The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 50 "Operation Yoyo" (1)
While the diplomatic circles were arguing endlessly over the 8th parallel issue, the 10th Army stopped to adjust its deployment after occupying Seoul, and prepared for any battles to be fought next.On Washington's orders, MacArthur delivered a radio speech in early October calling for North Korea's surrender.In response, Prime Minister Kim Il Sung responded on October 10 by ordering his troops to "fight to the end."

第8集团军已经派部队越过三八线去试探北朝鲜的防御。10月9日，全面入侵的部队——第1骑兵师、第24步兵师、韩国第1师和英国第27旅开始行动了。北朝鲜人顽强抵抗了大约五天时间后，第1骑兵师突破了防线，攻占了汉城—平壤走廊的第一个重镇金川。

Over the next few days, the North Korean People's Army continued to retreat, with the 1st Cavalry Division and the 24th Infantry Division vying to see who would be the first to reach the town of Sariwon, the middle town on the road to Pyongyang.They advanced so fast that they overtook and bypassed large numbers of the North Korean People's Army.North Koreans surrendered en masse, with a single UN battalion taking 1 prisoners in one night.An air force pilot even captured a company of the North Korean People's Army in the air.Spotting a group of North Korean soldiers on a slope northeast of the mountains, he dropped a notice ordering them to lay down their weapons, which they obeyed, and the pilot directed another patrol to the 700 waiting to surrender captive there.The UN forces captured large quantities of artillery, tanks, and ammunition, including three trainloads full of munitions supplies, which the fleeing enemy had sealed up in tunnels.Senior officers also began to surrender (among them was Colonel Lee Hak-jou, chief of staff of the North Korean People's Army's 200th Division, who fled from his unit, woke up two GIs sleeping in their bunkers, and surrendered his weapons).The Australian troops of the 13rd Battalion captured a large number of enemy troops near a bivouac. The American commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pete Kreynolds, radioed the Australians: he was coming with a team of prisoners, and the truck escorting the prisoners of war flashed. Headlights on.When Lieutenant Colonel Krenos arrived, he heard an Australian on guard yelling, "What do you mean? We're here for a coordinated attack tomorrow morning, and the damn Yankees are coming up from the north in the middle of the night. , brightly lit, and brought a whole bunch of bloody North Korean captives."

Yet General Walton Walker still had reason to be concerned.The Eighth Army remained desperately short of ammunition and other supplies, and the situation worsened as troops continued to advance rapidly.The nearest railway station to the Eighth Army was Wagwan on the Nakdong River, 8 miles away.Incheon was still overcrowded, and the remaining elements of X Corps were in the final stages of evacuation of MacArthur's planned invasion of the east coast.

The progress of the South Korean army in the east was even more rapid, and they were not hindered by the grand plan of the man named Douglas MacArthur.When the enemy is retreating, they pursue them.An Army intelligence report estimated that only 2.5 North Korean People's Army troops were able to withdraw across the [-]th Parallel in the area.The South Korean army is still heartbroken over the humiliation and humiliation three months ago, and does not give the other side a chance to breathe.

The pursuit along the East Coast is a classic example of "modern" warfare.The South Korean 3rd Division traveled day and night on foot or by car, and often lost contact with all command posts.The division commanders ignored basic military common sense such as the security of the flank.The South Korean military believes it can ignore or contain any possible counterattack by the North Korean People's Army from the west.They did not stop to mow out small groups of resistance, and stragglers could be cleared, killed or captured later.

That's not to say the South Korean military's progress has been easy.Only 5 men remained in the 2400th Division of the North Korean People's Army, but it retained its mortars and 76mm anti-tank guns, which were deadly when used on the narrow coastal roads.The North Korean People's Army also has strong tunnel fortifications and artillery bunkers.But the South Korean army continued to push forward, often 15 miles a day, even though many soldiers with worn-out shoes marched north with bloody soles.

On October 10, the South Korean 10rd Division and the Capital Division entered Wonsan, less than two weeks after they crossed the 3th Parallel.The next night, the city was under the control of the United Nations forces.The 3rd Division remained at Wonsan in preparation for the arrival of MacArthur's "invasion" forces, while the Capital Division advanced another 50 miles north along the coast.

