The Korean War, 70 years Ago, The Republican, Kane PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
25 March – 31 March 1951
The Republican, Kane PA
Crossing the 38th Parallel.
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American tanks and infantrymen drove the last large body of Communist troops out of South Korea, but there were indications the Reds were preparing to make a stand along the 38th Parallel. The Chinese 26th Army and remnants of the North Korean 1st Corps, totaling more than 30,000 men, fled toward the parallel rather than be trapped by the east-west junction of Allied troops above Uijongbu. The advance put the American 8th Army within 10 miles of the old North Korean frontier all along the western half of the 140-mile front. There would still be no crossing in force, however. General MacArthur said the Army would cross the parallel “if and when its security makes it tactically advisable.” On Tuesday, South Korean troops on the east coast drove into North Korea in force. They had reached three miles north of the parallel, traveling along the same route they followed the previous summer all the way to Chosin. This time they were expected to advance much more cautiously to protect their flank, and there was no expectation that they would go more than a few miles into the North.
Midweek American troops waged a battle of annihilation against Chinese rear guards north of Seoul. An 8th Army communique reported that American troops ran into heavy enemy resistance northeast of Uijongbu in a fighting advance up one of the main highways from Seoul to Pyongyang. The Yanks blasted the Reds from their foxholes and other defenses only a few miles south of the 38th Parallel with massed artillery and tank fire and bayonet charges. In the east, five North Korean towns had been overrun by the South Koreans as they drove more than six miles across the frontier.
A B-29 Superfortress carried the war to China’s doorstep, bombing the half-mile railway bridge across the Yalu River border between northwest Korea and Manchuria. It was the first raid in recent months on the main bridge over which Chinese reinforcements and supplies entered Korea. Sixteen other B-29s blasted airfields around Pyongyang, and eight more hit the enemy’s east coast port of Hamhung. The B-29s together dropped 210 tons of explosives on three target areas. The next day four more bridges across the Yalu were hit, and one Soviet-built MIG-15 jet was downed by bomber escorts. Sixteen US Sabre jets also tangled with MIG-15s over northwest Korea with no known damage to either side. At sea, Allied warships carried on their non-stop bombardment of the Communist east coast port of Wonsan. Once a thriving town of 35,000, it had been turned into a “city of death” with only “suicide groups” living in caves to repel any Allied invasion.
At the end of the week, at least two American tank columns plunged across the 38th Parallel into the Communist North. Elements of two US divisions carried the war back to the enemy homeland in the same area in which Red China’s New Year offensive smashed Allied lines on the parallel exactly three months ago. Both spearheads returned to stronger positions short of the border overnight. They reported scattered opposition to their thrusts, and one task force had to fight its way out of an enemy ambush on the return trip. They were four days behind their South Korean allies, who had lunged up the east coast and crossed the border in force on Tuesday.
The American defense secretary spoke out against what he termed an astonishing shift in sentiment against a defense buildup. He said an upcoming vote on the draft Universal Military Training (UMT) bill would test whether the US could stand hitched for a long-term defense program. Congressional sniping at the bill had defense officials worried.
The UN announced that its forces in Korea had suffered a total of 228,941 casualties, 57,120 of them Americans. The report covered the forces of 15 nations fighting the Chinese and North Korean Communists under General Douglas MacArthur. The Pentagon estimated that the Communist forces had suffered 760,300 casualties.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Kane Republican)