Chapter Six
The die has been cast
Julius Caesar, crossing the Rubicon, 49 BC
13 October, 1950. 38th Parallel, near Kaesong.
Shrivelled eyes deep in hollow sockets gazed at Argyll Second Lieutenant Owen Light as he advanced. ‘We were passing these trenches dug facing north,’ Light recalled. ‘And standing up in them were skeletons in uniforms; they still had their weapons.’ The cadavers were the unburied remains of ROK units overrun on 25 June; a ghost force bearing silent witness to another invasion rolling across their frontier.
This offensive, however, was moving in the opposite direction of the one three and a half months earlier. Having successfully defended the south, the UNC was striking north.
On 27 September, President Harry Truman permitted General Douglas MacArthur to operate north of the 38th parallel. On 1 October, MacArthur broadcast a surrender message north. It went unanswered. The same day, South Korean President Rhee Syngman sent his forces north up the east coast. Rhee had made no secret of his ambition to unify Korea, hence earlier US reluctance to arm him with offensive weapons. Kim Il-sung’s invasion, and the UNC response, had handed him the opportunity he had sought; the balance of power had tipped in his favour. Moreover, he had the support of MacArthur, who would settle for nothing less than total victory. What was absent was the approval of the wider world for an extension of the war northward.
Although Rhee had jumped the gun, Washington had been gathering backing. On 30 September, a resolution, sponsored by the UK and seven other states, was placed before the UN. On 7 October, the assembly voted 47–5 – overwhelming a Soviet peace proposal – to pass UN Resolution 376(V). It called for a ‘unified, independent and democratic government’ with ‘all appropriate steps’ taken to ensure ‘conditions of stability throughout Korea’.1
The invasion plan had already been laid out in a Joint Chiefs of Staff directive on 27 September. Its objective: The destruction of the NKPA. To avoid antagonising Peking and Moscow, only ROK troops would advance the final miles to the Chinese and Russian borders.2 The line at which non-ROK troops would halt was some 50 miles south of the Yalu, the river which denoted the Sino-Korean frontier. This line was broadly demarcated by the town of Chongju in the west, and the cities of Hungnam and Hamhung in the east; it would be known to 27th Brigade as ‘The MacArthur Line’.3
The UNC attack would be two-pronged. X Corps – comprising the US 1st Marine, the US 7th Infantry and the ROK Capital divisions – would advance in the peninsula’s east. Divided from X Corps by the peninsula’s mountainous spine, would be 8th Army. Led by US 1 Corps – 27th Brigade, ROK 1st Division and the US 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions – 8th Army would strike north up the western axis. The brigade, the smallest unit in I Corps, would be commanded by one of the divisions. To I Corps’ east, ROK II Corps would advance in parallel, just west of the mountains. Finally, IX Corps would mop up resistance in the south. The UNC in Korea now numbered almost 300,000 men.4
American reconnaissance units crossed on the 7 September; a full-scale US advance began on 9 October.5 On 11 October, 27th Brigade was attached to 1st Cavalry Division.6
For some soldiers, the frontier was meaningless. ‘We did not know about the 38th parallel or North Korea, we thought we were just going on to Pyongyang,’ said Diehard Frank Whitehouse. ‘We did not know if that was in the north or the south.’ Others fretted that they were escalating beyond the UN mandate. ‘We were under the understanding we were only going to the 38th parallel, then we were told we were going on,’ said Middlesex Private Edgar Green. ‘Chaps said, “How far are we going? Where’s it going to end?”’ Of more immediate concern was the terrain. ‘Every day, the hills were getting bigger and higher and there were more of them,’ Whitehouse said. The war was entering ‘Tiger Country’.
These doubts, and the grim tableau passed by Light notwithstanding, the northward advance, the first Cold War invasion of a communist state, was animated by an almost carnival atmosphere. Middlesex Major Dennis Rendell was on a recce with Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Man when their jeep vehicle went over ‘a hell of a bump’ in the road. ‘Somebody asked, “What the hell was that?”’ Rendell recalled. ‘The CO turned round and said, “That was the 38th parallel!”’
