CHAPTER 13
Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.
September 19, 1950
Patton had been up early. Later today, he would be flying to Pusan, and then to Tokyo, and then to Midway. If an emergency cropped up, Eighth Army might be able to contact him during the first two legs of that journey, or have the message meet him in Japan. The flight halfway across the Pacific would be long, and he would be cut off from his command. He could rest then.
The command post in Seoul wouldn’t be official until 0800, another fifteen minutes away. He had moved in early anyway. Abe and Meeks would handle what was left of the Taejon post as his staff gathered their things and drove north. It would be a long drive too – an Army’s command post should never have been more than a half hour’s drive from the front. Taejon had far exceeded triple that at this point. If Korea didn’t lack so much critical infrastructure, he never would have allowed it. Phone wire, code machines and everything else needed by headquarters were arriving in greater quantities now that shipments direct from California were arriving in Pusan and the other ports. If this war didn’t end soon, the Korean battlefield would become as well organised as his previous ones in France and Sicily.
A lot of people seemed to think it would end soon. Either North Korea would give up and accept a return to the status quo ante bellum along the 38th parallel, or the United Nations forces would storm over that line, take Pyongyang (something he thought could be done in two weeks) and end the war that way. Apart from fretting about Red China, no-one from MacArthur down seemed to think any other outcome was possible. After Eighth Army’s defeat of the NKPA, such an attitude could be understood. Patton refused to tolerate it. Unpreparedness had been the only constant he had seen in 1950, much as it was in 1941 (and, he recalled, in 1917). A lot of things went wrong in war. Much fewer did if you were ready for them.
He had been thinking about invading North Korea for about as long as he had been in Asia. In the early days, there had been too many other jobs to attend to, and North Korea fell quite low on the list of priorities. Now it wasn’t, so he had ordered a comprehensive report from every senior member of his staff about how the Koreans fought – North and South, how Eighth Army had performed, and what might be coming up beyond the 38th. Sixty typed pages sat on his desk. They would be reading for the flight. Colonel Landrum had already read it. As he poured himself a scotch, he asked his chief of staff to “talk me through it.”
“Sir, there’s a number of points to note, but the one I feel is most important is that the ROK police have reported a large number of communist cells hiding out in the hills behind their lines and increasingly behind ours as well. A lot of them are armed with our stuff, which either means they took whatever the South Koreans threw away in July or they’re ex-NKPA and are working off captured stocks.” Landrum explained. “You’re already aware of how much captured equipment they use in their army.”
“Yes, yes.” Patton said dismissively – he had seen an enormous supply dump captured intact near Inchon a few days ago. A couple thousand tons of ammo, all of it US made. “I don’t care about those cells – Rhee has his own goddamn SS to silence them. What I want to know is, how the hell did they get there? We already forced two, maybe three Red divisions to surrender, and the MPs have done a fine job escorting them to Jeju.”
“This is of course speculation, but General Koch indicates that he believes they slipped away from the communist lines during the night, and travelled along routes not well covered by roads.” Landrum said. “On page 46 he explains this in detail.”
“The nights and the hills.” Patton said, before he slammed his fist on the desk. “Goddamn it! I said we weren’t doing enough night drills! We control the day and then the bastards rule the night! Our troops don’t get off the roads hardly enough either. We’re inviting the enemy in.”
“Sir, you might want to calm down?” Landrum offered. Patton remembered getting into trouble a few times in the last war for getting too angry about things – so he had ordered them all to remind him whenever he did so this time around.
“Thank you, colonel, you’re right.” Patton said. “I did write about this in my book. I want every officer between the rank of captain and brigadier general to be reminded of my instruction to secure every height in hill or mountain country with a force of at least a platoon, and also to have every unit on training duties to double the amount of night practice. Now repeat that order back to me.” After Landrum did so, he asked “any other urgent issues in that report, colonel?”
“Perhaps not urgent, but if we’re going into North Korea it will soon be important.” Landrum said. “Extensive discussion with the local population has told us that winters in Korea can be quite severe, and Muller thought this worthy of three pages in the report.”
“We’re the same latitude as the top half of California.” Patton said at once. “Barely any further north than Sicily was. How do you mean severe?”
“By the sounds of things, Siberia.” Landrum said. “Ten, twenty below wouldn’t be uncommon in the northern mountains. The middle of December is the usual start to the season.”
Patton lit a cigar. “Guess we better get ready for it then. We’re halfway through September already.”
***
September 20, 1950
As the Independence touched down on the runway on Sand Island, Harry Truman’s mind decided to remind him of Walton Walker’s unfortunate accident. This flight to the middle of the Pacific had gone without any troubles, but as long as the Korean War was still going, what happened to Walker would be on everybody’s minds whenever they travelled by air. It had been Walker’s bad luck to have that maintenance crew do such a poor job (Truman thought he had been told that those people had been thrown out of the Air Force). Now it seemed to be Truman’s too. If Walker was still in Korea, he wouldn’t be trying to rein in His Majesty MacArthur, and Patton would have been riding his horse out in California. During the occupation, Asian affairs had been orderly. They hadn’t been since July 17th.
