Korean War....

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

Battle of Pakchon

The Battle of Pakchon was a battle in the Korean War between the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade and an unknown number of Chinese and North Korean troops. The battle took place around the small village of Pakchon and around the Taeryoung River. The engagement is konwn to Australian historians as the Battle of the Apple Orchard.


Background

Once the Eighth Army had crossed the 38th Parallel and was driving on Pyongyang General MacArthur was determined to cut off the fleeing North Korean armies before they reached the Yalu River and sanctuary. Even while Pyongyang was being invested he inserted 187 Airborne Regimental Combat Team (187 RCT) by parachute at the two critical junction points 35 miles north of the city at Sukchon. Headquarters 187 RCT and the 1st and 3rd Battalions (1/187 RCT 3/187 RCT) jumped into two drop zones at Sukchon. Both sites dominated the road and rail approaches to the Chongchon River which was 30 miles further north.


The Airborne Attack

Headquarters 187 RCT, 1/187 RCT and 3/187 RCT landed about 1400 hours 20 October 1950 at Drop Zone WILLIAM, south east of Sukchon. 1/187 RCT quickly secured Sukchon and established a road block north of the town. 3/187 RCT established a defensive position astride the road and the railway about two miles south of the town. At 1420 hours, 2/187 RCT landed near Sunchon, 17 miles to the east and linked up successfully with 6 ROK Division. The 187 RCT had come to fight; the first air drop brought 6 X 105 mm howitzers and 1125 rounds of ammunition which was reinforced next day by a further 12 X 105 mm howitzers and 4 X 90 mm anti-aircraft guns. Nearly 600 tons of ammunition and other supplies were delivered during the operation.[2]

At this time the bulk of the North Koreans had crossed or were in the act of crossing the Chongchon and so evaded the noose.[2]

However, the 239 North Korean Regiment (239 NK), the last formation out of Pyongyang, had taken up a rear guard position on the best defensive ground between Pyongyang and the Chongchon River. The 2500 strong Regiment was astride the road and the railway just north of Yongyu and Op'a-ri. They deployed a battalion in each locality which were three miles apart.[2]

At 0900 hours, 21 October, 1950, 3/187 RCT started two combat teams south, 1 Company towards Op'a-ri along the railway and K Company along the road towards Yongyu. At 1300 hours 1 Company reached Op'a-ri where it was heavily attacked by an estimated enemy battalion supported by 120 mm mortars and 40 mm guns. In a battle lasting two and a half hours, two Platoons of 1 Company were overrun and the company withdrew west with 90 men missing. The enemy did not follow up and withdrew to defensive positions on the high ground near Op'a-ri. K Company also encountered an estimated enemy battalion just north of Yongyu which, after a sharp contact, withdrew south and east of the town. K Company continued on to Hill 163 just north of the town and into the town itself.

With the United Nations (UN) forces driving into Pyongyang, the two attacks on 239 NK from the north put them in a dangerously exposed position. The North Korean reaction was fierce. At midnight they launched the first of three attacks which forced K Company to withdraw from Hill 163 and the town. At 0400 hours and again at 0545 hours, 22 October, 1950, they launched further strong attacks on the Battalion Command Post 3/187 Regimental Combat Team (RCT) and L Company, both located one mile north of Hill 163. Despite suffering heavy losses in those attacks, at 0600 hours 239 NK launched 300 men against L Company and 450 men against Headquarters Company. By daylight 22 October 1950, 3/187 RCT was only just holding and the seriously depleted 239 NK must have been close to exhaustion.


27 British Commonwealth Brigade

At noon, 21 October, 1950, 24 United States Division, with the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade leading, crossed the Taedong River at Pyongyang and headed north. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were in the van and by nightfall the Brigade halted on the outskirts of Yongyu, 21 miles north of Pyongyang. A patrol from the Argyll's entered the town and made contact with elements of 3/187 Regimental Combat Team.

239 North Koreans' midnight attack on Yongyu came from the general direction of the road running south-west of the town. The Argyll's met the fringe of the attack and beat it off. The attack on 3/187 RCT was stronger and the enemy succeeded in entering the town before breaking off and moving away at 0300 hours.

Next day the Australians of 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment were to take the lead in the advance, C Company was to be the leading company. The orders given in the early evening stressed the urgency to link up with the US Airborne. The company was not to be distracted at Yongyu, they were to press as quickly as possible as the Argylls continued to clear the town. The noises of the Airborne battles to the north were now very close and could be heard clearly throughout the night. There was no doubting the morrow would bring battle.

C Company RAR was the only company to remain largely intact as the battalion hastily absorbed reinforcements from the rest of the regiment and K Force and came to strength. The newest 3 RAR company had been formed in late 1949, early 1950 from the young men who joined the Regular Army after World War 11. By the standards of the other companies C Company was very young and unblooded. Much of the banter within the Battalion was directed at them. The K Force arrivals ; older, confident and all with 2nd AIF experience , tended to make fun of the young regulars and their inexperience. Good humoured as it was, when it continued once the battalion commenced operations the young regulars became all the more determined to show their mettle. For C Company was a well trained sub unit and, unlike the other sub units still shaking down, was a cohesive team.

The Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO's) and senior soldiers were experienced, competent leaders who had raised and trained the Company. As an unexpected luxury, a handful of K Force reinforcements joined the C Company during the advance and took it over strength; a state never to be attained again by any unit in the campaign.

Whereas the Platoon commanders were young and inexperienced, all from the 1948 graduating class from Royal Military College - Duntroon, the Company Commander, who arrived only weeks before the battalion sailed, was a vastly experienced battle leader.

Captain Archer P. Denness had commanded a company at El Alamein, through the Islands and subsequently in the early days of the occupation of Japan. High principled, he neither smoked, drank or swore. "Arch" Denness was accustomed to command; woe betide anyone of his officers or NCO's who were in any way derelict in the exercise of their duties or any soldier who was profane within earshot. In the short time that he had been in command he had quickly established his stamp on the company ; nobody was in any doubt that only the highest standards were expected by "Armour Piercing Archie" as the soldiers soon christened him. Above all, his insistence on timeliness had got through to every soldier and stood C Company in good stead through the long day of its baptism of fire.

At 0700 hours, 22 October, 1950, C Company drove off, 7 Platoon leading on tanks of D Company, US 89th Tank Battalion followed by the rest of the company in US troop carrying vehicles. Not quite knowing what to expect the company drove carefully through the Argyll's and the scattered firing into the eerily deserted town. Yongyu was quite large ; leaving it and getting into open country again was like entering sunshine from darkness. Nobody spoke much in the ten minutes or so the trip took and all were relieved to be back in the country.

 

[Lucky13]

The Apple Orchard

At 0900 hours (9 am) and a mile north of Yongyu, C Company came under fire from the apple orchard on the slopes of Hill 163 in YD 2354 (map grid location). Very quickly it became apparent that C Company had driven into the North Koreans who were in the process of forming up to attack the Americans. Enemy on the fringe of the battlefield flushed from camouflaged positions started to bob up every where. The Commanding Officer (CO) Lieutenant Colonel Green, traveling well forward as was his want, was more quickly to the scene and much more involved than he would have appreciated. His quick informal orders group proceeded with Regimental Policemen engaging interlopers within yards of the assembled group. He did not have a lot of information. There was no contact with the American Airborne who were believed to be located nearby. Without precise locations he was unable to use any indirect weapons in the battle and this concerned him throughout the engagement. In this confusing scene his ability showed. The urgent need for link up dictated his decision. He chose to try and bounce C Company, largely on their own.

Orders concluded, the CO looked at the scene of battle all around him and rather wryly suggested to "Arch" Denness, he had better get on with it quickly.

The scene was made for Arch Denness and C Company were more than able to match his mood. Quietly determined to be successful in their first battle, constrained by the underlying excitement, there was some nervous conversation as weapons, ammunition and equipment were checked and formations settled. At 0930 hours (9.30 am), 22 October, 1950, 8 Platoon (Lieutenant C.M. "Mousey" Townsend) and 7 Platoon (Lieutenant R.F. "Rob" Morison), attacked the high ground east of the road. 9 Platoon (Lieutenant D.M. "Dave" Butler) was in reserve and held the road and the flank to the north.


The Assault

The attacking platoons went in hard, uphill through the apple trees, and their dash was just too much for those in their path. Many of the enemy jumped out of their pits to engage the gallant young Australians and exposed themselves to the relentless surge of the attackers. Although considerably outnumbered, 7 and 8 Platoons pressed their attacks fiercely, impressing all those in a position to observe. The young soldiers were, if anything, over eager to get into their first fight, but the apple trees were in full leaf and visibility was a real problem. Control was difficult and the last thing wanted in the first engagement was a man shot by one of his mates. The NCO's and the senior soldiers were absolutely splendid and quickly got the neophytes through the momentary confusions which everyone experiences in their first battle. With so many enemy present there was a considerable threat of some remaining hidden and firing at the backs of the Australians as they passed. The platoons pushed on and in a stride were through to the vital ground. Even a bunker which threatened 8 Platoon provided only a momentary delay as the young men grenaded it as if on a training exercise and pressed forward.

C Company's sudden arrival, even though it must have been expected to some extent, and the speed with which the North Korean outposts were brushed aside, had completely surprised the enemy. They were caught with all their attention directed north to a final frenzied effort to break out past the American forces. The CO's decision to pass 3 RAR through Yongyu so quickly and bounce the enemy aside was bold and brilliant. Thereafter the enemy were incapable of presenting organised resistance to the vigorous thrust from the south. Nonetheless there were many determined individuals who opposed the Australians every step of the way. So much so by 1000 hours the CO was forced to commit D Company to clear the area to the west of the road.

