Tiger's Tail: Looking North

North Korean soldiers looked on in wonder at the dizzying array of shaving creams, tooth pastes, shower soap and shampoo in South Korean homes....But it was the abundance of toilet paper that led to the collapse of North Korean moral. Soldiers wondered at full rolls of toiler paper hanging in the bathroom's of even the poorest houses of Seoul, with entire six packs waiting in linen closets. More remarkably the toilet paper was not course, but impossibly soft, like the pillows that lay on every bed in the city.

The South Koreans may have been the victims of capitalist oppressors but they enjoyed creature comforts unheard of in the north. This was the stark reality confronted by North Korean troops already tired and warn out after a week of war.

Indeed few supplies were reaching them at the front. By then American, South Korean and increasingly Japanese air power hammered the Red Triangle. Not a bridge was left standing, not an intersection was left un-cratered.

But this was only part of the aerial campaign. On the 7th day of the war a flight of B-2 bombers struck and utterly obliterated Kim ill Sung University in Pyongyang. This was a major nuclear  research facility. The B-2s left a half dozen smoldering piles of ruble where nuclear research faculties once were. Tellingly the Americans struck the university during the middle of the day, ensuring that hundreds of scientific personal were killed. An hour later a second flight of B-2's repeated the feat at Hamyhung University of Chemical research. The United States Air Force struck Uranium Enrichment sites at Yongjo-ri, near the Chinese border, and Chonma-San, both near the Chinese border.

While these strikes garnered world attention they distracted from the American's real purpose. As the air war over North Korea continued unabated the US Navy unloaded the 25th Infantry Division at the port facilities of Hasan, about 40 miles south of Seoul. At the same time the 1st Marine Division embarked from Okinawa. The marines sailed to points north, where they would rendezvous with elements of the 101st Air Assault Division north of the border....