Battle of Heartbreak Ridge

The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge was a month-long battle in the Korean War. It was fought between September 13 and October 15, 1951, in the hills of North Korea a few miles north of the 38th parallel (the prewar boundary between North and South Korea), near Chorwon. Heartbreak Ridge, is at 38°18′N, 128°1′E in Yanggu County, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge was one of several major engagements in an area know as "The Punchbowl", which served as an important Communist staging area. The United Nations first initiated limited operations to seize the high ground surrounding the Punchbowl in late July.


Engagement
After withdrawing from Bloody Ridge, the Korean People's Army (KPA-the North Korean Army) set up new positions just 1,500 yards away on a seven-mile-long hill mass that was soon to earn the name Heartbreak Ridge. If anything, the enemy's defenses were even more formidable here than on Bloody Ridge. Unfortunately, the 2d Division's acting commander, Brigadier General Thomas de Shazo, and his immediate superior, Major General Clovis E. Beyers, the X Corps commander, seriously underestimated the strength of the North Korean position. They ordered a lone infantry regiment-the 23rd and its attached French battalion to make what would prove to be an ill-conceived assault straight up Heartbreak's heavily fortified slopes.

All three of the 2nd Division's infantry regiments participated, with the brunt of the combat borne by the 23rd and 9th Infantry Regiments, along with the attached French Battalion. The attack began on September 13 and quickly deteriorated into a familiar pattern. First, American aircraft, tanks, and artillery would pummel the ridge for hours on end, turning the already barren hillside into a cratered moonscape. Next, the 23d's infantrymen would clamber up the mountain's rocky slopes, taking out one enemy bunker after another by direct assault. Those who survived to reach the crest arrived exhausted and low on ammunition. Then the inevitable counterattack would come - wave after wave of North Koreans determined to recapture the lost ground at any cost. Many of these counterattacks were conducted at night by fresh troops that the North Koreans were able to bring up under the shelter of neighboring hills. Battles begun by bomb, bullet, and shell were inevitably finished by grenade, trench knife, and fist as formal military engagements degenerated into desperate hand-to-hand brawls. Sometimes dawn broke to reveal the defenders still holding the mountaintop.

And so the battle progressed-crawling up the hill, stumbling back down it, and crawling up once again-day after day, night after night, for two weeks. Because of the constricting terrain and the narrow confines of the objectives, units were committed piecemeal to the fray, one platoon, company, or battalion at a time. Once a particular element had been so ground up that it could no longer stand the strain, a fresh unit would take its place, and then another and another until the 23d Infantry as a whole was fairly well shattered.

The fighting was savage - no quarter was given or asked by either side - and the ridgeline (called Heartbreak by the American G.I.'s) changed hands many times in an exhausting series of attacks and counterattacks. Several units up to company size (100-200 men) were wiped out. The Americans employed massive artillery barrages, airstrikes and tanks in attempts to drive the North Koreans off the ridge, but the KPA proved extremely hard to dislodge. Finally, on September 27th, the 2d Division's new commander, Maj. Gen. Robert N. Young, called a halt to the "fiasco" on Heartbreak Ridge as American planners reconsidered their strategy.

The 23d Infantry's failure to capture Heartbreak Ridge had not come from a lack of valor. It took extreme bravery to advance up Heartbreak's unforgiving slopes under intense enemy fire. And when things did not go right, it took equal courage to take a stand so that others might live. One person who took such a stand was Pfc. Herbert K. Pililaau, a quiet, six-foot-tall Hawaiian. Pililaau's outfit, Company C, 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry, was clinging to a small stretch of Heartbreak's ridge top on the night of 17 September when a battalion of North Koreans came charging out of the darkness from an adjacent hill. The company fought valiantly, but a shortage of ammunition soon compelled it to retreat down the mountain. After receiving reinforcements and a new issue of ammunition, the Americans advanced back up the ridge. North Korean fire broke the first assault, but Company C soon regrouped and advanced again, recapturing the crest by dawn. The pendulum of war soon reversed its course, however, and by midday the men of Company C were once again fighting for their lives as the North Korean battalion surged back up the hill. Running low on ammunition, the company commander called retreat. Pililaau volunteered to remain behind to cover the withdrawal. As his buddies scrambled to safety, Pililaau wielded his Browning automatic rifle with great effect until he too had run out of ammunition. He then started throwing grenades, and when those were exhausted, he pulled out his trench knife and fought on until a group of North Korean soldiers shot and bayoneted him while his comrades looked on helplessly from a sheltered position 200 yards down the slope. Determined to avenge his death, the men of Company C swept back up the mountain. When they recaptured the position, they found over forty dead North Koreans clustered around Pililaau's corpse.

Pililaau's sacrifice had saved his comrades, and for that a grateful nation posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor. Yet his valiant act could not alter the tactical situation on the hill. As long as the North Koreans could continue to reinforce and resupply their garrison on the ridge, it would be nearly impossible for the Americans to take the mountain. After belatedly recognizing this fact, the 2d Division crafted a new plan that called for a full division assault on the valleys and hills adjacent to Heartbreak to cut the ridge off from further reinforcement. Spearheading this new offensive would be the division's 72d Tank Battalion, whose mission was to push up the Mundung-ni Valley west of Heartbreak to destroy enemy supply dumps in the vicinity of the town of Mundung-ni.

It was a bold plan, but one that could not be accomplished until a way had been found to get the 72d's M4A3E8 Sherman tanks into the valley. The only existing road was little more than a track that could not bear the weight of the Shermans. Moreover, it was heavily mined and blocked by a six-foot-high rock barrier built by the North Koreans. Using nothing but shovels and explosives, the men of the 2d Division's 2d Engineer Combat Battalion braved enemy fire to clear these obstacles and build an improved roadway. While they worked, the division's three infantry regiments-9th, 38th, and 23d-launched coordinated assaults on Heartbreak Ridge and the adjacent hills. By October 10 everything was ready for the big raid. The sudden onslaught of a battalion of tanks racing up the valley took the enemy by surprise. By coincidence, the thrust came just when the Chinese 204th Division was moving up to relieve the North Koreans on Heartbreak. Caught in the open, the Chinese division suffered heavy casualties from the American tanks. For the next five days the Shermans roared up and down the Mundung-ni Valley, over-running supply dumps, mauling troop concentrations, and destroying approximately 350 bunkers on Heartbreak and in the surrounding hills and valleys. A smaller tank-infantry team scoured the Sat'ae-ri Valley east of the ridge, thereby completing the encirclement and eliminating any hope of reinforcement for the beleaguered North Koreans on Heartbreak.

The armored thrusts turned the tide of the battle, but plenty of hard fighting remained for the infantry before French soldiers captured the last Communist bastion on the ridge on October 13. After 30 days of combat, the Americans and French eventually gained the upper hand and secured Heartbreak Ridge. Both sides suffered high casualties: over 3,700 American and French and an estimated 25,000 North Korean and Chinese. These losses made a deep impression on the U.N. and U.S. command, which decided that battles like Heartbreak Ridge were not worth the high cost in blood for the relatively small amount of terrain captured. For this reason, Heartbreak Ridge was the last major offensive conducted by U.N. forces in the war.

Sporadic battles along the line of contact between U.N. and communist forces would continue to be fought until the armistice was signed in July, 1953, but from this point on, they would usually be initiated by the North Koreans or Chinese.

Battle of Old Baldy

The Battle of Old Baldy usually refers to a series of five engagements over a period of 10 months for Hill 266 in west-central Korea, though there was also vicious fighting both before and after these engagements..

As May turned to June, Major General David L. Ruffner of the 45th Division (holding the right flank of the I Corps' line, was frustrated by the splendid view that enemy observers had of his division’s positions. Opposing the 45th Division from east to west were elements of the 338th and 339th Regiments, 113th Division, 38th Army; 350th and 349th Regiments, 117th Division, 39th Army; and the 344th Regiment, 115th Division, 39th Army. The other infantry components of the 113th, 115th, and 117th Divisions were in reserve, as was the 116th Division, 39th Army. The Chinese had over ten battalions of artillery positioned along the front in direct or general support roles. Maj. Gen. Ruffner laid plans for Operation Counter, a two-phase operation to capture and hold 12 outposts a few thousand yards in front of the main line. One of the most prominent hills came to be called "Old Baldy", which earned its nickname after artillery and mortar fire destroyed the trees on its crest. But as the highest point on a prominent east-west ridge, Old Baldy held strategic importance because it dominated terrain in three directions.

The battle for Old Baldy was costly to both sides. Through July 21, 1952, the United Nations had lost 357 men in the battle for the hill, and Chinese casualties were estimated to be more than 1,000.


Opening attack

Several air strikes on known enemy strongpoints close to the outpost objectives took place during the daylight hours of June 6, 1952. Then, after dark, various units ranging from a squad to almost a company, advanced to take possession of the outposts. Evidently the Chinese had not anticipated the operation, for the attack units encountered little opposition except at Outpost 10 on Hill 255 and Outpost 11 on Hill 266. The former, which was to become better known as Porkchop Hill, was taken by two platoons from I Company, 180th, after a 55-minute fire fight with two Chinese platoons. On Old Baldy, two squads from A Company, 180th Infantry, exchanged small arms and automatic weapons fire with two Chinese squads, then withdrew and directed artillery fire upon the Chinese.

Pfc. James Ortega, a forward observer for the 171st Field Artillery Battalion, jumped into a trench and directed the artillery concentration which pounded the top of the hill with 500 rounds. When the artillery ceased, the men from A Company again probed the enemy's positions. Meeting intense fire, M/Sgt. John O. White took a squad, reinforced by a BAR and machine gun, and made a sweep to the rear of the enemy where they advanced to within 25 feet of the Chinese before attacking. As the Chinese resistance crumbled, the infantrymen from A Company pushed their way toward the crest of Old Baldy, where Chinese artillery immediately began to come in. Despite the enemy fire, the A Company squads hung on and took possession of Old Baldy shortly after midnight.

Once the outposts were seized, the task of organizing them defensively got under way. Aided by Korean Service Corps personnel the men of the 279th and 180th Infantry Regiments brought in construction and fortification materials and worked through the night. They built bunkers with overhead protection so that their own artillery could use proximity fuze shells when an enemy attack drew close to the outpost. They ringed the outposts with barbed wire and placed mines along the avenues of approach which were also covered by automatic weapons. Whenever possible, they sited their machine guns and recoilless rifles in positions where they could provide support to adjacent outposts. Signal personnel set up communications to the rear and laterally to other outposts by radio and wire and porters brought in stockpiles of ammunition. Back on the main line of resistance, infantry, tank, and artillery support weapons had drawn up fire plans to furnish the outposts with protective fires and a prebriefed reinforcing element was prepared to go to the immediate assistance of each outpost in the event of enemy attack. By morning the new 24-hour outposts were ready to withstand counterattacks, and garrison forces of from 18 to 44 men were left behind as the bulk of the forces from the 279th and 180th Infantry Regiments withdrew to the main line of resistance.

Recollection from March 1952 of the Battle for Old Baldy, “The Ethiopians took Old Baldy from the ‘Chinks’ but when they turned it over to us, we lost it again. The Ethiopians are going to try to get it back.” --Edward L. Pierce


First battle of Old Baldy - June 26 - July 17 1952

The contest for Old Baldy became very heated on June 26, 1952. Almost 1,000 feet west of the crest the Chinese had established positions that posed a constant threat to the 45th Division outpost and the 179th Infantry Regiment's troops in the area. Colonel Sandlin decided to destroy the enemy strongpoints. Early in the morning the 179th Infantry Regiment vacated its outpost on Old Baldy to permit air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages to be placed on the enemy positions. Eight fighter-bombers from the Fifth Air Force dropped bombs and loosed rockets and machine gun fire; then 45th Division artillery and mortar units began to lay concentrations on the enemy strongpoints.

C Company (Reinforced), 179th Infantry, under 1st Lt. John B. Blount, and F Company, 180th Infantry, commanded by Captain Tiller, which was attached to the 179th, attacked after the artillery and mortar fire. With C Company moving in from the left and F Company, supported by a tank, coming in from the right finger of Old Baldy, the assault forces soon ran into heavy small arms and automatic weapons fire from the two Chinese companies who comprised the defense force. After an hour of fighting the Chinese suddenly pulled back and directed artillery and mortar fire upon the attacking units. When the fire ceased, the Chinese quickly came back and closed with the men of C and F Companies in the trenches. A Company, 179th Infantry, under 1st Lt. George L. Vaughn, came up to reinforce the attack during the afternoon, for the enemy machine guns were making it difficult for men of C and F Companies to move over the crest of the hill. The attack force regrouped, with F Company taking over the holding of the left and right fingers of Old Baldy, C Company holding the old Outpost 11 position, and A Company working its way around the right flank of the enemy defenders. For two hours the battle continued as the Chinese used hand grenades and machine guns to repel each attempt to drive them from their positions. Late in the day two tanks lumbered up the hill to help reduce the Chinese strongpoints; one turned over and the second threw a track, but they managed to inflict some damage before they were put out of action. Gradually the Chinese evacuated their positions and the 179th was able to send engineers and several more tanks up to the crest.

During the night of 26 June and the following day the three companies dug in to consolidate their defense positions on Old Baldy. On the afternoon of 27 June L Company, 179th Infantry, under 1st Lt. William T. Moroney, took over defense of the crest and F Company, 180th Infantry, moved back to a supporting position. C Company and elements of A Company held the ground northwest of the crest.

When night fell, enemy activity around Old Baldy increased. Mortar and artillery fire began to come in on the 179th Infantry Regiment's positions and Chinese flares warned that the Chinese were on the move. At 2200 hours the Chinese struck the defenders of L Company from the northeast and southwest. An estimated reinforced battalion pressed on toward the crest until it met a circle of defensive fire. From the main line of resistance, artillery, mortar, tank, and infantry weapons covered Chinese avenues of approach. L Company added its small arms, automatic weapons, and hand grenades to the circle which kept the Chinese at bay. Unable to penetrate the ring, the Chinese withdrew and regrouped at midnight.

The second and third attacks followed the same pattern. Each lasted over an hour during the early morning of June 28th and each time the Chinese failed to break through the wall of defensive fires. After suffering casualties estimated at between 250 and 325 men, the Chinese broke off the fight. The 179th Infantry reported six men killed and sixty-one wounded during the three engagements.

Late in the evening of June 28th, the Chinese artillery and mortar fire on Old Baldy signaled the approach of another attack. Four Chinese squads reconnoitered the 179th positions at 2200 hours, exchanging automatic weapons and small arms fire. About an hour later the main assault began with a force estimated at two reinforced battalions moving in from the northeast and northwest behind a very heavy artillery and mortar barrage. This time the Chinese penetrated the perimeter and hand-to hand fighting broke out. Shortly after midnight a UNC flare plane began to illuminate the battle area and the defensive fires from the main line of resistance, coupled with the steady stream of small arms and automatic weapons fire from the three companies of the 179th on the hill, became more effective. By 0100 on June 29th, the Chinese disengaged to the north, having suffered losses estimated at close to 700 men. In return the Chinese had fired over 4,000 rounds of artillery and mortar fire and the 179th Infantry had suffered 43 casualties, including 8 killed in action.

As June ended, the 45th Division, despite the lack of combat experience of many of its troops, had acquitted itself well on the battlefield. In the fight for the outposts the division had withstood more than twenty Chinese counterattacks and inflicted an estimated 3,500 casualties on the enemy. It had also won a commendation from General Van Fleet. The Chinese made one more attempt to wrest control of Old Baldy from the 45th Division's possession on the night of July 3-4. Three separate attacks, the last in battalion strength, met the same fate as their predecessors as the concentration of defensive firepower first blunted and then forced the Chinese to desist in their assaults.


Second battle of Old Baldy - July 17-22, 1952

The Chinese had not attempted to take the hill again until the U.S. 2nd Division relieved the 45th Division during mid July. All of the Eighth Army's corps followed a policy of rotating their divisions periodically on the line and the 45th had spent over six months at the front. The Chinese took advantage of the relief as they mounted two attacks on the night of July 17-18 in strengths exceeding a reinforced battalion. Through quick reinforcement of the Old Baldy outpost and heavy close defensive fires, E and F Companies, 23rd Infantry Regiment, who were defending the hill managed to repel the first Chinese assault. But the second won a foothold on the slopes which the Chinese reinforced and then exploited. Chinese artillery and mortar fire became very intense; then the Chinese infantry followed up swiftly and seized the crest. Counterattacks by the 23d Regiment supported by air strikes and artillery and mortar fire, did not succeed in driving the Chinese from the newly won positions. By July 20 the 2nd Division elements had regained only a portion of the east finger of Old Baldy. The onset of the rainy season made operations exceedingly difficult to carry out during the rest of the month.

As the torrential downpours converted the Korean battleground into a morass in the last week of July, the U.N. Command counted its losses on Old Baldy during the month. Through July 21 the tally showed 39 killed, 234 wounded, and 84 missing for the UNC and an estimated 1,093 killed and wounded for the Chinese.


Third battle of Old Baldy - August 1-4, 1952

When the rain eased off at the end of July, the 23rd Infantry Regiment again sought to secure complete control of Old Baldy. Since the Chinese had an estimated two platoons on the crest, the 23d sent two reinforced companies up the slopes after artillery and mortar preparatory fires on the Chinese positions. Edging toward the Chinese defenses, the 2nd Division forces used small arms fire and hand grenades as they reached the trenches. After bitter hand-to-hand combat, the two companies finally gained the crest early on August 1 and dug in to prepare for the customary counterattack, Two hundred flares were distributed around the UNC positions and forty-two air sorties were flown during the day in support. That night the Chinese sent first mortar, then artillery fire at the crest, dropping an estimated 2,500 rounds on the 23d Regiment elements. But counterattacks were driven off.

Mines, bunkers, and additional wire helped to strengthen the UNC hold on Old Baldy on August 2, and extremely heavy and effective artillery fire broke up another enemy assault on August 4.

Battle of Pork Chop Hill

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill refers to a pair of related Korean War engagements during the spring and summer of 1953. These actions, occurring as the conflict was drawing towards a negotiated armistice, were controversial in the United States because of heavy loss of life in battles for terrain of no apparent strategic or tactical value. The first battle was described in a book of the same name by S.L.A. Marshall, from which was made the film Pork Chop Hill.

The first battle ended with a United Nations victory as the Chinese broke contact after two days of battle and withdrew. The second battle involved significantly more troops on both sides and was hotly contested for five days before United Nations Command conceded the battle to the Chinese forces and withdrew behind the main battle line.


Background

Pork Chop Hill was the nickname for a United Nations military outpost in the "Iron Triangle" sector of Korea along the 38th parallel. The hill, 255 meters in elevation, had first been seized in October 1951 by the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment, again in May 1952 by Item Company of the U.S. 180th Infantry Regiment, then defended by the 21st Thai Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division (United States) in November, 1952. Since December 29, 1952 the outpost was part of the 7th Infantry Division's defensive sector. Pork Chop itself was one of a number of exposed hill outposts in front of the Main Line of Resistance (MLR), defended by a single company or platoon dug into sand-bagged bunkers connected by trenches.

Opposing the 7th Infantry Division were two divisions of the Communist Chinese Forces (People's Volunteer Army), the 141st Division of the 47th Army, and the 67th Division of the 23rd Army. These were veteran, well-trained units expert in night infantry assaults, patrolling, ambushes, and mountain warfare. Both armies (Corps-equivalent units) were part of the 13th Field Army commanded by General Deng Hua, who was also deputy commander of Chinese Volunteer Army forces in Korea.

The opposing forces in this sector were roughly equal in size, the 7th Division (Major General Arthur Trudeau, commanding) totaling 11 infantry battalions (including attached battalions from Colombia and Ethiopia), a battalion of armor, and 6 battalions of artillery, while the Chinese forces totaled 12 infantry, 10 artillery, and the equivalent of one tank battalion.

Both the United Nations Command and the Chinese had used military operations to gain leverage or make political statements relevant to the truce discussions since at least early 1952. The first battle on Pork Chop Hill occurred in proximity to Operation Little Switch, the exchange of ill and injured prisoners-of-war scheduled to begin April 20. The Chinese command authorized the April attack to demonstrate that reaching agreement on a contentious issue in negotiations did not signal any unwillingness to continue fighting if necessary.


The first battle (April 16-1
Loss of the outpost

On March 23, 1953, a battalion of the Chinese 423rd regiment, 141st Division seized an outpost near Pork Chop Hill called Old Baldy in a surprise night attack that quickly overwhelmed Company B of the 3rd Colombian Battalion (Lt.Col. Alberto Ruiz-Novoa) in the process of being relieved. Two days of counterattacks by a battalion of the 7th's 32nd Infantry Regiment failed to retake the hill and the United Nations Command ordered it to be abandoned. This preliminary action exposed Pork Chop to attack from three sides, and for the next three weeks the hill was probed nightly by Chinese patrols.

On the night of April 16, Pork Chop was manned by Company E, 31st Infantry (1st Lt. Thomas V. Harrold). Shortly before midnight the hill was struck with a massive artillery barrage, followed by a sudden assault by a battalion of the Chinese 201st regiment. The hill was quickly overrun, although pockets of U.S. troops held out in isolated bunkers. Elsewhere in the sector other positions were also attacked, placing pressure on the entire 7th Division


31st Infantry counterattack

Company K (1st Lt. Joseph G. Clemons, Jr.) and Company L (1st Lt. Forrest J. Crittendon), 31st Infantry, in reserve behind the MLR, were ordered to counterattack and began their attack at 04:30 of April 17. By dawn they reached the main trenches on top of the hill but suffered almost 50% casualties, and half of Company L's troops had not been able to leave the trenches of an adjacent outpost, Hill 200. Lt. Clemons, in tactical command of the assault, requested reinforcement. 2nd Battalion 17th Infantry was already attached to the 31st Infantry and its Company G (1st Lt. Walter B. Russell) was immediately sent forward, linking up with Company K at 08:30. All three companies were subjected to almost continuous shelling by CCF artillery as they cleared bunkers and dug in again.

Through a series of miscommunications between command echelons, Division headquarters ordered Russell's company to withdraw at 15:00 after they too had suffered heavy losses, and did not realize the extent of casualties among the other two companies. By the time the situation was clarified the companies of the 31st Infantry were down to a combined 25 survivors. Maj. Gen. Trudeau, by then on scene, authorized the commander of the 31st Infantry, Col. William B. Kern, to send in a fresh company to relieve all elements on Hill 255 and placed him in tactical command with both the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 17th Infantry attached and at his direction.


17th Infantry counterattack

Kern sent forward Company F, 17th Infantry (Captain Monroe D. King), which started up the hill at 21:30 under heavy artillery fire but reached the trenches at 22:00, suffering 19 killed in the process. Kern at 23:00 then ordered Company E, 17th infantry (1st Lt. Gorman C. Smith), to move up to reinforce Company F. Smith, to avoid the bulk of the artillery fire, moved around the right flank of the hill and up the side facing the Chinese positions

Company K, 31st Infantry had incurred 125 casualties, including 18 killed, of its original 135 men. After twenty hours of steady combat the remaining seven members started off the hill singly just after midnight of April 17-18 and withdrew without further losses. Several of Company L's survivors remained with the relief troops to familiarize them with the layout of the hill defenses.

During the early morning of April 18, the Chinese 201st Regiment renewed its attack at 0130 and again inflicted heavy losses on the defenders, nearly overrunning Company F in battalion strength. The timely counterattack by Company E, 17th Infantry caught the Chinese by surprise on their flank and ended the organized assault. The 141st Division renewed attacks in company strength at 03:20 and 04:20 but did not gain further ground.

At dawn on April 18, an additional U.S. rifle company (Company A, 17th Infantry) climbed the hill to reinforce the 2nd battalion companies. Together the three companies spent the bulk of the day clearing the trenches and bunkers of all hiding Chinese and securing the hilltop. The battle ended that afternoon.

UN artillery had fired over 77,000 rounds in support of the three outposts attacked, including nearly 40,000 on Pork Chop Hill alone on April 18; the Chinese expended a similar amount.

Tactics and losses

Both the Chinese and US infantry assaulted the hill initially under cover of night. Each used a heavy preparatory artillery barrage to force the defenders to cover in bunkers and to screen the approach of the attacking troops. Chinese forces used rapid movement and infiltration tactics to close quickly on the trenches and surprise the defenders, while the US forces used grazing fire (small arms fire placed approximately 1-2 feet above the ground surface) to limit defensive small arms fire, then maneuvered systematically up the hillsides under shellfire. Neither side employed supporting fire from tanks nor armored personnel carriers (APC) to protect attacking troops.

Once inside the trench line, troops of both forces were forced to eliminate bunkers individually, using hand grenades, explosive charges, and occasionally flame throwers, resulting in heavy casualties to the attackers. For the UN forces, infiltration of cleared bunkers by bypassed Chinese was a problem throughout the battle and hand-to-hand combat was a frequent occurrence.

Evacuation of casualties was made hazardous by almost continuous artillery fires from both sides. The 7th Division made extensive use of tracked M-39 APC's to evacuate casualties and to protect troops involved in the resupply of water, rations, and ammunition, losing only one during the battle.[5] In addition the UN forces employed on-call, pre-registered defensive fires called flash fire to defend its outposts, in which artillery laid down an almost continuous box barrage in a horseshoe-shaped pattern around the outpost to cover all approaches from the Chinese side of the MLR.

U.S. losses were 104 dead, including 63 in the 31st Infantry, 31 in the 17th Infantry and 10 among engineers and artillery observers, and 373 wounded. Chinese losses were estimated at several hundred dead and a thousand wounded.



The second battle (July 6-11)
Rebuilding the defenses

The 7th Division rebuilt its defenses on Pork Chop Hill in May and June, 1953, during a lull in major combat. Final agreements for an armistice were being hammered out and the UN continued its defensive posture all along the MLR, anticipating a cease-fire in place.


Night surprise attack

On the night of July 6, using tactics identical to those in the April assault, the Chinese again attacked Pork Chop. The hill was now held by Company A, 17th Infantry, under the temporary command of 1st Lt. Richard T. Shea, Jr, its executive officer. Company B of the same regiment, in ready reserve behind the adjacent Hill 200, was immediately ordered to assist, but within an hour, Company A reported hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. A major battle was brewing and division headquarters ordered a third company to move up. The battle was fought in a persistent monsoon rain for the first three days, making both resupply and evacuation of casualties difficult. The battle is notable for its extensive use of armored personnel carriers in both these missions.

On the second night, the Chinese made a new push to take the hill, forcing the 7th Division to again reinforce. Parts of four companies defended Pork Chop under a storm of artillery fire from both sides. At dawn of July 8, the rain temporarily ended and the initial defenders were withdrawn. A fresh battalion, the 2nd Battalion of the 17th, counter-attacked and re-took the hill, setting up a night defensive perimeter.


7th Division counterattacks

On both July 9 and July 10, the two sides attacked and counter-attacked. A large part of both Chinese divisions were committed to the battle, and ultimately five battalions of the 17th and 32nd Infantry Regiments were engaged, making nine counter-attacks over four days. On the morning of July 11, the commander of the U.S. U.S. I Corps decided to abandon Pork Chop Hill to the Chinese and the 7th Division withdrew under fire.


Results and losses

Four of the thirteen U.S. company commanders were killed. Total U.S. casualties were 243 killed, 916 wounded, and nine captured. 163 of the dead were never recovered. Of the Republic of Korea troops ("KATUSA") attached to the 7th, approximately 15 were killed and 120 wounded. Chinese casualties were estimated at 1,500 dead and 4,000 wounded.[8]

Lieutenant Richard Thomas Shea and Cpl. Daniel D. Schoonover, a combat engineer, were both posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Less than three weeks after the battle, the armistice was signed and the conflict ended.

Battle of Bloody Ridge

The Battle of Bloody Ridge took place during the Korean War from August 18 to September 5, 1951. Located in hills north of the 38th parallel in the central Korean mountain range, it was fought between the communist North Korean forces of the KPA (Korean People's Army) and U.N. (United Nations) forces consisting of ROK (South Korean) units and the 2nd Infantry Division (United States) (U.S. Army). The hill known as Bloody Ridge is at 38°15′18″N, 128°0′48″E in Yanggu County, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

By the summer of 1951, the Korean War had reached a stalemate as peace negotiations began at Kaesong. The opposing armies faced each other across a line which ran (with many twists and turns along the way) from east to west, through the middle of the Korean peninsula, a few miles north of the 38th parallel. U.N. and communist forces jockeyed for position along this line, clashing in a number of relatively small, but intense and bloody battles.

Bloody Ridge began as an attempt by U.N. forces to seize a series of hills forming a ridge which they believed were being used as observation posts to call in artillery fire on a U.N. supply road. The 36th ROK Regiment made the initial attack. It succeeded in capturing most, but not all, of the ridge after a week of fierce fighting that at times was hand to hand. It was a short-lived triumph, for the following day the North Koreans recaptured the mountain in a fierce counterattack.

The next U.N. assault was made by the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Division. The battle raged for ten days, as the North Koreans repulsed one assault after another by the increasingly exhausted and depleted 9th Infantry. After repeatedly being driven back, it succeeded in capturing one of the hill objectives after two days of heavy fighting. The weather then turned to almost constant rain, greatly slowing the attacks and making operations almost impossible because of the difficulty in bringing supplies through "rivers of mud" and up steep, slippery slopes.

Fighting continued, however, as casualties mounted. The 2nd Division's 23rd Infantry Regiment joined the attack on the main ridge while the division's other infantry regiment, the 38th, occupied positions immediately behind the main ridge which threatened to cut off any North Korean retreat. The combination of frontal attacks, flanking movements and incessant bombardment by artillery, tanks and airstrikes ultimately decided the battle. Finally, on September 5th, the North Koreans abandoned the ridge after UN forces succeeded in outflanking it.

The American soldiers called the piece of terrain they had taken, Bloody Ridge, which indeed it was: 2,700 U.N. and perhaps as many as 15,000 communists were casualties, almost all of them killed or wounded, few prisoners being taken by either side.

After withdrawing from Bloody Ridge, the North Koreans set up new positions just 1,500 yards away on a seven-mile-long hill mass that was soon to earn the name Heartbreak Ridge.


Casualties

The much higher communist casualties were due in large part, to two factors:

1. Discipline in the KPA was poor and constraining orders so strict to the point where subordinate leaders were often not allowed to withdraw under any conditions, in which case the entire unit would be blooded. Even when permission was granted for a withdrawal, it often came only after the large majority of troops in the unit had been killed.

2. In most battles, U.N. forces had an overwhelming advantage in artillery and air support; indeed, the communists had no air support whatsoever. An enormously destructive "rain of fire" could be brought by U.N. units against North Korean and Chinese forces which they could not answer in kind.


Outpost Harry

Outpost Harry was located in what was commonly referred to as the "Iron Triangle" in Korea. This was an area approximately 60 miles north of Seoul and was the most direct route to the South Korean capital. Outpost Harry's elevation was around 1,280 feet high and positioned some 320 yards south of a larger landmass occupied by the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) called "Star Hill" and some 425 yards northeast of United Nations positions. A service road that wound from the Main Line of Resistance (MLR) along an intermittent stream led to the rear of the outpost where a medical aid station and a supply point were located. Harry was an outpost east of the Chorwon Valley with sister outposts to the West called Tom and Dick. OP Dick was about 100 yards in front of the Main Line of Resistance, and Tom was about 250-300 yards in front and below the MLR. The later was the floor of the valley. Harry, which was over 400 yards from the MLR, was also higher than the MLR, making supply much more difficult. The route to the outpost was under constant enemy observation and fire, and its height made it harder to pack supplies up the hill. Unlike Tom and Dick, which could get supporting fire from the MLR, Harry got less close supporting fire from the MLR because company 60mm mortars and the heavy machine guns did not have enough range. Harry relied more on artillery and heavy mortar companies.

The soldiers of the Greek Expeditionary Forces called it Outpost "Haros" the Greek name for Death. More than 88,000 rounds of Chinese artillery would pound Outpost Harry—a tiny Korean hilltop no bigger than Times Square. Defended each night by a single company of American or Greek soldiers, the Chinese had anticipated an easy capture. Over a period of eight days, vast waves of CPV forces would flood into Harry’s trench lines--more than 13,000 soldiers in all. And yet each of the five UNC companies ordered to hold Outpost Harry, when its turn came, held it.

After eight days of intense, often hand to hand fighting, the CPV forces could not endure any more losses in their assault on Outpost Harry. Their failed attacks had, in eight days, cost them 4,200 casualties. Their entire 74th Division had been decimated. And for the first time in the annals of U.S. military history, five rifle companies together—four American and one Greek—would receive the prestigious Distinguished Unit Citation for the outstanding performance of their shared mission.

During this period most of the fighting would be conducted at night while the daylight hours were usually spent by the UNC forces evacuating the dead and wounded, replacing the defending company, sending up resupplies and repairing the fortified positions. The daylight hours were punctuated with artillery, mortar and sniper fire, making repairs and reinforcment a more dangerous task. During the 4 to 5 days prior to the initial attack on the outpost, CPV artillery and mortar fire increased from an average of 275 per day to 670 per day.


Preface and Layout

Outpost Harry was a strategic "military Hot Spot" and dearly desired by the Chinese. It's defense and preservation was viewed as critical because it blocked CPV observation down the Kumwha Valley and shielded that portion of the MLR from enemy direct fire. If the UN forces lost the outpost, the U.S. Eighth Army would have had to withdraw approximately 10 kilometers to the next defensible line. Furthermore, a CPV victory at Outpost Harry may have whet the appetite for more war and disheartened the American public to a point where it might have accepted an armistice term less favorable than was eventually was the case.

The position contained a communication trench line which ran from the supply point forward some 400 yards to the top. At that point, the trench line joined another trench that made a complete loop (circle) around the outpost with an additional finger that ran along the east ridge about 100 yards. The trench line was deep enough to walk around the perimeter unseen by the enemy. It was fortified with reinforced fighting bunkers, a command post and a forward observation bunker. It could accommodate approximately 150 infantrymen.

During the period of June 1-8, 1953, aerial reconnaissance indicated that the enemy CPV Forces were building for a major offensive. The enemy units identified were the 22nd & 221st Regiments of the Chinese Communist 74th Division.

King Company of the 15th Infantry Regiment was selected and ordered to occupy and defend Outpost Harry as they were considered a more experienced battle tested unit. It was a "Hold at all Costs" order with no withdrawal. With the background of "Peace Talks" on going, The CPV goal at this time was to inflect heavy casualties and to gain possible concessions at the truce table. King Company occupied Outpost Harry on the morning of June 6, 1953 through light enemy mortar fire. Upon reaching the summit and the outpost's fighting positions, King Company personnel along with the assistance of the 10th Combat Engineers engaged in improving the fortifications. The trench line was deepened and expanded, bunkers reinforced, 55 gallons of napalm were installed and wired for firing, wire was strung, and communications improved.


June 10-11, 1953

Early on June 10th, K Company, commanded by Capt. Martin A. Markley, had been briefed on an emminent CPV attack, and he in turn briefed his men. Ammo and communications were checked, as were final protective fires.

During the night of the first attack, the Chinese outnumbered Harry’s defenders by 30 to 1. “All total, there was a reinforced CPV regiment of approximately 3,600 enemy trying to kill us,” said Captain Martin Markley, commander of K Company, 15th Infantry Regiment. Despite an intense barrage of defensive firepower and the detonation of napalm, the invading CPV forces stormed the slopes of the outpost and soon penetrated the trenches. When K company got under cover in bunkers, friendly Variable Time (VT) artillery was called in to stop the CPV attack. The artillery rounds exploded in the air rather than on impact, and this, plus hand-to-hand combat, finally drove the CPV off of Harry that night. By morning, all but a dozen GIs had been killed or severely wounded. K Company was so depleted that they were immediately reinforced by a reserve platoon and then replaced by another company of the 3rd Battalion. In addition to a composite reserve committed by the 3rd battalion commander (Colonel Russell F. Akers Jr.), Companies "E" and "C" 15th Infantry were committed to reinforce. One platoon of tanks from Heavy Tank Company, 15th Infantry, and one platoon of infantry were committed to the valley east of Outpost HARRY. as a diversionary force. This tank-infantry team proved to be of great value in channelizing the enemy attack.

M/Sgt. Ola L. Mize was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Outpost Harry that night.

In defense of Outpost Harry that night, Company C exceeded the 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion's record for the number of rounds fired in a single engagement: 6,082 rounds.


June 11-12, 1953

Baker Company of the 15th and Baker Company of the 5th RCT defended Harry. The CPV began with another massive artillery and mortar barrage, continuing through most of the night. The CPV infantry crept in close through the artillery fire and had gained the trenches on the rear of the outpost were bitter hand to hand fighting ensued.[5] Company "B", 5th Regimental Combat Team, was used to reinforce the defenders, while the CPV attempted to reinforce the initial successful assault through the night. By daybreak, at approximately 0545 hours, the CPV again called off their assault and withdrew.


June 12-13, 1953

Able Company of the 5th RCT and Love Company of the 15th Infantry Regiment defended Harry. They were supported by a detachment from the 10th Combat Engineer Battalion that got trapped on the outpost while on a mine laying detail.[6] On the night of 12 June at 2200 hours, CPV artillery and mortar fire preceded an attack on the outpost which was broken up by UNC defensive fires. The CPV were in the trench for a short time but were forced to withdraw. Fighting ceased at 2247. However at 0208 the CPV attacked from the north, northeast, and northwest of the outpost.[7] Bitter hand to hand fighting ensued as the CPV gained the trench on the northern slope of the outpost. Company "L", 15th Infantry, reinforced and by 0450 hours the CPV were driven from the trenches and forced to withdraw. A platoon of tanks from the 64th Tank Battalion plus one platoon of infantry were dispatched to the valley east of outpost Harry and operated successfully as a diversionary force. All action ceased with the exception of UNC counter battery and counter mortar fire.


June 13-14, 1953

Charlie Company of the 5th RCT took responsibility for Harry on June 13th. On the night of 13-14 June, at approximately 0255, CPV artillery and mortar fire preceded a screening action against the outpost from the east and west for the purpose of protecting recovery of their dead. This screening force was broken up by UNC defensive fires. Action became sporadic, with light CPV artillery and mortar fire falling on the outpost and MLR. By 0440 the CPV withdrew and all action ceased.


June 14-15, 1953

Company "G", 15th infantry had their turn at defending Outpost Harry. During the night of 14-15 June, at about 0125 the Chinese moving through friendly artillery and defensive fires, gained the trenches on the rear of the outpost, and intense hand to hand fighting followed. At 0222 hours, UNC forces held the outpost with the CPV reinforcing in the bitter hand to hand action. Company "E", 15th Infantry was committed to reinforce. One platoon from Heavy Tank Company and one platoon of Infantry were again dispatched as diversionary force. At 0345 the CPV withdrew and action ceased.


June 15-16, 1953

Company "A", 15th Infantry was committed to the defense of the outpost, and it turned out to be a quiet night on the outpost. The following morning the regimental commander placed the Greek Expeditionary Forces Battalion in the area of the outpost Harry sector in order that his US battalions, all of which had suffered heavy causalities, could refit and reorganize.


June 16-18, 1953

During the night of 16-17 June there was no significant action, permitting much needed engineer work on the outpost to be accomplished by Company "P", Greek Expeditionary Force Battalion and elements of Company "B", 10th Combat Engineer Battalion.

On the night of 17-18 June, the Chinese returned at about 0052 hours, moving through their own and UNC artillery and mortar fire to attack Outpost Harry from the northeast and northwest. The CPV were repelled and forced to withdraw, but stayed in the area.[8] At 0240 the CPV attacked from the north under intense artillery and mortar fire. The CPV gained the trenches of the outpost on the northern slope at 0313. Bitter hand to hand fighting ensued with the CPV making numerous attempts to reinforce through the protective artillery ring. Company "N", GEF Battalion was committed to reinforce. One platoon of tanks from Heavy Tank Company, 15th Infantry Regiment, and one platoon of Greek Infantry were dispatched to the valley east of Outpost Harry as a diversionary force. By 0402 hours the CPV were forced out of the trenches on the outpost, and all action ceased with the CPV withdrawing, having fired 22,000 rounds in support of this attack.


Aftermath

The CPV forces employed against Outpost Harry during the period 10-18 June were tabulated by U.S. Intelligence Sections to be substantially as shown in the following table:

10-11 June - A reinforced CPV regiment (Approx. 3,600 CPV)

11-12 June - A CPV regiment (approx. 2,850 CPV)

12-13 June - A reinforced CPV regiment

13-14 June - An estimated 100 CPV

14-15 June - An estimated 120 CPV

15-16 June - Negative

16-17 June - Negative

17-18 June - A CPV regiment.

During this period the entire 74th CPV Division was utilized against this position and at the end of the engagement was considered combat ineffective. CPV rounds fired in support of their attack during the period 10-18 June amounted to 88,810 rounds over 81mm in size: UNC mortar and artillery units in conjunction with friendly tank fires expended 368,185 rounds over 81mm in size."

From June 10 to the 18th, the casualty figures were:

15th Infantry Regiment - 68 KIA, 343 WIA, 35 MIA; KATUSA - 8 KIA, 51 WIA, 7 MIA;

Greek Expeditionary Force Battalion - 15 KIA, 36 WIA, 1 MIA.

Attached and supporting units 5th RCT - 13 KIA, 67 WIA, 1 MIA;

10th Engr. Bn. - 5 KIA, 23 WIA; 39th FA - 5 KIA, 13 WIA.

3rd Infantry Division, July 3, 1951
Advancing in the Iron Triangle Sobang Hills.


2nd Division troops on Bloody Ridge, September 1951
North Korean troops had fought bitterly.


United Nations troops fighting on the outskirts of Seoul, the capital of Korea.
20 September 1950.


Cpl. Thomas E. Bullis of Troy, N.Y., gunner, and Pfc. Charles R. Gilman of Peroria, Ill., assistant gunner, fire their 57-mm recoilless rifle at a Chinese Communist pillbox during action against the Communist forces at the bottom of Hill860, near Kaoch/Eang-ni, 24 April 1951.


Hit in the back during a grenade duel, Corporal Dominick F. Zegarelli, (Utica, N.Y.) Company L, 7th Regimental Combat Team, U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, waits for evacuation, while other members of his platoon rest. 3 July 1951.


Cpl. Sam Ayala of Niles, Calif., Co. L, 7th RCT, U.S.3rd Infantry Division, waits for medical evacuation from Hill 717, Cpl. Ayala was wounded while engaged in a bitter grenade battle with deeply entrenched Chinese Communists.


Company "M", 7th RCT, U.S. 3rd Infantry Division machine gunners, watch for the movements of Communists forces, as artillery lands on Hill 717, one of the objectives of "Operation Doughnut".
3 July 1951.


Returning from an assault on Hill 717, men of Company "L", 7th RCT, 3rd Infantry Division, help a wounded buddy onto a strecher for evacuation to an aid station.
3 July 1951.


Sgt. Douglas D. Tompkins of Jud, North Dakota, Tank Company, 5th RCT, 24th U.S. Infantry Division, fires a .50 caliber machine gun at Communist-held positions during an assault against the Chinese Communist forces along the east central front, 14 July 1951.


Men of Battery C, 936th Field Artillery Battalion, U.S. Eighth Army, fire the 100,001st and 100,002d shell at Chinese Communist position near Choriwon, 10 October 1951.


Powder smoke and dust billow as a recoilless rifle team of Co. D, 7th infantry Regiment, 3rd U.S. Infantry Division, fire their weapon at Chinese Communist positition on Hill 200 near Qnmong-Myon, 9 November 1951.


Infantrymen of the Heavy Mortar Co., 1st Platoon, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th U.S. Infantry Division, fire the 4.2-inch Heavy mortar on Communist hill positions in the Mung Dung-ni Valley.
10 August 1952.


Members of the 81-mm Mortar Platoon, Co. D, 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Eighth Army, blast Communist positions in Punchbowl, 12 August 1952.


