CHAPTER 15
Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.
September 24, 1950
Major General William F. Dean had been promoted. Many officers seemed to hold the belief that a general’s spot was behind the lines, fighting the war with a telephone and a map. He had fought in Taejon with a rifle and a bag of hand grenades. To many, such a display would have been an act of utter foolishness. Patton had quite the opposite idea. He had gotten Dean a Bronze Star, and given Washington a recommendation for his rank to go from one star to two. Officially, he had described it as a case of “inspired and effective leadership that played a key role in the maintenance of our position in Taejon”. Unofficially, he said it was just because Dean had been “a brave son of a bitch”. Then everyone forgot about the recommendation until the Inchon operation sparked a new interest in finally organising Eighth Army’s now seven divisions into corps. He was the first to be appointed, and one half of his new IX Corps was made up of his old division. Now he hoped to lead the first American units over the old border.
Well… not exactly lead.
As the twilight turned to dawn, he stood atop a small hill a couple of miles behind the 38th parallel, where the 24th Division’s artillery was lined up in preparation for the attack across the border. Every gun in the division was supposed to be trained on a location not far from here. Probably every gun in the Eighth Army was. Except in the west, the front hadn’t moved in the American sector for three days or more. Artillery shells hadn’t been bound by the same restrictions that men were (or if they were, Patton had neglected mentioning it). Neither had the spotting planes. A lot of North Korean strongpoints, manned by those units that had escaped the first assault, were known. In this sector, the mightiest one was Yongpyong.
“Let ‘em rip.” General Barth said into a radio, and within seconds shells were beginning to fall into Yongpyong. Through his field glasses, Dean saw the men and tanks follow them shortly afterwards. That was until they stalled somewhere just short of the town.
By 1000, he could see Yongpyong was going to be a major problem. It was only a short spit across the border, but the radio and Barth’s telephone were giving no indication that the battle was going to end soon. He drove back to his command post in Mansedariri and got on the line to General Church, who had his old division.
“What’s gone wrong up there?” he asked.
“Looks like the Koreans have Yongpyong fortified to a fare-thee-well. Could be anything from a battalion to half a division in there that needs digging out.” Church said. “We can’t advance towards Wonsan without it. If they have any anti-tank guns in there, which I’m not aware of yet, they would have the range to hit any trucks on the Kumhwa road.”
“Tell you what, I’ll get General Kean to give you some of his artillery. I want that town silenced today.” Dean said. “If you can, get a regiment on the west side of the town too. Encircle them, starve them out if they don’t give up.”
“I’ll do it.” Church said.
General Kean’s 25th Division reported better news: Majonni had already fallen and a bridge had been found over the Imjin.
“Yonchon is giving us a little trouble, sir. A Red blocking force of some sort is there. I can give you the artillery, but we’ll want it if we’re going to get through Yonchon today.” Kean said.
“Good. Bypass Yonchon.” Dean ordered. “Leave a regiment or so to watch it, no more than that. We need to secure those mountain passes before the Koreans have a chance to fortify them.”
And everyone thought the NKPA was finished by now. Dean thought as he put down the phone. So much for that.
***
September 25, 1950
“Good morning, Ambassador.” President Harry Truman said as he picked up the phone. “What can I do for you today?”
“Good morning, Mr President, and thank you for agreeing to receive my call so soon.” Kavalam Madhava Panikkar said. Panikkar was the Indian ambassador to Peking, and the unofficial messenger between the United States and Red China. “I have been asked to pass on a message by the Chinese Foreign Minister.”
“And what might that be?” Truman asked. If Red China wanted something from him, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Minister Zhou would like to inform the United States that the Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression, nor will they supinely tolerate seeing their neighbours being savagely invaded by imperialists.” Panikkar said.
“Is that so?” Truman asked. “Very well, thank you. Is there anything else?”
“Not right now, Mr President. Unless you are in need of India’s good offices to negotiate an end to the conflict in Korea.”
“That won’t be necessary at present.” Truman said. “Thank you again.”
As he put down the phone he said to Averell Harriman “That was Panikkar in Peking. He reckons Red China’s not going to be happy if we cross into North Korea.”
“Patton crossed it yesterday.” Harriman noticed. “He’s probably twenty or thirty miles past it by now. And Mao’s only just woken up, has he?”
“It’s late evening in Peking right now.” Truman said, before he realised what Harriman meant. “Yeah, he must have. What do you make of it?”
“Not much.” Harriman said. “Panikkar’s at least pink, if not outright Red himself. I’d say its a bluff to keep us out of North Korea.”
“Well, we’re in now, and we’ll have a devil of a time trying to pull Patton out even if we wanted to. MacArthur too for that matter.” Truman said. “The timing is odd too. We were sitting on the 38th for most of a week. If Red China wanted us to stay out, why wait until now?”
Harriman snapped his fingers. “They’re not ready.”
“Red China?” Truman asked.
“Yeah.” Harriman said. “If their leaders only just found out we’re able to cross the line, their army can’t be ready to do anything about it.”
“MacArthur said yesterday that he thinks Patton will be in Pyongyang in ten days, and the ROKs are getting close to Wonsan.” Truman said.
