From 20 May onward, it grew more apparent every hour that the second installment of the CCF Fifth Phase Offensive had failed even more conclusively than the first. The enemy had only a narrow penetration on a secondary front to show for ruinous casualties. Worse yet, from the Chinese viewpoint, the UN forces were in a position to retaliate before the attackers recovered their tactical balance. The Eighth Army had come through with relatively light losses, and it was now about to seize the initiative. CHAPTER VII Advance to the Punchbowl _Plan to Cut Off Communists--Initial Marine Objectives Secured--MAG-12 Moves to K-46 at Hoengsong--Fight of the 5th Marines for Hill 610--1st MAW in Operation_ STRANGLE--_KMC Regiment Launches Night Attack--1st Marines Moves Up to_ BROWN _Line--7th Marines Committed to Attack_ Only from the air could the effects of the UN counterstroke of May and June 1951 be fully appreciated. It was more than a CCF withdrawal; it was a flight of beaten troops under very little control in some instances. They were scourged with bullets, rockets, and napalm as planes swooped down upon them like hawks scattering chickens. And where it had been rare for a single Chinese soldier to surrender voluntarily, remnants of platoons, companies, and even battalions were now giving up after throwing down their arms. There had been nothing like it before, and its like would never be seen in Korea again. The enemy was on the run! General Van Fleet, after his retirement, summed up the double-barreled Chinese spring offensive and the UN counterstroke in these words: We met the attack and routed the enemy. We had him beaten and could have destroyed his armies. Those days are the ones most vivid in my memory--great days when all the Eighth Army, and we thought America too, were inspired to win. In those days in Korea we reached the heights.[202] [202] Gen J. A. Van Fleet, USA (Ret), “The Truth About Korea,” _Life_, 11 May 53. Communist casualties from 15 to 31 May were estimated by the Eighth Army at 105,000. This figure included 17,000 counted dead and the unprecedented total of some 10,000 prisoners, most of them Chinese Reds taken during the last week of the month in frantic efforts to escape. Such results were a vast departure from past occasions when Mao Tse-tung’s troops had preferred death to surrender. In all probability, only the mountainous terrain saved them from a complete debacle. If the Eighth Army had been able to use its armor for a mechanized pursuit, it might have struck blows from which the enemy could not recover. As it was, the Communists escaped disaster by virtue of the fact that a platoon could often stand off a company or even a battalion by digging in and defending high ground commanding the only approach. Every hill was a potential Thermopylae in this craggy land of few roads.