Planted beside dirt-track border crossings were signs advertising that fact. ‘We crossed with a plethora of signs by the roadside saying, “You are crossing 38th parallel courtesy of 1st Cavalry,”’ said Middlesex Major John Shipster. And behind American units – daubed in chalk or paint on makeshift road signs, mud walls, local cottages – was a bald, long-nosed head peeping over a wall. ‘There was continual reference to “Kilroy” along the road,’ Shipster said. ‘Kilroy slept here’; ‘Kilroy was here yesterday’; ‘Kilroy has gone ahead’. It was appropriate that ‘Kilroy’ – the graffiti icon of the Second World War, the GI who ‘always got there first’ – had landed in Korea, for this campaign was beginning to resemble Northwest Europe in late 1944.
8th Army Commander General Walton Walker had served under Patton, the finest pursuit general of the war, as the commander of the XX Corps, known as ‘The Ghost Corps’ for its speed of advance;7 1st Cavalry Division’s CO, General Hobart Gay, had been Patton’s chief-of-staff.8 In this headlong style of warfare, the priority is to advance so fast that the enemy, off-balance, has neither time nor space to consolidate and make a stand, so can be bypassed and surrounded. But in Korea, the Wehrmacht was not the enemy. While bypassed Germans could be wiped out, bypassed North Koreans ditched uniforms or melted into the hills.
Tactical issues aside, publicity-driven officers had individual agendas. With the NKPA apparently broken, US and ROK divisions were literally racing each other to seize prestige objectives. ‘The speed of movement was terrific,’ said Man: ‘Let ’em roll! It was the American wild west all over again.’
* * *
Summer was over. Fall vies with spring as the finest season in Korea, and under clear, impossibly high skies, the countryside was painted in its autumnal palette: the trees and scrub on the undulating hillsides were a gorgeous riot of bronze, gold and copper, interspersed with jagged outcrops of pale grey granite and the evergreen of pines. In the valleys, the late rice harvest had been gathered; tall sheaves of bound rice straw stood among the paddies. Many of the mushroom-roofed villages sat among sprawling orchards, their well-pruned trees heavy with ripe apples. The days were cool, invigorating.
Under Japanese rule, the north of the peninsula had been the seat of industry, more well-off than the south. As they advanced into communist territory, some soldiers were surprised at how neat and prosperous it looked, compared to the war-ravaged hamlets of the Naktong and the corpse-strewn ruins of Seoul. ‘South Korea I had found to be poverty stricken,’ said Argyll Ralph Horsfield. ‘In North Korea, the landscape seemed to change in the sense that the fields were all cultivated, there were trees, farms and orchards.’ The two competing states were ‘like chalk and cheese,’ he thought.
Huge clouds of dust – in some areas, greyish yellow; in others a gingery red – billowed up from the miles-long tank and truck convoys, as, packed nose-to-tail, towing trailers and long artillery pieces, they ground up dirt tracks lined with empty ration cans tossed out by troops. Charging tanks dredged up bow waves of dust on the roads, but had to slow to a crawl to negotiate the sharp bends in villages. Recovery vehicles were overworked, hauling up vehicles that had tipped off raised tracks into the paddies.
Initial excitement soon dissipated. On 11 October, orders to move 3 RAR forward were impossible to carry out due to lack of transport. The following day, the Middlesex advance was held up, first by the tail of the US 5th Cavalry Regiment, then by 1st ROK Division crossing their front.9 A furious Man planted anti-tank guns in the road as an obstacle so he was not bypassed, but on secondary roads that, with the poor maps issued, frequently led into cul de sacs, progress was grinding. ‘It was a wild goose chase,’ said Diehard Corporal Don Barrett. ‘It was a farce.’
Insufficient transport, bad roads, and methodical flank clearances meant that 27th Brigade was not proceeding as fast as commanders wanted. ‘Gay, the CO of the 1st Cavalry, told a liaison officer, “Tell that brigadier of yours to get off his ass!”’ recalled REME Captain Reggie Jeffes.
Gay was a dynamo on the roads. Rendell was deploying his company when he sensed someone looking over his shoulder. It was the general, armed with a shotgun. ‘I said, “Look general, why can’t you leave me alone and let me fight my battle?”’ Rendell recalled. This is not the way a major usually addresses a general, but Gay took it in good form. ‘He said, “OK, if you feel like that,”’ Rendell continued, ‘So I said, “What’s more, why do you carry that bloody shotgun?” He said, “You never know, you might see a ‘phee-sant’.” And he was right – there were a lot of game birds.’
