The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Morning News, Danville PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
24 June – 30 June 1951
The Morning News, Danville PA
The first anniversary of the war, and talk of an armistice.
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UN forces fanned out all across the Korean front on Monday, the war’s first anniversary, looking for any signs of an expected Communist offensive. The Reds made five assaults Sunday night north of Inje, more than 75 miles northeast of Seoul. By early morning, all had been repulsed. The Reds struck in unknown numbers with heavy mortar and artillery support. Whatever the Communists might be plotting inside their new defense line was masked by stout resistance which thwarted all Allied attempts to penetrate the outposts. The Reds hurled the Allies off two key hills overlooking the old “Iron Triangle,” the central front area where enemy troops had massed for two ill-fated offensives in April and May.
On Tuesday, Red forces smashed against Allied lines northeast of Kumhwa in central Korea, near the southeast base of the Iron Triangle, penetrating UN positions, but were pushed back shortly after. All across 100 miles of front, Allied patrols hit stiff Red resistance, and in most cases were forced to withdraw after brief fights. The Reds showed determination to hold their positions and keep the Allies away from their new defensive line, just north of the 38th Parallel. They made heavy use of small arms, automatic weapons, artillery and mortars.
The Chinese Communists endorsed a Soviet proposal for a cease-fire in Korea and threatened the US with total defeat if she did not accept. They also implied, without directly stating, that they still wanted terms favorable to Red China. The Red position was given in a violent editorial diatribe against the United States, published by the Peiping [Beijing] People Daily and by the Peiping radio. President Truman in turn pledged American support for a “real settlement” of the Korean war, and called upon the “absolute tyrants” of the Kremlin to avoid further attacks upon the free nations lest “you be confronted by a war you cannot possibly win.” The Korean ambassador to the US said that South Korea would reject any cease-fire that did not provide for the complete reunification of the Korean peninsula. The Secretary-General of the UN said he was convinced the Russian proposal was sincere, and on 27 June diplomats of 16 UN countries fighting in Korea formally declared their readiness to end the war under terms designed to bring about “genuine and enduring peace” in Korea. Three days later the Supreme UN Commander, General Ridgway, called on the Communist commander in Korea to name a representative to attend an armistice conference. He proposed that the meeting, which would end more than a year of bloody conflict, be held on a Danish hospital ship, the Jutlandia, in the harbor at Wonsan. Thus Ridgway had checked squarely to the Communists the next move to halt the war.
Late in the week the Communists made strong probing attacks on the central front, but were hurled back. Allied patrols stabbing at suspected Red buildup areas were showered with mortar and automatic weapon fire amid bitter fighting. Fifth Air Force pilots reported sighting heavy southbound vehicular traffic on the main roads south of Wonsan and Yangdok on the east coast. They also reported enemy vehicles moving on the supply routes between Sinanju, in northwest Korea, and Pyongyang. Frontline officers expected a Red attack in the western sector by the second week in July. Allied forces checked small but furious Red attacks in central Korea but a lull settled along most of the front as rumors of a cease-fire spread. Still, on Saturday, Allied artillery smashed attacks by two Communist companies in central Korea, northeast of Kumhwa, hours before an official bid for an armistice.
The US Senate’s 42-day inquiry into the firing of General Douglas MacArthur ended with a former top US air chief declaring that the US had made a mistake in failing to bomb Red Chinese bases in Manchuria. Major General Emmett O’Donnell, former head of the Far East bombing command, said that the UN was “paying for that mistake now.” Winding up some 2 million words of testimony by 13 witnesses, O’Donnell threw out a warning to Soviet Russia that American bombers were ready to deliver “the most horribly destructive blow the world has ever seen” if Russia provoked war. He also claimed that he could’ve taken his bombers and destroyed North Korea within three months, without a single American soldier landing there.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Danville Morning News)