The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (96 page)

I
N A WAY,
the roots of this book go back to a series of long conversations I had in 1963 with Lieutenant Colonel Fred Ladd. He was the senior adviser to the ARVN (or South Vietnamese) Ninth Division, based in Bac Lieu, in the middle of the Mekong Delta, and was one of my favorite officers. We stayed friends until his untimely death in 1987 at the age of 67. Fred Ladd was a general’s son, a West Point graduate, a thoughtful, brave man of great honor. Once when his Vietnamese counterpart, the division commander, had given a very rosy-eyed portrait of how well the division was doing to a group of senior American officers, Fred had taken the American commander in Vietnam, General Paul Harkins, aside to tell him that things were not going nearly that well. For that bit of honesty he was sharply rebuked by Harkins for casting aspersions on a fine Vietnamese officer’s words. In a way, Vietnam became a great roadblock in Fred’s career, and he could never reconcile himself to reporting optimistically about a war that was being lost.

Vietnam was, of course, the obsessive subject matter at hand, but as we got to know each other we talked more and more about the Korean War, where he had also served, with gathering interest on my part. It was only thirteen years since the Chinese had entered that war, and Fred spoke often of the tragic quality of a war, almost over, that had suddenly become infinitely larger and more violent as they came across the Yalu and caught most of the American units by surprise. He had been a general’s aide at the time, ironically to Major General Ned Almond, who is a prominent figure in this book. He spoke cautiously about Almond in those sessions, a discretion that was a compromise, I suspect, between high personal loyalty and considerable professional reservations. What I do remember from our talks was the terrible ordeal of the troops, some of the men only a year or two older than I was (I was sixteen when the Korean War started), caught in that freezing cold by this massive attack, surely the largest ambush in American military history. During those sessions in Bac Lieu and when Fred stayed with me at my house in Saigon, we went over the subject of those days again and again. What I did not realize at the time was
that he was the teacher and I was the student, and the subject was not just Vietnam; it now included Korea as well.

The images of that moment, when the Chinese struck, stayed with me. As when I had returned from Vietnam and I had needed to find out what had happened there and why, and thereupon had written
The Best and the Brightest
, I remained haunted by the images I had created in my own mind of those weeks in November and December 1950, and I was determined to write about it one day. Now, forty-four years after I first heard Fred Ladd’s stories, here is the book.

A book like this does not have a simple, preordained linear life. A writer begins with a certainty that the subject is important, but the book has an orbital drive of its own—it takes you on its own journey, and you learn along the way. It became not just the story of the Chinese entering the war and what happened in those critical weeks. On the way there was a great deal of political history to be learned, all of which formed the background on both sides. And there were other battles to be studied—people kept telling me about the brutal fighting in the early Pusan Perimeter days, and so I had to learn about that. And then one day someone mentioned the Battle of Chipyongni to me—the battle where the American commanders first learned how to fight the Chinese.

When I began
The Best and the Brightest
in 1969 it was a much easier book for me. Vietnam had been a central, dominating part of my life for seven years by that time. Thus I knew to an uncommon degree the overall map of it, the players, and the essential chronology. That was not true for me with Korea. So I spent much of the first two years not merely reading the existing bibliography and interviewing people but getting a feel for what had happened. I had very good teachers—most of them combat infantrymen who had survived it all. I am grateful for the kindnesses and courtesies extended to me by so many men and so many families in the homes I visited. To those whom I visited and interviewed, but whose stories did not make the book, I offer my regrets but my thanks, because all the interviews helped shape my sense of the war. I found many of the senior officials in the Korean Veterans’ groups, especially those of the Second Infantry Division, to be exceptionally helpful in guiding me toward veterans of those battles in which I was especially interested, or which they felt I had to master.

One of the great pleasures of what I do comes from the constant sense of surprise of the reporting—how many people turn out during the interviews to give more than you expected and thus enhance the entire experience. That forms something I particularly prize in what has been a fifty-two-year journalistic career: a respect for the nobility of ordinary people.

One story will suffice along this line. When I was working on the book a
number of people had suggested that I interview a man named Paul McGee who lived on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina. I called him. The first call, the introductory one, was not a great success. He did not seem very enthusiastic about seeing me. But we made a date to get together on a Saturday, which was to be my getaway day after a week on the road. That had been a particularly hard week—five interviews in five days in five different North Carolina towns. On the morning of my scheduled visit with McGee it snowed heavily in Charlotte—a truly miserable day. My plane back to New York was scheduled for 3
P.M.
I was staying at an airport motel. The temptation to bag the McGee interview and take an earlier flight was overwhelming; then I thought again, why not see him? I had come all this way and this was what I get paid to do. So I went out and found his home and for four hours it all poured out, what had happened in those three days at Chipyongni when he was a young platoon leader. It was if he had been waiting for me to come by for fifty-five years, and he remembered everything as if it had been yesterday. He was modest, thoughtful, and had total recall. The story of how his platoon had held out for so long came out in exceptional detail, along with the names and phone numbers of a few men who had made it out with him and who could confirm all the details. It was a thrilling morning for me, nothing less than a reminder of why I do what I do.