“Just look at them.” He said, shaking his head. “They’re not in uniform. They’re in costume.”
Averell Harriman laughed. “You’re not far wrong, sir.”
Patton, to no-one’s surprise, was standing there in the most extravagant dress uniform regulations had a chance of allowing, or maybe a bit more overdone than that. He had several of his medals on, most prominently his World War I and II Victory Medals and a DSC with an Oak Leaf Cluster. His helmet and shoes gleamed so brightly that they must have been polished just minutes before. Truman was fairly sure it wasn’t possible to polish a suit, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if the general had tried.
If Patton had overdone his uniform, His Majesty had underdone it. Instead of a polished helmet, MacArthur had a scrambled eggs cap that was so worn out that it could have been in use during World War I (it wasn’t – apparently someone on MacArthur’s staff frayed new caps out just to give them that effect). His shirt was unbuttoned, with no decorations to be seen. But for the five stars on his collar, he looked like a fresh-faced second lieutenant.
“George is going to love that.” Harriman said. “No tie, no helmet, nothing.”
Before the President could respond, one of the aircrew gave him a thumbs up. “We’re ready.”
As he begun walking down the set of stairs that had been wheeled out next to the Independence, Patton snapped to attention with another one of those parade ground salutes that were being shown increasingly often in the news. MacArthur wasn’t nearly so quick, and for a moment it seemed like he would offer to shake hands with his commander-in-chief without saluting first. Truman wasn’t obsessed with the military rituals the way most drill sergeants and one four-star general seemed to be, but he noticed that.
“At ease, generals.” he said once he reached the ground. “Let’s try to do this with a minimum of fuss.”
“However you please, sir.” MacArthur said, as an Air Force fellow drove a jeep up to the runway.
***
Eighth Army Headquarters at Seoul was hardly any different from when it had been at Taejon. This building, less than a mile from Rhee’s capital and about the only one close to intact in the area, was remarkably similar in layout to the old one. One room had had a hole blown out of its roof at some point, which was now covered by a tarp. That room didn’t get used much, except for a few assorted supplies that were being stored there. Everyone else had moved in to whichever room was most similar to their position in the old HQ. Patton’s staff worked like a well-oiled machine now, a far cry from the occupation days. Once all the equipment had been set up, no-one seemed to really notice that they weren’t even in Taejon.
Colonel Eugene Landrum didn’t even really notice the general’s absence until the phone rang. At this time of the morning, Patton would usually be at the front, so it wasn’t too surprising.
“Eighth Army Headquarters, Colonel Landrum speaking.” he said as he picked up the phone.
“Good morning, colonel. It’s Coulter.” General Coulter said.
“Good morning, sir. What’s gone wrong?” Patton trusted his subordinates to make their own command decisions, and he’d see for himself when a particular unit was doing well considering he tried to visit every division at least once every few days. Something going wrong, or a message from Tokyo, were the only calls Eighth Army received frequently any more.
“Nothing has gone wrong.” Coulter said. “Quite the opposite, in fact, if you look at it the way George would. The ROK 3rd Division has just reported back with the capture of Yangyang.”
“Where is that, sir?” Landrum asked. There was a map on the other side of the room, but all Korean names seemed to be similar to each other, so it would take a while to find the place. He might be running the headquarters in Patton’s place, but he didn’t have Patton’s ability to recall every insignificant town’s location within a hundred miles of the battlefield the way his boss could.
“East coast, just north of the 38th parallel.” Coulter explained.
“North? We don’t have authorisation for that.” Landrum said. “That’s the whole reason Patton’s gone to meet the President.”
“That’s right, we don’t.” Coulter said. “Mr Rhee has gone and done it anyway. He’s convinced it is his God-given right to reunify all of Korea, no matter what we or the United Nations say. I expect if I order any of his troops to do anything, they aren’t going to listen.”
“The general won’t like that.” Landrum said, in lieu of he’s going to skin whoever ordered the Koreans to get ahead of the Eighth Army and across the parallel before him. “Well, we’ve still got the Capital Division. I’ll try to keep them on a leash.” That would be easy enough, they were still engaged in Seoul fighting what was left of the Northwestern Pocket. “In the meantime, contact Pusan, and get them to contact Midway and tell George. If that doesn’t work, get hold of Tokyo.”
“And then George will try to get Truman to let him chase them into North Korea.” Coulter said.
“Chase them?” Landrum laughed. “If he lets anyone in this army rest in the next forty-eight hours, I’ll be damned. He’ll say we ought to chase them, and then order everyone to take the lead.”
“Sounds about right.” Coulter said, laughing as well. “I’ll get through to Midway. You tell me if there’s any issues with the Capitals.”
- BNC
