The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Evening Gazette, Indiana PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
3 June – 9 June 1951
The Evening Gazette, Indiana PA
Facing the Iron Triangle.
*****
Allied troops fighting through driving rain toward the main Communist redoubt in North Korea beat off savage Red counter-attacks on Monday. Artillery thundered over the sound of hand grenades as UN forces threw back the thrusts. Reds attacked all threatening UN spearheads, fighting stubbornly everywhere against the crunching Allied advance. UN officers said the offensive was no longer meeting a holding action – it appeared to be reaching the main Red defensive line. On the eastern front the Chinese fought from heavily constructed fortifications built by North Koreas in prewar days. Foliage had grown over them in natural camouflage.
Allied troops rolled to within artillery range of Chorwon, key to the Red “Iron Triangle” in Korea, but 6,000 battling Chinese blocked the advance of other UN troops trying to reach the triangle from the east. Most of the UN west and central front surged closer to the Communist assembly area bounded by Chorwon, Kumhwa and Pyonggang. The threatening Allied advance was made against diminishing Red resistance along the rain-swept Yonchon-Chorwon highway in the west. UN infantrymen slogged nearly two miles through the mud, narrowing the 13-mile gap between Allied-held Yonchon and the prize Communist city of Chorwon. By Thursday, Allied troops were straddling the two most important mountains guarding the approaches to Chorwon and Kumhwa. Sweating UN infantrymen clambered to the top of 2,700 foot Mount Kodae, four miles south of Chorwon. From this height the Allies dominated the mountain road and valley corridor up which other troops were pushing. They were in a position to pump artillery fire into battered Chorwon, 17 miles north of the 38th Parallel.
UN Defense Secretary George C. Marshall paid a surprise visit to the Korean war front on Friday, denying that the visit had anything to do with peace negotiations, as big Allied guns fought a long range artillery duel with Chinese batteries in front of Chorwon. UN forces hammered at suddenly stiffened resistance before the city, on which their whole position in Korea depended. Meanwhile, Reds were said to be rushing in reserves from Manchuria, funneling them into Pyonggang, apex of the triangle. But by week’s end, the battered Communists began retreating from the Iron Triangle, falling back toward Kumsong, about 28 miles north of the Parallel.
UN forces suffered a sharp spurt in casualties during the latest Chinese offensive. British dead in April and May were counted as more than 700, and wounded and missing at 1,100. French and Turkish casualties were expected to rise as well as a result of recent fighting. Ethiopian, Columbian and Cuban troops, en route to the battle front, had yet to see any casualties.
The US Secretary of State told Senators that other UN nations had vetoed an American plan the past November for “hot pursuit” of enemy planes across the border into Manchuria. The US had proposed only two to three minutes of air penetration but the Allied governments would not go along with it.
Sergeant Maurice Mosher, an ex-coal miner from Glen Lyon, PA, leader of a 24th Division machine gun platoon, had killed 300 Chinese Reds and wounded many others. He was already the holder of three Bronze Stars, and had been recommended for the Silver Star.
A Congressional investigating committee termed the GI training program in Pennsylvania “alarming” and said it represented “a dreary picture indeed.” The program was deemed to have been “reduced to mediocrity and scandal as a result of administrative failure on the part of our governmental agencies.”
Congress had given its final approval to a bill extending the draft law four more years and breaking ground for the nation’s first Universal Military Training program. President Truman was expected to sign the bill into law. The long-debated legislation, which passed the House by a strongly bipartisan 339 votes to 41, lowered the minimum draft age from 19 to 18-1/2 years, extended the period of service to 24 months, reduced physical and mental standards for inductees, and put a 5 million ceiling on the overall strength of the armed forces until 31 July 1954.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Indiana Evening Gazette)