This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Some vehicles stopped, loaded hale and hurt alike. Men grabbed hold of others as they raced by, only to be kicked off by the already overcrowded riders. And each stop, when it occurred, only delayed the column more.

  There could be no turning back. As the Light Brigade had ridden into the valley of death, so the 2nd Division rode into six miles of hell. The greater part of the leading serials came through safely, though blooded. Their momentum and the furious strafing of the encircling hills by the Air Force took them through. Then, as the road became more clogged with broken and burning vehicles, and Chinese fire increased at the final defile, the movement became more and more sluggish. Finally, about midafternoon, the pass itself was blocked and closed.

  The major trouble, all that bloody afternoon, was that a strung-out motor convoy could have no unity of command. Tankers, who could move freely up and down the road, had no orders. Some stopped to fight; others blared through to the south. Senior officers filled their own vehicles with wounded and walked out. Some fought off encircling Chinese with rifles. No one had command; no one had control.

  Colonel Peploe, his own jeep filled with wounded men, roared into the last defile before the road closed. In the pass a great heap of debris is from exploded trucks lay across the road; Peploe, holding on with all his strength, felt the jeep would never clear it.

  But his driver, a young lieutenant, poured on the gas like a madman, careening and sluing across the road. The jeep bounced through. Whining down the last ridge, Peploe's quarter-ton raced around a curve and up over a wooded hill, and suddenly there were men about the truck. A friendly British voice yelled, "You can slow down now—you're safe!"

  Behind Peploe, the pass closed in a fury of fire and death. Still to the north of it was the greater part of the 2nd Division.

  The British, fighting their way north, were in contact with a Chinese division, stalled. A force might have been put together from the men who had first cleared the pass, and such force might have gone back and swept its sides of enemy guns—but the men who reached British lines had been fighting their own separate Little Big Horns for five days and nights. As an observer remarked, these survivors were men, not gods. No relieving force was ever organized from the south.

  Within the gauntlet, each vehicle, each man, lived through an individual Hades. There were acts of immense courage, and of heartbreaking solicitude, as well as of stupidity and cowardice. As in all battles, all that reflected good or bad for the race of man took place within the pass.

  These tales have been well told, elsewhere.

  On the northern lip of the gauntlet, after the column started through, Colonel Sloane's 9th Infantry had run into new trouble. As the Turks, cut to pieces, reeled back from the surrounding slopes, mortar fire crashed down on the men holding the shoulders of the road.

  Barberis was hit, a litter ease. The 2nd Battalion S-3 was hit. Captain Frank Muñoz, senior surviving officer, took temporary command.

  The 2nd Battalion, like all the units of 9th Infantry, had been told to come out any way it could. And most of the men of the 9th secured places in the convoy as individuals as the trucks came by, so losing their lives or coming through, as their fortunes read.

  Muñoz tried to keep his own men together. On the road he found some stalled vehicles, abandoned when they were stopped. Their tires had been shot away, their radiators perforated by bullets. Using the native mechanical genius of his men, Muñoz put an artillery ammunition truck in running order. Then, throwing out the heavy stuff, he loaded aboard all the small-arms ammunition he could find.

  He told George Company: "We're going to fight our way through. We're going to evacuate our wounded on this truck. Anyone who can't walk, rides—"

  His men were worried and shaken, but they listened to him.

  A .50-caliber machine gun was in a ring mount on the repaired truck, and with his firing at the enfilading hills, Muñoz and his company started south, picking up stragglers, fighting their way through.

  Some time after three o'clock, they arrived at the pass. Coming below the high slate cliffs, they walked into a swarm of Chinese bullets. The pass itself was blocked with wrecked vehicles, and from the high ground to either side of it enemy machine guns blazed incessantly at the vehicles piling up to the north.

  Men had to leave their vehicles and make for the rocks and ditches, while gunfire cut them down. In the ten-degree weather, soldiers were becoming exhausted and apathetic. Americans, ROK's, and Turks lay on the ground, shocked, uncaring, while Chinese fire beat the earth about them. Their faces were dust-grimed, their eyes watering, their jaws slack.