“In that case, I’d say we’re likely to beat North Korea before Red China is even ready.” Harriman said. “Why would they enter a war they’ve already lost?”
“I don’t know.” Truman said. “The Red Chinese have proven quite stubborn in the past, so I’ll see what Acheson and Marshall have to say about it too.” Need to warn His Majesty as well.
September 27, 1950
The new Eighth Army headquarters in Haeju didn’t have half as good a conference room as the ones in Seoul or Taejon had boasted. It didn’t have half as good an anything as those had. This building was cramped, smelly and had suffered more bomb damage than was really appropriate for an army headquarters. It reminded Patton of a stable, a far cry from the French chateaus that Third Army had frequently operated out of. But it was an hour closer to the front than Seoul was, at least for two of his corps. The staff could make do for a couple of days.
“Sariwon.” Oscar Koch said, using a long stick to point at a location on the western part of North Korea. “Sariwon.” he said again. “Flanked on two sides by the Chaeryong river, and by mountains on the third. It sits on the best route, the only good one, into Pyongyang. This is where the North Koreans intend to make their last stand.”
“How sure are you?” Patton asked. He had the utmost confidence in his intelligence chief, but the North Koreans had already proven themselves much better at hiding themselves than the Germans had ever been. No fewer than four towns along the border had been turned into small citadels, slowing I and IX Corps down far longer than he would have liked.
“Very.” Koch said confidently. “I am aware we have been fooled before, but I’ve never seen someone hide a force this large completely before. King Kong is there too.”
“Bastard.” Patton muttered. Kang Kon was easily the most capable North Korean general, and Patton’s chief opponent since he arrived in Asia. At some point early in the war, someone had claimed that he had stepped on a mine, which wasn’t a likely story as most of Eighth Army’s mines remained in crates or boxes back in Pusan. More recently he had been thought to have been captured in Seoul, only for the prisoner in question to merely be an unfortunate private with a similar name. Evidently he had slipped through the net once more.
“Our radio intercepts indicate the presence of no fewer than four North Korean divisions. The 1st and 4th, which are hardened veteran units. The latter has been nicknamed the ‘Seoul’ division for their success in the first week of the war. I expect both units will be among the best Kim Il-sung can offer. The others are the 19th and 27th, which we have never encountered before and do not believe to have been a part of the initial invasion.” Koch said.
“They’ll be tough bastards then.” Patton said, before anyone could dismiss them as green or rear-area units. The communists had terrible equipment, no food and not half the manpower they really needed. Too many of them fought like the damned Waffen SS nonetheless.
“We must be prepared for anything.” Koch agreed. “The question now is, what are we going to do about them.”
“What’s the status on the bridges over the river?” Abrams asked.
“Doubtful.” Koch said. Stratemeyer had kept his promise not to bomb any more of them deliberately, but unfortunately the Koreans got a say in whether the bridges still stood. “Sariwon’s their best chance at keeping us out of Pyongyang, and they’ve little left south of the Chaeryong. Only a fool would leave them up in those circumstances.”
“Were they up last week?” Patton asked.
“I believe so, some of them at least, sir. But that won’t help us at Sariwon. Why do you ask?” Koch said.
“The engineers can handle Sariwon, just as they got us into Seoul. I have full confidence in them.” Patton said. “But fighting through Sariwon is going to take time, and the time we waste there is time that the Reds will be using to fortify Pyongyang. Pyongyang sits behind a river too. They know I got held up by fixed fortifications on the Siegfried Line, so they put them here to stop me again.”
“And if the bridges over the Chaeryong were still up last week, you think the bridges over the Taedong might still be?” Abrams said.
“Precisely.” Patton agreed. “And I intend to capture them. Sit down, Oscar.” As the intelligence chief sat down, Patton got up and began pointing at the map himself. “Right now, thanks to those bunker cities on the border, I Corps has only made it to here.” he pointed to Pyongsan, about eighteen miles north of the border. “There’s only one good road in the area, and it goes to Sariwon. X Corps will be able to attack the river line tomorrow morning, and I expect that the Koreans will expect me to make a pincer attack on their position there.”
“That’s what we had been planning to do.” Abrams agreed.
“Exactly. The Germans had a fellow who had the job of researching me. Told Rommel what he thought I would do. I expect the Koreans have someone like him now. I used Rommel’s book to defeat Rommel. Those bastards must have translated my book by now – I’ll bet anything they want to use it against me.” Patton said.
“You’re going over to the defensive?” Abrams joked.
“Nonsense.” Patton said, chuckling. “They expect to meet me on the plains. That’s the good tank country. Therefore I propose we send I Corps up the Suan road. Use it to bypass all of their defences. Drive a great column right through the heart of North Korea, and strike Pyongyang from the east.”
“It’ll never work.” Colonel Landrum warned. “We already know there’s four Korean divisions waiting in Sariwon. That road we were going to use is one they could use to cut Milburn off. The last time a force that size struck out and created a bulge in the line, we chopped it off. Shouldn’t we put something on the flank?”
“The hell with the flanks.” Patton said. “Instead of worrying about them ourselves, we make the enemy worry about his. In four days King Kong won’t give a damn about the bulge near Sariwon. He’ll be pissing himself trying to hold on to Pyongyang.”
- BNC