Passing the Test: Combat in Korea, April-June 1951

PREFACE

PREFACE Much can be learned about war from studying the thirty-eight months of fighting in Korea, from June 1950 to July 1953. Military operations ranged from rapid advances and withdrawals and amphibious landings and evacuations, all reminiscent of World War II, to static operations interrupted by set-piece battles and vicious raids that recall the battles on the Western Front during World War I. The weather was often as brutal as the fighting: summers hot and humid , winters frigid with icy Siberian winds. The rugged terrain challenged even those who thought they were in good physical condition . Before Korea, U.S. strategic planners, and indeed most people in the United States, believed that such a war would never be fought again, and certainly not in Korea. Consequently, preparations were few, and the individuals who actually had to fight the battles paid the price. This book, the third in a series on the Korean War, takes a close look at some of the fighting that occurred during the Chinese Communist Spring Offensive from late April to late May–early June 1951. This volume focuses mostly on combat at the lowest levels: battalion, company, platoon, squad, and individual soldiers. Although the spotlight is on tactical operations and frontline fighting, each combat action is placed in its own unique context, so that the reader is aware of the way in which events and decisions in Korea influenced what happened on the battlefield. Most of the material for this book is drawn from interviews conducted by U.S. Army historians soon after a combat action oc- x PREFACE curred, in some cases within hours or a few days. Additional information comes from official records, such as unit journals and periodic reports, and from unit and individual award recommendations , which included eyewitness accounts of heroic actions. Army historians had to overcome many problems to collect the combat interviews that form the basis for this book. They worked on tight deadlines because the interviews and after-action summaries were needed not only to capture the historical record while events were still fresh, but also to provide information to other American units about enemy and friendly operations, namely which tactics and methods the enemy was using and which procedures and tactics seemed to be effective or were failures in fighting the enemy. There were many combat actions, and little time was available to conduct interviews and compile the reports, which in most cases included maps, photographs, and a narrative summary. Sometimes historians could not visit units until long after a battle had ended. Often the key individuals necessary to provide a complete understanding of the fight were not available for interviews because they were dead, ill, wounded, on leave, or on rotation, or for other reasons . The ideal was for the historian to walk the battlefield with the participants so that the resulting interviews, maps, and photographs brought the action to life. But this could not always be accomplished because of time limitations or because the former battlefield at that point lay in enemy territory. Accounts by different participants were sometimes contradictory, even about such routine matters as orders, indicating that the confusion of combat remained after the fighting ended. Other statements were vague about the most recent actions or seemed to focus on one specific incident, indicating perhaps that the trauma produced by the immediate presence of danger and death in combat still lingered. The combat interviews used in this volume were based mostly on the notes that the combat historians and their enlisted assistants took during individual and group interviews. Following these sessions , the historians and their assistants compiled, edited, typed up, and revised copies of their refined and combined notes, which were then used to complete the studies and were attached to them as supporting documents. Only in some rare instances did the inter- xi PREFACE viewees personally review, edit, and authenticate their comments in the transcripts prepared by the military historians. Because the interviews used in chapter 2, “Hill 902,” and in chapter 3 fall into this category, they are the only ones in the book that appear as firstperson accounts. The interviews were not tape-recorded and transcribed because the military history detachments at the time lacked such equipment. This particular shortcoming was clearly recognized , and Army military history detachments in subsequent con- flicts have always gone to the field fully equipped...