First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez charges over the sea-wall at Red Beach, and soon after sacrificed his life for his comrades.

Lt. Lopez was awarded the Medal of Honor.




Lieutenant Ralph Barnes of Arlington, Va., platoon leader, 1st Platoon, Co. C, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, throws a hand grenade at Chinese Communist positions, as UN troops launch an offensive attack against the Communist near Uijong-Bu, 23 March 1951.


Troops with the 7th Division Infantry, 31st Battalion, Company L near "Heartbreak Ridge".


A grief stricken American infantryman whose buddy has been killed in action is comforted by another soldier. In the background a corpsman methodically fills out casualty tags, Haktong-ni area, August 28, 1950.

Defense of the Pusan Perimeter, 1950
PFC Harold R. Bates and PFC Richard N. Martin rest atop the third objective that U.S. Marines seized overlooking the Naktong River, South Korea, 19 August 1950.


A casualty receives plasma from a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman at a medical aid station somewhere near the Naktong River Front, during the defense of the Pusan Perimeter, 17 August 1950.


Corsairs Re-activated at San Diego
Approximately 30 F4Us were recently de-mothballed at the Naval Air Station, San Diego. The fleet Navy fighters had rested in the preservative 'cans' for over two years.
After a brief testing period the Corsairs will be ready for operation.
"Each humidity-controlled, sealed 'can' housed four Corsairs.


USS Valley Forge (CV-45)
Crewmen use flight deck tractors with power brooms to sweep snow from the carrier's flight deck, during operations off Korea, circa early 1951.
Photo is dated 8 May 1951, but Valley Forge ended her second Korean War deployment in late March of that year.
Plane parked in the foreground is a F4U-4 "Corsair" fighter. Those on the forward flight deck are an AD "Skyraider" attack plane and a HO3S helicopter.


Grumman F9F-3 "Panther",
of Fighter Squadron 52 (VF-52)
Taxies forward on USS Valley Forge (CV-45) to be catapulted for strikes on targets along the east coast of Korea, 19 July 1950.
Note details of the ship's island, including scoreboard at left.


USS Valley Forge (CV-45)
Flight deck tractors tow Grumman F9F "Panther" fighters forward on the carrier's flight deck, in preparation for catapulting them off to attack North Korean targets, July 1950.


USS Valley Forge (CV-45)
Flight deck crewmen wheel carts of rockets past a Vought F4U-4B fighter, while arming planes for strikes against North Korean targets in July 1950.


USS Valley Forge (CV-45)
A Vought F4U-4B fighter is fueled and armed with 5-inch rockets, prior to strikes against targets on the Korean east coast, 19 July 1950.


Captain David Booker, USMC.
Mans his aerial reconnaissance plane on flight deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with the Seventh Fleet.
If the view was taken at about that time, the carrier would be USS Valley Forge (CV-45), then the only 7th Fleet carrier, which was engaged in early Korean War operations.
Capt. Booker's plane is a Vought F4U-5P "Corsair". Note its camera hatch low on the fuselage behind the cockpit.


Vought F4U-4B "Corsair" Fighters,
of Fighter Squadrons VF-113 & VF-114
Prepare for launching aboard USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), during strikes on North Korean targets, circa 19 October 1950.
Note small bombs, with fuse extensions, on the planes' wings.




Weapons Company, in line with Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, trying to contact the temporarily cut off Fox Company in a glancing engagement to permit the 5th and 7th Marines to withdraw from the Yudam-ni area. Nov. 27, 1950.
Yudam-ni, at the western extremity of the Chosin Reservoir, was the scene of early combat in the campaign, as Chinese forces attacked the two Marine regiments there. The Marines subsequently had to fight their way back to Hagaru along roads surrounded by the enemy.


Two light machine gunners cover men of the 187th RCT as they go up a ridge on Hill 451, north of Inje, Korea, while F-80's strafe the village.
1 June 1951.


Showing the entrance to his bunker at the edge of crater caused by an enemy mortar shell is Corporal George C. Brown, Boston, Massachusetts, Company L, 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st U.S. Cavalry Division.
17 October 1951.


CPL George D. Smedley of Mt. Vemon, Ind (L) and SGT Thomas P. Montana of Yuma, Ariz, light machine gun crew members of Co C, 8th Cav Regt, 1st Cav Div, watch for Communist-led North Koreans troops on the 38th parallel line, northwest of Kaesong.


PFC Walter Smith, Corrigan, Tex; PFC Robert McMahan, Springfield, Tenn; and CPL Hubert Hightower, Rome, Ga (L-R), all of the 5th Cavalry Regt, examine a tank captured from the Communist led North Korean forces at Waegwan.


Men and equipment of the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion await orders to board the LST's at the Pusan Docks.

Battle of Chosin Reservoir

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir was a battle in the Korean War, in which 30,000 United Nations troops (nicknamed the "Frozen Chosen", or "The Chosin Few") under the command of American General Douglas MacArthur faced approximately 60,000 Chinese volunteers. Shortly after the People's Republic of China entered the conflict, large numbers of Chinese soldiers swept across the Yalu River, encircling the United Nations (UN) troops in the northeastern part of North Korea at the Chosin Reservoir. A brutal battle in freezing weather followed. Although they inflicted enormous casualties on the Chinese forces, the UN troops were forced to evacuate North Korea after they withdrew from the reservoir to the port of Hungnam.


Overview

By mid-October 1950, the Korean War looked as if it was nearly over to many UN leaders. Most of North Korea had been captured by the American-led UN forces. However, on November 25, 1950, communist China entered the war and huge numbers of Chinese soldiers poured across the border into Korea. The UN command, under General Douglas MacArthur, was slow to appreciate the implications of this new reality. MacArthur ordered his ground units, the U.S. Eighth Army in the west and the X Corps in the east, to continue their offensive to the Yalu River, the border with China and to cut the Chinese supply route extending into the neighboring U.S. 8th Army sector.

The X Corps — commanded by controversial Major General Ned Almond, U.S. Army — was widely spread out over northeastern Korea, its units far apart and out of supporting distance from each other. The X Corps troops at Chosin, mainly the U.S. 1st Marine Division, elements of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division, and 41 Independent Commando Royal Marines were, by late November, surrounded by units of the Ninth Army Group of the People's Liberation Army (referred hereafter as Chinese Communist Forces, or CCF). The Chinese launched heavy attacks that halted the UN offensive. MacArthur and Almond ordered Major General O.P. Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division and associated forces in the Chosin area to fight his way out of the trap. Starting on November 26, 1950, the UN troops began a fighting withdrawal to the south, towards Hungnam.

Keeping his units concentrated and moving deliberately, Smith made an aggressive assault to break out of the reservoir. When asked if the Marines were retreating, Smith explained that their fighting withdrawal through Chinese lines did not constitute a retreat. His explanation was abbreviated into the famous misquote, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!" (recalling the famous quote from Captain Lloyd Williams at Belleau Wood during the First World War, "Retreat? Hell, we just got here!").
The battles of the Chosin Campaign, which had a decisive impact on the future course of the war, were fought in the ten day period between November 27 and December 6 , 1950. Four different actions were fought; the successful defense of Hagaru, the successful defense of Yudam-ni, the successful effort of the 5th and 7th Marines to break through from Yudam-ni to Hagaru-ri, and the fight of RCT 31, East of Chosin.


Strength of Opposing Forces

While the Chinese commanding general, Sung Shi-lun, had 12 divisions in his IX Army Group available for the Chosin operations, the actual battle contacts and Chinese prisoner statements indicate that only eight of the 12 divisions, or two-thirds of the IX Army Group strength, were committed to battle. It must be remembered that most of these Chinese divisions were not at full strength. The 1st Marine Division had an effective strength of 25,473 men at the time. But the division did not have all its support strength in the Chosin area. Altogether, the equivalent of about two army regiments from the 7th and 3rd infantry divisions and the 41st Royal Marine Commandos were engaged, together with the 1st Marine Division, in the Chosin combat operations, adding another 8,000 men, counting supporting units. The opposing ground forces, then, totaled about 55,000-60,000 light infantry against about 30,000 American and British infantry, who had powerful artillery, tank, and air support, with logistical support. The Chinese IX Army Group was essentially a light infantry force without motorized transport, artillery, air support, or tanks. Its largest weapons were mortars. It had no resupply of ammunition or food after it entered battle. When one considers the volume of firepower available to the American forces and their capability of resupply of ammunition and food, as contrasted to Chinese deficiencies in these areas, one must reject the popular notion that the Chinese had overwhelming force.


East of the Reservoir

On the eastern side of the Chosin Reservoir, a 3,000-man composite U.S. Army task force from the 7th Infantry Division, RCT 31, was isolated by the 80th CCF Division reinforced by a regiment of the 81st CCF Division. On the second day the CCF commander committed the remainder of 81st and held the 94th Division in reserve for his main effort down the east side of the reservoir (these units originally were en route to finish off the garrison at Hagaru-ri). Greatly outnumbered and worn down by incessant attacks, RCT 31 was virtually destroyed. Survivors from this unit reached Marine lines at Hagaru-ri on December 2, 1950. Some survivors of RCT 31 and other army units including an army tank company and combat engineers, joined Smith's forces and participated in the breakout.

Nine members of RCT 31 were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's second highest award for valor.


Task Force Drysdale

In mid-November 1950, the roughly 300 men of 41 Independent Commando, Royal Marines Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Douglas B. Drysdale, were attached to the U.S. 1st Marine Division. This marked the second time that U.S. Marines and Royal Marines had served together. (The first time was during the Boxer Rebellion.)

41 Commando had been at Koto-ri with Colonel Chesty Puller’s 1st Marine Regiment when the Chinese attacked. On the morning of November 29, Major General O.P. Smith, Commanding General of the 1st Marine Division, ordered Puller to send a task force to open up the road between Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri, where the majority of the division was. The breakthrough force was composed of Drysdale’s 41 Royal Commando, Captain Carl Sitter's G Company, 3rd Battalion 1st Marines (G/3/1), B Company, 31st Infantry Regiment, and various Headquarters and Services Marines. All totaled, the task force was around 900 men and 140 vehicles.

The task force struck out of Koto-ri at 0930 hours on November 29 and by 1630 hours, had advanced only half way to its objective, due to stiff enemy resistance—halfway to Hagaru-ri the Chinese ambushed the task force and cut it to pieces. The units of the Task Force had become bogged down, separated and were not in radio contact in an area later named "Hell Fire Valley" by Lieutenant Colonel Drysdale. After being reinforced by tanks from D Company, 1st Tank Battalion, Drysdale contacted Smith at Hagaru-ri and was told to “Press on at all costs.” Drysdale responded by stating, “Very well, then: we’ll give them a show.” He passed word that they were going to run the gauntlet to Hagaru-ri.
Later that evening, most of the men from 41 Commando, Sitter's Marines, and the tanks from D Company arrived at Hagaru-ri, with a wounded Drysdale entering the division command post to announce “41 Commando present for duty.” In the confusion along the road, roughly 400 members of Task Force Drysdale were still left stranded and out of radio contact in Hell Fire Valley and completely surrounded by vastly numerically superior Chinese forces. For his leadership and valor, Captain Sitter was awarded the Medal of Honor, one of eleven Chosin Marines so honored.



The still-stranded forces were composed of about 60 Royal Marines, most of B Company 31st Infantry Regiment, and the assorted Headquarters and Services Marines, strung out in four pockets along roughly two-thirds of a mile. Most of these men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. A few were able to pass through Chinese lines and make it back to Koto-ri. During the night, army Lieutenant Alfred J. Anderson of B Company, 1/31 Infantry, regrouped those of his company that he could find into a defensive perimeter. Twice, he closed with enemy soldiers and killed them at arm's length, deflecting their weapons with one arm as he used his pistol. Early on the morning of November 30, Anderson received orders to withdraw those troops under his control. He led them back safely to Koto-ri.

Of the 900 men of Task Force Drysdale, approximately 300 arrived at Hagaru-ri, 300 were killed or wounded and about 135 were taken prisoner, with the rest making it back to Koto-ri. Seventy-five of the 141 vehicles were also destroyed. Some considered the mission poorly conceived and doomed from the start. Major General Smith was not so quick to write it off however, saying that it was at least a partial success because it delivered over 300 seasoned infantrymen and a tank company to the beleaguered defenses at Hagaru-ri.


Final phases of the battle

In their withdrawal, U.S. troops were either attacking—conducting numerous assaults to clear Chinese roadblocks and overlooking hill positions — or under furious Chinese attack themselves. The sub-zero temperatures inflicted even more casualties than the Chinese (who also suffered greatly from the extreme cold). U.S. forces enjoyed total air supremacy, with Navy, Marine, and Air Force fighter-bombers flying hundreds of sorties a day against the encircling Chinese. Over 4,000 wounded were flown out and 500 replacements flown in during the operation, contributing considerably to its success. The Marines and soldiers were able to destroy or effectively disable all seven Chinese divisions that tried to block their escape from the reservoir. Despite the effort of many Marines, whose plight attracted world-wide attention and was seized on by the western media as a "moral victory" in the midst of defeat, the strategic situation was now highly unfavorable for UN forces and it was decided to withdraw the entire X Corps from North Korea. The Marines, the rest of X Corps, and thousands of civilian refugees were soon evacuated by ship from the port of Hungnam, which was then destroyed to deny its use to the communists.



Aftermath

The UN forces in northeast Korea quickly withdrew to form a defensive perimeter around the port city of Hungnam, where a major evacuation was being carried out in late December 1950. All together, 193 shiploads of men and material were evacuated from Hungnam Harbor, and about 105,000 soldiers, 98,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies were shipped to Pusan in orderly fashion.

While the Chinese were able to expel the UN forces from the reservoir, U.S. forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese as they fought for their own survival. After their departure from North Korea, the Marines were returned to the South, where they continued to fight as part of UN forces until the armistice in July 1953.

To this day, the U.S. Marines consider the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir to be one of the proudest parts of their own history despite the heavy losses. The Marines mauled the Chinese divisions they faced so badly that they had to be withdrawn from the front, and marched out in an orderly fashion and intact. However, often overlooked is that the U.S. Army's RCT 31 accomplished at least part of its mission. It successfully guarded the right flank of the 1st Marine Division, protecting it from Chinese attack for four days. If not for the presence of the task force, the Chinese 80th and 81st Divisions might have captured the key Marine base and air-strip at Hagaru-ri before the Marines had concentrated sufficient units to defend it. This would have blocked the only escape route of the Marines and other army units, potentially leading to a significantly different outcome. Likewise, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army considered the battle an honor, although they were not prepared for the horrible casualties they incurred. This campaign, with the simultaneous victory against U.S. forces to the west, was the first time in a century a Chinese army was able to defeat a Western army in a major battle, despite the heavy losses.



A column of troops and armor of the 1st Marine Division move through communist Chinese lines during their successful breakout from the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. The Marines were besieged when the Chinese entered the Korean War Nov. 27, 1950, by sending 200,000 shock troops against Allied forces.

U.S. Marines engaged in street fighting during the liberation of Seoul, circa late September 1950.
Note M-1 rifles and Browning Automatic Rifles carried by the Marines, dead Koreans in the street, and M-4 "Sherman" tanks in the distance.


Deck Launch -- Visible rings of vapor encircle a Corsair fighter as it turns up prior to being launched from the USS Boxer for a strike against communist targets in Korea. Hovering to the stern of the aircraft carrier, the every-present helicopter plane guard stands by to assist if any emergency arises.
Planes are Vought F4U-4s. Helicopter is a Sikorski HO3S.


An Attack Squadron 65 (VA-65) AD-2 Skyraider taxies forward on the flight deck in May 1951.


Grumman F9F Panther Is fueled by crewmen on the flight deck of USS Boxer (CV-21)


Aviation Ordnanceman Airmen J.V. Lykins and D.F. Jenkins move two truck loads of bombs onto the bomb elevator ready for the six-deck journey to the flight deck to be loaded on waiting aircraft. Over 100 tons of ammunition are loaded and flown from USS Princeton each operational day.
The inscription over the elevator door reads: "Maximum Load 5500 lbs".


Members of the carrier's Ordnance Department pose with decorated 2000-pound bombs, 9 March 1951. Messages painted on the bombs are: "Greetings from PhilCee"; "Happy Easter"; and "Listen! To This One it will Kill you". Among the planes parked in the background are F4U-4Bs of Fighter Squadron 113 (VF-113).


250-pound bombs being loaded under the wings of a Douglas AD Skyraider of Attack Squadron 65, during operations on the 21 May 1951. A cart of 5-inch rockets and a second cart of 250-pound bombs are also present.


Ordnancemen attach 250-pound bombs to the wing of a Vought F4U-4B Corsair, during operations on 21 May 1951. Note use of the bomb rack and plane's flap hinge as foot stands.
Plane in the right background is an Attack Squadron 65 (VA-65) AD-2 Skyraider (Bureau Number 122318), with Landing Signal Officer stripes on its tail.


Ordnancemen loading rockets beneath the port wing of a Fighter Squadron 64 (VF-64) F4U-4B Corsair, during operations on 21 May 1951. Note different types of rocket warheads, and details of carts used to transport the rockets.


Vought F4U-4 Corsair (Bureau No. 81712), of Fighter Squadron 791 (VF-791) makes vapor rings with its propeller as it takes off from USS Boxer (CV-21) for a Korean War air strike on 6 July 1951. Note small bombs under the plane's wings and flight deck distance markings. The Corsair is just passing the 500-foot point.


Crewmen participate in a snowball fight, while clearing snow from the carrier's flight deck during operations early 1951. Photo is dated 8 May 1951, but Valley Forge ended her second Korean War deployment in late March of that year. Planes parked on deck are F4U-4 "Corsair" fighters. That at left, with rockets on its wing, is Bureau # 81150.


Seated in the after cockpit of a Douglas AD-4N Skyraider attack plane, on board USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), during the filming of motion picture footage used in John Ford's "This is Korea", on 27 January 1951. Note: camera; flight gear and inflatable life vest worn by LCdr. Armistead; and paper bag containing a strong admonition encouraging its use by those afflicted with airsickness.

Battle of Pusan Perimeter

The Battle of Pusan Perimeter was fought in August and September of 1950 between United Nations Command forces combined with South Korean forces and the forces of North Korea. The U.N. and Republic of Korea forces held Pusan until the Inchon landing, then launched a counter-attack, defeating the North.


July 1950

After the initial defeats of the ROK and U.S. forces at Seoul, Osan and Taejon, the remaining ROK and U.S. forces began consolidating and reorganizing what was left of their units and equipment around the southern port city of Pusan.

The 24th Division would soon share the defense of South Korea with the rebuilt Republic of Korea Army (ROK or ROKA) and two newly arrived U.S. Army divisions, the 25th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division. On July 24, the ROK Army reorganized itself into two corps and five divisions. The ROK I Corps controlled the 8th Infantry Division and Capital Divisions, while the ROK II Corps controlled the 1st Division and 6th Infantry Division. A reconstituted ROK 3rd Division was placed under direct ROK Army control. The ROK II Corps headquarters was at Hamch’ang with its 1st and 6th Divisions on line from west to east, and the I Corps headquarters was at Sangju with the 8th and Capital Divisions on line from west to east. The 3rd Division operated on the east coast of South Korea. Large numbers of recruits and replacements had entered the ROK Army, which had regained its prewar strength of about 95,000. The U.S. 25th Division, with its three regiments—24th, 27th, and 35th—commanded by Maj. Gen. William B. Kean, arrived during July 10-15, 1950 at Pusan. General Walker ordered the 25th to bolster ROK defenses of the central mountain corridors. The 1st Cavalry Division, with its three regiments—5th, 7th, and 8th—sailed from Japan and landed at P’ohang-dong north of Pusan during July 15-22. The unit assumed responsibility for blocking the enemy along the main Taejon-Taegu corridor. In late July both the 25th Division and the 1st Cavalry Division withdrew steadily in the face of aggressive North Korean attacks. On July 29, General Walker, with the support of General MacArthur, issued what the press called a "stand or die" order to the Eighth Army. Walker emphasized that the retreating must stop. The Eighth Army had been trading space for time and was running out of space.

One of the major problems of the retreat was the volume of refugees moving through Eighth Army lines. Their numbers were greater during July and August 1950 than at any other time in the war. During the middle two weeks of July about 380,000 refugees crossed into ROK-held territory. The North Koreans often exploited the situation by launching attacks that began with herding groups of refugees across minefields and then following up with tanks and infantry. The North Koreans also infiltrated U.S. Army lines by wearing the traditional white civilian clothing and joining groups of refugees, thus enabling them to commit a variety of surprise attacks on American soldiers. The commanders of the 25th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions attempted unsuccessfully to control the volume of refugees and enemy infiltration by searching displaced civilians and limiting the times and routes available for their movements. In late July General Walker, with the cooperation of ROK authorities, set explicit rules for the organized removal of refugees to the rear by the ROK National Police. By the end of July the ROK government had established fifty-eight refugee camps, most of them in the Taegu-Pusan area, to care for the homeless. But even with these efforts, refugees continued to hamper the movement of U.S. and ROK troops throughout the battlefield.

As the Eighth Army neared a natural defensive position along the Naktong River, the North Koreans accelerated their efforts to cut off elements of that army. After the fall of Seoul in late June the North Korean 6th Division had crossed the Han River and rapidly moved south over the western coastal roadnet. Eighth Army intelligence lost track of the 6th. The only UN forces situated at the time southwest of the Taejon-Taegu-Pusan highway were a few hundred ROK 7th Division survivors along with some scattered ROK marines and local police. On July 21, General Walker learned that a North Korean unit, presumed to be the North Korean 4th Division, was operating in the southwest area. Walker ordered the 24th Division, despite its deficiencies in manpower and equipment after the loss of Taejon, to serve as a blocking force in the area from Chinju in deep south central Korea northward to Kumch’on. Two battalions of the 29th Infantry, then stationed on Okinawa, and the ROK 17th Regiment would reinforce the 24th Division. On July 23, the North Korean 4th Division moved south from Taejon with the intent of supporting the 6th Division in an envelopment of the United Nations’ left flank and driving to Pusan. The 4th pushed as far as the Anui-Koch’ang area, about fifty miles southwest of Taegu, by the end of July. During July 25–28 the two battalions of the 29th were driven back by elements of the 6th at Hadong, located about twenty-five miles west of Chinju. On July 31 the Eighth Army finally became aware of the 6th Division’s presence after the 6th took Chinju and forced one battalion of the 29th and the 19th Infantry of the 24th Division to withdraw to the east. Eighth Army rushed the 27th Infantry of the 25th Division, which had been in reserve, to reinforce American units in the Chinju-Masan corridor. The 24th and 25th Divisions, aided by the ROK 17th Regiment, finally managed to slow the progress of the North Korean 4th and 6th Divisions at what would become the southernmost sector of the Pusan Perimeter. By August 3, U.S. and ROK units had averted the immediate threat of a North Korean drive all the way to Pusan.


August 1950

On 1 August the Eighth Army issued an operational directive to all UN ground forces in Korea for their planned withdrawal east of the Naktong River. UN units would then establish main defensive positions behind what was to be called the Pusan Perimeter. The intent was to draw the line on retreating and hold off the NKPA while the U.S. Army could build up its forces and wage a counteroffensive. The Pusan Perimeter assumed by U.S. and ROK forces on August 4 involved a rectangular area about 100 miles from north to south and 50 miles from east to west. The Naktong River formed the western boundary except for the southernmost 15 miles where the Naktong turned eastward after its confluence with the Nam River. The ocean formed the eastern and southern boundaries, while the northern boundary was an irregular line that ran through the mountains from above Waegwan to Yongdok. From the southwest to the northeast the UN line was held by the U.S. 25th and 24th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Division, and then by the ROK 1st, 6th, 8th, Capital, and 3rd Divisions. From south to northeast the North Korean units positioned opposite the UN units were the 83d Motorized Regiment of the 105th Armored Division and then the 6th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 15th, 1st, 13th, 8th, 12th, and 5th Divisions and the 766th Independent Infantry Regiment. The 5th Regimental Combat Team from Hawaii and the phased arrival of the 2nd Infantry Division from the United States augmented U.S. Army forces. A third major reinforcement arrived in Korea on August 2, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, about 4,700 men. UN combat forces at this point actually outnumbered the North Koreans, 92,000 to 70,000.

The North Koreans had four possible avenues of advance leading to Pusan that could result in the defeat of U.S. and ROK forces, and in August they tried them all simultaneously. These approaches went through Masan south of the confluence of the Nam and Naktong Rivers, through the Naktong Bulge to the rail and road lines at Miryang, through Kyongju and down the east coast corridor, and through Taegu. During the first week of August General Walker decided to launch the first American counterattack of the war in the Chinju-Masan corridor. One of his purposes was to break up a suspected massing of enemy troops near the Taegu area by forcing the diversion of some North Korean units southward. On August 6 the Eighth Army issued the operational directive for the attack by Task Force Kean, named for the 25th Division commander. Task Force Kean consisted of the 25th Division, less the 27th Infantry and a field artillery battalion, with the 5th RCT and the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade attached. The Army plan of attack required the force to move west from positions then held near Masan, seize the Chinju Pass, and secure the line as far as the Nam River. Task Force Kean launched its strike on August 7 but ran head-on into one being delivered simultaneously by the North Korean 6th Division. After a week of heavy fighting, neither Kean’s troops nor their opponents had made any appreciable progress. Even so, the Eighth Army had launched its first offensive in Korea and successfully halted an assault by an enemy division.



Seven air miles north of the point where the Naktong River turns east and the Nam River enters it, the Naktong curves westward opposite Yongsan in a wide semicircular loop. This loop became known to the American troops as the Naktong Bulge during the bitter fighting there in August and September. On August 6 the North Korean 4th Division crossed the Naktong at Ohang with the intent of driving to Yongsan located about ten miles to the east. The 24th Division defended that sector and the 24th commander, Major General John H. Church, who had succeeded General Dean as division commander, placed the defense of the Naktong Bulge under Task Force Hill. Task Force Hill consisted of the 9th Infantry of the 2d Infantry Division along with the 34th and 19th Infantries and a battalion of the 21st Infantry of the 24th Division. Despite the efforts of Task Force Hill, by 11 August the 4th Division had penetrated to the vicinity of Yongsan. General Walker then added to the fray the 23d Infantry of the 2d Division, the 27th Infantry of the 25th Division, and the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade.

General Church led the coordinated attack of Army and Marine Corps troops against the North Koreans that began on August 17. By the eighteenth the American forces had decisively defeated the 4th Division, which had lost half its original strength of about 7,000 men.

Located about twenty miles south of P’ohang-dong on the east coast, Kyongju was an important rail and highway center situated within the Taegu–P’ohang-dong–Pusan triangle inside the Pusan Perimeter. The capture of P’ohang-dong and the nearby Yonil Airfield, used by the Far East Air Force, would open a natural and essentially undefended corridor for the NKPA to move directly south through Kyongju to Pusan. General Walker had only lightly fortified the east coast corridor because the enemy threat was more immediate on the western perimeter, and he doubted that the North Koreans could mount a major successful drive through the trackless mountains. In early August the enemy almost proved Walker wrong when three North Korean divisions—the 5th, 8th, and 12th—and the 766th Independent Infantry Regiment mounted strong attacks against the ROK defenders. By 12 August the North Koreans had pressed to P’ohang-dong and also threatened Yonil Airfield. The North Korean 5th Division cut off the ROK 3d Division above P’ohang-dong, and the 3d Division had to be evacuated by sea to positions farther south. General Walker reinforced the ROK units in the area with elements of the U.S. 2d Infantry Division. By 17 August ROK units and the 2d Division had managed to check the enemy drive at P’ohang-dong. A primary factor in stopping the North Koreans was logistics, as they had outrun their supply line during the difficult trek southward through the mountains.



The natural corridor of the Naktong Valley from Sangju to Taegu presented another principal axis of attack for the NKPA. The sizable NKPA forces assembled in an arc around Taegu in early August from south to north consisted of the 10th, 3d, 15th, 13th, and 1st Divisions and elements of the 105th Armored Division. Opposite the North Korean divisions were the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and the 1st and 6th Divisions of the ROK II Corps. The North Koreans crossed the Naktong River in several places within the arc around Taegu during the second week of August. When several enemy artillery shells landed in Taegu on August 18, President Syngman Rhee ordered movement of the Korean provincial government, then in Taegu, to Pusan. The North Korean 1st and 13th Divisions posed the primary threat as they pressed toward Taegu by overland routes from the north and northwest. General Walker moved up the 23d and 27th Infantries, both fresh from defensive action in the Naktong Bulge, to reinforce the ROK 1st Division, which confronted the North Korean 1st and 3d Divisions in its sector. Although the North Korean 1st Division pushed to within nine miles of Taegu, the combined efforts of the ROK 1st Division and the U.S. 23d and 27th Infantries frustrated enemy efforts to penetrate to Taegu.

Even though the North Korean People’s Army had seriously threatened the United States and ROK Armies within the Pusan Perimeter during August 1950, the defenders both successfully resisted the enemy attacks and continued the buildup of forces for a counteroffensive. The Far East Air Force had established air supremacy over the North Koreans early in the war and continued to influence the outcome of battles by multiple sorties in close support of ground troops, 4,635 in July and 7,397 in August. By late August there were more than 500 American medium tanks within the Pusan Perimeter. The tanks in tank battalions were equally divided between M26 Pershings and M4A3 Shermans, except for one battalion that had the newer M46 Pattons. On September 1, the United Nations Command had a strength of 180,000 in Korea: 92,000 were South Koreans and the balance were Americans and the 1,600-man British 27th Infantry Brigade. In August the North Koreans continued the plan and tactics begun at the Han River in early July with a frontal holding attack, envelopment of the flank, and infiltration to the rear. When the Eighth Army stabilized the line at the Pusan Perimeter, these tactics no longer worked and success could come only by frontal attack, penetration, and immediate exploitation. Generals MacArthur and Walker countered with classical principles of defense—interior lines of communications, superior artillery firepower, and a strong air force. By September 1, the North Koreans had assembled a 98,000-man army for a massive offensive against the Pusan Perimeter. However, they experienced substantial problems: a third of their ranks manned by forcibly conscripted and untrained South Koreans, a major shortage of small arms, and only enough rations for one or sometimes two meals a day.

September 1950



In early September as during August, General Walker faced dangerous situations in essentially the same places along the Pusan Perimeter: in the east at P’ohang-dong to include a potential severing of the corridor between Taegu and P’ohang-dong, north of Taegu where the enemy made disturbing gains, at the Naktong Bulge, and in the Masan area in the extreme south. Also as he had during the fighting in August, Walker continued his masterful tactics of shifting his forces from one threatened enemy penetration to another. In early September the ROK 3d, Capital, 8th, and 6th Divisions held the line farthest to the east against the North Korean 5th, 8th, 12th, and 15th Divisions. Maj. Gen. John B. Coulter, newly appointed deputy commander, Eighth Army, assumed command of American units in the eastern sector and employed the 21st Infantry of the U.S. 24th Division and other supporting units to bolster the ROK divisions. On 7 September General Church replaced Coulter as American commander in the eastern sector after General Walker ordered the entire 24th to reinforce the ROK divisions. A combination of ground fighting, predominantly by the South Koreans, along with American close air support and naval gunfire from offshore inflicted serious losses on the North Korean divisions. The North Korean 1st, 3d, and 13th Divisions pressed the attack north of Taegu against the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, which prompted Walker on 5 September to move the main Eighth Army headquarters from Taegu to Pusan. The 1st Cavalry Division essentially checked the thrusts of the North Koreans north of Taegu, but fighting continued there into mid-September.

At the end of August the North Korean People’s Army also planned a crushing blow against the U.S. 2d and 25th Divisions in the southern part of the Pusan Perimeter. The North Korean 6th Division would attack through Haman, Masan, and capture Kimhae, fifteen miles west of Pusan. The 7th Division was to strike north of the Masan highway, wheel left to the Naktong River, and wait for the 6th Division on its right and the 9th on its left and then resume the attack toward Pusan. The 25th Division held the southernmost sector that ran from the confluence of the Naktong and Nam Rivers to the southern coast, while the 2d Division was positioned in the area across the Naktong River north of the 25th. The North Korean 9th Division faced the 2d Division at the Naktong Bulge and had the mission of capturing the towns of Miryang and Samnangjin, thereby cutting off the Eighth Army route of withdrawal between Taegu and Pusan. During the first week of September the 9th Division penetrated the Naktong Bulge as far east as Yongsan, but a counterattack by the 2d Division together with the U.S. 1st Provisional Marine Brigade pushed back the 9th almost to the Naktong River. The 2d Division’s 23d Infantry beat back the North Korean 2d Division six miles north of Yongsan at Changnyong. At the same time the 6th and 7th Divisions mounted strong attacks against the 25th Division. Despite enemy penetrations into the sectors of the 25th’s regiments—the 35th Infantry’s sector west of Ch’irwon and the 24th Infantry’s sector near Haman that was effectively stopped by the 27th Infantry—the 25th Division repelled the NKPA’s offensive in the south. The Naktong River line held, and the Pusan Perimeter was secure.


Analysis

Within the space of a few months in 1950, the United States had taken the big leap from attaching no strategic importance to Korea to active involvement there in a major armed conflict. Its active Army of 591,000 had been focused on Soviet intentions in western Europe and occupation duty in Europe and the Far East. The four divisions under MacArthur’s Far East Command in Japan were performing primarily occupation duties, and their actual readiness level for conventional combat was even lower than their marginal statistical ratings indicated. Each of MacArthur’s divisions was about 7,000 men short of its authorized strength of 18,900, and none of them had received any new equipment since World War II. MacArthur had not fully supported development of the ROK Army, and in 1948 he had suggested merely expanding the ROK Constabulary. When the ROK minister of defense in 1949 requested M26 Pershing tanks from America, the KMAG argued that the Korean terrain and roads would not allow tank operations, a clearly inaccurate prediction of the Soviet T34 tank’s performance in South Korea during the war’s early stages. When USAFIK withdrew from South Korea in 1949, it did transfer to the ROK Army individual weapons and equipment sufficient for 50,000 men, but these small arms were incapable of repelling enemy armored attacks.

America failed to anticipate the North Korean invasion, and KMAG erred in concluding that the ROK Army could withstand an invasion if it happened. Nevertheless, when the attack came the United States decided to intervene on behalf of South Korea. President Truman authorized air and naval support early in the conflict and the progressive introduction of ground troops. The defeat of Task Force Smith underscored the importance of adequate prewar training along with armored and air support in combat operations. Further, MacArthur underestimated the skill and determination of the North Koreans but recognized his error when he concluded that more than four U.S. divisions were needed to defeat the enemy. The combined efforts of the U.S. and ROK Armies led by General Walker, complemented by air and naval superiority, slowed the southward drive of the North Koreans and ended in a difficult but successful defense of the Pusan Perimeter. The fighting was intense as reflected in American casualties to mid-September 1950—4,599 battle deaths, 12,058 wounded, 401 reported captured, and 2,107 reported missing in action. The bitter weeks of retreat and death would soon change, however, with MacArthur’s "hammer against the anvil": the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter coupled with the landing at Inch’on by the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 7th Infantry Division during the third week of September.

FIRST MARINE TANKS BATTALION IN SUPPORT OF TURKISH BRIGADE - A 1st Marine Division tank crew member is careful not to let the hatch door slam against his tank, as he climbs out to inspect his tank after received three harmless 76 Howitzer hits.


A .50-caliber machine gun crew of the 2d Infantry Division covers the advance of American tanks, somewhere in Korea, 13 August 1950.


Troops from Battery D, 865th Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion, 2d Infantry Division, manning a multiple .50-caliber gun emplacement, fire on Communist led North Korean Forces in a burning village near P'Ohang-dong, on 20 August 1950.


An infantryman of the 2d Infantry Division fires a .30-cal. machine gun during the American attack on Yongsan on 2 September 1950


Cpl. Eliso Cramer of Hebbronville, Texas, a member of the 37th Field Artillery Battalion, 2d Infantry Division, pulls the lanyard of the howitzer to demonstrate the send off of the 100,000th round fired by the Battalion since they have been in Korea. 31 March 1951


An aid man of the 23d Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, hits the dirt and rolls into a foxhole in response to the call of "medic" from a wounded rifleman's buddy, during action of the 2d Infantry Division against the Chinese Communist Forces along the fighting front on 2 August 1951.


A tank of Company C, 72d Tank Battalion, U.S. 2d Infantry Division, waiting their turn to fire on Hill 773, as a 155-mm howitzer "Long Tom", 96th Field Artillery Battalion, fires on the hill near Yang-gu, on 2 Aug 1951.


Two mortar crews of the Heavy Mortar Co., 38th Regiment, U.S. 2d Infantry Division, fire their 4.2 mortars at Communist positions on Hill 773 near Yanggu, on 13 Aug 1951.


A rifle team of the 9th RCT, 2d U.S. Infantry Division, firing on a Communist position on 5 Sep 1951.


The strategic hill nicknamed "Bloody Ridge" owing to the costly casualties suffered by both sides as elements of the 2d Infantry Division closed in to take it.


A squad from the 3d Platoon, Company F, 2d Battalion, 23d Infantry Regiment, 2d U.S. Infantry Division, moves out from bunker positions on patrol duty at Kumgangsan, on 1 Jan 1952.


PFC Lewis E. Canie, left, 30 calibre machine gunner with Company G, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2d U.S. Infantry Division, and PFC Bernard E. Wisch, assistant gunner, keep sharp lookout for signs of the Communist forces from their hillside post along the fighting front on 10 Mar 1952.


A Republic of Korea soldier wounded on "Old Baldy" is treated by Pfc. J. Cleveringa of Sioux Center, Iowa, (right) a medic of the 2d Infantry Division, at a blocking position below "Old Baldy" on 1 August 1952.


Litter bearers slosh along a rain soaked roadway as they evacuate a wounded soldier of the 23d Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, from "Old Baldy," to a forward aid station, as the battle for the possession of the strategic position rages on 1 August 1952.


Pvt Eulogio Santiago-Figueroa, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2d U.S. Infantry Division, who was wounded by fragments from a 102-mm Communist shell which was dropped during the celebration of the first mass on "Old Baldy," is carried by litter to a jeep for transfer to the 38th Infantry Regiment Collecting Station and further evacuation to the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital on 29 Aug 1952.

M4A3E8 "Sherman" Tank of Company B, 72nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, fires its 76mm gun at enemy bunkers on "Napalm Ridge", in support of the 8th ROK Division, on 11 May 1952. Note the prepared firing position, with ammunition cases piled at left, and sandbags piled on the tank hull's rear upper surfaces.


Men of the 8th Eng Bn, 1st Cav Div put logs under weakened support of a bridge near Yangzi, to prevent its collapse until a tank retriever can arrive and remove the M-4 tank on 28 Jan 1951.


A tank of the last UN Forces units in Seoul evacuated the city, withdrawing across the Han River on the remaining pontoon bridge which will be demolished as soon as they have passed. 4 Jan 1951.


Tank of the 24th ID is loaded on pontoon barge at the Naktong River to be transported across, during offensive by US troops against the Communist-led North Korean forces in that area. 20 Sep 1950


A long line of jeeps waiting to be ferried across the Kumho-gang River cause a traffic jam on the way to the front. 16 Sep 1950.


Interrupted in their task of building a raft at the Han River front by Chinese Communist fire, these men of the 14th Combat Engineer Battalion, I Corps, return fire from behind a protecting bulldozer. 7 Mar 1951.


Engineers carry an aluminum half-pontoon , weighing 1,740 pounds, to the water at a raft-building site. 8 Nov 1952.


Engineers drill in solid granite to widen a road to be used as a cut-off route. 21 Jul 1951.


Suspended over mountainside by ropes, men of Co. "C", 1343rd Eng. Combat Bn, 8th Army, drill holes for TNT, as they rebuild road caved in during heavy rainfall. 20 Jul 1951.


A demolition squad of Company A, 65th Engineer Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, place dynamite under the tracks of a burned out tank, under the supervision of the recovery platoon of C, 89th Tank Battalion, 25th Infantry Division. 14 Oct 1951.


An anti-tank mine crew starts checking for other possible mines after an M-4 tank of the 32nd RCT, U.S. 7th In Div (in background) was disabled when it hit an anti-tank mine on this road on 28 Feb 1951.


Men of the 2nd Platoon, B Co 10th Engineer Battalion check a tank for booby-traps and the area for mines. 8 Oct 1951.


Engineers use a rope to pull a booby-trapped tree off the road in the Techen-ni Area, Korea. Attached to the tree was a Russian-type heat grenade that failed to explode. 14 Apr 1951.


A member of the 2nd Engineer Special Brigade throws a hand grenade into a cave to force Communist-led North Korean soldiers out. 16 Sep 1950.


Men of the 77th Engineer Combat Company blast at Communist troops taking cover in caves imbedded along steep banks of the Hantan River. 11 Apr 1951.

Tank Action at Chongju

Following the capture of Pyongyang, the enemy's capital city, in October 1950, the left-flank unit of Eighth Army hurried north to fulfill the long-range mission of reaching the Yalu River and the end of the war. This force was built around the British 27 Commonwealth Brigade which, at the time, consisted of a battalion from the Royal Australian Regiment, a battalion from the Argyle and Sutherland Regiment, and a battalion from the Middlesex Regiment. Since these infantry battalions were without supporting arms or services of their own, Eighth Army attached to the brigade U.S. artillery units, engineers, and the 89th Medium Tank Battalion. This combined force, commanded by Brig. B. A. Coad of the British Army, was under the operational control of the 1st Cavalry Division, but worked as a separate task force at a considerable distance from, and without physical contact with, that division or other friendly units.

Starting early on the morning of 22 October l950, the task force resumed its advance from Pyongyang north. Usually the infantrymen rode on the tanks or in trucks near the end of the column that stretched for two and a half to three miles. A platoon of tanks led. Nothing unusual happened until near noon of the second day, when the task force engaged a large but disorganized enemy unit at the town of Sukchon. There was no trouble the third day as the column crossed the Chongchon River at Sinanju and Anju, but at Pakchon, to the north, the bridge across the Taenyong River was destroyed, and there was a two-day delay before the column headed west toward Chongju. North Koreans offered some resistance to the river crossing at Pakchon and, more significant, there was a sudden stiffening of enemy activity. As a result, the brigade commander concluded that the days of "rolling" were over. When the advance began again at 0800 on 28 October it was with greater caution. Lead companies investigated all likely enemy positions instead of leaving them to the follow-up units, and the column therefore moved only fifteen miles during the day.

Again on the morning of 29 October the task force resumed its march westward. The day's objective was Chongju. The Royal Australian battalion and Company D, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, led the column. The infantrymen dismounted frequently to screen suspected high ground to the flanks, and the tank battalion's liaison plane patrolled the area well ahead of the column. The liaison pilot (Lt. James T. Dickson) stopped the column several times during the morning while fighter planes made strikes against enemy tanks. About noon, as the head of the column neared the top of a high hill, Lieutenant Dickson sent a radio message to the tankers warning them of enemy tanks dug in and camouflaged on each side of a narrow pass where the road cut through a low hill. This position was at the top of the ridge ahead, beyond a narrow strip of paddy fields and about two and a half miles away over a winding and narrow road. Proceeding slowly, the leading platoon of tanks went down to the bottom of the hill to the east edge of the valley. There Lieutenant Dickson dropped a message advising them to hold up temporarily because of the enemy tanks.

After a delay of a few minutes, the tank battalion commander (Lt. Col. Welborn G. Dolvin) and the Australian infantry battalion commander arrived at the head of the column. While they were planning the next move, Lieutenant Dickson spotted what he believed to be a camouflaged tank position on the reverse slope of a low hill just beyond the next ridge ahead. The fighter planes were busy with another target, so he radioed the tankers to ask them to place indirect fire in the area. The platoon of tanks that was second in line, led by Lt. Francis G. Nordstrom, opened fire from its position on top of the hill. Nordstrom did not expect to hit anything but, after firing about ten rounds, with Lieutenant Dickson adjusting the fire, smoke started to rise from the camouflaged position. It was heavy, black smoke such as that made by burning gasoline. Lieutenant Dickson called off the firing.

