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Strategic Setting
The large-scale Chinese attacks came as a shock to the allied forces. After the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter and the Inch�on landings, the war seemed to have been won. The desperate defensive fighting of June was a distant memory, as were the bloody struggles to hold the Naktong River line in defense of Pusan in August and early September. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the Far Eastern Command Theater Commander, had triumphed against all the odds by landing the X Corps, consisting of the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Infantry Division, and elements of ROK Marines at the port of Inch�on
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near Seoul on 15 September. Breaking out from the Pusan Perimeter four days later, Eighth Army defeated and then pursued the remnants of the North Korean People�s Army (NKPA) up the peninsula by many of the same roads over which they had retreated a mere two months before. On 29 September Seoul was declared liberated.
As the victorious UN forces pursued the fleeing NKPA, MacArthur was authorized by President Harry S. Truman to go north of the pre-June boundary, the 38th Parallel, while enjoined to watch for any indications that the Soviets or Chinese might enter the war. Korea was seen by most at the time as just part of the overall struggle with world communism and perhaps as the first skirmish in what was to be World War III. MacArthur, convinced that he could reunify all of Korea, moved his forces north. Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker�s Eighth Army advanced up the west coast of Korea to the Yalu River, while Maj. Gen. Edward M. "Ned" Almond�s independent X Corps conducted amphibious landings at Wonsan and Iwon on the east coast. Almond�s units moved up the coast and to the northeast and center of Korea to the border with China. Until the attacks by the CCF at Unsan, the war thus seemed on the verge of ending with the UN forces merely having to mop up NKPA remnants.
In retrospect the events on the battlefield in late October and early November 1950 were harbingers of disaster ahead. They had been foreshadowed by ominous "signals" from China, signals relayed to the United States through Indian diplomatic channels. The Chinese, it was reported, would not tolerate a U.S. presence so close to their borders and would send troops to Korea if any UN forces other than ROK elements crossed the 38th Parallel. With the United States seeking to isolate Communist China diplomatically, there were very few ways to verify these warnings. While aware of some of the dangers, U.S. diplomats and intelligence personnel, especially General MacArthur, discounted the risks. The best time for intervention was past, they said, and even if the Chinese decided to intervene, allied air power and firepower would cripple their ability to move or resupply their forces. The opinion of many military observers, some of whom had helped train the Chinese to fight against the Japanese in World War II, was that the huge infantry forces that could be put in the field would be poorly equipped, poorly led, and abysmally supplied. These "experts" failed to give full due to the revolutionary zeal and military experience of many of the Chinese soldiers that had been redeployed to the Korean border area. Many of the soldiers were confident veterans of the successful civil war against the Nationalist Chinese forces. Although these forces were indeed poorly supplied, they were highly motivated, battle hardened, and led by officers who were veterans, in some cases, of twenty years of nearly constant war.
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Perhaps the most critical element in weighing the risks of Chinese intervention was the deference paid to the opinions of General MacArthur. America�s "proconsul" in the Far East, MacArthur was the American public�s "hero" of the gallant attempt to defend Bataan and Corregidor in the early days of World War II, the conqueror of the Japanese in the Southwestern Pacific, and the foreign "Shogun" of Japan during the occupation of that country. He was also the architect of the lightning stroke at Inch�on that almost overnight turned the tide of battle in Korea. When he stated categorically that the Chinese would not intervene in any large numbers, all other evidence of growing Chinese involvement tended to be discounted. MacArthur and his Far Eastern Command (FEC) intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, continued to insist, despite the CCF attacks at Unsan and similar attacks against X Corps in northeastern Korea, that the Chinese would not intervene in force. On 6 November the FEC continued to list the total of Chinese troops in theater as only 34,500, whereas in reality over 300,000 CCF soldiers organized into thirty divisions had already moved into Korea. The mysterious disappearance of Chinese forces at that time seemed only to confirm the judgment that their forces were only token "volunteers."
The overall situation in early November 1951 was unsettled, but UN forces were still optimistic. The North Korean Army had been thoroughly defeated, with only remnants fleeing into the mountains to conduct guerrilla warfare or retreating north toward sanctuary in China. Eighth Army positions along the Ch�ongch�on River, halfway between the 38th Parallel and the Yalu, were strong. The 1st Cavalry Division had admittedly taken a beating, but two regiments were still in good condition, while the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions had generally recovered from their earlier trials. On the Eighth Army�s right flank, the 2d Infantry Division was in a position to backstop the vulnerable ROK 6th and 8th Divisions. In northeastern Korea, the units under X Corps were fresh and, in the case of the 1st Marine Division, at full strength. By the first week of November, despite the surprise attacks by what were still classed as small Chinese volunteer units, the United Nations forces as a whole were well positioned and looking forward to attacking north to the Yalu to end the war and being "home by Christmas."
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