On Desperate Ground Page 4
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General Ned Almond, the X Corps commander, was deficient of ideas on how to cross the Han. Almond, who had neglected to order extra bridging materials from Tokyo, had left the details for Smith and his people to figure out. As with the Inchon landing, the Army general seemed to think that crossing the river was another mechanical problem that could easily be solved. Smith’s chief operations officer, Colonel Alpha Bowser, later scoffed: “General Almond had a habit of treating the Han River like it had five or six intact bridges across it, and of course it had none.”
Almond’s primary focus seemed to be on satisfying MacArthur’s desire to reach Seoul by the hallowed September 25 deadline. He kept prodding Smith and his staff to move faster. So what if a river stood in the way? “There was no dearth of advice about speed and boldness,” Smith later wrote.
At least Almond had stopped calling him “son.” However, Smith was starting to see a quality in the X Corps commander that was far more concerning: an impetuosity, a tendency toward snap judgments, a willingness to ignore on-the-ground realities in favor of abstract goals. Those who knew Almond’s style from his days in Europe viewed him as a whirling dervish—someone who thrived on adrenaline-soaked chaos. Certainly he had shown no lack of courage; in Italy, where he had fought, he gave little thought to his own safety. But he was an impatient micromanager, constantly on the move and seemingly incapable of delegating. “He was what we referred to as a ‘hard charger,’ ” said Bowser. “A rather vain man in many ways.” He was “mercurial and flighty,” the operations chief thought, adding: “If he had one glaring fault, I would say it was inconsistency.”
Then, too, Almond’s temper was legendary. Said one historian: “He could evoke the thunders if crossed.” Ned the Dread left a long trail of unease in his wake. It was said that he could “precipitate a crisis on a desert island with nobody else around.” Alexander Haig, who was then a close aide to Almond, called him “the most reckless man I have ever known.” Almond, it seemed, had only one martial modality: Attack. Planning and forethought were not his long suits. To him, war was about sallying forth, gaining ground, planting the flag. “When it paid to be aggressive, Ned was aggressive,” one observer wrote. “When it paid to be cautious, Ned was aggressive.”
So Smith would have to be aggressive, too. As for crossing the Han, he would need to improvise his own solution. The men themselves would cross the river stuffed inside amtracs—amphibious tractors—the wallowing snub-nosed beasts, equipped with twin Cadillac V-8 engines, that served as the tried-and-true assault vehicles of ship-to-shore warfare. The bigger problem was how to transport large equipment, such as the Marine tanks, which weighed forty-two tons apiece. After testing various prototypes, the engineers designed and constructed a klutzy raft set upon large pneumatic pontoons. The jury-rigged barges, said one journalist, were little more than mattresses of timber, but they worked. Though it would take a while, these creaky craft would ferry the tanks across.
Early on the morning of the twentieth, Smith observed the first crossings from a high hill, field glasses pressed to his eyes. “There was plenty of enemy fire,” he wrote, “but our people went on in.” Like colonies of determined beavers, his men churned across the river, the wakes of their vehicles leaving a bewildering pattern of V’s over the broad gray surface. The North Koreans, entrenched in the green hills that overlooked the far bank, put up a fight, but vanguards of the Marines quickly waded ashore, climbed the heights, and silenced the enemy guns.
The crossing was nearly a complete success, and soon Smith’s Marines were pressing toward Seoul. They marched along the highway, or rode in trucks, through the terraced hills, past sorghum fields and paddies of rice ready for harvest, past green gardens and orchards pendulous with fruit. Along the way, they encountered a few pockets of North Korean soldiers, but not many—the enemy was offering little resistance in the countryside. Pyres rose over the ridgeline, in the direction of Seoul, and the air was tinged with yellow smoke and dust. Civilians streamed out to the roadside, some cheering or waving flags, others staring with severe looks of confusion and hope.