Meanwhile, the battalion commanders had worked out their plan of attack. Since Lieutenant Nordstrom liked the point position where he could open the action and control it, they decided to let his platoon lead the attack. No infantrymen would accompany his tanks. The other two tank platoons, mounting infantrymen, would follow in column. This force consisted of thirteen tanks and about two companies of infantry.

Nordstrom's platoon was to head at full speed for the point where the road went through the narrow pass-a distance of about two miles. This seemed to be the most important ground since there was no apparent way to bypass it. The next platoon of tanks, under Lt. Gerald L. Van Der Leest, would follow at a 500-yard interval until it came within approximately a thousand yards of the pass, where the infantrymen would dismount and move to seize the high ground paralleling the road on the right side. The third platoon of tanks, under Lt. Alonzo Cook, with a similar force was to seize the high ground left of the road. After discharging the infantrymen, the tank platoon leaders were to maneuver to the left and right of the road and support the advance of their respective infantry units.

The attack started with Lieutenant Nordstrom's tank in the lead. Within a hundred yards of the road cut Nordstrom noticed enemy soldiers hurriedly climbing the hill on the left of the road. He ordered his machine-gunner to open fire on them. At about the same time he spotted an enemy machine-gun crew moving its gun toward the pass, and took these men under fire with the 76-mm gun. The first shell struck the ground next to the enemy crew, and the burst blew away some foliage that was camouflaging an enemy tank dug in on the approach side of the pass on the right side of the road. As soon as the camouflage was disturbed the enemy tank fired one round.

The tracer passed between Nordstrom's head and the open hatch cover. In these circumstances he did not take time to give fire orders; he just called for armor-piercing shells and the gunner fired, hitting the front of the enemy tank from a distance of less than a hundred yards. The gunner continued firing armor-piercing shells and the third round caused a great explosion. Ammunition and gasoline began to burn simultaneously. Black smoke drifted east and north across the high ground on the right side of the pass, effectively screening that area. Lieutenant Nordstrom ordered the commander of the last tank in his platoon column (Sgt. William J. Morrison, Jr.) to fire into the smoke with both machine guns and cannon. At the same time other tank crews observed other North Koreans left of the pass and directed their guns against them.

Lieutenant Nordstrom did not move on into the pass itself because by this time it seemed to him that the enemy would have at least one antitank gun zeroed in to fire there and could thus block the pass. He remained where he was-about seventy yards from the pass with the other tanks lined up behind his. Fire on the enemy to the left of the road tore camouflage from a second enemy tank dug in on the left of the pass in a position similar to that of the tank already destroyed. Nordstrom's gunner, firing without orders, destroyed this tank with the second round. There was another violent explosion, which blew part of the enemy tank's turret fifty feet into the air.

While this fire fight was going on at the head of the column, the Australian infantrymen were attacking along the ridges on each side of the road. There was considerable firing in both areas. Lieutenant Cook's tanks, on the left side of the road, had been able to follow the infantrymen onto the hill and provide close support.

In the midst of the fighting at the head of the column, the guns in the two leading tanks jammed because of faulty rounds. At that time a shell came in toward Nordstrom's tank from the left front. Nordstrom instructed his platoon sergeant (MSgt. Jasper W. Lee) to fire in the general direction of the enemy gun until he and the tank behind him could clear their guns. This was done within a few minutes, and Nordstrom, having the best field of fire, started placing armor-piercing rounds at five-yard intervals along the top of the ridge to his left, firing on the only logical positions in that area, since he could see no enemy vehicles. Following the sixth round there was another flash and explosion that set fire to nearby bushes and trees.

The next enemy fire came a few minutes later-another round from a selfpropelled gun. It appeared to have come from the right-front. It cut across Lieutenant Nordstrom's tank between the caliber .50 machine gun and the radio antenna about a foot above the turret, and then hit one of the tanks in Lieutenant Cook's platoon, seriously injuring four men. Because of the smoke it was impossible to pinpoint the enemy, so Nordstrom commenced firing armor-piercing shells into the smoke, aiming along the top of the ridge on the right side of the road. He hoped that the enemy gunners would believe that their position had been detected, and move so that he could discover the movement. Another green tracer passed his tank, this time a little farther to the right. Nordstrom increased his own rate of fire and ordered three other tank crews to fire into the same area. There was no further response from the enemy gun and, to conserve ammunition which was then running low, Nordstrom soon stopped firing. It was suddenly quiet again except along the ridgelines paralleling the road where Australian infantrymen and the other two tank platoons were pressing their attack. No action was apparent to the direct front.

At the rear of the column, Lieutenant Cook had gone to his damaged tank, climbed in and, sighting with a pencil along the bottom of the penetration, determined the approximate position of the enemy gun. He radioed this information to Nordstrom, who resumed firing with three tanks along the top of the ridge on the right side of the road. Again he failed to hit anything. For lack of a better target he then decided to put a few rounds through the smoke near the first enemy tank destroyed. He thought the two rounds might possibly have come from this tank even though the fire and explosions made this very improbable. The third round caused another explosion and gasoline fire. With this explosion most enemy action ended and only the sound of occasional small-arms fire remained.

Shortly thereafter both Australian units reported their objectives secured. Since it was now late in the afternoon, the British commander ordered the force to form a defensive position for the night. It was a U-shaped perimeter with a platoon of tanks and an infantry company along the ridgeline on each side of the road, and Lieutenant Nordstrom's tanks between them guarding the road.

When the smoke cleared from the road cut there was one self-propelled gun that had not been there when the action commenced. It appeared that it had been left to guard the west end of the road cut and its crew, becoming impatient when no tanks came through the pass, had moved it up beside the burning tank on the right side of the road, using the smoke from this and the other burning tanks as a screen.

At 2100 that night enemy infantrymen launched an attack that appeared to be aimed at the destruction of the tanks. Lieutenant Nordstrom's 1st Platoon tanks, which were positioned near the road about a hundred yards east of the pass, were under attack for an hour with so many North Koreans scattered through the area that the tankers turned on the headlights in order to locate the enemy. The Americans used grenades and pistols as well as the tanks' machine guns. Gradually the action stopped, and it was quiet for the rest of the night. When morning came there were 25 to 30 bodies around the 1st Platoon's tanks, some within a few feet of the vehicles. At 1000 the column got under way again and reached Chongju that afternoon. This was the objective, and here the task force broke up.

Tank Action at Chongju

Following the capture of Pyongyang, the enemy's capital city, in October 1950, the left-flank unit of Eighth Army hurried north to fulfill the long-range mission of reaching the Yalu River and the end of the war. This force was built around the British 27 Commonwealth Brigade which, at the time, consisted of a battalion from the Royal Australian Regiment, a battalion from the Argyle and Sutherland Regiment, and a battalion from the Middlesex Regiment. Since these infantry battalions were without supporting arms or services of their own, Eighth Army attached to the brigade U.S. artillery units, engineers, and the 89th Medium Tank Battalion. This combined force, commanded by Brig. B. A. Coad of the British Army, was under the operational control of the 1st Cavalry Division, but worked as a separate task force at a considerable distance from, and without physical contact with, that division or other friendly units.

Starting early on the morning of 22 October l950, the task force resumed its advance from Pyongyang north. Usually the infantrymen rode on the tanks or in trucks near the end of the column that stretched for two and a half to three miles. A platoon of tanks led. Nothing unusual happened until near noon of the second day, when the task force engaged a large but disorganized enemy unit at the town of Sukchon. There was no trouble the third day as the column crossed the Chongchon River at Sinanju and Anju, but at Pakchon, to the north, the bridge across the Taenyong River was destroyed, and there was a two-day delay before the column headed west toward Chongju. North Koreans offered some resistance to the river crossing at Pakchon and, more significant, there was a sudden stiffening of enemy activity. As a result, the brigade commander concluded that the days of "rolling" were over. When the advance began again at 0800 on 28 October it was with greater caution. Lead companies investigated all likely enemy positions instead of leaving them to the follow-up units, and the column therefore moved only fifteen miles during the day.

Again on the morning of 29 October the task force resumed its march westward. The day's objective was Chongju. The Royal Australian battalion and Company D, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, led the column. The infantrymen dismounted frequently to screen suspected high ground to the flanks, and the tank battalion's liaison plane patrolled the area well ahead of the column. The liaison pilot (Lt. James T. Dickson) stopped the column several times during the morning while fighter planes made strikes against enemy tanks. About noon, as the head of the column neared the top of a high hill, Lieutenant Dickson sent a radio message to the tankers warning them of enemy tanks dug in and camouflaged on each side of a narrow pass where the road cut through a low hill. This position was at the top of the ridge ahead, beyond a narrow strip of paddy fields and about two and a half miles away over a winding and narrow road. Proceeding slowly, the leading platoon of tanks went down to the bottom of the hill to the east edge of the valley. There Lieutenant Dickson dropped a message advising them to hold up temporarily because of the enemy tanks.

After a delay of a few minutes, the tank battalion commander (Lt. Col. Welborn G. Dolvin) and the Australian infantry battalion commander arrived at the head of the column. While they were planning the next move, Lieutenant Dickson spotted what he believed to be a camouflaged tank position on the reverse slope of a low hill just beyond the next ridge ahead. The fighter planes were busy with another target, so he radioed the tankers to ask them to place indirect fire in the area. The platoon of tanks that was second in line, led by Lt. Francis G. Nordstrom, opened fire from its position on top of the hill. Nordstrom did not expect to hit anything but, after firing about ten rounds, with Lieutenant Dickson adjusting the fire, smoke started to rise from the camouflaged position. It was heavy, black smoke such as that made by burning gasoline. Lieutenant Dickson called off the firing.

Meanwhile, the battalion commanders had worked out their plan of attack. Since Lieutenant Nordstrom liked the point position where he could open the action and control it, they decided to let his platoon lead the attack. No infantrymen would accompany his tanks. The other two tank platoons, mounting infantrymen, would follow in column. This force consisted of thirteen tanks and about two companies of infantry.

Nordstrom's platoon was to head at full speed for the point where the road went through the narrow pass-a distance of about two miles. This seemed to be the most important ground since there was no apparent way to bypass it. The next platoon of tanks, under Lt. Gerald L. Van Der Leest, would follow at a 500-yard interval until it came within approximately a thousand yards of the pass, where the infantrymen would dismount and move to seize the high ground paralleling the road on the right side. The third platoon of tanks, under Lt. Alonzo Cook, with a similar force was to seize the high ground left of the road. After discharging the infantrymen, the tank platoon leaders were to maneuver to the left and right of the road and support the advance of their respective infantry units.

The attack started with Lieutenant Nordstrom's tank in the lead. Within a hundred yards of the road cut Nordstrom noticed enemy soldiers hurriedly climbing the hill on the left of the road. He ordered his machine-gunner to open fire on them. At about the same time he spotted an enemy machine-gun crew moving its gun toward the pass, and took these men under fire with the 76-mm gun. The first shell struck the ground next to the enemy crew, and the burst blew away some foliage that was camouflaging an enemy tank dug in on the approach side of the pass on the right side of the road. As soon as the camouflage was disturbed the enemy tank fired one round.

The tracer passed between Nordstrom's head and the open hatch cover. In these circumstances he did not take time to give fire orders; he just called for armor-piercing shells and the gunner fired, hitting the front of the enemy tank from a distance of less than a hundred yards. The gunner continued firing armor-piercing shells and the third round caused a great explosion. Ammunition and gasoline began to burn simultaneously. Black smoke drifted east and north across the high ground on the right side of the pass, effectively screening that area. Lieutenant Nordstrom ordered the commander of the last tank in his platoon column (Sgt. William J. Morrison, Jr.) to fire into the smoke with both machine guns and cannon. At the same time other tank crews observed other North Koreans left of the pass and directed their guns against them.

Lieutenant Nordstrom did not move on into the pass itself because by this time it seemed to him that the enemy would have at least one antitank gun zeroed in to fire there and could thus block the pass. He remained where he was-about seventy yards from the pass with the other tanks lined up behind his. Fire on the enemy to the left of the road tore camouflage from a second enemy tank dug in on the left of the pass in a position similar to that of the tank already destroyed. Nordstrom's gunner, firing without orders, destroyed this tank with the second round. There was another violent explosion, which blew part of the enemy tank's turret fifty feet into the air.

While this fire fight was going on at the head of the column, the Australian infantrymen were attacking along the ridges on each side of the road. There was considerable firing in both areas. Lieutenant Cook's tanks, on the left side of the road, had been able to follow the infantrymen onto the hill and provide close support.

In the midst of the fighting at the head of the column, the guns in the two leading tanks jammed because of faulty rounds. At that time a shell came in toward Nordstrom's tank from the left front. Nordstrom instructed his platoon sergeant (MSgt. Jasper W. Lee) to fire in the general direction of the enemy gun until he and the tank behind him could clear their guns. This was done within a few minutes, and Nordstrom, having the best field of fire, started placing armor-piercing rounds at five-yard intervals along the top of the ridge to his left, firing on the only logical positions in that area, since he could see no enemy vehicles. Following the sixth round there was another flash and explosion that set fire to nearby bushes and trees.

The next enemy fire came a few minutes later-another round from a selfpropelled gun. It appeared to have come from the right-front. It cut across Lieutenant Nordstrom's tank between the caliber .50 machine gun and the radio antenna about a foot above the turret, and then hit one of the tanks in Lieutenant Cook's platoon, seriously injuring four men. Because of the smoke it was impossible to pinpoint the enemy, so Nordstrom commenced firing armor-piercing shells into the smoke, aiming along the top of the ridge on the right side of the road. He hoped that the enemy gunners would believe that their position had been detected, and move so that he could discover the movement. Another green tracer passed his tank, this time a little farther to the right. Nordstrom increased his own rate of fire and ordered three other tank crews to fire into the same area. There was no further response from the enemy gun and, to conserve ammunition which was then running low, Nordstrom soon stopped firing. It was suddenly quiet again except along the ridgelines paralleling the road where Australian infantrymen and the other two tank platoons were pressing their attack. No action was apparent to the direct front.

At the rear of the column, Lieutenant Cook had gone to his damaged tank, climbed in and, sighting with a pencil along the bottom of the penetration, determined the approximate position of the enemy gun. He radioed this information to Nordstrom, who resumed firing with three tanks along the top of the ridge on the right side of the road. Again he failed to hit anything. For lack of a better target he then decided to put a few rounds through the smoke near the first enemy tank destroyed. He thought the two rounds might possibly have come from this tank even though the fire and explosions made this very improbable. The third round caused another explosion and gasoline fire. With this explosion most enemy action ended and only the sound of occasional small-arms fire remained.

Shortly thereafter both Australian units reported their objectives secured. Since it was now late in the afternoon, the British commander ordered the force to form a defensive position for the night. It was a U-shaped perimeter with a platoon of tanks and an infantry company along the ridgeline on each side of the road, and Lieutenant Nordstrom's tanks between them guarding the road.

When the smoke cleared from the road cut there was one self-propelled gun that had not been there when the action commenced. It appeared that it had been left to guard the west end of the road cut and its crew, becoming impatient when no tanks came through the pass, had moved it up beside the burning tank on the right side of the road, using the smoke from this and the other burning tanks as a screen.

At 2100 that night enemy infantrymen launched an attack that appeared to be aimed at the destruction of the tanks. Lieutenant Nordstrom's 1st Platoon tanks, which were positioned near the road about a hundred yards east of the pass, were under attack for an hour with so many North Koreans scattered through the area that the tankers turned on the headlights in order to locate the enemy. The Americans used grenades and pistols as well as the tanks' machine guns. Gradually the action stopped, and it was quiet for the rest of the night. When morning came there were 25 to 30 bodies around the 1st Platoon's tanks, some within a few feet of the vehicles. At 1000 the column got under way again and reached Chongju that afternoon. This was the objective, and here the task force broke up.

Tank Support

Members of Company A, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, crawled out of their sleeping bags at 0330 on 7 March 1951. Breakfast was scheduled at 0345, the attack at 0615.

It was snowing. The heavy wet flakes, which melted soon after they fell, made the ground wet and slippery. Through the darkness and the usual early morning fog, the drivers went off to start the engines of their tanks so that they would warm up during breakfast.

Bivouacked in the half-destroyed village of Kwirin-ni, Company A was ready to move as soon as the men finished breakfast and rolled up their sleeping bags. The company's 15 tanks and 1 tank recovery vehicle were dispersed among the buildings of the village, carefully located so that each would occupy its designated position in the column when it moved onto the road. The vehicles were already loaded with ammunition, carrying, in addition to the regular load of 71 rounds, 54 rounds that each crew had stacked on the rear deck of its tank. Fastened to the eight tanks that were to be at the head of the column were trailers, each carrying nested twelve-man assault boats.

Company A's mission for 7 March 1951 was to support the 35th Infantry (25th Infantry Division) in its assault crossing of the Han River. For the operation the tank company was attached to the infantry regiment, and further detailed to support the 3d Battalion. Orders for the crossing, originating at Eighth Army, reached the 35th Infantry on 2 March. Regimental and battalion officers had begun at once to plan for the crossing and of train troops in the use of assault boats. Commanders, flying in liaison planes above the river, had searched for possible crossing sites. The Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon patrolled the south bank of the river to get specific information.

Since the engineers had estimated that the Han River would be 7 to 9 feet deep at the time of the crossing, division and regimental orders included no plan to get tanks across the river during the assault phase. There was a plan, however, to construct a fifty-ton-capacity floating bridge, which the engineers anticipated would be in use by early evening of the first day of the assault. [3] After delivering fire across the river in support of the infantry crossing, the tanks were to continue direct fire support of the ground movement until they could cross on the bridge.

As the planning progressed, Lt.Col. Welborn G. Dolvin (commander of the 89th Tank Battalion) considered the possibility of getting tanks across the river in time to give close and effective support while the infantrymen were expanding their bridgehead. After reconnoitering the river bank and making several flights over the area, Colonel Dolvin suggested this possibility to the commander of Company A (Capt. Herbert A. Brannon). He did not order Captain Brannon to attempt the crossing but only suggested that he fully investigate the possibilities, and that the advantages of giving tank support when the infantrymen most needed it warranted the risk involved.

"It's worth a gamble," Dolvin said.

Captain Brannon went to the engineers for more information about the depth of the water and the condition of the river bottom. Unfortunately, there was scant information on either, since the Chinese kept the river effectively covered with machine-gun fire both day and night. Captain Brannon studied aerial photographs of the crossing site and decided to gamble one tank on the crossing.

On 4 March Brannon moved his tank company into a forward assembly area at Kwirin-ni about two miles from the proposed crossing site. That evening he called his platoon leaders to his mud hut and told them he intended to attempt to ford the river. His plan was to send one tank, towing a cable from the winch of the tank recovery vehicle, across the river. If the water proved to be too deep and the tank swamped out, the recovery vehicle on the south bank could pull it back. If the tank made it to the north bank, the others would follow the same route. The leader of the 3d Platoon (Lt. Thomas J. Allie) volunteered to take the first tank into the water.

The next morning Captain Brannon made a reconnaissance of the south bank of the Han. Hills and embankments on the right and in the central part of the regimental zone fell abruptly to the river. Only on the left, in the 3d Battalion's sector, were the banks gentle enough to permit a crossing. This area, at the point where the Pukhan River joins the Han, was of necessity the crossing site for all assault units of the 35th Infantry. About a thousand yards upstream from the confluence of the rivers, there was a small, flat island dividing the Han into two channels, the near about 250 feet wide and the far about 200.

Captain Brannon walked along the river bank until he was opposite the island or sand bar. Aerial photographs indicated he would find the most promising route at the west end of this island. After choosing a route for the tank crossing, he selected positions from which all three platoons could best support the crossing of the infantrymen.

Since all movement to the river bank on 7 March would be hidden by darkness, tank-platoon leaders, accompanied by Captain Brannon, made their own reconnaissance on 6 March, locating the routes and the positions they would occupy.

Engineers, responsible for furnishing and manning the assault boats, asked Captain Brannon to haul these craft to the river bank. There were two reasons for this: the engineers feared their trucks would get stuck in the loose sand near the river, and the regiment was anxious to have as few vehicles as possible on the roads leading to the crossing site on the morning of the assault. Each trailer carried five assault boats. Engineers were to ride on the trailers to the crossing site, unhook them, and then remain until the infantrymen arrived to put the boats into the water. After dropping the trailers, the tanks would proceed to their selected positions and prepare to fire. The schedule called for the tanks to fire a twenty-minute preparation beginning at 0555. At 0615 infantrymen of the 3d Battalion, 35th Infantry, would push the assault boats into the water and row toward the hostile north bank of the river.

Quietly, early on the morning of 7 March, Company A tankers finished breakfast, rolled up their sleeping bags, and then moved the tanks onto the road. When Captain Brannon ordered the column forward at 0430, it had stopped snowing. The tanks moved slowly; the tank commanders did not want to make unnecessary noise by racing the engines, and it was too dark at the time for the drivers to see more than the outline of the road.

Exactly as planned, the tank column proceeded to the river bank, stopped only long enough for the engineers to uncouple the trailers, then continued by platoons to firing positions. It was about 0545. From across the river came the sound of occasional shell bursts. The preparation fire was not scheduled until twenty minutes before jump-off. At 0555 four battalions of 105-mm howitzers, a battalion of 155-mm howitzers, and a regiment of British guns commenced firing on previously designated targets. Captain Brannon's tanks opened direct fire against targets on the north bank of the Han. For this fire, the crews used the ammunition loaded on the rear decks of the tanks, keeping the regular load of ammunition for use if they could successfully ford the river.

It was still so dark that the tankers could see only the hazy outline of hills across the river. At 0615, on schedule, infantrymen pushed assault boats into the water, and the assault wave, still partly hidden from the enemy by the dim half-light of early morning, started across the river. The infantrymen crossed several hundred yards below the sand bar, following a different route than that the tankers expected to take.

The crossing progressed on schedule although enemy machine-gun fire punched small holes in several of the boats, wounding some of the occupants. Once across the river, the assault companies came under concentrated small-arms fire soon after leaving the gentle rise on the north river bank. At the same time, enemy artillery fire began falling on the south bank. Besides interfering with activities on that side of the river, the fire destroyed sections of a foot bridge then under construction.

Lt.Col. James H. Lee (infantry battalion commander) and Captain Brannon watched the river-crossing operation from the battalion's observation post. At 0740, when he received word that all assault units of his battalion were across, Colonel Lee, who was skeptical of the success of the crossing, told Captain Brannon that the north bank was secure. "You can try crossing if you wish."

Captain Brannon called Lieutenant Allie, who had offered to take the first tank into the water.

Already within two hundred yards of the river, the two vehicles moved to the edge of the water and stopped to connect the winch cable from the recovery vehicle to Lieutenant Allie's tank. About 0800 Allie's tank went into the water, heading toward the west (downstream) end of the sandy island near the middle of the river. Lieutenant Allie stood erect in the open hatch, calling out instructions to the driver over the tank intercommunication system. The water was only about three feet deep, and since the Sherman tank was designed to ford water to that depth, there was no difficulty except that the speed of the tank, limited by the speed at which the motor-driven winch on the recovery vehicle could pay out the cable, was slow. After the tank had gone two thirds of the distance to the island, the winch suddenly caught. The moving tank dragged the other vehicle for several feet, and then the cable broke, pulling apart at the coupling fastened to Lieutenant Allie's tank. Relieved to find the tank able to move freely, the tank driver (Sgt. Guillory Johnson) increased his speed. Within a few minutes after leaving the south bank, the tank reached the lower end of the sand bar.

Originally, Lieutenant Allie had planned to proceed straight across, but once on the island, he could see at its east end what appeared to be footings for an old bridge. Crossing to the up-river end of the island, Lieutenant Allie turned into the water again. The tank dipped steeply into water that momentarily covered the hatches over Sergeant Johnson and his assistant driver, wetting both men. An experienced tank driver, Johnson at once increased the speed of the tank to keep the water from closing in behind the tank and drowning out the engine. The tank climbed out of the water at each of the three old earthen bridge footings but, after a few seconds, it would plunge again into the water deep enough to come up to the turret ring. Nevertheless, after being in the water for two minutes or less, the tank reached the opposite bank.

After radioing back for the next tank in line to follow, Lieutenant Allie moved forward a short distance and then waited for the rest of his platoon. SFC Starling W. Harmon, following the same route with his tank, joined his platoon leader within five minutes. Wanting to have only one tank in the river at a time, Lieutenant Allie waited until Sergeant Harmon was on the north bank of the Han River before calling for the third tank. Because its escape hatch had jarred loose during the firing that morning, the third tank flooded out and stalled in the comparatively shallow water south of the island. Lieutenant Allie ordered his two remaining tanks, one at a time, to proceed around the stalled tank and cross.

With two tanks, Lieutenant Allie set out at 0830 to join the infantry. Having advanced a little more than a thousand yards, the infantrymen had stalled temporarily near a road that cut across the tip of land between the Pukhan and the Han. Enemy fire coming from a small hill and from a railroad embankment six hundred yards ahead had stopped them. The two tanks moved forward, directing their fire against the small hill. When fire from the hill stopped, the two tank crews turned their cannon toward the railroad embankment. There were six freight cars standing on the tracks. They had been burned and shot up, apparently during an air raid. The Chinese had placed three machine guns to fire under the cars into the area to the south. With their own machine guns and 12 or 15 rounds from their cannon, the tank crews quickly silenced the enemy guns. The infantrymen moved up even with the two tanks, a gain of six hundred yards. As the infantrymen moved beyond the railroad tracks, following the two tanks which ranged ahead, three other enemy machine guns commenced firing. Lieutenant Allie spotted one, laid on it with the 76-mm gun and fired two rounds, the second of which threw parts of bodies and weapons into the air. The other two tanks of Lieutenant Allie's platoon arrived in time to take part in the firing, and a tank commanded by MSgt. Curtis D. Harrell located and silenced another machine gun. Then, all four tanks raked the enemy positions with their coaxial machine guns during a thirty-minute period while the front line advanced approximately seven hundred yards to the objective.

In the meantime, as soon as Lieutenant Allie's tanks were on the north bank, Captain Brannon started another platoon across. Within twenty minutes these five tanks were moving forward to support another infantry company and the last platoon of tanks began to cross. By 1000 all Company A's tanks except one were moving forward with the assault companies; by noon Colonel Lee's 3d Battalion had reached its objective. The remaining tank, which had flooded out earlier in the morning when its escape hatch fell out, was repaired by midafternoon and successfully crossed the river. The river crossing was a success and, as Colonel Lee believed, the close support furnished by the tanks was a big factor in the outcome of the operation.

Withdrawal Action
Korean summers are wet. It was raining and unseasonably cold during the dark early morning hours of 5 July 1950 when the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry, reached Pyongtaek. Approximately forty miles south of Seoul, the village was near the west coast of Korea on the main road and railroad between the capital city and Taejon, Taegu, and Pusan to the south. Pyongtaek was a shabby huddle of colorless huts lining narrow, dirt streets.

The infantrymen stood quietly in the steady rain, waiting for daylight. They grumbled about the weather but, in the sudden shift from garrison duties in Japan, few appeared to be concerned about the possibility of combat in Korea. None expected to stay there long. High-ranking officers and riflemen alike shared the belief that a few American soldiers would restore order within a few weeks.

"As soon as those North Koreans see an American uniform over here," soldiers boasted to one another, "they'll run like hell." American soldiers later lost this cocky attitude when the North Koreans overran their first defensive positions. Early overconfidence changed suddenly to surprise, then to dismay, and finally to the grim realization that, of the two armies, the North Korean force was superior in size, equipment, training, and fighting ability.

As part of the 24th Infantry Division, the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry, was one of several unprepared American battalions rushed from Japan to help halt the North Korean invasion of the southern end of the Korean peninsula. The change from garrison to combat duties had come abruptly on the morning of 1 July 1950 when the division commander (Maj. Gen. William F. Dean) called the commander of the 34th Infantry and alerted the entire regiment for immediate movement to Korea. At the time the regiment consisted of only two under-strength battalions. Twenty-four hours later they sailed from Sasebo, Kyushu, arriving in Pusan that evening. After spending two days checking equipment, organizing supplies, and arranging for transportation north, the regiment, crowded onto five South Korean-operated trains, had started north on the afternoon of 4 July.

The 34th Infantry had not been the first unit of the United States Army to reach Korea. Part of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry (24th Division), had been airlifted from Japan on the morning of 1 July. After landing at Pusan it had boarded trains immediately, and rushed northward. The battalion commander (Lt. Col. Charles B. Smith) had the mission of setting up roadblocks to halt the North Korean southward thrust. Part of this force had gone to Pyongtaek and part to Ansong, a village ten miles east of Pyongtaek. Without making contact with North Koreans, the two task forces from Colonel Smith's battalion had reached their assigned areas during the morning of 3 July. A field artillery battery arrived at Pyongtaek the next day, and that evening, 4 July, Smith's entire force had moved twelve miles north of Pyongtaek where it set up another blocking position just north of Osan.

About the same time that Smith's battalion had started for Osan, the two battalions of the 34th Infantry, heading north, had passed through Taejon. One battalion was to reestablish the blocking position at Ansong; the 1st Battalion was going to Pyongtaek with a similar mission. A new commander-an experienced combat officer-had joined the 1st Battalion as the trains moved through Taejon. He told his company commanders that North Korean soldiers were reported to be farther north but that they were poorly trained, that only half of them had weapons, and that there would be no difficulty in stopping them. Junior officers had assured their men that after a brief police action all would be back in Sasebo. Officers of the 34th Infantry knew that the 21st was ahead of the 34th in a screening position. Overconfidence was the prevailing note.

This was the background and the setting for the rainy morning when the 1st Battalion-and especially Company A, with which this account is mainly concerned-waited in the muddy streets of Pyongtaek. When daylight came, the companies marched north to the hills upon which they were to set up their blocking positions.

A small river flowed along the north side of Pyongtaek. Two miles north of the bridge that carried the main highway across the river there were two grass-covered hills separated by a strip of rice paddies three quarters of a mile wide. The railroad and narrow dirt road, both on eight- to ten-foot-high embankments, ran through the neatly patterned fields. The battalion commander stationed Company B on the east side of the road, Company A on the west, leaving Company C in reserve positions in the rear. Once on the hill, the men dropped their packs and began digging into the coarse red earth to prepare defensive positions for an enemy attack few of them expected. In Company A's sector the positions consisted of two-man foxholes dug across the north side of the hill, across the rice paddies to the railroad embankment, and beyond that to the road. Company A (Capt. Leroy Osburn) consisted of about l40 men and officers at the time. With two men in each position, the holes were so far apart that the men had to shout to one another. Each man was equipped with either an M-1 rifle or a carbine for which he carried between eighty and one hundred rounds of ammunition. The Weapons Platoon had three 60-mm mortars. There were also three light machine guns-one in each of the rifle platoons-and four boxes of ammunition for each machine gun. Each platoon had one BAR and two hundred rounds of ammunition for it. There were no grenades nor was there any ammunition for the recoilless rifles.

To the north of Osan, meanwhile, Colonel Smith's 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, and an attached battery of artillery completed the occupation of the high ground north of the village by daylight on 5 July. Smith had orders to hold in place to gain time, even though his forces might become surrounded. That same morning, at 0745, enemy tanks approached from the north. The Americans opened fire with artillery and then with bazookas, but the tanks rammed through the infantry positions and on south past the artillery, after losing only 4 of 33 tanks. Enemy infantrymen followed later, engaged Colonel Smith's force and, after a four-hour battle, almost surrounded it. About 1400, Colonel Smith ordered his men to leave the position and withdraw toward Ansong. Smith's force carried out as many wounded as possible, but abandoned its equipment and dead. The survivors, traveling on foot in small groups or on the few artillery trucks, headed southwest toward Ansong. This was the result of the first engagement between North Korean and American soldiers.

Brig. Gen. George B. Barth (commander of 24h Division Artillery and General Dean's representative in the forward area) was at Osan with the battery of artillery when the first "Fire mission!" was relayed to the battery position. When it became apparent that neither the infantry nor the artillery could stop the tanks, General Barth had gone back to Pyongtaek to alert the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry, which was still digging in.

The 1st Battalion's command post was in one of the dirty buildings on the road north of Pyongtaek. It was apparent to General Barth, by the time he arrived there, that enemy tanks would break through the Osan position. He therefore warned the 1st Battalion commandeer and instructed him t dispatch a patrol northward to make contact with the enemy column. Barth's instructions to the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry, differed from those he had given to Colonel Smith at Osan. Since General Barth now believed the Pyongtaek force could hold out only a short time if encircled, as apparently was happening to the battalion at Osan, he ordered the battalion at Pyongtaek to hold only until the enemy threatened to envelop the position, and then to delay in successive rearward positions to gain time.

A rifle platoon from the 34th Infantry went north to make contact with the enemy tanks. About halfway between Pyongtaek and Osan the platoon met several enemy tanks and fired upon them without effect. The tanks made no effort to advance. The opposing forces settled down to observing each other.

While these events were taking place only a few miles away, men of Company A at Pyongtaek finished digging their defensive positions or sat quietly in the cold rain. In spite of the fact that a column of enemy tanks had overrun the Osan position and was then not more than six miles from Pyongtaek, the infantrymen did not know about it. They continued to exchange rumors and speculations. One of the platoon leaders called his men together later that afternoon to put an end to the growing anxiety over the possibility of combat. "You've been told repeatedly," he explained, "that this is a police action, and that is exactly what it is going to be." He assured them that the rumors of a large enemy force in the area were false, and that they would be back in Sasebo within a few weeks. He directed them to put out only the normal guard for the night. Later that evening, however, Captain Osburn told some of the men that four Americans who had driven north of Osan toward Suwon had failed to return, and that he had heard an estimate that 12,000 North Koreans were in the area to the north. He considered an attack possible but not probable.

It rained steadily all night. Beyond the fact that tanks had penetrated the Osan position, no more information about the fight there came through until nearly midnight, when five survivors from Osan arrived at the 1st Battalion command post with a detailed account of that action. The 1st Battalion commander passed word of the Osan defeat along to his company commanders, warning them to be on the lookout for stragglers from the 21st Infantry. Apparently no one passed the information on down to the platoons. The battalion commander then sent a patrol from Company C to blow up a small bridge about 600 yards north of his two forward companies. It was about 0300 when this was done. Startled by the explosions, infantrymen of Company A showed some concern until they learned the cause. Then they settled back to wait for daylight, or to sleep if possible. At 0430 they began to stir again. SFC Roy E. Collins, a platoon sergeant, walked along the row of foxholes in the center of the company position. One of a group of combat-experienced men recently transferred from another division, he had joined Company A only the day before. He advised his men to get up and break out their C rations and eat while they had a chance. The evening before, Collins had stationed a two-man listening post in the rice paddies about 75 yards north of the company. He called down and told them to come back to the company perimeter. It was only a few minutes after daylight.

The battalion commander walked down the road between Companies A and B, stopping to talk with a group of 17 men manning a roadblock on Company A's side of the road. Lt. Herman L. Driskell was in charge of the group, which consisted of an eight-man machine-gun squad from his 1st Platoon, and three 2.36-inch bazooka teams from the Weapons Platoon.

After telling Driskell to get his men down in their holes because he planned to register the 4.2-inch mortars, the battalion commander walked west across the soggy rice paddies toward Company A's command post on top of the hill. Lieutenant Driskell's men did not, however, get into their holes-the holes were full of water. A Weapons Platoon sergeant, SFC Zack C. Williams, and PFC James 0. Hite, were sitting near one hole. "I sure would hate to have to get in that hole," Hite said. In a few minutes they heard mortar shells overhead, but the shell bursts were lost in the morning fog and rain. In the cold rain, hunched under their ponchos, the men sat beside their holes eating their breakfast ration.

Up on the hill, Sergeant Collins was eating a can of beans. He had eaten about half of it when he heard the sound of engines running. Through the fog he saw the faint outline of several tanks that had stopped just beyond the bridge that the detail from Company C destroyed two hours earlier. North Korean soldiers from the lead tank got out and walked up to inspect the bridge site. At the same time, through binoculars, Collins could see two columns of infantrymen moving beyond the tanks, around both ends of the bridge, and out across the rice paddies. He yelled back to his platoon leader (Lt. Robert R. Ridley), "Sir, we got company." Lieutenant Ridley, having been warned that part of the 21st Infantry might be withdrawing down this road, said it was probably part of that unit. "Well," said Collins, "these people have tanks and I know the 21st hasn't any." The battalion commander arrived at Captain Osburn's command post just in time to see the column of enemy infantrymen appear. Deciding it was made up of men from the 21st Infantry, the two commanders watched it for several minutes before realizing it was too large to be friendly troops. They could see a battalion-size group already, and others were still coming in a column of fours. [12] At once, the battalion commander called for mortar fire. When the first round landed, the enemy spread out across the rice paddies on both sides of the road but continued to advance. By this time Collins could count thirteen tanks from the blown bridge north to the point where the column disappeared in the early morning fog.

Within a few minutes the men from the enemy's lead tank returned to their vehicle, got in, closed the turret, and then swung the tube until it pointed directly toward Company A.

"Get down!" Sergeant Collins yelled to his men. "Here it comes!"

The first shell exploded just above the row of foxholes, spattering dirt over the center platoon. The men slid into their holes. Collins and two other combat veterans of World War II began shouting to their men to commence firing. Response was slow although the Americans could see the North Korean infantrymen advancing steadily, spreading out across the flat ground in front of the hill. In the same hole with Sergeant Collins were two riflemen. He poked them. "Come on," he said. "You've got an M1. Get firing."

After watching the enemy attack for a few minutes, the battalion commander told Captain Osburn to withdraw Company A, and then left the hill, walking back toward his command post, which he planned to move south.

Out in front of the company hill, the two men at the listening post, after gathering up their wet equipment, had been just ready to leave when the first enemy shell landed. They jumped back into their hole. After a short time one of them jumped out and ran back under fire. The other, who stayed there, was not seen again.

The entire 1st Platoon was also in the flat rice paddies. Lieutenant Driskell's seventeen men from the 1st and the Weapons Platoons who were between the railroad and road could hear some of the activity but they could not see the enemy because of the high embankments on both sides. Private Hite was still sitting by his water-filled hole when the first enemy shell exploded up on the hill. He thought a 4.2-inch mortar shell had fallen short. Within a minute or two another round landed near Osburn's command post on top of the hill. Private Hite watched as the smoke drifted away.

"Must be another short round," he remarked to Sergeant Williams.

"It's not short," said Williams, a combat-experienced soldier. "It's an enemy shell."

Hite slid into his foxhole, making a dull splash like a frog diving into a pond. Williams followed. The two men sat there, up to their necks in cold, stagnant water.

It was fully fifteen minutes before the two Company A platoons up on the hill had built up an appreciable volume of fire, and then less than half of the men were firing their weapons. The squad and platoon leaders did most of the firing. Many of the riflemen appeared stunned and unwilling to believe that enemy soldiers were firing at them.

About fifty rounds fell in the battalion area within the fifteen minutes following the first shell-burst in Company A's sector. Meanwhile, enemy troops were appearing in numbers that looked overwhelmingly large to the American soldiers. "It looked like the entire city of New York moving against two little under-strength companies," said one of the men. Another large group of North Korean soldiers gathered around the tanks now lined up bumper to bumper on the road. It was the best target Sergeant Collins had ever seen. He fretted because he had no ammunition for the recoilless rifle. Neither could he get mortar fire because the second enemy tank's shell had exploded near the 4.2-inch mortar observer who, although not wounded, had suffered severely from shock. In the confusion no one else attempted to direct the mortars. Within thirty minutes after the action began, the leading North Korean foot soldiers had moved so close that Company A men could see them load and reload their rifles.

About the same time, Company B, under the same attack, began moving off of its hill on the opposite side of the road. Within another minute or two Captain Osburn called down to tell his men to prepare to withdraw, "but we'll have to cover Baker Company first."

Company A, however, had no effective fire power and spent no time covering the movement of the other company. Most of the Weapons Platoon, located on the south side of the hill, left immediately, walking down to a cluster of about fifteen straw-topped houses at the south edge of the hill. The two rifle platoons on the hill began to move out soon after Captain Osburn gave the alert order. The movement was orderly at the beginning although few of the men carried their field packs with them and others walked away leaving ammunition and even their weapons. However, just as the last two squads of this group reached a small ridge on the east side of the main hill, an enemy machine gun suddenly fired into the group. The men took off in panic. Captain Osburn and several of his platoon leaders were near the cluster of houses behind the hill reforming the company for the march back to Pyongtaek. But when the panicked men raced past, fear spread quickly and others also began running. The officers called to them but few of the men stopped. Gathering as many members of his company as he could, Osburn sent them back toward the village with one of his officers.

By this time the Weapons Platoon and most of the 2d and 3d Platoons had succeeded in vacating their positions. As they left, members of these units had called down telling the 1st Platoon to withdraw from its position blocking the road. Strung across the flat paddies, the 1st Platoon was more exposed to enemy fire. Four of its men started running back and one, hit by rifle fire, fell. After seeing that, most of the others were apparently too frightened to leave their holes.

As it happened, Lieutenant Driskell's seventeen men who were between the railroad and road embankments were unable to see the rest of their company. Since they had not heard the shouted order they were unaware that an order to withdraw had been given. They had, however, watched the fire fight between the North Koreans and Company B, and had seen Company B leave. Lieutenant Driskell and Sergeant Williams decided they would hold their ground until they received orders. Twenty or thirty minutes passed. As soon as the bulk of the two companies had withdrawn, the enemy fire stopped, and all became quiet again. Driskell and his seventeen men were still in place when the North Koreans climbed the hill to take over the positions vacated by Company B. This roused their anxiety.

"What do you think we should do now?" Driskell asked.

"Well, sir," said Sergeant Williams, "I don't know what you're going to do, but I'd like to get the hell out of here."

Driskell then sent a runner to see if the rest of the company was still in position. When the runner returned to say he could see no one on the hill, the men started back using the railroad embankment for protection. Nine members of this group were from Lieutenant Driskell's 1st Platoon; the other eight were with Sergeant Williams from the Weapons Platoon. A few of Lieutenant Driskell's men had already left but about twenty, afraid to move across the flat paddies, had stayed behind. At the time, however, Driskell did not know what had happened to the rest of his platoon so, after he had walked back to the vicinity of the group of houses behind the hill, he stopped at one of the rice-paddy trails to decide which way to go to locate his missing men. Just then someone walked past and told him that some of his men, including several who were wounded, were near the base of the hill. With one other man, Driskell went off to look for them.

By the time the panicked riflemen of Company A had run the mile or two back to Pyongtaek they had overcome much of their initial fear. They gathered along the muddy main street of the village and stood there in the rain, waiting. When Captain Osburn arrived he immediately began assembling and reorganizing his company for the march south. Meanwhile, two Company C men were waiting to dynamite the bridge at the north edge of the village. One of the officers found a jeep and trailer that had been abandoned on a side street. He and several of his men succeeded in starting it and, although it did not run well and had apparently been abandoned for that reason, they decided it would do for hauling the company's heavy equipment that was left. By 0930 they piled all extra equipment, plus the machine guns, mortars, bazookas, BARs, and extra ammunition in the trailer. About the same time, several men noticed what appeared to be two wounded men trying to make their way along the road into Pyongtaek. It was still raining so hard that it was difficult to distinguish details. Pvt. Thomas A. Cammarano and another man volunteered to take the jeep and go after them. They pulled a BAR from the weapons in the trailer, inserted a magazine of ammunition, and drove the jeep north across the bridge, not realizing that the road was so narrow it would have been difficult to turn the vehicle around even if the trailer had not been attached.