While motorised Americans surged north, 27th Brigade was restricted to clearances in hills between Kaesong and Kumchon. This kind of work granted an intimate view of tragedies invisible from a speeding vehicle, for slowing the advance were enemy holdouts. ‘When the Americans were leading, some sniper would start up from a hill and you’d see a whole battalion halted and there they’d be, waiting for airplanes to come along,’ said Man. ‘There was little idea of attacking with platoons, they just sat and waited. A lot of time was wasted and the odd sniper did his job quite nobly.’ Such holdups invited massive retaliation. Rising above the dust haze, columns of smoke coiled slowly into blue skies. White marked phosphorous impacts; grey, burning wood or thatch; black, napalm. Fires had distinct odours. A burning village smelled of wood smoke; blazing pines had a strangely zesty bouquet; napalm reeked of petrol.
Private James Beverly’s Middlesex platoon was tasked to eliminate an enemy position on high ground. ‘We asked for an aircraft to strafe it, which they did. I must admit, I liked to see napalm go in – it sounds horrible – but they never retreated!’ The following morning, the platoon took the ridge. The ground was still hot, the scrub was still smouldering – and so were the defenders ‘They were like kamikazes! One was sitting at a machine gun, and he still had his hands on it, he was the colour of charcoal, and his head was nodding – it was the nerves or something,’ Beverly said. ‘They had stayed there and burnt … the whole country was burnt.’
Corporal John Pluck, the recent Middlesex reinforcement, cleared another village. ‘The North Koreans liked to dig in around villages occupied by civilians,’ he said. ‘Americans passing by were fired on, they replied and blasted this village to hell.’ Weapons at the port, well spaced, the Diehards advanced in a 50-yard line over open ground, warily entering the smoking settlement. It was heavily damaged; holed walls, sagging roofs, debris strewn between cottages. ‘I heard a low moaning coming from one of these houses that had a shell hole in the roof,’ Pluck recalled. He peered in. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the prone outlines of a man, a woman and several children coated in thick dust. Another moan. Looking closely, Pluck registered a streak of red among the grey: A huge gash in the scalp of one of the children, a little girl, perhaps seven years old. Pluck lifted her carefully and carried her out. Helpless, he handed her over to an old woman in the next house. ‘I was 23-years-old, a leader of men, but this disturbed me a great deal,’ he said. Pluck continued the operation, vision blurred with tears. He later heard the child had died the same day.
Killings preceded 8th Army’s arrival: it was simple for enemy to settle accounts with ‘reactionaries’, adopt civilian clothing and welcome the invaders. ‘As you went into a village, men lined up and bowed low and said, “Mansei, mansei!”’* recalled Man. ‘Not far away were bits and pieces of legs sticking out from under the earth.’ Irish Diehard Frank Screeche-Powell recalled an old man and an infant lying dead in one village: ‘I guess some of our men had laid them in peace with God,’ he said. ‘They’d been murdered by the Reds.’
Dispirited enemy troops, bypassed by the advance, dribbled in and surrendered, but there were occasional skirmishes. Around midnight on Friday 13 October, Phillip Bennett, the 3 RAR mortars officer, overheard a perimeter sentry shout a challenge. Bennett went over to find a Korean standing with his hands behind his back. ‘I realised something odd was going on and heard the pin of a grenade being released – a large sound in the night!’ Bennett said. ‘He heaved it towards us, I shouted a warning and ducked for cover.’ The grenade exploded, sprinkling the two Diggers with shrapnel. Bennett opened up: ‘I tried to use my .38, but had three misfires out of six.’ Still, at least one round struck; they heard screams as the Korean crawled into the darkness. Bennett’s wounds, in his shoulder and side, were ‘bloody painful’ but not serious: he was dressed at the RAP. Bennett and the sentry were 3 RAR’s first combat casualties. The battalion moved the next day. The wounded Korean was never found.
Transport was vexing. ‘US sources could never provide us with more than a two-battalion lift, and so B Echelon had to be grounded to provide the third battalion lift,’ wrote Coad. ‘Most unsatisfactory.’ The moving battalions were formed into semi-independent battle groups, with whatever supporting arms were available. The vanguard battalion – which changed daily – would lead up the road axis, the second cleared flanks and the third rested and moved forward in the evening.10 This leapfrog style of movement, with the spearhead changing every day, set the stage for the actions to come. With the war fully mobile, little detailed planning was feasible. Coad, Green, Man and Neilson would have to plan and execute their operations on the run.
