The glory jobs in the Signal Corps during the Korean War were few and far between. Most of the work that had to be done was grunt work… setting up communication links, running wire and trying to keep the circuits open while incoming fire ripped up cables along the road, as well as the men laying them. If you were part of a Signal Construction Company your job was especially difficult, as you moved with the flow of the war and often that flow moved without you. That is, it was usually the Signal boys in the Signal Construction Companies that were the last to find out that a unit had moved, and was now in desperate need of communication.

Lieutenant David S. Howard, a graduate of Army Signal Corps OCS Class 44-40 was the Commanding Officer of just such a company. Assigned to the 532nd Signal Construction Company, he spent his waking hours trying desperately to meet the needs of Staff Officers literally crying for communication service. During his sleeping hours, he fought his way through nightmare after nightmare, trying to find solutions that would meet everyone’s needs.

The unit he was assigned to, the 532nd, arrived in Korea on July 10, 1950. As we tell this story further we will speak of the 532nd Signal Construction Company as though it was the only Signal Construction Company that served during the entire Korean War. Clearly, that was not the case. In fact there were 2 Signal Construction Battalions and at least 3 other Signal Construction Companies that served, not to mention a total of 62 Signal Corps units of one form or another.

Yet the 532nd was unique. It was unique because of its early arrival in the war, and its association with Eighth Army Headquarters. Because of this it was often looked to as the first source for help by Eighth Army when things needed to be done. And as a result, as you will see in this article, it played an important role in not only helping win the Korean War but also defining a new form of tactical combat that theretofore had never existed. With this in mind, we ask the reader to forgive us if we speak in this article of the 532nd as though it was the only Signal Construction Company in the Korean War. It wasn't... it was just one of the best damned Signal Companies to fight that war.[1]

We begin then with the 532nd Signal Construction Company, and its Company Commander, Lieutenant Howard. Considering that the war started on June 25, 1950, Lt. Howard’s unit was Johnny On The Spot when it came to being among the first to get in country, set up shop and begin supporting the troops. Being a HQ Support Company, as can be imagined, as soon as they arrived they began getting calls for phones to be installed in Eighth Army Headquarters… calls from frantic, frustrated Staff Officers, every one of which claimed a priority need to have a phone installed so that he could do his job.

Normally, stringing wire and hooking up phones would have been child’s play for Lt. Howard’s men. However, since only a few of the 532nd’s switchboards had arrived in country along with the men, the number of drops (lines) available to connect to phones was less than the demand Eighth Army HQ was creating. That being the case, all the men could do was string wire and hope for the best.

To try and keep the peace and make everyone think that phone service would soon be available, they strung the wire they had and then connected phones to these same dead ended wires. But that didn’t work. When Officers came along and saw a phone with a wire connected to it, they tried to use it. Finding no one on the other end of the line, they filled out a service order. All that did was add to the work Lt. Howard’s men did, as they ran around double checking whether the phone that was reported as being inoperative was or wasn’t one of the dead ended wire drops.

To get around this problem, and having more wire than phones, Lt. Howard’s Signaleers decided instead to simply string the wire to where it was needed, drop it on the floor next to the desk or spot where the phone would eventually be set, and move on. That way, when they got a call about a bare ended piece of wire missing a phone, they were pretty sure it was that way because it was supposed to be that way… and it would stay that way until more switchboards arrived. 

Strangely, this tactic worked to their favor, as once the Staff Officers of the Eighth Army figured out that the 532nd’s missing switchboards was the reason they had no phone service, they pulled out all stops to get them brought over to Korea. In the mean time, Lt. Howard spent his time running between Staff Officers, explaining the situation, asking for their help in getting his switchboards sent over as soon as possible, and suggesting that in the interim they work it out among themselves as to who would get access to the limited phone lines that were available.

To some extent this took the pressure off, but as time passed and the switchboards still failed to arrive another solution was needed. To meet the needs of all of the HQ Staff Officers a rotation schedule was set up whereby one Officer would receive phone service one day, and another the next. A smooth system from an operational standpoint, this process of connecting phones one day, disconnecting them the next and connecting another phone in its place, doubled the men’s workload.

With nary a complaint Lt. Howard set his men to connecting the phones and circuits in accordance with the priority schedules the Eighth Amy Staff Officers gave him… connecting a phone for a few hours today, pulling the line from it tomorrow and putting it somewhere else, and on, and on. A stopgap routine that fit the occasion, while this played havoc with the Signaleer’s work schedule, everyone heaved to, abandoned their normal shift schedule and simply worked as long as was needed to get the job done. Simply put, the day ended when the work ended, at which time the men would bunk in for an hour or two of sleep and then get up and do it all over again.

Across the Company the Officers and men of the 532nd worked without regard for their own comfort, realizing that a war was on and there was no time for niceties. Soon their work ethic began to be recognized. So hard did the men of Lt. Howard’s unit work that after a week at this level of intense activity the Staff Officers of the Eighth Army began complimenting them for a job well done. The report of the men’s efforts soon went up the chain of command, until it reached Lieutenant Colonel Thomas A. Pitcher, the Signal Officer of Eighth Army. A former Army Signal Corps OCS instructor himself (Instructor for Army Signal OCS Class 41-01, the very first Army Signal OCS Class), to show his appreciation he abandoned his desk and headed out to work with the wire crews himself, helping to string wire and connect phones along with the rest of the men.[2]

Over time the 532nd’s equipment began to arrive, and the panic of the early days subsided. Routine work then set in, based on an approach little changed from WWII. Overall, the wire that was strung, equipment that was used and methods employed followed textbook processes as had been taught in Fort Monmouth’s Signal Schools, with one exception. The exception had to do with the use of spiral 4 cable. As our readers know, spiral 4 wire worked more effectively as a telephone cable than non-spiral wire because the twisting of the wires helped reduce electromagnetic interference… either from other phone cables in close proximity to a wire line, or other sources such as spurious radio waves. Spiral 4 cable also reduced electromagnetic transmissions from the wire itself, helping to reduce noise and interference being instilled into nearby circuits, equipment and cables running parallel to it.