The scenes grew more desperate, the sense of panic more acute, as the Marines drew closer to Seoul. The roadside became a chaos of rubble and tangled telegraph wires, with refugees hurrying along the roads. It felt as though a storm were approaching. “Women carried huge bundles on their heads and pushed carts that overflowed with belongings,” wrote Joseph Owen, who served with the Seventh Marine Regiment. “Dirty children toddled beside bent grandparents, and the troops tossed candy bars to the kids. The Koreans, old and young, scrambled in the dirt for the candy.”
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As the Marines began to probe the outlying precincts of the city, the human cost of MacArthur’s deadline became more apparent to Smith. He felt the September 25 date was contrived—little more than a political gimmick designed to win headlines. Smith reckoned that his Marines could probably take Seoul by the twenty-fifth, but only by laying waste to large sections of the city, pounding it with artillery, bombing it to cinders. Seoul would be badly scarred, and the civilian death toll could be terrible.
Smith knew that there were other, less destructive ways to take the city. Alpha Bowser insisted that the Marines could capture Seoul “with hardly a brick out of place.” They could encircle it, cut the enemy’s supply lines, and methodically ferret out the defenders, block by block. But this kind of fighting would take more time than MacArthur was willing to tolerate.
So the big guns were brought forward, and the ritual of “softening up” targets across the city began. This, of course, was but a euphemism for a devastating bombardment that could only strike terror in the hearts of Seoul’s residents. General Almond was pleased to note that the enemy would be pounded to pieces. That a city might be razed in the process appeared not to trouble him.
The supreme commander seemed similarly disinclined to dwell on such unpleasantries. MacArthur sensed that he was on the brink of total victory, and nothing could dampen his euphoria. The Inchon operation had been a brilliant success. Everything he had predicted was coming true. He had taken the enemy by surprise. Down at the Pusan perimeter, North Korean units were reportedly dissolving and retreating headlong for the thirty-eighth parallel. The U.N. forces at Pusan, including the Eighth Army, commanded by General Walton Walker, were breaking out of their besiegement. MacArthur could already see the war’s end.
He was so pleased with the progress of the invasion that the next morning, September 21, he decided to fly back to his headquarters in Tokyo and leave the advance on Seoul to Almond and Smith. (Since the start of the Inchon assault, MacArthur had been bunking on the Mount McKinley, never on shore.) In MacArthur’s view, taking Seoul would be little more than a mopping-up operation. Throughout World War II, he had shown a habit of publicly declaring targets to be pacified well in advance of the deed—and his old predilections were still in evidence. He seemed to discount reports that more than thirty thousand North Korean soldiers were in the capital now, digging in for a siege. The city would fall, MacArthur insisted, in a matter of days. The North Korean defenders would simply evaporate.
General Smith was puzzled and a little alarmed by MacArthur’s confidence. Smith accompanied MacArthur to Kimpo Field, where the supreme commander surprised everyone by cooking up an impromptu award ceremony on the tarmac. MacArthur, his voice quavering, called Smith “the gallant commander of a gallant division.” Then he pinned a Silver Star on the Professor’s chest.
The Silver Star was one of the highest and most coveted accolades that a U.S. serviceman could win in combat. It was a tremendous honor, yet Smith was mortified by the gesture. Not only did this ceremony seem premature, but, more to the point, Smith felt he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. The Silver Star was intended for those who’d performed heroic acts on the front lines, in the heat of enemy fire. “It is meant for gallantry in action,” Smith wrote to his wife
in disdain, and “not appropriate for a division commander.”
MacArthur didn’t care. He loved these sorts of martial rituals—the more florid the better—and he genuinely seemed to think that Smith had earned it. He shook Smith’s hand and then boarded his plane for the comforts of Tokyo.
Smith’s misgivings about MacArthur were deepening by the day. He stood at attention on the runway, blinking in the morning light, wearing a thin smile of embarrassment and disgust.
Then he turned his attention to the problem of Seoul.
