The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Evening Herald, Shenandoah (Pottsville) PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
18 November – 24 November 1951
The Evening Herald, Shenandoah (Pottsville) PA
Thanksgiving. Would there be a truce by Christmas?
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A UN division captured another hill Monday on the third day of an offensive southeast of Kumsong on the mountainous Korean central front. UN troops struck north against light to moderate enemy resistance after beating off three successive Communist counterattacks ranging in strength from a company to a battalion. The advance put the Allies nearly four miles north of the points where they had crossed the Pukhan river in assault boats on a nine mile front Saturday. The drive threatened to flank Kumsong, rubbled former Communist headquarters town 29 miles north of the 38th Parallel. Although the city was abandoned by the Reds, they still dominated part of it from outlying hills.
Hundreds of shouting Chinese Reds threw United Nations forces off a hill on the western front on Tuesday, but the Allies retook it in a counterattack. The Reds struck west of Yonchon in battalion strength, some 800 to 1,000 men, a half hour after midnight, after suffering heavy casualties in a futile attempt to dent the Allied line a few hours earlier. This time, the Chinese reached the top of the hill, but the Allies stormed back and seized it again. On the east-central front the same day UN forces drove ahead nearly a half mile in high ground northwest of Punchbowl Valley.
The Communists promised Monday to give their answer Wednesday to a UN proposal designed to end the Korean War by Christmas. At the Communist delegation’s request, the joint armistice subcommittee had adjourned until 1100 Wednesday to await the Red reply. The Communists already had indicated they may accept the proposal, but they first wished to contact higher authorities in Pyongyang, Peiping and perhaps Moscow. The UN proposal would grant the Communist demand that the present battleline become the ceasefire line, provided an agreement was reached within 30 days on the rest of the armistice terms, including an exchange of war prisoners. On Wednesday, the Reds agreed in principle to the UN proposal. Several days of technical arguments were expected ahead for the negotiators, and it was feared that Allied hopes for a truce by Christmas may not be realized, although both sides agreed that was the goal. They had set the stage for a 30-day race against time by settling their four-month dispute over the location of the ceasefire line. On Saturday, negotiators from both sides had agreed on half of the line, but their failure to complete it set back the “truce by Christmas” program at least 24 hours.
General Ridgway, Supreme Allied Commander, conceded that 6,000 or more US troops may have been the victims of Chinese atrocities in Korea, but said his command had proof of only 365 such deaths. Thus far 10,836 US troops were missing in action, and it was believed that approximately 6,000 of the missing had been murdered by the enemy. South Korean president Syngman Rhee charged that the Communists had also begun systematically wiping out millions of pro-Allied South Koreans. He confirmed an 8th Army war crimes report that the Reds already had slain 7,000 South Korean troops and 250,000 South Korean civilians and added that they were carrying on a campaign of murder of an extent never before seen in the history of civilized man.
The armed services expected to call up more reservists to help replace those it released, a United Press survey showed. The great callup of reserves after the outbreak of the Korean War had yanked 740,000 Americans back into uniform in the first 15 months, the services revealed. Now some reservists who were called back were ending their tours of duty.
The US atomic bomb had scored a notable victory in Korea without ever leaving this country. It had forced the Reds to abandon the massed manpower tactics with which they came close to overwhelming outnumbered United Nations forces. That, some observers believed, was the real significance of a recent remark by the air Chief of Staff. He stated that there were no targets in Korea these days which would warrant use of the kind of atomic weapons now in the US arsenal. In other words, without ever being hit by an A-bomb, the Reds had learned lesson No. 1 of atomic warfare: dispersal. That was smart of the Reds, but was also a big boon to the comparatively small UN forces opposing the military might of Communist China.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Shenandoah/Pottsville Evening Herald)