This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  But on the knob of 209 Schmitt was determined to hold out. The time when Americans tended to surrender or to try to bug out was fast ending in Korea. Too many U.S. soldiers had been found shot in the back—and all hands knew there was nowhere to go. And, finally, all hands were now aware that they were in a war to the finish, regardless of how they had got into it.

  All afternoon and all that night, Schmitt's small party repulsed violent enemy attacks. One master sergeant, Travis Watkins, distinguished himself by conspicuous heroism, killing a dozen of the enemy. Desperately wounded, half-paralyzed, Watkins then refused any of the few rations, saying he deserved nothing since he was now too weak to fight.

  Schmitt kept asking for an air drop of supplies, if there was no other way to relieve him. A light plane was able to drop some small-arms ammunition, rations, medical supply, and twenty-one cans of beer. The water cans broke on impact with the ground, and most of the attempted resupply fell into the enemy lines beyond Schmitt's perimeter.

  Schmitt was hit, but refused to give up command. His example gave renewed nerve to the tired men on the knob the second day. The enemy sent a captured American up with a message to surrender. Schmitt refused.

  From higher ground, enemy machine-gun and mortar fire continued to lash the American position. After dark, the enemy renewed its infantry assaults. Again they were repulsed, but now the list of American dead and dying was growing. Schmitt's men were almost out of ammunition, and food was exhausted. They had no more water. The radio was gone; they were cut off from the world. Dead or wounded men lay in every foxhole, or on the blasted earth around it.

  As the sun came up on 3 September, about the only thing left to the pitifully few Americans on the knob was the determination to resist.

  At daylight on 1 September the tank platoon leader reported to Frank Muñoz that there was no one alive to be seen within George's 3rd Platoon area except NKPA. But Muñoz, checking the rest of his line, found the remaining rifle platoons in good shape. The enemy had boiled around them during the night, not stopping to finish them off.

  Muñoz conferred with his remaining platoon leaders, Lieutenant Mallory and Sergeant Long. Long had been hit, but refused evacuation during the night. Now he asked, "What are we going to do, sir?"

  "Stay here until we're told otherwise, Sergeant. I'd hate to have to recapture this terrain."

  But with the enemy in the 3rd Platoon area, this ridge was too exposed for last-ditch defense. Muñoz tried to raise Battalion, and failed. In the absence of instructions, he began to look for a better hill, on which George could erect a tight perimeter. Just behind his present ridge rose Hill 211, and on this high ground Muñoz now consolidated his remaining company. And during the morning, stragglers from the 3rd Platoon came in, with Flowers' patrol.

  The enemy seemed willing to leave them alone. Muñoz ordered his cooks to prepare a hot meal for noon chow.

  At midmorning, more stragglers from Easy Company, which had been shattered between Obong-ni and Cloverleaf, wandered into his lines. Few of these men had any weapons or equipment; Muñoz re-outfitted them from his store of recovered American arms. One of Easy's officers, Lieutenant Day, joined him.

  Day told him, "I want to get out of here."

  "Hell, no. Let's combine our forces here on 211 and hold till Regiment comes back." Frank Muñoz knew that Regiment would come back. The 9th Infantry had to return, or else.

  Morning passed, without action. Then, at 1200, the radio in contact with Battalion HQ squawked. From it came a new order: Move back to Yongsan.

  Muñoz argued over the radio. "I can hold here. I want to stay. Look, there are still isolated American troops in this vicinity, wandering over the hills. If I stay, it'll give 'em a place to come to—"

  But Frank Muñoz didn't have a Battalion officer on the radio; he was talking to some PFC operator. This operator told him, "Look, Lieutenant—my orders are to tell you to move back to Yongsan. I've done that, and I'm leavin'. Out!"

  Muñoz, whose dark eyes were deceptively pleasant in his hawk-nosed face, was furious. He thought, If I ever catch that SOB, I'll beat his brains out. Fortu- nately for his career, he never found that radioman.

