The Price

The U.S. finally learned some of the cost of its retreat in Korea. It was high, and in each individual case a matter of immense grief to those near & dear, but in cold military statistics, it was not nearly so high as the nation had feared after the first reports.

General MacArthur's headquarters reported that 11,964 U.S. troops were killed, wounded or missing in 19 days of fighting immediately before or after the Chinese Communists launched their crushing attack on Nov. 27. The total did not include 22,000 more men listed as non-battle casualties, most of them the victims of frostbite or frozen feet.

Field commanders estimated that Chinese losses in the bitter fighting totaled more than 120,000 men--though this was admittedly a horseback estimate, as a retreating army is a poor judge of enemy losses.

Hardest hit of all U.S. forces was the Army's 2nd Infantry Division, which bore the brunt of the heavy Chinese attack at the Chongchon River. It lost 4,131 men. Others:

1st Marine Division, 2,891

Army 7th Infantry Division, 2,097

Army 25th Infantry Division, 1,606

Army 1st Cavalry Division, 443

Army 24th Infantry Division, 146 Army 3rd Infantry Division, 650

The latest official Defense Department figures for 5 1/2 months of the war totaled 36,421 men, including 6,180 dead, 24,930 wounded and 4,546 missing. Actually these figures were well out of date. The best unofficial estimate last week was that losses in Korea to date are approximately 48,000 men, not including non-battle casualties.

MacArthur's headquarters insisted that losses in the Korean breakthrough were not out of line in comparison with those suffered in similar operations in other wars. There was something to be said for this argument when figures were compared with losses in World War II's Battle of the Bulge. In that bitter battle, in one week alone, U.S. casualties were 27,194 men.

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