Walton Walker
The attacks caught UN planners and troops by surprise. By August 26, the UN troops thought they had destroyed the last serious threats to the perimeter, and anticipated the war ending by late November. ROK units, in the meantime, suffered from low morale as a result of their failures to defend effectively thus far in the conflict, and a cautious US Eighth Army commander Lieutenant General Walton Walker ordered Major General John B. Coulter to the P'ohang-dong area to shore up the ROK I Corps, which was falling apart due to low morale. UN troops were preparing for Operation Chromite, an amphibious assault on the port of Inchon on September 15, and did not anticipate that the KPA would mount a serious offensive before then.