To the great dismay of the officers, when the news came that the South Korean army had driven straight in by land and seized their target Wonsan, the 1st Marine Division was still boarding the ship in Incheon, preparing for the long voyage to "invade" Wonsan .Would MacArthur withdraw his utterly idiotic order to allow the 1st Marine Division to skip a week of meaningless sea voyages and return to fight?No, the Marines had to go to Wonsan by boat.

Sitting in the officer's cabin of the USS Mount McKinley (once again serving as the flagship and command post of the invasion force), a colonel wrote to an Army friend who worked at MacArthur's headquarters. "I hate to use that corny, 'We told you so', but man, we've got to say it. We're on a boat in the harbor, and we're supposed to be killing enemies on the battlefield. You know , your 'Great God MacArthur' is not always right, this time he really screwed up."

The colonel addressed the envelope, but decided not to post it the next day.The letter would be described as jealousy.After all, MacArthur successfully won Incheon amidst the opposition of the Marine Corps, so the general could be allowed to make a mistake.The colonel stuffed the letter into his knapsack.

Fall of Pyongyang
The fall of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, was almost uneventful, and the defenders took little encouragement from Prime Minister Kim Il Sung's Oct. 10 order: "There is no one step back, and now we have nowhere to go." In order to carry out his order, Kim Il Sung established a "supervisor team", that is, a temporary firing squad, to shoot deserters on the spot.

Kim Il Sung's warning was too late. On October 10, the United Nations forces broke through the Pyongyang defense line, throwing the North Korean People's Army into chaos.A British battalion (14st Argyll) found emaciated North Koreans milling about on the side of the road, waiting for an opportunity to surrender.On several occasions, North Koreans mistook Englishmen in unfamiliar clothes for Russians, and a group ran up to a platoon at the Argyll camp, shouting "Comrade, comrade!" as if Russia had sent troops to their rescue.They handed over cigarettes and the red star on their hats as souvenirs.The British accepted the cigarettes, red stars, and their back pats, then stepped back and shot the North Korean gang.

On October 10, the intelligence agency of the 17th Army estimated that there were less than 8 North Korean soldiers defending Pyongyang, and the heavily damaged North Korean People's Army could only fight back.The UN forces appeared to be approaching the North Korean forces from all sides—the 8000st Cavalry Division from the south and the 1st Korean Division from the southeast.A commander of the South Korean army, the brigade commander Baek Sun-yeop, is ambitious and strives to be the first to enter Pyongyang.When the Communists took over North Korea five years ago, the city's rulers killed several members of Baek's family.During the march in 1, Bai told an American reporter that the North Koreans "saw off his baby's head."

The final assault on Pyongyang began on October 10.The North Korean People's Army launched a final counterattack, sending three tanks to meet the attacking force of the 19th Cavalry Regiment.A team led by a young American soldier knocked out the tanks with bazookas.

At noon, the 1st Cavalry Division and the Korean 1st Division rushed into the urban area with a fierce offensive, clearing away the last stubborn defenders.Brigadier Bai wants to pay back the debt in blood.When a North Korean detachment held out, he directed his tanks to run right through. More than 300 North Koreans were crushed or shot to death.

The relatively easy fighting meant that Pyongyang escaped the havoc that Seoul experienced.For this reason, or for some other reason, according to Time magazine reporter Dwight Martin, ordinary people in Pyongyang welcomed the UN troops with "South Korean flags, British flags, Chinese Nationalist flags, and a United Nations flag of my own imagination."The American troops were amazed by the Russian way of life in this city: the Soviet embassy was surrounded by a large number of Russian official residences; the Russian commissary was full of red wine, vodka, caviar and cosmetics; the Soviet embassy was equipped with expensive wireless communications and photographic equipment .Access to Kim Il Sung's office is through four reception rooms, each of which is hung with a portrait of Joseph Stalin; A huge mahogany desk with a foot-high plaster bust of Kim Il-sung on the left and a bust of Stalin on the right.”In his air-raid shelter there is a music room with an organ and a barber chair.

