured sporadically had not even heard of the Incheon landing, let alone a "morale drop".)
In addition to the tenacious resistance of the North Koreans, the lack of equipment also prevented Walker from quickly breaking through the encirclement.Under MacArthur's repeated urging, he retorted on September 9 that he was "ready to break out of the encirclement, if it were not for the trouble in materials."There was no way he could get his heavy tanks across the Nakdong River, since most of the logistical support was given to the 21th Army. "We've been stepmothers lately, and as far as our sapper equipment is concerned, we're not in a great place." Walker knew full well that MacArthur couldn't tolerate officers who couldn't meet deadlines, no matter how difficult they were. "I don't want you to think I'm dragging my feet," he told Tokyo, "but there's a river ahead of my whole front..." Only two bridges remained intact.

After several days of indecision, MacArthur decided that another amphibious operation was needed to allow the Eighth Army to break through the Pusan ​​perimeter.He asked his deputy chief of staff, General Doyle Hickey, to develop a plan to take two of Walker's American divisions and one Korean division from their positions and land them in the mountains on the west coast, 8 miles south of Incheon .Walker protested that if three divisions were withdrawn from the Pusan ​​area, the North Koreans would quickly annihilate the remaining UN troops there and would be free to counter any attempted invasion north.

As happened later, the development of the situation exceeded MacArthur's expectations.Just before proceeding with the proposed plan, the weather cleared and the air force could again be dispatched.Bombs and napalm gradually destroyed the morale of the enemy troops.The North Koreans began to flee without armor.A small number of people stayed and fought in vain and were beaten to death in the bunker; others fled in embarrassment, their wet clothes were still hanging on the bushes, and the food in the headquarters was still warm.Thousands of soldiers simply took off their military uniforms in an attempt to blend in with the common people, or flew away to continue guerrilla warfare.The 1st Cavalry Division advanced 3 miles in three days.

(End of this chapter)