4
BENEATH THE LIGHTHOUSE
Seoul
Even from the depths of the house in Buk Ahyeon Dong, Lee Bae-suk could sense the noose was tightening. The Americans seemed to be burrowing through his neighborhood, pressing inward, street by street, block by block. Outside, Lee could hear jeeps and trucks grinding through the leafy suburbs of the West Gate. The skies swarmed with fighter planes. He could hear mortar blasts, the natter of machine guns. The windows in the house constantly rattled.
Nearby, beyond a rocky outcropping that was a prominent landmark of the neighborhood, he could hear combat. At times, it sounded like close-in fighting, hand to hand. There were screams and cries, radios squawking, commands shouted into the night. The fight for Seoul was entering its last stages.
Lee and his cousins had almost no food left, and they were surly from having been cooped up for so long. He was constantly scolding the children, reminding them to keep quiet. The house, hot and stifling, had become a prison. But Lee knew they had to stay put a little longer; they had no choice. Now, he sensed, was the most dangerous moment of all, the moment of reckoning. The closer the Americans drew to the core of the city, the more maniacal the KPA would become. The most perilous hour, he thought, would be the one immediately before liberation. But he remained optimistic. Lee recalled an expression he’d heard growing up: Right beneath the lighthouse is the place where it is darkest.
In quiet moments, he thought about his family in the North. He wondered if they were alive. What would the U.S. invasion at Inchon mean for them? After the Americans captured Seoul, would they keep on going, pursuing the North Koreans into their own land? Would the U.N. unify the country under the banner of the South, just as Kim had tried to do under the banner of the North? If so, Lee might get to see his family once again. He rejoiced at the thought, and in his mind he pictured a beautiful homecoming. On the other hand, he feared, his family might get caught and killed in the turmoil, as so many Koreans on both sides had. This land was like a thermometer, the mercury rising and falling, north then south then north again. Each incremental change in temperature, in either direction, meant tragedy for someone somewhere.
A few more days passed. Then, on the afternoon of September 23, a calm descended over the West Gate. The fighting, it seemed, had stopped. Looking out an upstairs window, Lee caught an astonishing sight: a large cluster of troops, gathered on his block. They weren’t marching anywhere. They were standing around, puffing cigarettes, talking and laughing. Some vehicles were parked nearby, and sandbags were piled around a machine gun. Lee studied them closer and realized—they were Americans.
Then Lee did something injudicious. He bounded down the stairs, flung open the gate, and ran out to greet the Yanks. There was no telling who in the neighborhood might be watching—quislings, perhaps, spies of the KPA. It was possible, too, that the American soldiers, edgy from battle and thinking him a threat, might shoot him on the spot. But in his excitement, he threw caution aside.
“Welcome!” he cried. “Welcome, Americans! Welcome to Seoul!”
He approached them with his arms upraised and flashed a broad smile. Striking up a conversation, he surprised the Americans with his fluency—the English he had learned while working at the embassy was paying off. These men were from the First Marine Division, he learned, under the command of General Oliver Prince Smith. They offered a cigarette and some chewing gum, and Lee stood talking with them for a while. He was embarrassed by his ashen appearance—it had been nearly three months since he last went outside—but he could not conceal his joy.
The Marines were battle-worn and sunburned, dirty and unshaven. They said they had come up from Inchon, crossed the Han in boats, and attacked the city from the west. Some of the fighting nearby had been horrific. Beyond the outcropping near his house, Lee glimpsed scores of corpses—North Korean soldiers and U.S. Marines alike. A Navy medical corpsman walked among the dead, searching in vain for wounded comrades.
Lee told the Americans he wanted to join them. He was sick of living in the shadows, like some skittish lizard who made his home under a rock. He yearned to shout his allegiance from the parapets. He wanted to be part of the fight.
He returned to the house with a flush of excitement. But the next morning, when he went out to see the Americans again, his heart sank: The Marines were gone. Overnight, the battle lines had been redrawn. The West Gate was North Korean territory once again. By greeting the Americans with such ardor the day before, Lee feared he had exposed himself—and had possibly endangered his cousins as well. Cursing his own stupidity, he slunk back to the house and bolted the door.
