BATTLE OF KOREA: Siege of Kumsong

Despite the imminence of renewed truce talks (see above), the battle of Korea thundered on. “We are getting deeper into the Chinese,” said an allied officer, “just like wading into water.”

The major actions last week were at

Kumsong, the Reds’ central-front bastion, and beyond Yonchon, about 35 miles to the west. On the Yonchon sector, the battered but indomitable U.S.1st Cavalry Division had been trying, against savage enemy resistance, to push the Reds out of hills from which they could fire on the rail line from Seoul to Chorwon, the allied-held west corner of the old Red Iron Triangle. Last week, as the ist Cavalry’s men waded in with bayonets and grenades, enemy resistance suddenly collapsed as the beaten Chinese Communists pulled out to the north. The G.I.s moved into the enemy bunkers and other strong points—some of which were taken without firing a shot—and the U.N. rail line was secure.

Smoking Rubble. General Van Fleet had had his eye on Kumsong all summer. When the Reds lost most of their Iron Triangle, they moved their main central-front base a few miles east to Kumsong (peacetime pop. 5,000). Allied probing attacks in that direction ran into stonewall resistance. Then, with the start of truce talks in July, allied efforts slacked off.

Last fortnight Van Fleet aimed three U.N. divisions—the U.S. 24th with Colombians attached, the South Korean 2nd and-6th—in an all-out attack on Kumsong. By last week the three converging divisions had narrowed the 22-mile jump-off front to less than eight miles, and a torrent of artillery fire had turned most of Kumsong into burning and smoking rubble. The infantrymen were so close that they could have looked down into the town, if the weather had been clear instead of thick. The Chinese had pulled out most of their men and guns. Some 800, left as a screening force on a height called Fortress Mountain, were encircled. Like most such “traps,” this one proved more of a sieve; three-fourths of the Reds slithered out and got away, but 200 were killed on top of the mountain by U.N. forces.

Victory & Winter. Two columns of burly Patton tanks thrust into the outskirts of Kumsong, shot up everything in sight, and retired to their lines without losing a vehicle, although the Reds had fired on them from a respectful distance with antitank guns. After that, it was clear that Kumsong was finished as an enemy base. There was no need for Van Fleet actually to occupy it until he could do so with a minimum of casualties. This week, after another bold tank raid in which the U.S. armor braved enemy mortar fire, a U.S. patrol moved up to within 600 yards of the blasted rail and road junction. Chinese | resistance seemed to have melted.

U.N. commanders were jubilant over the Kumsong victory, but the slogging doughfeet of the 24th were not so cheerful. Cold rains lashed by freezing winds were giving them a foretaste of the Korean winter, which only a few old hands could remember from last year. Hundreds of G.I. bonfires dotted the countryside. Said a sergeant: “My feet are cold, my hands are cold and my neck is cold. And this is only October. I just hope I get out of here before winter.”