  Muñoz saw a scene of incredible confusion. The dead lay about in droves. Now and again a hurt man croaked aloud for water. Only a few men were trying to fight back at the enemy holding the hills.

  On the other side of the road, meanwhile, across from Muñoz, General Keiser arrived in his jeep. He left the truck and walked up to the edge of the fatal log jam in the defile. Here he tried to bring some soft of order to the dazed men on the ground.

  "Who's in command? Who are you? Can any of you do anything?"

  The ROK's and Turks couldn't understand; the Americans kept silent.

  Then Major General Keiser, division commander, walked on into the pass, to see what he could do. He found a few men fighting, and he saw men helping the seriously wounded. But he found no officers, and he went back to the northern edge, while bullets chipped the rock behind him.

  On the way out, he accidentally stepped on the body of an American lying in his path. The man suddenly moved and said, "You damn son of a bitch!"

  Surprised, General Keiser could only say, "My friend, I'm very sorry." Feeling very old and tired, he went on.

  He knew that infantry parties had to be formed to attack and clear the ridges lipping the defile. Until this was done, there was no hope of clearing the obstacles in the road.

  Over the pass now, Air Force jets were strumming in full fury, rocketing, napalming, stinging the rocks with machine-gun fire. They did a great deal to ease the burdens of those below, but they could not do the job alone. Still, they tried.

  A plane whined in so low that the spent .50 caliber cartridges from its wing guns tinkled off Frank Muñoz's helmet. The flame from a napalm blast seared his face.

  Muñoz, pinpointing a machine gun on the right side of the pass, got five men together. Frozen, exhausted to the point of hardly caring whether they lived or died, men moved as in molasses. It was almost impossible for anyone, officer or man, to do the slightest task—but Muñoz moved up the slope, and the Chinese pulled the gun away.

  Meanwhile, the man who could get the job done had arrived.

  Lieutenant Tom Turner, exec of the 38th's Regimental Tank Company, had had an incredible afternoon. Earlier, while directing fire against attacking Chinese, a rocket blast from friendly air knocked him unconscious in the ditch, where he lay for more than an hour as the motorcade ground past.

  Coming to, bruised and shaken, he had walked more than a mile south, moving along stopped vehicles whose drivers and riders were down in the ditches, fighting. At the head of this mile-long column he found a small truck standing idle, clear road opening before it, while its crew engaged in rifle duels with the Chinese in the hills.

  Turner got this truck on its way—then, under heavy fire, he moved back along the road, getting men into their trucks and moving again. It took tremendous effort, and great courage. Finally, with the trucks moving, he leaped on the running board of a two-and-a-half ton, only to fall into the ditch again as the bit of metal to which he clung was carried away by a machine-gun slug.

  Again Turner blacked out.

  When he crawled from the ditch once more, he saw the column had braked again approximately a thousand yards to the south. But as he stood erect, he felt a Chinese rifle in his back.

  He was in the midst of a Chinese squad, some of whom were rendering first aid to American wounded lying along the road. Limping from a badly sprained ankle,
Turner was told by the Chinese leader, in good English, to sit down.

  Then, after a few minutes, the Chinese asked him if his ankle was good enough for him to walk back to his own lines. Surprised, Tom Turner answered, "I think so."

  The Chinese then searched him—but politely, asking if he objected. They took two letters from him, leaving his money intact. More important, they missed the bottle of I. W. Harper that Turner had stowed in his jacket.

  Then the Chinese leader ordered him to move down the road, collecting American walking wounded as he went. Limping, his ankle afire with pain, Turner walked away, fully expecting to be shot in the back. Instead, the Chinese faded into the bills.

  Turner began to collect American wounded men who could walk, and he passed his bottle around. With three other men, all hurt, he approached the north end of the pass. Here a machine gun opened fire on the little group, and they hit the ditches. Resting, Turner passed the bottle once more.

