Operation Courageous - 38th Parallel

38th Parallel

Earlier, as General Ridgway was about to open Operation Courageous, the gains he already had registered in his Killer and Ripper advances had influenced a decision in Washington by which operations above the parallel assumed new importance as a political question. The decision centered on how and when to approach the desired cease-fire. Notwithstanding the building evidence of North Korean offensive preparations, officials of the Departments of State and Defense believed that Ridgway's recent successes might have convinced the Chinese and North Koreans that they could not win a military victory and, if this was the case, that they might agree to negotiate an end to hostilities. On the advice of these officials, President Harry S. Truman planned to make a public statement suggesting the United Nations' willingness to end the fighting. The statement was carefully worded to avoid a threatening tone and so to encourage a favorable reply. Truman intended to deliver the appeal as soon as his statement had been approved by officials of all nations that had contributed forces to the U.N. Command.

The timing of the presidential announcement was tied also to the fact that Ridgway's forces were fast approaching the 38th parallel. The consensus in Washington was that the Chinese and North Koreans would be more inclined to agree to a cease-fire under conditions restoring the status quo ante bellum, that is, if the fighting could be ended in the vicinity of the parallel where it had begun. Therefore, while there was no intention to forbid all ground action above the parallel, there was some question in the mind of Secretary of State Dean Acheson and among many members of the United Nations whether the Eighth Army should make a general advance into North Korea.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff notified General Douglas MacArthur of the President's plan in a message radioed from Washington on March 20. They informed him of the prevalent feeling in the United Nations that the U.N. Command should make no major advance above the 38th parallel before the presidential appeal was delivered and the reactions to it determined. They also asked for his recommendations on how much freedom of ground action UN forces should have in the vicinity of the parallel during the diplomatic effort to provide for their security and to allow them to maintain contact with the North Koreans.

MacArthur had been pressing Washington for decisions favoring a military, not a diplomatic, solution to the war. Shortly before he received the Joint Chiefs' message he again had expressed his views in a letter to Republican Congressman Joseph William Martin, Jr. of Massachusetts, the-minority leader in the United States House of Representatives. The congressman earlier had written MacArthur asking for comment on Martin's thesis that Nationalist Chinese forces "might be employed in the opening of a second Asiatic front to relieve the pressure on our forces in Korea." MacArthur replied that his own view followed "the conventional pattern of meeting force with maximum counterforce", that Martin's suggestion on the use of Chiang Kai-shek's forces was in consonance with this pattern, and that there was "no substitute for victory".

Although he had been denied the decisions that in his judgment favored a military solution, MacArthur nevertheless wanted no further restrictions placed on the operations of his command. In so advising the Joint Chiefs on March 21, he pointed out, as he had some time earlier, that under current conditions any appreciable UN effort to clear North Korea already was out of the question.

While awaiting a response, MacArthur informed General Ridgway of the new development on March 22. Although MacArthur expected that the response from Washington would be a new directive for ground operations, possibly one forbidding an entry into North Korea in strength, he intended in the meantime to allow the Eighth Army to advance north of the parallel as far as logistics could support major operations. Ridgway otherwise was to be restricted only by having to obtain MacArthur's specific authorization before moving above the parallel in force.

In acknowledging these conditions Ridgway notified MacArthur that he currently was developing plans for an advance that would carry Eighth Army forces ten to twenty miles (15–30 km) above the parallel to a general line following the upstream trace of the Yesong River as far as Sibyon-ni in the west, falling off gently southeastward to the Hwach'on Reservoir, then running east to the coast. As in past and current operations, the objective would be the destruction of enemy troops and materiel. MacArthur approved Ridgway's concept but also scheduled a visit to Korea for March 24, when he would have an opportunity to discuss the plans in more detail.

Before leaving Tokyo, MacArthur issued a communique in which he offered to confer with his enemy counterpart on arranging a cease-fire. He specified that he was making the offer "within the area of my authority as the military commander" and that he would be in search of "any military means" for achieving the desired result. He thus kept the bid within the military sphere. But in leading up to his offer MacArthur belittled China's military power, noting in particular that Chinese forces could not win in Korea, and made statements that could be, and were, interpreted as threatening that the United Nations would decide to attack China if hostilities continued. These remarks prompted other governments to ask about a possible shift in U.S. policy, and in President Truman's judgment they so contradicted the tone of his own planned statement that he decided not to issue it for fear of creating more international confusion.

MacArthur's call for victory in Korea thoroughly angered the President. It was, he wrote a few days later, "not just a public disagreement over policy, but deliberate, premeditated sabotage of U.S. and UN policy." Moreover, MacArthur had not cleared his communique with Washington as the President's directive of December 1950 required for all releases touching on national policy. Truman considered MacArthur's violation of the directive as "open defiance of my orders as President and as Commander in Chief." His immediate act was to order the Joint Chiefs of Staff to send MacArthur a reminder of the December directive. Privately, he decided that MacArthur should be relieved.

Included in the reminder sent by the joint Chiefs on March 24 (received in Tokyo on March 25) were orders that MacArthur report to them for instructions should his counterpart respond to his offer and "request an armistice in the field." No such response was expected, however, and since Truman had canceled his own cease-fire initiative, operations in strength above the 38th parallel again had become a tactical question for General MacArthur and General Ridgway to answer. MacArthur, in fact, publicly revealed his answer before he really knew that the diplomatic effort to achieve a cease-fire had been canceled. Upon his return to Tokyo late on March 24 following his conference with Ridgway and a visit to the front, he announced that he had directed the Eighth Army to cross the parallel "if and when its security makes it tactically advisable. More specifically than that, of course, MacArthur had approved Ridgway's concept of a general advance as deep as twenty miles (30 km) into North Korea.