The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Mercury, Pottstown PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
10 June – 16 June 1951
The Mercury, Pottstown PA
On Flag Day, US policy was under attack on multiple fronts.
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The reeling Chinese army retreated from the “Iron Triangle” after the US First Corps troops secured its base – the gateway to North Korea’s heart. On Monday, Allied occupation of the triangle’s anchors – Chorwon and Kumhwa – appeared only a matter of hours. Greek, Turkish, Filipino and Thai troops achieved one of the war’s great victories late Sunday by seizing control of the area after a bloody eight-day battle. It opened the way for Allied tanks to burst into the sprawling Pyonggang valley. Red casualties were estimated at more than 40,000 since 1 June.
By week’s end, the Reds were retreating farther north along most of the front, and they chose to stand and fight only where their escape routes were threatened. The Eighth Army commander warned that he expected the Chinese Communists to loose a third big spring offensive. He gave no hint of when the blow might fall, but as he spoke enemy vehicles rumbled southward from the Manchurian border toward the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. An estimated 500 vehicles were brought under aerial attack. The current Allied push, now threatening the new Red base at Kumsong, 29 miles north of the 38th Parallel, had recovered all the ground lost to the last enemy offensive.
The US Secretary of State George C. Marshall said that he did not expect any Chinese peace move anytime soon. “They have got themselves in a difficult situation,” he said. “But they have the problem of ‘face,’ the importance of which is hard for us to understand.”
Lieutenant General Albert Wedemeyer, the US commander in China during WWII, in testimony before the US Senate in the matter of General MacArthur’s dismissal, said he was not confident in Red China’s sincerity in negotiating agreements. He denounced the Korean War as a “bottomless pit” for young American men and called for “drawing a line” against Soviet Russia. He was in favor of the US throwing a ring of air bases around the Russian heartland so American planes could deliver pulverizing blows to the Soviets if war came.
On Thursday, General MacArthur bitterly accused US policy makers of appeasement in Korea and of a “moral weakness” by talking of a peace settlement. He told an audience of some 20,000 Texans that America’s first line of defense was the Yalu river at the Manchurian border and not the Elbe river in Germany. In a speech bristling with defiance of Truman administration war policies, the five-star general called for stronger measures against the enemy in Korea to end the war “rapidly and decisively.” He advocated bombing Red China, blockading the Red-held coast, and using Chinese Nationalist troops to bring a quick end to the conflict.
Pottstown area soldier Private Donald Skean was killed in action in Korea on 28 May, his parents were informed by telegram on Wednesday. He had enlisted in 1950 when he was 17 years old, and was serving in the paratroops when he was killed. He had been in Korea for six months, virtually all of that time in combat.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Pottstown Mercury)