Twilight War

After touring the Eighth Army's 145-mile front last week, TIME Correspondent Bud Hutton cabled:

HOW do these men feel about the war? A grimy, bearded infantryman spoke for thousands when he said to me: "I guess it all depends on how you look at it. The days it's my turn to go out on patrol and some jerk over there cuts down at me with a burp gun or whatever--why, then it's a hell of a big war for me that day. And the days I get to just lay around the bunker--with maybe only ten or 15 rounds incoming all day, and the Chinaman stays over on his own side of the valley-well, those days it's not much of a war at all, I guess." He thought for a moment, and added: "But even on those days, Mac, it's still Korea. It's cold when it freezes and muddy when it don't and . . . say, Mac, do you think that business there at Panmunjom will ever amount to a damn?"

Mazes & Honeycombs. Even briefing officers are beginning to call it the "twilight war." During the past two months, the battle of Korea has become a war of deeply entrenched positions, of night patrols and occasional daylight raids, of sporadic and usually short artillery duels.

When it comes to scouting each other's positions, U.N. observers probably have the better of it; with air supremacy over the battle lines, their plane crews have charted a growing maze of trenches, bunkers and caves, which now honeycomb almost every Red-held mountaintop and dominating ridge line. On some key peaks, the Reds, who are tireless diggers, have made perimeter entrenchments all the way around the slopes and have apparently built tunnels through from one side to another, in order to shift troops quickly and furnish impregnable shelter against allied bombs and heavy artillery. Bunkers with alternate layers of pine logs and earth, from 3 to 15 feet thick, are proof against all but the biggest allied guns.

If the war ever gets rolling again, the chances are that the most formidable Red-held mountains will have to be bypassed and isolated. Storming them would be bloody and purposeless. On cold, clear nights, you can hear the beaver-busy Communists digging at the frozen earth from end to end of the front.

Antitank Minefields. The Reds use less barbed wire and fewer mines and trip flares than the Eighth Army, probably because they have less. However, allied tanks which now & then push out on raids have run into heavy antitank minefields. Communist armor has recently begun to reappear on roads leading to the front. In the past two months, more than 30 enemy tanks have been destroyed, some 20 more damaged.*

General Van Fleet says that the Reds now have more artillery than the U.N. Their stockpiles of ammunition are known to be bigger than last year, but they are apparently hoarding it for future effort. Although, by U.N. estimates, the Reds have lost more than 45,000 men in the twilight war, Van Fleet believes that their units have been brought up to full strength; intelligence officers believe that the Reds can mount a major offensive at any time. U.S. troops in the line are paying closer attention to the truce talks at Panmunjom than ever before. One reason is obvious: most of them are recent replacements, who cannot expect rotation for many months, and who therefore look to a quick truce as the only means of getting out fast.

*Last week a Red tank prowling a frozen river was "sunk" when U.N. artillery fire holed the ice and the tank fell through.

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