General MacArthur’s “Home-by-Christmas Offensive”
Marshal Peng’s “Second Phase Offensive”
Happy Thanksgiving!
The Battle Of The Chongchon River
The Marines Arrive In Yudam-ni
General MacArthur’s “Home-by-Christmas Offensive”
From early October through about mid-November, General MacArthur’s original plan for the UN forces in North Korea seemed be something like “Go that-a-way, as fast as possible,” where “that-a-way” was north in the general direction of the Yalu River. Under this original plan, the 1st MarDiv would zip past the Chosin Reservoir and continue heading north, somewhat covering the left flank of the rest of X Corps which was also heading north along various lines, about seventy miles to the east. This was the plan in force when the Chinese launched their First Phase Offensive on October 25 and remained in force when they abruptly ended it about two weeks later.
In public, MacArthur continued to dismiss the idea that the Chinese were still resent in significant numbers in North Korea, but he had to know that they had been there in the very recent past. Since the Chinese were now “gone” it was time for the UN forces to resume their attack toward China.
General MacArthur was renowned for both his ego and his hubris. He was one of those people who could never be wrong. However, he also had a long and very successful career as a general. His Korean operations, Chromite and Tailboard, both of which had been initially viewed dubiously by others, had both worked well. His new operation was announced on Thanksgiving Day, November 23. He dubbed it the “Home-by-Christmas Offensive.” This was one of those iconic dates MacArthur loved so much. The underlying idea behind the Home-by-Christmas Operation seemed to be that MacArthur was concerned about the Eighth Army’s situation and was taking steps to strengthen it. But one must never forget that MacArthur always worked the public relations angle.
Under this offensive, General Walker’s Eighth Army would resume its advance north – toward the Yalu River and China – beginning at 10:00 AM on November 24. This in itself was not a change from existing instructions. The Eighth Army had been camped just south of the Chongchon River since early November, regrouping and repairing the damage from Onjong and Unsan. The ROK II Corps had been largely rebuilt. MacArthur had most certainly not given up on his goals of occupying all of North Korea, unifying the two Koreas, and parking his armies on the Chinese border. (In his heart, he wanted to cross the Yalu and attack China directly.) There were two major changes, though, from operation “Go That-a-way.”
First, the Eighth Army would change its tactics slightly. It would advance along a broad front, about seventy-five miles wide. The reconstituted ROK II Corps would be placed on the Eighth Army's right flank. The Eighth Army would conduct the main advance, with its I Corps to the west and its IX Corps in the center. This might not seem like much of a change, but it was. The first time they had advanced through this area, the units had advanced blitzkrieg-style; separate lines of advance up roads or across easy terrain, with little lateral connection. Some of these units advanced faster and farther than others. The Chinese had been able to exploit this separation of units and to chew some of them up at Onjong and Unsan. Maintaining an even front would make it harder for the Chinese to do this again – though not impossible. As large as the Eighth Army was, seventy-five miles of front line was a lot of territory to cover.
Secondly, under General MacArthur’s new plan, the Eighth Army was to be strengthened. During the PVA’s “First Phase Offensive” the bulk of the fighting had been in the west. Aside from Sudong-ni, X Corps had received little opposition as it began its advance up the east coast. MacArthur believed that this would be the case again — that the strongest enemy concentration would be in the west, and that the decisive battles would be fought there. To counter this, the 1st MarDiv had its mission abruptly changed.
RCT-5 and RCT-7 would still leave the Chosin Reservoir, but instead of heading north along the MSR, they would now go west, toward the Eighth Army. Specifically, they would depart Yudam-ni on November 27, and move west over a very questionable road. Their goal would be little village named Mupyong-ni, about fifty miles west of Yudam-ni.