5
THE BATTLE OF THE BARRICADES
Seoul
The way into Seoul grew bloodier with each mile. General Smith’s Marines finally began to encounter the resistance they had believed would show itself at Inchon. The North Korean People’s Army had erected barricades at nearly every major intersection—piles of burlap bags stuffed with dirt and rice and sand, the crude bulwarks sometimes reinforced with furniture and miscellaneous junk hauled out from houses and tenements. North Korean snipers had positioned themselves on rooftops and balconies, in high buildings, in attics and crawl spaces, in cellars with ground-level windows. The streets, meanwhile, were seeded with Russian-made mines. Every cranny of the city had been booby-trapped.
General MacArthur had assured Smith that taking Seoul would be a cakewalk. But MacArthur wasn’t there to see it through—he was seven hundred miles away in Tokyo, attending to his cloistered world, surrounded by his court. He would not bother himself with the messy complexities of the conquest; he would follow it from afar, and return in triumph when the dirty work was done.
Because Smith had a deadline to meet—an artificial one, as far as he was concerned—he had no choice but to pummel the city with artillery. It was a decision he hated to make, but once he’d made it, he was lavish with his ordnance. The howitzers, positioned miles away along the Han, unleashed their wrath. For more than twenty-four hours, Seoul’s foundations shivered and shook. “Slowly and inexorably,” wrote war correspondent Reginald Thompson, “the last life was squeezed and battered out of the city.”
Much of the capital was ablaze. The place was a shambles—windows shattered, sidewalks pocked, buildings blistered and yawning with holes. It was, said one Marine, “literally a town shot to hell.” A residue of cinders coated the streets, and chunks of concrete crunched underfoot. Downed telegraph wires lay tangled along the roads. Beasts of burden ran in the streets. Thousands of terrified civilians, not sure where to go, darted this way and that, wailing and coughing through heavy smoke that stank of mass death. “Few people,” wrote one correspondent, “have suffered so terrible a liberation.”
Through this ruined cityscape the Marines advanced, block by rubbled block. They hunched and flinched as they went, for the “crack of bullets overhead was close and constant and meant for them,” said Time-Life photographer David Douglas Duncan. Not knowing the proper place names of Seoul, the Marines invented their own—Nelly’s Tit, Slaughterhouse Hill, Blood and Bones Corner. Smith, said one journalist, “deployed his men like ferrets into the mole hills of Seoul’s waterfront suburbs.” Working their way over the city’s escarpments, they sometimes ventured into caves, snuffing out the enemy with flamethrowers.
Then the Marines pushed up Ma Po Boulevard, a broa
d, straight thoroughfare lined with sycamore trees, the trolley tracks that ran down the roadway’s center now damaged. The Pershing tanks rolled over the debris-strewn asphalt, swiveling their turrets, poking into structures, occasionally catching the corner of some building’s roof and yanking it off while veering into a side street in search of prey.
After the tanks came the sappers and the infantry, their M1s fixed with bayonets. Eyes red, faces smudged with soot, the men skirted the fires and held up their hands to shield their faces from the heat. They crept through railyards, probing and crouching and probing some more, leapfrogging through sniper fire. They kicked in doors, crawled over fences, clomped through gardens. Occasionally the carcass of some smoldering building would collapse in a heap, sending out showers of sparks.
Urban warfare was not a traditional specialty of the Marines—the World War II veterans among them were more used to fighting on beaches and in jungles—but they adapted to the nerve-racking work. From barricade to barricade, Smith’s men inched forward—it was “a dirty, frustrating fight every yard of the way,” said one Marine engineer. They blasted the roadblocks with white phosphorus shells, with mortars and grenades and rockets. Red tracer rounds looped through the smoky air and smacked into the sandbags, then the machine guns opened up. The Marines killed all who resisted—one account spoke of “clots” of enemy corpses. The North Koreans who surrendered were stripped naked and, thus humiliated, marched away in droves.