Last Phase

The stage was set for the final battle in the “police action” in Korea. This week General Douglas MacArthur broadcast his second ultimatum to the North Koreans: “I, as the United Nations Commander in Chief, for the last time call upon you and the forces under your command, in whatever part of Korea situated, forthwith to lay down your arms and cease hostilities.” MacArthur was ready to hit the Communists above the 38th parallel with another coordinated air-sea-ground offensive.

The brilliant landing at Inchon had been executed while the enemy still held the initiative and numerical superiority in manpower. This time the odds would be overwhelmingly on the U.N. side.

Outclassed. The Communists were in precipitate flight to a new, hastily organized defensive position stretching from the peninsula’s west coast near Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to Wonsan, traffic junction and port on the eastern shore. They were heavily outclassed in equipment. The advantage of numbers had passed to the U.N. forces.

MacArthur had seven U.S. divisions* and two U.S. regimental combat teams (about 125,000 men), six South Korean divisions (about 60,000 men), one Australian and two British battalions (about 3,000 men). The Eighth Army was battle-hardened and victory-flushed, had unchallenged air support. For amphibious operations it had an equally unchallenged Navy: six aircraft carriers, the U.S. battleship Missouri, six cruisers, hundreds of destroyers, landing craft and other vessels.

The North Koreans had lost all but remnants of 13 divisions below the 38th parallel. They had suffered scores of thousands killed and wounded. Some 50,000 North Koreans were P.W.s. Almost all their tanks and trucks committed in the southern fighting had been knocked out or abandoned. They had no air cover. Their naval defense was limited to a few patrol boats and the sowing of Russian-made mines. To man their defenses above the 38th parallel they had two reserve divisions, the remnants from the south and a batch of new, poorly trained recruits, a force totaling about 200,000.

Outflanked. For supplies the Communists depended largely on road communications extending 100 to 300 miles from the Manchurian and Siberian borders. U.N. air power harassed and hampered these lines. They could be cut at a critical point by a U.N. landing above or below the mudflats on the west coast opposite Pyongyang. Once MacArthur’s men were ashore again, the U.N. would have another anvil on which the hammer of troops advancing from the south could crush the enemy’s last organized forces and thus pound out the final victory.

Only a Chinese Communist or Russian army marching to the aid of the Korean comrades could possibly stave off a swift defeat for the Red aggressors. But more & more such intervention seemed unlikely. The time for it would have been a month ago when a relatively minor effort might have pushed U.N. forces into a Dunkirk on their southern beachhead. Now, for a change, not the free world but the enemy had acted too little and too late.

* Last week the famed 3rd U.S. Infantry Division, under Major General Robert H. Soule, arrived in the Korean theater. In World War II, it made four amphibious landings (North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, France), took more casualties (34,224) than any other infantry division, was one of the war’s most decorated outfits.