During the period when the company was assembling and waiting in Pyongtaek, Sergeant Collins, the platoon sergeant who had joined the company the day before, decided to find out why his platoon had failed to fire effectively against the enemy. Of 31 members of his platoon, l2 complained that their rifles would not fire. Collins checked them and found the rifles were either broken, dirty, or had been assembled incorrectly. He sorted out the defective weapons and dropped them in a nearby well.

Two other incidents now occurred that had an unfavorable effect on morale. The second shell fired by the North Koreans that morning had landed near Captain Osburn's command post where the observer for his 4.2-inch mortars was standing. The observer reached Pyongtaek while the men were waiting for Cammarano and his companion to return with the jeep. Suffering severely from shock, the mortar observer could not talk coherently and walked as if he were drunk. His eyes showed white, and he stared wildly, moaning, "Rain, rain, rain," over and over again. About the same time, a member of the 1st Platoon joined the group and claimed that he had been with Lieutenant Driskell after he walked toward the cluster of houses searching for wounded men of his platoon. Lieutenant Driskell with four men had been suddenly surrounded by a group of North Korean soldiers. They tried to surrender, according to this man, but one of the North Korean soldiers walked up to the lieutenant, shot him, and then killed the other three men. The narrator had escaped.

Of the approximately 140 men who had been in position at daybreak that morning, only a few more than 100 were now assembled in Pyongtaek. In addition to the 4 men just reported killed, there were about 30 others who were missing. The first sergeant with 8 men had followed a separate route after leaving the hill that morning and did not rejoin the company until several days later. One man failed to return after having walked down to a stream just after daylight to refill several canteens. There were also the others who had been either afraid or unable to leave their foxholes to move back with the rest of the company. This group included the man from the listening post and about twenty members of the 1st Platoon who had stayed in their holes in the rice paddies.

Ten or fifteen minutes went by after Cammarano and his companion drove off in the jeep. Through the heavy rain and fog neither the jeep nor the wounded men were visible now. Suddenly there was the sound of rifle fire in the village and Captain Osburn, assuming that the two men (together with the vehicle and all company crew-served weapons) were also lost, gave the word to move out. Forming the remainder of his company into two single-file columns, one on each side of the street, he started south. The men had scarcely reached the south edge of the village when they heard the explosion as the Company C men destroyed the bridge. One fourth of the company and most of its equipment and supplies were missing as the men set off on their forced march.

A few scattered artillery shells followed the columns. None came close, but they kept the men moving fast. "This was one time," said one of the sergeants later, "when we didn't have to kick the men to get them to move. They kept going at a steady slow run." Captain Osburn did not try to follow the high ground but, when he could, he kept off the road and walked across rice paddies. There were several wounded men but the 4.2inch mortar observer was the only one in the group unable to walk by himself. The others took turns supporting and helping him. His eyes still showed white and he kept moaning "rain" and the men near him wished he would shut up.

Occasionally the men made wise cracks about the police action: "I wonder when they're going to give me my police badge," or "Damned if these cops here don't use some big guns." But mostly they were quiet and just kept moving.

The rain continued hard until about noon. Then it began to get hot-a moist, sultry heat. The clouds hung low on the mountains. Nevertheless, Captain Osburn kept up a steady pace. Before leaving Pyongtaek he had warned that the column would not stop and any men who fell out would be left behind The men were thirst but few of them had canteens. They drank from the ditches along the roads, of from the rice paddies.

By noon the column had outrun the enemy fire, and Osburn halted it for a ten-minute rest. Thereafter he set a slower pace, usually following the road, and took a ten-minute break each hour. The column had no communication with any other part of the 24th Division, since the company radios had been abandoned that morning. Nor did anyone know of a plan except to go south. There was no longer any serious talk of a police action-by this time the soldiers expected to go straight to Pusan and back to Japan. The Company A men frequently saw pieces of equipment along the road, and from this they assumed the rest of the battalion was on the same road ahead of them. Later they began to overtake stragglers from other companies. By the middle of the day the men were hungry.

By mid-afternoon wet shoes caused serious foot trouble. Some of the men took off their shoes and carried them for a while, or threw them away. It was easier walking barefoot in the mud. Other equipment was strewn along the road-discarded ponchos, steel helmets, ammunition belts, and even rifles that men of the battalion had dropped. As the afternoon wore on the two columns of Company A men lengthened, the distance between the men increasing. They kept trading places in the line and took turns helping the mortar observer. At breaks, Captain Osburn reminded them to stay on or near the road and, if they were scattered by a sudden attack, to keep moving individually.

Late that afternoon, during a ten-minute rest period, an American plane flew low over the men who were lying along the road near a few strawroofed houses. The pilot suddenly dipped into the column and opened fire with his caliber .50 machine guns. Only one man was hit-a South Korean soldier. The bullet struck him in the cheeks, tearing away his lower jaw and part of his face. This incident further demoralized the men. When a South Korean truck came by, they put the wounded Korean on it.

Early that evening Captain Osburn, at the head of his company, reached the town of Chonan and there found other elements of the 1st Battalion which had arrived earlier. It was a shabby-looking outfit. Many men were asleep on the floor of an old sawmill and others were scattered throughout the town in buildings or along the streets, sitting or sleeping. Captain Osburn immediately set out to locate officers of the other units to learn what he could of the situation. The remainder of Company A was strung out for a mile and a half or two miles to the north. As the men reached the town they lay down to rest. There was no organization-they were just a group of tired, disheartened men. The last men in the column did not straggle in until two hours later. By then Captain Osburn had borrowed three trucks from the South Korean Army with which he moved his company to defensive positions a few miles south of Chonan. General Barth had selected these positions after leaving the 1st Battalion's command post at Pyongtaek early that morning. He had gone to Chonan to brief the regimental commander of the 34th Infantry and then south to select terrain from which the 24th Division could stage a series of delaying actions. He returned to Chonan late in the afternoon to learn that the 1st Battalion had withdrawn the entire distance to Chonan, instead of defending the first available position south of Pyongtaek from which it could physically block the enemy tank column. Believing that the North Koreans were in pursuit, he directed the 1st Battalion to occupy the next defensive position, which happened to be about two miles south of Chonan.

It was dark by the time Company A began to dig in at this position. The company, of course, had no entrenching tools but a few of the men scraped out shallow holes. Most of them just lay down and went to sleep. The next morning (7 July) Captain Osburn got the men up and ordered them to go on digging foxholes. Groups of men went off to nearby villages looking for spades or shovels. They also got a small supply of food from the Koreans, many of whom were abandoning their homes and fleeing south. When they had finished digging their positions, Osburn's men sat barefoot in the rain, nursing their feet. Hopefully, they discussed a new rumor: they were going to a railway station south of their present location, then by train to Pusan, and from there to Japan. There was some argument about the location of the railway station, but most of the men were agreed that they were returning to Japan. The rumor pleased everyone. Nothing of importance happened to Company A during the day, although the other battalion of the 34th Infantry, after having moved from Ansong to Chonan on the previous evening, was engaged in heavy fighting just north of Chonan.

Full rations were available on the morning of 8 July, thus relieving one kind of discomfort. The fighting for Chonan continued and, by midmorning, the remaining American forces began to withdraw and abandon the town. In Company A's area, the day was quiet until early afternoon, when enemy artillery rounds suddenly exploded in the battalion's area. Within a few minutes after the first shell landed, Captain Osburn gave the order to pull out. The entire battalion moved, part of it on three trucks still in its possession, but Company A marched, Captain Osburn in the lead and again setting a fast pace. This time he kept his company together. About the middle of the night the company stopped and took up positions on a hill adjoining the road, staying there until the first signs of daylight when Osburn roused his men and resumed the march. After several hours the three trucks returned and began shuttling the remainder of the battalion to new positions just north of the Kum River and the town of Konju. There the entire battalion formed a perimeter in defensive positions-the best they had constructed since coming to Korea.

By the time the trenches and holes were dug in, it was mid-afternoon of 9 July. Company A got an issue of rations and, for the first time, one of ammunition. The Weapons Platoon received one 60-mm mortar. This preparation for combat weakened the rumor about returning to Japan. Instead, Captain Osburn and his officers told the men or another infantry division then en route from Japan. The sky was clear, the sun hot and, for the first time in several days, the men had dry clothing. The battalion remained in the area without incident until 12 July. That morning it registered the 81-mm and the 4.2-inch mortars and issued more ammunition to the men. It had the first friendly mortar fire and the first abundant supply of ammunition since early morning of 6 July. That afternoon, at 1700, an enemy shell landed in the area. Others followed and within a few minutes North Korean soldiers appeared in large numbers. Instead of hitting frontally, the leading enemy soldiers circled wide and attacked the 1st Platoon, which was outposting a high point of the hill, on the right flank. After suffering heavy losses on the morning of 6 July, only ten men remained in that platoon. Five of these were killed at the very outset of the fighting on the 12th when the North Koreans overran their positions and shot them in their holes. The five remaining men from the 1st Platoon escaped and joined one of the others.

The sudden collapse of the outpost placed the enemy directly to the right and above the 2d Platoon. SFC Elvin E. Knight, platoon guide, turning to determine the source and cause of the firing, noticed a flag up where the 1st Platoon had been.

"What the hell's that flag doing up here?" he asked. Suddenly he yelled, "That's a North Korean flag!"

About twenty enemy soldiers appeared on the high knob. They began firing down upon the 2d Platoon and several of them started sliding down the steep hill toward the men, shouting and firing as they came. The flank attack completely surprised the men of the 2d Platoon, whose positions, selected for firing toward the front, were unsuitable for firing at the high ground on the right. Almost immediately someone began shouting, "Let's get the hell out of here!" and the men started back individually or in small groups. They did, however, take their weapons and several of the wounded. The rest of the company-those in the 3d and Weapons Platoons-held their ground and rapidly increased their rate of fire as soon as they saw what had happened to the other two platoons. Most of the 2d Platoon moved back several hundred yards, where the other two platoons were located, and resumed fighting. Until dark there was a heavy volume of fire and after that occasional exchanges with small arms until about 0230 on 13 July when, under orders, Company A abandoned its hill and moved very quietly back, following a river south for a short distance until it was beyond range of North Koreans' rifles.

After daylight Osburn and his men crossed the long bridge over the Kum River. For another day Company A and the rest of the battalion stayed there while North Koreans assembled on the north bank of the river. Then, on 14 July, one group of North Koreans crossed the Kum River and successfully attacked a battery of artillery in that vicinity. The entire battalion moved out by truck on the 15th and fell back to the city of Taejon, closing there late in the afternoon. Other units of the 24th Division, already assembled, were preparing to defend the town. The 1st Battalion took up defensive positions on the northeast side of Taejon, on high ground between the main part of the town and the airstrip used by the division liaison planes. [16] American forces destroyed the bridge over the Kum River before withdrawing to Taejon, but the North Koreans succeeded in crossing and followed in close pursuit.

After the next heavy enemy attack Company A, and the remainder of the entire 24th Division, fell back again, this time to the Pusan perimeter. The attack began soon after daybreak on the morning of 20 July. In Company A's area, Sergeant Williams and three other members of the Weapons Platoon were among the first to discover it. They were manning bazookas with the mission of blocking the main road leading from the north into Taejon. As daylight increased on the morning of 20 July Williams noticed movement on hills about three hundred yards to the right. He watched as three skirmish lines of North Koreans came over the hilltop. Other enemy soldiers appeared on hills to the left of the road. After watching for several minutes, he raced back about five hundred yards to a Korean house in which the battalion's command post was located. The other three men followed.

There was a high, mud wall around the command post. Williams ran through the gate and into the house, where he hurriedly described the enemy force, claiming that North Koreans were "just boiling over the hill!"

"Well, Sergeant," answered the battalion commander, "you're a little excited, aren't you? "

"Yes, sir, I am," said Williams. "And if you'd seen what I just saw, you'd be excited too."

Just as the two men went through the gate to look, several flares appeared to the north. Suddenly the enemy began firing tank guns, artillery, mortars, and machine guns in a pattern that covered the entire city, including the immediate area of the 1st Battalion's headquarters.

"I guess we'd better get out of here," said the commander, and turned back into the building.

It was only a few minutes after dawn. Soon the entire battalion was moving south again. Captain Osburn kept Company A together as a unit-at the beginning at least-but many men from the battalion were on their own, units were mixed together, and organization was lost in the confusion. Some men threw away their shoes again and walked barefoot. Most of them had trouble finding food, and for all of them it was a disheartening repetition of their first contact with the North Korean Army. They did not go back to Japan. They had seen only the beginning of fighting on the Korean peninsula. But when they again came to a halt beyond the Naktong River, and turned to make another defensive stand against the North Koreans, they had ended the first phase of the Korean conflict. Other United Nations troops had arrived in Korea. The period of withdrawal was over. Members of Company A and the rest of the 34th Infantry had lost their overconfidence and had gained battle experience. They soon settled down to a grim defense of the Pusan perimeter.

Attack Along a Ridgeline

The first break in the Naktong defense line at the central sector of the Pusan perimeter occurred during the early morning of 6 August 1950 when an estimated one thousand enemy troops crossed the Naktong River and penetrated the zone of the 34th Infantry (24th Infantry Division). The regimental commander immediately committed his reserve and counterattacked, but the North Koreans clung to their bridgehead on the east side of the river. During the night the enemy moved sufficient forces across the Naktong to replace their losses and increase their strength. When the division commander (Maj. Gen. John H. Church) learned that the enemy had crossed the last good natural barrier in southern Korea, he committed his reserve, the 19th Infantry (24th Infantry Division), in an effort to drive the enemy back across the river. During the next few days General Church attacked with all the troops he could muster from his own under-strength division and from units attached to it by Eighth Army. The North Koreans, however, continued to build up their forces east of the Naktong.

By 8 August North Koreans, totaling a reinforced regiment had waded the river and pulled raftloads of heavy equipment including trucks, across with them. Two days later they appeared to have two regiments in strong positions east of the Naktong. Consolidating all troops in the southern part of his division zone under the command of Col. John G.

Hill (whose 9th Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, was attached to the 24th Division to help restore the Naktong line), General Church ordered a counterattack on 11 August. Task Force Hill's attack ran squarely into strong enemy attacks, and the entire operation lost its direction and impetus in the resulting confusion. With communications lacking much of the time and enemy forces scattered throughout a large area, one regimental commander summed up the chaos by saying, "There are dozens of enemy and American forces all over the area, and they are all surrounding each other." During this period of grim combat, a desperate effort was made to prevent collapse of the Naktong line, while North Koreans fought back with equal determination. Task Force Hill, now comprising three infantry regiments, launched a full-scale attack again on 14 August. It failed once more.

General Church ordered the attack to continue at 0630, 15 August. It would commence on the left (south) flank of the task force zone where the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry, was to lead off in a column of companies. The battalion commander chose Company A to lead the attack.

Eighth Army planned maximum artillery support and gave Task Force Hill priority on tactical airplanes. Early that morning, however, it began to rain, and thick clouds along the ridgelines interfered with effective operation of the planes.

Soon after first light on the morning of 15 August, the commander of Company A summoned the leader of the 1st Platoon (Lt. Melvin D. Schiller), to whom he briefly outlined the plan of attack. Lieutenant Schiller, whose platoon was to lead the company column, had time only to take his squad leaders to high ground where he could point out to them the objective and the general route to be followed. The 1st Battalion's objective was a ridgeline a mile and a half long and approximately four hundred feet higher than the stream and the rice paddies at the ridge's base. There were several separate peaks along the crest of the ridgeline.

Followed by the rest of Company A, Lieutenant Schiller's platoon proceeded to the southeast end of the ride, took up its attack formation, waited a few minutes until the end of a fifteen-minute artillery preparation, and then started up the ridge in a general northwest direction. Members of the platoon, knowing that the North Koreans had repulsed a similar attack that Company B had made two days before, expected trouble. For about a quarter of the distance, however, the platoon moved up the ridgeline without interference. Then two enemy machine guns, firing from the left, forced the platoon to the ground. When this happened, the company commander called Lt. Edward L. Shea and told him to take his 2d Platoon through the stalled unit and continue the advance. Lieutenant Shea and one of his squad leaders (SFC Roy E. Collins) exchanged dubious glances. Their platoon consisted of 9 inexperienced men and 24 replacements who had joined the company three days before.

Motioning his men to follow, Lieutenant Shea started up the ridge.

"Let's take a look at it," he said, as he strode off erectly. As he neared the 1st Platoon's position, enemy fire forced him to the ground. He crawled up beside Lieutenant Schiller who was lying on his stomach behind a native
grave mound which was about four feet high, four feet in diameter, and covered with neatly trimmed grass. Lieutenant Schiller was trying to locate the two enemy machine guns that were holding up the advance. He and Lieutenant Shea suspected that the guns were located on the short hill on the left flank, since the string of enemy bullets seemed to cross just above the grave. Just as the two platoon leaders reached this conclusion, a bullet struck Schiller's helmet. It cut his head, followed the curve of his helmet, passed through his shoulder, and emerged to lodge in Shea's leg just above the knee. The two officers, both casualties, immediately directed their platoons to open fire against the enemy guns. Friendly fire caused the enemy guns to suspend fire, and the attack moved forward along the ridge top with the company commander (Lt. Albert F. Alfonso) directing the platoons.

The two platoons worked well together, one group moving forward while the other fired at the enemy positions. Moving steadily, Company A soon reached the first high peak at the southwestern end of the ridgeline. It was about 0830 when the company stopped to plan for the continuation of the attack. There were freshly dug holes, but no enemy in the area.

Beyond this point the narrow crest of the ridge dipped slightly before rising again at the next peak. Formed by a spur ridge, the next high point appeared to be a rocky cliff, about four hundred yards away, which lay athwart the long ridgeline and the direction of attack. Just in front of the point where the cliff joined the main ridgeline, there was a depression, or saddle. During the few minutes that the company spent preparing to continue the attack, several of the men observed enemy soldiers moving near the saddle. On the previous day, members of Company A had seen an enemy machine gun firing from the top of the rocky cliff.

Lieutenant Alfonso pointed out the saddle in front of the rocky cliff and told MSgt. Willie C. Gibson (now leading the 2d Platoon) to secure Lt. Alfonso then lined up the 1st Platoon behind an embankment on the high ground and assigned to it the mission of firing at any enemy interference, and especially to silence the enemy machine gun, if it fired. Under the protection of the 1st Platoon's base of fire, the 2d Platoon would dash along the 500-yard-long ridge. Once the 2d was in the saddle, the 3d Platoon would follow and reinforce it.

Sergeant Gibson lined up his four squads in the order they were to leave. He planned to follow the 2d Squad. He detailed Sergeant Collins at the end of the line to make certain that every man in the platoon moved out. Cpl. Leo M. Brennen (a squad leader and veteran of the Pacific war who had joined the company three days before) straightened and partially pulled the pin on a grenade he carried.

"I'll be the first man to go," Brennen said. "The rest of you guys follow me."

Brennen jumped over the embankment and started running toward the objective. Sergeant Collins checked his watch. It was 0845. Three other men followed Brennen at fifteen-yard intervals, all of them running just below the crest of the ridge since enemy guns fired from the opposite, or southwest side of the ridge. Just after the fourth man left, the North Koreans fired several short bursts from the machine gun on the rock cliff, hitting two men from the 1st Platoon, one in the eye and the other in the neck. Both were killed at once.

"After that," one of the surviving men said, "it was just like jumping into ice water."

But the rest of the platoon followed, each man about ten or fifteen steps behind the man in front. No one was wounded until the next to the last man-Cpl. Joseph H. Simoneau-rose to go. A burst from the North Korean gun struck him in the leg and shoulder. He yelled, "I'm hit!" and fell back toward Sergeant Collins. Collins pulled him back, called the medics, and then, after notifying the leader of the 3d Platoon that he was the last man from the 2d, jumped over the protective hump of dirt and ran.

This had taken no longer than five minutes. Sergeant Collins had gone only a few steps when Corporal Brennen, the lead man, reached the end of the ridge. After running the entire distance, Brennen looked over the low, pinched ridge separating him from the enemy-occupied ground and saw three North Koreans sitting around their machine gun as if they were relaxing. The gun was about twenty yards in front of him. Brennen had one grenade ready to throw and he tossed it. As he did this, he noticed movement to his left and turned to see another enemy light machine gun and its crew nearer than the first. He fired one clip from his rifle at them at the same time the machine gun fired at him. Corporal Brennen hit both enemy soldiers manning the gun, and believed he killed them, but not until they had shot him through the leg. He slid down the hill a short distance to a protected area. A brief period of noisy, confused, and furious fighting followed.

As the members of the 2d Platoon reached the saddle, they formed a firing line along their side of the little ridge. Lying close to the ground, they peered over the ridge frequently to observe and fire at the enemy, who was often only a few yards away. Three or four men who became casualties within a few minutes slid down the slope to join Corporal Brennen. There, Sergeant Gibson and a medic were now caring for the wounded.

Sergeant Collins, whom Lieutenant Shea had appointed second in command, reached the combat area a few minutes after the first burst of activity and took over the direction of the 2d Platoon. Like Corporal Brennen, Sergeant Collins carried a grenade with the cotter pin straightened and the ring over his index finger so that he could flip out the pin quickly. A few seconds after he reached the saddle there was a burst of fire from an enemy burp gun on the left flank. Collins ran back toward the bank on the left end of the firing line and looked over the ridge just as a North Korean raised to fire into the American line. Collins dropped his grenade on the enemy side of the hill and jumped to one side as a burst from the burp gun dug into the ground near him. His grenadeburst threw the burp gun into the air, and as Collins raised up to look over the ridgeline again another North Korean picked up the gun and tried to reload it. Sergeant Collins shot him with his rifle. At this moment SFC Regis J. Foley of the 3d Platoon came up to Collins.

According to the plan, the 3d Platoon was to follow immediately after the 2d Platoon. Sergeant Foley, the first man behind Sergeant Collins, reached the saddle, but the next man mistakenly turned into another narrow area about two thirds of the way across. Consequently, the entire 3d Platoon was lost to the action since it came under such heavy enemy fire that it could move neither forward nor to the rear.

"Foley," said Sergeant Collins, "you watch this end and don't let them get up here."

Collins then started back along the line of riflemen where several gaps had occurred as men became casualties. Some men were already yelling that they were out of ammunition, even though each rifleman had carried two bandoleers and a full belt of M-1 clips-a total of 17 rounds. Sergeant Collins knew they would need help to win the battle they had started. Unaware that the 3d Platoon had gone to the wrong area and was now pinned down by heavy enemy fire, and believing that it would soon join him, Collins sent a runner to the company commander asking for more help and for more ammunition. He especially wanted grenades, which were easy to toss over the ridgeline. While he waited for word from the company commander, he went along the line, taking ammunition from those who were wounded or dead and distributing it to the men who were effective. By this time most of the men in the platoons were calling for help, wanting either ammunition or medics. In addition to the close-in fighting that continued, the enemy machine gun up on the rocky cliff had turned and was firing at the exposed rear of the 2d Platoon. Fire from this gun varied according to the amount of fire that the 1st Platoon's base of fire delivered against it. When the covering fire was heavy, the enemy gun was quiet; but it resumed firing as soon, and as often, as the 1st Platoon quit.

It took Sergeant Collins's runner eight minutes to make his round trip. He returned with a note from Lieutenant Alfonso which read, "Pull out."

At the far right of the line, Cpl. Joseph J. Sady yelled for a grenade. ?They're pulling up a machine gun here," he shouted.

Collins threw Lieutenant Alfonso's note down and took a grenade to Corporal Sady who tossed it over on the enemy gunners.

"That took care of them," he said.

An enemy rifleman, firing from a distance of ten steps, hit Corporal Sady in the head and killed him. The next man in the line killed the North Korean.

Sergeant Collins worked back along the line. At the left end Sergeant Foley, who had been stationed there to hold that flank, came sliding down the ridge bareheaded and bleeding. He had been hit by a split bullet that had apparently ricocheted from a rock and had cut into his head. Collins bandaged him and told him to go back and ask the company commander for more help. But as soon as he was gone, Sergeant Collins realized that because his ammunition was so low, and because less than half of his original strength remained, he had no alternative but to break contact and withdraw. He called down to tell Sergeant Gibson to start getting the wounded men out. Six men were wounded, two of them seriously, and Gibson started to evacuate them by moving them down a gully between the two hills to a road at the bottom.

Near the center of the saddle a Negro rifleman, PFC Edward 0. Cleaborn, concentrated on keeping an enemy machine gun out of action. Standing up on the ridgeline and shooting down into the enemy side of the hill, he kept killing North Koreans who tried to man the gun. He was excited and kept firing rapidly, calling for ammunition and yelling, "Come on up, you sons of ladyes, and fight!"

Sergeant Collins told him to get down on the ground, but Cleaborn said, "Sergeant, I just can't see them when I get down."

About this time an enemy soldier jumped over the little ridge and landed on top of Sergeant Collins who was stripping ammunition from one of his men who had just been killed. The North Korean grabbed Sergeant Collins by the waist and held on tightly. Seeing this, Cleaborn jumped down and started after the North Korean who kept hiding behind Sergeant Collins. Collins eventually persuaded Cleaborn that the enemy soldier wanted to surrender, and Cleaborn went back to the firing line. Collins pushed his prisoner down to the ditch where Gibson was evacuating the wounded. Sergeant Gibson loaded the prisoner with the largest wounded man who had to be carried out, and started him down the gully toward the road.

By the time Sergeant Foley returned with a renewal of the company commander's instructions to withdraw, the evacuation of all wounded men was under way. As men left the firing line, they helped the wounded. Only six men remained in firing positions and several of these were so low on ammunition they had fixed their bayonets. Sergeant Collins told the six to fire a heavy blast at the enemy's position, and then move out quickly. All but Cleaborn fired a clip of ammunition and then started to leave. He reloaded his rifle and said he wanted to fire one more clip. As he jumped back on the ridge to fire again, he was killed by a bullet through his head. Sergeant Collins and the remaining five men ran back along the ridgeline, the route of their advance.

It was 0932 when the men reached the little spur from which the 1st Platoon had been firing, just forty-seven minutes after the attack had begun. Of the original 36 men in the 2d Platoon that morning, only 10 were unharmed. Nine wounded men walked or were carried down the ditch to the road, three dying before reaching the road. The other members of the platoon were dead.

The 1st Battalion's attack had been stopped. Other elements of Task Force Hill encountered similarly stubborn resistance, and during the afternoon the commander of the force recommended to General Church that the attack be discontinued and that the force dig in to defend the ground it occupied.

Defense of a Battery Position

North Korean Communist forces appeared to be near complete victory at the end of August and during the first part of September of 1950. Along the southern coast of Korea enemy troops were within thirty miles of Pusan, the only port and supply base left to the United Nations army. American troops holding this Pusan perimeter at the time consisted of four divisions and a brigade occupying a line in the general area of the Naktong River from Waegwan south to Masan-a straight-line distance of seventy miles. The irregular front line was twice that long. South Korean soldiers manned the northern section of the perimeter from Waegwan to Pohang-dong on the east coast.

At the beginning of September the North Koreans began a powerful drive against the southern end of the perimeter defended by the U.S. 2d and 25th Infantry Divisions. These attacks achieved limited success and carried the combat into the rear areas behind the American front lines. One penetration fell against the 35th Infantry, a regiment of the 25th Division, soon after midnight on the morning of 3 September. The enemy pushed Company B from its position, surrounded Company G and the 1st Battalion command post, and then attacked several batteries of artillery. Among the artillery units, the heaviest fighting took place within the gun position of Battery A, 64th Field Artillery Battalion, which was in direct support of the 35th Infantry. The headquarters of each of these units was located in Haman at that time.

On the night of 2-3 September Battery A was in position two and a half miles north of Haman near a main road and single-track railroad running east and west between Masan and Chinju. The narrow road from Haman joined the Masan-Chinju road at the small village of Saga, the buildings of which were strung along the main road. [1] Because of North Korean infiltrators, artillery units were alert to the necessity of defending their own positions and the battery commander (Capt. Leroy Anderson) kept his area as compact as possible. Three or four hundred yards south of the road there was a low ridge shaped like a half circle and forming a shallow bowl. Here Captain Anderson positioned five of his six howitzers. Since the area was too small to accommodate all of the pieces, he placed the other howitzer on the north side of a railroad track that paralleled the Masan road and divided the battery area. The fire direction center, on the south side of the tracks, was operating in a tent erected in a four-foot-deep dugout within shouting distance of the guns. The wire section had its switchboard north of the tracks in a dugout fifteen to twenty yards south of the cluster of houses, a few of which were used by men of the wire section as living quarters. In addition to the low ridge, there was only one other terrain feature of importance-a gully, about four feet deep, next to the railroad tracks.

Around the battery position Captain Anderson set up ten defensive posts including four .50-caliber machine guns, three .30-caliber machine guns, one observation and listening post, and two M16 halftracks each mounting four .50-caliber machine guns. Four of the posts were on the ridge around the gun position and were connected by telephone wire. The others were within shouting distance.

Until 0245 on 3 September the battery fired its usual missions in support of the 35th Infantry. The night was dark, and there was a heavy fog in the area-a condition common along the southern coast of Korea during the summer. The battery first sergeant (MSgt. William Parker) was the first to suspect trouble. He was standing near the switchboard dugout when he noticed several men moving along the main road.

He called to them, "Who's there?" and then, when they continued walking, he yelled "Halt!"

Three North Koreans were pulling a machine gun (the type mounted on small, cast-iron wheels) down the road. They moved down the road a few more steps and then dropped into a ditch, turned their gun toward the battery position, and opened fire. Almost immediately there was enemy fire from several other directions, a large part of it coming from the ridgeline that partially surrounded the main part of the battery. At the south end of the battery position the North Koreans had three machine guns in action against the gun sections and, soon after the first shots were fired, they had pulled another machine gun into place along the road in Saga. From the beginning, the action was divided between the two parts of the battery, divided by the railroad tracks.

Sgt. Herbert L. Rawls, Jr., the wire team chief, saw the North Koreans at the time Sergeant Parker challenged them. Realizing that there would be trouble, he ran first to one of the native houses by the road to awaken several men from his section who were sleeping there, then to the switchboard dugout to warn those men. Near the edge of the switchboard hole Sgt. Joseph R. Pursley was kneeling on the ground splicing a wire. Just as Rawls got there a North Korean appeared and killed both men with a burp gun. He then threw a grenade into the switchboard dugout. The explosion killed two of the three men in the hole; the third man, Cpl. John M. Pitcher, was not seriously injured. He continued to operate the switchboard throughout the night with the two bodies beside him in the hole.

All this had occurred within a few minutes. At the same time two other events were taking place in the same area. At the first sign of action, Cpl. Bobbie H. McQuitty ran to his 3/4-ton truck upon which was mounted a machine gun. He had parked his truck near the road and now, by the time he reached it, the North Koreans had rolled one of their machine guns (one of the two they had in Saga) up just in front of it. With the two machine guns pointed toward each other at a distance of not more than thirty yards, McQuitty's gun failed to fire. He jumped from the truck and ran across the rice paddies toward the front lines of the infantrymen where he had seen a tank the previous afternoon. He now hoped to get help from it. By this time, neither the other two machine guns on that side of the railroad, nor the quad .50s, could fire against the North Koreans in that area without endangering men of the wire section.

Meanwhile, the communications men whom Sergeant Rawls had awakened just before he was killed tried to get away from the building in which they had been sleeping, hoping to rejoin the main section of the battery. In one room of the building were three men, PFC Harold W. Barker, PFC Thomas A. Castello, and PFC Santford B. Moore. Barker left first, running. He had gone only a few steps when he saw one of the North Korean machine guns directly ahead. He turned quickly and dashed back to the house, but as he reached the doorway a bullet struck his knee. Castello and Moore pulled him back into the building and decided to remain in the house. They put Barker on the floor, and then stood in a corner of the room as close to the wall as possible. Unfortunately, several days before this Barker and Castello had picked up two small pups, which now shared the same room. The pups chewed on some paper and made considerable noise. In an adjoining room there had been another man who also tried to escape, but as he stepped from the building he encountered fifteen or twenty Communist soldiers standing in a group just outside the door. One of them shot him in the mouth and killed him.

Within a few minutes after the North Koreans appeared, five members of the communications section were dead and another man was wounded. Thereafter the enemy fired the two machine guns toward the area of the howitzers but made no attempt to move against the guns or even to search the area for other Americans.

Immediately after the first shot was fired against the men near the switchboard, three machine guns at the south end of the battery position opened fire against the howitzer sections. Two of these were in place on the low ridgeline at the left front of the guns and a third fired from the left rear. In addition, there was fire from a half dozen or more enemy riflemen. Of the six guns, the three nearest the ridge were under the heaviest fire. There was an immediate interruption of the fire missions while the crews took cover in their gun pits, which were deep enough to afford some protection. There was a period of several minutes, then, before the artillerymen realized what was happening and determined the extent of and direction of the enemy fire.

Meanwhile, on the left, an enemy soldier threw several grenades at the pit occupied by MSgt. Frederick J. Hammer's section. One of the grenades exploded inside the pit, killing one man and wounding several others; another exploded in an ammunition pit and set fire to over a hundred 105-mm shells stored there. The men manning the machine-gun posts along the ridge opened fire when the action began but soon realized the enemy had already penetrated to the battery position. They pulled back, going north toward the other halftrack mounting the quad .50s. This weapon fired just a few rounds before its power traversing mechanism failed and, when it could not be operated by hand, the gun crew backed the vehicle a short distance to the gully by the railroad tracks.

It was just about this time that the battalion headquarters called Battery A to ask the reason for interrupting the fire mission. The battery executive officer (Lieut. Kincheon H. Bailey, Jr.) answered the telephone at the fire direction tent. Bailey had heard the machine guns firing but was not concerned about it since at that time the front-line infantrymen were not far away and the artillerymen could often hear the noise of automatic weapons and small arms. In turn, he called the gun crews to ask them. Sergeant Hammer and four other gun sections reported their situation but the sixth section, commanded by PFC Ernest R. Arnold, was under such intense machine-gun fire that no one wanted to reach for the telephone on the edge of the gun pit. Bailey reported back to the battalion and went out to investigate for himself.

During the several minutes required to relay this information to battalion headquarters the situation in the battery position developed fast. Sergeant Hammer, seeing his ammunition burning, ordered the men in his section to make a dash for the gully by the railroad tracks. Within the next few minutes the men manning two other guns managed to escape and get back to this gully. Meanwhile, one of the platoon sergeants (MSgt. Germanus P. Kotzur) had raced over to the howitzer north of the railroad tracks and ordered the gun section to lay direct fire against the hill from which the enemy soldiers had apparently come.

It was about the time the first of these shells landed that Lieutenant Bailey left the fire direction tent to find out what was happening. The powder in Hammer's ammunition pit was burning brightly by this time, illuminating one end of the battery position. As Bailey walked toward that area he saw North Koreans walking around the gun and concluded the crew was dead or gone. He ran back to the nearest howitzer and told the chief of section (Cpl. Cecil W. Meares) to start firing against the ridge. Two howitzers fired a total of eighteen rounds, which burst a hundred and fifty to two hundred yards away. Bailey also urged the gun crew to start firing their side arms against the North Koreans who now occupied the next gun pit-the one Sergeant Hammer's crew had abandoned. For five or ten minutes Corporal Meares's men fired at the enemy soldiers and threw grenades toward the gun pit. Then Bailey and Kotzur decided it would be best to get the crews back to the protection of the gully. They stopped the artillery fire and began calling for the other crews to move back. To give these men some protection, Sgt. Henry E. Baker ran to a nearby 2 1/2-ton truck which carried a ring-mounted caliber .50 machine gun and began firing this toward the North Koreans. PFC Richard G. Haussler went with Baker to feed the ammunition belts through the gun. These two men, although up high where they could be seen from the entire area as long as the ammunition was burning brightly, fired five boxes of ammunition (1,250 rounds) through the gun in about ten minutes. The battery commander (Captain Anderson) set out on an inspection of the battery position to make certain none of his men remained in foxholes or in the gun pits.

It was about 0315 when all of the cannoneers reached the gully by the railroad tracks-half an hour after the action began. As it happened, the Catholic chaplain of the 25th Division (Capt. John T. Schag) had visited the battery earlier in the day and had decided to spend the night there. When the fighting began Father Schag took charge of a group of men who had been sleeping near him and guided them to the gully then used as the battery defensive position. Once in the gully, he gathered the wounded men together and then helped the medics care for them. Captain Anderson and Sergeant Kotzur organized the men for the defense of the gully. Everyone was now in this gully except for three men in the fire direction tent; Corporal Pitcher, who was still operating the battery switchboard; and Barker, Castello, and Moore, who were still waiting quietly in the house in Saga.

Enemy activity decreased after the men of the battery consolidated their position in the gully although there was a brisk exchange of rifle fire. The battalion commander (Lt. Col. Arthur H. Hogan) called several times to find out what was happening and offered help from one of the other batteries in the battalion. One man at the fire direction tent (Sgt. Carl Francis) yelled to Lieutenant Bailey to ask if he wanted some 155mm fire placed in the area, and Bailey said they'd like to have some on the hill in front of the guns. Colonel Hogan was familiar with the hill and, having good original data, got the first shells squarely on the hill.

Bailey yelled back to the fire direction center, "Right 50; drop 100; fire for effect."

The men around him groaned when they heard this command, so Bailey changed it to "drop 50; fire for effect."

Colonel Hogan asked for two rounds from the battery of medium artillery and the rounds fell just in front of the guns. Soon after this a tank came down the Masan road from the north and began firing into the enemy positions. It was the tank for which Corporal McQuitty had gone after his machine gun jammed at the beginning of the action. This helped to reduce the enemy activity although there was scattered rifle fire until the first signs of light that morning. The enemy soldiers then disappeared, and the gun sections returned to their howitzers to assess the damage. The North Koreans had killed 7 men and wounded 12 others of Battery A, destroyed four trucks, and let the air out of the tires on one of the howitzers. On three of the howitzer tubes they had written in chalk the numbers of their company, platoon, and squad. Otherwise, the guns were not damaged. There were 21 dead North Korean soldiers in the battery position when the action was all over. Captain Anderson regrouped his battery on the north side of the tracks and resumed the firing of normal supporting missions.

Artillery at Kunu-ri

After crossing two thirds of North Korea in the fall of 1950, Eighth Army's advance to the Yalu River ended abruptly. The commander of one field artillery battalion reconnoitered for forward positions one afternoon but early the next morning, after strong enemy attacks against nearby units during the night, he received orders to select positions for a displacement to the rear. This was the beginning of a long withdrawal.

The U.S. 17th Field Artillery Battalion, an 8-inch howitzer unit, was attached to the 2d Infantry Division on 24 November after being relieved, the day before, from control of the 1st Cavalry Division. After a reconnaissance on the night of 23 November, the battalion moved into positions in the vicinity of Kujang-dong the next morning.

Kujang-dong was a bleak-looking town-a few dozen earth-colored houses along the narrow road and the single-track railway. Battery A placed its guns at the edge of the village, taking over the better buildings for sleeping quarters and for its command post.

At this time Battery A had a strength of 74 of the authorized 135 men, having come overseas under-strength in August. Soon after the battery arrived in Korea, fifty Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers were sent to Battery A and had stayed until October, when they had been released because everyone thought the war was over.

The first indication Battery A men had that the war wasn't over came on the morning of 24 November from an air observer who, while registering the No. 2 howitzer on the base point, spotted an estimated two hundred enemy soldiers. It had been a month or more since anyone had seen so many North Koreans, and no one realized that these soldiers were Chinese. The front line was not more than three thousand yards north of Kujang-dong when Battery A began firing. Expecting to continue the usual rapid northward advance, the battalion commander (Lt.Col. Elmer H. Harrelson) went forward on the morning of 25 November to select positions two miles farther north. At the same time the commander of the nearby 61st Field Artillery Battalion (a 105-mm unit) selected positions in the same area. Both units were to move that afternoon, but the road was already so jammed with traffic that Division Artillery decided not to move the 8-inch howitzers until the next morning. Early that night Chinese troops waded the Chongchon River and attacked in force, hitting units of the 23d Infantry Regiment and overrunning the new positions of the 61st Field Artillery Battalion. At 2300 some of the men from the 61st straggled into the area of Battery A, having left their position with neither equipment nor howitzers. One man was barefoot. The commander of Battery A (Capt. Allen L. Myers) put everyone on an alert basis for the night, although the Chinese did not penetrate that far.

After daybreak, 26 November, the commanding general of the 2d Infantry Division Artillery ordered Colonel Harrelson to pull back several miles. While the 61st Battalion attacked to recover its howitzers and equipment, Harrelson selected positions to the rear. The narrow supply road was still so jammed with vehicles, however, that it was late that night before Battery A received the march order, and it was 2330 before the battery pulled onto the road and started south, moving under blackout conditions. The chief of section of the last howitzer in the column put his hand on the shoulder of the man driving the tractor to indicate that he wanted the driver to slow down through the town of Kujang-dong. The driver, thinking that the section chief wanted him to turn left, turned down a small side street. There was a delay of five or ten minutes while the crew turned the tractor and howitzer around, knocking down several buildings in the process. This section was now separated from the rest of the column and it was impossible to catch up because of the solid line of vehicles but Captain Myers had taken his chiefs of section with him when he selected the position and the men now knew where to go.

Captain Myers's new position was in a stream bed near the road to Kunuri. Three howitzer sections arrived first; then the maintenance, wire, kitchen, and radio sections; then the fourth gun section; and finally, the local security detail. The temperature was near zero and there was a strong wind as the crews put the guns into firing position. Battery A fired without registering, using average corrections furnished by the fire direction center. On 27 November, while the infantry regiments of the 2d Division and some of the artillery units were experiencing heavy enemy attacks, Battery A had a comparatively quiet day although it was too cold for the men to sleep. They sat huddled around gasoline stoves when they had no fire missions. All men whom Captain Myers could spare from the firing sections were needed either for outpost duty or for hauling ammunition from Kunu-ri, twenty-five to thirty miles away. The narrow road, following the curves of the Chongchon River, was better suited to the native ox-carts than to the heavy trucks that now jammed it, moving only a few miles an hour.

Enemy pressure increased throughout the division's area and at 2200 that night, Colonel Harrelson received orders to again displace to the rear. By 0745 the following morning, 28 November, when Battery A marchordered, front-line infantry units had fallen back until the artillerymen could hear the sound of smallarms fire. Captain Myers heard that an ROK division west of the 2d Infantry Division had collapsed, exposing the division's right flank. This time Myers moved his battery approximately five miles south, where he put the howitzers in position near the road but, at 1230, with the battery laid and ready to fire in the new position, he was ordered to close station and march-order, again moving south. By this time all units of the 2d Division were moving back.

Battery A now went into position southwest of Kunu-ri in a large field along the division's supply road. The first part of the night was quiet and the men had a chance to sleep some, but the battery began getting fire missions and commenced shooting in a northerly direction two hours before daylight, 29 November.

Several incidents occurred during the day that indicated the situation was fast becoming critical. Early in the morning Colonel Harrelson received instructions to look for new positions along the route of withdrawal to Sunchon. Earlier, however, a report reached 2d Division headquarters indicating that the enemy had established a roadblock several miles south on the road to Sunchon. Officers at the division's command post accepted this information calmly, but sent a patrol to investigate and, a little later that morning, ordered the Reconnaissance Company out to open the road. Meanwhile, the reconnaissance for new positions was held up until afternoon when, as officers at division headquarters expected, the Reconnaissance Company would have eliminated the enemy roadblock on the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road. [5] About mid-morning, Captain Myers received orders to haul the ammunition he needed from Kunu-ri because the ammunition dump there was going to be destroyed. And during the day the three 105-mm howitzer battalions and the 155-mm howitzer battalion of the 2d Division passed by the gun position of Battery A, all headed south.