  There were wounded men all around, crawling, groaning, trying to move south into the pass. Tom Turner took another swig from his bottle, then got up. Hardly feeling his ankle, he trotted forward, under the embankment. And here American soldiers shouted to him to get down; a Chinese gun was dug in only twenty-five yards above him, spraying the road.

  Turner asked for a grenade, but none of the men near him had any. Shaking his head to clear it, he then asked, "Who'll join me in rushing that gun?"

  The suggestion went over like a lead balloon. One soldier told him, "You want it, you go take it, Lieutenant."

  Somebody else said, "Take it, and shove it up your ass."

  Giving up on the Americans, Turner went back the way he had come, shouting for any ROK or Turk who could talk English to come forward. He found one ROK who could. The man brought more than thirty other ROK's with him. Turner explained what he wanted—and the ROK's agreed.

  He set some of them up as a base of fire to pin down the enemy gun, while he explained to the others that they would attack it behind him. Then he moved out. Looking back, he was shocked to see the whole group coming with him—they had not understood his orders.

  Operating on his own genuine courage and the stimulus of the liquor, Turner figured what the hell. He yelled, "Banzai—Banzai!" and ran up over the covering embankment toward the enemy gun.

  Turner's group swamped the gun crew before they could swivel it to meet the charge. Eager to go on, Turner's ROK's wanted to rush another gun, but he held them back, trying to get them into some kind of fighting order first.

  At this moment an aircraft whistled low over the ridges, firing into them. A rocket exploded, and once again Tom Turner, bruised and concussed, lost consciousness.

  But while he lay on the cold dust, other men were beginning to take charge.

  The low-flying planes, howling angrily over the pass, had knocked over gun after gun as the sun sank. And both General Keiser and his assistant commander, General Bradley, now where organizing rifle parties to sweep over the enfilading ridges. Other officers, Muñoz from the 9th, and several from the 38th, got together small groups to move across the hills.

  By now it was within minutes of becoming dark. The Chinese fire seemed to slacken a bit, and Muñoz moved his ammo truck with the .50 caliber forward along the road. Eight or ten Chinese suddenly appeared in front of the truck, apparently trying to surrender. But these men carried weapons, though their hands were high.

  A Korean lieutenant yelled at Muñoz: "Don't trust them—they're trying to get in close!"

  Muñoz and the Chinese opened fire at almost the same time. The Chinese went down, but now somebody ran up the line yelling, "Cease fire! Cease fire! The Chinese are trying to surrender!"

  Farther ahead, General Keiser heard the shouts. He began yelling, "Stop that! These Commies know English! They started this—we're beginning to get them on the run!"

  Now two light tanks from the 2nd Recon Company came into the defile, and with them an officer of the 38th was able to push the blocking debris out of the way. Suddenly, painfully, the serpentine column began to wind once again through the narrow pass, around the curve, and up onto the wooded British ridge beyond.

  Muñoz heard Keiser say, "We've got to get through here before dark—" and the general hopped into his jeep and started through the pass. Behind him, Muñoz and the others followed.

  The movement broke the will of the hovering Chinese. The ravaging fury of the American air, blasting out guns, spilling the enemy hordes trying to move up onto the hills to reinforce the defenders, the courage of a few ROK's and Americans, and the impact of a bottle of I. W. Harper had all added up to clear the pass.

  As it grew dark, Tom Turner, once more on his feet, led a column of mixed allied troops through draws to the southwest on foot, reaching friendly lines at last.

  Muñoz lost twenty-five of his people in the gauntlet, but coming into Nottingham, he found—miracle of miracles—his company kitchen truck. At that moment he would rather have had it than diamonds.

  As the sun flared redly in the west and went out, the long jam at the pass was broken—but a great part of the 2nd Division was still north of the defile when the sun went down.

  When General Keiser had first encountered the stoppage at the pass, he had tried to raise Colonel Freeman's 23rd Regiment, holding the gate north of Kunu-ri. Keiser had hoped for help from the embattled 23rd—but he could not make contact because of the hills and distance.