  There was nothing to do but to move out, however. Right or wrong, he had his orders. He took stock. He had taken some fifteen NKPA prisoners during the night, most of whom were wounded, and he also had a large number of wounded of his own. These men he put in the three deuce-and-a-half trucks parked behind his hill.

  At about 1600, George Company moved out. Muñoz formed his men into a long column of twos. At the head of the column he placed two of his support- ing tanks, with the remaining two at the rear. He ordered small parties to go ahead to secure the hills on either side of the road to the east.

  As he moved out, he could clearly see the North Koreans climbing the hills all around him. They made no move to halt the retreat, nor did they fire on him. They merely stood on the surrounding hills and watched calmly as G Company marched away.

  During the night, the NKPA had passed between the 9th and 23rd regiments, and while the 9th was taking its lumps, C of the 23rd was overrun and destroyed. Only an effort by Headquarters and Service Company personnel halted the enemy advance—the same units that had brushed past the right of Muñoz's hill—close to the 23rd Command Post.

  By midmorning, Major General Keiser, CG of the 2nd Division, realized his division was split in two—the 23rd and 38th, which was so far untouched, in the north, out of contact with Division HQ and the reeling 9th Infantry to the south. The enemy 9th Division was locked in heavy combat with the 9th Regiment, and now Keiser had intelligence that the NKPA 2nd Division had also crossed the Naktong and was on high ground in the 23rd Regiment's sector.

  At 0810 he telephoned Eighth Army HQ in Taegu, and reported the crisis.

  Within a few hours Eighth Army was aware that a hole more than eight miles deep and six miles across had been sliced into the middle of the 2nd Division front and that the front-line rifle battalions of two of the division's regiments had been hit hard and in some cases were disintegrating. Communication everywhere along the front was spotty or non-existent.

  General Walker at 0900 requested Fifth Air Force to make its maximum effort in front of the 2nd Division, and to try at all costs to prevent reinforce- ment and resupply of the NKPA spearheads across the Naktong. The Far East Command immediately asked the Navy to support this air effort, and at FECOM's request, naval units steaming to strike against the Inch'on-Seoul area were turned back.

  Once again, as so often during the long, hot days of summer, Walton Walker had a critical command decision to make. Since the night before his Perimeter had been broken in two places—in the 2nd Division zone and in the 25th Division area in the south. In the south, the 25th had deep trouble, but in the Naktong Bulge the enemy was almost at Yongsan, only twelve miles west of Miryang and the main highway and rail lines linking the Perimeter.

  This day and the next few were to test Walton Walker to the utmost. Walker was short and snappish, but under tremendous pressure he was a bulldog of a man. He was not demonstrative and had absolutely no flair for the dramatic, no personal traits that could make him beloved or admired as with a Patton or a Ridgway.

  He was facing a situation that no American high commander had faced for a long time. He was fighting a last-ditch defense, largely with troops who would have been glad to depart Korea, and with commanders under him who in many cases were profoundly defeatist. Very few American generals under- stood the true condition of the Inmun Gun in early September. Behind Walker the Korean civilians of wealth and prominence were preparing to depart for Japan, and the Chinese merchants—those barometers of the Orient—were disposing of their property hastily and booking passage for Taiwan.

  Walker, under pressure, never relented in his determination to hold the Pusan Perimeter. He spoke to his field commanders pungently and often sharply, and was not popular with them. He gave the troops stand-or-die orders, and lessened his popula
rity in that quarter. He had no use for the press, who got in his way, and was not adverse to letting the press know it. But whatever Walton Walker's popular image, his military reputation for the defense of the Perimeter must remain secure. And his pugnacious temperament, whatever it did to those around and beneath him, added to the defense the one thing it needed most at this point—stubbornness.

  On 1 September Walker had in Army reserve only three weakened regiments, but compared to earlier times this was a princely force. He had the 5th Marines near Masan, the 27th Infantry, and the reconstituted 19th Infantry near Taegu. All these units he alerted. Then understanding that the salient in front of the 2nd Division was the most critical threat, he ordered General Craig to prepare the Marine Brigade to move into the Bulge area.

