BATTLE OF KOREA: Rout

The enemy’s collapse came with avalanche swiftness.

On Tuesday his resistance still seemed determined. The high command in Tokyo announced the capture of Seoul, but within the battered capital fierce street battles raged. Along the southern perimeter, the North Korean withdrawal from the Naktong went stubbornly.

On Wednesday the avalanche began to roll. Late the night before a motorized column of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, barreling up from the south, had joined hands with the X Corps pushing down from the Inchon beachhead. “Complete breakthrough,” reported Tokyo. On Thursday the enemy’s main force abandoned Seoul, his trapped divisions in the southwest fell apart. On Friday, U.N. communiques called it a “rout.” By week’s end, the avalanche had run its thunderous course. North Korean organized resistance had ended, U.N. forces were mopping up isolated remnants, the first U.N. division had crossed the 38th parallel.

Flesh & Cinders. TIME Correspondent Dwight Martin cabled an eyewitness account of the Seoul street fighting:

“On Tuesday morning I entered the city from the southwest up Mapo Boulevard. Three months ago Mapo was a bustling, cheerful sycamore-lined thoroughfare with a doubletrack trolley, grocery, wine and tea shops and a sprinkling of residences. This morning Mapo wore a different look. The burned and blackened remains of the boulevard’s shops and homes sent clouds of acrid smoke billowing over the city. Buildings still ablaze showered sparks and ashes high into the air to cascade down on red-eyed, soot-faced marines.

“In the center of the street, six Pershing tanks wheeled into position to advance. Directly in front of the lead tank lay the body of a Red soldier who had been caught in the burst of a white phosphorus shell. The corpse was still burning as the tank’s right tread passed over it, extinguishing the flame and grinding the body into a grisly compost of flesh and cinders.”

Barricades & Ambuscades. “At a burned-out police substation, a group of marines waited behind a wall, tending three of their wounded and a wounded enemy soldier. The corpsmen shouted for an ambulance. A marine from the other side of the street replied: ‘Bring ’em out on litters. The major says we’ve lost four ambulances, seven corpsmen and four drivers since last night. We ain’t got the ambulances to replace ’em.’ The medics swore softly, placed the wounded on litters and started back to the C.P.

“Farther along, behind a barricade just seized by the marines, we saw another amazing sight. Less than 50 yards away, through dense smoke, came 40 to 50 North Korean soldiers. They dragged a light antitank gun. Apparently they thought the barricade was held by their side. The marines first stared in disbelief, then opened fire with every weapon available. The Reds screamed, buckled, pitched and died on Mapo’s pavement.”

At one point, U.S. marines driving in to Seoul from the southwest were almost trapped by North Koreans. They were saved by the caution and good sense of the commander of the point company, Captain Robert Barrow of St. Francisville, La. Barrow took his men across the Seoul-Mukden railroad tracks, deployed them on a ridge and refused to advance past an apparently deserted group of buildings and a residential sector until he had scouted the ground.

Barrow’s men spotted North Korean troops hiding in the heavily sandbagged buildings, waiting for the marines to pass them; had they done so the North Koreans might have caught several battalions between their fire and that of the defenders in the city’s center. Barrow called for an air strike and an artillery barrage. For 18 hours U.S. planes rained rockets, explosive bombs and napalm fire bombs on the area in front of Barrow’s outfit. First scores, then hundreds, then thousands of Red soldiers were seen running from their place of ambush. When the holocaust was over, Barrow’s company and the marines behind them walked through the wreckage.

Across the Parallel. Almost three months from the day it had fallen, Seoul was in U.N. hands. The North Koreans pulled out northward toward Uijongbu, a road and rail center 18 miles below the 38th parallel. Marine planes flattened the town with Tiny Tim rockets (1,284 Ibs. weight, 11.75 inches in diameter). One X Corps column raced eastward from Seoul to the Ichon area, where it linked up with South Korean troops sweeping the east coast.

This week the South Korean 3rd and Capitol Divisions stabbed across the 38th parallel and up the Sea of Japan coast. Their initial thrust took Yangyang, seven miles north of the border, and reached Kansong, more than 20 miles farther on. Red fortifications were mostly unmanned and resistance negligible. Captured North Koreans said they had been ordered to fall back to Wonsan, 70 miles above the 38th parallel, for a stand.