  But Colonel Sloane, 9th Infantry, was in contact with both headquarters, and he relayed the messages.

  Freeman, to the north, was under pressure equal to that of Keiser at the pass. Minute by minute, the Volume of fire falling on the rear guard was increasing; Freeman could hear the ominous bugling from surrounding hills as Chinese massed for the kill. Both he and the commander of his attached artillery, Keith, agreed that if the 23rd RCT did not soon withdraw it would never get the chance.

  Freeman, sending messages through Sloane to Keiser, was thinking about his own withdrawal. He wanted permission to move out by way of the Sinanju road to the west instead of coming through the pass. In the sending and relay of messages, both Freeman and Keiser, thinking of different problems, became somewhat confused. To Freeman came the message, "Go ahead, and good luck."

  Later, neither Keiser nor his ADC, Bradley, could remember having authorized the change of plan. But as Keiser told Freeman, "Thank God, Paul, that it all worked out for the best."

  For upon getting the relayed message, Freeman and Keith at once decided to fire all ammunition on the ground, and to abandon the heavy guns. The road west was unfit to move howitzers by night on a fighting withdrawal.

  As the riflemen of the 23rd began to leave their positions on the high ground about Kunu-ri, the cooks, clerks, and drivers of the 15th Field Artillery formed daisy chains from the ammunition dumps to the guns. Only a few thousand yards beyond, Chinese were pressing down from the hills in column. With every man in the artillery bearing a hand to bring up the ammunition, the gunners opened fire.

  In twenty minutes, the battalion sent 3,206 rounds through the tubes; the earth before the advancing Chinese trembled and exploded in fire and death. Paint burned and peeled from the guns; breechblocks went dark from heat. Then, the ammunition gone, Keith's gunners' removed the firing locks and sights and thermited the tubes, and made for their trucks.

  But the hail of explosives had saved the regiment. Running into such unprecedented fire, the Chinese stopped—and believing they were about to be counterattacked, they dug in. Though they would come out again later and attempt pursuit, they would never be able to catch up with the motorized column on foot.

  As dark fell, Freeman's command started west, to the main coastal road, and came through intact. The last men and vehicles did not clear Kunu-ri till midnight—and after these came still the hard-pressed rear guard of the 25th Division, elements of Corley's 24th Infantry.

  At 0200, 1 December, Blair's 3/24th still held Kunu-ri. While Blair was reporting to Colonel Corley
by field phone, Chinese swarmed into his CP. By dawn, the 3/24 had dissolved as a fighting force, and it was every man for himself.

  Ironically, the Chinese allowed those who ran toward the west to escape, and in many cases actually helped these men along by picking them up and carrying them until they were close to American lines.

  Those who stayed and fought were not seen again.

  The 2nd Division Artillery, less Keith's 15th Field, was the last element of the division to come through the gauntlet on the south. They had been waiting all afternoon. Because Freeman went west, the artillery became not an element in the column, but fighting rear guard for the division. Thus, the gunners had the terrible chore of moving, trying to support the column by fire, and defending the guns all at once. For a while, the artillery was in a quandary as to what to do.

  Just at dark, the pass cleared, and seeing the vehicles ahead of the artillery move out, Brigadier General Haymes, Divarty Commander, realized his decision had been made for him. He ordered the artillery columns to proceed through the pass.

  With the artillery came engineers, MP's, and dozens of stragglers from the infantry serials that had gone through earlier. It was a blazing fight for most of the way. Some batteries were forced to deploy and man their guns; some were overrun. All were badly shot up.

  On the night march, under fire, the road became clogged with blazing vehicles. Swerving to avoid the blocks, other vehicles overturned. The first artillery battalions in the column came through best. The 17th leading, came out in good shape. The 37th, following, lost ten guns. The 503rd fought most of the night to save its 155's, finally losing them. The 38th Field, at the end of the column, lost every gun and truck, and its men came out as stragglers over the hills, if they came out at all.