Mupyong-ni was considered to be strategically important. It was on the Chongchon River and sat astride a road which went from Pyongyang all the way to the Chinese border, which was the road the PVA used to supply its forces in western North Korea. The Marines would physically join with the Eighth Army, which presumably would also have reached Mupyong-ni from the southwest by the time the 1st MarDiv got there. Once the two forces were joined, they would continue north. The 1st MarDiv would serve as a right flank for the Eighth Army, guarding against further Chinese attacks from the east. Implicit is MacArthur’s assumption that ROK II Corps wouldn't be up to this task. (They wouldn’t.)
A lot of people thought that this sideways march to the west was a terrible idea. One of these people was David Halberstam.
The timing of the Tenth Corps offensive in the east was important. It began on November 27, two days after the massive Chinese assault against the Eighth Army. The Marines had heard some of the early reports, but did not know the scope of the disaster. The essential plan in the east was nonetheless bizarre – the work, said Bill McCaffrey, of madmen. [General McCaffrey was at that time the commander of the 31st Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, X Corps.] The Marines in X Corps were to drive west to Mupyong-ni, some perhaps forty or fifty miles away, but each mile likely to be impassable, on roads which might or might not exist. Mupyong-ni was a village high up on the Chongchon, and thus in the Eighth Army sector; getting there would allegedly link them up with Walker’s men. This way they would theoretically encircle any Chinese troops in the area and cut off their escape, and, in the minds of the Dai Ichi architects, cut off all Chinese supply lines as well. [“Dai Ichi” refers to the Dai Ichi Seimei Building in Tokyo, in which General MacArthur had his headquarters as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the allied occupation of Japan following WW2.]
Given the thinness of the American forces, and the absolute harshness of the terrain, some mountains reaching seven thousand feet, and the cruelty of the weather, often twenty degrees below, it was pure insanity. The people in the Dai Ichi simply did not understand that those being cut off would be the UN forces themselves, completely isolated in the most unreachable place in the country, that in the unlikely event that the Marines with all their vehicles actually tried to make it through to Mupyong-ni on what would turn out to be an ox trail really, by then sure to be ice-covered, over mountainous peaks, they would be the perfect target for the Chinese. But for MacArthur this linkup of X Corps and the Eighth Arny was a symbol for victory, the crowning moment of a career-crowning campaign, proof that he had conquered the country and the enemy. It mattered nothing to him that even if the Marines managed to get through to Mupyong-ni, it would have no military value, because they would barely control the land they stood on. No one could talk him out of it.
“The plans bore no resemblance to the country. In those days it was like complete insanity in the command,” Bill McCaffrey said years later. “From the time we headed for the Yalu it was like being in the nut house with the nuts in charge. You could only understand the totality of the madness if you were up there in the north after the Chinese had entered in full force, and we were being hit and hit again by these immense numbers of troops. And what were getting from Tokyo was madness – absolute madness. The only real question was whether we could get any of our people out of there, and yet the orders were still to go forward.” MacArthur, after Inchon, he added bluntly, “was nutty as a fruitcake.”
The lead regiment was supposed to be Ray Murray’s 5th Marines, already too isolated for their own good. Of the projected attack west, Murray later said, “It was unbelievable. The more you think about it, the more unreal it becomes. Well, anyhow, those were the orders, and that’s what we started to do.” It was, as Almond’s own chief of staff, Nick Ruffner, put it, “an insane plan.” It ranked, Clay Blair wrote, “as the most ill-advised and unfortunate operation of the Korean War.”
One obvious problem with MacArthur’ plan was that RCT-5 wasn’t even in Yudam-ni. They were nearly thirty road miles away, at the inlet, on the northeastern side of the reservoir. RCT-5 and all its equipment, including its allotment of artillery from the 11th Marines, would be have to be moved to Yudam-ni first. MacArthur didn’t issue his orders until November 23. RCT-5 just made it; it finished arriving on November 26. The next day was operation “Home-by-Christmas’s” D-Day.
