BATTLE OF KOREA: Lull Before Storm

By land & sea as well as by air, the allies were doing everything possible to hamper Communist communications to the fighting front. Near Songjin, almost 200 miles north of the 38th parallel on the east coast, 250 British marines went ashore from a naval task force led by the U.S. heavy cruiser St. Paul. While the ships shielded them with a curtain of fire, the commandos mined 100 yards of the Communists’ main east coast rail line, blew a trough 16 ft. deep in the roadbed. After seven hours ashore, the British got back on their ship without a casualty.

In the front lines across Korea, the general picture was one of lull before a storm. A U.S. private described it as “a little noise and a lot of climbing.” General

Ridgway had received new artillery, increasing his already massive firepower.

R.O.K. units had been across the parallel, on the east coast, since March 27. Last week a U.S. column crossed north of Uijongbu. Soon the front north of the parallel had broadened to ten miles, then to 40 miles, and by week’s end troops of seven nations—U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Siam, Greece, South Korea—were in North Korea almost everywhere along the 110-mile front. Enemy resistance faded in the west but stiffened in the center, in front of the Communists’ “iron triangle” (Hwachon-Chorwon-Yonchon), where the main body of their forces was believed to be poised for the big push. At one point, Chinese holed up in eight enormous bunkers drove off repeated U.S. attacks with mortars, machine guns, rifle fire and grenades.

This week U.S. doughfeet reached the south edge of the Hwachon Reservoir against the fiercest resistance of the week. The Reds opened some of the reservoir’s floodgates, raising by four feet the level of the Pukhan River and sending debris banging against allied pontoons. The enemy seemed dead set on preventing any further approach to the iron triangle.