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5th Cavalry broke out of the Pusan
Perimeter by crossing the Naktong on September 26,
advancing to Sanju and north to Hamchung and south
to Osan-dong, and seizing Chongo, Chochiwon and
Chouni.
Crossing the Imjin on October 2,
the 5th Cavalry then crossed the 38th parallel on
October 9.
Lead by the 5th Regiment, the 1st
Cavalry Division entered Pyongyang, the capital of
North Korea on October 19.
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70th Tank Battalion |
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By October 25 the North Korean Army
had been nearly destroyed when the veteran Chinese
guerilla armies made their first probing attack on
advancing 8th Army units. The previous year (1949),
China's resolute Guerilla Armies had won one of
the most decisive battles in all History, at
Huai-Hai, trapping and
annihilating a 500,000 man regular army without
control of the air or even artillery equality. For
some incredible reason, our Generals like Almond
dismissed these brave, resourceful veterans as
"laundry-men." The facts were quite
otherwise.
With China's sledgehammer
entry, the war took a terrible new turn, with
battles raging down and up and down and up again
for almost a year, and then dragging on to static
Trench Warfare and finally a Cease-Fire on July 27,
1953. Entering the third millennium, that is still
the situation. Today, watching our indecisive
stand-down from the Middle East, without any clear
idea of who our friends are, if indeed we have any,
I wonder how much our present "Leaders"
have learned from history.
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