Ⅵ. “Retreat, Hell!” ALMOST six months had passed over the men fighting in Korea. There had been many changes for those original ones still alive, unwounded, still in combat. The Pusan Perimeter was only a nightmarish memory, for the Inchon landing had by-passed the entire North Korean line. Soon the Reds broke and fled north—or surrendered—or vanished in peasants' clothes into the hills. Shortly thereafter, according to General MacArthur's proclamation from the rostrum of the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul—on the 27th of September—that city had been liberated of the Communists. This was exactly three months since its evacuation—but none of the official communiques bothered to mention that the building was surrounded by soldiers whose only job it was to guarantee that neither President Rhee nor MacArthur was shot by enemy troops, still seething within the city. Many Americans were wounded, and many were killed in Seoul during the days that immediately followed its “liberation,” because the Reds were more concerned with holding their positions, in which they too were dying, than in listening to the radio bulletins announcing that the battle was over. Then the battle was over. Those of the enemy who did not die fighting, or surrender, or vanish—those remnants turned and retreated north, back into the country from which they had come. The men of the Eighth Army followed in immediate pursuit, reached the old boundary between the two countries—the 38th Parallel—and rolled right across. The Reds never really made another stand, even at Pyongyang, their capital. And while the soldiers of the Eighth Army were streaming north, another force, the newly-created Tenth Corps—the force that had been born for the Inchon operation—went back aboard transports, circled the peninsula and landed far up along the northeastern coast, at Wonsan and Hungnam. That Tenth Corps consisted of the same 7th Army and 1st Marine Divisions, plus the fresh 3rd 154 l Ⅵ. “Retreat, Hell!” This is War!
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