Because of this, especially in Korea, where distances between a phone and its switchboard tended to be longer than that found in Europe in WWII, everyone wanted to be connected with the new wire because its higher signal to noise ratio meant that conversations were more intelligible. So great was the demand for spiral 4 cable that Division level Communication Officers even got into the picture, demanding that their circuits use this wondrous new wire too.

The result was easy to predict: spiral 4 cable soon became in very short supply, creating more nightmares for the 532nd. Yet problematic as it was finding enough cable to meet everyone’s needs, the men didn’t complain because using spiral 4 greatly reduced the amount of signal maintenance they had to do, reducing the number of times they had to run new cables, and therein reducing the number of times they found themselves in the field, exposed to enemy fire.

Technical and supply problems aside, it didn’t take long for the pace and pulse of the Korean War to set in. During the early days of the war much of the work the 532nd did was in the vicinity of the Naktong River (낙동강). This was because the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) had driven their way down, across the entire length of South Korea, to the very river’s edge, and was pressing on the few U.S. troops then trying to hold onto Pusan. In effect, this made the Naktong River the western boundary for the infamous Pusan Perimeter. The result was that the NKPA mounted attack after attack along its length, trying to dislodge the U.S. and Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) troops along it, cross it, and rout the Eighth Army.[3]

The spot where some of the most fierce battles took place became known as the Naktong Bulge, and the first battle between U.S. and North Korean forces took place at this spot  between August 5th and 19th, 1950. Occurring in the vicinity of Yongsan (Yeongsan, Changnyeong county), right beside the Naktong River, controlling this important piece of ground meant that both sides fought hard to hold their positions along the Naktong Bulge during those early days. Because this was a key point the U.S. had to hold in order to save Pusan, the fighting that took place here led to the skirmishes taking place both here and along the rest of the front becoming known as the Battle of The Pusan Perimeter. Though if you had asked our Army Signal OCS graduate, Lieutenant Howard, he would have told you that while a hot spot of fighting, the battles that took place in the Naktong Bulge were only one of several large engagements around Pusan, all fought nearly simultaneously, and all supported by his Signaleers.

To get a sense of what these men went through, it is useful to look at some of the engagements they experienced. On August 5, the 4th Infantry Division of the NKPA moved south and crossed the Naktong River, attempting to cut US supply lines that ran in that area as well as gain a bridgehead into the Pusan Perimeter. Opposing it was the 24th Infantry Division of the Eighth Army, being supported by Signaleers from the 532nd.

Over the next two weeks, American and North Korean forces fought a bloody series of engagements inflicting heavy casualties on one another in a confusing series of attacks and counterattacks. Neither side was able to gain an upper hand over the other, and the front line shifted constantly back and forth throughout the engagement. As was expected, Lieutenant Howard's men strung and restrung cable in every direction imaginable, in an attempt to keep commanders in touch with those US forces then streaming into the fight. Without the telephone links the men of the 532nd set up, field commanders would not have been able to direct reinforcements to where they were needed, coordinate air support or call in heavy weapons fire on the North Koreans.

As a key part of the overall Battle of The Pusan Perimeter, the Naktong River Perimeter battle received the full attention of Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker. Otherwise known as "Bulldog", Walker was the Commander of the Eighth Army. Every bit as good a General as he was difficult to get along with, as a short, fat, heavy drinking man with a never ending pugnacious scowl his men loved him. He epitomized what American soldiers thought in those days a fighting man should be. No intellectual strategist with a tendency to dally with women writers that interviewed him, like David Petraeus, Walker was all fight all the time.

When he arrived in Korea U.S. forces were being pushed back mile by mile, every day. To sort things out and put his forces on the front foot instead of the back foot, Walker established the Eighth U.S. Army in Korea (EUSAK) as a Command Post and located it in Taegu, some 60 miles northwest of Pusan on the southeast corner of the peninsula. Not being able to mount a serious offensive because of the slow manner in which American forces dribbled into Korea, Walker watched as the NKPA pushed his men further and further down the peninsula. The rout began on July 5 when Task Force Smith suffered a crushing defeat near Osan. Two days later, on July 7, the NKPA pushed their way through Ch'onan. On July 10 they took Ch'ongju, then Choch'iwon on July 11–12, and finally crossed the Kum River on July 15–16.

On July 17 Walker, in an attempt to better coordinate all available troops in the field, added operational control of the Republic of Korea Army to his own forces, noting that they were badly battered and poorly equipped for the fight ahead, but still full of spirit and determination. However, spirit and determination was not enough. Three days later, the NKPA pushed the 24th Infantry Division out of the city of Taejon, and in the process actually captured Divisional Commander Major General William Dean.

Yet the rout continued. On July 25 the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Division found themselves being driven out of Yongdong. Throughout this period, Lieutenant Howard’s men ran cable everywhere they were asked, taking fire and fixing damaged wires even as U.S. Infantry troops moved about them, trying to consolidate the few lines they held.

So bad was the situation that Walker did something he had never done before. He addressed the men in a manner designed to grab them, shake them up, get their attention, and rally them for a second effort.

Little did he know that his talk to the men would also place his name in the pantheon of American heroes, forever. On July 29 he issued to Division Commanders what has become known as his "Stand or Die" order. It read:

We are fighting a battle against time. There will be no more retreating, withdrawal or readjustment of the lines or any other term you choose. There is no line behind us to which we can retreat.…There will be no Dunkirk, there will be no Bataan. A retreat to Pusan would be one of the greatest butcheries in history. We must fight until the end.…We will fight as a team. If some of us must die, we will die fighting together.…I want everybody to understand we are going to hold this line. We are going to win.

Rallying though his call to arms was, the men had their work cut out for them. Few knew that the forces under Walker’s command included little more than 5 badly mauled ROKA divisions and 3 still under strength U.S. Divisions: the U.S. 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions and the 1st Cavalry Division. Yet weak as they were, the men held on and waited for reinforcements to arrive.

