The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Inquirer, Phila., PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
7 June 1952 – 14 June 1952
The Inquirer, Philadelphia PA
More unrest in the Communist prison camps.
*****
Allied infantrymen won a hill on the western Korean front Saturday in one of three short but vicious skirmishes. Allied war planes continued smashing at Red supply lines. The Eighth Army reported that United Nations patrols, attacking after an artillery barrage, won a height west of Chorwon in a two hour clash in the predawn darkness, and held it against counter-thrusts.
On Sunday British infantrymen drove Communist prisoners of war back from a barbed wire fence with tear gas on Koje Island. It was the first time United Nations guards had to use tear gas since last Wednesday. Guards from the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry through six tear gas grenades into Compound 76 when POWs refused to retreat from the vicinity of engineers digging for a suspected prisoner escape tunnel. No one was reported hurt in the prison pen housing 2,700 North Korean officers and 650 noncommissioned officers. Defiant Communist prisoners dug chest-deep trenches on Monday inside three compounds as the time neared when United Nations troops would split the riot-torn prisoner of war pens into smaller units. UN officials said there was considerable activity in the “blacksmith shop” of Compound 76. Steady hammering and clinking indicated POWs were hard at work fashioning knives and crude spear tips.
The next day the Americans acted. Tough paratroopers of the “Angels from Hell” combat team emptied Compound 76 of its 6,000 Communist prisoners of war in 2½ hours of bloody fighting, burned the compound to the ground, and clapped its leaders in solitary confinement. The Reds lost an estimated 24 to 30 killed and 136 wounded. Two American soldiers were killed, one by a concussion grenade that fell short, and 13 were wounded. On Wednesday, the bodies of eight North Korean prisoners of war murdered by hard-core reds were dug up from a rubble-covered wall in Compound 77. The bodies were located shortly after 6,010 prisoners were moved out of the compound to smaller quarters without resistance. A US Army intelligence officer said he expected that more bodies would be found. The next day nearly 500 frightened anti-Communist prisoners bolted to the protection of United Nations guards as Brigadier General Haydon L. Boatner cleared another Koje Island prison compound. The “friendly” prisoners, inmates of the 4,800-man Compound 95 – said they feared they had been marked for the same brutal death by torture allotted to the anti-Reds in Compound 77, where already 15 strangled, stabbed, and beaten bodies had been recovered.
Korean truce negotiations resumed Wednesday after a three-day recess with a blunt statement from General Mark Clark that the Allies would meet whenever either side had something constructive to say – but would not indulge in useless daily propaganda forums. Clark’s statement was delivered to the Reds just before 37-minute meeting of the full truce teams at Panmunjom. They agreed to meet again on Thursday.
President Truman suggested that military men from five neutral nations be invited to visit Korea and observe United Nations treatment of Communist prisoners of war. In a letter to the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Truman endorsed and enlarged upon a suggestion made by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Philadelphia Inquirer)