On 16 October, the brigade was ordered to pass through 1st Cavalry Division and seize Sariwon. Sariwon was particularly vital. Not only was it a key crossroads and reputed garrison town, it was also a prestige objective: 24th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division had been told that whichever unit took Sariwon, would be given priority to capture Pyongyang.11 Such things mattered to American commanders; Gay gave 27th Brigade the crucial task. After the frustrations of previous days, Coad was delighted. ‘At last,’ he wrote, ‘we were going to get an axis!’12
* * *
At 06:35, the Argylls passed through the lines of 1st Cavalry and punched north into enemy territory. The countryside was idyllic: low, rolling hills; rich paddies and orchards; undamaged, peaceful villages.
Blazing the trail was A Company, led by that happiest of warriors, Major David Wilson. First were four M4 Shermans of the US 89th Tank Battalion, battened down; then another four loaded with a platoon of Jocks; a second platoon in trucks; a mortars section and a Vickers section in carriers; then the third platoon: ‘Very like a the Second World War column going through France after Normandy,’ Wilson mused. Behind, followed the rest of the battalion. Further back was a US general in a jeep, complete with obligatory press posse. Wilson was surprised to discover that he was there, not as a liaison, but as a referee to ensure ‘fair play’ between the 1st Cavalry spearhead – i.e. the Argylls – and 24th Division.13
The progress of the thrust was tensely followed by Brigade HQ. War Diary entries make clear the importance of pace.
At 07:45, the battle group passed its first objective, a range of hills, the Shermans knocking out an anti-tank gun. At 09:00, a bridge – un-demolished – was crossed. Snipers fired on the column from the village of Hungsu-ri. The lead platoon dismounted, rapid-firing into cottages on each side with their own weapons and the massive .50 calibre machine guns on the tank turrets, while tank gunners fired white phosphorous shells, igniting suspected sniper points. ‘This was a noisy and effective way of clearing the main access and the snipers did not return,’14 noted the A Company After-action Report.15 There was one casualty of this short, violent action: Private Raymond Kinne,* was killed 2 yards from Wilson by a sniper in civilian clothes firing point-blank.16 At 11:30, more snipers were encountered. The lead platoon deployed, killing four.17 At 12:30, a key pass was cleared. Still no opposition. At approximately 14:00, in rolling country some 3 miles short of Sariwon, the inevitable happened.18 Small arms and anti-tank weapons opened up from an apple orchard on the left of the road, at a point where it curved round the hill. The Argylls had tripped the NKPA defences.
The lead tank commander was hit, and, as men tumbled off trucks and tanks to deploy, so was one Jock, shot in the buttocks; the bullet exited through his chest. ‘This chap was a bit lugubrious and one of the corporals had said, “Serve you right if you get hit in the arse,”’ recalled his platoon commander, Ted Cunningham. ‘The corporal came up to me and said, “Och sir, I wish I’d never said that.”’ Remarkably, the man was not seriously wounded: The bullet missed all vital organs.
It was clear to Wilson that enemy fire covered the road. This was a classic ‘fire block’ – i.e. a position parallel to a route, from which enemy could shoot anything that passed – a tactic the UNC would soon become unpleasantly familiar with. It would have to be eliminated. At this point, a spotter plane that had been over-flying the column chose to land on the track, separating the tanks from the Jocks of the lead platoon. To make matters worse, a US general, in a state of high excitement, arrived with his reporters.19‘They’re in that orchard, rake ’em, blast ’em out of there!’ yelled General Frank Allen, 1st Cavalry’s assistant commander.20
Wilson issued orders. One platoon would hold the road; a second would assault; a third, on high ground, would secure the flank of the attacking platoon. The major then began directing tank fire onto the enemy in the orchard while mortars and Vickers prepared to engage.
The assault platoon was led by Light, the leader of the clearance patrol on the Naktong. By now, he and his men had fully gelled. ‘I really thought my platoon were good guys, it wasn’t long before you understood what made them laugh – danger, I think!’ Light’s sergeant was an Arnhem veteran. ‘We would be advancing and he’d see someone hanging back and he’d shout, “Come up! How are ye gonna be killed back there!” and everybody would laugh.’ On this, their first set-piece attack, there would be danger aplenty. ‘This was a platoon attack,’ said Light. ‘What I’d trained for!’
