Redstate

By streiff Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Robert Kingston, an Army general and highly decorated combat veteran who served in the early 1980s as the first chief of U.S. Central Command, which deploys ground, sea and air units to the Middle East, died Wednesday (Feb. 28, 2007) at the Ruxton Health Care nursing home in suburban Alexandria, Va. He had complications from a fall at his home in suburban Fairfax County, Va. He was 78.

And so the old man has passed.

But Bob Kingston wasn’t just any Army general; in the words of Genesis “there were giants in the Earth in those days.” He was a legend.

As the euphoria of the pursuit of the routed and decimated North Korean army in the fall of 1950 receded with the Manchuria winds only two United States military units reached the Yalu River separating North Korea from Manchuria: the Buffaloes of the 17th Infantry Regiment and Task Force Kingston.

Read on.

The American Army is a peculiarly American institution. It has a schizophrenic relationship not only with the nation but with itself. The institutional Army seems to try at every juncture to destroy the traditions of the institution and transform it into some bland Wonder-Bread-and-Velveeta concoction in which the basic widget is the individual soldier rather than the regiment. In my little commented upon but damned good diary, Devils in Baggy Pants a small fact I didn’t touch on was that 3-504 PIR was reflagged as 1-508 PIR. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it is sort of dysfunctional to build an esprit around being a member of the Devils in Baggy Pants and the next day to be transformed into a battalion of a different, and far less storied, regiment.

Periodically real soldiers ascend the ranks and impose some discipline on the gaggle of beancounters and fleshpeddlers who run the Army in peacetime and interest in the regiment revives.

In was during one of those brief interregnums, under Shy Meyer and John Wickham that I became acquainted Bob Kingston. He was honorary colonel of my regiment, the 32d Infantry, where he had begun his career as a second lieutenant and was a regular guest at our dining-ins where adult beverages were consumed, Castro’s crops were burned on a prolific scale, and senior officers and sycophants were subjected to glorious premeditated humiliation.

Anyway back to the story of Task Force Kingston as told by historian Martin Blumenson.

The time was late November 1950. The North Korean army had been defeated, and its remnants were streaming north in retreat. The United Nations troops were in pursuit, advancing toward the Yalu River, the northern boundary of Korea. […]

This was the plan, but it never materialized. Chinese troops were massing, and they were about to disrupt more than these local arrangements. No one knew this, however, when Lt. Kingston was called to the battalion command post on the evening of November 21, 1950.

The place was Wondokchang, 32 miles south of the Yalu. […]

Though beaten, though streaming north to sanctuary in Manchuria, the North Korean troops had a nasty way of turning to fight when cornered. They were still dangerous; and though a major offensive was out of the question, their deadly weapons were ambush, the unexpected trap, sudden flank attack.

Reluctant to plunge ahead into the unknown, the battalion commander gave Kingston the mission of spearheading the advance. Kingston was to reconnoiter and, if possible, take Samsu. To help Kingston and the 33 men in his platoon, the battalion commander gave Kingston seven tracked vehicles (from the 15th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion). Kingston's command thereby became a task force.

[…]

The vehicles and their crews were commanded by a first lieutenant named Allen. Though Kingston was a second lieutenant and therefore junior to Allen, Kingston commanded the task force. This was odd, but not the rationale: Allen's function was to support Kingston; the guns were in support of the infantry.

Of the three enemies in Korea -- the weather, the terrain and the North Koreans -- the weather was probably the worst. If the sun was shining, the temperature in winter might get up to 20 degrees below zero; 30 and 40 below were more normal.

[…]

That night the operations officer, Capt. Lash, called Kingston into the command post. "You'll continue your advance tomorrow," Lash told him.

"How far?"

"All the way."

Kingston's face showed his surprise. "The Yalu?"

Lash nodded. "Think you can make it?"

Kingston grinned. "Are you kidding? Sure, I'll make it."

[…]

Darkness came early on the third day, and the drivers had to use their blackout lights to get back to Samsu. The men were suddenly tired, disgusted with an operation that seemed to be getting them nowhere. Kingston found himself swearing under his breath.

He reported in to battalion headquarters, where he saw the battalion commander.

[…]

"You want to try it again tomorrow?"

"You bet I do, Colonel."

"You need anything else?"