As the battle progressed, other units began to appear along the front. As quickly as they arrived in Pusan units like the 5th Regimental Combat Team (5th RCT), the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade (1st Marine Bde.), the 2nd Infantry Division (2nd ID) and the British 27th Infantry Brigade (27th Inf. Bde.) were sent to the line.

To help consolidate their front and close openings that the NKPA would certainly exploit, Walker ordered his besieged and harassed forces to withdraw behind the natural barrier of the Naktong River.

Slowly, the “front” became distinguishable from what had previously been little more than numerous small but fierce battle areas only lightly connected to each other. By August 1 what became known as the Pusan Perimeter finally emerged. It comprised a rectangle about 100 miles wide by-50 miles high, set into the Southeast corner of Korea. Along the west side of the rectangle was the main line of resistance. It ran along the Naktong River, from the mountain town of Naktong-ni south for about 80 miles. At that point where the Naktong met the Nam River, the waterway jogged sharply to the east. At this point the defensive line left the river and continued instead some 20 miles due south, until it reached the coast.

The northern boundary of the Pusan Perimeter ran through the mountains from Naktong-ni to the town of Yongdok, on the east coast. There the sea stepped in to save the day, bounding the eastern and southern sides of the Perimeter. If the NKPA wanted to breach the line in this area, Walker could depend on the U.S. Navy to anchor this point, as well as the one to the southwest.

Walker’s repositioning of his units had the effect of making the perimeter he had to defend smaller. This of course had an impact on the 532nd’s efforts to support the units Walker was repositioning. For one thing, as the Naktong Perimeter became smaller the number of telephone lines that had to be run to each unit rapidly increased. Normally one sees this occur when an army builds for itself a stable defensive position. Walker though wasn’t aiming for a war of defense, he was merely repositioning his men to a) stop the NKPA’s advance until b) he could loose elements of his front line to go on the offensive… launching their gambit from the very lines they had been defending a day earlier. Thus Walker envisioned some units launching offensive actions while others… their neighbors in the trenches, if you will… stayed behind and maintained the defensive line protecting Pusan.

The impact of this on Lieutenant Howard’s Signal Construction men was that along the perimeter he was trying to support this "defensive stability" ended up applying to only certain units. In other words, some of the units his men ran cable to barely moved from one day to the next, as their task was to maintain a defensive line. Others on the other hand, while acting like they were filling a defensive hole in the Naktong Perimeter and therein maintaining a defensive line, were in reality looking for any opportunity to move laterally one way or the other, or even scoot over the line, to attack the enemy and make a breakthrough that would allow them to mount an enveloping action.

For those units that held their ground, Howard’s men of the 532nd had it easy… the phones they put in stayed in. But for the others, keeping lines of communication open to them proved a nightmare. Some, like the 24th Infantry Division, seemed to Howard to “shift too often.” Long after the war he commented in talking about the Naktong Perimeter battle that the 24th was the one that moved the most, saying “we had a hard time keeping wire in to them. At one time the 24th was west of Kochang and we were ordered to tie them into the Mukden cable at Miryang, about forty road miles away. So we sent out two crews and started laying two spiral 4 cables from each end toward the middle. But by the time these crews met and ran their test calls, the 24th had moved.”

For those of our readers that lived through Vietnam, stringing spiral 4 cable that had to be moved with Infantry that moved laterally, backwards and forwards, hour by hour, throughout the day, every day, seems unthinkable. One wonders how it could have been done at all. Thinking back on OCS training, it's easy to remember being taught how to supervise a platoon of men stringing cable and wiring phone service in the field, but it’s hard to recall a class on how to logistically glue your men to the Infantry men most in need of the phone your Signaleer was carrying in his knapsack. It’s hard to imagine a Signaleer running along beside some Infantry Lieutenant waiting for him to say “put the phone here… this will be my fighting position for the next 3 hours…”, all while uncoiling wire with every step he takes.

What we know is this, Lieutenant Howard, of OCS Class 44-40 got his men to do it, and do it with style.

As for Bulldog Walker, he proved a genius at operating along interior lines. With the help of the U.S. Fifth Air Force keeping the enemy at bay, Walker was able to move his forces along the inner edge of the perimeter even during daylight hours, without fear of detection. Helping him with this was a stroke of good luck in the form of a well placed rail loop that the Japanese had built back when Korea was one of their colonies. The line in question ran close to the Pusan Perimeter and connected Pusan with Miryang, Taegu and P'ohang-dong. This allowed Walker to quickly bring both men and materials up from the port on the Tsushima Strait. It being able to handle up to 30 oceangoing ships at any one time, Walker was thus able to bring to bear, within short order, serious men and materials almost anywhere along the Perimeter where the NKPA might chose to raise their head.[4]

With the economic and military might of the U.S. of A. behind him, General Walker was thus able to build a line of assault able to provide defensive capabilities where needed, while at other places along that same line put men to work preparing for offensive action. To assure that all of the units were integrated along the length of the Pusan Perimeter he initially positioned his three Divisions (24th,  25th and 1st Cav.) along the Naktong River, from Waegwan south to the coast. Tactically, the 24th Infantry Division held the center among the group, with the 1st Cavalry Division on the right and the 25th Infantry Division on the left edge. To add defense in depth, north of the 1st Cavalry Division General Walker ordered that the ROKA 1st Division sit along the edge of the Naktong itself, occupying its edges up to the northwest corner of the Perimeter. To round this defense in depth, Walker then placed the ROKA 8th and Capital Divisions in the center of the line, and the 6th Division to their west. For added measure he assigned the ROKA 3rd Division the task of defending the far northeast corner, all the way up to and through Yongdok, and from there on to the coast.

While Walker was busy preparing to do serious battle, the North Koreans did not sit idly by. Seeing the strength of Walker’s defenses unfolding they acted quickly and threw 6 infantry divisions against the western flank of the Pusan Perimeter. For good measure, they threw another 4 against the northern flank. Backing these foot soldiers up was the NKPA’s 105th Armored Division, which was held in reserve.

