BATTLE OF KOREA: No Stop

Soon after V-J day, proud U.S. cavalrymen raised a yellow and black billboard on the western outskirts of Tokyo. It read: “You are now entering Tokyo by courtesy of the 1st Cavalry Division—First in Manila; First in Tokyo—The First Team.” As last week began, the dismounted troopers of the 1st Cavalry had every intention of adding “First in Pyongyang” to their battle honors.

Switching Signals. On the western flank of the U.N. army driving into North Korea, the cavalrymen advanced over the 38th parallel along the highway to Kum-chon, a railway center 80 miles southeast of Pyongyang. They ran smack into what they then decided were the strongest defense positions in North Korea. On heights overlooking bends in the highway the Communists had built concealed concrete pillboxes and log revetments—some with walls eight feet thick.

From these carefully prepared positions diehard North Korean soldiers poured fire onto the advancing cavalrymen. Red mines blew the treads off U.S. tanks and convoys were held up under fire for hours at a time. Air and artillery support could not take all the burden off the troops on the ground. Rockets from F80 Shooting Stars set dry grass and bright autumn foliage ablaze, but failed to smash some Communist redoubts. In the first day of the attack the cavalry took many casualties, moved little more than a mile beyond the parallel. Said one officer: “It’s been rough work, rougher than we expected. We had hoped to be 25 miles into North Korea by this time.”

Changing signals, Major General Hobart Gay, the 1st Cavalry’s commander, converted his frontal assault to a three-pronged drive. One of his columns swung west of the highway, knifed in a sweeping end run to the railroad and highway north of Kumchon to cut the main Communist supply line. The British Commonwealth 27th Brigade leapfrogged U.S. troops, sliced toward Kumchon in a wide northeast arc. The main body of the 1st Cavalry Division continued to slog up the Kumchon highway behind Patton tanks.

Gay’s enveloping movement came off with textbook smoothness. By midweek the eastern and western prongs had closed on Kumchon. Trapped in the city and in the area south of it were nearly 20,000 North Korean troops. “They will not get out any tanks, guns or vehicles,” promised Gay.

Taking Trips. Nowhere else along the 200 miles of the semicircular U.N. front was North Korean resistance as stubborn as at Kumchon. On the 1st Cavalry’s right flank, the 1st R.O.K. Division under able Major General Paik Sun Yap (TIME, July 24) raced ahead, aided by U.S. tanks and rockets from F-80s. Said trim, 30-year-old General Paik, “Now at least we have some tanks, too, and it is wonderful. My tactic is ‘no stop.’ ” He added proudly, “Now we can be like General Patton.”

By week’s end the 1st R.O.K. Division was closer to Pyongyang than any other U.N. unit and still moving forward. The division’s speed was partly explained by the fact that Paik, a native of Pyongyang, was worried about his widowed sister and her eight children who had been left in the enemy capital. Said he, “Pyongyang was a beautiful town, but the Communists will fight to the death for it and we will burn all of it if necessary. Under the Communists, nobody can talk, nobody can take trips, nobody can do anything. I would gladly die for freedom from the Communists.”

Other South Korean troops were also advancing on Pyongyang from the southeast. On Paik’s right, the 6th and 8th R.O.K. Divisions overran the anchor points of a North Korean “defense triangle,” then advanced against disorganized opposition along an all-weather motor road toward the North Korean capital.

Raising Signs. On the eastern end of the front the Communists were barely putting up token resistance. Here the foot soldiers of the R.O.K. Capital Division and the 3rd R.O.K. Division had advanced 100 miles beyond the 38th parallel in ten days. Even against light opposition the speed of their drive was amazing; admiring G.I.s called the 3rd R.O.K. Division “The Rambling Roks.”

Early last week the Capital and 3rd Divisions climaxed their northward push with the capture of Wonsan, an industrial city directly across the peninsula from Pyongyang. R.O.K. forces had expected to fight a bitter battle for possession of this strategic seaport, a communications hub for railways and highways running west to Pyongyang, northeast to Siberia. But the remnants of the two North Korean divisions assigned to defend Wonsan showed little fight. Brushing off sporadic counterattacks, the South Koreans captured 1,000 prisoners, six tanks, seven artillery pieces, 5,000 small arms and such miscellaneous booty as a truck loaded with rice and tooth powder. The 3rd Division seized Wonsan’s Japanese-built airport, the best in North Korea, found its runways grass-grown but still usable.

Wonsan bore traces of its former Russian masters. Still intact was a marble monument topped with a red star and praising Stalin as “our defender against American imperialism.” Egged on by U.S. advisers, the R.O.K. troops raised a sign which read: “You are now entering Wonsan by courtesy of the R.O.K. I Corps—the Capital and 3rd Divisions.”

Within two days Wonsan had been declared secure and Combat Cargo Command planes were landing materiel at the airport. The R.O.K. Capital Division was rolling north toward the industrial city of Hungnam, bent on cutting off North Korea’s direct rail and road links with Siberia. Still farther up the east coast, a 37-ship U.N. naval force headed by the battleship Missouri pounded other communications and transportation hubs in four coastal cities. Hardest hit in the two-day bombardment was the industrial town of Chongjin, 60 miles below the Korean-Siberian border, where until the beginning of the war the Soviet navy had maintained a submarine base.

While the fleet carried out what many observers thought were pre-invasion strikes, the 3rd R.O.K. Division drove west along the trans-peninsular highway from Wonsan toward Pyongyang. One 3rd Division column raced ahead in trucks in an attempt to rescue an estimated 1,000 G.I.s reportedly held prisoner by the North Koreans somewhere along the rail line to Pyongyang.

At week’s end the battle-tempered 24th U.S. Infantry Division joined the assault into North Korea. Entering the lines west of the 1st Cavalry Division, the 24th swept through Yonan, just south of the 38th parallel, was apparently headed for Chinnampo, the port city for Pyongyang. Part of the 1st Cavalry Division was still engaged in mopping up the Kumchon trap, but eager General Gay kept his spearhead moving north. Said Gay: “These cookies are beaten. It’s only a matter of time until we are in Pyongyang.”