Colonel Harrelson, Captain Myers, and the other battery commanders undertook that afternoon to reconnoiter for positions on the Sunchon road, expecting it to be open. It wasn't. Vehicles were jammed on and near the road for several miles south of Kunu-ri, and occupants of some vehicles returning from the south claimed the road was cut, that it was impossible to get through. [6] Captain Myers and his party returned to the battery position at dark while Colonel Harrelson went to Division Artillery's command post for a briefing on the general situation. There he learned the 2d Division was confident it would be able to open the road. He was told to fire his regular missions during the night. If the road were open by morning of 30 November, the 17th Field Artillery Battalion would withdraw over that road, taking its place at the head of the column of artillery battalions, since the 8-inch howitzers were considered to be the most valuable pieces and the hardest to replace. If the roadblock were not cleared by morning-and if the division did not issue another order-the battalion was to pull out by another road west to Anju and then so at that time, he realized that the situation could change abruptly.

The direction of fire, which was north on the morning of 29 November, gradually shifted east during the day. That evening, with the howitzers laid on an azimuth of 1600 mils, Battery A started firing charge 7 at a range of eighteen thousand yards. By morning on 30 November the cannoneers were using charge 1 at a range of thirteen hundred yards. Because of the critical situation Colonel Harrelson, calm but anxious to keep the battery informed, held three battery commanders' calls during the night. At the call held at 0400 on 30 November he outlined three possible plans of action: to return to Kunu-ri and put a large ammunition trailer across the road to block traffic long enough to get the battalion's vehicles into the solid column of traffic and move the battalion west through Anju; to go south on 2d Division order when the roadblock was opened; if these failed, he proposed that the battalion stay and fight until it was forced to destroy all equipment and fight its way south as a battalion. Harrelson preferred to take the road to Anju since his battalion had followed that road when it moved north and was familiar with it. However, soon after this meeting Colonel Harrelson was called to Division Artillery's command post and there learned that, by division order, his battalion would withdraw over the road to Sunchon. During the night of 29-30 November the military police told the division's provost marshal that the road to Anju was also cut by the Chinese. At the same time, IX Corps, of which the division was a part, directed the 2d Division to use the Sunchon road since the road from Anju south was already burdened with three divisions.

Soldiers continued to straggle through and past Battery A's position during the early morning of 30 November. Some were ROK soldiers and some were from the 2d Division or from another nearby U.S. division. Soon after daylight a tank officer stopped at Battery A's position and told Captain Myers that all infantry units to the north had withdrawn. He said he had some tanks in the rear that could help the artillerymen if necessary. This was not an accurate report but, as a precaution, Myers assigned zones for direct fire to each of the gun sections. Even as the situation was, the cannoneers could see the shell bursts from their gun positions.

Colonel Harrelson met his battery commanders again at 0800 on 30 November and told them of the decision to use the road to Sunchon even though the road leading west to Anju appeared to be still open. The 2d Division, he said, had ordered the 9th Infantry Regiment to attack south and destroy the enemy roadblock. The 9th Infantry, however, had suffered such heavy casualties during its last three days of fighting that it had an attacking force of only four hundred or five hundred men when it started south toward the critical area early that morning. By 0900 it became apparent at division headquarters that this force was too weak to destroy the roadblock, and the 38th Infantry was ordered to help.

At 0930 Colonel Harrelson called Captain Myers with instructions to march-order and move as a fighting column. Myers at first interpreted this to mean he should destroy all equipment, but before he did so he called his battalion commander again and learned that Colonel Harrelson wanted the tractors and howitzers to go first, then the wheeled vehicles with the rest of the equipment. He wanted the tops and windshields down, machine guns mounted, and the men equipped to fight as infantrymen if necessary. By batteries, the order of march was: B, A, Headquarters, Service, C. Within Battery A the four gun sections left first; then the tractor pulling the large ammunition trailer, the Diamond-T four-ton ammunition truck, and the 3/4-ton executive truck. The rest of the wheeled vehicles followed.

Moving southward at an average rate of five miles an hour, Battery A passed three of the 2d Division's organic artillery battalions-all still in position and firing. It appeared to members of Battery A that the guns were laid to fire in several directions. About noon the column stopped when Battery A's vehicles were near a deserted quartermaster supply dump that had belonged to the U.S. 25th Infantry Division. Here the men loaded up on quartermaster supplies, especially overcoats, which many of them lacked. Near the supply dump a hundred or more soldiers, American and South Korean, were lying on the ground trying to sleep. A captain was in charge of them. There was a two-hour delay at the dump while the remaining fighting force of two infantry regiments attempted to reduce the enemy positions at the roadblock. At about 1400 the column started moving again, and the infantrymen by the supply dump climbed up on Battery A's vehicles. Vehicles were closed up bumper to bumper on the dry road which, having been graded by U.S. engineers, was wide enough for two-way traffic in most places. Low hills lay on both sides of the thousand-yard-wide valley.

The day was cold. The men were tired and tense. After proceeding haltingly for a mile and a half or two miles, the battery's vehicles passed between enemy machine guns firing from opposite sides of the road and the men scrambled for the ditches. Friendly airplanes strafed the hills along the road, occasionally quieting the guns. When they did, the column would get under way until another gun fired or until vehicles ahead came under enemy fire. After passing several enemy machine guns, all located between two hundred and three hundred yards from the road, the column stopped again and this time failed to move until almost dark. Military police patrolled the road in jeeps, doubling the column to locate the trouble.

During the halt a large number of South Korean soldiers came across the enemy-occupied hills on the left side of the road and joined the column. They were badly disorganized and some were without weapons.

Meanwhile, Colonel Harrelson, fearing that his battalion would be stranded in the center of the roadblock through the night, made plans to pull his vehicles off the road and form a perimeter, but at dusk the vehicles began moving again. About this time a halftrack mounting a twin 40-mm came past the column and took a position at the head of Battery A. It fired at all suspected enemy positions, often getting air-bursts by aiming at the trees. Many of the South Korean soldiers climbed on the vehicles as they started forward.

After dark drivers used only blackout lights, and it was difficult to distinguish the many vehicles abandoned by the road from other vehicles in the column. The communications chief (Sgt. Preston L. Bryson) was driving the executive truck and pulled up behind a jeep in which he could see two men. After waiting for several minutes, he realized both men were dead and then pulled around the jeep. There were twenty-five to thirty vehicles abandoned along the seven-mile stretch that was under enemy fire.

The main difficulty occurred at the southern end of the roadblock. A two-lane concrete bridge had been destroyed, forcing the withdrawing column to use a bypass and to ford the stream which, at the time, was several feet deep. The bypass approach from the north was in good condition, but the southern exit was up terraced rice paddies, the first terrace being very difficult to maneuver. After fording the stream the driver of the first tractor in Captain Myers's column found his path blocked by two 3-ton trucks and one 2 1/2-ton truck that were stuck and abandoned. None of the abandoned vehicles belonged to the 17th Field Artillery Battalion.

The battalion S-3 (Major Joseph J. Prusaitis) came back and instructed Captain Myers to uncouple the first tractor and pull the vehicles out of the bypass. The lead tractor belonged to the 2d Section (Sgt. Harrington D. Hawkins) which uncoupled it just as two tanks drove up the road from the south with their lights on. The beams of the headlights fell on the men working in the bypass. Immediately several enemy machine guns opened fire and tracer bullets flashed all around the artillerymen. Mortar rounds began falling nearby. Shouting, Captain Myers made the men get off the vehicles nearby. The battery executive (Lt. Donald D. Judd) was standing in the road when the lights shone on him. A Chinese rifleman thirty feet away was aiming at Judd when one of the cannoneers killed the enemy soldier. After this action flared up the tanks turned their lights on and began firing at the enemy. Thinking that the tanks had come to pull the abandoned vehicles away, Captain Myers instructed Sergeant Hawkins to couple up again and proceed.

Meanwhile, on the north side of the destroyed bridge, MSgt. Judge Shanks, driving the next howitzer, looked across and saw the tank on the south side of the bridge. Not realizing there was a gap in the bridge, he pulled up on the north approach where he was forced to halt. The following vehicle stopped a few feet behind him and the rest of the column was jammed up to the rear. This caused another difficult delay before the 8-inch howitzer and prime mover could be backed up and run through the bypass.

The bypass was the end of the roadblock. At 213O the last of the men of Battery A cleared the obstacle and saw the lights come on at the head of the column. There were stragglers and wounded men on the trailers, howitzers, fenders, and hoods of the vehicles, and three 3/4-ton trucks had been turned into ambulances. The artillerymen had passed the bodies of at least four hundred American or other friendly troops that were lying by the road. Battery A had eight men wounded while running the roadblock, none killed. It lost four 2 1/2-ton trucks, three 3/4-ton trucks, the kitchen trailer, and the supply trucks of which one was abandoned because of mechanical failure. For the battalion the equipment losses amounted to twenty-six vehicles and a howitzer from Battery B, which overturned and killed eight ROK soldiers who were riding on it.

The artillery battalions and other units of the 2d Division that followed were not so fortunate. Soon after Colonel Harrelson's battalion cleared the bypass, an M-6 tractor pulling a 155-mm howitzer stalled in the middle of the ford, effectively blocking the route of withdrawal. All vehicles north of the ford were abandoned and the personnel walked out.

Chosin Reservoir

It was bitter cold. The temperature was below zero. The wind howled. Snow fell-a snow so dry that dust from the road mixed with it in yellowish clouds that swirled about the column of trucks. Tundra-like, bleak, and without vegetation in most places, the land was depressing.

Huddled together in the back of the trucks, the men of the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry, stomped their feet on the truck beds in futile attempts to keep their limbs from becoming stiff and numb. Most of them wore long woolen underwear, two pairs of socks, a woolen shirt, cotton field trousers over a pair of woolen trousers, shoepacs, pile jacket, wind-resistant reversible parka with hood, and trigger-finger mittens of wool insert and outer shell. To keep their ears from freezing they tied wool scarves around their heads underneath their helmets. Still the cold seeped through. Occasionally the entire column ground to a halt to permit the men to dismount and exercise for a few minutes.

Lt.Col. Don C. Faith commanded the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry. As part of the 7th Infantry Division and of X Corps (Maj.Gen. Edward M. Almond), the battalion was moving from Hamhung north to relieve marines on the east shore of Chosin Reservoir and then to continue the attack to the Yalu River. A man could take even stinging, stiffening cold if it meant the end of a war. And that was how things looked on this 25th day of November 1950. In fact, just before Faith's battalion left Hamhung some of the men had listened to a news broadcast from Tokyo describing the beginning of a United Nations offensive in Korea designed to terminate the war quickly. Originating in General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's headquarters, the report predicted that U.S. divisions would be back in Japan by Christmas. It had been cheering news.

Having assembled three divisions at the east coast port of Hungnam at the end of October, General Almond had launched his X Corps on an offensive with the objective of reaching the Manchurian border as soon as possible. By the third week of November the corps was scattered across an area of more than four thousand square miles of bare, bleak, and rugged mountains. The 1st Marine Division, attacking along both sides of Chosin Reservoir, was more than fifty miles inland. One regiment of the 7th Division-the 17th Infantry-had gone more than a hundred miles north of Hungnam and had reached the Yalu River on 21 November. Other units of that division were separated by straightline distances of seventy or eighty miles. Road distances, tortuously slow, were much longer. North Koreans had offered only slight resistance against X Corps advances, but the obstacles of terrain and weather were tremendous.

Passing engineer crews working on the twisted, shelf-like road notched into the side of precipitous slopes, the truck column bearing Colonel Faith and his men northward at last reached Hagaru-ri at the south end of Chosin Reservoir. Several Marine Corps units were located in Hagaruri. The truck column passed a few tents and small groups of marines huddled around bonfires. When the road forked, Colonel Faith's column followed the right-hand road, which led past the few desolate houses in Hagaru-ri toward the east side of the reservoir.

At least one or two men from each company were frostbite casualties late that afternoon when the battalion closed into defensive positions a mile or so north of Hagaru-ri. The night was quiet. There were warm-up tents behind the crests of the hills and the men spent alternate periods manning defense positions and getting warm.

The morning of 26 November was clear and cold. Since the marines still occupied the area, Colonel Faith waited for more complete orders, which had been promised. Toward noon, the assistant commander of the 7th Division (Brig.Gen. Henry I. Hodes) arrived at Faith's command post with more information on the planned operation. Having flown to Hagaru-ri by light aircraft, he had driven north by jeep. Additional 7th Division units, he explained to Colonel Faith, were then en route to Chosin Reservoir. The commander of the 31st Infantry Regiment (Col. Allan D. MacLean) was to arrive soon to take command of all units on the east side of the reservoir. He was bringing with him his own 3d Battalion, his Heavy Mortar Company, his Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon, a detachment of medical personnel, and the 57th Field Artillery Battalion. The last-named unit would be short one of its firing batteries but would have with it Battery D, 15th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion-a unit equipped with halftracks mounting quadruple caliber .50 machine guns (M-16s) and dual 40-mm guns (M-19s). General Hodes said the Marine regiment would move on the following day to join the rest of the 1st Marine Division in an attack aimed at securing another important road northwest from Hagaru-ri. The mission of MacLean's task force, and thus of Colonel Faith's battalion, was to secure the important road running along the east side of the reservoir and thence north to the Manchurian border.

When Colonel MacLean arrived with his staff later that evening, he stated his intentions of attacking north as soon as his task force arrived. He approved Colonel Faith's plan to take over the northernmost defensive position as soon as the marines vacated it the next morning.

Monday, 27 November, was another clear, cold day. Marine trucks were on the road soon after dawn shuttling troops south. By noon, when the road was clear again, Colonel Faith moved his battalion north. The rest of Colonel MacLean's force arrived that afternoon, moving into position about three or four miles south of Faith's battalion.

As night fell on 27 November, the first order of business was defense, although a continuation of the northward drive the marines had begun was planned for the next day. Lending greater force to common knowledge that Chinese forces in undetermined strength were roaming the mountains in the vicinity of Chosin Reservoir, the marines had told Colonel Faith that on the day before several Chinese prisoners had revealed the presence of three fresh divisions operating in the area of the reservoir. Their mission, the prisoners had said, was to sever the American supply route. The marines also told Faith's men that on the previous night, in this same location, a Chinese patrol had pulled a marine from his foxhole, disarmed him, and beaten him.

With this in mind, Colonel Faith placed his companies in a perimeter that lay across the road facing north, with the right flank bent south to face mountains that loomed high to the east. During the late afternoon the companies dug in their positions and cut fields of fire through some scrub brush on the hills. After breaking through eight or ten inches of frozen earth, the digging was easy. There were no stones in the ground. Colonel Faith set up his command post in a few farm houses in a small valley less than a thousand yards behind the front lines. It got dark early, still bitterly cold. For an hour or two after dark there was the sound of shell bursts around the perimeter since forward observers had not completed the registration of artillery and mortar defensive fires before dark. For another hour or two, until after 2100, it was quiet.

The battalion adjutant, having driven a hundred and fifty miles that day from division headquarters, arrived with two weeks' mail. A few minutes later an officer from Colonel MacLean's headquarters brought the operation order for the attack scheduled for dawn the next morning. Colonel Faith called his company commanders, asking them to bring their mail orderlies and to report to his command post for the attack order.

The enemy attacked while the meeting was in progress. Probing patrols came first, the first one appearing in front of a platoon near the road. When the friendly platoon opened fire Company A's executive officer (Lt. Cecil G. Smith), suspecting that the enemy force was a reconnaissance patrol sent to locate specific American positions, tried to stop the fire. He ran up and down the line shouting: "Don't fire! Don't fire!" But by the time he succeeded, the enemy force had evidently discovered what it needed to know and had melted away into the darkness. In the meantime, enemy patrols began to repeat this pattern at other points along the defensive perimeter. A few minutes after midnight the patrolling gave way to determined attack. While one Chinese company struck south along the road, another plunged out of the darkness from the east to strike the boundary between the two rifle companies that were east of the road.

The defensive perimeter began to blaze with fire. In addition to directing steady mortar and small-arms fire against Colonel Faith's battalion, the Chinese kept maneuvering small groups around the perimeter to break the line. As one enemy group climbed a steep ridge toward a heavy machine gun operated by Cpl. Robert Lee Armentrout, the corporal discovered he could not depress his gun enough to hit the enemy. He then picked up his weapon, tripod and all, cradled it in his arms, and beat off the attack.

As the night wore on not every position along the perimeter held as well. Within two or three hours after they first attacked, the Chinese had seized and organized the highest point on the two ridgelines that had belonged to the two companies on the east side of the road. Loss of this ground seriously weakened the defense of both companies, and also permitted the enemy to fire into a native house where Capt. Dale L. Seever had set up his command post. Forced to vacate, he moved his Weapons Platoon and command group to the front line to help defend what ground he had left. On the extreme right flank the Chinese forced two platoons out of position. On the left side of the road they circled wide around the left flank and seized a mortar position.

Wire communications with Colonel MacLean's headquarters and with the 57th Field Artillery Battalion went out soon after the attack started. After establishing radio communication, which was never satisfactory, Colonel Faith learned that the Chinese were also attacking the other units of MacLean's task force. This explained why the artillery, involved with the more immediate necessity of defending its own position, was unable to furnish sustained support to Faith's battalion.

Colonel Faith's battalion was still in place when daylight came on 28 November, but there were serious gaps in the line. Although ordered to launch his attack at dawn, when the time came to carry out the order Colonel Faith had his hands full trying to hang onto his perimeter and recover the ground lost during the night. The night attack had been costly in casualties and morale. When it moved to Chosin Reservoir, Faith's battalion had about ninety per cent of its authorized strength plus 30 to 50 ROK soldiers attached to each company. Morale had been good. Although casualties during the night had not been alarmingly high, a disproportionately high number of officers and noncoms had been put out of action. In Company A, for instance, when Lt. Raymond C. Denchfield was wounded in the knee, his company commander (Capt. Edward B. Scullion) set out to temporarily take charge of Denchfield's platoon. An enemy grenade killed Scullion. Colonel Faith then sent his assistant S-3 (Capt. Robert F. Haynes) to take command of Company A. He was killed by infiltrators before he reached the front lines. Colonel Faith telephoned the executive officer (Lieutenant Smith) and told him to take command of the company.

"It's your baby now," Faith told him.

The strength and determination of the enemy attack was also a blow to morale. It now appeared to Faith's men that, in addition to the severe weather, their troubles were to be compounded by fresh enemy troops. The cold weather was bad enough, especially as there were no warm-up tents within the perimeter. During the night, when they had not been engaged in beating off enemy attacks, the men could do nothing for relief but pull their sleeping bags up to their waists and sit quietly in their holes watching for another attack, or for morning. The light machine guns did not work well in the cold. This was especially true during the night when the temperature dropped sharply. The guns would not fire automatically and had to be jacked back by hand to fire single rounds. The heavy machine guns, however, with antifreeze solution in the water jackets, worked all right.

Similar attacks had fallen against the perimeter enclosing Colonel MacLean's force four miles to the south of Faith's battalion. Chinese had overrun two infantry companies during the early morning and got back to the artillery positions before members of two artillery batteries and of the overrun companies stopped them. After confused and intense fighting during the hours of darkness, the enemy withdrew at first light. Both sides suffered heavily.

Colonel MacLean had another cause for concern. Soon after arriving in that area the night before, he had dispatched his regimental Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon to patrol the surrounding area. Twelve hours after the platoon had set out, no member had returned.

Colonel Faith tried all day to recover the ground lost during the night. The most critical loss was the prominent knob at the boundary of the two companies east of the road. Lt. Richard H. Moore led his platoon in counterattacks on 28 November and succeeded in recovering all but the important knob itself. Repeatedly, Moore got his platoon to the bottom of the knob only to have the Chinese-many of whom were firing Americanmade weapons-drive it back again. The friendly counterattacks were greatly aided by mortar fire and by very close and effective air support by carrier-based Corsairs. There were planes in the air most of the day. Front-line observers communicated with the planes by the regular assault-wire lines to battalion headquarters, where a Marine tactical air control officer (Capt. Edward P. Stamford) relayed the instructions to the pilots. The planes made some passes so close to friendly troops that several targets were marked with white phosphorus grenades thrown by hand. More frequently the infantrymen used rifle grenades to mark their targets. In spite of these efforts, the Chinese managed to hold the important knob.

Late in the afternoon both Lieutenant Moore and the battalion sergeant major were put out of action by the same burst from an American caliber .45 Thompson submachine gun. One bullet killed the sergeant. Another one struck Moore squarely on the forehead, raised a bump and dazed him for a short time, but did not otherwise hurt him. Unable to recover the main terrain feature within its perimeter, Company C organized a reverseslope defense directly in front of the knob.

Sixty or more casualties gathered at the battalion aid station during the day. By evening about twenty bodies had accumulated in front of the two-room farm house in which the aid station was operating. Inside, the building was crowded with wounded; a dozen more wounded, some wearing bandages, stood in a huddle outside.

During the afternoon of 28 November a helicopter landed in a rice paddy near the battalion's command post buildings. General Almond (X Corps commander), on one of his frequent inspections of his front lines, stepped out of the craft. He discussed the situation with Colonel Faith. Before leaving, General Almond explained that he had three Silver Star medals in his pocket, one of which was for Colonel Faith. He asked the colonel to select two men to receive the others, and a small group to witness the presentation. Colonel Faith looked around. Behind him, Lt. Everett F. Smalley, Jr., a platoon leader who had been wounded the night before and was awaiting evacuation, sat on a water can.

"Smalley," said Colonel Faith, "come over here and stand at attention.?

Smalley did so. Just then the mess sergeant from Headquarters Company (Sgt. George A. Stanley) walked past.

"Stanley," the colonel called, "come here and stand at attention next to Lieutenant Smalley."

Stanley obeyed. Colonel Faith then gathered a dozen or more men-walking wounded, drivers, and clerks-and lined them up behind Smalley and Stanley.

After pinning the medals to their parkas and shaking hands with the three men, General Almond spoke briefly to the assembled group, saying, in effect: "The enemy who is delaying you for the moment is nothing more than remnants of Chinese divisions fleeing north. We're still attacking and we're going all the way to the Yalu. Don't let a bunch of Chinese laundrymen stop you."

Unfolding his map, General Almond walked over and spread it on the hood of a nearby jeep and talked briefly with Colonel Faith, gestured toward the north, and then departed. As the helicopter rose from the ground, Colonel Faith ripped the medal from his parka with his gloved hand and threw it down in the snow. His operations officer (Major Wesley J. Curtis) walked back to his command post with him.

"What did the General say?" Curtis asked, referring to the conversation at the jeep.

"You heard him," muttered Faith; "remnants fleeing north!"

Lieutenant Smalley went back to his water can. "I got me a Silver Star," he remarked to one of the men who had observed the presentation, "but I don't know what the hell for!"

That afternoon Colonel MacLean came forward to Colonel Faith's battalion. Toward evening, however, when he attempted to leave, he was stopped by a Chinese roadblock between the two battalions, thus confronting him with the grim realization that the enemy had surrounded his position. He remained at the forward position.

Just before dark, between 1700 and 1730, 28 November, planes struck what appeared to be a battalion-sized enemy group that was marching toward the battalion perimeter from the north, still two or three miles away. The tactical situation, even during the daytime, had been so serious that many of the units did not take time to carry rations to the front line. When food did reach the soldiers after dark, it was frozen and the men had no way to thaw it except by holding it against their bodies. By this time most of the men realized the enemy was mounting more than light skirmishes, as they had believed the previous evening.

"You'd better get your positions in good tonight," one platoon leader told his men that evening, "or there won't be any positions tomorrow."

As darkness fell on 28 November, Colonel Faith's battalion braced itself for another attack. The most critical point was the enemy-held knob between the two companies east of the road. Lt. James G. Campbell (a platoon leader of Company D) had two machine guns aimed at the knob, and between his guns and the Chinese position there was a five-man rifle squad. Lieutenant Campbell was particularly concerned about this squad. He was afraid it was not strong enough to hold the position.

Enemy harassing fire, fairly constant all day, continued to fall within the battalion perimeter after dark. It had been dark for three or four hours, however, before the enemy struck again, hitting several points along the perimeter. As expected, one enemy group attacked the vulnerable area east of the road. Lieutenant Campbell heard someone shout and soon afterward saw several figures running from the knoll held by the five-man squad. In the darkness he counted five men and shot the sixth, who by then was only ten feet from his foxhole. Expecting more Chinese from the same direction, he shouted instructions for one of his machine-gun crews to displace to another position from which it could fire upon the knoll that the five men had just vacated. At that moment Lieutenant Campbell was knocked down. He thought someone had hit him in the face with a hammer, although he felt no pain. A mortar fragment about the size of a bullet had penetrated his cheek and lodged in the roof of his mouth. He remained with his gun crews. After the first Chinese had been driven back, enemy activity subsided for about an hour or two.

While this fighting was taking place, General Almond was flying to Tokyo at General MacArthur's order. The corps commander reported to General MacArthur at 2200, 28 November, and received orders to discontinue X Corps' attack and to withdraw and consolidate his forces for more cohesive action against the enemy.

Five hours after this meeting, at about 0300, 29 November, Colonel Faith's executive officer (Major Crosby P. Miller) went to the frontline companies with orders from Colonel MacLean to prepare at once to join the rest of his force four miles to the south. Because of the enemy roadblock separating the two elements of his task force, Colonel MacLean ordered Faith to abandon as much equipment as necessary in order to have enough space on the trucks to haul out the wounded, and then to attack south. All wounded men-about a hundred by now-were placed on trucks that formed in column on the road. Because of the necessity of maintaining blackout, it was not practical to burn the vehicles, kitchens, and other equipment to be left behind.

When the withdrawal order reached the rifle platoons, the plan for withdrawing the battalion segment by segment collapsed as the men abruptly broke contact with the Communists, fell back to the road, and assembled for the march. Enemy fire picked up immediately since the movement and the abrupt end of the firing made it obvious to the Chinese that the Americans were leaving.

Colonel Faith directed two companies to provide flank security by preceding the column along the high ground that paralleled the road on both sides for about two miles. Movement of the 1st Battalion column got under way about an hour before dawn, 29 November. Because Captain Seever (CO, Company C) had been wounded in the leg the day before, he instructed one of his platoon leaders (Lt. James 0. Mortrude to lead the company. Slipping and stumbling on the snow-covered hills, Mortrude and the rest of the company set out along the high ground east of the road. Company B was on the opposite side. Mortrude could hear the vehicles below, but could see nothing in the dark. He encountered no enemy. The column moved without opposition until, at the first sign of daylight, it reached the point where the road, following the shoreline, turned northeast to circle a long finger of ice. The Chinese roadblock was at the end of this narrow strip, and here enemy fire halted the column. The battalion's objective, the perimeter of the rest of MacLean's task force, was now just across the strip of ice and not much farther than a mile by the longer road distance.

Halting the vehicular column, Colonel Faith sent two companies onto a high hill directly north of the strip of ice with orders to circle the roadblock and attack it from the east. At the same time, he told Lieutenant Campbell to set up his weapons on a hill overlooking the enemy roadblock. Carrying two heavy machine guns and a 75-mm recoilless rifle, Campbell's group climbed the hill and commenced firing at the general roadblock area. From this hill he and his men could see the friendly perimeter on the opposite side of the narrow strip of ice, and to the south beyond that they could see enemy soldiers. A hundred or more Chinese were standing on a ridgeline just south of the friendly force. About a dozen Chinese, in formation, marched south on the road. They were beyond machine-gun range, but the recoilless rifle appeared to be effective on the ridgeline.

Down on the road, Colonel Faith's column suddenly received fire from the vicinity of the friendly units across the finger of ice. Believing that the fire was coming from his own troops, Colonel MacLean started across the ice to make contact with them and halt the fire. He was hit four times by enemy fire-the men watching could see his body jerk with each impact-but he continued and reached the opposite side. There he disappeared and was not seen again.

It now became evident that the fire was Chinese. Colonel Faith assembled as many men as he could and led them in a skirmish line directly across the ice. As it happened, a company-sized enemy force was preparing to attack positions of the 57th Field Artillery Battalion when Faith's attack struck this force in the rear. Disorganized, the Chinese attack fell apart. Faith's men killed about sixty Chinese and dispersed the rest. In the meantime, the two rifle companies approached the enemy force manning the roadblock. Now surrounded itself, the roadblock force also fell apart and disappeared into the hills. With the road open, the column of vehicles entered the perimeter of the other friendly forces.

After a search for Colonel MacLean failed to discover any trace of him, Colonel Faith assumed command and organized all remaining personnel into a task force. Friendly forces, although consolidated, still occupied a precarious position. During the afternoon Faith and his commanders formed a perimeter defense of an area about 600 by 2,000 yards into which the enemy had squeezed them. This perimeter, around a pocket of low, slightly sloping ground, was particularly vulnerable to attack. Except for the area along the reservoir, Colonel Faith's task force was surrounded by ridgelines, all of which belonged to the Chinese. There were firing positions on a couple of mounds of earth within the perimeter and along the embankments of the road and single-track railroad that ran through the area. Several Korean houses, all damaged, stood within the perimeter. There were many Chinese bodies on the ground, one of which wore a new American field jacket that still had its original inspection tags. Rations were almost gone. Ammunition and gasoline supplies were low. The men were numbed by the cold. Even those few who had managed to retain their bedrolls did not dare fall asleep for fear of freezing. The men had to move their legs and change position occasionally to keep their blood circulating. Automatic weapons had to be tried every fifteen to thirty minutes to keep them in working order.

Three factors prevented the situation from being hopeless. First, airdrops were delivered on the afternoon of 29 October. The first drop landed on high ground to the cast, and friendly forces had to fight to get it. They recovered most of the bundles, and captured several Chinese who had also been after the supplies. A second drop went entirely to the Chinese, landing outside the perimeter to the southwest. A third drop was successful. One airload consisted of rations, the other of ammunition. The second factor was the Marine tactical air support, which constantly harassed the enemy with napalm, rockets, and machine-gun fire. Throughout 29 and 30 November the black Corsairs hit the enemyeven during the night between the two days, when they operated by bright moonlight. Pilots later reported that so many enemy personnel were in the area, they could effectively drop their loads anywhere around the perimeter.

The third factor was the hope that friendly forces would break through the Chinese from the south and effect a rescue. There was talk that the assistant commander of the 7th Division (General Hodes) had even then formed a task force and was attempting to join them. This was true.

Colonel MacLean had asked for help the day before (28 November) when he realized he was surrounded. In a message to X Corps he had asked that his 2d Battalion, then at Hamhung awaiting orders from corps, be dispatched to him at once, even if it had to fight its way north.

Although corps failed to act promptly upon MacLean's request, it did form a task force from several small units then located at Hudong-ni, a small lumber town about a third of the distance north between Hagaru-ri and Colonel MacLean's force. Under command of General Hodes, this task force started north at mid-morning, 28 November, but a strong enemy force halted it just north of the village, and forced it to withdraw.

The 2d Battalion, 31st Infantry, meanwhile waited for orders. Late on the afternoon of the 28th, corps ordered it to set up a blocking position at Majon-dong, a third of the distance from Hamhung to Hagaruri. It was to move by rail, with its trucks following by road. A little later corps changed the orders. The 2d Battalion was to move by rail to Majon-dong, the next morning. From there X Corps would furnish trucks to haul the battalion north to help Colonel MacLean. The battalion arrived at Majon-dong and spent the entire day waiting for X Corps trucks. None came. When the battalion's own trucks arrived, as part of the initial plan for establishing a roadblock in the village, X Corps ordered them off the road. Because of confusion at X Corps headquarters, the battalion's own trucks were not released to it, even though the promised X Corps trucks did not arrive. Thus, two entire days passed without progress in providing relief for Colonel MacLean's surrounded battalions. It was while his 2d Battalion waited at Majon-dong that Colonel MacLean disappeared at the enemy roadblock.

Finally, on the morning of 30 November, the relief battalion got under way. Before it had gone halfway to Hagaru-ri, it came under enemy attack itself, and did not reach Koto-ri until the following morning. By then, the road between Hagaru-ri and Hamhung was threatened by the enemy and it became necessary to divert the 2d Battalion to help protect the entire corps withdrawal route, and it was therefore held in Koto-ri.

Ten miles above Hagaru-ri, Colonel Faith's task force beat off enemy probing attacks that harassed his force during the night of 29-30 November. The Chinese concentrated on the two points where the road entered the perimeter, and on the south they succeeded in overrunning a 75-mm recoilless rifle position and capturing some of the crew. There were no determined attacks, however, and the perimeter was still intact when dawn came. It was another cold morning. The sky was clear enough to permit air support. Inside the perimeter, soldiers built fires to warm themselves and the fires drew no enemy fire. Hopefully, the men decided they had withstood the worst part of the enemy attack. Surely, they thought, a relief column would reach the area that day.

A litter-bearing helicopter made two trips to the area on 30 November, carrying out four seriously wounded men. Fighter planes made a strike on high ground around Task Force Faith, and cargo planes dropped more supplies, some of which again fell to the enemy. As the afternoon wore on, it became apparent that no relief column was coming that day. Colonel Faith and Major Curtis organized a group of men to serve as a counterattack force to repel any Chinese penetration that might occur during the coming night. As darkness settled for another sixteen-hourlong night, commanders tried to encourage their troops: "Hold out one more night and we've got it made."

On 3o November, again beginning about 2200, the Chinese made another of their dishearteningly regular attacks. From the beginning it showed more determination than those of the two previous nights, although it did not appear to be well coordinated, nor concentrated in any one area. Capt. Erwin B. Bigger (CO, Company D), in an attempt to confuse the Chinese, hit upon the idea of firing a different-colored flare every time the enemy fired one, and blowing a whistle whenever the enemy blew one.

Soon after midnight, when the enemy attack was most intense, a small group of Chinese broke into the perimeter at one end. Faith sent his counterattack force to patch up the line. From then until morning there were five different penetrations, and as many counterattacks. One of the penetrations, just before first light on 1 December, resulted in enemy seizure of a small hill within the perimeter, thus endangering the defenses. Battalion headquarters called Company D to ask if someone there could get enough men together to counterattack and dislodge the Chinese.

Lt. Robert D. Wilson, a platoon leader, volunteered for the job. "Come on, all you fighting men!" he called out. "We've got a counterattack to make."

During the night Lieutenant Wilson had directed mortar fire, but the ammunition was gone by this time. Assembling a force of 20 or 25 men, he waited a few minutes until there was enough light. His force was short of ammunition-completely out of rifle grenades and having only smallarms ammunition and three hand grenades. Lieutenant Wilson carried a recaptured tommy gun. When daylight came the men moved out, Lieutenant Wilson out in front, leading. Near the objective an enemy bullet struck his arm, knocking him to the ground. He got up and went on. Another bullet struck him in the arm or chest.

"That one bit," he said, continuing. A second or two later, another bullet struck him in the forehead and killed him.

SFC Fred Sugua took charge and was in turn killed within a few minutes. Eventually, the remaining men succeeded in driving the Chinese out of the perimeter.

Even after daylight, which usually ended the enemy attacks, the Chinese made one more attempt to knock out a 75-mm recoilless rifle that guarded the road. In about two-platoon strength, they came up a deep ditch along the road to the south. Lieutenant Campbell rushed Corporal Armentrout forward to plug the gap with his machine gun. Hit by a mortar round the night before, the water jacket on the machine gun was punctured and, after several minutes, the gun jammed. Armentrout sent his assistant back for the other heavy machine gun, the last good one in the section. With it, and by himself, Corporal Armentrout killed at least twenty enemy soldiers and stopped the attack.

At 0700, 1 December, as Lieutenant Campbell was telling the battalion S4 (Capt. Raymond Vaudrevil) that everything was under control, a mortar shell landed ten feet away and knocked him down. Fragments sprayed his left side, and wounded two other men. Someone pulled Campbell under a nearby truck, then helped him to the aid station. The aid-station squad tent was full; about fifty patients were inside. Another thirty-five wounded were lying outside in the narrow-gauge railroad cut where the aid station was located.

Dazed with shock, Lieutenant Campbell lay outside about half an hour. Colonel Faith appeared at the aid station, asked all men who could possibly do so to come back on line.

"If we can hold out forty minutes more," the Colonel pleaded, "we'll get air support."

There was not much response. Most of the men were seriously wounded.

"Come on, you lazy bastards," Faith said, "and give us a hand."

That roused several men, including Campbell. Because he could not walk, he crawled twenty yards along the railroad track and found a carbine with one round in it. Dragging the carbine, Campbell continued to crawl to the west. He collapsed into a foxhole before he reached the lines, and waited until someone helped him back to the aid station. This time he got inside for treatment. The medical personnel had no more bandages. There was no more morphine. They cleansed his wounds with disinfectant, and he dozed there for several hours.

As it was everywhere else in the perimeter, the situation at the aid station was most difficult. Near the medical tent a tarpaulin had been stretched over the railroad cut to shelter additional patients, and other wounded were crowded into two small Korean huts. Company aid men, when they could, assisted the medical officer (Capt. Vincent J. Navarre) and three enlisted men who worked continuously at the aid station.

Two thirds of the No. 2 medical chests were lost during the withdrawal from the first positions. The jeep hauling them had simply disappeared. Thus, most of the surgical equipment was gone. Aid men improvised litters from ponchos and field jackets. One splint set was on hand, however, and there was plenty of blood plasma. The aid station had one complete No. 1 chest. When bandages were gone, aid men used personal linens, handkerchiefs, undershirts, and towels. They gathered up parachutes recovered with the airdropped bundles, using white ones for dressings and colored ones to cover the wounded and keep them warm. Sgt. Leon Pugowski of the Headquarters Company kitchen had managed to save two stoves, coffee, and some cans of soup. He set the stoves up in the aid station, and the seriously wounded got hot soup or coffee.

Task Force Faith had been under attack for eighty hours in sub-zero weather. None of the men had washed or shaved during that time, nor eaten more than a bare minimum. Frozen feet and hands were common. Worst of all, the weather appeared to be getting worse, threatening air support and aerial resupply. Few men believed they could hold out another night against determined attacks.

Captain Seever (CO, Company C) sat on the edge of a hole discussing the situation with Major Curtis (battalion S-3). An enemy mortar shell landed 10 to 15 feet away and exploded without injuring either of them. Seever shrugged his shoulders.

"Major," he said, "I feel like I'm a thousand years old."

A single low-flying Marine fighter bomber appeared over the surrounded task force about 1000 on 1 December. Establishing radio contact with the tactical air control party, the pilot stated that if the weather improved as forecasted, he would guide more tactical aircraft into the area shortly after noon. He also stated that there were no friendly forces on the road between Faith's perimeter and Hagaru-ri.

Colonel Faith decided to try to break out of the perimeter and reach Hagaru-ri in a single dash rather than risk another night where he was. He planned to start the breakout about 1300 so that it would coincide with the air strike. He ordered the artillery batteries and the Heavy Mortar Company to shoot up all remaining ammunition before that time and then to destroy their weapons. He placed the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry, in the lead, followed by the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, the Heavy Mortar Company, and the 3d Battalion of the 31st Infantry. Halftrack vehicles of Battery D, 15th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion, were interspersed throughout the column. To minimize danger from enemy attack, Colonel Faith wanted the column to be as short as possible -only enough vehicles to haul out the wounded. All other men would walk. Vehicles, equipment, and supplies that could not be carried, or that were not necessary for the move, he ordered destroyed. The men selected twenty-two of the best vehicles-2 1/2-ton, 3/4-ton and l/4-ton trucksand lined them up on the road. They drained gasoline from the other vehicles and filled the tanks of the ones they were going to take. Then they destroyed the remaining vehicles with white phosphorus or thermite grenades.

About noon someone roused Lieutenant Campbell and said, "We're going to make a break for it."

He and the other wounded men-several hundred of them by this time-were placed in the vehicles. They lay there for about an hour while final preparations for the breakout attempt were made. Enemy mortar shells began dropping in the vicinity.

Colonel Faith selected Company C, 32d Infantry, as advance guard for the column. Lieutenant Mortrude's platoon, the unit least hurt, was to take the point position for the company. Supported by a dual 40-mm halftrack, this platoon would clear the road for the vehicle column. Lieutenant Mortrude, who was wounded in the knee, planned to ride the halftrack. Company A, followed by Company B, would act as flank security east of the road. There was no danger at the beginning of the breakout from the direction of the reservoir, which was to the west.

Friendly planes appeared overhead. Mortrude moved his platoon out about 1300. Lieutenant Smith led out Company A. The men of these units had walked barely out of the area that had been their defensive perimeter when enemy bullets whistled past or dug into the ground behind them. At almost the same time, four friendly planes, in close support of the breakout action, missed the target and dropped napalm bombs on the lead elements. The halftrack in which Mortrude planned to ride was set ablaze. Several men were burned to death immediately. About five others, their clothes afire, tried frantically to beat out the flames. Everyone scattered. Disorganization followed.

Up to this point, units had maintained organizational structure, but suddenly they began to fall apart. Intermingling in panic, they disintegrated into leaderless groups of men. Most of the squad and platoon leaders and the commanders of the rifle companies were dead or wounded. Many of the key personnel from the battalions were casualties. Capt. Harold B. Bauer (CO, Headquarters Company), Major Crosby P. Miller (battalion executive officer), Major Curtis (battalion S-3), Capt. Wayne E. Powell (battalion S-2) and Lt. Henry M. Moore (Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon leader) had all been wounded. The same was true of the important non-coms. No one had slept for several days. One thought drove the men: they had to keep moving if they were to get out. Even those who were not wounded were strongly tempted to lie down and go to sleep; but they knew they would be lost if they did.

Lieutenant Mortrude gathered ten men around him and proceeded to carry out his orders. Firing as they advanced, they dispersed twenty or more enemy soldiers who fled. As they ran down the road screaming obscenities at the enemy, Mortrude and his men encountered several small Chinese groups, which they killed or scattered. One such group was putting in communication lines. Another was repairing a wrecked jeep. Out of breath and hardly able to walk on his wounded leg, Mortrude and those men still with him reached a blown-out bridge two miles or more south of the starting point. Attracting no enemy fire, they stopped there to rest and wait for the column. A little later a Company A platoon leader (Lt. Herbert E. Marshburn, Jr.) came up with a group of men and joined them. Together they crossed under the bridge and moved to the east, then south, to reconnoiter. Enemy fire came in from the high ground to the northeast. Most of the men fell to the ground to take cover. Lieutenant Mortrude wondered why the vehicles were not coming down the road, since he had expected the column to follow closely. As he lay on the slope of the ridge, a bullet struck him in the head and knocked him unconscious.

The main body of the column, meanwhile, waited until Colonel Faith could reorganize it. Since Company C and part of Company A were disorganized by the burning napalm, he ordered Company B to take the lead and to advance with marching fire to the blown-out bridge. The vehicular column moved slowly down the road, keeping abreast of Company B, which was sweeping the high ground. Air cover was continuous.

It was mid-afternoon or later when the truck column stopped at the blown-out bridge where it was necessary to construct a bypass over the rough and steep banks of the stream. A half-track towed the trucks across while the able-bodied men with the column took care to prevent them from overturning. In the middle of this tediously slow process, Chinese riflemen began firing at the trucks and men. One truck-the one in which Lieutenant Campbell was lying-stalled in the middle of the stream bed. Enemy fire struck some of the wounded men in the truck. Campbell, figuring it would be better for him to get out and move under his own power, crawled out of the truck. He started walking up the ditch toward the lead vehicles, which had stopped again a third of a mile ahead. After he had gone about two hundred yards enemy riflemen began shooting at him, forcing him to the ground. He discovered his head was clear now, and the feeling of weakness had vanished. Although his leg and side pained him, and although his cheek and mouth were swollen from the wound he had received three days before, he felt pretty good. When a 3-ton truck came by after about twenty minutes, he got on it. He never did learn what happened to the truck he had left.

Back at the blown-out bridge the column moved forward as fast as the halftrack could drag the trucks through the bypass. The battalion motor officer (Lt. Hugh R. May) stood in the road supervising the operation. He appeared to be unconcerned about the enemy fire, which remained heavy as long as there were men and trucks at the roadblock. It was late in the afternoon before the last truck was across.