From a fighting power standpoint the NKPA force looked solid and steady. But the truth behind the scene of so much manpower and hardware suggested that a different story was unfolding. Although the 105th was armed with the highly capable Soviet T-34 tank, the unit had suffered heavy losses during its advance and was down to only about 40 operational tanks. This suggested that rather than it being a solid tactical move on the NKPA’s part to hold their tanks in reserve… waiting for an opportunity to send them through a break in the line… it was more likely that they were being held in reserve to help protect the infantry, in case a rout ensued and the NKPA had to fall back in disarray.

The other side of the coin however was that while the 105th’s tanks might have been little more than a show piece placed on the chess board, the men of the NKPA were in fine shape and ready for a fight. More worrisome than this, every day there seemed to be more and more of them pouring into the battle lines. This was because the North Koreans continued to send fresh forces down the peninsula, such that by late August they were able to commit 3 additional relatively fresh divisions, 2 against the center of the Naktong defense line and 1 south, at a point just opposite the southern end along the coast.

Despite this, Walker's force held a slight numerical advantage… at least in the first week of August it did, when his lines held some 92,000 troops to about 70,000 for the NKPA’s side. In this case however, Walker worried that his numerical advantage might be for naught, as the majority of the NPKA soldiers were not only already combat hardened, they were in fact combat troops. Because of the close proximity of the defensive lines to Walker’s Headquarters, Walker’s 92,000 soldiers, on the other hand, consisted mainly of the kind of men normally found in a Headquarters area… support troops of the type needed to provide, operate and maintain the logistics infrastructure an army requires. Lieutenant Howard’s 532nd men were among them… support men soon to find their ability to fire a weapon as important as their ability to tell “tip” from “ring.”

To break out of the pocket the NKPA had him sewed up in, Walker devised a strategy around conducting what he called a "Mobile Defense." The plan was that a small portion of his defending force would hold a thin screen of forward positions, each centered on a strong point. The bulk of his force he would hold in reserve as a counterattacking element. Some of our readers may have read our article on the October 2014 Home Page, where we discussed tactical warfare from the perspective of a Signal Site in Vietnam (see: Tactical Warfare On A Signal Site). If you did, you are already familiar with the 5 basic forms of battle tactics: Envelopment, Turning Movement, Infiltration, Penetration and Frontal Attack. These forms obviously existed during the Korean War too, but Walker’s concept of a Mobile Defense did not. At that time there was no such thing as a Mobile Defense. Not until Walker perfected it did this form of tactical doctrine join the U.S. Army’s compendium of standard elements of maneuver that can be used to win a battle. Thanks to Walker however, by 1950 his new Mobile Defense strategy was not only part of the U.S. Army’s repertoire of battle tactics, it had been written into the U.S. Army's primary operations manual as an accepted and proven form of combat to be taught to all military leaders.

What Walker did when he devised his approach was modify the tactic then known as a "defense on a wide front" to suit the situation he found himself in along the Naktong and Puson Perimeters. Even this however—the Defense on a Wide Front—was considered a risky form of tactics, being considered by most as little more than a theoretical exercise worthy of college classroom exploration, but not actual field use. Highly experimental at best, Walker saw value in the concept and decided to marry it with another form of tactics known as the “positional defense.” In Positional Defense the bulk of one's forces are deployed along a continuous line of fixed positions, with small, mobile reserve forces placed at key points in the rear. By integrating these two tactical forms Walker was able to take the best of each and create an impregnable defensive position along which were spotted strong points able to mount offensive actions intended to break through the enemy’s lines, after which anything from an envelopment to a turning movement could be mounted to press the case to victory. Yet at the same time, if the enemy mounted an opportunistic frontal attack either without warning or in response to a breakout by Walker, he could just as easily move his “Strong Point” units just as he would reserves, to fill any hole or void in danger of seeing his line give way to the enemy.

As things actually unfolded on the ground in the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter, Walker assigned to each of his Divisions along the bulk of the Perimeter a positional front line defense involving a length of about six to eight miles each. By contrast, each of the Divisions Lieutenant Howard’s men of the 532nd supported covered a length of line along the Naktong River of 25 to 35 miles. There being 4 Divisions in this group, that meant that Lieutenant Howard’s men were trying to keep some 100 – 140 miles of front line units in communication with Eighth Army HQ.

As the reader can imagine, Strong Points or no Strong Points, the line of defense was so long and thinly spread that Walker lacked sufficient troops to form the key large mobile reserve he intended to have at his disposal via his newly developed Mobile Defense strategy. But he was nothing if he was not both stubborn and determined, and so to remedy this situation he cobbled together a number of ad hoc “counterattack forces” from troops in those sectors where he expected little to no fighting to occur. This, plus a few extra men from the newly arriving units, gave him a supplemental reserve that he could throw at any NKPA attempt to penetrate the weak line he held along the Naktong River.

For those of you readers beginning to feel “this man is taking far too many chances… first inventing a new form of battle tactics, then putting in place an emergency support strategy dependent on pulling men from low friction points along his front and piecing them together with new arrivals to the field, men hardly even aware of where they are…” you must remember that Walker was on the ground… he was there, and he knew what he was up against. Even today, some 64 years later, it's hard to look at what he did and find logic in it... but it worked.

What Walker knew that analysts even today fail to realize is that he had two important things on his side: 1) a solid network of roads and railroads within the perimeter, which he could use to move his "fire brigades" around wherever he needed them, and 2) a superb team of Signaleers in the form of Lieutenant Howard’s 532nd Signal Construction Company, able to build and maintain fully effective lines of communication along his entire front, no matter how fluid that front became. With communication in hand, men at the ready, and the means to move those men, Walker had exactly what his Mobile Defense strategy called for.

