Combat· Korean War
Kansas Line
The Kansas Line was the defensive position drawn across the commanding ground of east-central Korea to which the United Nations advance was anchored, and the Marines spent a long stretch holding and improving their sector of it as the war's character changed.
With armistice negotiations opening, the emphasis shifted from sweeping advances to securing key terrain, patrolling aggressively into no-man's-land, and beating off probes against the line. The Marines fortified their positions, contested patrol bases forward of the main line, and absorbed a steady trickle of casualties from the artillery, mortars, and ambushes that defined this phase. It was here that the mobile war of 1950 and early 1951 gave way to the grinding stalemate that would last to the armistice. The Kansas Line became the hinge of the division's operations, the base from which it pushed to seize the Punchbowl heights and the line to which the front kept returning.
Record no. 631