HEAVY CHINESE LOSSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27570, 12 December 1950, Page 7

HEAVY CHINESE LOSSES

New Zealand Press Association—Copyright flee. 0.35 a.m. SEOUL, Dec. 11. The Chinese Communists lost an estimated 20,000 killed, including 5000 killed by United Nations aircraft, during the last fortnight of fighting against American Marines and infantrymen, and British commandos who fought their way out of a trap in their drive from Chosin to Hamhung, said a 10th Corps spokesman. The Americans suffered more than 5000 casualties. Correspondents report that the last elements of 25,000 Americans had safely reached the coastal plateau leading to Hamhung. In the fighting retreat through 37 miles of hell, infantrymen, mortarmen, anti-tank men, cooks and bakers—anyone who could carry a rifle—held snow-topped ridges while a great parade of tanks, road-scrapers, lorries, and tank-carriers passed down the road beneath them. The engineers are estimated to have last 60 per cent, of their men and equipment in paving the way for the tanks and lorries.

The marines began withdrawing from Kotori on Saturday, and the last troops pulled out of the town yesterday. The retreat of the rearguards was slowed down by harassing fire from the Communists. Aircrews reported that hundreds of North Korean refugees tailed the column along the snow-covered mountain road from Kotori towards Hamhung. The'troops said that a large part of three Chinese divisions were killed in the break-out. Army cooks ran up with cups of coffee as the first lorries rumbled into Hamhung at dusk yesterday. The troops were hollow-eyed, bloodsplashed, and weary to the point of dropping. Men on foot arrived stumbling and wincing from frostbite, using their rifles as crutches. There were men wounded, with blood frozen to their skin. There were men dead—their bodies sprawled across trailers, lorries and even on bulldozers. Troops reported that even after they met the relieving column six miles south of Kotori on Saturday they still had to smash through a road block under heavy fire from the surrounding hills, but when that was done they reached the plains and much of the fight seemed to go out of the Chinese. Dispirited enemy troops, half-starved, suffering from frostbite, and with their uniforms in shreds, surrendered in hundreds. The beach-head into which they have withdrawn is well supplied from the sea and is defended by a powerful marine and navy air arm, but will be quickly encircled if the 100,000 or more Chinese in the north-east follow through. The costly 30-mile withdrawal from the Chosin reservoir ended with the troops atop mud-coated lorries sliding along the last lap to Hamhung down the road kept open bv the United States 3rd Division. Farther south, United Nations ground forces completed the evacuation of the important port of Wonsan under the guns of the United States cruiser St.' Paul and three destroyers. The Eighth Army communique yesterday was silent on the army’s new positions, but reported Allied air strikes against 3000 Communists moving east of Haeju—a west coast port two miles north of the thirtyeighth parallel. The communique also reported that elements of two South Korea** divisions were fighting the guerrillas •outh of Chorwon, 16 miles north of the parallel. The Korean legislative system faced a complete breakdown today as panicstricken deputies fled southwards and left the National Assembly without a quorum. At a meeting of the Assembly yesterday only 65 out 0f'206 members were present. The Assembly has not been able to hold a formal meeting for four days because the necessary quorum of more than half the members—at least 104—has not been present. The Government is now faced with the choice of either making attendance compulsory or moving the Assembly farther south. The jittery population of Seoul has not been slow to realise the implication of the Assembly’s continued inactivity. Many people previously undecided whether or not to flee the capital have now joined the thousands of refugees already on the road south.