EXTREME GRAVITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27450, 25 July 1950, Page 5

EXTREME GRAVITY

Position Of American Forces In Korea URGENT NEED FOR TROOPS New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec. 7.30 p.m. - LONDON, July 24. It is difficult to exaggerate the extreme gravity of the military situation in Korea, says The Times correspondent with the Eighth Army Headquarters in Korea. “It is not tanks, guns or aircraft that are primarily needed, but infantry—and the time factor is crucial. Reinforcements are urgently required if the United Nations are to assert their will. “ The American forces in Korea can achieve little if, wherever they are committed, they are confronted with overwhelming local numerical superiority. There is a simple explanation for the fall of Taejon too few men trying to hold too large an area with nobody to watch the flanks. It is an often repeated tale in Korea.

“Allied air superiority has undoubtedly slowed up the North Korean advance, but it is only underlining the old, old truth, that air attack will not stop advancing ground forces, and that infantry can be met only with infantry. If the American and South Korean forces are driven back into a bridgehead in South Korea (even if a sizeable bridgehead) } the military task of fighting their way back through the length and breadth of this mountainous peninsula will be immense.” “ Not since Dunkirk has a Great Power been in such a predicament as that of the United States in Korea,” says the Daily Mail’s correspondent, Mr G. Ward Price, in a cable message from Tokio. “By . her military intervention in the defence of the South Korean Republic, America has bitten off more than she can, at the present, chew.” Mr Price says that in two visits to the front he was shocked by the rawness of the American troops. Recruited since the last war, they are without real military experience, except the easy conditions of the occupation of Japan. Doubting if the Americans have time to fortify and maintain a toehold in the backs-to-the-sea position based on the east coast ports of Pusan and Pohang, Mr Price says: “ It is now evident that the United States would have done better to abstain from committing inadequate forces to a land action. She should have ,been content wifh a naval blockade combined with intensive air action, in which she has uncontested superiority—unless North Korea’s allies furnish air support. The loss of prestige incurred in abandoning the South Korean Army to its fate would have been less than that entailed by a military defeat. At best it is likely to be six months before sufficient .strength can be accumulated to pass to the offensive, even if the coastal bridgehead can be maintained.”