This created another problem. Under the original orders, two of the three RCTs which comprised the 1st MarDiv were to serve as the left flank of US X Corps. In this position they would guard the entire X Corps from Chinese attacks from the west as they all continued northward. Then MacArthur pulled RCT-7 from its flanking assignment and sent it to Yudam-ni. This left just RCT-5 as a flanking unit. Now it, too, had been diverted to Yudam-ni. X Corps now had a completely unguarded left flank.
No commander worth his salt advances his army through enemy territory without guarding its flanks. This was the genesis of RCT-31, which was very hastily organized and moved to RCT-5’s former positions on the inlet. At full strength, RCT-31 was the equivalent of an undersized regiment. So hastily was RCT-31 slapped together, one of its three battalions and some artillery never made it to the inlet in time, as we will see below. The 3,300 troops who did make it there were savagely attacked and suffered a casualty rate (killed, wounded, captured, missing) of about 90% before they could move an inch.
A third, and biggest, problem was simply this – no one had any idea at all how many Chinese there were in the mountains around Chosin or north of the Chongchon or where they were located. As we have seen, General MacArthur didn’t think there were very many at all, and whatever thing MacArthur thought, General Almond also thought the same thing. At the point MacArthur issued these new orders, the Chinese already had eighteen divisions north and east of the Chongchon River and twelve more all around the Chosin Reservoir - 300,000 soldiers – all waiting to begin the “Second Phase Offensive.”
Marshal Peng’s “Second Phase Offensive”
As we have seen, after the three battles in late October and early November, the Chinese “disappeared.” Of course they really hadn’t disappeared. Marshal Peng pulled his Thirteenth Army back and rebuilt it to its full strengh of eighteen divisions. In the upcoming attack he had decided to use the entire Thirteenth Army against the approaching UN Eighth Army. (During the First Phase Offensive, he had diverted a few divisions to Chosin, as we have seen.)
Peng planned to begin his attack against the Eighth Army late at night on November 25. He knew that the ROK II Corps was once again covering the right flank of the advancing force. He also knew that they were overall weaker and more prone to collapse than the other UN elements. He would meet the entire seventy-five mile line, but he would hit hardest at the ROK II Corps. If their lines crumbled, the way into the very center of the Eighth Army was wide open to him.
But now the 1st MarDiv, a significant combat force, had landed and was advancing north toward Chosin. The rest of X Corps, far to the east, was advancing as well, in a sort of patchwork fashion. They were not regarded as much of a danger by the Chinese. However, the landing of the 1st MarDiv at Wonsan had alarmed Chairman Mao. He did see the Marines as a serious threat.
Mao and his generals also figured that the logical path for the 1st MarDiv to take once they left Wonsan was through the area around the Chosin Reservoir, then north to the Yalu River. Peng had already moved his troops away from there to rejoin the main body of the Thirteenth Army, so this way was now unguarded.
Mao personally ordered General Song to take the PLA Ninth Army across the border into North Korea to destroy the advancing Marines. The Ninth Army, which consisted of twelve divisions, began crossing the border on November 11 and moving into position. On that same day, November 11, RCT-7 was just beginning to arrive in Hagaru-ri. Under Marshal Peng’s plan, the Ninth Army was to launch its attack at the same time as the Thirteenth Army — late at night on November 25. This turned out to be impossible for General Song. He was not able to get his troops into good counterattacking positions timely.
I think that one main reason for General Song’s delay was the inherent difficulty that the Chinese had in processing intelligence information quickly. The Marines had been moving slowly and carefully up until November 20, at which time their units began jumping all around the Chosin area like some crazed game of Checkers. This activity continued past Marshal Peng’s D-day. The commanders of the small units which were watching the Marines did send their information up the chain of command, but they had to rely on couriers, and those couriers had to remain hidden in the daytime, so Peng did not have current information really at any time, and his orders did not really match the evolving tactical situation.
As it turned out, the Ninth Army would not initiate its counterattack until late at night on November 27, two full days after Peng had begun his counterattack. By this time, the news of the Thirteenth Army’s attacks in the west had reached General MacArthur, and to a much lesser degree, General Smith.