  Afterward, at noon, Walker proceeded to the 2nd Division front, and riding up and down in his jeep with its special guard railing-fitted so that Walker could stand while traveling—and carrying an automatic shotgun in case of ambush, Walker told the 2nd Division to stand or die.

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  14

  The Turn of the Tide

  I never intended to withdraw. There was no place to go.

  — Colonel Henry G. Fisher, commanding 35th Infantry, 1 September 1950.

  TO FACE THE CRISIS in front of Yongsan, Friday, 1 September, General Keiser had only a few elements of E Company, 9th Infantry, the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, the Division Reconnaissance Company, and elements of the 72nd Tank Battalion. These other divisional units he attached to the 9th Infantry, and during the day they engaged the NKPA in the low hills and broad, rolling rice paddies surrounding the town.

  The engineers, fighting as infantry, inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy north and south of the town, but by night North Korean soldiers had entered Yongsan. By the morning of 2 September the edges of Yongsan and the hill south of town were littered with enemy corpses and burning equipment. The engineers also suffered. In D Company, 2nd Engineer Battalion, only one officer remained on his feet at dawn.

  Meanwhile, the 9th's C.O., Colonel Hill, had gathered together the scattered remnants of the front-line companies that had been overrun 31 August. Among them were Muñoz's G Company, and F Company, which had also escaped the brunt of the enemy attack. By mid-afternoon these troops had been reconstituted into the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, and, supported by the 72nd's tanks, they received orders to attack through the hard-pressed lines of the 2nd Engineer's Able Company south of Yongsan.

  Before the attack, Frank Muñoz had been sent a great number of South Koreans, and ordered to integrate them in his squads. Muñoz didn't like the idea. The ROK's spoke no English; he couldn't communicate with them; and they seemed to have no clear understanding of which end of a gun the bullets came out.

  But, desperate for manpower, the Eighth Army had decided to try to utilize the thousands of able-bodied young South Koreans that could not be readily absorbed in the ROK Army within its own ranks. The concept was never successful. The language barrier remained, and the cultural gulf between Korean and American was impassable. Lacking understanding of their allies, American troops refused to trust them; lacking training, the behavior and performance of the Koreans was spotty at best.

  Muñoz protested, but was told to make the best of it. He put the KATUSA—Korean Augmentation United States Army—to work the way all other commanders put them to work, on labor details.

  The attack jumped off through the engineer lines about one mile south of Yongsan. The NKPA had occupied the town, but had made no serious attempt to move farther east. Spreading out widely across the broad rice fields, Muñoz led his men toward the wattle-walled, grass-roofed city, which was already afire.

  At the edge of Yongsan, they were hit by small-arms fire.

  Muñoz brought a tank forward, and moved two squads in behind its armor protection and firepower. With the tank grinding ahead, the small spearhead broke through the edge of Yongsan, and now the fighting devolved into house-to-house combat.

  Yongsan was a small town, hardly more than a village. Two principal streets crossed it, one running east, the other north-south. The other streets were mere alleyways or paths. The thatched houses were mostly one-storied, and made of wattle, which burned smokily. The single solidly built structure in Yongsan was the schoolhouse, which faced the park and trees of the town square.

  In the reeking smoke and confusion of house-to-house combat, Muñoz's boys quickly ran into a new kind of trouble. Firing into burning houses, they

  moved along the sides of the streets, now and then tossing hand grenades into likely nooks. Occasionally, they stepped across Korean corpses.

  In three instances, the "corpses" rose and shot one of Muñoz's men in the back. Another man, picking up a hand grenade lying beside a dead enemy soldier, blew himself up. The real corpses were booby-trapped.

  "Make sure the stiffs are dead!" Frank Muñoz ordered.

  George Company may have wasted a little ammunition, but now each corpse" was thoroughly riddled as George passed by.

  Ahead of the squads rumbled the 90mm-gun tanks of the 72nd Tank Battalion. Halting now and again to fire, the tanks blew apart whole houses. Bit by bit, Yongsan was being removed from the face of the earth, a fate which, tragically, was to befall almost every town and city within Korea during the coming months.

