UN Troops Push Nearer Kumsong
The Florence Morning News, Florence, S.C., Friday October 19, 1951.
U. S. EIGHTH ARMY HEADQUARTERS, KOREA, Friday, Oct. 18 [sic – should be 19 I think], 1951, - (AP) – Allied troops and tanks, attacking in a morning mist, today pushed to two and one-half miles of battered Communist Central Korean base of Kumsong.
The Reds were making a fight for the city.
Fresh Chinese forces dug in on hills just south of the city fought desperately to stem the grinding Allied drive.
The United Nations infantrymen jumped off on their attack at dawn. Supported by tanks, they fought forward all along a battle line extending from a point four miles southwest of Kumsong to a point four miles southeast of the Big Red base.
Infantrymen tossing grenades made their closest approach to Kumsong from the south. There they assaulted a ridgeline two and one-half miles from the city.
Southwest of Kumsong, Allied troops wrested a hill from the Reds. To the East, other Allied troops attacked the highest hill in the area.
A briefing officer said the Allied troops were fighting fresh Chinese replacements. The officer said that the Reds, many of them untested in battle until now, apparently were brought into fight to replace troops pulled back to rest.
This is the sixth day of the attack on the Central Front.
On the Western Front, the last Chinese positions under attack fell almost without a shot to U. S. First Cavalry Division troops after 15 days of grinding battle.
These twin successes rounded out General James A. Van Fleet’s Eighth Army offensive in the West and cast a rosy glow over the seven-day-old attack in the Center.
Allied officers considered Kumsong neutralized as a Communist base.
AP Correspondent Sam Summerlin flew over Kumsong 30 miles north of the Parallel 38th in a light liaison plane. He described it as a “ghost city” with no movement in its streets or around the thatch-roofed houses.
He said the “once bustling road junction … appeared almost deserted.”
Below the town a curtain of smoke from bursting artillery “rose like a sweeping forest fire.” Allied troops inched forward against the Reds on a smoking ridgeline.
Earlier Allied air observers sighted several small groups of civilians inside Kumsong. Summerlin quoted the air spotters as saying that most of the Chinese apparently had pulled out, and that civilians had moved into the hills and caves north of the city.
The Eighth Army communiqué Wednesday night said Allied troops were less than three miles south of Kumsong. Two key points were occupied in a 1,200 yard advance.
Southeast of Kumsong, the Reds in a delaying action battled South Koreans who were reported “heavily engaged.”
In the West, Allied infantry drove against Chinese hill bunkers Thursday, expecting the usual torrent of fire and steel in return. Instead there was hardly a shot. Red resistance had suddenly melted.
In a few moments the foot soldiers were scrambling up the slopes in the early morning sun. They raced to grab heights while they could.
Before noon the whole Chinese defense position had collapsed west of Yonchon, 35 miles north of Seoul. Everywhere the Allies stood on heights they had first attacked Oct. 3 on the opening day of the drive.
The Communists still hold firmly only the road and rail center at Pyonggang, 35 miles north of 38 in this central Korean sector. Pyonggang is the apex of the old Iron Triangle assembly area.
The autumn drives were won at the cost of some painful casualties to the Allies.