The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Evening Sentinel, Carlisle PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
30 September – 6 October 1951
The Evening Sentinel, Carlisle PA
Another Allied offensive, and the truce talks are still stalled.
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The United Nations command told the Communists to stop bluffing and make their choice between an “honorable armistice” an all-out war. The UN command again sounded the warning while waiting for a Communist reply to its proposal to shift the suspended truce talks from Kaesong to Songhyon, eight miles to the southeast, in the middle of the western front’s “no man’s land.” Supreme UN commander Ridgway made the proposal in a formal note to North Korean premier Kim Il Sung. “The Communists must realize that the time for bluffing is over,” he said in a reflection on the note. Unless the Reds choose to resume the cease-fire conference on mutually satisfactory terms, he note said, they face the prospect of a terrible winter and more military reverses. As of Tuesday, a fifth day had passed without a Communist reply to Ridgway’s proposal.
General Omar Bradley said that the United Nations had enough men in Korea to stop any possible Communist attack. Bradley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the comment at a Korean airport as he prepared to fly back to Tokyo after a two day tour of the front. He also told newsmen earlier in the day that he believed the UN could win the Korean War on the battlefield if truce talks collapse. Meanwhile, in China, the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese military issued an order of the day to China’s armed forces accusing the US of “wrecking and obstructing” the Korean truce talks and preparing for a new war. He said that war “seriously threatens the security of our motherland.”
US Eighth Army headquarters reported UN forces hurled back the Communists in the air and on the ground as generals Bradley and Ridgway toured the Korean front. American jets shot down their 114th Red jet fighter of the war and damaged three others in a 67-plane dogfight high over northwest Korea. The rest of the enemy formation fled north into Manchuria. South Korean ground forces at the same time captured the third crest of a hill range west of Heartbreak Ridge on the east central front, and sent the remnants of a North Korean battalion fleeing north. The South Koreans charged up the hill with fixed bayonets and routed the northerners after a vicious hand-to-hand battle. Other South Korean troops farther east captured a hill northwest of Punchbowl Valley, against light to moderate enemy resistance.
On Wednesday the Reds battled attacking United Nations forces to a standstill along most of the 115-mile Korean front and rushed their biggest offensive build up since the past spring. In the air, however, 12 US Shooting Stars – America’s slowest jets – caught a dozen crack Communist jet fighters over North Korea, probably shooting down two of them and damaging another. Army censors in Tokyo announced a temporary partial blackout on news from Korea. They said they did not know the reason for the blackout but it could only mean that some military event was in progress and details were being held up for security reasons.
On Thursday the event was revealed – five tank-led UN divisions smashed ahead up to four miles from their jumping off positions in the biggest Allied offensive since the Korean truce talks began. Canadian troops of the new British Commonwealth Division paced the advance on the second day of the offensive, flaming along a 40-mile front stretching across the western half of Korea. Elsewhere along the front, however, fanatical Communists put up bitter resistance, and in two cases forced slight UN withdrawals. The Reds fought to the death from bunkers and deep entrenchments, some of them dug into the sheer sides of rocky cliffs on the mountainous front. The Chinese and North Koreans were breaking in the main UN assault zone, abandoning their fortified “Winter Line” and reeling northward. “The Chinese broke and ran this morning,” said one Allied general.
All Army enlisted men who had been involuntarily recalled to duty would be civilians again by Christmas, but the first childless married draftees soon will be on the way to replace them.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Carlisle Evening Sentinel)