Lining his men up in the monsoon ditch, he gave the order: Fix bayonets. ‘It has two reasons,’ Light said. ‘One is psychological – it makes you feel better – and if your gun jams, you have something to fight with.’ Snick, click: Jocks fitted the needle-like ‘pig stickers’ onto their muzzles. Ahead, the orchard rose up a gentle slope for about 200 yards: Light’s attack would be at 90 degrees to the enemy position. As the platoon moved off, a five-minute barrage from mortars, tanks and Vickers ploughed up the enemy position. Light led his men silently though the orchard, deploying by hand signal – ‘I wanted it done quietly,’ he said. ‘No nonsense!’ – but due to the trees, could not see the effect of the support fire.
Their advance was so fast that Light worried they would walk into the covering fusillade – then suddenly, they were upon the North Koreans. All were in trenches, facing the column. Due to the bend in the road, Light’s men had got behind them. The stealthy advance through the trees, combined with the tremendous cacophony of firing, had bought the Highlanders to within yards of the enemy undetected. ‘The poor devils were facing the wrong way,’ said Light. ‘We sprang on them.’ Jocks rapid-fired down into the trenches – enemy tried frantically to stand or turn – too late. ‘They got up,’ Light said. ‘And they felt the kiss of death on them.’ Only one got out of his trench after a corporal had a stoppage. The North Korean had the same problem; the two slashed and thrust at each other among the trees with bayonets, before the enemy was shot by another Jock.
It had been a massacre. ‘We cleared them all out, we didn’t get a scratch!’ said Light. ‘This is what we trained for, were good at, the Jocks were all laughing, they thought it was tremendous!’ Light’s platoon had killed seventeen enemy, capturing 10 LMGs; forty-two more enemy lay dead from the support fire.21 The murderous attack won Light a nickname, the accuracy of which was confirmed by his company commander: ‘The Jocks don’t often get it wrong,’ Wilson wrote. Light’s nickname was a single word: ‘Killer’.22
American reporters were impressed. ‘The Argylls could have gone barrelling through,’ wrote Newsweek’s correspondent, comparing the action to a Technicolour movie. ‘They refused – partly because they hadn’t seen much real combat (sic) and champed for a chance to show how good they are … it was an impressive demonstration.’23
A Company’s clearance had only taken about fifteen minutes, but impatience was brewing. The Deputy Commander of I Corps, the Deputy Chief of Staff of 1st Cavalry and an unidentified major general arrived and confronted Wilson, ordering him to remount and strike for Sariwon. This was uncomfortable; the major already had been ordered to go firm by Neilson, and his platoons were scattered over a square kilometre of countryside. ‘Their presence and advice did not make the handling of the situation any easier,’ noted the Argylls’ War Diary. Then B and C Companies motored through; the generals and press promptly disappeared with the new vanguard.24
As A Company regrouped, 3 RAR rolled up. Seeing the carnage, a Digger leaned out of a truck and yelled, ‘For Chrissakes mates, leave some for us!’25 Wilson was ordered up to join an O Group in Sariwon itself, which was being secured by B and C Companies with barely any resistance. In the town, Wilson settled back in an abandoned barber shop as 3 RAR, meanwhile, rode through to establish a blocking position to the north.
It had been a remarkable day. It would be a more remarkable night.
* * *
Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Green led his battalion north of the town, establishing blocking positions well forward. ‘He said, “We have got to get far forward so we can make a good start in the morning,”’ recalled Lieutenant David Butler. ‘It gave us a glimpse of Charles Green – that was the nature of him.’ To his rear, B Echelon, together with elements of C Company, settled among an orchard as night fell; it was to be these elements, not Green’s vanguard that would see action this night. Sergeant Reg Bandy of C Company and his section were digging into a dry paddy alongside a road junction as darkness fell. Three US tanks stood nearby.
Unknown to the Diggers, events inside Sariwon were out of control. The town had been entered by the Argylls at 15:20, and reported occupied by 16:20;26 after dark, retreating North Koreans, driven by US forces pushing from the southwest, blundered intoastonished Argylls. Close-range firefights were breaking out across the burning town, but not all enemy were so engaged, for Sariwon has two parallel roads running north–south.
