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View Full Version : Welcome to the Western Front



thedrifter
12-16-02, 06:56 AM
http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/WesternFrontBattle.jpg

line, stood by to support
machine-gunners of 1st Marines who laid fires on enemy forces.
Photo By TSgt Jack A. Slockbower


By Maj Allan C. Bevilacqua, USMC (Ret)


At 0400 on 25 March 1952, Major General John T. Selden, USMC, Commanding General, First Marine Division, assumed responsibility for carrying out the division's assigned mission: "to organize, occupy and actively defend its sector of Line Jamestown." It would have been understandable had MajGen Selden shaken his head in dismay. Facing him was a task never before thrust upon the commander of a Marine division—to actively defend a front that stretched nearly 35 miles, six times the normal frontage assigned to a division. It was the stuff of which nightmares are made.


Those nightmares began on the division's far left with the Kimpo Peninsula, the long tongue of land bounded by the Yellow Sea and the large island of Kanghwa-do on the west and by the Han River on the north and east. Sticking out like a hitchhiker's thumb, the peninsula was home to a number of critical installations, the most important of which were Kimpo Airfield, the port of Inchon and the sprawling Eighth Army logistics installation known as Ascom (Army Support Command) City.


Beyond these considerations the Kimpo Peninsula posed a serious threat to the 1stMarDiv's left flank. A successful Chinese penetration into the peninsula would turn that flank and with it the left flank of the entire Eighth Army, opening the door to the South Korean capital of Seoul. While the two Chinese armies opposite the 1stMarDiv's sector, the 63d and 65th, had shown no interest in the Kimpo Peninsula, the peninsula's tactical importance was too great for MajGen Selden to ignore. The peninsula would have to be defended.


Unfortunately, the fact that the Kimpo Peninsula would have to be defended did not answer the question of how. To solve that thorny problem, MajGen Selden had to be inventive. In order to provide for the defense of the peninsula, the Kimpo Provisional Regiment was formed around the nucleus of the 5th Korean Marine Corps (KMC) Battalion, the 1st Armored Amphibian Bn, the 13th Republic of Korea (ROK) Security Bn and one battalion of the 1stMarDiv's reserve regiment. In one sense it was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, since the subtraction of one battalion from the division's reserve regiment would detract from the reserve's ability to reinforce or counterattack if needed. The problem of the Kimpo Peninsula quickly demonstrated that MajGen Selden's assets would be thinly stretched.


What would stretch those assets even further was the incredibly long front line that trended off to the east for miles until it reached its junction with the solid rock of the British Commonwealth Division at the Samichon Gang (River). Normal procedure called for the manning of a strong main line of resistance (MLR), with units linked together side by side, and an outpost line of resistance (OPLR) sited on key terrain features forward of that. No matter how MajGen Selden and his Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 (Operations), Lieutenant Colonel Gordon D. Gayle, juggled the figures they always came out the same. There was too much ground to hold and too few Marines to hold it. The job was going to require a constant reworking and revising that would last for the remainder of the Korean War.


Something that would defy any degree of reworking or revising was the matter of the Panmunjom Corridor. Located squarely in the middle of the 1stMarDiv's sector, the corridor led to the village of Panmunjom, the site of the so-called "truce talks," in between friendly and enemy lines. Both the corridor and Panmunjom itself were official no-fire zones that by order of the I Corps commander, Lieutenant General John W. O'Daniel, USA, "could not be fired into, out of, or over." The Panmunjom Corridor and the tactical limitations it imposed would be a constant thorn in the 1stMarDiv's side.


A more painful form of thorn didn't take long to make its presence known at the level where war becomes personal—the division's rifle companies. The sector the division had inherited was littered with mines. The ROK First Division that had previously held the sector had made liberal use of mines, but had been less than meticulous in recording or marking their locations.


Mines serve a useful military purpose. Coupled with fire and observation, mines deny the enemy the use of an area. They impede his progress. They protect friendly areas from attack. The enemy must redirect his movement to avoid minefields or slow his march in order to remove them, leaving himself open to friendly counteraction.


To the man on the receiving end, though, mines are nasty things. They can turn a man's foot into strawberry jam, shred his legs or blow him end over end. Rigged with a tripwire, a mine can riddle a man with fragments from head to foot. Bounding mines, such as the "Bouncing Betty," can detonate at waist height, inflicting damage that no amount of medical care can overcome.


Corporal Charlie Houchin, a Fifth Marine Regiment squad leader, remembered one Marine's encounter with a Bouncing Betty in the early days on the Western Front. "The poor guy was practically cut in half. From the chest up and from the hips down he was recognizable. Everything in between was just a mangled mess of meat and blood and guts. He lived for maybe a minute after we got to him. … We had to bring him out in two pieces. I never went out on patrol afterwards without thinking about that. When I finally left Korea I wasn't the least damn bit sorry to go." In the 1stMarDiv's first weeks on the Jamestown Line, mines caused 50 percent of the division's casualties.


Mines or no mines the division would carry out its order to "actively" defend its sector of the Jamestown Line. It was not a matter of blindly following orders. Much more than that, it was sound military sense. MajGen Selden had no intention of permitting his division to sit passively in trenches and bunkers while the Chinese roamed the landscape unhindered. Nothing good could come of that.


Immediately upon occupying their positions, the division's forward regiments commenced an aggressive program of combat patrols, mostly at night, with the objective of keeping the Chinese off balance. The Chinese, who had been unnaturally passive while the division moved into position, weren't long in reacting. As March gave way to April, clashes between friendly and enemy patrols out in the disputed ground became the nightly norm. The sector that had been one of the most somnolent in Korea was fast becoming very "active" indeed.


It soon became evident from their increased probing and patrolling that the Chinese were feeling the Marines out. To the Marines on the outposts and along the MLR, falling back on their fractured Japanese, it was a case of testo-testo. The Chinese were seeking to find out what these American Marines were made of. From the Chinese standpoint it was a logical undertaking. The Chinese soldiers who could have testified to the fighting qualities of the 1stMarDiv, those who had opposed the division during the Chosin Reservoir campaign and on the Eastern Front, for the most part were dead. Very few of them were left to testify to much of anything.



Chinese activity increased sharply during the first week of April, beginning with a strong ground attack against the KMC regiment when a Chinese battalion, supported by a 30-minute artillery preparation, slammed into the South Korean lines. An early penetration was sealed off, and the attack was thrown back. The attack set the stage for an almost nightly series of such forays against the KMC regiment and the 1st and 5th Marines. The Marines struck back viciously, often meeting the attackers forward of the OPLR before they could deploy for attack.

It was during the course of one such attack on the night of 8-9 April that Private First Class Robert E. Beatty, a rifleman serving with "Item" Company, 3d Bn, 5th Marines, distinguished himself. Seeing his platoon leader fall mortally wounded, PFC Beatty, despite suffering painful wounds himself, fought forward into the teeth of the enemy fire to recover the fallen officer's body.


http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/apr02WesternFront.htm


Sempers,

Roger