The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Plain Speaker, Hazelton PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
2 November 1952 – 8 November 1952
The Plain Speaker, Hazelton PA
America has a new president.
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On Monday the Army issued a draft call for 48,000 men in January. It was the highest monthly call since the past January, when 59,650 men were inducted through Selective Service. The new call brought to 1,202,430 the total number drafted, or earmarked for induction, since selective service was resumed in September 1950.
The former commander of America’s World War II forces in China told a nationwide radio audience that he was speaking out about the Democratic administration’s failure to train and equip as many South Korean troops as it might have, and the rejection of help proffered by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. He said he was speaking out “because I feel that I would be derelict in my duties as a citizen were I to remain silent and leave the truth about Korea untold.”
Dug-in Allied soldiers hurled back predawn Red assaults on the Korean eastern and central fronts. North Korean Communists launched six attacks in the heartbreak Ridge sector. Each was stopped cold despite unusually heavy Red artillery and mortar fire. Chinese Reds on the central front stormed all night long at South Korean positions atop bloody Sniper Ridge. The South Koreans beat back a final assault at dawn. The US Eighth Army said Sniper and nearby Triangle Hill were quieter Tuesday than at any time since the Allies launched their central front attack on 14 October. The mercury dipped to a bone chilling 1° above zero. Bloody fighting for Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge flared on Wednesday into the heaviest action of the 23-day struggle for the Korean central front heights. South Korean troops in a predawn sneak attack stabbed within 10 yards of the crest of Triangle Hill, then were pinned down by Chinese Red hand grenades and machine gun fire. Five previous attempts to retake the heights, lost on Friday, had stalled in the same place. Other Republic of Korea troops seized one of two knobs on an off-shot ridge of Triangle, called Jane Russell Hill. Massive artillery support and fighter-bombers supported the attacks.
By Thursday the savage fighting that had raged over the frozen hills north of Kumhwa for 24 days slacked off. Battered assault troops retired to rest and regroup. The next day the biggest guns in the UN’s Korean arsenal hammered Red positions on the central front and jubilant artillerymen claimed they were winning the bloody battle of the hills. Allied officers said about half of the 200 Chinese field pieces around Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge had been destroyed or damaged. The Kumhwa valley shuddered under the impact of the all-out Allied barrage. As the big guns roared, the first snowfall of the winter sifted down from leaden skies. Infantrymen of both sides huddled in bunkers and foxholes, leaving them only for scattered patrol clashes across the dismal 155-mile front.
The United States rejected a Soviet protest against creation of a sea defense zone in Korean waters. A state department spokesman called the complaint a Red attempt “to deceive people.” A Russian note to Washington charged the United States with an illegal and aggressive new blockade in Korean waters and warned that the United States must take the “responsibility for consequences.”
On Wednesday the result of the presidential election was announced. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected, along with his vice president Richard Nixon. The general’s election smashed all voting records as he won the presidency in a sprawling landslide that left control of Congress teetering in the balance between Republicans and Democrats. Pennsylvania’s 32 electoral votes were swept into the Republican column in the biggest tide of votes in Keystone State history.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Hazelton Plain Speaker)