Action at Kumsong Salient

Just when a truce seemed near, the Communists rekindled the fighting war with unexpected vigor. In a driving rain one night, Chinese Communist bugles shrilled, signal flares blossomed under the low clouds. Then, on the mountainous central front. 17,000 Chinese Reds hit the crack ROK Capitol Division and three other South Korean outfits in the heaviest enemy attack in two years.

There were 26 assaults on an 18-mile sector, along that part of the front that bulged north through the old Iron Triangle and passed just below Kumsong. Under overwhelming force, the ROKs wavered and broke. Some went back as far as ten miles before they were regrouped and turned around.

Noisy Helmets. At one place the Chinese captured a U.N. half-track mounting four .50-caliber machine guns. When a group of combat-dazed South Koreans, shuffling back to the rear, saw the halftrack, they ignored it, thinking it was in friendly hands. The Chinese in the vehicle pressed the firing button and held it down. Luckily for the ROKs who survived, the Chinese apparently did not know how to reload, and when the .50s stopped firing they jumped out and disappeared.

One U.S. artillery crew, sighting through the bore of their weapon, fired point-blank at onrushing Reds and escaped with their gun. Other crews had to destroy their guns with grenades before they fell back; one U.S. artillery battalion lost 300 in killed and captured.

The next morning Allied howitzers and trucks lay sprawled in the ditch along a supply road called the "Goat Trail." Not many ROKs showed up at aid stations or mobile hospitals; most of their wounded were in enemy hands. Stragglers without guns and helmets, and sometimes without shoes, appeared one by one. When asked where their equipment was, they shrugged. One said, "A helmet makes more noise in the bushes than the man who's wearing it does."

Sizzling Barrels. In the lowering weather, there was no U.N. air support. The U.N.'s booming Long Tom 155s, 105-mm. howitzers and multiple heavy machine guns filled the valleys with their clamor. Gun barrels got so hot that they sizzled in the rain. Supply truck crews struggling through red-brown mud quickly dumped their shell loads at new gun positions and headed back for more.

Casualties were severe on both sides. When the weather cleared and U.N. planes began raking the flow of Chinese reinforcements, the attacks petered out. The Hwachon dam and reservoir (supplying most of Seoul's electric power) and the U.N. communications hubs at Chorwon and Kumhwa, which had seemed threatened under the first impetus of enemy attack, were safe. A new U.N. first line was established at the base of the Kumsong salient. But the salient itself was gone. At the cost of thousands of lives, the proposed armistice line was a little straighter--in the Communists' favor.

This week, attacking in a different sector, the Communists forced U.S. Marines to abandon two outposts, known as Berlin and East Berlin.

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