The Americans immediately set about installing a new government in the occupied capital.Colonel Archibald Melchior, a civil affairs officer, formed a committee of dignitaries he hoped were non-communists in Pyongyang.Melchior explained: "We were sitting on some logs next to a small bridge, and we saw a North Korean man coming towards us. Since he was neatly dressed, we grabbed him and told him to gather some respectable people. burgher." The burgher, a shopkeeper, happily complied, and got the Americans some schoolteachers and low-level county officials to serve as a cadre.Five years of Soviet rule over North Korea came to an end.

Willoughby declares victory

On October 10, General Charles Willoughby effectively declared the end of the war.Willoughby said in an intelligence summary distributed to all Far East Command personnel:
The enemy is incapable of any large-scale organized resistance.There are indications that North Korea's military and political command may have fled to "Manchuria" and that communication with and consequent control of enemy forces on the battlefield has been completely disabled. ...

Despite these signs of disorganization, there is no sign yet that the enemy intends to surrender.They continued to maintain combat effectiveness for small-scale delayed UN operations. ...

The frustrated 10th Army was still tossing at sea at this time, and the war was in full swing, but they had no choice but to watch the fire from the other side.The North Koreans—presumably with Soviet help—swarmed the route to Wonsan with more than 3000 mines.The Navy managed to get rid of them, but misfortunes abounded.

A small fleet of 21 minesweepers began clearing the mines on 10 October and cleared a route up to 10 miles offshore.At this time, a certain officer (whose name has not been disclosed in the naval history) came up with the idea to use aircraft to bomb and detonate mines along a narrow route so that the minesweepers who opened the way could pass. On October 10, 10 aircraft took off from the aircraft carriers USS Wright and USS Philippine Sea and dropped 12 tons of 39-pound bombs each.But this method did not work, the impact of the bomb explosion was not enough to detonate the mine.Three minesweepers then sailed into the channel.A few minutes later, the "Viking" minesweeper hit a mine, and the "Oath" minesweeper following it hit another mine, and the two boats quickly sank.A third minesweeper, the Miracle, rescued more than 1000 survivors, but 50 sank with the ship, one person later died of his injuries, and 20 others were injured.The minesweeping operation continued for another two weeks and lost 12 ships, 33 South Korean and 3 Japanese.The Russian-built mines are extremely sophisticated: a magnetic device programmed to explode after as many as a dozen ships pass through.Therefore, minesweepers must go back and forth in a sea area at least 2 times before they can confirm whether it is a safe area.

In this way, from October 10th to 19th, the 25st Marine Division, the best unit in the Korean War, had been doing nothing. They were full of resentment and could only sail slowly in the Japanese Sea outside the Wonsan Strait by transport ships.Joke-loving Marines made sarcasm about Operation Yo-Yo, and every time the ship turned south, they began spreading rumors of returning to Busan—and then back home.But the jokes quickly ran out, especially on LSTs and small transports that weren't ready for what amounted to a trans-Pacific voyage.Gastroenteritis and dysentery were rife on all the transport ships, and 1 people fell ill on board the Phoenix of the Seas.Food supplies are dangerously short.As Marine Corps historian Lynn Montrose writes: "Men live on board ships, and whiners have never been more angry. Letters to wives and lovers pile up every day, and paperback murder mysteries are overwhelmed by boredom." Readers have read it incompletely."

Entertainers Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell's show at Wonsan on the evening of October 10 was filled with complaints from disgruntled Marines stranded at sea.The next day, the 24st Marine Division finally landed amidst the jeers and jeers of the troops who arrived earlier by land and air (the Air Force ground crew had arrived in Wonsan 12 days ago).MacArthur's "strategy" kept his best troops out of battle for four weeks.

At the same time, "Operation Yoyo" also made the 7th Division of the Army miserable.In a sense, the 7th Division was in a more disheartening situation than the Marines.The original plan called for the 7th Division to land at Wonsan with the Marines, so the division boarded at Pusan ​​as if it were going to be a non-combat landing.However, South Korean forces occupied Wonsan just before the 7th Division sailed away from Pusan, so the Tokyo command decided to change the division's mission: the division would land as far north as possible in order to compete with those already in North Korea. The troops meet.General Almond chose Liyuan as the landing point, where the 7th Division could be deployed to drive northward along the Beiqing-Fengshan-Huesanjin road directly to the Yalu River.

(End of this chapter)