Sitting here today looking back on General Walker’s approach to his predicament, one can see how precisely his actions fit within the kind of Infantry training tactics we are all familiar with. It couldn’t be any more simple, Walker was applying the old saw of shoot, move and communicate—except that if one looks closely enough at what he was doing, what one will see is that he had reversed the order. The way Walker applied this rule of thumb was in the form of communicate, move, shoot, not move, shoot, communicate. That is, he used the superb but harried communication network Lieutenant Howard’s 532nd set up to “communicate” along the full length of his thinly held line... treating it in the manner of an upside down triangular communication network that allowed him to move his men where needed when needed, with the dual purpose of defending his line "here" while he broke through the enemy's line "there".

The graphic at right shows how simple the concept was. It is shown for a situation where one of the points along the front line, Unit A, comes under attack and requires reinforcements. With Lieutenant Howard's excellent communication network in place, this unit is able to notify Walker at HQ that they need support. Walker can then, using the same communication network Lt. Howard set up, direct Unit B to move some of it's troops to support Unit A. Of importance in this case, Unit B represents one of Walker's "Strong Points", and so has troops prepared to do any one of three things: defend their position, go to the aid of another line unit, or if possible take the offensive, break through the line and roll up the enemy's position.

In the scenario at right, with Unit B under orders Walker can notify the logistics personnel running the transportation links along the front line to pick up and move Unit B's men to Unit A.

Today this kind of coordination is what one would expect from front line units. But it must be remembered that during the Korean War a commander having at his disposal a fully functional front line communication network layered on top of an ideally situated transportation network simply did not exist. It wasn't until the mobile communication systems of the Vietnam War allowed commanders to use their access to helicopters to provide a transport system that mobile defense, and especially offense, became possible. In Korea, General Walker was trying to create, before its time, a concept that one day the entire U.S. Army would come to rely on.

And so it was—in 1950—an American General had formulated with clarity and exactness a better way for the Infantry to operate. By using the excellent communication network Lieutenant Howard and his men had given him, along with the local transportation links at his disposal, he was able to develop a new battlefield tactic based on the simple concept of communicate, move, shoot. Not shoot, move and communicate, but communicate, move and shoot. And note further, the way Walker used the concept he had his men communicate three times before any moving or shooting took place.

It’s enough to make a grown Signal Officer cry: communicate, move, shoot.

For General Walker then, with this new tactic, it didn't matter if the battle was defensive or offensive in nature, he could react and win either way. If the NKPA ruled the day and took it to the Eighth Army, pressing the lines until they broke and the NKPA could overtake Pusan… he could use his tactics to move men from Strong Points to weak points. On the other hand, if Walker had his way and he was able to find a place where his men could break through the encirclement the NKPA had him in, then he could reverse his Mobile Defense strategy and make it a Mobile Offense strategy. Either way, the order of the day was still to communicate, move, shoot.

For all of this, credit goes to not only General Walker, but also former Army Signal OCS Class 41-01 Instructor Lieutenant Colonel Thomas A. Pitcher, who organized activities back at HQ, as well as his erstwhile Army Signal OCS Class 44-40 graduate Lieutenant Howard... who acted as the field leader on the spot... hop scotching the men of his 532nd Signal Construction Company along the full length of the 140 mile long Naktong Perimeter front line. Without these two men, General Walker would have been in a world of hurt.

Without being too maudlin, it is important to say that as the battle unfolded the means by which these three men commanded the field portrayed grace itself. General Walker, lacking a subordinate corps headquarters, felt he could get a better feel for the battle if he was with the men, along the lines. Because of this he took to his jeep, alternating between it and an L-19 Bird Dog to check firsthand what was happening at each Strong Point. As he moved men and materials he kept Lieutenant Colonel Pitcher, back at HQ, in the picture. Pitcher in turn gave a heads up to Lieutenant Howard, who in turn moved his men to run new cables and lines wherever needed. Their coordination was so good that often Lt. Howard’s men had phone lines in place before the men General Walker dispatched even arrived.

While it is a little outside the scope of this article, we will digress here to tell you of one of the other men who supported General Walker in this effort to apply his new Mobile Defense strategy. His name was Colonel Eugene M. Landrum, he was the EUSAK Chief of Staff, and we bring him up because back during WWII Landrum was the Commanding Officer in charge of the American forces that recaptured the Aleutian island of Attu, from the Japanese. More to the point, this author has particular interest in him as it was under his command that this author’s Uncle died in combat. A Signaleer, the behind the lines attack that took his life never should have happened, but did in great measure because of the ineptness with which then General Landrum managed that battle with the Japanese. For those readers interested, you can find the story of the 4 men of this author’s family that served in the Signal Corps in an article we penned called Signalmen Are Tough, posted back in January 2012. In that story you will learn of our Uncle Steve, a Private performing Signal Corps duties in a Coast Artillery Unit in the Battle of Attu… a Signalman who died in a knife fight with a Japanese Sapper, in the middle of the night.

After gaining some combat experience at Attu, Landrum was shipped to Europe, was promoted to Major General and led the 90th Infantry Division during the brutal hedgerow fighting in Normandy, in July 1944. He did as well as he was able, but much like the needless slaughter that took place under his command on Attu, things didn't turn out as Eisenhower planned. The result was that he found himself relieved of that command and reverted back to the level of Colonel. The records do not indicate why he was relieved, but one can assume that it wasn’t because there were too many Major General’s in Ike’s Army back then.

In the Korean War Landrum popped up again, this time being assigned to General Walker’s staff. Unlike how he was perceived in WWII, in Korea Walker found him a much better soldier and more reliable than many of the other Colonel’s on his staff. Walker valued him highly, even to the point of publicly demonstrating the value and respect he placed on Landrum by always referring to him as "General" Landrum.

This author’s personal views aside, by the time of his appearance in the Korean War Colonel Landrum exuded a calm, unflappable air of professionalism. All of his colleagues found him to be a consummate team player. For Walker this proved to be a benefit, as since a U.S. field army in 1950 was not authorized an Assistant Commanding General, Walker turned to Landrum and made him his de facto deputy. This brought him into close contact with Lieutenant Colonel Pitcher, the Eighth’s Signal Officer, and through him on numerous occasions Lieutenant Howard. With the primary task of keeping track of all forces in Korea and summoning up reserves to plug any holes, Landrum became a key part of the battles that followed.

