Last Train from Vladivostok

TIME Correspondent Wilson Fielder last week was aboard the light cruiser Juneau* on a patrol of the east coast of Korea. Fielder cabled the first detailed report of the war at sea.

WHEN the 6,000-ton Juneau came to Far Eastern waters earlier this year, her mission was one of peacetime training. Few of her complement had seen action and officers admitted that her men were “below standards desirable for combat.” They were still below standard when the Juneau headed north about a fortnight ago under wartime orders. Then one day the lookout spotted four torpedo boats bearing down on the ship.

An ensign just out of the Naval Academy told me later: “Suddenly the war got awfully personal. The prows of those boats were high out of the water. They were roaring in for the kill. We opened fire with the 40 millimeters, our main-battery five-inchers and everything we had. When the smoke and spray had cleared away there they were, still boring right on in. Finally we forced three of the boats onto the beach and sent a shore party in to capture their crews. The fourth changed course and headed out to sea with throttles wide open. Since then there’s been no messing around getting up to general quarters.”

The Galloping Ghost. That was the beginning of a series of short, sharp actions which kept the Juneau’s crew almost constantly at general quarters. Teamed up with destroyers of her own group and ships of Britain’s Royal Navy, the Juneau sank several large trawlers slipping out of ports in South Korea after they had landed North Korean reinforcements. She darted shoreward and lobbed five-inch shells at coastal roads and bridges.

Gradually the green crew improved its shooting. Affectionately they tagged the Juneau “the galloping ghost of the Korean coast.” Officers who remembered the Solomons campaign spoke of the beat between southern Japan and Korea as “The Little Slot.” Said a junior officer: “This is the only way to fight war for me, fat and happy, waiting for it to come to you. Good chow, showers and clean bunk.” Rear Admiral John Higgins, whose flag is in the Juneau, smiled happily. This was what the Navy called esprit de corps. The Juneau headed back to her base in Japan to get more ammunition.

In the week the Juneau had been away, the little (formerly five officers and less than 100 men) U.S. naval base had become headquarters for a U.N. task force. Ringed by soft green mountains, the turquoise harbor was a colorful array of British, Australian and American flags. Little whaleboats and captain’s gigs raced madly back & forth hauling the brass on formal calls, which “are well in order,” the British said, “since this is really not a war after all.” At the officers’ club Royal Marines turned out each night in red cummerbunds and dinner jackets. The Americans dressed on a war footing; many of them wore crinkled khaki and no ties.

After two days in port, the Juneau went on the prowl again. I was aboard when she left the harbor, riding low in the water from the heaviest load of ammunition she had ever carried. As we put off, a 40-man U.S. Marine guard in knife-edge khaki stood at ramrod attention as the Juneau’s band blared a salute. Then, as the sun slowly set into purple clouds and dark green mountains, the ship seemed to relax. A cool evening breeze played across her bow and she headed back for “The Little Slot.”

First night out, the Juneau and her destroyers maintained a northerly course. The ship’s loudspeaker announced: “We are now steaming 6,000 yards off the Korean coast. If we spot troop movements or targets of opportunity we will close and take them under fire.”

Up on the Juneau’s flag bridge, Admiral Higgins was wrapped snugly in a wool-lined sea jacket. A veteran destroyer man whose steel blue eyes are set deeply in a reddish tan face with a hard strong jaw, he commands four U.S. warships.

Targets of Opportunity. Two hours later, the clangor of general quarters sent all hands to their battle stations. The Juneau was 4,000 yards offshore and the lights of trucks moving along coastal roads in enemy-held South Korea could be seen with the naked eye. One of the Juneau’s forward guns cracked sharply and a flare-shell sped into the night. A few seconds later a brilliant white light floated gracefully over the beach toward low hills. The five-inchers pounded for a few minutes and then all was dark and silent again. The Juneau swung about and cruised south for a few minutes, then north, then south. Thirty minutes passed, then 45. Sharply the voice of the lookout sang in the headphones: “Truck lights off the port bow, sir!”