B
ECAUSE OF THE
nature of this book, events that took place more than fifty years ago, my interviewing was different this time than for most of my books: fewer total interviews, but a great deal more time spent trying to decide which battles mattered and only then finding the varying surviving veterans. That meant I spent more time trying to figure out which veterans to interview; and when I did find what I thought were the right people, going back repeatedly to them. Here is the list of interviewees (I am not using military rank because in many cases the rank kept changing): George Allen, Jack Baird, Lucius Battle, Lee Beahler, Bin Yu, Martin Blumenson, Ben Boyd, Alan Brinkley, Josiah Bunting III, John Carley, Herschel Chapman, Chen Jian, Joe Christopher, Joe Clemons, J. D. Coleman, John Cook, Bruce Cumings, Bob Curtis, Rusty Davidson, James Ditton, Erwin Ehler, John S. D. Eisenhower, George Elsey, Hank Emerson, Larry Farnum, Maurice Fenderson, Leonard Ferrell, Al Fern, Thomas Fergusson, Bill Fiedler, Richard Fockler, Barbara Thompson Foltz, Dorothy Bartholdi Frank, Lynn Freeman, Joe Fromm, Les Gelb, Alex Gibney, Frank Gibney, Andy Goodpaster, Joe Goulden, Steve Gray, Lu Gregg, Dick Gruenther, David Hackworth, Alexander Haig, Dr. Robert Hall, Ken Hamburger, Butch Hammel, John Hart, Jesse Haskins, Charles Hayward, Charley Heath, Virginia Heath, Ken Hechler, Wilson Heefner, Jim Hinton, Carolyn Hockley, Ralph Hockley, Cletis Inmon, Raymond Jennings, George Johnson, Alan Jones, Arthur Junot, Robert Kies, Walter Killilae, Bob Kingston, Bill Latham, Jim Lawrence, John Lewis, James Lilley, Malcolm MacDonald, Sam Mace, Charley Main, Al Makkay, Joe Marez, Brad Martin, John Martin, Filmore McAbee, Bill McCaffrey, David McCullough, Terry McDaniel, Paul McGee, Glenn McGuyer, Anne Sewell Freeman McLeod, Roy McLeod, Tom Mellen, Herbert Miller, Allan Millett, Jack Murphy, Bob Myers, Bob Nehrling, Clemmons Nelson, Paul O’Dowd, Phil Peterson, Gino Piazza, Sherman Pratt, Hewlett Rainier, Dick Raybould, Andrew Reyna, Berry Rhoden, Bill Richardson, Bruce Ritter, Arden Rowley, Ed Rowny, George Russell, Walter Russell, Perry Sager, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Bob Shaffer, Edwin Simmons, Jack
Singlaub, Bill Steinberg, Joe Stryker, Carleton Swift, Gene Takahashi, Billie Tinkle, Bill Train, Layton (Joe) Tyner, Lester Urban, Sam Walker, Kathryn Weathersby, Bill West, Vaughn West, Allen Whiting, Laron Wilson, Frank Wisner, Jr., Harris Wofford, Hawk Wood, John Yates, and Alarich Zacherle.

In addition, there are a number of interviews I did for earlier books, which connect directly in this one, including the aforementioned long talks with Fred Ladd, and interviews and talks with Homer Bigart, the legendary
Herald Tribune
and
New York Times
reporter, a close friend and my predecessor in Vietnam, Walton Butterworth, Averell Harriman, Townsend Hoopes, Murray Kempton (another close friend), Bill Moyers, George Reedy, James Reston (my original sponsor at the
New York Times
), Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Carter Vincent, and Theodore White, another good friend. In addition, when I wrote
The Best and the Brightest,
I became friendly with General Matthew Ridgway. He quite liked the book (in no small part because he was one of its rare heroes) and we stayed in touch. Late in his life, around, I think, 1988, we had a series of telephone calls, and during one of them he began talking about doing another book about the Korean War. He was clearly dissatisfied with parts of his earlier book, perhaps goaded by Dean Acheson, who had in a somewhat friendly way in a letter suggested that Ridgway had pulled his punches in describing his view of MacArthur’s behavior in those days. I think he was also stung by MacArthur’s own subsequent criticism of Ridgway’s conduct of the war. At this point his voice changed somewhat, and he became edgier and sharper of tone. He also started free-associating over the phone about the reasons he believed MacArthur had gone so far north, and in particular, why he had split the command—to diminish, Ridgway said, the influence and independence of General Walker and particularly the Joint Chiefs, to make Walker compete with Almond, who was completely under MacArthur’s control. It was really aimed at the Joint Chiefs, he said; and as his forces moved north it shifted ultimate power and control of the mission to Tokyo from Washington and Korea itself. He was also very critical—almost bitter in tone, I thought—about how completely removed the Tokyo command was from the reality of the battlefield, and the failure of Tokyo to understand what it was subjecting American soldiers to. As he continued to talk I took rough if imperfect notes and later consolidated them. There was the suggestion in that conversation that perhaps he would do another book and might want to do it with me. When a few weeks later I called back to see where his thinking was, he had pulled back from the idea of a book. He was, he said, in his early nineties (he was born in 1895), and it was more work than he wanted. But some of that conversation is reflected in this book.

