The CCF and NK armies had fought their fifth phase campaign with ferocity, determination and skill. They had driven Eighth Army back on all fronts. In the east, they had again shattered the ROK divisions which faced them, divisions which hadn't yet the time to adequately train replacements for the seemingly unending series of vicious battles they had undergone from the start of the war, and which had never been given resolute leadership by their highest officers. In their brave assaults, the CCF had penetrated as far as Pungam-ni, and once again threatened embattled US 2nd Infantry Division with encirclement.

But they had suffered terrible casualties ... from massive artillery barrages and B26 bomber attacks as they deployed forward in their attacks, and from sheets of tank and infantry fire as they desperately struggled to penetrate the wire and mine fields protecting our entrenched forces.

Sensing this weakness, in spite of the CCF extensive advances and menacing positions Ridgway again counter-attacked, across the front. To escape being trapped in the mountains of the salient they had won the enemy now fled before our own troops, as we had so often done before theirs. Eighth Army, grown to its most efficient and confident level in the war, had finally fought its way into a position to terribly punish the CCF attempts to resupply their assault troops and to drive them further north, toward the goal of a defendable line from Pyongyang to Wonsan.

However, in a decision which history weighs to this day, Truman halted our Army just beyond the 38th Parallel, and we entered into truce negotiations at Kaesong. Right or wrong, Truman and most of the member nations of the UN decided that the goal was not destruction of the North Korean government, but rather preservation of the freedom of South Korea. Having essentially driven the NK and their great ally China back across the 38th parallel, it was decided to stop, establish a defensive line across Korea approximately in the existing positions, and work toward an end to the fighting by diplomatic means.

It would have saved over a million lives had our leaders taken this approach the previous October but, right or wrong, the bloody infantry and the bloody civilians paid a bloody price for these incompatible decisions, as the talks dragged on for two years.