The Juneau waited until other truck lights flickered and began to move along the coastal road, and her five-inchers blasted the silence. Again the firing lasted only a few minutes. Once more, eyes searched the blackness along the beach. At last came the welcome news: “Secure from general quarters.” The crew members methodically secured their guns and gear, filed below to grab a few hours’ sleep before dawn. The Juneau resumed its course toward North Korean waters, where there might be better targets of opportunity.*

Next day the Juneau was joined by the destroyer Mansfield. Below decks, men not on watch slept, played cards or argued their chances “of getting back stateside by November.”

“This Is It.” The Juneau’s executive officer, her skipper, Captain Jesse C. Sowell, and Admiral Higgins worked late that night over their maps. Commander W. B. Porter, the ship’s executive, pointed out that north of the 40th parallel the Han-kyung railroad held close to the coast. This was the logical supply line for the

Korean Reds in the eastern part of the country, since it was the only direct connecting link with the Russian Trans-Siberian line which terminates at Vladivostok. In his cabin next day, Commander Porter unfolded a map before a small group of dungaree-clad men.

“You are all volunteers,” he said. “None of you have to go on this mission if you don’t want to. Shortly before midnight we will transfer to the Mansfield. About a thousand yards offshore we will leave the Mansfield in a small boat. Our job will be to mine a railroad tunnel near the beach.”

At midnight, in absolute silence, under chilly, low-hanging skies that blotted out the stars, the Mansfield cautiously worked in toward shore. On the destroyer’s quarterdeck ten men—four marines, four bluejackets and two officers—checked their weapons and adjusted packs crammed with TNT. Some carried Tommy guns, others carbines. Each man had a knife dangling on his pistol belt. A few wore sneakers. The men shifted their feet uneasily as they watched a small whaleboat being lowered into the water.

Commander Porter said: “Well, this is it. Let’s go over the side.” As the whaleboat pushed off for shore its engine sounded loud and the men instinctively bent low; each reasoned that it might lessen his chance of being seen in the inky blackness. Sixty yards offshore a white headlight seemed to spot the whaleboat for a minute. Then it shifted back inland. All hands flattened in the bottom of the boat. Then they heard the rumble of a freight train heading toward the tunnel that was their target for the night.

Ashore, the waist-high grass smelled like heather, one of the men later remem bered. Commander Porter stationed two marines on the beach near their boat. After clambering up a small hill, sometimes slipping and sometimes falling with their heavy packs of explosive on their backs, the men discovered they were above the tunnel. Carefully they worked down to one entrance. It was a single track tunnel, blasted out of solid rock, about a quarter of a mile long, curving slightly. Using shovels they had brought with them, they dug into the railroad bed. When their shovels rang too loudly they went down on their knees and finished digging with their hands. Primer cord connected two charges so they would explode as one, and caps were taped to both rails. Then word was passed to head back for the whaleboat.

Back aboard the Mansfield a small portion of brandy was passed to each dripping man. “It wasn’t bad after we got ashore,” a lanky sailor said slowly. “It was just the long pull. Standing by, waiting to go in is always the worst.”

As the Mansfield put out to sea, we could see a southbound train headed for the tunnel. From the fantail of the destroyer scores of eyes watched with powerful glasses as the train disappeared inside. We could not hear or see the explosion.

But no train emerged from the southern end of the tunnel.

* Launched at Kearny, N.J. in 1945 and named after the famed, ill-fated 6,000-ton cruiser Juneau, which was blown up by a Jap torpedo on Nov. 14, 1942 at the southern end of “The Slot,” the strip of water running northwest-southeast through the Solomon Islands. All but ten of the Juneau’s crew were lost, including the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa.

* Even in the atomic age, war has a way of turning back to its past. Last week’s action of the Juneau was reminiscent of the time C. S. Forester’s hero, Captain Horatio Hornblower, commanding H.M.S. Sutherland, shelled a mule train on a coastal road between Malgret and Aren de Mar during Wellington’s Peninsular campaign.