Little Man & Friends

The Communist invaders from North Korea last week reaped the harvest of tactical surprise, of crushing superiority in weapons. The spectacle was the sickening one of a heavyweight punching around a wispy little man who has just got up from a sickbed. The situation, though grim, was not hopeless. At week's end, the little man had powerful friends hurrying to his side.

"If One Antitank Crew ..." The U.S. coaches failed to foresee the devastating psychological effect of enemy armor on the tankless South Koreans. In the crucial battle for Uijongbu (see map), 40 Communist tanks came down the valley road in close-packed single file. If this column had been destroyed, the Red offensive might have been crippled at the start. A sorrowing U.S. military adviser commented later: "If one antitank crew had been able to pick off the lead and rear tanks, the 38 others would have been sitting ducks" (i.e., immobilized by wrecks at both ends of the column). Nothing of the sort happened.

Things might have been different if the_South Koreans had had their U.S. advisers at elbow. Some time ago, hardbitten Brigadier General William (Bill) Roberts, commander of KMAG (the U.S. Korean Military Advisory Group), had said to his men: "Don't fool yourselves. If war comes, you fellows are going to be the battalion and regimental commanders of this army." Unfortunately, last week Bill Roberts was out of the country, headed for the U.S. His subordinates in Korea may have been ordered by Washington to evade capture at all costs. In any case, the U.S. coaches were not on hand to coach in the thick of combat.

Across the River. There was no street fighting for Seoul. With the government and the U.S. military advisers evacuated by air from Kimpo, the city's defenders decided that only the Han River would stop the invaders' southward march, and they prematurely demolished the Han bridges (see below).

The South Koreans who got across the Han fled toward Suwon, 20 miles to the south, where Brigadier General John H. Church, acting KMAG commander, and his staff had set up headquarters. Around this base South Korean commanders managed to regroup some units and truck them north to hold the river line. By the time they arrived, however, the Communists were already putting their dreaded tanks across the river on rafts and pontoon bridges. Again the South Koreans, now short of weapons of any sort, wavered and broke, and the Communists pushed on. Meanwhile, U.S. jets and F82 Twin Mustangs were beginning to shoot down Yaks and knock out some of the enemy armor. The Yaks retaliated by destructive sneak attacks on Suwon's airstrip (see cut).

Increasing Commitments. When Red tanks were spotted reconnoitering near Suwon, General Church ordered his mission of some 250 men to Taejon, 73 miles still farther south. In a pouring rain, traveling in trucks, jeeps, weapons carriers, they made the weary trip over roads like quagmires. The new hope was to hold at the Kum River north of Taejon.

U.S. B-29s were bombing Pyongyang, the Red capital, and other objectives north of the 38th parallel. U.S., British and Australian naval forces, including carriers and cruisers, were committed to action in the Korean theater; U.S. warships shelled shore installations at the Red-seized port of Inchon. Douglas MacArthur ordered the 24th Division, equipped with tanks and artillery, to Korea by sea. One battalion of the 24th was flown to Pusan and shipped to the Kum River front by rail. Major General William F. Dean, the 24th's commander, was appointed commanding general of all U.S. forces in Korea, with Church as his senior GHQ liaison officer. Meanwhile four enemy columns were reported moving south, one of them outflanking Suwon. The U.S. troops in the field deployed to meet them. One unit got its first taste of combat when five Yaks strafed them savagely, for 25 minutes, with rockets and machine guns.

In the first week of fighting, the invader had won conspicuous success. But at week's end, South Korea--and her friends --had not lost the battle. The issue would turn on whether the defenders could hold out long enough for MacArthur's men to get into the line.

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