CHAPTER 6
I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.
August 6, 1950
Douglas MacArthur considered his trip to Taejon, just his second to Korea since hostilities began, to have been a great success. Reporters and cameras from Life magazine, from the NBC and other radio and television networks, journalists from a couple dozen countries, had all captured the moments he walked through the largest city to be liberated from North Korean control so far. Every one of those reports would have General of the Army Douglas MacArthur front and centre. He was here. He was winning the war. The streets of Taejon, battered as they were, were entirely free again. All because of his leadership.
Though he would never admit it, not even to Jean, he knew that he wouldn’t be striding through Taejon today if not for Patton. The day that Patton had showed up in Korea, Eighth Army was in retreat basically everywhere, and the troops in Taejon had thought they would be fighting a holding action for just a few days to give the rest of the army time to set up a position in front of Pusan. Patton had done seemingly done it by kicking butts harder and more often than anyone else had dared. It had worked: communications between the units were not perfect, but certainly a lot better than they were. Discipline and troop confidence was also greatly improved. Equipment and manpower remained a problem, but the only way those were being solved was by ships coming from the other side of the Pacific.
Patton had kicked butts a little too hard though. That was why, as the press folks were leaving and the Bataan waited on a newly recaptured airstrip, he was sitting down with the general in what had once been a bank, and now was merely a building that was missing a good third or more of its south-facing walls. He hated confronting subordinate officers, but Patton wasn’t going to listen to Whitney and had refused to speak with Almond at all. So, after a brief exchange of greetings and congratulations, he decided to get straight to the point.
“I’ve got a problem.” MacArthur said. “A political problem, and I think you know all about it.”
“Mr Rhee? I already told the ambassador that he doesn’t know anything about fighting a war and should let me do the job properly.” Patton said, already angry.
“That may be so, but he’s contributing more than half of our manpower and is the whole reason we’re fighting out here. Someone has to listen to him.” MacArthur said.
“The orders have to stay. I don’t know how many goddamn times I got held up in France because nobody had a damn clue how to run our logistics. If they’d listened to me I’d have been over the Siegfried Line in two days and a tenth the casualties.” Patton said.
MacArthur decided to just let Patton rant about what could have been in Europe. He couldn’t afford to sack him: Truman had sent him not three weeks ago, and Washington had already involved itself far too much in the affairs in Asia. They’d already objected to his attempt to get Chinese troops to help hold the line, even though it was clear those troops were desperately needed. Finally, when Patton began claiming that he could have taken Berlin by the Christmas of 1944…
“Just shut up and listen for a minute, George.” MacArthur said. “The orders to clear the roads can stay. If someone around here had thought of them earlier I might have given them myself.” He didn’t need to mention that had he given them, it wouldn’t have been by shooting a mule in front of three hundred Koreans. “I’ll explain those to Mr Rhee as military necessity. I can’t say the same for the fifty thousand Koreans serving in units under your command, and he’s demanding they be placed under someone – anyone – but you. The program of integrating Korean and American units can’t go on unless someone else is in charge of it.”
“You’re splitting the command?” Patton asked angrily.
“It’s the only way he’ll tolerate you being in the country at all.” MacArthur explained. “And as you’re much too valuable to send back to California, I’m going to have to restrict your command to American troops only.” As of yet, Americans and South Koreans were the only troops manning the UN lines, but London had already promised a force to arrive before the end of the month and other countries were preparing contingents of their own. MacArthur doubted any of them wanted to be associated with Patton’s inability to be diplomatic.
“How do you expect me to man the lines if you’re taking half my troops away?” Patton demanded.
“I’ve already given you the Marine brigade, and Willoughby assures me there are no North Koreans remaining along the west coast. The two regiments there and the Marines will make up for most of the Koreans being removed from your command. And of course, more reinforcements are on the way from the States.” MacArthur explained. “Willoughby is also certain that the North Koreans west of the mountains are greatly weakened after the battle here.”
“Willoughby is…” Patton caught himself. “No, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But last week Hickey said you’d be taking the Marines away for ‘Chromite’, as well as a division that hasn’t even arrived yet. How am I to advance then?”
“As things stand, there is little need for further offensives at present. As long as the present positions can be held, ‘Chromite’ will allow us to trap the enemy and we shall win the war there.”
Although MacArthur had ordered everyone away from the building, a second lieutenant now stood at the doorway. “Urgent message for General Patton, sirs.” he said, announcing his arrival.
“What is it?” Patton asked.
“Andong has fallen, sir. Colonel Landrum thinks the communists have launched another big offensive.”
