The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Daily Republican, Monongahela PA

Korean War Weekly Front Pages

1 July – 7 July 1951

The Daily Republican, Monongahela PA

Cease-fire negotiations were imminent, but the fighting continued.

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UN and Communist troops fought on grimly with orders to “kill the enemy” as their leaders attempted to arrange a cease-fire meeting. A message from UN Supreme Commander Matthew Ridgway, accepting a Communist proposal for meeting in the Kaesong area, was expected shortly. He was expected to suggest that talks begin sooner than the 10 to 15 July period suggested by the Communists. An 8th army spokesman said that meantime: “Our orders have been to kill the enemy wherever we find him. These orders have not been changed.” “Mercilessly annihilate the enemy and shoot down his planes,” the North Korean communist radio admonished Red troops. A Red communiqué said 1,900 UN troops were killed or captured on the eastern front Saturday and Sunday. Allied artillery and planes kept up a drum fire of death all along the front while patrols stabbed into the enemy lines.

On Tuesday, UN forces captured a 3,500 foot mountain peak on the west central front of Korea after three days of bitter fighting against up to 5,000 stubbornly resisting Chinese communists. An armed column of 40 tanks sliced behind the Red positions and protected sweating Allied troops who scaled the north peak of the 3,500 foot mountain, highest in the Sobang range, south of Pyongyang. A cease-fire seemed a long way off to the troops who stormed the cliffs. Allied troops fought a three-hour duel Tuesday on the Eastern front. One Allied light officer said, “We never encountered anything like it in the way of counter-battery fire.”

A Peiping [Beijing] broadcast said that Communist China entered the Korean War largely to protect Manchuria, and was willing to talk about a lasting peace if the American threat to her frontier was removed. The broadcast was recorded a few hours after the United Nations agreed to Communist proposals for cease-fire negotiations in Korea and suggested a preliminary meeting on the battlefield Thursday to arrange details. General Ridgeway urged the Reds to send liaison officers under a white flag to the 38th Parallel ghost city of Kaesong Thursday morning to ensure efficient arrangement of the armistice talks. He accepted the Communist proposal to open the main talks in Kaesong on the Western front no-man’s-land 10 July but asked the Reds to make it sooner if possible to save lives.

A five-man team was planned to conduct preliminary cease-fire talks with the Communists on the Korean battlefields Sunday. Reports from Hong Kong said the Communists would help speed an armistice by avoiding political issues in the meeting, which would arrange details for a formal cease-fire conference later. Allied patrols and some 600 Communist soldiers sparred around Kaesong while US Army engineers cleared the Seoul-Kaesong highway. UN monitors kept tuned to wavelengths of Peiping and Pyongyang, the enemy capitals, but no reply to Ridgway’s last message demanding positive assurance of safe conduct for the Allied delegation had been received by Thursday morning. On Friday, each side had guaranteed safe conduct of the other’s delegation to Kaesong, a mile and a half south of the 38th parallel on the western front.

On Friday US war planes struck for the second day against Communist convoys pouring men and supplies from Manchuria toward the Korean front in a big Red build up. There was only light patrol sparring along the 100-mile battle line, with preliminary cease-fire talks only a few hours away. Fifth Air Force night raiders in action until dawn claimed they destroyed or damaged at least 100 of the enemy vehicles clogging a 95-mile stretch of highway from Sinuiju on the Manchurian border, to Sinanju, 40 miles above Pyongyang.

On 7 July Communist cease-fire negotiators reached the Kaesong area from Pyongyang, and the United Nations command announced that the road they traveled would be subject to air attack again after midnight. Preliminary cease-fire talks would begin in Kaesong on Sunday presumably before noon. The Air Force announced that two helicopters were standing by at a base north of Seoul to take UN commander General Matthew B. Ridgway’s negotiators to Kaesong, 35 miles northwest of the base.

Enlistments of servicemen due for discharge between Sunday and next July 1, some 300,000 to 400,000 men, had been extended for one year. The order, announced by President Truman, did not apply to draftees, who must serve for 24 months but technically included enlisted reserves. However, and listed reservists who served at least a year during World War II were eligible for inactive duty after putting in 17 months following outbreak of the Korean War.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Monongahela Daily Republican)