Near 3 RAR’s B Echelon came a burst of automatic fire. Then, from out of the gloom to their south, the Australians heard an unmistakable noise: The thump-thump-thump of marching feet. Ferguson, the mercurial second-in-command commanding the echelon while Green established his CP forward, immediately grasped the situation. ‘Don’t fire until I give the order!’ he told Bandy and the other men digging in beside the track. Indistinct figures were tramping up the road, closer and closer. Ferguson ordered jeep headlights flicked on. In the sudden illumination an apparently endless column of marching enemy was revealed. ‘They came in three ranks,’ said Bandy. ‘They thought the way was clear!’
Blocking the column stood a Sherman dominating the junction. With it stood Ferguson, together with men of B Company – sent back by Green to assist his second in command – and an interpreter. ‘You’re surrounded!’ Ferguson roared, waiting for the South Korean to translate. ‘Surrender or be massacred!’ He gave the North Koreans two minutes to decide. Lying prone in the dry paddy just yards from the enemy mass, Bandy took first trigger pressure. ‘There was dead silence,’ said Bandy. ‘It was the longest two minutes – it seemed like two hours!’
It was a risky bluff by Ferguson. In his exposed position, he would be the first man gunned down if the enemy went for broke. Soldiers on the track gaped, confused; Bandy reckoned they had spotted Australians in greatcoats – the night was cool – and, like the men in the town, concluded they were Russians reinforcing from the north. The NKPA vanguard seemed stunned. Some seemed to be taking firing positions, but on the track, had little cover. The clock ticked.
At the head of the column, weapons clattered to the ground. Hands rose. Like dominoes, the process was repeated down the long lines of men. Diggers cautiously emerged from cover, weapons levelled. On the faces of the enemy, surprise turned to anger when they registered the Australian numbers. ‘They were pissed off when they realised there were only 120 of us!’ Bandy recalled. Ferguson’s bluff had worked. ‘That’s what made him a battle leader,’ said Sniper Robbie Robertson. ‘He turned that situation around.’
* * *
The enemy was – apparently – mastered. Ferguson ordered Butler to drive in to Sariwon to locate the ration truck, which had not arrived. Butler’s young platoon sergeant, Alfred ‘Jack’ Harris, overheard Butler ask Ferguson what he was to do about enemy between the position and the town. Ferguson dismissed his concern, saying all enemy had ‘probably’ surrendered. Harris was less certain, but orders were orders. The platoon mounted a truck, Butler and Harris clambered into the cab and they started off south.27
Almost immediately, they found themselves driving between the marching lines of what appeared to be a North Korean regiment; Ferguson had not bagged the entire column. As they had with the Argylls, the NKPA mistook the Diggers for allies. ‘There were people on either side of us shouting, “Mansei – Russki – mansei!”’ said Butler. ‘We went right through them and kept going.’ The platoon in the back froze like statues; in the cab, Harris and Butler waved back. ‘It was a bit dodgy!’ Butler recalled
After passing the column, the truck was engulfed by smoke from burning railway carriages: the suburb south of Sariwon. The billowing clouds reflected flames ‘like a stormy day’ thought Harris.28 Backlit by this hellish illumination, strode a devilish silhouette: A tall figure surmounted by a bonnet and carrying a crooked stick. Butler dismounted. ‘Have you seen our CO?’ the apparition enquired; it was John Slim, the Argyll adjutant, searching for Neilson who – unbeknownst to either man – had undergone an experience almost identical to Butler’s. Butler could not help; Slim disappeared back into the night. Remarkably, Butler’s platoon located the rations. Returning to B Echelon, they found the North Koreans they had passed had surrendered.29
With daylight, confusion evaporated. Ferguson’s gambit had netted 1,982 prisoners – complete with machine guns, mortars and anti-tank guns.30
The Argylls had entered the town from the southeast. The enemy who had advanced in columns through the town had been pressed by 24th Infantry Division, advancing from the southwest. Meanwhile, the US 7th Cavalry had found a side road running parallel to the axis taken by 27th Brigade on the right. They had advanced northeast of Sariwon and trapped yet another group of NKPA, taking 1,700 prisoners, who they marched south toward 3 RAR in their headlights. Green had been preparing to launch up that axis at dawn; the American arrival from the north obviated his attack.
The Middlesex, bringing up the rear, saw only aftermath.
Sariwon was still burning as they drove through – a drive Major John Willougby found eerie. ‘We jinked through the narrow streets and the smoke and flames of burning houses,’ he wrote. ‘Passing through the main square were a number of civilians leaning against the walls or crouching in doorways and it was only in looking back that I realised that they were all dead – dreadful.’31 The Koreans had been either asphyxiated by napalm or killed by a blast in the high altitude bombing that had preceded the Argyll attack, leaving no external wounds.