I AM INDEBTED
to a great many people for their help with this book, starting with the men of the Second Infantry Division, especially the officers of their Korean War alumni association, and particularly Chuck Hayward, Charley Heath, and Ralph Hockley. From the First Cav, Joe Christopher was exceptionally helpful in connecting me with men who fought and survived Unsan. Edwin Simmons went out of his way to assist me with access to the First Marines and helping me find men like Jim Lawrence, who were unusually knowledgeable about O. P. Smith.

I want to thank others who helped me: Tom Engelhart, who edited the book, which given its complexity was never an easy process; Ben Skinner, a talented young writer in his own right, who did additional research for me on the American decision to cross the thirty-eighth parallel and head north; and my neighbor Linda Drogin, who volunteered on this book as in the past to do some vital checking for me. I would also like to thank my friend Joe Goulden, who not only wrote one of the best and most penetrating books on the Korean War but was a source of constant assistance and encouragement to me. I want to mention the scholars of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, and in particular Kathryn Weathersby, for their help in this book—the Center is a remarkable source of new information on areas long closed off to Westerners.

I was welcomed and treated with uncommon kindness at a number of libraries. From the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Dr. Richard Sommers, chief of patron services, as well as Michael Monahan, Richard Baker, Randy Hackenburg, and Pamela Cheney; from the Marines, known properly as the History Division of the Marine Corps University, Dr. Fred Allison, Danny Crawford, and Richard Camp; at the Douglas MacArthur Archives in Norfolk, Virginia, James Zobel was exceptionally helpful; at the Harry Truman Library, Michael Devine, the director, Liz Safly, Amy Williams, and Randy Sowell; at the Lyndon Johnson Library, Betty Sue Flowers; from the Franklin Roosevelt Library, Alycia Vivona, Robert Clark, the supervisory archivist, Karen Anson, Matt Hanson, Virginia Lewick, and Mark Renovitch; and from the New York Public Library, Wayne Furman, David Smith, and my friend Jean Strouse. At the Council on Foreign Relations, Lee Gusts was generous and helpful. As ever, the entire staff of the New York Society Library was helpful and helped create what is an oasis for me and other writers in the city.

At Hyperion Bob Miller and Will Schwalbe had faith in this book and its value from the start and stayed with me, even though, like most books, it came in somewhat behind schedule. Others at Hyperion for whose support I am grateful are Ellen Archer, Jane Comins, Claire McKean, Fritz Metsch, Emily
Gould, Brendan Duffy, Beth Gebhard, Katie Wainwright, Charlie Davidson, Vincent Stanley, Rick Willett, Chisomo Kalinga, Sarah Rucker, Maha Khalil, and Jill Sansone, and from HarperCollins, my old friend of more than thirty years, Jane Becker Friedman. I am grateful for the help of my friends and lawyer-agents, Marty Garbus and Bob Solomon. My friend Carolyn Parqueth once again transcribed most of the interviews. Charles Roos is my computer expert and he saved me from crisis after crisis—on those terrible days when my manuscript seemed to have departed my computer.

No one who sets off to do a book like this is ever the first; someone has always been there before, and we in this business are always aware of those who went before us and our debt to them, especially when the events took place more than fifty years ago. So it should be noted that among the books listed in the Bibliography, certain books were truly essential, most notably Clay Blair’s encyclopedic
The Forgotten War
, the most important primer for anyone dealing with Korea; William Manchester’s
American Caesar
; the books of Roy Appleman; S. L. A. Marshall’s
The River and the Gauntlet
; Joe Goulden’s
Korea
; Max Hastings’
The Korean War
; and Martin Russ’s
Breakout
.
Uncertain Partners
, the book by John Lewis, Sergei Goncharov, and Xue Litai about the relationship between Stalin, Mao, and Kim, is a groundbreaking work, its value greatly enhanced by my own long conversation with Professor Lewis. My friend Les Gelb, until recently the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, was as ever a wise consultant and a thoughtful ally.

My two friends Lieutenant General Hal Moore (who commanded a company in Korea) and Joe Galloway, who together wrote what I consider the best book on combat in Vietnam,
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
, were not only constantly supportive but gave me valuable guidance. In addition my friend Scott Moyers, who has been uncommonly helpful in my work for more than a decade, kept an eye on me and helped me out when I was struggling with the manuscript. I want to acknowledge my immense admiration for the esteemed photographer David Douglas Duncan, who came out of Chosin with the First Marines and is revered by them for that alone. With his remarkable photographs he has been able to remind us of what all those men went through in those days; I am proud that he was willing to let me use one of his photographs for the jacket of the book—it’s a badge of honor.