United Nations Forces Put Chinese Off Balance In Korea

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 December 1950, Page 5

United Nations Forces Put Chinese Off Balance In Korea

Review Of Changed Situation Since Red China's Might Entered The War

TOKIO, Dec 26 (Bee. 8.15 p.m.).—The withdrawal of the 10th. Corps from Hungnam had completed the readjustment of the United Nations troops forced by the Chinese entry into the Korean War. said General MacArthur, in a communique. He was renewing events in the month following China’s invasion Korea to Christmas Day. General MacArthur said:

“The might of a major military nation was suddenly and without warning thrown against the relatively small United Nations command, but without attaining a decision.” He claimed that this was at less cost in men than in the comparable period of fighting around the old Pusan perimeter. It "exposed before it was too late the secret political and military decisions of enormous scope, and threw off balance enemy preparations aimed at surreptitiously massing power capable of destroying our forces with one mighty extended blow,” General MacArthur said. . The real test of the United Nations command was when it was confronted by an overwhelming force of Chinese, but survived without much loss of resources or ability to manoeuvre. “No command ever fought more gallantly or efficiently under unparalleled conditions of restraint and handicap, and no command could have acquitted itself to better advantage under a prescribed mission involving unprecedented risk and jeopardy," said the General. INTELLIGENCE HANDICAPPED The General said the end of the Korean campaign was clearly in sight in October, when the Chinese attacked. The Bth Army immediately drew back into a compact front, while attempts were made to assess the strength of the new enemy. Political intelligence failed to penetrate the iron curtain and field intelligence was'

(severely handicapped because air reconnaissance over the Manchurian border was impossible. The only 'course left was reconnaissance in I' force, and on November 24 United Nations troops went into the offensive in the hope that they would be : opposed by no more than a token Chinese force. General MacArthur said that he renewed the assurances that the United Nations troops would not violate the Manchurian border and that the Sth Army would return to Japan as soon as the Korean border area was cleared. The Allied advance was the final test of Chinese intentions. "Events subsequently disclosed neither that political nor military reassurances could have had the slightest influence upon the momentous decision underlying Red China’s commitment of her forces to war,” he said. Resistance to the advance “unmasked the fiction of volunteer participation and disclosed the massive deployment of the 4th Chinese field army—an important segment of the entire Chinese Communist military strength —of an aggregate of 27 divisions, with elements of the 3rd Field Army immediately to the rear. General MacArthur concluded that the United Nations advance had caught the Chinese off balance and they were unable to exploit the position to endanger the Sth Army while the 10th Corps on the flank forced the Communists to divide their forces and weaken their offensive capabilities.