  The tanks and following infantrymen reached the center of town. Already one American tank had been hit by an 85mm round from a T-34. The crew evacuated before the tank burned; another American tank passed around the crippled one and blasted the T-34, standing three hundred yards beyond. The T-34 went up in a burst of smoke and flame.

  There were more North Korean tanks in Yongsan, but the 72nd, and men with 3.5 bazookas, took care of them. The enemy tanks and their infantry were well trained and well coordinated, moving closely together. But when the United States tanks engaged the T-34's, in every case the 90mm rounds penetrated the enemy armor. With their tanks blasted and burning, the North Korean infantry dispersed.

  By late afternoon 2 September, Yongsan—or what was left of it—was free of enemy. By dusk, the NKPA had been pushed back into the chain of low rolling hills to the west.

  For the moment, the enemy drive into the Perimeter had been stopped.

  While the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry was clearing Yongsan, General Keiser, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Eighth Army, and General Craig of the Marine Brigade were holding conference at the 2nd Division CP. It was decided that the Marines would attack down the Yongsan-Naktong Road toward their old battleground, the Cloverleaf-Obong-ni hill mass, while the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry attacked just to their north, trying to make contact with the 23rd Infantry, in trouble up that way.

  G and F of the 9th Infantry, with A Company, 2nd Engineers, held the line of hills west of Yongsan during the night. At 0855 on 3 September, the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 5th Marines opened their attack to the west.

  During heavy fighting all 3 September, the Marines slowly backed the enemy into the Bulge. At nightfall they were on a line two miles west of Yongsan. They had taken casualties: 34 dead, and 157 wounded.

  That night, 3/5 Marines were ordered to pass through 2/5 and continue the attack. During the hours of darkness torrential rains began to fall, making both Marines and soldiers miserable throughout the night.

  In the next two days, they were going to make the North Koreans much more miserable.

  The sun on Sunday, 3 September, came up like fire, and soon the pitiful band of survivors on the knob of Hill 209 beside the Naktong, the remnants of Dog and How companies, 9th Infantry, were broiling in the breathless heat. They had a few C rations, but they had long since run out of water, and the cries of the wounded men tightened the drawn and bearded faces of the men still holding out. The enemy fire blasting the hill never ceased.

  The North Koreans on the ridge above the knob directed accurate mortar fire into the ragged foxholes. Enemy infantrymen crawled close up the slopes and tossed
grenades. One man was forced to leap from his hole a half-dozen times to avoid bursting grenades; on the sixth attempt, he was killed.

  The wounded Edward Schmitt never gave up. He had been promised help from his battalion, and he intended to hold the hill until it arrived. Under his leadership and quiet example, the men on the knob, suffering terribly, held together. He was still directing the defense when killed by a mortar round.

  Lieutenant McDoniel, the next senior officer, took command. With darkness, it seemed as if the prayers and entreaties of the wounded and dying men had been answered; great gouts of water rained from the skies.

  Men turned their blistered mouths upward, gasping to drink the falling drops; they wrung water from their filthy shirttails, and drank, half-sobbing. Lieutenant McDoniel spread out two woolen blankets, and from these he wrung enough water to fill a five-gallon can. As the rain continued, most men were able to fill their canteens.

  In the rain and dark, the enemy left them alone.

  But the night passed too quickly, and in the dawn, again warm and clear, only half of the men who had climbed the hill were still living. The enemy still lurked about them. Their ordeal was not done.

  At 0800 on 4 September, the day dawning clear and warm after a night of chilling rain, 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, on line with the 5th Marines, jumped off again in the counterattack against the Bulge. During the rainy night the enemy had been oddly passive, and now, during the day, the advancing Americans began to come upon scenes of indescribable confusion and horror. Bodies of North Koreans, victims of American air and artillery, lay scattered all about along the roads, unburied. The advancing Americans passed abandoned equipment, including two undamaged T-34's. They came upon tents still standing, apparently the former command post of the enemy 9th Division. Now it seemed that the men of the Inmun Gun, asked to go to the well once too often, were beginning to break apart.