122 l Ⅴ. The City Ⅴ. The City MANY people, in many parts of the world, heard the news, shrugged their shoulders and went about their work—for they thought the report was only another of the wild rumors to come out of Korea. But the news flashes were correct. The Nations had landed at Inchon. Quietly pulled out of the firing line on the western edge of the Perimeter, the Marines had returned to Pusan, where they joined other Marines aboard transports just in from the States—Marines who brought their combat strength up to a full division—the First Marine Division. One day out of Pusan their ships met still more transports, also loaded with men—men of the 7th Army Division— who were to follow them in upon the beach. Glad to be out of the Perimeter, and even glad to be aboard despised transports, the Marines had been happily complaining about the bunks, the food, the salt-water showers and trying to decide in their bull sessions just which place it would be that they were going to hit. The voices of the troop commanders over the ships’ loudspeakers answered the question for them . . . INCHON! Eyes turned to the old-timers who knowingly had been drawing maps on the decks, maps of Wonsan and Hungman and other ports along the far north-eastern coast of the peninsula, ports known to have fine harbor facilities, and deep water, and beaches just made for amphibious landings. But INCHON! There were no carefully sketched maps of Inchon on the decks, the port had been dismissed as the one place where it was certain they would not have to land. General Douglas MacArthur worked on exactly the same theory that made the Marines discard Inchon as his place for landing. He apparently believed that if everyone in Tokyo and Washington and Lake Success considered an Inchon landing an impossibility, then the North Koreans and their advisers in Moscow probably felt the same way. After painstakingly studying every book and chart This is War!
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