With all of this in place it was just a matter of time until the NKPA acted. From August 4th to 24th the NKPA attacked the Pusan Perimeter along multiple lines of thrust. Coordinating each route of attack, the North Koreans were essentially able to combine these efforts such that they formed 4 major, widely separated but nevertheless converging axis. Adding to this, in the southwest one NKPA division and one armored regiment advanced along the Chinju-Masan-Pusan axis, seeking to envelop the left of Walker's line.

This is what Walker had been waiting for, and the reason he had developed his Mobile Defense. On August 7 he gave the word and the combined Army–Marine force launched the first ever American counterattack of the Korean War, hitting the NKPA 6th Division at Chinju.

As a test of strength the tactics worked, but accomplished little more. The truth be told, what Walker had loosed was more of a counterattack than an attempt to break through the NKPA lines. Worse, it was poorly coordinated and while it stopped the North Koreans it had little impact on their strength. After 5 days of hesitant fighting, Walker, having heard through Lieutenant  Howard’s communication link that things were getting hot farther north, sensibly suspended the operation.

While a seemingly redundant point, the reader should reflect on the significance of the importance of speedy, reliable communication in a situation such as this. Without Lt. Howard’s vast and functional network of spiral 4 linked telephone lines Walker would not have known that his northern flank was receiving more pressure than it should have been. If he had continued with his vacillating combat action in the southwest near Chinju, he could have found himself being forced, too late into the game, to pull reserves from other places to shore up what was a poorly run local campaign at Chinju. If he had done this, it might have served to weaken his lines in the north to the extent that the pressure the NKPA was putting in that area breached those lines. Thus it was that the telephone network built by a lowly First Lieutenant nearly fresh out of Army Signal OCS again provided the key tool needed to allow General Walker to sense the situation in real time and react within a heartbeat to the pulse of the battle.

The southwest and north battles aside, the NKPA was not about to let General Walker off of the hook. In chorus with their southern thrust, the North Koreans punched at the center of Walker's line, sending 5 infantry divisions echeloned in depth at Walker’s men. To make sure they had the impact needed to break through Walker’s lines, the NKPA supported these units with elements of the 105th Armored Division. In terms of battle tactics, the form of attack the NKPA was attempting to mount mimicked a double-pincer movement. While the attack originated in the vicinity of Sangju, it’s purpose was clearly to envelop Taegu. The double pincer element took its form from attacks bearing on Taegu, from both the north and south.

Here we revert back to a point we made earlier, where we commented that Walker had two critical strengths supporting his proceedings, and that without these he not only would have been flying blind, but likely risk losing any battles he might have launched. Those two strengths were:

1) A solid network of roads and railroads within the perimeter, which he could use to move his "fire brigades" around wherever he needed them, and

2) A superb team of Signaleers in the form of Lieutenant Howard’s 532nd Signal Construction Company, able to build and maintain fully effective lines of communication along his entire front.

We reiterate this point, because in the end it is the existence of these two strengths that enables the Mobile Defense concept to work. Much like the tactical approach air mobile operations took in Vietnam, without communication and transportation Walker's tactical approach would have broken down.

When Walker saw the double pincer movement unfolding he instantly recognized that if it succeeded he would lose both of these two assets. That is, if the NKPA broke through what he termed the Naktong Bulge they would be able to destroy the integrity of Lieutenant Howard’s spiral 4 network of telephone lines, effectively putting his communication network out of service, as well as sever the critical Taegu–Pusan rail loop that he depend on to move men. Without a communication backbone and a means of moving his men from Strong Point to weak point, Walker’s Mobile Defense would collapse. In the time it took for these thoughts to gel in Walker’s mind, the Naktong Bulge went from being an interesting line on the map to the greatest threat he faced.

In battle good leadership almost always trumps better training, equipment and manpower, and so it was with the first two battles the North Korean’s launched. Poorly coordinated (dare we say, the North Koreans didn’t have Lieutenant Walker on their side, and so were without effective means of communication?), the extra time it took for the NKPA to respond to Walker’s movements allowed General Walker to shift his reserves between the two attack points as required. This befuddled the North Koreans, who thought they were on their way to taking the day. Instead, when Walker moved the 1st Marine Brigade and elements of the 27th Infantry Regiment north and attached them to the 24th Infantry Division, and then ordered the combined force to counterattack the NKPA 4th Division (August 17), the NKPA collapsed. The result was that the 24th Infantry Division was able to clear the “bulge” by the following night and hold the ground from that point on.

Little did the NKPA know how close they came to succeeding; and little too did they know how tenuous the hold was that the 24th ID had on the property they were occupying. It wasn’t until later, on August 24, when Colonel Landrum picked up one of Lieutenant Howards field phones, called General Walker, and told him that the 2nd Infantry Division had disembarked and was on the ground ready for action that Walker was able to heave a sigh of relief. He ordered Colonel Landrum to get the 2nd ID on trains as fast as possible, get them up to the line, have them step into the bulge the 24th ID was occupying, and then have the 24th ID pulled back and placed into reserve again.

Poor coordination though the NKPA might have been displaying, they were not without determination. Even while their attacks in the center and south were failing they ordered another 2 NKPA Divisions just north of Taegu to attempt to force their way across the Naktong River. Here they succeeded, causing the U.S. lines—being held by the ROKA 1st and 6th Divisions—to collapse along the northwest corner of the Naktong Perimeter. As the ROKA Divisions withdrew they fell back on the 1st Cavalry Division, which had the unenviable task of defending the city of Taegu itself. With all of the city of Taegu under threat, General Walker smartly ordered his EUSAK headquarters to evacuate and relocate to Pusan.

Again, Lieutenant Colonel Pitcher turned to First Lieutenant Howard and asked him to rally his Signaleers and set up a new HQ level communication infrastructure in Pusan. This time however our OCS graduate was ahead of the curve. Expecting just such an event, Howard had earlier instructed his Signaleers to pre-wire Pusan, in their spare time, so that if push came to shove all they would need to do was grab the telephones off of the desks in Taegu, run them down to Pusan, and reattach them there. Well, push did come to shove, and thanks to Lieutenant Howard’s men the Signal Corps came through again.

