The War in Korea
By PETER FLEMING IN modern war you very seldom launch an attack unless and until you outnumber your enemy on the front or sector with which you are concerned. There have, of course, been exceptions to this rule, whose importance, underlined by the invention of automatic weapons, has tended to increase in direct China also has a large population, and .her military leaders have learnt much of what they know about modern war from the Russians. In their latest offensive they relied once more on the " human sea " technique, and it gained for them the limited successes which such tactics, if carried out with determination, must always gain ; for however good the defenders' weapons and however well they use them, there comes a saturation-point beyond which they cannot en- gage all the targets that they ,need to engage, and at night. of course, they cannot seriously interfere with penetration round the flanks of the locali- ties on which their defence is concentrated. It was inevit- able that, once the Chinese had mounted an attack of this nature, the United Nations would have to give ground before it ; as they did.
But there is not really much future in a human sea composed entirely of infantry with artillery support. especially if the infantry are not motorised. Such an attack can penetrate or overrun positions and push back the whole front ; but it loses momentum in the process, and may in the end achieve very little if it is not backed up by the power to exploit=swiftly and in depth—the ground gained and the confusion caused. The main source of this power nowadays is armour, which the Russian offensives against the Germans never lacked, but of which the Chinese appear to be almost wholly destitute. (At one point they used cavalry to exploit success, which was better than nothing, but not good enough.) So it looks at the moment as if their main effort has spent itself, and though—particularly on the central front and in the east—they may gain more ground and cause more anxious-moments, their current offensive seems doomed to prove indecisive and extremely costly. Some—perhaps a great deal—of the credit for this belongs to the British element in the 8th Army. Both the 27th Common- wealth and the 29th Brigades bore a heavy share of the fighting.
Both appear to have had what is probably the common ex- perience in Korea of being allotted an impossibly wide front to defend ; both fought with the utmost staunchness, and the 29th Brigade in par- ticular suffered cruel losses.
The progress made by a human sea will always depend largely on the quality of the resistance offered to its leading waves when they are at their most intimidating, for this is also the moment when they are most vulnerable ; and the gallant tenacity of the British troops in the face of over- whelming odds undoubtedly made a big difference in this battle.
The first thing in war is to decide what your object is ; and operations are very seldom successful either if they have the wrong object or if nobody concerned in them is quite cer- tain what the object is. In Korea we appear to have the unusual spectacle of two armies fighting like mad with- out either of them quite know- ing what it is trying to achieve.
Theoretically, I suppose, the object of the Chinese and the North Koreans is to drive the 8th Army all the way back down the peninsula and push it into the sea ; but the attain- ment of this aim must have long been accepted by the Communist high command as an impossibility. For what other object,. then, are they fighting ? Are they merely creating a. diversion—serving the Kremlin's st r a tegic interests by containing large Imperialist forces in a remote and unrewarding part of the world ? If that is the case (which seems to me extremely improbable), why need they fight so hard ? Or are they fighting to ensure the security of the Manchurian frontier ? This is not a war-aim which is calculated to make a very strong appeal to the North Koreans, and the Chinese could attain it , far more ,expeditiously and far less expensively by negotiatoSn. What do they think they are doing? Considera. lions of " face " alone are hardly important enough to commit the Chinese indefinitely to a cbstly and. unsuccessful adventure. It would be scarcely less interesting to know what General Ridgway's intentions are. At various phases of the campaign circumstances have imposed on the 8th Army the limited objec- tive of self-preservation ; and at the time of the Inchon landings the United Nations forces had at least a chance of totally destroy- ing the military machine which opposed them. But now what are they trying to achieve? On the map of North Korea there is no objective or group of objectives whose capture would make further resistance by the enemy impossible. Nobody sees any future in sitting on the 38th Parallel, and only an advance to the Yalu (which, again, does not appear to be contemplated or indeed to be militarily possible at present) offers a theoretical solution of how to put an end to the campaign.
Sea-power generally wins wars in the long run, and it may be that some repetition of the amphibious coup de main at Inchon will be tried on the east coast. That would at least represent one possible escape from the strategical impasse which both sides seem to be on the point of reaching. Fighting on two fronts, the 8th Army and the 5th Air Force should be able to engage on something more hopeful than the war of attrition to which the former seems at present to be committed. It may take us a long time to win the war in Korea, but it is hardly too soon for those responsible to decide how it is to be won.
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