Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Halberstam is one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians. After graduating from Harvard in 1955, he covered the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, then was sent overseas by the New York Times to report on the war in Vietnam. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting at the age of 30. His last fourteen books (which include THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST and Hyperion's FIREHOUSE and TEAMMATES) have all been New York Times bestsellers. He lives in New York City.

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The Coldest Winter

HYPERION

Contents

Glossary of Military Terms.........................................................................ixList of Maps.......................................................................................xiNote on Military Map Symbols.......................................................................xiiIntroduction.......................................................................................1PART ONE : A Warning at Unsan......................................................................7PART TWO : Bleak Days: The In Min Gun Drives South.................................................45PART THREE : Washington Goes to War................................................................87PART FOUR : The Politics of Two Continents.........................................................169PART FIVE : The Last Roll of the Dice: The North Koreans Push to Pusan.............................251PART SIX : MacArthur Turns the Tide: The Inchon Landing............................................291PART SEVEN : Crossing the Parallel and Heading North...............................................321PART EIGHT : The Chinese Strike....................................................................393PART NINE : Learning to Fight the Chinese: Twin Tunnels, Wonju, and Chipyongni.....................503PART TEN : The General and the President...........................................................589PART ELEVEN : The Consequences.....................................................................619Epilogue...........................................................................................647Author's Note......................................................................................659Acknowledgments....................................................................................663Afterword by Russell Baker.........................................................................667Notes..............................................................................................671Bibliography.......................................................................................697Index..............................................................................................703

Chapter One

On October 20, 1950, the men of the U.S. First Cavalry Division entered Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Later, there was some controversy over who got there first, elements of the Fifth Regiment of the Cav or men from the South Korean First Division. The truth was the men of the Cav had been slowed because all the bridges in their sector going over the Taedong River had been blown, and so the South Korean troops, or ROKs (for Republic of Korea), beat them into the ruined city. That did not diminish their pleasure. To them, the capture of the city meant the war was almost over. Just to make sure everyone knew that of all American units in country, the Cav got there first, some troopers, armed with paint and brushes, painted the Cav logo all over town.

Small private celebrations were taking place throughout Pyongyang. Lieutenant Phil Peterson, forward observer with the Ninety-ninth Field Artillery Battalion, and his best buddy, Lieutenant Walt Mayo, both working with the Third Battalion of the Eighth Regiment of the Cav, had their own two-person celebration. They could not have been closer as friends, having been through so much together. Peterson thought it an unusual friendship, one only the Army could forge. Walt Mayo was a talented and sophisticated man who had gone to Boston College, where his father taught music, whereas Peterson was a product of Officer Candidate School, and his formal schooling had ended back in Morris, Minnesota, in the ninth grade because they were paying $5 a day for men to work in the fields. In Pyongyang Lieutenant Mayo had managed to procure a bottle of Russian bubbly from a large store of booze liberated from the Russian embassy, and they shared it, drinking the pseudo-champagne, so raw it made you gag, from the metal cups in their mess kits. Vile, but good, they decided.

Sergeant First Class Bill Richardson of Love Company of the Third Battalion felt a wave of relief sweep over him in Pyongyang. The war was virtually over, and the Cav might be getting out of Korea. He knew this, not just because of all the rumors, but because Company headquarters had called asking all men who had experience loading ships to notify their superiors. That was as sure a sign as any that they were going to ship out. Another sign that their days of hard fighting were over was that they had been told to turn in most of their amino. All the rumors seeping out of the different headquarters must be true.

In his own mind Richardson was the old guy in his unit: almost everyone in his platoon now seemed new. He often thought of the men he had started out with three months earlier, a period that seemed to have lasted longer than the preceding twenty-one years of his life. Some were dead, some wounded, and some missing in action. The only other soldier in Richardson's platoon who had been there from the start was his pal Staff Sergeant Jim Walsh, and Richardson sought him out. "Jesus, we did it, buddy, we made it all the way through," he said, and they congratulated each other, not quite believing their good luck. That mini-celebration took place on one of the last days of October. The very next day they were reissued their amino and ordered north to save some South Korean outfit that was getting kicked around.

Still, the word was out: there was going to be a victory parade in Tokyo, and the Cav, because it had fought so well for so long in the Korean campaign, and because it was a favorite of Douglas MacArthur's, the overall commander, was going to lead it. They were supposed to have their yellow cavalry scarves back for the parade, and the word coming down was that they better be prepared to look parade-ground sharp, not battlefield grizzled: you couldn't, after all, march down the Ginza in filthy uniforms and filthy helmets. The men of the Cav were planning to strut a bit when they passed MacArthur's headquarters in the Dai Ichi Building. They deserved to strut a bit.

The mood in general among the American troops in Pyongyang just then was a combination of optimism and sheer exhaustion, emotional as well as physical. Betting pools were set up on when they would ship out. For some of the newest men, the replacements, who had only heard tales about how hard the fighting had been from the Pusan Perimeter to Pyongyang, there was relief that the worst of it was past. A young lieutenant named Ben Boyd from Claremore, Oklahoma, who joined the Cav in Pyongyang, was given a platoon in Baker Company of the First Battalion. Boyd, who had graduated West Point only four years before, wanted this command badly, but he was made nervous by its recent history. "Lieutenant, do you know who you are in terms of this platoon?" one of the senior officers had asked. No, Boyd answered. "Well, Lieutenant, just so you don't get too cocky, you're the thirteenth platoon leader this unit has had since it's been in Korea." Boyd suddenly decided he didn't feel cocky at all.

On one of their last days in Pyongyang there was another positive sign. Bob Hope held a show there for the...