MacArthur dismissed Patton without a word. Andong was – no, had been – defended by an ROK unit. It hadn’t been implemented yet and already the decision to separate Korean units was looking like a bad one. If only the politicians would let the Army actually fight the war without interfering all the time.
***
August 8, 1950
“Sir, without the Koreans, we simply don’t have enough troops in the sector to do all that you ask.”
Nineteen words that summed up everything that was wrong with Eighth Army. As soon as they were out of his mouth, Colonel Creighton Abrams knew that his commander would not be happy. Patton never liked being told no, especially when he wanted to launch an offensive. He thought back to his days in Third Army, when Patton would repeat the phrase ‘never take counsel of your fears’, find some supplies that he later found out had come from other US armies, and then order the offensive go ahead anyway. In Korea, there were no other armies to take supplies from (the ROK troops didn’t have anything worth taking).
For a wonder, Patton didn’t curse him out. Half the headquarters staff it seemed had already experienced that. An hour after Patton called you a son of a bitch, he would be praising you as a fine officer again, but it wasn’t an experience Abrams looked forward to. The exception was Charles Willoughby in Tokyo, who he had decided was incompetent and refused to speak to at all. But instead, Patton listened. Maybe today he was in a good mood.
“What do we have the troops for?” he asked.
“You want to train troops up in the rear. You want to attack north from our bridgehead over the Kum River. You want to retake Kunsan. I can give you one of those today without jeopardising our positions, and a second once the 5th and 19th Regiments secure the southwest and turn it over to ROK police. That’s likely to take another three or four days, and they’d need another two to redeploy.” Abrams explained. He didn’t need to explain that those two regiments had taken far longer than expected to defeat the North Korean force still active around Mokpo. None of the battles there had been in any way decisive: heavy fire and the support of some tanks had made the Koreans retreat time and time again, but very few had been killed or taken prisoner. What was really needed down there was artillery, but every spare gun had been needed at Taejon. Mokpo had only been surrounded the previous day, and there was still something like half a division holed up in there.
“Priorities, then?” Patton said. “Training has to be first. Most of the troops are still green, and don’t know anything about holding a flank or proper patrols.”
Abrams made a note on a scrap of paper to make sure the commanders assigned to training duties were told to focus on making the troops watch their flanks. “What then, sir?”
“Seoul.” Patton said. “I expect local attacks to go in that direction even if the rest of the line can’t move forward. We have the enemy by the balls. Time to kick him in the ass.”
“I’ll have the orders ready.” Abrams said.
Seoul? That was a long way away. Even counting the two regiments in the south, Eighth Army still only had three divisions, and at least one of those would be combat ineffective for a while yet. Abrams wasn’t confident of getting near Seoul any time soon. He was feeling lucky that the NKPA had decided to strike further east.
***
August 12, 1950
Sergeant Carl Dodd crouched in a hastily-dug foxhole on the outskirts of Kwangju. The book in his pocket said not to dig foxholes, as they were bad for morale and didn’t do much to keep you alive. That might have been good advice if you were charging across the plains of France limited only by the horsepower of the engine of a Sherman tank. He hadn’t been a part of Third Army’s great charge, having served in a training role then. Now he was laying siege to God knew how many North Koreans. The front hadn’t moved much in five days, and no-one was keen to storm the town. Taejon had been an expensive battle for both sides. Word was that Taejon was located somewhere important. Kwangju wasn’t. A siege would do. The gooks had to be low on supplies anyway: every road on the west coast of Korea had been bombed to hell, and Navy Corsairs were a common sight over first Sunchon and then Kwangju itself.
He peered over the top of his foxhole, rifle at the ready. There was a North Korean coming out towards them. He was about to fire when he saw the white flag. Faint yellow really – whatever that rag he was holding was supposed to be, it clearly hadn’t been washed in a while. The intent couldn’t have been clearer.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled out, just in case his buddies didn’t see the fellow’s makeshift flag.
All there was left to do was wait. None of the Americans in his unit spoke Korean, but there were a few ROK troops nearby to take the man back to the command tent. The colonel would make a decision, presumably having already received orders from Patton.
The wait was long and tense, but Dodd still preferred it to being shot at, or worse, being under mortar fire. Eventually, word came out that the entire North Korean 6th Division was surrendering. He never saw that one North Korean soldier again, but others came out of the town with hands above their heads, so word was correct. Most of them looked starved half to death.
Later that night, one of the privates in his unit asked him a question that was on everyone’s minds. “Sarge, what are we supposed to do with four thousand prisoners?”
He thought about it, and then gave the best answer he could. “I don’t know. That’s for the generals to decide.” Had someone told him that not even the generals knew what to do, he wouldn’t have been too surprised.
- BNC