When Lieutenant Mortrude regained consciousness on the slope of the ridge, he noticed friendly troops moving up the hill in the area south of the blown-out bridge. An aid man (Cpl. Alfonso Camoesas) came past and bandaged his head. Then Mortrude stumbled across the ridgeline, passing many American dead and wounded on the slope. Dazed and in a condition of shock, he followed a group of men he could vaguely see ahead of him. The group went toward the reservoir and walked out onto the ice.

While all of this was taking place, another enemy roadblock halted the lead trucks in the column at a hairpin curve a half mile beyond the blown-out bridge. At least two machine guns and enemy riflemen kept the area under fire. Colonel Faith, a blanket around his shoulders, walked up and down the line of trucks as he organized a group to assault the enemy who were firing from positions east of the road. Each time he passed his jeep in the center of the column he fired several bursts from the caliber .50 machine gun mounted on it. Heavy enemy fire also came from the west side of the road, from the direction of the reservoir. This fire raked the truck column, hitting the wounded men in the trucks. Darkness was not far off. Colonel Faith was desperately anxious to get his column moving and the wounded men out before the Chinese closed in on them. He got some wounded into the ditch to form a base of fire and then organized several groups to assault the enemy positions.

One group of men, under Captain Bigger (CO, Company D), was to clear out the area between the road and the reservoir. Colonel Faith instructed the S-2 of the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry (Major Robert E. Jones), to gather all available men and move them onto the high ground south of the hairpin curve, while he himself organized another group to move onto the high ground just north of the roadblock at the hairpin curve. They would then attack from opposite directions at the same time.

Captain Bigger, blinded in one eye by a mortar fragment and wounded in the leg, supported himself on a mortar aiming stake and waved his group up the hill, hobbling up himself. Like Captain Bigger, the majority of his group was walking wounded.

It was almost dark when Major Jones and Colonel Faith, each with a hundred men or less, launched their attacks against the roadblock and knocked it out. Colonel Faith, hit by grenade fragments, was mortally wounded. A man next to him, hit by fragments of the same grenade. tried to help him down to the road, but was unable to do so. Some other men came by, carried him down to the road, and put him in the cab of a truck.

Colonel Faith's task force, which had started to break up soon after it got under way that afternoon, now disintegrated completely because those men who had commanded the battalions, companies, and platoons were either dead or wounded so seriously they could exercise no control. The task force crumbled into individuals, or into groups of two or ten or twenty men. Major Jones, with the help of several others, took charge of the largest group of men remaining-those who stayed to help with the trucks carrying the wounded. Enemy fire had severely damaged the truck column. Several trucks were knocked out and blocked the column, and others had flat tires. The time was about 1700, 1 December, and it was almost dark.

Those who were able, now removed all wounded men from three destroyed 2 1/2-ton trucks which blocked the column, carried the wounded to other trucks, and then pushed the destroyed vehicles over the cliff toward the reservoir. Someone shouted for help to gather up all men who had been wounded during the roadblock action. For half an hour the able-bodied men searched both sides of the road. When the column was ready to move again the wounded were piled two deep in most of the trucks. Men rode across the hoods and on the bumpers, and six or eight men hung to the sides of each truck. After re-forming the truck column with all operating vehicles, Major Jones organized as many able-bodied and walking wounded men as he could-between a hundred and two hundred menand started south down the road. The trucks were to follow.

The group of men that had gone with Captain Bigger, after having run the Chinese off of the high ground on the west side of the road, found that there were still enemy soldiers between it and the road. Rather than fight back to the road, Bigger led his men west and south to the reservoir shore, and then out onto the ice. Another group of about fifteen men, including Lieutenant Smith (who had commanded Company A), Lt. Richard E. Moore (one of his platoon leaders), and Lieutenant Barnes (an artillery forward observer), after knocking out one of the enemy machine guns on the same side of the road, watched Captain Bigger and his men heading toward the ice. They debated what they should do. They could see the trucks stalled along the road. They were out of ammunition. Deciding there was no reason to go back, they continued toward the reservoir ice. A group of 15 or 20 Chinese, trying to head them off, came as far as the reservoir bank and fired at them without effect. One enemy soldier, however, did follow them out on the ice to bayonet a man who had fallen behind. Six men of this group, including Smith, were wounded or had frostbitten feet.

Lieutenant Campbell stayed with the column of trucks following the men with Major Jones. Just before leaving the last roadblock position, Campbell happened to meet his platoon sergeant (MSgt. Harold M. Craig). Craig was wounded in the middle of his back and was about to throw away his carbine and rely on his bayonet. Figuring that he would have to make a break for it as soon as darkness came, Craig felt his carbine would encumber him. Campbell gladly accepted the carbine. It had a "banana clip" in it, with thirty rounds. As the trucks moved forward he found one with a place on the side to which he could cling. There were five other men clinging o the same side. It was a ragged and desperatelooking column of men and vehicles. Those following Major Jones had little semblance to a military unit. Without subordinate leaders, without formation or plan, they were a mixture of the remnants of all units, a large percentage being walking wounded. About 15 of the original 22 trucks were left.

A mile or two beyond the roadblock two burned-out tanks partly blocked the road and delayed the column until men could construct a bypass. Beyond that, the column made steady but slow progress for another mile or so. Some of the men began to believe they were safe. There were stragglers along the road-men who had struck out for themselves during previous delays. Some of them swung onto the passing trucks. By this time, it was nearly 2100 and the column, having covered more than half of the approximate ten miles between the last defensive perimeter and Hagaru-ri, approached Hudong-ni, the small lumber village. As the leading truck, which was some distance ahead of the rest of the column, entered the town, Chinese soldiers opened fire and killed the driver. The truck overturned and spilled out the wounded men, a few of whom managed to work back up the road to warn the rest of the column. At this point Major Jones decided it would be advisable to get away from the road and follow the railroad tracks south. The railroad paralleled the road but was closer to the reservoir shoreline. Some of the men followed him.

About 75 to 100 men stayed with the vehicles. An artillery officer collected all who could walk and fire a weapon, and led them forward. At the edge of the village they began to receive fire from rifles and at least one automatic weapon of an enemy unit of undetermined size. After returning the fire for a few minutes, the group returned to the vehicles. They picked up several wounded men from the overturned truck and took them back. The trucks moved a little closer to the village and halted. It was then 2200 or later, 1 December.

A group of officers and men decided they would wait where they were. Word of their situation, they argued, must surely by then have gotten through to Hagaru-ri. Aid would undoubtedly arrive soon.

They waited about an hour or so until the rear of the column began to receive small-arms and mortar fire. Then they decided to make a run for it. Lieutenant Campbell was still hanging to one of the trucks. "We'll never make it through," he thought.

As the column proceeded through the village, moving slowly, enemy fire killed the drivers of the first three trucks. The column halted and an enemy machine gun immediately raked it at point-blank range. Jumping off the tailgate of the third truck, Lieutenant Campbell scrambled for the right side of the road where an embankment separated it from a small plot of cultivated ground eight or ten feet beneath. In the darkness he could see only outlines of the trucks on the road and the flashes of a machine gun firing from a hill on the opposite side of the road. Leaning against the embankment, he fired his carbine at the machine gun's flashes. A body, an arm torn off, lay nearby on the road. The overturned truck, its wheels in the air, rested in the small field below the road. Someone pinned under it kept pounding on the truck's body. Wounded men, scattered nearby, screamed either in pain or for help. Up on the road someone kept yelling for men to drive the trucks through. Chinese soldiers closed in on the rear of the column. Campbell saw a white phosphorus grenade explode in the rear of a truck at the end of the column.

"This is the end of the truck column!" he said to himself.

Someone yelled, "Look out!"

Campbell turned in time to see a 3/4-ton truck coming over the embankment toward him. As he scrambled to one side, the truck ran over his foot, bruising the bones. Someone had decided to try to get the lead vehicles off the road. Pushed by the fourth, the first three trucks, without their drivers, jammed together, rolled off the embankment, and overturned. Wounded men inside were spilled and crushed. The frantic screams of these men seemed to Lieutenant Campbell like the world gone mad. He fired his last three rounds at the enemy machine gun, headed for the railroad track on the opposite side of the tiny field, and dived into a culvert underneath the railroad. It began to snow again-a fine, powdery snow.

Everyone scattered. Corporal Camoesas (company aid man) found himself in a group of about fifteen men, none of whom he knew. Carrying six wounded, the group reached the reservoir. As Camoesas walked out on the ice, he looked back. Several trucks were burning.

Lieutenant Campbell crawled through the culvert. He found a man, wounded in the leg, who could not walk. Two other soldiers came over the embankment and joined him. Dragging the wounded man, the group walked in a crouch across the rice paddy to a large lumber pile in the middle of the field. There, two more soldiers joined them. At the edge of the reservoir, three quarters of a mile away, several others joined Campbell's party. Staying close to the shoreline, the men walked on the reservoir ice. Campbell was not sure where Hagaru-ri was, but he felt they would reach it if they followed the reservoir shore.

The reservoir ice was not slippery. The wind had blown off most of the snow, leaving a rough-surfaced crust, and it was so thick that 76-mm shells had ricocheted off without appreciable effect.

At a North Korean house, an ROK soldier with them asked where the marines were. He was told that American jeeps came down the road every day. Some of the group, suspicious of the North Koreans, wanted to continue across the reservoir, but Lieutenant Campbell thought he recognized the road. He led off, and the rest followed. By then, he had seventeen men with him, of whom three were armed. Two miles down the road, the group reached a Marine tank outpost, and the tankers directed them to the nearest command post, where a truck took them to a Marine hospital in Hagaru-ri. Lieutenant Campbell arrived there at 0530, 2 December. The shell fragment in the roof of his mouth began to bother him.

Individuals and other groups straggled into Hagaru-ri for several days beginning on the night of 1 December. Lieutenant Smith and those men with him, who had left the column at the second roadblock, reached a Marine supply point at Hagaru-ri about 2200 that night. A plane had dropped a note in a canteen instructing them to keep away from the shoreline and continue across the ice. A little later that night, Captain Bigger hobbled in with his group.

The men who went with Major Jones, after following the railroad tracks for some distance, had been fired on by an enemy machine gun. Many of the men took off toward the reservoir and began arriving at the Marine perimeter soon after midnight.

Most of the men who had served with Task Force Faith were left where the truck column stopped near the lumber village of Hudong-ni, or were strewn along the road from there to the northernmost position. When those few men who could move had left, the others were either captured or frozen.

PFC Glenn J. Finfrock (a machine gunner from Company D) became unconscious from loss of blood about the time the truck column came to its final halt. It was daylight on the morning of 2 December when he regained consciousness again. He moved down the road a short distance until he found several wounded men trying to build a fire by one of the trucks-the one in which Colonel Faith had been placed the previous evening. His frozen body was still in the cab. Since the truck appeared to be in good order, Finfrock and another man tried unsuccessfully to start it. As they were working on the truck some Chinese walked toward them from the village, and several of the men ran toward the ice. Other were captured. The Chinese gave morphine to several men, bandaged their wounds and, after caring for them for several days, freed them.

Lieutenant Mortrude, wounded in the knee and in the head, walked to Hagaru-ri from the blown-out bridge. It was 0330 on 2 December when he reached friendly lines.

Corporal Camoesas (the aid man) and his group carrying the six wounded men, after hiding in brush near the reservoir shore in order to rest, followed the railroad track until they came to the road leading toward Hagaru-ri. About 0800 they met a Marine tank, and three hundred yards beyond were trucks and ambulances waiting to take them to the rear. All day other men made their way back to friendly lines.

On 4 December, when most of its survivors had returned, the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry, counted only 181 officers, men, and attached Republic of Korea troops, of the original 1,053 that had begun the operation. The other battalions in the perimeter had suffered equal losses.

This was not the immediate end of trouble, since the enemy still controlled much of the road between Hagaru-ri and the port city of Hungnam. But at Hagaru-ri the 1st Marine Division had a solid perimeter that included the airstrip, and there were food and ammunition and medical supplies. From Hungnam the more seriously wounded were evacuated by plane. For the others, ten days of fighting lay ahead.

Twin Tunnels Patrol Ambush

During the withdrawal from northern Korea in December of 1950, U.S. Eighth Army outdistanced the pursuing Chinese and North Koreans and broke contact with the enemy. By the end of January 1951, as a result of firm orders from its commander (Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway) the army turned and took up defensive positions near the 37th parallel, and from there sent feeler patrols northward to locate the enemy again and reestablish contact.

The 24th and 2d Infantry Divisions occupied adjoining positions near the center of Eighth Army's line. Late on the 27th of January, the commanding general of U.S. X Corps directed the 2d Division to send a reconnaissance patrol northward to the vicinity of two railroad tunnels a few miles south of Chipyong-ni. It was to join forces at Iho-ri with a group from the 24th Division, after which the composite patrol would proceed to the objective.

Because the order reached the divisions so late, the 24th Division was unable to make arrangements for crossing the unbridged Han River in time to effect the meeting. A patrol from the 23d Infantry (2d Division) reconnoitered the Twin Tunnels area, however, and returned to its base without incident.

At 2240 on the night of the 28th, X Corps directed the 2d Division to run the same patrol on the following day, again in conjunction with a patrol from the adjoining division. This time the 2d Division was to furnish five additional jeeps to carry the men from the 24th Division, which was still unable to get its vehicles across the river.

First orders concerning the patrol reached the 23d Infantry at 2300. They were passed on down to the 1st Battalion which, in turn, called Company C and gave preliminary instructions to Lt. James P. Mitchell (one of its platoon leaders), asking him to report to battalion headquarters the following morning at 0600 to get complete orders.

It was still dark, the sky was clear, and the temperature was a few degrees above zero when Lieutenant Mitchell reached the S-3 tent on the morning of 29 January. Here he was given the mission of making another reconnaissance of the Twin Tunnels area-by road, about thirty miles north of Company C's location-and told to make contact with the enemy, if he could, but to avoid combat with any large enemy force. He was ordered to move out as soon as possible since he was scheduled to meet the 24th Division's patrol at 1030. By 0630 Lieutenant Mitchell had returned to his company to organize his group.

Plans for the patrol were being made and changed while the members assembled. Battalion headquarters called three times between 0630 and 0800, each time adding men and weapons to the patrol. There were also difficulties and delays in securing enough vehicles and radios, both of which were acutely scarce as a result of heavy equipment losses which the 2d Division had sustained during its withdrawal from northern Korea. The 1st Battalion finally arranged to borrow three jeeps, with drivers, from another battalion of the same regiment, and extra radios from an artillery battalion. Lieutenant Mitchell had two SCR-300 radios, neither of which worked well, for communications within the patrol. To help maintain communications between the patrol and its headquarters, the regiment had arranged for an L-5 liaison plane to circle above the patrol and act as a radio relay station. It was therefore necessary to have an SCR-619 radio to communicate with the plane. To be safe, the 1st Battalion borrowed two. On the morning of 29 January, however, the artillery battalion complained because two of its radios had been damaged when loaned to the infantry the previous day, and insisted on furnishing its own operators with the radios. It was 0900 before the artillerymen reported, and the patrol was ready to get under way.

Lieutenant Mitchell was in command of the patrol. As finally organized, it consisted of forty-four officers and men, most of whom were members of his Company C rifle platoon. Nine members of the patrol, including an officer, were from Company D; the others were the artillery radio operators and the drivers from the 3d Battalion. These men were mounted on two 3/4-ton weapons carriers and nine jeeps, five of which were for the 24th Division men. Mitchell's men carried two BARs and either rifles or carbines, plus a 75-mm and a 57-mm recoilless rifle, a 3.5-inch bazooka, a 60-mm mortar, and two caliber .50 and three caliber .30 machine guns mounted on the vehicles, and two light machine guns with tripod mounts.

For 20 of the 44 members of the patrol, this was their first combat action since they had joined Company C only four days before. They were from specialist schools-listed as draftsmen, mechanics, and techniciansand had received little training as infantrymen.

Another officer joined the patrol just before it left. Capt. Melvin R. Stai (battalion assistant S-3) went along only to be certain that Lieutenant Mitchell's patrol met the men from the 24th Division as planned. He was told to return to battalion headquarters after the composite patrol departed for the tunnels.

Lieutenant Mitchell, with four men in a jeep mounting a caliber .50 machine gun, made up the advance party and led the patrol by about fifteen hundred yards. The main body, under the control of Lt. William C. Penrod (a Company D platoon leader), followed, with intervals of at least a hundred yards between vehicles. For Korea, the road was good but movement was slow because of heavy snow in shaded spots and patches of ice that covered some sections of the narrow road.

The liaison plane circled above the vehicular column as far as Iho-ri where it lost visual contact because of the haze that frequently filled the narrow Korean valleys during the morning hours.

At 1115 the column reached Iho-ri, a small village on the east bank of the Han River, where the patrol from the 24th Division was waiting. The group from the 24th consisted of Lt. Harold P. Mueller and fourteen men whom he had selected from his platoon of Company F, 21st Infantry. In addition to rifles, the men had six BARs and a light machine gun. They had reversible parkas which they wore with the white side out, including white hoods over their helmets, whereas the men from the 2d Division were dressed in fatigue clothing and field jackets. The combined patrol now numbered 4 officers and 56 men, including Captain Stai, who decided at Iho-ri to accompany the patrol instead of returning to battalion headquarters. It proceeded at once toward the objective, which was still approximately fifteen miles away.

The Twin Tunnels were located about three miles southeast of Chipyong-ni and less than a mile northwest of a little village named Sinchon. As Lieutenant Mitchell in the lead vehicle neared the objective, he passed a large hill that rose steeply on the left (west side of the road, dominating the entire area. This was Hill 453. Skirting the base of the hill, the road crossed a ford in a shallow stream and then split at the base of another, smaller hill. One fork of the road turned right to Sinchon; the other fork went west for several hundred yards, then turned north for another two thousand yards where it crossed the railroad track between the two tunnels.

At the ford Lieutenant Mitchell stopped to wait for Lieutenant Mueller and Captain Stai, who were riding in the two jeeps immediately behind. Since the patrol was already behind schedule, Captain Stai offered to go alone into Sinchon while the rest of the patrol went on to investigate the tunnels, after which they would be ready to return. Accordingly, the two lieutenants and the men with them proceeded to the railroad track, turned their vehicles around in position to go back, and then waited near a farm house. The tunnels were not side by side, but were, instead, end to end, cutting under two steep ridges, one on each side of the road and narrow valley. On the west side the ridge rose toward the south to the hill mass of which Hill 453 was a part; the ridge on the east side of the road sloped north to Hill 333. Between these two ridges were a stream, terraced rice paddies, and scattered Lombardy poplars, all typical of the Korean landscape.

Captain Stai left his driver and vehicle by the road, walked alone toward the cluster of drab houses in Sinchon and disappeared. The time was about 1215.

Trouble started within a minute or two after the two jeeps stopped by the railroad tracks. Men from the 21st Infantry patrol spotted 15 or 20 Chinese soldiers running from a small hill just north of the railroad crossing, and opened fire on them. The others of the patrol ran up to see what was happening. Soon after the first shots, ten or twelve scattered mortar rounds fell near the road, landing just south of the two parked jeeps and in front of the other vehicles which were now closing into the tunnels area.

At about this time the liaison plane appeared overhead again. The battalion executive officer (Major Millard 0. Engen) was in the plane which, after it had turned back at Iho-ri because of ground haze, was now returning since visibility had increased. Major Engen saw the same enemy troops whom Lieutenant Mueller's men had taken under fire, as well as another company-sized group on Hill 453. He immediately reported this over the SCR-619 radio together with instructions for Lieutenant Mitchell to turn his patrol around and get out of the area at once. Lieutenant Mitchell did not receive this message because of faulty radio reception.

By the time the last vehicle in the column crossed the ford near Sinchon, Mitchell also saw enemy movement to the south and suspected that his patrol had been caught in a well-planned ambush. He realized that from the fingers of Hill 453, which dominated the road and even the ditches along the road, the Chinese could see when the last vehicle of the patrol closed into the tunnels area. Hill 453 also blocked the route of retreat. Further advance of the column was stopped by enemy positions on Hill 333 northeast of the railroad crossing. Lacking radio communication with the liaison plane and also within the column, and since the ridge tips crowded so close against the road that the men in the trailing vehicles could not see ahead, the vehicles and the entire patrol bunched up in the area just south of the railroad crossing.

Lieutenant Mitchell had decided to make a run for it before the last vehicles in the column had come to a stop.

"Let's get out of here!" he shouted to the men, most of whom had dispersed to seek cover when the first mortar rounds fell. "Let's get out of here!"

Before the last vehicles to arrive could be turned around, however, the men could see Chinese soldiers running from Hill 453 down toward the ford.

In the plane overhead, Major Engen also watched the Chinese moving to cut off the patrol. He radioed new instructions, this time directing Mitchell to head for the high ground east of the road. He then left the area since it was necessary to refuel the plane. No one received this message either.

Men in the get-away jeep, which having turned around was now in the lead, opened fire with their caliber .50 machine gun, but the gun was cold and had so much oil on it that it took two men to operate it, one to jack it back and another man to fire it. It had little effect. Lieutenant Penrod tried to get the 75-mm recoilless rifle in position to fire, but gave that up when he saw that the Chinese had already cut the road and that they were racing for the high ground on the east side of the road. He called back to Mitchell to say they couldn't get through.

After Captain Stai had walked off toward Sinchon, his driver followed him in the jeep for a hundred or two hundred yards and had then stopped in the single-lane road to wait. When the enemy force began running from Hill 453 toward the east side of the road, the driver left, apparently trying to join the main body of the patrol. He was shot and killed before he had gone far, the jeep overturning by the road.

When the firing commenced, Lieutenant Mueller looked at the hill on the east side of the road. Realizing they had no chance of breaking out of the ambush by following the road and, wanting to get on defensible high ground, he started up the hill, calling for his men to follow.

A single, narrow ridge rose abruptly at the east edge of the road, and then extended east for nine hundred yards to the high part of the ridge. The ridge was only about four hundred feet higher than the road, and both it and the ridge leading to it were covered with low brush and, on the northern slopes, a foot of wet snow. After climbing a short distance, Lieutenant Mueller stopped to study the area through his binoculars. To the south he saw the Chinese running toward the same hill for which he was heading.

"We're going to have to get to the top of that hill," he called back to Lieutenant Mitchell. "The Chinese are coming up from the other side! This is our only chance!"

From this time on it was a race for the high ground, with the Chinese climbing the south slope of the hill from which the snow had melted.

The patrol, well equipped when mounted, was forced to abandon most of its heavy and crew-served weapons now that it was on foot. Penrod and Mitchell loaded their men with as much ammunition as each man could carry, and with the tripod-mounted caliber .30 machine gun and the 3.5inch bazooka. Mueller's men had another light machine gun with them. The two recoilless rifles, the 60-mm mortar, the five machine guns mounted on the vehicles, and the ammunition that could not be carried, were all left on the vehicles which were abandoned on the road, their engines still running.

Seven of Lieutenant Mitchell's men, all from the group of replacements, stayed in the ditch by the road. They had become frightened at the outbreak of the enemy fire, had taken cover in the ditch, and refused to leave when the other men started for the high ground. All seven were killed in the same ditch later that afternoon. With Captain Stai and his driver, nine of the original sixty men were out of action. It was after 1300. The remaining fifty-one men were climbing the steep northern side of the ridge.

The climb was agonizingly slow. Since enemy soldiers were climbing the hill on the south side of the same ridge, Mitchell's men had to stay on the north, steep, snowy side. Even so, they were under fire from several enemy riflemen and an enemy machine gun located to the north. Men from the 23d Infantry were conspicuous targets since their dark clothing made them prominent against the bright snow. Much of the way they moved on their hands and knees, pulling themselves from one scrub brush to another. Enemy fire was so accurate they would often pretend that they had been hit, deliberately roll a short distance down the hill and lie quietly until the enemy rifleman shifted his fire to someone else. They did this in spite of the extreme difficulties of carrying their heavy loads up the steep, slippery ridge.

Within a short time all of the men were wet, either from the snow or from perspiration, and several of them were injured on the way up. PFC Bobby G. Hensley, who was carrying the light machine gun and tripod on his back, stumbled and fell forward over a pointed stump, breaking several ribs. Sgt. Alfred Buchanan, who was with him, carrying four boxes of ammunition, rubbed snow in Hensley's face to revive him, and had him on his feet a few minutes later when Lieutenant Penrod came along and told Hensley to throw away the bolt and leave the machine gun. Hensley said he didn't think he could make it any farther.

"You've got to make it, son," said Penrod. "Just keep climbing."

Sergeant Buchanan left the ammunition and helped Hensley part way up the hill.

Lieutenant Mitchell also became a casualty before reaching the hill. During World War II he had received an injury to his spine, which left his back and legs weakened. Three fourths of the way up the hill one of his legs became weak and numb. Mitchell slid himself along the ground for a while but finally sat down in the snow to rest. While he was sitting by the trail a jeep driver (PFC William W. Stratton) stopped and urged Mitchell to go on. Stratton was one of the recent replacements and this was his first day in combat. When Lieutenant Mitchell explained that he couldn't move for a while, Stratton offered to stay with him. Just about this time, three Chinese riflemen appeared on top of the ridge and stopped about fifteen feet from where the two men were sitting. Mitchell was hidden partially by brush. Stratton saw them first and fired seven rounds from his rifle, missing each time. Mitchell fired one round and missed. His carbine jammed then and he had to take out his bayonet and pry the cartridge from the chamber. Meanwhile, a bullet from one of the Chinese guns hit the stock of Stratton's rifle and then his hand, tearing it badly. Then the enemy gun jammed. The other two Chinese had turned their backs and appeared to be listening to someone who was shouting to them from the opposite side of the hill. Lieutenant Mitchell finally got his carbine in operation and killed all three of the enemy. The two men slid down the hill a short distance to a small gully that offered more cover from enemy fire. Hensley (the machine gunner with the broken ribs) was already sitting in this gully, having been left there by Sergeant Buchanan. The three men sat there for about a half hour.

Except for one man, the remaining forty-eight men left in the patrol reached the crest of the hill. Sgt. John C. Gardella, loaded with machine-gun ammunition, slipped in the snow and fell down a steep part of the ridge. Since he was unable to climb back at that point, he circled to the north looking for an easier route. As it happened, he went too far north and suddenly came upon several enemy riflemen and a crew operating a machine gun. He was within twenty feet of the group before he noticed it and, although he was in heavy brush at the time and had not been seen, he was afraid to move back. He lay there for the rest of the day and throughout the night.

Lieutenant Mueller and his fourteen men were the first to reach the top of the hill. Once there, they learned that it afforded little protection from the enemy guns, which both to the north and to the south were located on higher ground. The ridge, which extended south from Hill 333, was made up of several pointed peaks connected by narrow saddles. The hill Mueller's men now occupied was approximately sixty feet lower than the top of Hill 333, nine hundred yards to the north, and a little lower than another hill not more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards to the south. The Chinese reached the hill to the south about the same time Lieutenant Mueller occupied the center high ground. In addition to the two narrow saddles that connected Mueller's position with the enemy-held ground both to the north and to the south, there was another narrow saddle between his hill and a smaller mound of earth to the west, on the ridge that the patrol followed toward the high ground. This mound of earth was within grenade-throwing distance. All three of these saddles were under enemy fire.

The useable area on top of the hill was so small it could have been covered by a squad tent and was tilted so that it sloped toward the east side of the hill, which was so steep that there was no danger of enemy attack from that direction. However, the hilltop was too small to accommodate all of the men, so Mueller and Penrod put some of the men along the saddle toward the north. Even then, it was crowded. There were no holes and the ground was frozen too deep to allow digging.

Enemy activity commenced almost at once, with machine-gun and rifle fire coming from both the Chinese north and south positions. The activity from the south was the more serious threat for two reasons. The enemy machine gun on the southern hill, being only slightly higher than the hilltop occupied by the American patrol, fired from a flat angle. Its beaten zone, therefore, was long and almost exactly covered the hilltop. In addition, the saddle connecting the two hills was so deep that the Chinese would be able to move under the machine-gun or other supporting fire until they were within a few yards of the patrol before they would mask their own fire. This would place them within easy grenade range. Fortunately, this same path was so narrow that the Chinese would be limited to small groups for each assault. Lieutenant Mueller, realizing that this was the critical part of his perimeter, placed his machine gun to guard this approach. (The machine gun was the only one left to the patrol by this time. There were eight BARs and the 3.5-inch bazooka.) The first enemy assault was prepared by mortar fire while the Chinese moved under the machine-gun fire until they were within easy grenade range. Mueller's men stopped it just below the rim of the perimeter with the machine gun and a concentration of BAR fire. The Chinese backed away and the enemy was comparatively inactive for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, the three injured men-Lieutenant Mitchell and Privates Hensley and Stratton-worked their way up on the hill to join the rest of the men in the perimeter. Stratton, pleased because he thought his shattered hand would be sufficient cause for returning home, crawled around the perimeter and showed it to some of the men.

"Give me your telephone number," he said to several of them, "and I'll call your wife when I get back to California."

Soon after the initial thrust from the south, the enemy gun to the north opened fire, wounding seven men at that end of the perimeter. The men lay as still as possible to avoid this fire, except for an eighteenyear-old squad leader (Cpl. LeRoy Gibbons) who already had been wounded six times during the Korean war. Gibbons wanted to talk with Lieutenant Mitchell, who, by this time, had reached the small, flat part of the perimeter. He stood up and walked erect through a string of tracers that went past him. Several of the men yelled at him to get down.

"Aw, hell," he said, "they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," and continued walking.

After this demonstration, Sgt. Everett Lee decided to take the enemy gun under fire. He crawled about fifteen feet farther north, saying to the other men nearby, "I'm going to get that son of a lady." He fired two rounds to zero in his rifle, then killed two of the men operating the machine gun. Other men near him joined in the firing and the enemy gun went quiet and did not again fire. Sergeant Lee stood up and walked back to his position on the line. This relieved much of the pressure on the north end of the line and, from then on, the main enemy efforts came from the south and from the west.

Lieutenant Mueller's machine gun, the only one to reach the top of the hill, was the main strength of the defense. Five or six separate assaults were directed against the south side of the perimeter during the afternoon. Each time the men held their fire until the enemy soldiers were within close range and then directed all available fire at the narrow enemy approach route. The machine gun was effective and Mueller's chief concern was keeping it and several BARs operating at the south end of the line. Seven men firing these weapons were either killed or wounded during the afternoon, all hit in the head. When one man was hit others would pull him back by his feet and another man would crawl forward to man the machine gun.

One of the machine gunners (Cpl. Billy B. Blizzard) raised his head not more than six inches from the ground and was struck by a bullet that went through his helmet, cutting into the top of his head.

Lieutenant Mitchell noticed Blizzard's head jerk and saw the hole suddenly appear in his helmet. He yelled to him, "You aren't hurt, son. That was a ricochet."

Corporal Blizzard turned so that his platoon leader could see the blood running across his forehead. "Like hell it's a ricochet," he said.

Mueller put another man in Blizzard's place. "For God's sake," he kept saying, "we've got to keep this gun going."

During one of the attacks, a Chinese crawled close to the perimeter, stood up and fired a continuous burst from his burp gun. He hit five men, including Mueller, before one of the Americans killed the enemy soldier.

When Major Engen (executive officer of the 1st Battalion) and the liaison pilot left the Twin Tunnels area to refuel their plane, they immediately reported to the 23d Infantry that the Chinese had ambushed and surrounded Mitchell's patrol. The regimental commander (Col. Paul Freeman) immediately requested an air strike, ordered the 2d Battalion to send relief to the patrol, and directed that a liaison pilot make a drop of ammunition to the patrol.

The 2d Battalion occupied a patrol base forward of the regimental line and was already about ten miles (road distance) nearer than the remainder of the regiment. The order reached the 2d Battalion commander (Lt.Col. James W. Edwards) at 1300. Colonel Edwards immediately called Capt. Stanley C. Tyrrell, whose Company F had performed a similar rescue mission the day before. Even though Company F was available at once, it required a little more than two hours to assemble the vehicles, weapons, and necessary supplies for the company, which consisted of 3 other officers and 142 enlisted men. Colonel Edwards added a section of 81-mm mortars, a section of heavy machine guns from Company H, and included an artillery forward observation party because its radio was necessary for communications with the liaison plane. Thus reinforced, the total strength of the force amounted to 167 officers and men.

Captain Tyrrell's mission was to rescue the ambushed patrol and to recover the bodies and the vehicles. Since darkness was not far off, Colonel Edwards instructed Tyrrell to form a defensive perimeter and proceed with the mission the following morning, if he could not gain contact with the ambushed patrol that night. Company F started north at 1515.

Back at the perimeter, the afternoon wore on with occasional lulls between enemy assaults. Toward late afternoon ammunition was getting scarce and the officers kept cautioning their men to use it sparingly. Medical supplies were exhausted three and a half hours after the fighting had begun. More than a third of the men had become casualties, although many of the wounded men remained in the perimeter fighting.

Private Stratton (the jeep driver with the shattered hand) had taken over a BAR from another wounded man. He fired it with his left hand. During quiet periods he crawled around the perimeter telling the other men not to worry about their situation. "We'll get out of this all right," he kept saying. However, by evening few of the men there expected to get out alive.

Lieutenant Mitchell pulled his men back several feet to the rim of the hilltop. There were advantages to this move. There, the Chinese could not spot American weapons so easily, and from the new position the Americans could not see an enemy soldier until his head appeared a few feet away. This saved ammunition since the men could not fire until they could see a Chinese head. As a frozen crust formed over the snow, the men braced themselves for the heavy blow they expected as soon as the darkness was complete. Said one of the men, "I'll see you fellows down below."

The first help for the surrounded patrol members came late in the afternoon. A Mosquito plane appeared above the patrol about 1730, just before sunset. The men watched as it circled above them and then screamed with delight when the first fighter planes appeared. Altogether they were two flights of four planes each. The first planes were jets, and they came in so low the men thought they could have touched them with the tips of their bayonets. Enemy activity stopped abruptly and, for the first time that afternoon, the men could raise their heads from the ground and move around freely in their crowded perimeter. The first planes fired machine guns and rockets. The second flight carried napalm bombs that burst into orange blossoms of flame among the enemy positions. It was excellent close support, and Lieutenant Mitchell and the members of his patrol grinned with appreciation during the half hour that it lasted.

Immediately following the air strike a liaison plane came over to drop supplies to the patrol. It made four runs over the group of men, each time flying no higher than fifteen feet above their heads, so low the men could see that the pilot had pink cheeks. And because the enemy hills were so close, the plane had to cross the enemy positions at the same height. The pilot dropped thirty bandoleers of rifle ammunition, two cases of machine-gun ammunition and several belts of carbine cartridges and then, on the last run, an envelope to which was fastened a long, yellow streamer. Except for one box of machine-gun ammunition, all of this fell beyond the tiny perimeter and, now that the air strike was over, in an area that was under enemy fire. Nevertheless, several men dashed out to retrieve everything that was close.

A young soldier raced after the message, which fell well down on the eastern slope, and took it back to Lieutenant Mitchell. The message said, "Friendly column approaching from the south. Will be with you shortly." Mitchell read it and then crawled around the perimeter to show it to the rest of the men.

About the same time, there was the sound of firing to the south. A few minutes later mortar rounds exploded on the top of Hill 453. Hopes of survival soared suddenly and the men shouted for joy. This, they decided, was the friendly relief column.

The airplanes left just as darkness began to set in, and Mitchell and Mueller warned their men to expect an enemy assault just as soon as it got dark. They also told the men not to yell out if they were hit because they did not dare let the Chinese know how many of the group were wounded.

Several mortar shells fell in the area, and one exploded in the center of the crowded perimeter, wounding one man seriously. The Chinese added automatic-weapons and rifle fire, building up the volume fast. There was the sound of bugles and of enemy voices and, between bursts of enemy fire, the sound of enemy soldiers walking over the crusted snow. Four men crawled forward until they could see the enemy approaching across the narrow saddle from the south. One of them, Sgt. Donald H. Larson, began yelling: "Here they come! Here they come!" They opened fire but within a few seconds all four of the men were hit. They crawled back.

Sergeant Larson pointed to his head wound-his fifth for the day-as he crawled past Lieutenant Mitchell. "That's enough for me," he said.

The situation was grim. The fire fight that had flared up in the vicinity of Hill 453 had stopped, and there was now no evidence of friendly troops nearby. Gradually, the men who had been looking anxiously toward the area from which Captain Tyrrell's men had been firing lost their hope of getting out of their perimeter. It was colder now. Their wet clothing was freezing to the ground. Several men were suffering from frostbite. More than half were casualties. Those with serious wounds had been dragged to the rear (east) part of the hilltop where they were laid on the frozen earth. The hill was so steep there that if grenades were dropped they would roll on down the hill away from the wounded men.

Those men who were less seriously wounded kept firing on the line or loading magazines for automatic rifles and carbines. One man with a large hole in his stomach loaded ammunition for an hour and a half before he died. Lieutenant Mueller, who had been wounded earlier when a bullet struck his leg, was hit a second time-this time in the head-injuring his left eye. He began to see flashes of light and occasionally lost consciousness.

Instead of the expected help, a second night attack hit Mitchell's patrol. It began with the usual mortar and machine-gun fire, worked up to grenade range, but again stopped a few feet from the edge of the perimeter when faced by the concentrated fire at the south end-fire from the machine gun and from several BARs. Private Stratton fired one of the automatic rifles with his left hand. When the Chinese were close, he stood on the rim of the perimeter, leveled his BAR at them and emptied the magazine. He was hit a second time, this time through the chest. Someone pulled him back toward the center of the perimeter. Soon afterwards a grenade exploded between his legs. Stratton screamed.

"For God's sake," said Mitchell, "shut up! "

"My legs have just been shot off," Stratton complained.

"I know it," the Lieutenant answered, "but shut up anyway."

Soon after this Stratton was wounded a fourth time, and died.

While all of these events were taking place on the hill, Captain Tyrrell's rescue mission was progressing even though Mitchell's men could see no action. Company F had arrived in the Twin Tunnels area between 1720 and 1730-as the air strike was in progress and a few

minutes before darkness. The vehicular column of eight 3/4-ton trucks and thirteen jeeps, with all of the trucks and some of the jeeps pulling trailers loaded with extra mortar and recoilless rifle ammunition, followed the same road used by the patrol. While the column was en route, an observer in a liaison plane dropped a message giving the exact location of the ambushed patrol, its vehicles, and also several positions where he had observed groups of enemy soldiers in that vicinity.

Nothing important happened until the two jeeps that formed the point of the column were within one hundred or two hundred yards of the ford near which Captain Stai had disappeared earlier in the day. Two machine guns on Hill 453 opened fire on the jeeps, bringing them to a quick halt. The occupants scrambled into the ditch for protection.

Captain Tyrrell, in the third jeep, soon appeared. He dismounted and walked back toward the rest of the column while his driver, already in the ditch, called after him, "You'd better get in the ditch, Captain. The Chinks will get you."

Tyrrell walked on back toward the 2d Platoon, which was next in column. "To hell with the Chinks," he said.

Deciding he could not proceed to the patrol with enemy machine gunners in his rear and riflemen on the highest hill in the area, Tyrrell hurriedly prepared to attack Hill 453. He ordered his 2d Platoon to dismount and lay down a base of fire to support an attack by the other two platoons. The 2d Platoon was firing rifles at Hill 453 within three to five minutes after the Chinese began firing. In the haze of dusk, Tyrrell sent his other two platoons toward the top of the hill, attacking up two of three spur ridges which extended generally east from Hill 453 and ended abruptly at the road. The heavy-machine-gun section was in action by the time the infantrymen started up the steep ridgeline, and before they had gone far the 81-mm mortar section began firing. Captain Tyrrell told the mortar crew to plaster the hill during the attack, moving the shell bursts up the ridgeline just in front of the advancing platoons. All of this had taken place in no more than twenty minutes, and in the midst of brisk enemy fire.

The first sergeant of Company F, in the meantime, had all vehicles turned around and parked in a closed column near the mortar section so that the drivers and other men not actively engaged at the time could guard both the mortar section and the vehicles.

There was no fight for the top of Hill 453; the Chinese abandoned it and fell back in front of the mortar and machine-gun fire. In fact, enemy fire fell off sharply after the first half hour, and thereafter there was negligible opposition. Darkness, however, retarded the advance, which was already difficult and tedious because of the snow and the steepness of the ridge. It took two hours or longer for the 1st Platoonthe one that attacked straight west-to gain the top of Hill 453. Once there, Captain Tyrrell told it to form a hasty perimeter for the defense of the hilltop and then send one squad south to contact the other platoon, which was coming up along the southern of the three spur ridges, thus making certain that the top of the hill was free of enemy soldiers. At 2030 these two platoons made contact.

From the hill to the north came the sounds of grenade explosions and heavy firing as another enemy attack fell against Lieutenant Mitchell's patrol.

Having secured Hill 453 and eliminated the threat from his rear, Tyrrell was ready to go ahead with his original mission. His 2d Platoon, which had been in support so far, was on the road and ready to head straight north toward the surrounded patrol just as soon as the rest of the company could be maneuvered into place to support the attack. By radio Captain Tyrrell ordered one of the platoons on Hill 453 to return to the road by the most direct route, and told the other one to move northeast to a point approximately two thirds of the way down the northernmost of the three spur ridges from that hill mass. When this platoon reached a position from which it could support the 2d Platoon by fire, it was to hold in place. He also sent the heavy-machine-gun section up the northern ridgeline to join the platoon that was to form the base of fire.

This re-positioning of his force required time, and in the meanwhile Tyrrell went to the area of his 2d Platoon to work out the complete plans for its advance and to make certain that all men of the platoon knew of the movements of the other platoons so that units of his company would not get into a fire fight among themselves. Having done this, he walked off to choose new positions east of the road for the heavy mortars, which he intended to displace forward. It was, by this time, 2100 or later.

While Tyrrell was thus engaged, he heard a voice coming from the direction of Sinchon: "Hey, are you GIs?" It sounded like an American voice.

Captain Tyrrell called back, "Who are you?" and received an answer that they were three wounded Americans.

Returning to the road, he alerted the platoon there to the possibility of some incident occurring on its right flank, moved a squad into position about a hundred yards east of the road and then, with his runner and radio operator, walked forward toward the direction from which the sound of the voice had come. They stopped at a ditch and Tyrrell called for one man to come forward to be recognized. Someone answered, claiming they could not come forward separately since two of them were wounded-one seriously-and could not walk alone. Tyrrell, by this time reasonably certain that they were Americans, told them to come forward together. It was so dark that Tyrrell could distinguish objects only a few yards away and although he could see nothing, he could hear the three men stumbling through the crusted snow. He saw them first when they were only a few yards away, halted them, and asked who they were.

The three men explained that they were members of Mitchell's patrol. They had escaped from the perimeter and had made their way down the steep east side of the hill to the railroad tracks, which they had followed south. All of them appeared to be excited and suffering from exhaustion. One was bleeding badly. Tyrrell told them to get into the ditch with him and remain quiet while he listened for the sound of any enemy soldiers who, he thought, might have followed them. The six men sat quietly. There was no sound anywhere in the area, only darkness and stillness. After several minutes of waiting, they returned to the road and the area of the 2d Platoon.

Everyone else in the patrol, according to the three men who reached Company F, was dead. They described the last attack which ended with Chinese swarming over their perimeter, shooting and throwing grenades. Only the three of them had escaped and there was nothing on the hill now, they claimed, but "hundreds of Chinese." Although Captain Tyrrell questioned them in detail, they were emphatic in stating that the entire patrol had been overrun and all members had been killed.

The last fire fight on the hill had ended abruptly after what seemed to Tyrrell like a half hour of heavy fighting. He now decided to wait until morning before continuing, since his battalion commander had told him that if he could not make contact with the patrol before dark, to form a defensive perimeter until morning to prevent falling into an enemy trap or getting into a fire fight with friendly troops. He advised his platoon leaders of the change in plan.

Ten or fifteen minutes later the leader of the 1st Platoon (Lt. Leonard Napier), which was moving down the northern ridge from Hill 453 with the mission of establishing the base of fire for the next attack, called his company commander by radio.

