Page 132 - NS-2 Textbook

THE COLD WAR ERA 125

Marines climbing the seawall at Red Beach during the Inchon landings.

111e timetable was interrupted, however, by a huge Inunications and roads. Chinese forces began to advance
Communist minefield at Wonsan Harbor. Instead of tak- southward into this gap. Elements of the ROK army met
ing five days to sweep the mines clear as planned, the job the Chinese in several heavy encounters in late October
took fifteen. The minefield had caused the allies to lose and early November. On 2 Novembel; Chinese forces at-
valuable time. 111e delay enabled the North Koreans to tacked lUuts of the Eighth Army near Unsan.
retreat in some semblance of order. The amphibious MacArthur warned the Joint Chiefs on 6 November
landing became an uadministrative" operation, taking that if the movement of Chinese forces across the Yalu
place after the ROK forces had already captured the city. continued, his army faced destruction. On 24 November
In the meantime, the Eighth Army caphrred Pyongyang MacArthur gave the order for his forces to begin a drive
on 19 October. to the Yalu. That same day, the first U.S. elements
reached the Yalu at Hyesanjin. Then on 25 November
1950 200,000 Chinese, called Volunteers of the People's
CHINESE INTERVENTION
Liberation Army, launched a TI1ajor offensive} s\veeping
Despite warnings that his invasion of Communist North the allies before them and cutting off a large group of
Korea ·would bring Chinese Communist intenrentioll, marines at the Chosin Reservoir north of Htmgnam.
MacArthur's forces continued to drive northward to- The next two ·weeks smv the United Nations forces
ward the Yalu River boundary with Chinese Manchuria. fight their way back southward in full retreat, even as the
MacArthur's intelligence officers did not believe the Chi- cold and snow of the Korean winter closed in. In tem-
nese would enter the war in force. They believed that if peratures as In'w as 25 degrees belo,v zero .. mm'mes and
they were going to do it at all, they would have done it other allied forces were often forced to fight their way
when the allies had their backs to the sea at Pusan. Thus out of surrounded positions. Navy and Marine planes
MacArthur sent the Eighth Army north from Pyongyang pounded the Chinese forces in the hills. Under this um-
and the X Corps north from Hamhung. On 26 October el- brella, the marines finally reached the coastal city of
ements of the ROK army arrived at the Yalu. HlU1gnam on 9 December. During the next two weeks,
There ·was an 80-mile gap behveen the hvo north- 105,000 troops, 90,000 Korean refugees, thousands of ve-
ward-moving UN forces because of no east-west com- hicles, and tons of bulk cargo were combat-loaded in