Amid the chaos floated hundreds of banknotes. ‘Someone had flushed a North Korean paymaster and in our brief halts, bundles of crisp new banknotes were distributed up and down the column in their hundreds of thousands,’ Willoughby noted.32 Men eagerly stuffed their packs, but it was soon discovered that an egg could not be had for less than one million won.33
* * *
27th Brigade’s seizure of Sariwon secured 1st Cavalry’s claim on Pyongyang.34 Delighted, Gay wrote to Coad on the ‘sensational drive through enemy territory,’ which had ‘sped 31 miles in 12 hours to deal the enemy a disastrous blow’.35 But though 27th Brigade had opened the gates of Pyongyang, it would not drive through them.
‘We were diverted away from the main route by no less than the diminutive figure of the general himself clad in a US Air Force flight jacket and with a belt and pistol at his waist,’ recalled Lieutenant Alf Argent, 3 RAR’s intelligence officer, of Gay. ‘He halted Lieutenant Colonel Green in his carrier and directed he and his battalion to another route to the west.’ Green was amused at a general directing traffic, but his Diggers watched sourly as 1st Cavalry rumbled past. It was a bitter pill for 3 RAR, as they knew the division – ‘MacArthur’s Palace Guard’ – from Japan. ‘We did not like 1st Cav: on guard duties in Japan, they got everything they wanted and others didn’t,’ said Mortar Sergeant Tom Muggleton. ‘There were 18,000 of ’em, all in vehicles,’ said Bandy. ‘It was like a circus, nobody walking, all swinging from .30 calibres and .50 calibres.’ The choking dust in their wake was like a sandstorm: soldiers could not see each other across the width of the track they were marching up.36
With the UNC victorious, Koreans were appearing at the entrances to their villages as the columns drove through, waving South Korean flags; Ken Mankelow wondered where they had got them, but given the brutal consequences of being seen to support the wrong side – by now, right-wing ROK paramilitaries were arriving – it was prudent for civilians to have two sets. Apples were thrown into passing vehicles, leading some men to worry about grenades. Many North Koreans were genuinely grateful toward their liberators. Signals Lieutenant Peter Baldwin was doing foot reconnaissance up a track for an overnight location, when a little boy appeared and wagged his finger. Baldwin thought he was being ‘cheeky’ but the child ran ahead of him, pointing to a tripwire leading to a hand grenade. Baldwin was ‘eternally grateful’.
The western route Gay had assigned 27th Brigade was, ‘an atrocious axis as usual,’ Coad thought.37 Much of 18 October was spent hauling trucks out of ditches; making matters worse, heavy rain fell. But there were still operational enemy. On 19 October, Len Opie’s section, leading 3 RAR, was marching alongside a US Sherman when a haystack in a paddy suddenly opened fire. Opie’s section deployed. The lead Sherman spun on its tracks – catching a man’s foot in its treads –and returned fire, hitting the ‘haystack’, a camouflaged T34. The tank stood motionless, its crew stunned. One of Opie’s men leapt onto its hull, and banged on the top hatch. An NKPA soldier opened it and was shot. That ended the action. Another tank and SPG were captured, unmanned and out of fuel.38
Meanwhile, 1st Cavalry was launching a set-piece assault on Pyongyang. Reginald Thompson, a highly experienced correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, watched big guns firing and infantry formations spreading over the plain; it reminded him of a nineteenth-century battle portrait. The attack hit air. The enemy had fled.39 Ahead, among wooded hills, nestled Kim’s capital on the Taedong River. On 19 October, 1st Cavalry and 1st ROK Division entered the city from different directions. Bar snipers, there was little resistance. For 1st ROK’s commander, General Paik Sun-yup, it was tremendously satisfying: He was a native of Pyongyang.