"If you had talked with a man who just came into my position," he told Tyrrell, "you wouldn't believe the patrol was wiped out."

This was Lieutenant Mueller's aid man who had run out of medical supplies during the afternoon and had left the perimeter after dark to try to get back to the vehicles where he hoped to find more supplies. For some unaccountable reason, he had gone too far south and there encountered Napier's platoon. Captain Tyrrell, questioning the medic over the radio, learned that the patrol was still holding at the time he left, even though three fourths of the men were casualties.

At once, Tyrrell issued new orders for his 2d Platoon (Lt. Albert E. Jones) to head north up the end of the long ridge toward the ambushed patrol. In the path of this platoon were three high points on the same ridgeline. Moving as quietly as possible, without preparatory or supporting fires, Lieutenant Jones and his platoon started forward, experiencing only the difficulties of moving and maintaining contact over steep terrain. They could hear another fire fight starting at the perimeter. They reached the first knob an hour later. The next knob ahead was the one from which most of the Chinese attacks had originated. Beyond that was the slightly lower knob where the patrol itself was located. There was no firing going on at the time Jones's 2d Platoon arrived at the southernmost knoll. Afraid that he might be walking into an ambush with his own platoon, he halted and then decided to go forward with one squad while the rest of his men formed a defensive perimeter.

Several hours had passed since Company F had done any firing. To the surviving members of Mitchell's patrol there was no evidence of the promised rescue. Enemy attacks, however, continued. Between first darkness and about 2100, the enemy made four separate assaults, all of them against the south end of the perimeter. It was the last of these that Captain Tyrrell had heard end abruptly while he was waiting for two of his platoons to get into position. Like the others, this attempt was preceded by heavy machine-gun and rifle fire with a few men making the final assault. It was broken up by Cpl. Jesus A. Sanchez, one of Lieutenant Mueller's men from 21st Infantry. Sanchez loaded two BAR magazines, waited until the Chinese were almost upon them, then jumped up and forward a few feet, and emptied both magazines at the Chinese. He ran back and lay down again.

There was respite for an hour before the enemy struck again, this time as Lieutenant Jones's platoon began moving north. For this assault the Chinese shifted to the small mound just west of Mitchell's hill, and attacked from that direction. Ten or fifteen enemy soldiers crawled up under the mortar and machine-gun fire and attempted to overrun the American position. Since Lieutenant Mueller's machine gun was still guarding the south end of the line, five men with rifles and automatic carbines waited until the Chinese were at the rim of their perimeter, then fired at full rate for a minute or less. There was another brief lull before the Chinese made one more assault. This time three enemy soldiers succeeded in getting into the perimeter where they caused considerable confusion in the darkness. One Chinese soldier stood erect among Lieutenant Mitchell's men.

"Get the son of a lady!" one of them yelled.

Several men fired at once, killing him. They killed another one who appeared immediately afterwards. A third Chinese walked up to within a few feet of SFC Odvin A. Martinson (Mueller's platoon sergeant) and fired at him with a burp gun. Sergeant Martinson, who already had been wounded five times that day, fired back with a pistol. Neither of them hit the other. PFC Thomas J. Mortimer, who was lying on the ground immediately behind the Chinese soldier, raised up and stuck a bayonet into his back as someone else shot him from the front. Sergeant Martinson picked up the body and threw it out of the perimeter.

"I don't want them in here," he said, "dead or alive."

The time was now 2230. There were between 27 and 30 wounded men in the perimeter, including those who were unable to fight, and several others, like Martinson, who had been wounded but were able to keep fighting. Lieutenant Mueller, having become conscious again, kept experiencing flashes of light in front of one eye. Ammunition was nearly gone, the effective strength of the patrol was low, and several doubted if they could hold off another attack. A few of the men wanted to surrender.

"Surrender hell!" said Sergeant Martinson who was, by this time, thoroughly angry.

Two red flares appeared toward the west and thereafter it was quiet. The patrol members waited for a half hour or longer while nothing happened. Then they heard footsteps again, the same sound of men approaching over frozen snow. This time the sound came from the south again. When the footsteps sounded close, Lieutenant Mitchell's men opened fire.

"GIs!" someone below yelled. "Don't shoot! GIs!"

For several seconds no one spoke or moved. Finally Corporal Sanchez called down, "Who won the Rose Bowl game?"

There was silence again for a few seconds until someone below called, "Fox Company, 23d Infantry, by God!"

Lieutenant Jones and his squad from Company F moved on up, following the same snow-beaten path over which the Chinese attacked during the afternoon and evening. Sanchez, the BAR man, stood up.

"We're relieved, fellows!" he yelled. "We're relieved!"

The others who could also stood up and, from then on, they disregarded the Chinese who had, apparently, moved back for the night.

A thin moon came up and furnished a little light, which made the evacuation of the wounded men easier. Nevertheless, it required more than three hours to move everyone off of the hill. Corporal Sanchez took charge of the top of the hill and supervised the evacuation from that end, searching the hill to be certain no living men were left behind, and emptying the pockets of the dead.

Some of the men whose wounds were not serious complained about the cold and the hardships of walking over the difficult terrain in the dark, but those men who were wounded seriously expressed only their gratitude, and tried to help themselves. Sergeant Martinson, with five bullet wounds, left the litters for the other men and hobbled out with two other men. Private Hensley, who broke several ribs while climbing the hill at the beginning of the action and had received help himself at that time, now helped carry another man down the hill. It was 0330, 30 January, before Company F men had carried down all surviving members of the patrol. Captain Tyrrell gave the word to move out and the column started south with one platoon of Company F marching ahead of the column and another following on foot behind the trucks.

The sun came up as the column reached Iho-ri.

Chipyong-ni

Chipyong-ni was defended because the commanding general of Eighth Army (Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway) decided to make a stand there against the Chinese Communists. In the chronology of Korean battles, the fighting for Chipyong-ni followed the withdrawal from northern Korea at the end of 1950, a brief Eighth Army offensive that began on 5 February 1951, and a full-scale Chinese counteroffensive that struck a week later.

The 23d Regimental Combat Team made the decisive defense of Chipyong-ni on 13 and 14 February 1951. This action followed the patrol ambush and the subsequent battle for the Twin Tunnels area some high ground three miles southeast of Chipyong-ni. After the Twin Tunnels operation, the 23d Infantry Regiment (2d Infantry Division) proceeded on the afternoon of 3 February to the town of Chipyong-ni and set up a perimeter defense. Chipyong-ni was a small crossroads town half a mile long and several blocks wide, situated on a single-track railroad. Besides the railway station there were several other brick or frame buildings in the center of the town, but most of the buildings were constructed of the usual mud, sticks, and straw. At least half of the buildings were already reduced to rubble as the result of previous fighting in the town.

Encircling Chipyong-ni were eight prominent hills that rose to an average height of 850 feet above the rice paddies and buildings in the valley. These hills provided excellent defensive positions, but to have occupied them would have stretched the front-line defensive positions along 12 miles of ridgelines and formed a perimeter with a 3- to 4-mile diameter. Instead, the regimental commander (Col. Paul L. Freeman) stationed his infantrymen on lower ground around a tight perimeter about a mile in diameter. On three sides of the town the line followed small hills; on the northwest section the infantrymen dug their holes across a half-mile strip of rice paddies.

During the ten days after going into position at Chipyong-ni, Colonel Freeman's regiment dug in and strengthened its positions. The 37th Field Artillery Battalion (attached to the regiment) arrived on 5 February. Battery B, 82d Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, joined the regiment, adding six M16 and four M19 flakwagons to the defense of the town. Several days later Battery B, 503d Field Artillery Battalion (a 155-mm howitzer unit), was attached to reinforce the fires of the 37th Field Artillery Battalion.

The infantry companies dug in their machine guns, registered their mortars, sowed antipersonnel mines, and operated daily patrols to the encompassing high ground. The regimental Heavy-Mortar Company divided he fires of its platoons and sections among the sectors of the perimeter, the artillery registered on all probable avenues of enemy approach, and all units established good communications lines. There was time to coordinate the infantry, artillery, and air support into an effective combat team.

This narrative describes the fighting for Chipyong-ni that occurred in that sector of the 2d Battalion's perimeter defended by Company G, 23d Infantry. As it happened, the howitzers of Battery B, 503d Field Artillery Battalion, were in position at the bottom of Company G's hill so that the artillerymen were drawn into the same battle. The commander of the 2d Battalion (Lt.Col. James W. Edwards) placed all three of his rifle companies on the front line to cover the sector assigned to his battalion. This was the south rim of the perimeter. Within the companies, two company commanders committed their three rifle platoons. The other company (F), to which Colonel Edwards assigned the center and smallest sector, manned its part of the line with only two platoons, leaving its support platoon as the battalion reserve.

The narrow supply road leading southwest from Chipyong-ni went under the railroad on the south edge of the town and then, within a third of a mile, passed two embankments of red clay where the road cut through the two ends of a U-shaped hill. Company G started at the second of these two road cuts and extended left (east) along the southern side of the U. It was not much of a hill only a couple of contour lines on the map. Infantrymen could climb the smooth hump of earth in a few minutes. The 1st Platoon of Company G held the right end of the hill next to the road cut. The 3d Platoon had the center position (the highest part of the hill) and extended its line left to the bend of the U. The 2d Platoon was down in the rice paddies between the 3d Platoon and Company F.

Men from the two platoons on the hill dug their holes just over the top of the forward slope. The positions restricted the fields of fire somewhat but provided good observation, especially for the 3d Platoon, which could see all areas to the south except for a dead spot in a dry creek bed just in front of its right flank.

There were two other significant features near the 3d Platoon's area.

At the foot of the hill and just beyond the dry creek bed was a cluster of 15 or 20 buildings that made up the village of Masan. The second feature was a narrow spur of ground that formed a link between the 3d Platoon's hill and a large hill mass to the south. The 2d Platoon in the rice paddies lacked satisfactory observation but had good fields of fire across the flat land to its immediate front.

In addition to its own Weapons Platoon, Company G's supporting weapons included a section of 75-mm recoilless rifles, a section of heavy machine guns from Company H, and a platoon of 88-mm mortars which was dug in near the edge of the town and had a forward observer stationed with Company G. There were also forward observers from the regimental Heavy-Mortar Company and from the 37th Field Artillery Battalion with Company G. During the daytime men from the 75-mm recoilless rifle section manned their weapons, but at night they replaced them with two caliber .50 machine guns to prevent having their positions disclosed at night by the back-blasts of the recoilless rifles.

The Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon set up two fougasses (drums of napalm), the first on the road just south of the road cut, and the second in the rice paddies in front of the 2d Platoon. The 1st Platoon, which was next to the road, also strung barbed-wire entanglements across the road and in front of its position. There was not enough wire available to reach across the company front. Colonel Edwards supervised the siting of all weapons, and the digging of the holes which he insisted be of the standing type and deep enough for good cover.

When Battery B, 503d Field Artillery Battalion, arrived, its 155-mm howitzers went into position in the small bowl formed by the U-shaped ridge of which Company G occupied one side. The howitzers were laid by platoon to support the east, north, and west sectors of the regimental perimeter. To the rear of the howitzers, the artillerymen set up a tent for the fire direction center (FDC) personnel. Behind that, near the bottom of Company G's hill, were several other tents for the mess and supply sections. A liaison officer from the 37th Field Artillery Battalion to Battery B (Capt. John A. Elledge), and the commander of Company G (Lt. Thomas Heath) worked out a plan for joint defense of the sector. This plan provided for the use of the artillery's machine guns on the front line and, if necessary, the use of some artillerymen as riflemen while skeleton crews manned the howitzers. The two officers also set up an infantry-artillery machine-gun post in the road cut with a six-man crew to operate two machine guns one caliber .50 and one caliber .30. This road cut was also the dividing line between Colonel Edwards's 2d Battalion sector and that of the French Battalion (a regular battalion of the 23d Infantry).

In the meantime, while the 23d RCT built up its defenses, an Eighth Army general offensive got under way on 5 February with X Corps, in the center of the line, attacking to make a double envelopment of the town of Hongchon, an important enemy build-up area. The attack moved slowly until the night of 11 February, when the Chinese launched a full-scale counteroffensive with two columns driving south aimed at the towns of Hoengsong and Wonju in X Corps' sector. The vigorous enemy attack drove through two ROK divisions and turned the United Nations' attack into a withdrawal that rolled the front lines south between 5 and 20 miles. Before the Chinese attack, the front lines of X Corps were well ahead of Colonel Freeman's Chipyong-ni perimeter, but as the units went south, sometimes fighting through enemy roadblocks, Chipyong-ni became a conspicuous bulge on the left of the corps' line.

At the 23d Infantry's perimeter, the usual patrols for the daylight hours of 13 February reported increased enemy activity crowding close to Chipyong-ni on three sides north, east, and west. The Air Force observation plane operating with the RCT reported enemy groups moving toward the perimeter from the north and east. Observers called for artillery fire against those enemy columns within reach, while the tactical air control party directed forty flights of aircraft against other enemy groups beyond artillery range.

Another indication of enemy strength and dispositions came from the 2d Division's Reconnaissance Company. Reinforced by a rifle company, it was ordered on the morning of 13 February to patrol the road from Iho-ri straight north to Chipyong-ni a distance of 15 to 18 miles. Even on this road there were Chinese in sufficient strength to halt this force and turn it back.

Faced with this growing threat of encirclement, Colonel Freeman wanted to give up his positions and go back to Yoju, fifteen miles south. The commander of X Corps (Maj.Gen. Edward M. Almond) flew into Chipyong-ni by helicopter at noon on 13 February and discussed with Colonel Freeman the advisability of such a withdrawal a move that had the approval of the corps and division commanders. At noon Colonel Freeman recommended that his regiment go south on the following morning (14 February). However, within an hour and a half after General Almond returned to his command post to relay this recommendation to General Ridgway, Colonel Freeman changed his mind and his recommendation. The report from the 2d Division's Reconnaissance Company describing enemy opposition to movement on the main supply road south convinced Freeman that it would be better to leave as soon as possible, and he presented his request to division headquarters. In the meantime, however, General Almond had submitted the original recommendation and request to leave Chipyong-ni on the following morning to General Ridgway. General Ridgway adamantly refused permission to abandon Chipyong-ni.

Colonel Freeman immediately started to strengthen his position. He asked for air strikes and airdrops for the next day, set up a secondary perimeter to be manned at night by a company of engineers, positioned his tanks near the outer perimeter, and ordered all gaps mined or blocked by lanes of machine-gun fire. During the early part of the evening of 13 February, Colonel Freeman called his unit commanders together to warn them that the movement of enemy troops probably meant that they would soon be surrounded and attacked by the Chinese.

"We'll stay here and fight it out," he said.

The early part of the evening was quiet. At Battery B's position Lt. Robert L. Peters was sitting in a tent writing a letter. The battery executive (Lt. Randolph McKinney) went to bed after having decided to remove his shoes but to sleep in his clothes in case troubled started. Most of the men of Battery B were inexperienced replacements who had joined the battery after the action at Kunu-ri, where more than half of the men and all equipment had been lost. Before Lieutenant Peters finished his letter he heard a burst of fire from what seemed like several thousand yards away. He stepped outside to look. To the southwest he could see what appeared to be six torches along a trail leading from a large hill. In a short time the machinegunners in the road cut opened fire at figures they could distinguish moving across the rice paddies to the south. Peters called back to Lieutenant McKinney: "Get up, McKinney; this is it!"

On the east end of Company G's sector, PFC Donald E. Nelson and Pvt. Jack Ward (members of the 2d Platoon) were sitting in their foxhole in the rice paddy arguing over which one of them had to stay awake during the first part of the night. The company was required to be on a fifty percent alert at all times, which meant that one man in each foxhole had to be awake while the other slept. Suddenly they heard the sound of digging. It sounded as if it were several hundred yards away.

Soon after this, two squads of Chinese soldiers attacked the center of Company G's line, hitting its 3d Platoon (Lt. Paul J. McGee). One of these enemy squads crawled along the spur of ground that led to the center of the 3d Platoon's position. The enemy threw three grenades at a machine gun manned by Cpl. Eugene L. Ottesen, and then opened with rifles. Corporal Ottesen began firing his machine gun. The other enemy squad, two hundred yards to the west, taking advantage of the dead spot in the dry creek bed, climbed the hill and attacked the 3d Platoon at the point where it joined the 1st Platoon. It was about 2200 when the first firing broke out.

Hearing the firing, PFC Herbert G. Ziebell awakened his foxhole buddy (PFC Roy F. Benoit) and said: "There's some firing going on. Get up and get ready."

Ziebell did not fire immediately because he could see nothing to shoot, and he was afraid the flash of his rifle would draw enemy fire. Along the line other men heard the firing and sat in the darkness waiting for the attack.

When Lieutenant McGee heard Corporal Ottesen's machine gun open fire he immediately telephoned his company commander (Lieutenant Heath). He then called his squad leaders by sound-powered telephone and informed them of the attack. In order to conserve ammunition, he ordered his men to fire only when they could see the enemy. Apparently making only a probing attack, the enemy withdrew after a few minutes. Except for some firing by the 2d Platoon, there was a lull for about an hour.

Around 2300 a Chinese squad worked up close to the center of the 3d Platoon. An enemy tossed a grenade in the hole of one of Lieutenant McGee's squad leaders (Cpl. James C. Mougeat), wounding him.

Corporal Mougeat crawled out of his hole and, shouting, "Lieutenant McGee, I'm hit!" started west along the hilltop toward the platoon's command post, twenty yards away.

The enemy threw several grenades at him, one of which knocked his rifle from his hand and tore off the stock. Fortunately for Mougeat, two men from his squad shot the Chinese. Recovering his damaged rifle, Corporal Mougeat ran on to the command post. There Lieutenant McGee calmed him down, and Mougeat decided to return to his squad.

"I'm not hit bad," he said.

Lieutenant McGee was watching several men about twenty yards below the platoon's position. One of them called his name.

"Who is that?" he asked a BAR man beside him.

"It's a Chink," the BAR man said.

McGee tossed a grenade down the hill. The explosion apparently wounded the enemy soldier who rolled down the slope. Lieutenant McGee borrowed the BAR and killed him.

Main activity near Battery B's position centered around the machine guns at the road cut. As soon as these began firing, one of the artillery officers (Lt. John E. Travis) and his machine-gun sergeant (Cpl. William H. Pope) grabbed several boxes of ammunition and went to the road cut. The rice paddies in front of these machine guns were completely covered with snow. On previous nights when Travis had gone there to check the position, that area had been smooth and white, but now there were lines of dark forms moving across the fields. They were barely visible in the dark but appeared plainly when illuminating flares hung over the area.

Lieutenant Travis and Corporal Pope had been at the outpost position only a short time when a mortar shell exploded in the cut, killing the two men closest to them, and wounding six, including Travis and Pope. Travis headed for the fire direction center tent and began yelling for some men to help-six to man the machine guns and another six to carry back the wounded.

Captain Elledge (the liaison officer) gathered up ten men and told them to follow. Enemy mortar shells were also falling in the battery's area at this time so that the artillerymen, most of whom were in action for the first time, were reluctant to leave their holes. Five of the men followed Captain Elledge; the others dropped off on the way and went back to their foxholes. When they reached the outpost position, the caliber .50 machine gun was jamming, so Captain Elledge and PFC Leslie Alston returned for another gun, carrying one of the wounded men back as they went. They then made several trips between the battery's position and the outpost, carrying ammunition out and wounded men back.

These two machine guns fired steadily for several hours, although no close action developed until about 0200 on 14 February when a platoonsized group of Chinese made an attack against the French Battalion just to the right of the machine-gun outpost. The enemy soldiers formed one hundred or two hundred yards in front of the small hill which the French occupied, then launched their attack, blowing whistles and bugles, and running with bayonets fixed. When this noise started, the French soldiers began cranking a hand siren they had, and one squad started running toward the Chinese, yelling and throwing grenades far to the front and to the side. When the two forces were within twenty yards of each other the Chinese suddenly turned and ran in the opposite direction. It was all over within a minute. After this incident it was relatively quiet in the rice paddies near the road cut.

The firing battery, meanwhile, kept up a normal volume of harassing and interdiction fire, and also fired an illuminating round every five minutes for the sector on the opposite side of the regimental perimeter. The gun sections had L-shaped trenches near their howitzers where the men stayed until Lieutenant Peters or Lieutenant McKinney called out a fire mission.

During the night the enemy, signaling with whistles and horns, launched four separate attacks against Lieutenant Heath's company. Most of the action fell against the 3d Platoon. Toward morning the artillery battery commander (Lt. Arthur Rochnowski) sent twenty men up to help on Company G's line.

At first light on the morning of 14 February, there were Chinese near the front line in front of the 3d and the 1st Platoons, although only three enemy soldiers actually reached it. One of these was killed and the other two captured soon afterward. Five or six Chinese remained near the road cut machine-gun outpost until daylight, then tried to crawl back across the rice paddies. At the limiting point between the 1st and the 3d Platoons, which had been under enemy pressure for several hours, a small group withdrew, leaving 12 or 15 bodies on the south slope of the hill. The platoon sergeant of the 3d Platoon (Sgt. Bill C. Kluttz), in a foxhole next to the one occupied by Lieutenant McGee, spotted several Chinese in the creek bed just in front. He fired several times at them. Suspecting the presence of other Chinese, Lieutenant McGee ordered him to have the rocket launcher fired into the creek bed. Sergeant Kluttz fired the launcher himself. The rocket hit a tree, making an air burst over the creek bed. About forty Chinese came out of the creek bed and began running across the rice paddies in front of the 1st Platoon, which opened fire on them. By the time it was completely light, all enemy activity had stopped.

During the day of 14 February, the artillerymen and infantrymen rebuilt their defenses in preparation for another attack. At 0900 Lieutenant McGee took out a patrol which captured 5 Chinese hiding in a culvert and 17 others who were wounded and lying in the rice paddies south of the company's position. McGee counted 18 enemy bodies. Near Masan, he walked up to a small haystack. Near it was an abandoned enemy machine gun. As a wounded Chinese raised up in the haystack to shoot the platoon leader, Sergeant Kluttz shot and killed the enemy soldier. Another Chinese, although handicapped by a badly wounded leg, was still trying to operate a Soviet burp gun when Cpl. Boleslaw M. Sander killed him.

Captain Elledge and several other artillerymen set out to examine the area around the battery's position. Eight hundred yards west of the machine guns in the road cut, there was a house that Captain Elledge decided should be destroyed before the Chinese could occupy it if they attacked that night.

Since the house was visible from the howitzer position, the 5th Section (Sgt. James Webb) took it under direct fire, using white phosphorus shells.

After the third round the house began burning, and about fifteen enemy soldiers ran from it across the flat ground. The two machine-gunners and men from the French Battalion killed eight of them; the other Chinese escaped.

During the day the artillerymen dug new and deeper holes and personnel trenches around the howitzers, since they found many of the holes they had dug unsatisfactory during the first night's attack. The battery commander also relaid his howitzers so that, instead of the usual two platoons of three howitzers each, they were laid in pairs. The two howitzers on the left were laid on an azimuth of 5,600 mils, the center laid on 6,400 mils, and those on the right were laid on 800 mils. The normal volume of harassing fires was scheduled for the night of 14 February, about 250 rounds for the battery.

During the afternoon the commander of Company G (Lieutenant Heath) went over to Battery B's fire direction tent to work out plans with Lieutenant Rochnowski and Captain Elledge for the defense of the company and battery position. After the experience of the night before, all were confident of being able to hold if the enemy renewed his attacks. They decided the Chinese were most apt to attack the center of the company's front the highest part of the perimeter where Lieutenant McGee's 3d Platoon was situated and to reinforce that area as much as possible. Lieutenant Rochnowski agreed to set up three outpost positions and two BAR teams on the 3d Platoon's right flank near the saddle directly behind his battery. This was in addition to the two machine guns the artillerymen manned on the front line. If it became necessary, he offered to send some of his artillerymen up to fight with Heath's men. Rochnowski planned to send half of the men from one platoon up on the hill first; if more were needed he would then split up the other platoon and thereby contribute a total of about forty men. Skeleton crews would continue to fire the howitzers.

During the day the 23d RCT received twenty-four airdrops of ammunition. There were also several air strikes, including three south of the

Chipyong-ni perimeter where there appeared to be increased enemy activity. Inside the perimeter enemy mortar rounds fell intermittently.

Company G had a quiet day. Hot meals were served. Some of the men thought that perhaps the Chinese had withdrawn. That hope disappeared soon after dark. First, flares appeared in the southern sky; then followed the sound of bugles. After about half an hour or longer, while the men of Company G waited tensely in their holes, a small enemy group opened fire on the machine gun in the center of Lieutenant McGee's platoon, wounding the gunner. The previous night the enemy had opened the fighting by firing on the machine gun. A squad-sized group of Chinese was trying to reach Corporal Ottesen's gun by working along the spur connecting the 3d Platoon's hill with the enemy-held Hill 397 to the south. An enemy machine gun fired overhead cover for the small force. Enemy flares popped in front of the company, and the firing built up rapidly into a furious and noisy fight with the strongest enemy thrusts apparently aimed at the center of the 3d Platoon and at the saddle between it and the 1st Platoon. Tracers arched over the artillery's gun position.

Down at Company G's kitchen tent members of the mess crew heard the firing. They had neglected to dig foxholes and now the closest and best protection was the garbage pit. Eight men crowded into it. None of them made any funny remarks about the odor. An artilleryman with no protection of his own set out looking for any unoccupied foxhole. He finally found one with a man stretched out in the bottom, and jumped in.

"There ain't no room in this hole," the first man said; "not for nobody."

"No room hell!" said the second man. "We'll make room!"

Up on the hill two squads succeeded in penetrating the front line at the left end of the 1st Platoon, occupying several foxholes next to the saddle.

The line was further weakened when these Chinese, having gained a foothold on the hill, planted pole charges in two of the 1st Platoon's holes; the resulting explosions killed four men. The enemy, now in control of the left side of the 1st Platoon's sector, set up a machine gun and started firing across the area of Lieutenant McGee's 3d Platoon. The leader of the 1st Platoon had his command post in a hut a short distance from another hut being used by the company commander. Without informing Lieutenant Heath, the leader of the 1st Platoon remained in his hut after the fighting started and did not join his platoon on the hill. He did maintain wire communication with his platoon sergeant (Sgt. Donald R. Schmitt) on the hill.

Because of the fire coming from the 1st Platoon's area, Lieutenant McGee began to suspect that platoon had lost some foxholes in its sector. He called the company commander on the telephone.

"Heath," he asked, "is the 1st Platoon still in position?"

Heath at once called the leader of the 1st Platoon, who in turn called Sergeant Schmitt on the hill. Schmitt was on the right end of the 1st Platoon's position, next to the road cut, still holding and unaware that the

enemy had taken the opposite end of the platoon position. He claimed the line was still solid. Lieutenant Heath relayed the information to McGee.

Lieutenant McGee, however, still had his doubts. He and his platoon sergeant (Sergeant Kluttz) shouted over to the 1st Platoon area, "Anyone from the 1st Platoon?"

There was no answer.

Activities in his own area now took up Lieutenant McGee's interest as enemy soldiers overran one of his own foxholes. On the right flank of his platoon's sector, next to the saddle, he could see four Chinese soldiers with shovels strapped on their backs crawling on their hands and knees. They were about fifteen feet above and behind a hole occupied by the squad leader on the platoon's right flank.

By this time the sound-powered telephone line to the squad leader was out, so McGee shouted across to him: "There are four of them at the rear of your hole. Toss a grenade up and over."

A burst from a machine gun in the 1st Platoon's area one now manned by the enemy prevented the squad leader from standing up to lob the grenade. Lieutenant McGee and the other occupant of his foxhole (Pvt. Cletis Inmon, a runner), firing a BAR and rifle, respectively, killed the four enemy soldiers. The time was now about 2200.

The right-flank squad leader's troubles were not yet over. Lieutenant McGee looked down the slope and saw a group of Chinese crawl out of the dry creek bed and start up the hill toward the squad leader's hole.

McGee called to him, "About fifteen or twenty of them are coming up to your right front."

With the enemy-manned machine gun firing frequent short bursts over his hole, the squad leader did not want to stand up high enough to see and fire at the enemy. Although Lieutenant McGee and Inmon kept firing at the Chinese, they could not stop them, and the enemy continued to crawl up toward the squad leader's hole, which was on the 3d Platoon's right flank next to the saddle. The Chinese began throwing potato-masher grenades toward the hole, which the squad leader shared with two other men. The squad leader and one of the other men a sergeant climbed out, ran to McGee's hole, and jumped in on top of him and Inmon. The sergeant was hit on the way over. The enemy then threw a satchel charge into the hole they had just left and killed the man who had remained there.

With these men on top of him, Lieutenant McGee could neither see nor fire. "Get the hell out of here, and get back with your squad!" he yelled.

The squad leader did not budge, and McGee repeated the order. The squad leader then jumped out and was immediately shot through the shoulder. Lieutenant McGee called for a litter team, and the two men-the sergeant and the squad leader were evacuated under fire.

By this time other enemy soldiers had started crawling up the slope toward Lieutenant McGee's position. One of them threw three grenades at McGee before the lieutenant killed the Chinese with a BAR he had taken from one of his men who had just been hit. The BAR was jamming on every tenth round. Lieutenant McGee used his pocket knife to extract the case. Finally he dropped the knife and was unable to find it in the dark. Quickly, he abandoned the automatic rifle and tried to fire his carbine at a Chinese who had crawled up to within ten feet of his hole. As the enemy soldier raised up on his knees, McGee pulled back the bolt to load the carbine, but at this critical moment the cold oil on the mechanism stopped the bolt from going home, and the weapon would not fire. McGee grabbed the operating handle and slammed the bolt in, fired four rounds at the Chinese, killing him. Men in nearby holes killed three other enemy soldiers who got close to Company G's front line.

It was now close to 2300. Lieutenant McGee needed help. Since wire communications were out, he ordered his platoon runner (PFC John N. Martin) to return to the company's command post and inform Lieutenant Heath that the platoon urgently needed men, ammunition, and litter teams.

After receiving this request, Lieutenant Heath stepped outside and shouted over to the artillery fire direction center asking Lieutenant Rochnowski for help up on the hill. The battery commander, in turn, called to is sections. In a few minutes fifteen artillerymen assembled. The runner (Martin) led them up toward the 3d Platoon's hill. As they crossed the crest of the hill the enemy opened fire on them. Lieutenant McGee watched with a sinking sensation as a mortar round killed one and wounded another, and the rest of the reinforcing group turned and ran back down the hill. Martin then returned to the rear area to guide the company's wire team, which was carrying ammunition up to the platoon.

Lieutenant Heath stopped the artillerymen at the bottom of the hill, reformed them, and led them back up the hill himself. By this time, fighting on the hill had erupted into a frenzy of firing, with the enemy in full possession of that sector of Company G's line near the saddle. Near the top of the hill Lieutenant Heath's group fell apart again, the men running hard toward the bottom. With his men all gone, Heath started back after them. He was angry, and was yelling so loudly the men in the fire direction center tent could hear him. Halfway down the hill he stopped and stood there. Yelling for more help, ordering the men to return and re-form their line. When they didn't, he ran on to the bottom.

Heath grabbed a couple of the men by their clothing, yelling: "Goddammit, get back up on that hill! You'll die down here anyway. You might as well go up on the hill and die there."

Tracers from the enemy machine gun stretched along the hilltop like red beads. Flares popped overhead. The area was alternately dimly lighted, and dark as if someone were turning street lights on and off. When the artillerymen tried to find cover, Lieutenant Heath ran back and forth yelling and pulling at the men to persuade them to stand up and move. It was now between midnight and 0100 on 15 February.

Captain Elledge heard Lieutenant Heath calling for help. He went out in the gun park and yelled for men to help fight. The inexperienced artillerymen responded slowly. Captain Elledge went around the howitzers, pulled several men from their holes and, with a force of about ten men, set out for the left flank of the area still held by the 1st Platoon. Reaching the forward slope of the hill he found the caliber .30 machine gun there was silent; its three-man crew had been killed. Elledge stationed three men in the machine-gun pit and spread the others along the hill, then examined the machine gun. It was binding, apparently having been hit. There was no ammunition. Captain Elledge put the machine gun on his shoulders and ran down the hill with it, after telling his men there that he would bring another one back immediately. He exchanged the damaged gun for an extra caliber .50 machine gun of Battery B. With it and a box of ammunition, he returned to the hill. He set up the weapon, turned it over to the three men, and then continued along the ridge, moving to the right toward the road cut. He wanted to see what the situation was.

Positions still manned by the 1st Platoon were a few yards down the forward slope of the hill, below Captain Elledge. Toward the west end of the hill he heard some odd noises, and stopped beside a three-foot-high grave mound near the top of the hill. Nearby were several men whom he suspected were Chinese. He could not see them, but he could hear them making low whistling sounds, like an owl, probably as a signal to other enemy soldiers. He waited there on his hands and knees, listening. In a few moments he could hear someone crawling over the crusted snow. Raising to look over the mound, he came face to face with an enemy soldier who was also peering over the mound. Captain Elledge was holding his carbine in his right hand. It was set to operate on automatic and was pointed in the general direction of the Chinese. He pulled the trigger and hit the man in the chest. Right behind this Chinese was another whom Captain Elledge shot through the head. A third enemy soldier threw a small "ink bottle" grenade which exploded and hit Elledge in the shoulder. With his arm numb, and figuring he was badly hit, Elledge slid on down the hill and went back to the battery's mess tent.

Soon after 2200, Lieutenant Heath's main line of resistance began to break up when the enemy seized and held part of the 1st Platoon's sector. The three hours that followed were filled with fighting as intense and as frantic as any in which the infantrymen had participated. Although the entire regimental perimeter was under attack, it appeared then that the main effort was directed against Company G. And within that company, the 1st and 3d Platoons were standing athwart the two routes by which the enemy tried to reach the top of Company G's hill. One of these routes followed the spur that led from Hill 397 into the center of the 3d Platoon; the other route ran from the dead space in the creek bed to the saddle at the boundary between the 3d and 1st Platoons. Loss of this saddle early in the night seriously weakened the company's defenses, especially when the leader of the 1st Platoon, not knowing that the enemy had wrested these foxholes from his men, claimed to be in possession of the area for an hour or two after the enemy had been firing the American machine gun from there. This gave the enemy ample time to organize the saddle before the Americans counterattacked.

Lieutenant Heath used all the supporting fire he could get. He had mortar fire from his own light mortars, the 81-mm weapons from Company H, and some help from the regimental Heavy-Mortar Company. The explosions from these shells, most of which fell in the area immediately south of Company G, sounded almost humdrum. The 37th Field Artillery Battalion shelled the slope of Hill 397 1,500 yards south of Company G. Enemy mortar shells fell on the north side of the hill, among Battery B's 155-mm howitzers, and on the French Battalion across the road. At frequent intervals illuminating flares appeared in the sky, and one time a plane dropped three large parachute flares which hovered in the sky above Battery B. They burned for thirty seconds or longer, turning the natural bowl from which the battery was firing into a large room flooded with bluish light. By this time the Chinese had a machine gun operating in the saddle and swung it toward the howitzers, raking the area.

Up on the hill the main weapons were small arms, grenades and explosive charges. The Chinese were fighting for each foxhole, receiving heavy casualties, but also taking some of the holes on Lieutenant Heath's front line and killing and wounding men from Company G and Battery B. The walking wounded slid down the hill and gathered at the building used as the company's command post or at one of the tents set up by the artillerymen, or walked toward the medical clearing station in Chipyongni.

Lieutenant Heath, realizing that the enemy now held the saddle and the flank of both the 1st and the 3d Platoons, tried unsuccessfully to form a counterattack force from the artillerymen. Several groups of artillerymen were fighting determinedly, including a caliber .so machine-gun crew and individuals along the line. But those men Heath tried to build into a counter-attacking force were the artillerymen who had been on the front line and left when heavy fighting commenced, or others who had avoided getting into combat in the first place.

After the first three attempts to reach the top of the hill failed, Lieutenant Heath went to the artillery commander for more men, and then organized his line for another counterattack.

"We're going up that goddam hill or bust," he wept yelling.

While Heath struggled to hold his men together and counterattack, McGee's 3d Platoon gradually lost more men and foxholes. The enemy machine gun, firing from a position in the former sector of the 1st Platoon, sent a bullet through the left eye of Private Inmon (the platoon runner in McGee's foxhole). He started shouting: "I'm hit in the face! I'm hit in the face! Get me back off this hill!"

Blood spurted from his eye as the platoon leader tried to calm him down. Lieutenant McGee told him to lie down. "I can't take you out now," he said. He shouted across to his platoon sergeant for the medic. "Inmon's been hit."

Within a few minutes the aid man came over and bandaged Inmon's head. Lieutenant McGee wanted Inmon to keep on firing his rifle but the wounded man said he could not see well enough, so McGee asked him to load clips for his carbine while he fired.

The 3d Platoon's strongest weapon was Corporal Ottesen's machine gun located in the center of its sector. It fired along the spur over which the enemy crawled toward Company G's line, and enemy soldiers had tried repeatedly to silence it. Some time after midnight two enemy soldiers managed to flank Ottesen's hole and tossed in two grenades, knocking out the gun. Corporal Ottesen became missing in action.

No longer hearing the machine gun, Lieutenant McGee called to his platoon sergeant (Sergeant Kluttz) who was between him and the gun.

"What's happened to the machine gun?" he asked. "It's quit firing."

Sergeant Kluttz told him the position had been overrun and that Chinese were coming through between Corporal Ottesen's squad and Cpl. Raymond Bennett's squad. Bennett's squad, holding the left flank of the platoon, had not been attacked. McGee called him on the sound-powered telephone and ordered him to shift several men over to fill the gap left by the knocked-out machine gun. He also sent his other runner (PFC John Martin) to find Lieutenant Heath and ask for ammunition and for replacements to fill the empty holes along his defensive line. Heath, in turn, called Colonel Edwards, who immediately sent a squad from Company F's uncommitted platoon to bolster Company G's line.

While this squad was on the way, Corporal Bennett succeeded in closing the gap where Corporal Ottesen's machine gun had been. A group of Chinese was still trying hard to seize that part of the hill. There was a bugler in the group whom Bennett shot as he tooted his second note. In the melee, however, Corporal Bennett was hit by a hand grenade which blew off part of his hand. Then a bullet hit him in the shoulder, and shortly thereafter a shell fragment struck him in the head. The soundpowered telephone went out, and Lieutenant McGee lost contact with Bennett's squad.

It was nearly 0200 when Sgt. Kenneth G. Kelly arrived with a squad from Company F's support platoon. This squad had the mission of recovering the part of Company G's line that had fallen to the enemy, especially the saddle between the two platoons. Sergeant Kluttz guided the men west toward the enemy-occupied foxholes and immediately started a fire fight that wounded or killed the entire squad from Company F within ten minutes. After killing two Chinese who fired burp guns at him but missed, Sergeant Kluttz returned to tell Lieutenant McGee what had happened.

"Lieutenant," he said, "we've got to stop them!"

The enemy attack continued without let-up. It was not one calculated to overrun the entire hill but a persistent, gnawing assault that progressed from one hole to the next. The Chinese held most of the holes on that part of the hill between the road cut and the saddle, and those on the right flank of the weakened 3d Platoon. Then, between 0200 and 0300, the 2d Platoon, which was not under heavy fire, pulled back its right flank from its position in the rice paddies, thus breaking contact with Lieutenant McGee's platoon and taking away a machine gun that had been supporting the 3d Platoon. Only a few men from the 3d Platoon were left.

Lieutenant McGee shouted over to Sergeant Kluttz to ask how Corporal Bennett's squad was making out.

"I think three or four of them are still left," the Sergeant answered.

McGee's platoon was low on ammunition and Sergeant Kluttz was having trouble with the machine gun he was firing.

Growing discouraged, Lieutenant McGee called to his platoon sergeant, "It looks like they've got us, Kluttz."

"Well," Sergeant Kluttz called back, "let's kill as many of these sons of ladyes as we can before they get us."

Once in possession of part of Company G's hill, the Chinese fired into the bowl-shaped area among the artillery and mortarmen, causing several casualties. The leader of the 4th Platoon (Lt. Carl F. Haberman) moved his mortars to a ditch a hundred yards or more to the rear. He then set out to find men to help retake the hill and eliminate the enemy fire. He walked into a squad tent filled with artillerymen.

"Hell," he said, "a squad tent won't stop bullets."

Haberman persuaded five or six men to accompany him. They went outside with him but none would climb the hill.

Some time between 0230 and 0300 Company G lost the rest of its hill. Sergeant Schmitt and the remainder of the 1st Platoon came down from the west end of the company's sector. In the center of the company's front, Sergeant Kluttz's machine gun jammed. He and Lieutenant McGee decided to try to get out. They called to the other men, threw what grenades they had left, and climbed over the crest of the hill. Lieutenant McGee and five other men, all who were left from the 3d Platoon, walked on down the hill.

Lieutenant Heath called his battalion commander (Colonel Edwards) to report the loss of his company's position. Since a break occurring anywhere around the small regimental perimeter was serious, Colonel Edwards ordered a counterattack and promised to send help. His battalion reserve now consisted of the support platoon of Company F less the squad that had been lost while attacking the saddle. After ordering this platoon to move to Company G's area, Edwards appealed to Colonel Freeman (CO, 23d Infantry) for more help. Colonel Freeman was fixed no better for reserve strength. An attached Ranger company constituted his reserve, but because of another severe enemy thrust at his 3d Battalion, Colonel Freeman was reluctant to commit his entire reserve in Company G's area. He agreed to furnish one platoon from the Ranger company and a tank.

Since so few of Company G's men were left, Colonel Edwards decided to put one of his battalion staff officers (Lt. Robert Curtis) in command of the two platoons. Curtis set out to meet the Ranger platoon and guide it into position.

While these two platoons were on the way, Lieutenant Heath attempted to form a defensive line along a four- or five-foot rib of ground that crossed the center of the bowl-shaped area just behind the artillery position. At the fire direction center several artillerymen were firing an illuminating mission when they heard Heath's voice outside. Heath was now speaking in a normal voice as he stationed one of his men on the new defensive line.

"We'll form our line right along here," he explained to the man, "just back of this tent."

The artillerymen looked at one another for a few seconds.

"I guess it's time to get out of here," one of them said.

They pulled a blanket over two wounded men who lay on the ground, and prepared to leave. Just then the telephone rang. It was the S-3 of the 37th Field Artillery Battalion inquiring about the illuminating mission he had requested.

"Where the hell are my flares?" he asked.

"Excuse me, sir," answered the artilleryman, "but our position is being overrun."

He dropped the telephone, followed the others outside, and crossed to the opposite side of the road in front of the howitzers. A three-foothigh embankment there afforded good protection. Other artillerymen were already behind it. The artillerymen did not abandon their howitzers; they could still cover the battery's position by fire.

Lieutenant Curtis, with the platoon from Company F and the Ranger platoon, reached Company G about 0330. [18] Lieutenant Curtis took command of the two platoons but immediately encountered trouble from the commander of the Ranger company. The latter officer had come with the platoon from his company. He claimed that the platoon, being a part of regimental reserve, was to take orders only from the regimental commander. Curtis immediately called his battalion headquarters to explain the situation to Colonel Edwards, who solved the problem by putting another staff officer this time a captain in command of the composite force.

It was between 0345 and 0400, 15 February, when Capt. John H. Ramsburg left the long, tin-roofed building that housed the battalion's command post and set out for Company G's area. Except for Company G's sector where there was brisk firing, the regimental perimeter was relatively quiet at the time. A quarter of a mile beyond the railroad tracks Ramsburg turned left, following a trail that led from the road to the house where Lieutenant Heath had established his command post.

Along the trail there was a quad caliber .so halftrack. An hour or two before the crew with the vehicle had accidentally run into a ditch, nearly tipping the halftrack over. Unable to get it into firing position, the crew had abandoned the weapon and vehicle. Lieutenant Curtis was standing near he halftrack. There was enough light in the area for Captain Ramsburg to recognize him at a distance of ten or fifteen feet.

