On this same day, Eighth Army ordered the British 29th Brigade to move to Anju, less one battalion, which was needed in the 2nd Division zone. The 29th Brigade, however, got no farther north than Pyongyang.
On the morning of 30 November the order for the Middlesex Battalion to attack north toward the 2nd Division was still in effect. General Coulter had reiterated this to General Keiser in his telephone call during the night of 29 November. It appears that, during the latter part of the night of 29-30 November, the IX Corps knew the location of the Middlesex Battalion because that information would be needed in settling on a demarcation line limiting 2nd Division artillery fire on the south so as not to strike the British Battalion position.
The 2nd Division seems to have thought on 30 November that the Middlesex Battalion would be just around the next bend of the road and would have cleared it southward. Communication between the 2nd Division and the Middlesex Battalion, as it turned out, was nonexistent that day, and the division did not know where it was until some of the division infantry reached its lines in the late afternoon. The IX Corps seems not to have maintained oversight of the Middlesex Battalion's actions on 30 November to assure its attack north went forward to help the 2nd Division. American and British communications at the battle scene that day were hardly better than that of the Chinese, if as good, despite their electronic equipment. In the hilly and mountainous country of northern Korea, there was constant trouble with infantry radios. Communication had to be by tank and artillery radio, when they were available.
An agreement for cooperation between the 2nd Infantry Division and the Middlesex Battalion in breaking the enemy roadblock on 30 November was reached during the night of 29-30 November between Lieutenant Colonel Holden, 2nd Division G-3, and the IX Corps G-3 staff. It called for the 2nd Division to attack south at first light. If its attack failed, it was to request the Middlesex Battalion to attack north toward it. Communication was to be by tank radio. The British Battalion was stated to be just south of the 85 grid line. The 2nd Division was not to deliver fire south of that line. The British Battalion, on its part, was not to deliver fire north of a line to be set by tank radio. The Middlesex Battalion was to be ready to attack not later than 8 A.M. on 30 November. In case tank radio did not establish communication, an alternate method was for 2nd Division liaison planes to drop messages to American tanks attached to the Middlesex Battalion. A IX Corps order, encompassing these terms, was issued at 3 A.M. on 30 November to both the 2nd Infantry Division and to the Middlesex Battalion. At 8:50 A.M., when the 9th Infantry troops under Colonel Sloane had failed to break the enemy fireblock below the 2nd Division Headquarters, the 2nd Division requested the Middlesex Battalion to attack north toward it."
The 85 grid line mentioned in the IX Corps order was on the south side of the Pass area on the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road and ran past the northern edge of the village of Karhyon. In the 2nd Division withdrawal no units ever met any British troops of the Middlesex Battalion until they were south of Karhyon. As far as can be determined, the Middlesex Battalion did not attack toward the 2nd Division on 30 November, and it never reached the top of the Pass, which it was supposed to hold open for the 2nd Division. This failure is not explained in any official records, nor in other sources, including British writings on the subject. British writers say only that, on the afternoon and evening of 29 November, the Middlesex Battalion was stopped short of the Pass by Chinese. They do not explain its failure the next day to carry out the IX Corps order and its failure to respond to the 2nd Infantry Division request for it to attack north to help reduce the Chinese fireblock.
Herein lies one of the military failures of the day. If the Middlesex Battalion made an effort but was stopped short of its goal, it should have notified the IX Corps so that the latter could have assembled and sent into action reserve troops it had available in the vicinity of Sunchon, including part of the 1st Cavalry Division as well as units of the 24th Division. We know from testimony of the first groups of Americans to go through the Chinese fireblock and to reach the Middlesex lines that Chinese did not then hold the Pass area two road miles northeast of Karhyon in any strength. Capt. William E. Manning, who was among the early groups to reach the Middlesex Battalion position, recalled that the Middlesex were on Hill 127. This hill is just south of the 85 grid line but three miles southeast of the Pass.
The failure of the Middlesex Battalion (or of other IX Corps troops that could have been assigned to the attack north) to gain control of the Pass and to move on toward the 2nd Infantry Division was a critical case of IX Corps and Eighth Army mismanagement on the battlefield. The Pass area late in the afternoon and after dark on 30 November became the scene of some of the worst carnage in the six-mile-long Chinese fireblock. After the Chinese did extend their control to the Pass area, they emplaced mortars and machine guns on the high ground above the road cut at the Pass and exacted a heavy toll in terms of lives lost and vehicles destroyed.