Meanwhile, along the front, General Walker sensed an opportunity finally coming his way. Finally, he thought, it was time to squeeze out of the Mobile Defense strategy the benefits he knew lay within it. Ordering that the 27th Infantry Regiment be shifted back to the north, from whence it had originally come… along with the ROKA 1st Division… he instructed them to counterattack the NKPA. Again the dual strength of an effective field telephone network backed up with a road and railroad system just to the rear of the front line allowed General Walker to work his magic. In short order these two units moved to relocate, and by August 18 the Americans and South Koreans from these 2 units had established defensive positions overlooking a long, flat, narrow valley that became known as the "Bowling Alley." The following day, Walker committed elements of the 23rd Infantry Regiment to reinforce the 27th,  and with that he had the strength he needed to press his enemy. The battle coursed for a full six days and nights, and while the 13th NKPA Division tried as they could to push the Americans back, they failed to succeed.

While General Walker savored this small little victory, things were turning against him in other quarters. Along the length of the Naktong Perimeter battles were raging. On August 9th the NKPA launched a combined infiltration and envelopment action, along Walker’s northern line of defense. To support this operation they threw 3 Divisions into the mix. Their objective was to push their way down the east coast, from Yongdok, through P'ohang-dong to Pusan.

Earlier General Walker had placed the northern flank of his perimeter under the tactical control of the ROKA 1st Corps. Now he decided to provide support for them by sending them a small task force of U.S. artillery and armor that they could turn to if needed. Again Lieutenant Howard’s Signaleers rose to the occasion and made certain that telephone lines were in place by rapidly stringing spiral 4 cable up to the ROKA 1st Corps field HQ. To assure that their extreme eastern flank, along the sea, did not give way, Walker ordered that massive FEC air and naval support be provided to them. As it turned out, this did the trick as Naval gunfire compensated for the ROKA 3rd Division's artillery shortfall, forcing the NKPA to withdraw far inland where they could be safe from the shelling.

Even so, the NKPA managed to push the South Koreans down the coast to Toksong-ni. Recognizing a tactical defeat when he saw one, General Walker ordered the U.S. Navy to pick up the ROKA troops and evacuate them on the nights of August 16th and 17th. During all of this time the 532nd Signal Construction Company busily tried to pull out the cable it had just installed a few days earlier, police-up the phones and equipment it could find, and prepare to support the ROKA troops wherever they were put ashore.

The next day the Navy set them ashore near P'ohang-dong, where some 25 miles south of where they had originally been they then proceeded to set up a defensive position. While in point of fact the ROKA 3rd Division had suffered a tactical retreat, thanks to the communications infrastructure the 532nd had set up, and the Navy’s transportation, the speed with which it was executed allowed them to remain in the fight, and that was to General Walker’s benefit. Even so, when the dust settled it was clear that the along the northeast edge the Pusan Perimeter had collapsed southward, and was now little more than half of its original size.

If General Walker had sat back at this point of the battle, put his feet up on his desk, and pondered the situation he would have seen that the North Koreans had in fact executed a massive frontal attack all along his lines. Normally this basic element of military tactics would have spelled his doom. The reason it didn’t in this case was because Walker was able to execute his Mobile Defense strategy with precision… thanks again to excellent Signal Corps provided communication backed up with a superb in-the-rear-of-the-lines transportation structure. Historians that have reviewed this battle say that the fault lie with the North Koreans, in that they executed their frontal attack in a piecemeal fashion. We disagree. We posit that piecemeal or not, if Walker was unable to hear with precision, via the telephone network First Lieutenant Howard and others had set up, what was going on and where, he would have fallen victim to a weakness in his line… somewhere along the front… that weak point would have collapsed and it would have been all over. America’s Army would have been routed by the North Koreans in the very earliest of days of the war.

But his lines didn’t collapse, his communications kept him informed, and he was able to move his men where he needed them, when he needed them, such that the battle of the Pusan Perimeter, and the Naktong Perimeter in particular, kept on.

On August 27 the NKPA commenced yet one more series of attacks against the same objectives they had been pressing since the first battle ensued. This time they had learned their lessons and the attacks were much better coordinated. With some 98,000 troops in the field, they were able to simultaneously press forward such that by September 3 General Walker found himself facing attacks in 5 separate locations. It was only a matter of time until the North Koreans had a stroke of luck, and so 3 days after their attacks began they managed to cut one of the roads Walker had depended on to move his troops.

Running just west of Taegu, the North Korean success in cutting this road forced the ROKA 3rd Division to one more time pack up and move. Leaving the town of P'ohang-dong behind them, they left the door open for the NKPA to take on the 1st Cavalry Division, who the reader will remember was defending Taegu. Fighting a tough battle, the NKPA came within inches of forcing the 1st Cavalry out of Taegu, but they failed. On September 10 however they managed to drive the 2nd Infantry Division deeper into the Naktong Bulge, pushing them back almost to Yongsan. Adding insult to injury, to the far south the NKPA broke through the 25th Infantry Division and began an advancing movement toward Masan.

Recognizing the possibility that Taegu might be lost, Walker focused his attention on the security of Pusan. Using the 532nd’s communication network, he shifted his reserves among danger points within what was clearly an ever shrinking perimeter. Seeing the Naktong Bulge as an important piece of ground to hold, if only to keep the NKPA at bay, he sent the 1st Marine Brigade up to support the 2nd Infantry Division, placing them under the 2nd ID’s command, and instructed that the combined force be used to clear the Naktong Bulge… for the second time.

At the same time, he ordered that the 24th Infantry Regiment be moved to a more central position within the Naktong Bulge. His intent was that it be available to quickly move laterally, if needed, to reinforce the 25th Infantry Division, the 2nd Infantry Division or even the ROKA units north of these two units. Thus again, his Mobile Defense tactics were coming to bear. Luckily for him, his tactical gambit was based on sound reasoning, as by September 7 he was forced to commit the entire 24th Infantry Division to support the ROKA Divisions to the north of the 25th and 2nd IDs… just as he had envisioned.

