Scorched-Earth Retreat

Said a U.S. officer, who had hoped that Douglas MacArthur's coast-to-coast line below the 38th parallel could be held: "What are you going to do when the enemy doesn't care how many men he loses?"

The suicidal fury of the Reds' first attack north of Seoul was astounding. The vast mass of the enemy pressed on by day as well as by night, ignoring U.S. artillery zeroed in on their lines of advance, ignoring the swarm of planes that hammered them from the air.

A U.S. communications unit stationed on what it supposed was an unassailable hilltop was amazed to see Chinese climbing up over steep, rocky crags. The Americans started firing at 20 yards. "Some we nailed," said a corporal, "and they'd take two or three others down with them, a drop of 75 feet. But they kept coming. If our machine-gunners hadn't cut them off from below, we might have run out of ammo. It looked like curtains."

Having forced their way across the frozen Imjin River, the Chinese ran into minefields and barbed wire. The leading elements marched right through the minefields, most of them blowing themselves up, and those who followed advanced over their own dead. When they reached the barbed wire, hundreds of Chinese flung straw mats down on the wire, then threw themselves down on the mats, and the others trod the living bridge over the wire.

A Lot of Practice. Concentrating 30,000 troops on a half-mile front, the Chinese mauled a regiment of the R.O.K. 1st Division, broke through and fanned out, threatening an adjacent U.S. division from the rear. Then the planned Allied retreat began. Once more, the bumper-to-bumper vehicle columns rolled south. It was a scorched-earth retreat: the troops and the aircraft burned every building in which the pursuing foe could take shelter.

An icy north wind followed the retreating G.I.s and seared the faces of rearguards firing from the back slopes of paddyfield dikes. The Chinese sought and found the junction between two U.N. outfits--one British, one American--and broke through. When the British on a neighboring hilltop opened fire, the Chinese swarmed up the hill and forced the British off. Twelve British tanks were ambushed and abandoned.

From the north, northwest and northeast, the Chinese converged on Seoul. The U.S. 24th Division, holding the center road leading to the city, slowed up the enemy by counterattacking with 20 Pershing tanks, and briefly recaptured Uijongbu. But this was only a delaying action; Seoul was doomed. President Syngman Rhee and his cabinet fled to Pusan. Allied evacuation of the capital was carried out efficiently and without undue haste (see below). "After all," said a U.S. officer bitterly, "we've had a lot of practice."

Flaming Broom. At Kimpo airfield, there was no time to save 500,000 gallons of fuel and 23,000 gallons of napalm (jellied gasoline for fire bombs). They went up in black smoke. The airfield barracks were soaked with kerosene; then a captain ran from one to another, setting them afire with a flaming broom. At Inchon, the port troops and thousands of civilians were evacuated under the guns of warships of five nations (U.S., British, Canadian, Australian, Dutch). The last two LSTs were floated off the mud flats by a high tide as the Chinese were swarming into the port area.

The enemy pushed a few spearheads beyond fallen Seoul, but failed to follow them up in force. Nevertheless, the retreating Allies lost no time in evacuating Suwon and putting its airfield to the torch. Next, they abandoned Osan (where the first U.S. units in Korea began their delaying action last summer). The road from there to Taejon, scene of last summer's most tragic battle, was clogged with refugees. And 50 miles to the east, a flanking threat was developing at Wonju, an important rail and road center which lies in rugged uplands like those around the Changjin reservoir in northeast Korea.

The Difficult Art. While Seoul was falling, the enemy had pushed down the central mountains toward Wonju. Despite MacArthur's statement that vast numbers of Chinese were in the area, the local U.S. commander found himself confronted by only four "well-equipped and well-fed" North Korean divisions, but they were quite enough to give him trouble. Wonju was defended by the U.S. 2nd Division (which had taken a terrible beating in the Chinese November offensive), plus French, Dutch and South Korean units. They were supplied by airdrop from C-119s ("Flying Boxcars") and smaller transports which landed on a makeshift airstrip and took out wounded.

Four R.O.K. regiments, which had been mauled in the fighting farther north, found themselves cut off by an enemy roadblock. U.S. units broke up the roadblock, and the South Koreans got through to the Allied lines. Wonju was then attacked on three sides by the determined North Koreans, and seemed about to fall when an Allied counterattack saved it temporarily. Twenty-four hours later, the U.N. forces abandoned the town.

There was no blinking the fact that the retreat toward Pusan was tragedy for Koreans (see below) and a hard defeat for the U.S. Americans might take some bitter comfort from the fact that their soldiers, traditionally unaccustomed to retreat, were rapidly learning that difficult military art. They retreated in orderly fashion, with very few losses. Their morale remained high. They were no longer alarmed when temporarily surrounded. Some of the more defiant noncoms and junior officers were reluctant to withdraw when they thought they could stand fast, but most were encouraged by persistent rumors that they would soon be quitting the hellish Korean theater altogether.

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