These two counterattacks, the PVA Thirteenth Army against the UN Eighth Army and the PVA Ninth Army against the US 1st MarDiv, were referred to by Chinese military leaders as the “Second Phase Offensive.” Until the Second Phase offensive actually commenced, the Chinese continued to sit in the hills and watch and wait — with the occasional fight just to remind everyone they were still around.
Happy Thanksgiving
After the battles at Ongjon and Unsan things were quiet in the west for nearly three weeks. This give the UN forces a chance to rebuild their numbers and repair the damage from the battles earlier in November. That year, Thanksgiving Day was November 23.
According to Lieutenant Owen...
Tokyo [MacArthur’s headquarters] made a big public relations splash out of Thanksgiving dinner for the troops. Every soldier and Marine in Korea was to have a hot turkey-and-trimmings dinner. The cooks, bakers, and messmen worked for days to prepare the meals and put them on galley trailers to go forward to the rifle companies. It was especially important, in Tokyo’s public relations scheme, that the front-line troops be shown the bounties of Thanksgiving. The war was going so well, the rear echelon hucksters proclaimed, that General MacArthur could afford to give the men not only the traditional meal, but also the day off.
The Chinese didn’t take Thanksgiving Day off. They gave us a stiff fight on a wretched hill, a few miles short of Yudam-ni. Colonel Litzenberg told us that after we took this one, Yudam-ni would be wide open. He and Colonel Davis were with us up front when we attacked.
It took us several hours and some casualties to fight to the top of the corrugated terrain, a mean jumble of giant boulders, felled trees, snow, and slippery ice. The Chinese defended stubbornly, but we had good support from the battalion’s heavy mortars and our own sixties. As we pushed the enemy away, Able and Charlie Companies barreled up the road and went into Yudam-ni with little trouble.
While we were taking the hill above them, the rest of the battalion had eaten their Thanksgiving dinners, hot and bountiful.
We had our dinner in frigid darkness at 2300 [11PM.] Captain Wilcox ordered us to come down from the hill, one platoon at a time. We filed into a tight little valley, just off the road. Waiting for us was a truck with a galley trailer, its sides pulled up, and the cooks standing proudly amid mounds of festive food. Gunny Buckley had the lights of the company jeep illuminating the area.
Most of us had lost our mess gear, but a smiling, back-slapping mess sergeant gave us aluminum trays. The cooks in the mess line were solicitous of the grimy, tired Marines who filed before them.
“What’ll you have, Mac? Take all you want. Plenty of chow for all hands.” “You want more turkey, Mac? How about a couple of these oranges for later.”
We sat in the snow and on the big boulders with the overflowing trays. We relished the feast before us, but we had not reckoned with the cold. The temperature had sunk far below zero and our food began to freeze before we could set a fork into it. The giblet gravy congealed and became an icy coating over the chilled turkey and mashed potatoes. The cranberry sauce became sherbet. The oranges became hard as baseballs.
I found a place on the hood of the company jeep, next to the corpsman, Bill Davis. Both of us spooned beneath the icy coating in search of morsels that hadn’t yet frozen. A bullet zinged the air a few feet above our heads – a Chinese sniper somewhere up the valley wall.
“Screw him,” Bill Davis said, in response to the sniper’s attempt, and he kept digging through his frozen turkey. Somebody turned off the jeep’s lights and the sniper didn’t bother us again.
When we went back to our positions on the hill that night, we were still hungry. We knew that battalion and the rear echelons had done their best, though, to give us a Thanksgiving dinner. Afterward, when we had to fight through this place again, we found turkey carcasses strewn everywhere and we remembered it as “Turkey Hill.”
The next day, November 24, the first part of MacArthur’s “Home-by-Christmas Offensive” kicked off. The US Eighth Army and ROK II Corps began their advances into northern North Korea, while the US X Corps continued moving north along the Korean east coast. The 1st MarDiv was already moving, as we have seen – RCT-7 was now in Yudam-ni and RCT-5 had just start to pull out of its positions on the eastern side of the Chosin Reservoir to join RCT-7.
