Communist casualties from 15 to 31 May were estimated by the Eighth Army at 105,000. This figure included 17,000 counted dead and the unprecedented total of some 10,000 prisoners, most of them Chinese Reds taken during the last week of the month in frantic efforts to escape. Such results were a vast departure from past occasions when Mao Tse-tung’s troops had preferred death to surrender.
In all probability, only the mountainous terrain saved them from a complete debacle. If the Eighth Army had been able to use its armor for a mechanized pursuit, it might have struck blows from which the enemy could not recover. As it was, the Communists escaped disaster by virtue of the fact that a platoon could often stand off a company or even a battalion by digging in and defending high ground commanding the only approach. Every hill was a potential Thermopylae in this craggy land of few roads.
It was the misfortune of the 1st Marine Division to have perhaps the least lucrative zone of action in all Korea for the peninsula-wide turkey shoot. A chaos of jagged peaks and dark, narrow valleys, the terrain alone was enough to limit an advance. Even so, the Marines inflicted 1,870 counted KIA casualties on the Communists in May and captured 593, most of them during the last eight days of the month.
General Almond congratulated the Division for its accomplishment of “a most arduous battle task. You have denied [the enemy] the opportunity of regrouping his forces and forced him into a hasty retreat; the destruction of enemy forces and materiel has been tremendous and many times greater than our own losses.”[203]
[203] CG X Corps msg of 1500, 3 Jun 51; 1stMarDiv HD, May 51.
Plan to Cut Off Communists
The 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, released from IX Corps reserve, arrived in the Hongchon area on 21 May and took a position between the 1st Marine Division on the left and the 2d Infantry Division on the right. Two days later X Corps gave the Marines the mission of securing the important road center of Yanggu at the eastern end of the Hwachon Reservoir ([Map 13]). Elements of the 2d Infantry Division, with the 187th Airborne RCT attached, were meanwhile to drive northeast to Inje after establishing a bridgehead across the river Soyang. From Inje the 187th (reinforced) would continue to advance northeast toward its final objective, Kansong on the coast. After linking up with I ROK Corps, the Army regiment might be able to pull the drawstring on a tremendous bag of prisoners—all the CCF forces south of the Inje-Kansong road. There was, however, a big “if” in the equation. The Communists were falling back with all haste, and it was a question whether the bag could be closed in time.
1st Marine Division Drive To Yanggu
23–31 May
Showing Regimental Routes