For the next 5 days the fighting was harsh, hostile in the extreme with neither side giving an inch and the NKPA pressing at every opportunity. Yet Walker's defenses held on until finally, on September 12, the NKPA offensive peaked. By this time Walker’s men had reduced the NKPA forces through slow attrition from some 98,000 to fewer than 70,000 effectives, with the result that the NKPA campaign had stalled along the full length of the Pusan Perimeter.

Off balance and overextended, the North Koreans suffered more from one thing than any other: they didn’t have Lieutenant Howard and his men of the 532nd Signal Construction Company on their team; and so the never ending bombardment by the U.S. Navy and Air Force of the NKPA began to take its toll on their lines of communication. With all seriousness, we can say that in the end one of the major contributing factors to the failure of the NKPA to win the battle of the Pusan and Naktong Perimeters was the breakdown of the NKPA’s communication infrastructure. It doomed their campaign. With little doubt, the fight was still in the NKPA soldiers in the field, and while reduced in number, they were still strong enough to persevere and win, but their inability to communicate effectively enough to react to unfolding events destined them to failure.

Unable to communicate, coordinate, and therefore move their men where they were needed—as General Walker was via his Mobile Defense strategy—the North Korean offensive broke down. In the end, just as communicate, move and shoot pushed General Walker to success, the inability of the North Koreans to communicate, move and shoot doomed them to failure.

As the battle came to a slow close the Eighth Army was able to field some 84,500 troops. The ROKA had over 72,000 men in the field. The massive logistics push that the U.S. military mounted through Pusan resulted in more than 500 medium tanks finding their way to the front, giving General Walker a greater than 5-to-1 advantage in armor. While of little use during the actual battle of the Pusan and Naktong Perimeters, they would come in handy when Walker finally broke out of his lines on September 15 and headed north.

As to how Walker was finally able to break out of his lines and head north, with little doubt General Walker knew of General MacArthur's plan to conduct a massive turning movement by landing an Army and Marine Division deep in the enemy's rear, at Inchon. Knowing what was coming, he was able to conduct what in the end was little more than a holding action along his perimeter… a frantic and dangerous holding action, but a holding action nevertheless.

While this was happening General Walker’s EUSAK staff worked on plans for his men to break out of the perimeter, force the North Koreans off to the side, drive north and link up with MacArthur’s Inchon landing force.  MacArthur designated his force the X Corps. Somewhat belatedly recognizing that the North Koreans were better fighters than he had thought, he realized that Walker needed more strength of his own, and so he assigned him subordinate corps headquarters, in the form of the I Corps and IX Corps. Technically, MacArthur did this towards the end of August, but since the necessary support organizations failed to reach the Eighth Army until the Pusan and Naktong Perimeter campaign was in its mopping up phase, little benefit ensued to Walker. Eventually, when he finally received the required support organizations, his burdens eased.

As we all know, the X Corps landed at Inchon on September 15. On the next day Walker’s Eighth Army launched its breakout. The coordination was masterful, as units of EUSAK held the perimeter that existed and pinned the North Koreans in place, the newly established I Corps broke out just north of Taegu. Lieutenant Colonel Pitcher organized Signal support for the Eighth Army, and First Lieutenant Howard and his men heaved to also. This time though they were backed by multiple Signal Construction Companies that were at the ready, having come ashore at various stages of the campaign that had just been fought.

Overall, while the plan General Walker put together was simple and easily executed, as everyone knew at that point the NKPA was not going to prove a pushover. As it stood, the joint Walker–EUSAK plan called for the 5th Regimental Combat Team and the 1st Cavalry Division to seize a bridgehead over the Naktong River, near Waegwan. The 24th Infantry Division would then cross the river, with the ROKA 1st Division and the British 27th Infantry Brigade in tow. The combined force was to then drive up the Kimch'on-Taejon-Suwon axis to link up with General MacArthur’s X Corps.

A clean and simple plan, the truth was that Walker's forces were exhausted after nearly 2 months of constant fighting, and they had a tough time pushing the NKPA troops off of the ground they held. Tired, with ammo in short supply, and without the necessary river-crossing equipment that one would expect for an action like this, the slog was hard. For a full week the men fought on… tired,  bedraggled, almost without ammunition, but determined. Finally on September 22 North Korean resistance broke. By the next day it was obvious, the North Koreans were in withdrawal. From there it was a horse race to see who could get to MacArthur’s men first. Five days later Task Force Lynch—a group formed around the 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division—finally linked up with the 31st Infantry Regiment of  the 7th Infantry Division, of MacArthur’s X Corps, in a place just north of Osan, early on September 27.

Thus it ended. The Battle of the Pusan and Naktong Perimeters was over. Fourteen NKPA divisions had been taken on and for all practical purposes annihilated. As September 1950 came to a close and October began, only 20,000 to 30,000 of the original 98,000 NKPA troops that had dared to besiege Pusan were able to make their way back to North Korea.

Yet General Walker’s men paid a high price too. During the period July 5 to September 16, Eighth Army casualties totaled 4,280 KIA, 12,377 wounded, 2,107 missing and 401 confirmed captured. We have looked but can find no concise record as to how many of these men were Signal Corps men, even less so Army Signal Corps OCS graduates or instructors. But this we do know, Lieutenant Colonel Pitcher and  First Lieutenant Howard were in the thick of the battle, and may have, singlehandedly had more to do with not just the successful outcome of the campaign, but also the proving of an important and new form of tactical warfare—the Mobile Defense—than anyone knew. Walker’s success in battle depended on them, and the men of the 532nd Signal Construction Company, who without question proved the theorem communicate, move, shoot a foundamental element of modern warfare. These wonderful men embodied everything the U.S. Signal Corps stands for. We doff our hat to them and take a knee in honor of them.[5]