"Christ, John," Lieutenant Curtis said, "but I'm glad to see you here! Can't do anything with these Rangers."

He went on to explain that the commander of the Ranger company objected to having a platoon from his company attached to another unit, to having it participate in a counterattack, and that he refused to take orders from anyone but the regimental commander.

Captain Ramsburg went first to Lieutenant Heath's command post where he called Colonel Edwards in order to report that he and both platoons were at the position. He then talked with the commander of the Ranger company to establish his position as commander of the infantry units in that sector.

At the time the few men left from Company G and those from the platoons from Company F and the Ranger company were all mixed together just a line of bodies on the ground firing against the hill to discourage the enemy from attempting a further advance. Captain Ramsburg had the platoon leaders separate their units and sort out the artillerymen whom he sent across the road where most men from the battery had assembled. Since none of Company G's communications facilities was working at the time, Captain Ramsburg asked Lieutenant Curtis to send men to Chipyongni for more radios. He then asked Lieutenant McGee to have the mortars moved closer to the line of departure so that he could call out orders to the crew.

In the meantime, the two platoon leaders re-formed their men. There were 36 men in the platoon from the Ranger company, 28 in the platoon from Company F. In addition, there were 6 or 7 mortarmen, 2 machinegun crews, and 4 or 5 men left from Company G. To the two platoon leaders he outlined his plan: following a short mortar concentration, the two machine guns would commence firing at the top of the ridge and over the heads of the attacking men who were to move on Captain Ramsburg's signal. The Ranger platoon, on the right, was to attack the hill formerly held by the 1st Platoon of Company G, while the platoon from Company F was to assault Lieutenant McGee's former position.

It was still dark when a man returned with three SCR-536 radios one each for Captain Ramsburg and his two platoon leaders. The enemy was fairly quiet at the time and had not interfered with organizing the attack. After testing the radios and getting all men in position on the line of departure, Captain Ramsburg called for mortar fire. The first round, fired from a range of not more than 150 yards, landed squarely on the crest of the ridge.

"That where you want 'em?" one of the mortarmen asked.

"That's exactly right," Captain Ramsburg yelled back. "Now go ahead and sweep the hill in both directions."

He asked for a five-minute concentration. The mortarmen doubted that their ammunition would last that long. After two or three minutes, Captain Ramsburg signaled for machine-gun fire. The two guns went into action, but after a few bursts enemy mortar rounds landed nearby, and both the friendly mortars and the machine guns had to cease firing. Eight or ten rounds landed between the line of departure and the mortar crews about twenty yards behind it. The explosions wounded at least six men, including the leader of the platoon from Company F.

The commander of the Ranger company, thinking that friendly rounds were falling short, called for the mortar crews to cease firing. The shouting interfered with efforts to get the attack under way. Captain Ramsburg became angry. He ordered the Ranger commander to gather up and evacuate his wounded men, hoping thereby to get rid of the commander as well as the wounded men.

The platoon sergeant took command of the platoon from Company F, the machine guns opened fire again, and Captain Ramsburg signaled for the jumpoff.

"OK, let's go!" he shouted.

The men stood up, commenced firing, and walked forward through crusted snow which, in the low ground in front of the hill, was knee-deep in places. In a minute or two the advancing line, with Captain Ramsburg moving in the center, started up the hillside, the Rangers in the lead since men from that platoon, all yelling loudly, pushed their attack fast.

Several enemy mortar rounds and a few grenades exploded on the slope of the hill. In the middle of the attack, two guns located near the French Battalion's hill fired into the Ranger platoon. The guns appeared to be either automatic rifles or light machine guns, but Captain Ramsburg could not tell if the French were firing by mistake, or if Chinese soldiers had set up guns in that area. Nor did he later learn who was firing. The first burst was a long, steady one a solid string of light from the gun to the Ranger platoon. After that there were short bursts for a minute or longer while Captain Ramsburg and several other men, believing this to be friendly fire, screamed to have it stopped. Several Rangers were wounded by this fire.

Just before the attack jumped off, Lieutenant Curtis had gone to each of the three tanks in that area to tell the tankers of the counterattack plans, and to warn them not to fire without orders. He had just returned when the machine gun fired into the Ranger platoon. One of the tank crews, having apparently decided the machine gun firing from the French Battalion's hill was friendly and the Rangers were enemy, disregarded orders and also opened fire, aiming the tank's caliber .50 machine gun at the Ranger platoon. While Captain Ramsburg yelled at the tankers, Lieutenant Curtis raced back and halted the machine gun, which had fired for 20 or 30 seconds, only long enough to sweep across the hill once. Besides creating more confusion, this caused additional casualties among the Rangers, the remaining ones of whom, by this time, were near the top of their hill still yelling among themselves.

Another gun this one definitely manned by the Chinese had meanwhile opened fire into the left flank of the platoon from Company F, causing serious damage in that area. The gun was in the rice paddies near the place where the 2d Platoon of Company G had been, and gave the attacking force its first indication that friendly troops had vacated that position. The commander of Company F spotted the tracers from this enemy gun and directed mortar fire at it but was unable to knock it out. As he afterward learned, the Chinese crew had been there long enough to dig in and provide overhead protection for the gun.

Captain Ramsburg, occupied with the machine-gun fire hitting the right flank of his line, did not know of the trouble the platoon from Company F was experiencing on the opposite end. Lieutenant Curtis succeeded in silencing the tank's fire. Several men from the Ranger platoon were already on top of their objective shouting for help.

"We're on top!" they yelled. "Come on up! Get some men up here!"

Other members of that platoon were still climbing the hill, but a third or more were casualties by this time, the result of either friendly or enemy fire.

A grenade exploded beside Captain Ramsburg just as the tank's fire ended and he turned to go on up the hill. A fragment struck him in the foot. At the moment he was holding a caliber .45 submachine gun in his right hand and at first he thought that, in his anger and excitement over the machine-gun fire from his own tanks, he had squeezed too hard on the trigger and shot himself through the foot. He wondered how he would explain the accident to Colonel Edwards. He then realized his gun was on full automatic and, had he pulled the trigger, it would have fired several times. He also recalled seeing a flash and decided he had been hit by a grenade fragment. He removed his glove and sat down to examine his foot. The two machine-gun crews came by on their way to the top of the hill where they were to relocate their guns. A little later Lieutenant Heath came up the hill and stopped where Ramsburg was sitting.

Permission to fire from the infantrymen. At the command post, Captain Ramsburg had just given the order to pull out.

"Go ahead and fire," he told Captain Elledge. "No one's left up there."

Captain Elledge returned to the quad .50 and swept the length of the enemy-held hill. The tank commander (MSgt. Andrew Reyna) appeared at that time to ask for help in recovering sixteen wounded men artillerymen and infantrymen who had been left at Battery B's supply tent near the foot of the hill and directly under the enemy's guns. While Captain Elledge kept pounding the enemy hilltop with fire from his four machine guns, Sergeant Reyna and his crew drove the tank under the fire to the base of the hill, carried the wounded men from the tent, piled them on the tank, and returned.

Captain Elledge had been firing so steadily that, in the first gray light of the morning, artillerymen across the road could see heat waves shimmering above the four guns. Elledge scanned the area, looking for targets. He noticed several enemy soldiers standing on the hill between the saddle and the road cut, and suddenly realized they were preparing to fire a 75-mm recoilless rifle that the 1st Platoon of Company G had left there. It was aimed directly at him. Captain Elledge could see daylight through the tube. He watched as the Chinese shoved a round into the breech, then he quickly turned his machine guns in that direction and destroyed the enemy crew.

Two wounded men had been left under a blanket in the fire direction center tent. While one tank, firing from the road, covered the rescue, PFC Thomas S. Allison and PFC Isaiah W. Williams (both members of the artillery wire section) drove a 3/4-ton truck to the tent, loaded the two wounded men onto it, and backed out again.

Lieutenant Curtis urged the remaining wounded men to start walking toward Chipyong-ni, then ran to the road to tell the artillerymen that the infantrymen were pulling back.

"You're the front line now," he told them.

The artillerymen, concerned about the safety of their howitzers, decided to stay behind the road embankment where, by fire, they could keep the Chinese out of their battery's position. Two tanks on the road separating the artillerymen from their howitzers regularly fired short machine-gun bursts into the blackened, chewed-up top of the hill.

At the command post only nine wounded men were left not counting Captain Ramsburg, who stayed behind to supervise the withdrawal. All nine were seriously wounded and waiting for litters and a vehicle to carry them to the battalion's aid station. They were lying on the ground near the straw-roofed buildings. As Lieutenant Curtis returned to the command post, a bugle sounded and he saw 10 or 12 Chinese soldiers coming down the highest hill the one originally defended by Lieutenant McGee's platoon. Curtis pointed out the enemy to the wounded men.

"If you fellows don't leave now," he told them, "you'll never leave. There aren't enough men left to protect you."

All nine men left, somehow or other moving with only the help they could give one another or get from Lieutenant Curtis, who followed them, heading back to the new defensive position.

Only two men both sergeants remained at the command post with Captain Ramsburg. The sergeants pulled out the telephones and the three men started toward Chipyong-ni, moving across the frozen rice paddies. Before they had gone far, however, an enemy machine-gunner fired at them. They broke into a run. Captain Ramsburg, disregarding his broken ankle which was now stiff and sore, sprinted the entire distance to the new hilltop.

The quad .50 still manned by Captain Elledge and the three tanks pounded the enemy hill with machine-gun fire. One of the artillery officers yelled for a gun crew to man a howitzer, and half a dozen men scrambled over the road embankment and dashed to one of the 155-mm howitzers. Turning it around, they fired six white phosphorus shells that blossomed into white streamers of smoke and fire along the hillside. At such close range, the sound of the propelling charge and the sound of the shell burst were barely separated.

At the new position, Captain Ramsburg joined the survivors of the tenhour enemy attack, as well as the remaining two platoons of the Ranger company attached to Colonel Edwards's battalion. All of the men experienced a feeling of relief when daylight came on 15 February, because the enemy soldiers usually withdrew then. This time, however, the Chinese did not withdraw. They conducted a determined defense against an attack made by the Ranger company and Company B, supported by air strikes, artillery, and tanks, and directed by Colonel Edwards. It was evening before the enemy was defeated and withdrew.

Several inches of snow fell during the night of 15-16 February, covering several hundred Chinese bodies on the hill originally defended by Lieutenant Heath's Company G. At Chipyong-ni the Chinese suffered their first defeat since entering the Korean war.

Task Force Crombez

While the 23d Regimental Combat Team, surrounded by Chinese Communists at Chipyong-ni, braced itself for the second night of the siege, a regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division set out on a sort of rescue mission: to drive through enemy lines, join the encircled unit and give it all possible assistance. Specifically, it was to open the road for supply vehicles and ambulances.

On 14 February 1951, the 5th Cavalry Regiment was in corps reserve when the commanding general of U.S. IX Corps (Maj.Gen. Bryant E. Moore) alerted it for possible action. It was midafternoon when he first telephoned the regimental commander (Col. Marcel G. Crombez) warning him to make plans for an attack along the road running from Yoju to Koksu-ri and then northeast into Chipyong-ni a road distance of fifteen miles. Another force, attacking along the better and more direct road to Chipyong-ni, had been unable to make fast enough progress because of heavily entrenched enemy forces along its route.

Immediately relaying the warning order to subordinate units, Colonel Crombez organized a task force.

In addition to the three organic infantry battalions of the 5th Cavalry, he included a medical company, a company of combat engineers, two battalions of field artillery of which one was equipped with selfpropelled howitzers, two platoons of medium tanks, and an attached company of medium tanks. [4] The last named Company D, 6th Tank Battalion was not a part of the 1st Cavalry Division, but happened to be located closer than any other available tank company. General Moore attached Company D to the 5th Cavalry and ordered it to get under way within thirty minutes to join that unit. Company D was on the road twenty-eight minutes later. At 1700 that afternoon, the corps commander again called.:

"You'll have to move out tonight," he told Colonel Crombez, "and I know you'll do it."

In the darkness, trucks and vehicles formed a column along the narrow, rutted road, snow covered and patched with ice. Moving under black-out conditions and in enemy territory, all units except the two artillery battalions crossed the Han River and advanced approximately half of the distance to Chipyong-ni. About midnight the regimental column halted at a destroyed bridge where units formed defensive perimeters while combat engineers rebuilt the structure.

At daylight on 15 February, the 1t Battalion jumped off again this time on foot. Its mission was to seize a terrain feature on the right which dominated the road for several miles to the north. When the battalion was engaged after moving a hundred or two hundred yards, Colonel Crombez sent the 2d Battalion to attack north on the left side of the road. Within an hour or two a full-scale regimental attack was in progress. Two artillery battalions supported the action, lifting their fire only for air strikes. Chinese resistance was firm. Observers in airplanes reported large enemy forces north of the attacking battalions.

The advance lagged throughout the morning. Sensing that the enemy offered too much opposition for the infantry battalions to be able to reach Chipyong-ni by evening, Colonel Crombez decided that only an armored task force would be able to penetrate the enemy-held territory. With corps and division headquarters pressing for progress, Colonel Crombez separated the tanks a total of twenty-three from his regimental column, and organized an armored task force. The tanks came from Company D, 6th Tank Battalion, and Company A, 70th Tank Battalion. He also ordered a company of infantrymen to accompany the tanks in order to protect them from fanatic enemy troops who might attempt to knock out the tanks at close range. This task fell to Company L, 5th Cavalry Regiment. In addition, four combat engineer soldiers were ordered to go along to lift any antitank mines that might be discovered. The engineers and the infantrymen were to ride on top of the tanks.

While the tanks maneuvered into position, Colonel Crombez reconnoitered the road to Chipyong-ni by helicopter. It was a secondary road even by Korean standards: narrow, with mountain slopes on the left side and flat rice paddies on the right, except at a deep roadcut a mile south of Chipyong-ni where, for a short distance, steep cliffs walled both sides of the road.

Meanwhile, the Company L commander (Capt. John C. Barrett) and the commander of Company D, 6th Tank Battalion (Capt. Johnnie M. Hiers), worked out the plans at company level. The two officers agreed that when the tanks stopped, the troopers would dismount, deploy on both sides of the road, and protect the tanks and the engineers who might be lifting mines. When the tank column was ready to proceed, Captain Hiers would inform the tankers by radio; the tankers, in turn, would signal the troopers to remount.

The M46 tanks of the 6th Tank Battalion were placed to lead the 70th Tank Battalion's M4A3 tanks because the M46s mounted 90-mm guns, could turn completely around in place (an important consideration in the mountainous terrain traversed by a single and narrow road), and had better armor protection than the M4A3 tanks, which mounted only 76-mm guns.

Original plans called for a separate column of supply trucks and ambulances to follow the tanks. Colonel Crombez, however, doubted if such a column could get through. He decided to proceed with only the armored vehicles. When the road was clear and suitable for wheeled traffic, he would radio instructions to the supply vehicles and ambulances. By radio he informed the commanding officer of the 23d RCT that he was coming, but without the supply trains.

"Come on," the commander of the encircled force answered; "trains or no trains."

Just before the task force left, the commander of the 3d Battalion, 5th Cavalry (Lt.Col. Edgar J. Treacy, Jr.) arranged for a 2 1/2-ton truck to follow the rear of the tank column and pick up any wounded men from Company L. The Company L commander (Captain Barrett) issued instructions that any troopers who became separated from the tank column were to make their way back to friendly lines if possible, or wait near the road, utilizing the best available defensive positions, until the tanks returned from Chipyong-ni later in the day.

About 1500 Captain Barrett mounted his company on the tanks in the center of the column, leaving four tanks at each end of the column bare. The four engineer soldiers rode on the second tank in the column. Thus, 15 tanks carried 160 Company L infantrymen. The infantry platoon leaders selected one man on each tank to fire the caliber .50 machine gun mounted on its deck. Captain Barrett rode on the sixth tank in line, along with ten enlisted men and Colonel Treacy who, at the last minute, decided to accompany the task force.

Planes strafed and bombed enemy positions along the route of march before the armored column took off. The two infantry battalions maintained strong pressure to keep the Chinese occupied and to prevent them from drawing off any strength to throw against the task force. With Colonel Crombez riding in the fifth tank, the mile-long column got under way at 1545 on 15 February. Liaison planes circled overhead, maintaining contact with the advancing tanks.

The task force, with fifty-yard intervals between tanks, proceeded about two miles until the lead tank approached the village of Koksu-ri.

All of a sudden, enemy mortar shells began exploding near the tanks, and enemy riflemen and machine gunners opened fire on the troopers exposed on the decks. Just then the lead tank stopped at a bridge bypass on the south edge of Koksu-ri, and the entire column came to a halt. The tankers turned their guns toward Chinese whom they could see clearly on nearby hills and opened fire with their machine guns and cannons. Several troopers, wounded by the first bursts of enemy fire, fell or were knocked from the tanks. Others left the tanks, not so much to protect them as to take cover themselves. Colonel Crombez directed the tank fire.

"We're killing hundreds of them!" he shouted over the intertank communications.

After a few minutes, however, feeling that the success of the task force depended upon the ability of the tanks to keep moving, Colonel Crombez directed them to continue.

Without warning, the tanks moved forward. The troopers raced after the moving tanks but, in the scramble, thirty or more men, including two officers of Company L, were left behind. The truck following the tanks picked up three wounded men who had been left lying near the road. This truck, however, was drawing so much enemy fire that other wounded men preferred to stay where they were. After both officers in the group were wounded by mortar fire, MSgt. Lloyd L. Jones organized the stranded men and led them back toward their own lines.

There was another halt just after the column passed through Koksu-ri, and again the infantrymen deployed. Against the intense enemy fire the tankers and infantrymen fired furiously to hold the enemy soldiers at some distance. For the second time, the tanks began moving without notifying the infantrymen, and again many Company L men were unable to remount. Some troopers were deployed 50 or 75 yards from the road and the tanks were going too fast to remount by the time the men got back to the road. Less than seventy men were left on the tanks when Task Force Crombez moved out after the second halt. Another large group of men was left to seek cover or to attempt to rejoin friendly units south of Koksu-ri. Several men from this group, including the commander of the 3d Battalion (Colonel Treacy) are known to have become prisoners of the Chinese.

Captain Barrett was unable to remount the tank upon which he had been riding, but he did manage to climb on the fifth or sixth tank behind it.

During the next three or three and a half miles there were several brief halts and almost continuous enemy fire directed against the column whether it was halted or moving. Several times, in the face of heavy enemy fire, tank commanders inquired if they should slow down or stop long enough to shell and silence the Chinese guns. Although enemy fire was causing many casualties among the troopers who remained on the tanks, Colonel Crombez, speaking in a calm and cool voice over the radio network, each time directed the column to continue forward.

Task Force Crombez, in turn, maintained a volume of rifle, machinegun, and cannon fire that, throughout the six-mile attack, could be heard by members of the infantry battalions still in position at the task force point of departure. Much of this fire was directed only against the bordering hills, but there were also definite targets at which to aim enemy machine guns, bazooka teams, and individual Chinese carrying pole or satchel charges. Even though it was difficult to aim from moving tanks, the remaining troopers kept firing at Chinese soldiers who several times were within fifty yards of the road. On one occasion Captain Barrett shot and killed three enemy soldiers who, trotting across a rice field toward the tanks, were carrying a bangalore torpedo.

Because of the intense enemy fire on the road, Colonel Crombez decided that wheeled traffic would be unable to get through. When he had gone about two thirds of the way to Chipyong-ni, he radioed back instructions to hold up the supply trucks and ambulances and await further orders.

The Chinese made an all-out effort to halt Task Force Crombez when the leading tanks entered the deep roadcut south of Chipyong-ni. For a distance of about 150 yards the road passed between steep embankments that were between 30 and so feet high. And on each side of the road at that point were dominating hills, the one on the right (east) side of the road being Hill 397 from which the Chinese had launched several of their attacks against the Chipyong-ni perimeter. There was a sudden flare-up of enemy fire as the point tank (commanded by Lt. Lawrence L. DeSchweinitz) approached the cut. Mortar rounds exploded on and near the road. SFC James Maxwell (in the second tank) spotted an enemy soldier carrying a bazooka along the top of the embankment at the roadcut. He immediately radioed a warning to Lieutenant DeSchweinitz, but before he got the call through a bazooka round struck the point tank, hitting the top of the turret and wounding DeSchweinitz, the gunner (Cpl. Donald P. Harrell), and the loader (Pvt. Joseph Galard). The tank continued but without communication since the explosion also destroyed its radio.
The four members of the engineer mine-detector team rode on the next tank in line (Sergeant Maxwell's). They clung to the tank as it entered the zone of intense enemy fire. An antitank rocket or pole charge exploded on each side of Maxwell's tank as it entered the pass and one of the engineers was shot from the deck, but the vehicle continued, as did the next tank in the column.

Captain Hiers (tank company commander) rode in the fourth tank that entered the road cut. Striking the turret, a bazooka round penetrated the armor and exploded the ammunition in the ready racks inside. The tank started to burn. The men in the fighting compartment, including Captain Hiers, were killed. Although severely burned, the driver of the tank (Cpl. John A. Calhoun) gunned the engine and drove through the cut and off the road, thus permitting the remainder of the column to advance. [32] It was later learned that this tank was destroyed by an American 3.5inch bazooka which had fallen into enemy hands.

With the enemy located at the top of the cliffs directly overlooking the task force column and throwing satchel charges and firing rockets down at the tanks, close teamwork among the tankers became particularly necessary for mutual protection. As each of the remaining tanks rammed through the cut, crews from the tanks that followed and those already beyond the danger area fired a heavy blast at the embankments on both sides of the road. This cut down enemy activity during the minute or less required for each tank to run the cut. The enemy fire did, however, thin out the infantrymen riding on the tanks and, at the tail of the task force, flattened a tire on the 2 1/2-ton truck that had been gathering up the wounded infantrymen who had either fallen or been knocked from the tanks. The driver had been hit near Koksu-ri as he was putting a wounded infantryman on the truck. Another wounded man (SFC George A. Krizan) drove after that and, although he was wounded a second time, continued driving until the truck was disabled at the roadcut. A few of the wounded men managed to get to one of the last tanks in the column, which carried them on into Chipyong-ni. The others, surrounded by the enemy, became missing in action.

Meanwhile, within the perimeter of the 23d RCT at Chipyong-ni, the 2d Battalion was fighting off stubborn and persistent enemy attempts to overrun the sector shared by Company G, 23d Infantry, and Battery A, 503d Field Artillery Battalion, on the south rim of the perimeter. Late in the afternoon of 15 February, after twenty hours of uninterrupted fighting, the battalion commander managed to send four tanks a short distance down the road leading south beyond the regimental defense perimeter with the mission of getting behind the Chinese and firing into their exposed flank and rear. Ten or fifteen minutes of firing by the four tanks appeared to have suddenly disrupted the Chinese organization. Enemy soldiers began running.

Just at that moment, tanks of Task Force Crombez appeared from the south. Sergeant Maxwell, in the second tank, saw the four tanks on the road ahead and was just about to open fire when he recognized them as friendly. The leading tanks stopped. For about a minute everyone waited, then Sergeant Maxwell dismounted and walked forward to make contact with the 23d Infantry's tanks. He asked them to withdraw and allow Task Force Crombez to get through.

By this time the Chinese were in the process of abandoning their positions south of Chipyong-ni and many were attempting to escape. Enemy opposition dwindled. With enemy soldiers moving in the open, targets were plentiful for a short time and Colonel Crombez halted his force long enough to take the Chinese under fire.

At 1700 Task Force Crombez entered the Chipyong-ni perimeter. It had required an hour and fifteen minutes for the tanks to break through a little more than six miles of enemy territory. Even though there were neither supply trucks nor ambulances with the column, and although the task force itself was low on ammunition, infantrymen were cheered by the sight of reinforcements.

Of 160 Company L infantrymen plus the 4 engineers who had started out riding the tank decks, only 23 remained. Of these, 13 were wounded, of whom 1 died of wounds that evening. Some members of that company already had returned to join the remainder of the 3d Battalion near the point of departure; a few wounded men lay scattered along the road between Koksuri and Chipyong-ni. While crossing the six miles of drab and barren country between those two villages, Company L lost about 70 men nearly half of its strength. Twelve men were dead, 19 were missing in action, and about 40 were wounded.

With only an hour of daylight remaining, Colonel Crombez had to choose between returning at once to his regiment, or spending the night at Chipyong-ni. Any enemy opposition encountered on a return trip that evening would probably delay into darkness the contact with friendly forces, and unprotected tanks operating in the darkness, he reasoned, could be ambushed easily by enemy groups.

On the other hand, the 23d RCT was dangerously low on small-caliber ammunition, airdrops that day having contained only artillery shells. Task Force Crombez had fired most of its ammunition during the action. Officers inside the perimeter wondered if there were enough small-arms ammunition to beat off another Chinese attack.

There was another reason for returning. Seriously wounded infantry-men within the perimeter urgently needed to be evacuated. It was also probable that men from Company L who had been wounded or stranded during the attack by Task Force Crombez were waiting near the road, according to their instructions, hoping to be picked up again as the tanks made the return trip. However, weighing the two risks, Colonel Crombez chose to stay. He arranged to station his tanks around the perimeter to strengthen the defense, but no attack came. Except for a few flares that appeared over enemy territory, the night passed quietly. Toward morning it began to snow.

At 0900, 16 February, the scheduled time for return to the regiment, Colonel Crombez informed his assembled force that the return trip would be postponed because the snow, reducing visibility at times to less than a hundred yards, prevented air cover. It was 1100 before the weather cleared and the task force was reassembled. This time Colonel Crombez stated that only volunteers from the infantrymen and the engineer minedetecting crew would ride on the tanks. None volunteered. Instead, an artillery liaison plane hovered over the column as it moved south. The observer in the plane had instructions to adjust proximity-fuzed shells directly on the column if the enemy attempted to destroy any of the tanks. On the return trip not a single enemy was seen, nor a shot fired. [40]

Immediately upon his return Colonel Crombez ordered the assembled supply train to proceed to Chipyong-ni. Escorted by tanks, twenty-eight 2l/2ton trucks and nineteen ambulances pulled out in the middle of the afternoon. For his part, Captain Barrett (the Company L commander), having returned with the task force because he wanted to find out what had happened to the rest of his company, set out in a jeep to retrace the route and search for wounded men who might still be lying along the road. He found four whom he turned over to the evacuation train at Chipyong-ni. The ambulances and seven 2 1/2-ton trucks, all loaded with wounded men from the 23d Regimental Combat Team, left Chipyong-ni that evening. The siege was ended.

A Rifle Company as a Covering Force

Toward the end of April 1951, Communist forces in North Korea launched an offensive against the peninsula-wide United Nations line. Except near Kaesong, at the west end, Eighth Army troops were ten or more miles north of the 38th parallel when the enemy attack began on the 22d day of the month. Although the attack was general in both plan and scope, North Korean units fighting on the east end of the front made only scant efforts and small advances. Chinese Communist forces concentrated on the west half of the line, aiming the heavy punch at the city of Seoul, thirty-five miles south of existing lines. The Chinese called the attack the "First Step, Fifth Phase Offensive."

This enemy activity interrupted an Eighth Army limited offensive that contemplated seizing the Chorwon-Kumhwa-Pyonggang area, an important communication and supply area commonly called "The Iron Triangle." The 3d Infantry Division was attacking north toward Chorwon and Pyonggang along the road running from Seoul through these towns and then north to the eastern port city of Wonsan. Units of the 3d were within ten miles of Chorwon and about the same distance north of the Imjin River.

As usual, the Chinese waited until after dark before launching their big attack. By morning on the following day (Z3 April) they had penetrated United Nations' lines at widely scattered points and, under orders, units of Eighth Army began falling back. The 3d Division gave up ten miles of territory, returned to the south bank of the Imjin River, and there, by the evening of the 23d, took up previously prepared positions on an established Eighth Army fortified defense line. The 7th Infantry (3d Division) was placed on a ridge overlooking the important Seoul-ChorwonWonsan road and the single-track railroad that parallels it. The position was especially important since it guarded the crossing site of the Imjin River. This was the same road and river crossing the North Koreans had used when they first invaded South Korean territory during the summer of 1950.

The 7th Infantry positions were not more than a thousand yards south of the 38th parallel, the former boundary between North and South Korea. The 1st Battalion occupied the east end of the regimental sector. Company B manned the bunkers and foxholes on Hill 283 and those along the ridgeline that slanted down toward the road. Company A's sector extended from Company B, southwest across a long, brush-covered saddle, then west along the top of Hill 287 a company front of 1,400 yards. Beyond Company A there was a gap of about 500 yards between its leftflank position and the right flank of the 3d Battalion, which occupied another ridgeline to the north and west.

To cover the wide Company A front, its commander (Lt. Harley F. Mooney) committed his three rifle platoons on his front line, leaving as his reserve a force of only eight men including himself, his executive officer, and his Weapons Platoon leader. Except for being thinly manned, however, Mooney's defensive positions were good. In most places the north side of the hill was too steep to permit the enemy to maneuver in front of the company.

The Weapons Platoon leader (Lt. John N. Middlemas) covered the critical areas with his weapons. He "fired-in" mortar concentrations in front of each platoon and located his mortar position near the center of the company front and only a few yards behind it so that the mortar crews would immediately be available if needed for front-line action.

Lieutenant Mooney considered his left flank the weakest section of the line since the best approach for the Chinese was at that end. In addition, the existing gap between the two battalions made that area more vulnerable. He stationed the 1st Platoon (MSgt. Joseph J. Lock) at that end. To cover the gap between the two battalions, Sergeant Lock sent his second-in-command (SFC Thomas R. Teti) with nine other men to establish an out-post on a small hill between the two battalions. Mooney then instructed Teti to make physical contact with the adjoining unit of the 3d Battalion once an hour. Company I agreed to send a patrol to contact Teti's outpost on alternate half-hour periods.

This was the position of troops when Chinese Communists renewed their attack on the morning of 24 April. Within the defensive position of the 7th Infantry, the heaviest enemy pressure was against the 3d Battalion, which was engaged throughout the day and the following night. Another enemy force struck Company B's end of the line and started a heavy fire fight that lasted from midnight until first light on 25 April. Men from company A waited quietly and tensely between these areas of activity, watching and listening. They were not disturbed.

At 0700 on 25 April a large enemy force attacked an observation post that the 3d Battalion had established on a hill about four hundred yards south of Lieutenant Mooney's company. Since this hill was over three hundred feet higher than front-line positions of either the 1st or 3d Battalions, it afforded observation of both battalions. The enemy force, after having penetrated the lines during the night, made a sudden and strong assault against the observation-post hill, forcing the battalion commander and his group to abandon it hurriedly. In enemy hands, this hill threatened both battalions.

Sergeant Lock, in charge of the left-flank platoon, watched this enemy action and, as soon as he realized what had happened, turned his machine gun toward the Chinese to restrict their movement and help the members of the observation-post party who were escaping toward the south and the north in order to rejoin Company A. Sergeant Lock also called Mooney, who immediately had his Weapons Platoon leader (Lieutenant Middlemas) shift his 57-mm recoilless rifle to the west flank from where it could be fired more effectively against the Chinese.

Meanwhile, the S-3 of the 1st Battalion called Mooney to tell him the regiment had orders to move to a fortified Eighth Army line just north of Seoul.

"You and Baker Company are to cover the withdrawal of the 3d Battalion and then be prepared to move Able Company out at 1000."

The S-3 designated Lieutenant Mooney's company as rear guard for the move because there was a trail from the center of Company A's position that went southwest down the hill to the road to Seoul. This was the only easily accessible route by which the three companies of the 3d Battalion and the two companies of the 1st Battalion could get down with their equipment and wounded men. The plan outlined to Mooney was for the three companies of the 3d Battalion to move through Company A in column of companies. Company B then would pass through the right flank of Company A. This action was to begin immediately. Lieutenant Mooney called his platoon leaders to tell them of the orders, then walked over to the top of Hill 283 to coordinate plans with the commander of Company B (Capt. Ray W. Blandin, Jr.). The time was about 0800.

At the opposite end of the line Sergeant Lock's platoon was still busy firing at the Chinese, who were now in full possession of the 3d Battalion's OP hill. On the north side of this hill there was a trail that the Chinese followed, and near the top the trail curved around a large rock. Sergeant Lock's machine gunner (Cpl. Pedro Colon Rodriguez) zeroed his light machine gun in on that point on the trail a range of about three hundred yards-and fired cautiously, usually squeezing off one round at a time, throughout the morning. He did not fire at every Chinese who passed the point, but after hitting one, would allow one or several others to pass unmolested before firing again. Because he was not greedy the Chinese kept using the trail and Rodriguez hit a total of fifty-nine enemy soldiers during several hours of firing.

After returning from Company B's position, Lieutenant Mooney and his executive officer (Lt. Leonard Haley) briefed the platoon leaders on the plan for moving Company A after the other units had started down the trail. To better cover his route of withdrawal Mooney decided to peel off his line from the left. Sergeant Teti's outpost between the two battalions would follow the last element of the 3d Battalion. Sergeant Lock's platoon would follow Teti; next, the 2d Platoon would follow and move through the 3d which would hold the right flank until the rest of the company was on the trail; then it would move out.

By the time Mooney had thoroughly briefed his platoon leaders it was 0900. There were still heavy exchanges of fire between the Chinese on the OP hill and Lock's left-flank platoon. Mooney, believing that the next action would be against this platoon, went to the west end of his line where he could best observe that situation. He was also anxious to learn what was happening to the 3d Battalion, knowing that the commander had lost control at the time his group was forced to leave the observation post. Even though an hour and a half had gone by since the order to leave had been issued, none of the men from 3d Battalion had yet reached the outpost position manned by Sergeant Teti, who had orders to call Mooney as soon as the first men appeared. Teti could see only an increase of enemy activity in the zone of the 3d Battalion. At the same time, the volume of rifle and machine-gun fire from the OP hill had increased steadily.

It was about 0915 when the first of the 3d Battalion men from Company K came through Lieutenant Mooney's area. They were tired from the activity during the previous night and day, and walked slowly along the narrow trail. They sat down if there was any delay along the single-file column. Mooney urged them to hurry. This made little impression on the weary men, however, and the column moved haltingly. It required fortyfive minutes for Company K to clear, and by the time men from the next company appeared it was after 1000. This was the hour scheduled for Company A to begin moving but Mooney, now that this was no longer possible, called his battalion headquarters again for further orders. He was told to wait until everyone else was off the ridgeline before moving his own company.

At the opposite end of the battalion front, however, Company B's commander (Captain Blandin) started his company down the trail at 1000 according to plan, unaware that the plan had broken down. Lieutenant Mooney received the information by telephone from his executive officer (Lieutenant Haley). This posed a new threat on the east flank although Mooney still believed the Chinese were most likely to strike Sergeant Lock's platoon at the west end of the line. He told Haley to send a few men to outpost the top of Hill 283, which had been Company B's left flank, and to bend the right flank of the company line south and refuse it. Haley sent a sergeant with four men to outpost Hill 283.

While these events were taking place, four planes made a strike with napalm and rockets on the OP hill causing a sudden drop in enemy fire from that area. A brief and relatively calm period followed while men from the 3d Battalion filed along the path. At 1100 the last men from Company I, still moving slowly, reached the spot where Lieutenant Mooney was waiting. Mooney urged the officers of the company to hurry, but they explained they needed litters and that the men were very tired. Mooney offered to furnish the litters, adding, "You'd better hurry or all of us will be up here and we'll be damned tired."

It had taken about two hours for two of the three companies to clear through Company A's area. In the meantime, Captain Blandin's Company B had reached the bottom of the hill where he reported to his battalion commander (Lt.Col. Fred D. Weyand). Colonel Weyand, realizing that the plans had miscarried, told him to get one platoon back on the top of the hill as quickly as possible to help Mooney hold his right flank.

Lt. Eugene C. May (a Company B officer) turned his platoon around and started back up the hill. He was near the top of the trail at 1130. When he arrived the last company of the 3d Battalion was strung out along the ridge top, and the entire company front was suddenly quiet. From the west end of the line Mooney called Lieutenant Middlemas who was now watching the east end of the line. Mooney explained that all the firing at his end of the line had stopped, and asked what was happening on the opposite flank.

"It's so quiet here," said Middlemas, "I'm just about ready to read some adventure stories for excitement."

At that instant there was the sound of scattered rifle fire from the top of Hill 283 where a sergeant and four men had been sent to outpost the right flank after Company B had vacated its sector. Hill 283 was just a large knob on the east end of the ridgeline. Between the knob and the right-flank position of Company A there was another smaller mound about forty yards beyond the last foxhole occupied by Lieutenant Mooney's men, and about seventy yards west of Hill 283.

Within a minute or two the sergeant in charge of the outpost appeared, running from the intermediate mound and yelling in a voice loud enough to be heard by the entire 3d Platoon: "They're coming! They're coming! Millions of them! They'll banzai us!"

Middlemas was near the center of the company line when he heard and saw what was happening. He took off running as hard as he could go toward the sergeant. The two men met near the right flank, and Middlemas lunged, bringing the sergeant to the ground with a football tackle. The other four members of the sergeant's outpost were following him, "just as goslings follow along after a mother goose." At the same time, three of the infantrymen at that end of the line started to abandon their holes, fearing that the right flank was crumbling.

Lieutenant Middlemas was yelling loudly and pounding several of the men on their helmets. "Get the hell back in your positions! Get up on that damned hill!"

He shoved the three men back in their holes, called to the 3d Platoon to send up one squad immediately, and then started off chasing the sergeant from the outpost and his four men back to the intermediate brush-covered knoll. They arrived there just in time to shoot one Chinese who was racing up the opposite side. There were 10 or 15 more enemy soldiers running from Hill 283 toward them. If the Chinese took this intermediate knoll they could fire down onto the top of the trail, severing the only route of withdrawal and evacuation. Lieutenant Middlemas knew he would have to hold off the Chinese for at least a half hour, or suffer heavy losses. He also knew they would probably either win or lose the battle within the next few minutes.

"Get to firing. Get to firing!" Middlemas shouted.

The action on this end of the line developed fast. There was considerable enemy fire coming from Hill 283 and a few Chinese crept within grenade range before they were killed. Within another minute or two, however, an eight-man squad from the 3d Platoon reached the knoll, making a total of fourteen men there, including Middlemas. All of them were firing rapidly.

A platoon leader of Company D in charge of the two heavy machine guns with Company A saw the critical situation as it developed and rushed the heavy machine gun from the 3d Platoon to the knoll. Then he sent for both the light caliber .30 and the heavy machine gun that were with the 2d Platoon. All of this action had taken place within five minutes after the sergeant in charge of the outpost signaled the alarm.

The platoon from Company B, meanwhile, reached the top of the trail soon after the shooting started and hurried into position. This platoon had one light machine gun. Then crews with two machine guns from the 2d Platoon arrived so that, in less than ten minutes, Lieutenant Middlemas had four machine guns firing and approximately forty-five riflemen in position. The firing swelled into a noisy roar and even the sound of the clips coming out of the rifles made considerable noise. The Chinese, who had been trying to wriggle around both sides of Hill 283 and reach Middlemas's knoll, backed away to the protection of the reverse slope.

At the opposite end of the company line, Lieutenant Mooney heard the storm of activity and realized he had allowed himself to be drawn away from the center of his company front. He was now more than a thousand
yards away from the main action. He started east along the trail, but it as clogged with men from the 3d Battalion who had squatted there as soon as the fire fight flared up at the east end. Mooney hurried along the ail telling the men to keep going and looking for their officers, one of whom he found also sitting by the trail resting.

"For Christ's sake," he said, "get up and get these men moving."

Farther along the trail he met Lieutenant Haley whom he instructed strip all ammunition from the 3d Battalion men as they turned down the trail.

Up on the knoll the sergeant who had been in charge of the outpost ad recovered his composure and was now reassuring his men. "We're holding them! By God, we're holding them!"

Gradually, after the strength and fire power increased and the men realized they could hold the small hill, they overcame their fear and their anxiety changed to bravado. One of the men started yelling, "Come and get it!" and the other men took it up, either firing or screaming at the Chinese. Once, when their rate of fire dropped noticeably, there was a sudden increase in the amount of fire received from the Chinese. After that experience the Americans kept up a heavy volume of fire, and although Lieutenant Middlemas believed it was this sudden and heavy base of fire hat was built up in the first ten minutes of the action that saved the flank, he was now concerned with making the ammunition last until everyone was off the hill. He went back and forth across his short line cautioning he men to fire aimed shots and hold down their rate of firing. In addition to its basic load of ammunition and that taken from the 3d Battalion, Company A had 300 bandoleers of rifle ammunition that were still intact when his action commenced. Mooney had this carried up to the knoll on the right lank. Even so, there was danger of running out.

About 1145 Mooney reached the area of activity. At that time the last of the 3d Battalion was passing through Company A's area followed by Sergeant Teti's outpost, and then the rest of Sergeant Lock's platoon. Lieutenant Mooney got in touch with his battalion commander (Colonel Weyand) to tell him of the situation and that he desperately needed some artillery support. As it happened, the artillery forward observer with Company A had been shot in the leg just before this action started, and Mooney now had no map of the area. He explained to Colonel Weyand that he wanted the artillery to fall on the hill which Company B had occupied that morning.

"Put a round out somewhere," he said, "and maybe I can hear it."

Colonel Weyand had been over this terrain and was well acquainted with it. He called the artillery, gave them the general area, and asked for one round. Mooney reported that he could neither see nor hear this round, especially through the heavy firing going on where he was standing. Weyand then asked for a shift "right 200, drop 200" and within a minute this round fell squarely on the enemy, exploding on the far side of the mound where there was apparently a concentration of Chinese troops. In any event, there were loud screams from the Chinese.

Mooney yelled over the radio, "That's beautiful! That's beautiful! Fire for effect! Throw out some more!"

The troops around him commenced yelling with renewed enthusiasm. More shells landed in battery volleys, relieving the pressure against Lieutenant Middlemas and his crew.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Mooney revised his plan for moving his company from the hill. The 1st and 2d Platoons on the west end of his line were already moving and were not affected, but the remainder of his forcewhich now had become a mixture of the 3d Platoon, his headquarters group, and the platoon from Company B could not be moved as a unit. He ordered these men to move out one at a time, Indian fashion, with the men farthest from the trail moving first so that he would be able to keep men along the trail to protect it. This plan would also release the men in the order that they became least valuable.

The two heavy machine guns, having fired twenty-six boxes of ammunition, ran out and Mooney ordered them to leave. The other ammunition was running low and Colonel Weyand kept urging Mooney to hurry since the artillery battery firing for him was almost out of shells too. Weyand arranged for an air strike and the planes soon appeared circling overhead until called in. These could not be employed until after the artillery fire stopped, and Lieutenant Mooney asked for the artillery to continue as long as the ammunition lasted.

Shortly after 1200 Colonel Weyand again called, urging Mooney to "move fast and get down from there." Except for those men still firing at the Chinese, all men from Company A had cleared the top of the trail. Mooney asked for smoke to screen the movement of these men as they broke contact. With smoke and a mixture of explosive shells to replace the machine-gun and rifle fire, men from the last group started to leavethey needed no urging. Less than five minutes elapsed from the time the first of the forty-five left their position until the last was on the trail. As the last man left, the artillery fire stopped and the planes commenced the air strike.

The entire action on the right flank had lasted from 1130 until approximately 1215. During this time two men had been killed by enemy rifle fire. When the tail of the column had gone about seventy-five yards down the trail, a single mortar round landed on the trail, killing one man and wounding four others, including Lieutenants Middlemas and Mooney, both of whom were hit in the leg by mortar fragments. By the time this happened a few Chinese were at the top of the trail and began firing down upon the withdrawing column. The last men in the column turned to fire up at the top of the trail, backing down the hill as they did so.