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Christmas
Until 10/17/50 General MacArthur
restrained U.N. ground forces other than ROK troops
from operating north of a line crossing the Chongchon
River at Kunu-ri. But on 10/24, as the
leading U.N. forces crossed the Chongchon at Sinanju, he instructed all Eighth
Army to press forward to the northern limits of
Korea.
The Chinese Beijing KW Museum says this
photo was when Eighth Army attacked from the Chongchon,
10/25/50 in an assault for the Yalu.
Using the same strategy of speed of
attack that had won our great victory at Inchon,
MacArthur strove to unite all Korea before China could
intervene effectively. Partly because of poor intel
from CIA, he was ignorant that Mao was already
intervening and was infiltrating a formidable veteran
Army into position for counter-attack, making speed far
less important than preparation. Not only was he not
building strong fall-back positions in depth should a
counter-attack occur, but at this time Eighth
Army's overall logistical situation was in bad
shape, with hundreds of miles of bad roads between
support railheads and the divisions needing support.
Added to the weakness of capability to deal with
serious unexpected problems was a casualness among our
leadership caused by their belief that the war was all
but over.
China's First
Phase Offensive was soon to shock and smash back
our lead elements, but since this was only a Recon in
force by a small part of the Armies by China already
had in place, and they withdrew after our own counter attack, we believed we could
regroup and finish the job in time for Christmas
shopping in Tokyo.
Long before Christmas we, and countless
innocent civilians, paid the price for ignoring the
basic military axiom that one should always be prepared
for what an enemy might be capable of doing, not merely
for what we hope he will do.
