The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Times, Gettysburg PA

Korean War Weekly Front Pages

9 November 1952 – 15 November 1952

The Times, Gettysburg PA

Brutal battles in the hills.

*****

Allied infantrymen in 11 hours of savage close-quarter fighting drove 1,300 North Korean Reds off two strategic hills on Korea’s eastern front. The Reds attacked in waves Sunday night behind a curtain of 4,000 rounds of artillery and mortar fire. They captured the crest of Anchor Hill at 0600 and smashed to the top of another hill to the south at 0625. The UN troops counterattacked almost immediately; they stormed back to the top of the second hill in just 15 minutes. Anchor’s crest was secured at 0930.

Midweek, South Korean infantrymen stormed back to recapture three strategic heights on Sniper ridge and Triangle Hill in long, bloody battles. But they failed to throw Chinese Communists off The Yoke, a maze of tunnels and caves at the northern end of Sniper which had been the key to firm control of the important ridge. Republic of Korea troops had regained all the ground they lost to furious Red artillery support assaults Tuesday night. On Thursday, it was reported that US war planes had poured flaming jelly gasoline, bombs, and machine gun fire on entrenched Chinese Reds in the Sniper Ridge - Triangle Hill area on Korea’s bleak central front. Victorious South Korean infantrymen meanwhile mopped up Red remnants around Pinpoint Hill, dominant height on blood-soaked Sniper. The ROK troops recaptured Pinpoint Wednesday in a heroic artillery-supported charge. Allied mortar and tank fire chopped up three small Red infantry probes against Allied positions at Jackson Heights, south of Iron Horse Mountains on the central front. Elsewhere along the 155-mile battle line, action was confined to patrol skirmishes.

The battle for Pinpoint Hill continued the next day as counterattacking South Koreans and die-hard Chinese communists locked in confused battle as darkness and a blinding ground fog fell on the blood-soaked hill. It was the first time in the month-long desperate battle for the Kumhwa ridges that South Korean shock troops had failed to carry their objective in a daylight attack. After 13 hours of steady fighting, ROK troops were partway up the scarred and muddy slopes but still short of Pinpoint’s crest. Screaming Chinese infantrymen took the hill early in the day in fanatical human wave attacks and swept into ROK entrenchments. Hand-to-hand fighting raged in foxholes. The valiant South Koreans counterattacked four hours later. The next day the South Koreans drove the Communists toward the north end of sniper Ridge after winning battered Pinpoint Hill for the 15th time in a month.

The chaplain of Gettysburg College told a Senior High School Armistice Day assembly “Peace is the most difficult of all human goals to attain. I think the reason it is so difficult to attain is that we let the walls of nationalism, economics, racial prejudices, and religious barriers stand in the way of a full and complete understanding among the peoples of the world.”

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Gettysburg Times)