The ROK II Corps met with some Chinese resistance, but overall the US Eighth Army met with little opposition and established positions as much as twenty miles north of the Chongchon River by nightfall on November 25. And their positions were all in a relatively neat line west to east. So far so good.
The Battle Of The Chongchon River
The PVA Thirteenth Army attacked the UN Eighth Army later that night. What ensued would become known as the Battle of the Chongchon River. Elements of the PVA Thirteenth Army attacked and overran the reconstituted ROK II Corps, and then decimated the US 2nd Infantry Division on the UN forces' right flank. The UN right flank disintegrated.
Once again, the main body of the US Eighth Army was unprotected. The PVA pressed its attack right into the middle of the Eighth Army, cutting in behind the center and left flank units which were engaged in their own battles about twenty miles north. There were some desperate battles over the next two days, but in the end, the Eighth Army was shattered. In the parlance of the time, the UN troops “bugged out.” They fled in disorder, often even dropping their weapons.
Eventually some order was restored.
Beginning on November 26, the UN Command and the surviving forces began to retreat all the way back to the 38th parallel. The US Eighth Army retreated 120 miles, the longest retreat in US Army history. They lost most of their equipment during the retreat. They also lost their commander, General Walker, who was killed when his jeep crashed. They would have been trapped and annihilated altogether except for the rear-guard delaying action by the Turkish Brigade, which slowed the PVA attack for two days, at great cost to the Turks.
The Battle of the Chongchon River was very nearly a complete victory for the Chinese. All that was missing for it to been entirely complete would have been encirclement and capture of the entire Eighth Army. These two armies would meet again, in about two months, near Seoul, with much different results.
The Marines Arrive In Yudam-ni
“The village of Yudam-ni was another scattering of small, grim buildings and huts. It joined two primitive roads on the edge of the Chosin Reservoir. The reservoir was now frozen solid and we set watches along the shores to guard against a Chinese attacks across the ice.” This was how Lieutenant Owen described their arrival.
RCT-7 was the first unit to arrive at Yudam-ni, on November 24 and 25, and they took control of the village. RCT-5 was trucked in from its positions on the eastern short of the reservoir, mostly on November 26; the last elements finally coming in early the next day, November 27. As soon as RCT-5 arrived, it was immediately taken to the western side of Yudam-ni. General Smith wanted them to lead the attack to the west, which was scheduled to go off that same morning as part of the “Home-by-Christmas Offensive.” RCT-5 was fresher than RCT-7, which had been more or less continuously fighting since Sudong-ni back on November 2. Even though RCT-7 wouldn’t have the point, they would still be fighting. They would be in the hills on both sides of the road, covering RCT-5's flanks, clearing any Chinese forces who occupied those hills.
Meanwhile, at the Chongchon River, the Eighth Army had collapsed under the weight of the Chinese attacks. Its subsequent mass retreat to the 38th parallel had begun. The Eighth Army would not be in Mupyong-ni to meet the 1st MarDiv. The division’s officers were working with news that was about two days old. Regardless, their orders were still to advance to Mupyong-ni.
According to Lieutenant Owen...
The 5th Marines came on trucks to join us at Yudam-ni; we now had two regiments there, almost ten thousand men [combat infantrymen.] Word came down that our mission had changed. Rather than continue the push north to the Yalu, we were to amount an attack to the west, fifty miles across another mountain range. The Chinese were pressuring the 8th Army’s flank over there, and the 1st Marine Division was assigned to relieve that pressure. Gone were the home for Christmas rumors.
Next Part
Part 8: The Chinese Spring Their Trap
Previous Parts
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Korean War Begins
Part 3: MacArthur's War
Part 4: First Encounter With The Chinese
Part 5: Where Have All The Chinese Gone?
Part 6: Into The Trap -- Koto-ri To Toktong Pass