The following day, 27th Brigade rolled in. First were the neat houses and tiny gardens of the suburbs; then the tram lines up broad city-centre avenues, over which loomed great concrete government buildings hung with enormous placards of Stalin and Kim. Many men were impressed by their glimpse of Pyongyang.* ‘As a youngster I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, because you heard about the terrible communists, and they had these marvellous big buildings,’ said Diehard Ted Haywood; the football stadium ‘made Wembley look second class,’ he thought. Locals were restive, Willoughby noted. ‘The population were tentatively beginning to loot and bales of cotton were being carried home.’40 Diggers filled 3 RAR’s water bowser at the brewery and drove it round the companies to fill everyone’s water bottles, but it proved to be weak beer.41
Grimmer events were also underway for advancing behind the 8th Army, Rhee’s paramilitaries were rooting out hardcore communists. ‘I remember how terribly cruel the South Koreans were to the citizens, I think they had broken into some liquor stores, were quite drunk and were shooting people in the streets and marching them off,’ said REME Captain Reggie Jeffes. ‘It was really an awful business, but there was nothing we could do.’
Pyongyang was largely intact, though much infrastructure – public transport, the water mains, sewage pumps and the great iron bridges over the Taedong River – had been destroyed by retreating NKPA.42 ‘It seemed that the experience of Seoul had taught theKoreans not to defend their towns,’ wrote Thompson.43 He and fellow journalists were free to wander. They feasted on caviar and champagne in the empty Russian embassy; it, and adjacent diplomatic housing, showed signs of being recently abandoned, with bottles of beer unfinished on the tables. Then, guided by a local, they entered Kim Il-sung’s lair, the presidium. It was set on a commanding hill, Moran-san, overlooking the city. From above, it was camouflaged with netting and foliage, but inside, the dictator’s inner sanctum proved magnificent. Kim’s office was thickly carpeted, hung with crimson-lined black silk curtains and dominated by a massive, carved desk. But at least one souvenir hunter had arrived before the reporters: A plaster cast of the North Korean leader had been decapitated.44 The office would subsequently be occupied by General Walker, who did not bother removing its large portrait of Stalin.
Kim himself had flown. On 11 October, he had broadcast a radio address urging last-ditch resistance: ‘Let us defend every inch of our motherland at the cost of our blood!’45 While his men surrendered or were cut down, the ex-guerilla decamped for the mountain town of Kanggye, in Korea’s distant north, 20 miles south of the Yalu. The dictator’s distress at this stage of the war may be imagined: on 14 October, he had admitted to his army that he had not expected US forces to cross the 38th parallel.46
While Thompson rifled through Kim’s bunker, 27th Brigade officers met a very different leader. Willoughby happened to be at Pyongyang airfield on 20 October where camera crews and press had gathered: ‘something big was in preparation’. A transport aircraft with ‘a cloud of escorting fighters’ landed. Boarding steps were positioned. ‘One got an impression of pressure within and sure enough, this door suddenly burst open and down the steps rushed the perfectly trained team of photographers, halting at their designated stations and immediately turning round to focus on the doorway,’ an impressed Willoughby wrote. ‘There was a long pause and suddenly there he was standing motionless in the doorway: MacArthur in majesty.’ As the supreme commander was greeted by Walker, press closed in. ‘Hands were shaken, full face; hands shaken again, right profile; then left profile and finally full face again for luck and up the steps went the great man and back to Tokyo,’ noted Willoughby. ‘Just like that.’47
MacArthur had every reason to beam. Still flush with his Inchon victory, he had conferenced with Truman at Wake Island on 15 October. Truman posed the big question: What if China intervenes? MacArthur assured him that if they did, US air power would ensure ‘the greatest slaughter’. Victory in Korea was, essentially, won.48
Brigadier Coad, his radio link down and unable to locate Divisional HQ, led his brigade into the northern suburbs. ‘We then went firm just outside the town and hoped that we should be allowed a rest,’ Coad wrote. ‘But that was not to be.’49
* Mansei – literally, ‘ten thousand years’ – is a Korean exhortation, similar to the European ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Long live!’ It is the Korean enunciation of the Chinese character that the Japanese pronounce as banzai.
* Communist forces might, feasibly, have rued the killing of Kinne: Seeking revenge, his brother, Derek, volunteered for the Korean War. Captured at the Imjin in 1951, Derek was determined not to besmirch his brother’s name; his extraordinary feats of resistance in the POW camps earned him a George Cross. (His story is told in the author’s To the Last Round) Derek last visited the UN Cemetery in Pusan in 2010 to see his brother’s name on the Commonwealth Memorial. Buried in North Korea, Raymond’s body was never recovered.
* The same holds true today: Pyongyang, as the author can attest, is a fine advertisement for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Few defectors who escape the impoverished and isolated nation, alas, support the contention of success and comfort that their showpiece capital represents.