Within C Company, as soon as success had been assured, the energetic Denness ordered us (9 Platoon) to push forward along the road. 7 and 8 Platoons continued with their consolidation. From the high ground they were able to engage the enemy to the north and east throughout the morning.

Shortly after, about 1000 hours, we came onto a cart and a badly wounded horse which effectively blocked the road. Under heavy fire, the road block was cleared and the platoon was able to move using the waist deep storm water drains on either side of the road for fire protection. The road led out of the heavily treed area and into an extensive open area, mostly paddy field, which proved to be the disputed area between the North Koreans and the Americans. It was in this area it seemed the North Koreans were forming up for the final attack against the Americans.

From then on 9 Platoon had to move forward under almost continuous fire and would have suffered heavy casualties but for the protection of the storm drains. Initially the platoon only attracted the attention of the enemy close to the road. Most of the enemy appeared to be focused north but their attention gradually shifted to the Australians.

Further down the road the enemy started to engage from greater ranges, our platoon pressed on although unable to effectively suppress the enemy long range fire. Fortunately the road was built up and the we were able to dominate significant areas which enabled us to keep moving. At this point 7 Platoon were ordered back to the road down the ridge to the west to clean out pockets of enemy who were engaging us (9 Platoon) at long range and the tanks were sent forward to 9 Platoon. Denness's reaction was timely as 9 Platoon was deep into the enemy area.

It was a scene of continuous confusion. Many of the enemy clearly had enough. Any lull in the firing would bring more and more of them forward to surrender despite a hard core fighting on.The appearance of the tanks tilted the balance. They brought fire down on positions some distance from the road and slowly the enemy became aware of the futility of continuing. 9 Platoon was able to move and link up with the American Headquarters shortly after noon.


Link up

It was a delighted Arch Denness who reported to the Commander of the American troops C Company 3 RAR had arrived. He had every reason to be exhilarated. His company had met with every challenge and it was already clear that they had been involved in a significant victory. Later 3 RAR reported approximately 150 enemy had been killed, 239 wounded and 200 captured as a result of its action at a cost of seven wounded. The operations in Sukchon/Sunchon had achieved much more. The Americans (187 RCT) claimed, at a cost of 46 jump casualties and 65 battle casualties, it had captured 3818 North Korean prisoners, killed 805 enemy and wounded 681.

It would be difficult to describe a more chaotic battlefield. Despite the many casualties the Americans and C Company 3 RAR had inflicted, who lay where they fell, there were still several hundreds of the enemy in and around the battlefield. North Korea paid a very heavy price in the battles north of Yongyu. There were, for example 69 enemy bodies counted in the storm water drains alone which 9 Platoon had moved. They had fallen in the overnight battles. The enemy dead lay much heavier in the open ground in front of the American Airborne positions.

There followed a period where enemy prisoners were rounded up on that tragic battlefield and there was momentary contact between the Americans and C Company. Strangely, the two units kept well apart. The Americans, 3 Battalion 187 Regimental Combat Team had obviously suffered heavily and were overjoyed to be relieved but were suspicious of the Australians. Some of them took the Australians, because of their strange garb and heavy overcoats to be Russian which led to momentary difficulty. The C Company soldiers quietly sat down in small groups and ate their lunch, unmoved by all else that was going on around them.

With link up complete, re-deployment for the continuation of the advance commenced. Within the Commonwealth Brigade, 1 Battalion Miiddlesex Regiment passed through and assumed the lead in the drive towards the Yalu River. The Americans reassembled and drove north to Sukchon to rejoin their regiment which returned to Pyongyang by the other route. On cue with the departure of the Americans, the press arrived and it was their sudden appearance to report the first battle of the Royal Australian Regiment which underscored the nature of the stunning success. All enjoyed the fuss the press made of us and the excitement of having our photographs taken.


Clearing West of the Road

It was all brought to a sharp conclusion as the battalion re-deployed and 9 Platoon was directed to clear west of the road past where the contact had begun in the morning. This patrol took the Platoon right through the paddy fields which, though well clear, were still in full view of the road now being freely used. Many of the enemy had fled to the west and were hidden, principally in rice stooks, and 9 Platoon had to flush them out. Some wanted to fight it out and were dealt with, but the bag of prisoners increased. The scene of Australian soldiers in extended line pushing on through the open areas captured the imagination of observers on the road. The Brigade Commander was later quoted;

"I saw a marvelous sight. An Australian Platoon lined up in a paddy field and walked through it as though they were driving snipe. The soldiers, when they saw a pile of straw, kicked it and out would bolt a North Korean. Up with a rifle, down with a North Korean, and the Australians thoroughly enjoyed it."

9 Platoon got back to the new company position just on dusk. It had been a long day.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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. 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.

"

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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 Page 22

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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 bitches, 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.

 

[comiso90]

Great post..

I'm sure there were very few Tank vs tank actions..... but

How well did the more modern M-48 Tank fair against the T-34?

... I know the M-24 took a beating

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.

 

[Lucky13]

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.