He had already gotten more troops added to his task force: a jeep mounting a machine gun; a tank belonging to the 7th Reconnaissance Troop; a squad, then a platoon, from the 13th Engineer Combat Battalion and under a first lieutenant named Donovan; a forward observer, Lt. Trotter, from Battery C, 48th Field Artillery Battalion, whose job it was to direct the fire of howitzers emplaced at Samsu; a tactical air control officer, Capt. Jiminez, whose job was to bring in planes to bomb and strafe.

But Kingston asked for and received another tank, more jeep-mounted machine guns, some mortars. This brought his command to more than a hundred men.

[…]

About a mile beyond Yongsong-ni, the road ascends. The incline starts gradually, becomes increasingly steep. It rises finally to a mountain pass, a defile overshadowed by high ground on both sides.

At the bottom of the rise, the task force ran into North Korean fire. Rifle and machine-gun bullets swept the road, wounding several men, among them Lt. Allen, the antiaircraft officer.

From the ditches where the infantry took cover, from the carriages where the crew members huddled behind their guns, the men of the task force put out a tremendous volume of fire. The tanks blasted the high ground at virtual point-blank range. Yet the North Koreans refused to give way.

[…]

Despite the fact that every man in the task force was shooting, the opposition was too strong. "I'm breaking off," he told Lash over the radio. "I'm taking too many casualties." He was bitterly disappointed; he had not fulfilled his promise. But to keep at it didn't make sense at the price he would have to pay.

[…]

Not long afterward, more reinforcement arrived. Lash had sent up a rifle company and an artillery battery for attachment to the task force.

The rifle company posed a problem. It was Company I, and the commander not only outranked Kingston but was an infantryman, too. Though Hammer and Jiminez were also captains, their position under Kingston could be rationalized by the fact that they were in support of Kingston's infantry; but the infantry captain did not exactly fit that category.

[…]

Later that evening, as Kingston huddled around a bonfire with several of his men, the rifle company commander came by. "Want to talk to you," he told Kingston.

They walked off a few yards from the men. "Listen," the captain said, "as far as I'm concerned, this is your task force. You have the mission. I'm here to reinforce you, and I'll support you. You need anything, you let me know."

Surprise kept Kingston silent a moment. "You sure you want it that way?"

The captain was sure.

[…]

Before the column started, two more officers showed up. One was a major from the Buffaloes, the 17th Infantry -- no one in the task force ever found out his name; his job was to "coordinate" the contact at Singalpajin. The other was Capt. Ed Wild, battery commander of the howitzers supporting Kingston. Officially, he was there to "coordinate" the forward observers, but really all he wanted to do was spit in the Yalu.

At this point young second lieutenant Bob Kingston has under his command in direct support of him a rifle platoon, seven half-tracks mounting quad .50-cal machineguns, a gun jeep, a tank, a platoon of combat engineers, a forward observer, a forward air controller, and an infantry company. He has five or six officers under his command who outrank him. Back to the story.

They walked a few miles toward the cliffs of Manchuria, toward the Yalu gorge and the river they still could not see. Around a curve in the road they came upon the village of Singalpajin. The road ran through a large flat field bounded on three sides by a loop of the Yalu gorge. Along the left side of the road, a row of undamaged houses marked the outskirts of town.

[…]

The first two houses were unoccupied. Everyone was moving forward when a volley of rifle fire suddenly descended on Kingston's group.

A firefight ensued. Kingston cleared an enemy strongpoint by charging it and tossing in a grenade. He was knocked unconscious by a rifle bullet glancing off his helmet.

Not many North Koreans were there. The bulk of the battalion that had opposed Kingston at the defile had apparently crossed the frozen Yalu into Manchuria.

During the day everyone managed to get to the edge of the gorge to look at the frozen sheet of ice that was the Yalu. Several men, among them Wild, descended to the riverbank to spit into the river.

As you might imagine, Blumenson takes liberty with the real story here because the men who made it to the Yalu did not “spit” in the river but rather donated other bodily fluids.

As Blumenson mentioned earlier, shortly after this the ChiComs intervened. Kingston’s battalion retreated with the remainder of X Corps and were withdrawn from the Hungnam-Wonsan beachhead. First battalion of the 32d Infantry disintegrated near Chosin Reservoir, it’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Don C. Faith won a posthumous Medal of Honor trying to break a ChiCom roadblock.

Anyway, Bob Kingston continued to build on the reputation he carved out for himself that winter in North Korea. He commanded at all levels and he was spoken of reverentially in the service. After retirement he was successful in business and willingly came back to regale young warriors, like myself at that time, with stories of bravery and to pass on the leadership lessons he had learned on many battlefields.

The Army is poorer today for his passing.