Alarums & Excursions

The hotting-up along the battlefront began casually enough. Concerned by a Communist buildup in forward areas, including much artillery, the Eighth Army stepped up its patrolling and redoubled its efforts to capture enemy prisoners for interrogation. In the west near Chorwon, elements of the U.S. 45th Division attacked and seized a T-shaped hill mass from where they could almost look down the enemy throats.

The Chinese counterattacked, behind heavy artillery and mortar barrages, and at one stage of the battle the Americans were clinging to a southern knob of the T while fighter-bombers blasted the Chinese positions by day and by night. It was still a small-scale action in contrast to the giant Communist offensives and allied counteroffensives in the spring of 1951, but it involved battalions and regiments instead of squads and platoons, and it was the fiercest fighting of 1952. Hundreds of Reds were reported killed and the U.S. casualty rate also rose.

The U.S. generals still professed to see no signs of a large-scale Communist offensive. Britain's Defense Minister, Field Marshal Earl Alexander, conferred with Generals Clark and Van Fleet, and repeated the current U.N. line: if the Communists attack they "would take a terrific loss and would not break through."

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