The War in Korea
By PETER FLEMING
WITHOUT (apparently) very much help from either artillery or armour, large forces of Chinese infantry have converted the United Nations' crudely publicised advance into a retreat. On these occasions there is always much confusion, than which nothing is more calculated to make bad news sound even worse than it is ; and sometimes, when things have sorted themselves out and that familiar character on every battlefield, the Sole Survivor, has fallen into perspective as a prudent individual who withdrew from the proceedings at an early stage, the situation seems less desperate than it did at first. But, even when this process has been allowed for as a possibility, things look bad in North Korea. The rout of several South Korean formations has let the Chinese through in the centre of the line, and they are in a position—if they can exploit it with sufficient vigour—to turn the flanks of both halves of the long front which they have breached. What General MacArthur needs at, this juncture is a strong and mobile reserve ; and upon his ability to muster one an.extremely discouraging light is thrown by reports that the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade, who are overdue for a rest anyhow, have been moved into the forward areas on foot, no replacements being available for their worn-out vehicles. The ambition to repatriate his troops in time for Christmas, though humane, is not really a valid excuse for a com- mander to start a battle before all his •field forces are equipped to take part in it.
The shortage of reserves is no doubt partly explained by the fact that fairly considerable United Nations forces are tied down by internal security duties in both North and South Korea. By merely acting as a diversion the guerrillas have already paid a dividend, and if things continue to go badly they may well emerge in a less subsidiary role. Guerrillas hardly ever achieve anything decisive * As Sir Henry Dale himself did for five years.—Ed., Spect.
unless they are actint in concert with main forces ; and this, unfor- tunately, is just what the more northerly concentrations are, or may shortly be, in a position to do. Russian broadcasters have claimed that they are well-organised, and the brutal measures .of " pacifica- tion" which nobody seems to have been able to restrain the South Korean authorities from taking on both sides of the 38th Parallel have done nothing to lessen the guerrillas' will to resist.
What is not, at this stage, easy to understand is the apparent ease with which the Chinese infantry have so far outfought their opponents almost all along the front. It is true that they outnumber the United Nations troops ; but then the Chinese always outnumber their enemies, on whom, however, they have not inflicted defeat for a very long time indeed. They are, of course, better acclimatised to the cold, and a great deal better at moving through rough country, than any of their adversaries except perhaps the South Koreans ; but they have no air-support, and their armour, though tanks have appeared in the Changjin Reservoir area, seems to have played no part in their main break-through. It must be conceded that they have manoeuvred skilfully and fought hard ; and it may be suspected that their opponents have not yet, except locally, done either.
Unreality, a dangerous and subversive element in all human affairs, seldom survives very long in war (though it had an unusually long lease of life in 1939-40). It seems (to me, at any rate) very doubtful whether the logic of events can much longer be restrained or distorted so that the Chinese bases in Manchuria continue to enjoy immunity from bombing. The more successful the Chinese are in Korea, the more clamant will become the need to hit them where, in the long run, it will hurt most. It looks as if only some major détente on an international level can prevent the extension of the air war to Chinese territory, with results disastrous to China and potentially dangerous to what is euphemistically known as world peace.
In South Korea it was sea-power which, by making possible the landings at Inchon, converted a possible defeat into certain victory overnight ; but it is depressingly difficult to see how the deployment of naval superiority can affect the present situation in North Korea. The climate has virtually put the carriers into cold storage for several months ; and there is no way in which the other units in the United Nations fleet can assist the hard-pressed land forces.
In a much earlier article I quoted the dictum of a Chinese general to the effect that " An army is like a fish ; the people are the water in which it swims." It is perhaps worth speculating on the attitude of the North Korean population to their would-be saviours from across the Yalu. In Upper Burma the various Chinese expeditionary forces were almost as unpopular with the inhabitants as were the Japanese ; but by all accounts the standards of conduct and disci- pline in the Communist armies are far higher than they were even in the better Nationalist divisions, and the North Koreans ought not to suffer more than the normal inconveniences involved in billet- ing and sustaining large bodies of troops. But Korea was once, long ago, under a form of Chinese suzerainty, and the time may perhaps come when the North Koreans will ask themselves—if the Chinese are still with them—whether their presence is explicable entirely in terms of ideology Lnd self-defence. But this is an hypothetical con- tingency and belongs (if anywhere) to the future.
It is almost a natural law that, when an army meets with a reverse, the intelligence staff are made scapegoats ; but it really does seem that General MacArthur's appreciation of the enemy's strength and intentions before he launched his ill-fated offensive was extra- ordinarily wide of the mark. Neither an army of 200,000 men nor the intention to use it aggressively are phenomena which spring up, like mushrooms, between a dusk and a dawn ; and the pained tone in which his somewhat turgid communiqués speak of the enemy " surreptitiously " building .up his strength (how else would he have expected him to do it ?) and " taking advantage of the freezing of all rivers " (as though this was an unfair use of an unpredictable quirk of the climate)—all this suggests that the General was caught on the wrong foot. Intelligence was a field in which, during the last war, the Americans did not excel, their capacity to assess evidence being not on a par with their industry and enterprise in collecting it ; and the United Nations' latest reverse in Korea must, like their earliest defeats, be partly ascribed to over-confidence based on a serious failure to grasp what they were up against.
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