The 2nd Infantry Division Starts into the Fireblock
The staff of the 2nd Infantry Division CP decided at about 10 A.M. that the 9th Infantry and other troops at the northern end of the enemy fireblock were too weak to break it. But the division could wait no longer to start its withdrawal. The division ordered the 38th Infantry Regiment to concentrate at the division CP. It was to lead the breakout attempt that General Keiser had now decided was the only option left to him. He ordered the Division Headquarters to get all the vehicles ready to go at any moment and instructed everyone to prepare to fight through the fireblock.
About the time General Keiser made this decision, he received an alarming report from Major Mezar, executive officer of the 23rd Infantry. Mezar reported by radio to Lieutenant Colonel Holden that Lt. Col. James Edwards, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, had told him of enemy pressure steadily building up on his front, with Chinese beginning to cross the Chongchon River to his front. Edwards's 2nd Battalion was then on high ground just southwest of Kunu-ri. The 23rd Infantry's position, only a few miles north of the 2nd Division CP and the artillery, might soon become precarious.39
General Keiser's order to the 38th Infantry to lead the division in its breakout effort did not find the regiment in the best of condition for such a mission, but there were no infantry troops available to Keiser that were better able to make the opening thrust. The 38th Regiment was pretty well worn out by its recent difficult actions with the Chinese on the approaches of Kunu-ri. During the previous night Colonel Peploe's 38th Infantry had spent until well after midnight fighting its way out of a Chinese encirclement south and southeast of Kunu-ri and did not reach its assigned defense position east of the 23rd Infantry Regiment until the early hours of 30 November. The regiment had lost all battalion aid stations during the night. It evacuated 90 wounded by sending them west that night on the Anju road. It still had 61 wounded it expected to carry out with it. The regiment, in its assembly area west of the Kaechon River, did not unload its trucks during the night. They remained ready to move at any time.
Colonel Peploe was so exhausted when the regimental headquarters stopped in the assembly area that night that he lay on a cot with his big overshoes on and his feet within six inches of a stove. He fell into a deep sleep. Others in the tent saw his overshoes start to smoke. They could not wake up the regimental commander, so they picked up the cot and moved it bodily away from the stove. Just about all the men in the regiment were as exhausted as Peploe, a strong, enduring man.
When Peploe received his orders on 30 November to move his regiment to the division CP, he started it south at once.30 Lieutenant Colonel Skeldon's 2nd Battalion was the first unit of the 38th Regiment to reach the division headquarters, arriving there about 9 A.M. Skeldon reported to Lieutenant Colonel Holden, the Division G-3, who handed him a note for Colonel Sloane, confirming an oral message that Skeldon's 2nd Battalion was attached to his force to help clear the fireblock. There were now only about 220 men in Skeldon's battalion. Skeldon loaded his men, 20 to a tank, o
n the regimental tank company and went down the road to join Sloane's 9th Infantry. Skeldon joined Sloane about 11 A.M. at the head of the fireblock. There he watched the 9th Infantry and the ROK 3rd Regiment attack on the Chinese ridge positions and the accompanying air strikes on the enemy. He noted that I Company, 9th Infantry, was stalled on the ridge to the east.
Meanwhile, the rest of Peploe's 38th Regiment had reached the division CP and halted in an assembly area just south of it. There, Captain Manning saw a quartermaster crew burning supplies and ROK and Turkish soldiers helping themselves to shoes, socks, fatigue jackets, overcoats, and other items of clothing from a 25th Division dump. Tags attached to some of the clothing flapped in the wind. When Peploe arrived at the division headquarters, General Keiser told him to get the 38th Infantry moving, since the fireblock had been overcome, and reported that Sloane had cornered a small Chinese force that was still threatening the road. In fact, the road was never free of the fireblock at any time on 30 November."
Colonel Peploe, upon receiving Keiser's oral order to lead the breakout, established his regimental march order, with the 2nd Battalion leading. The Regimental Headquarters, Special Units, the 3rd Battalion, and the 1st Battalion were to follow the 2nd Battalion in that order.
By noon all units of the division were assembled in the area of the Division Headquarters except the 23rd RCT and the artillery battalions. These formations were still in their positions, varying from two to four miles southwest of Kunu-ri, guarding the junction of the Anju-Sunchon-Kunu-ri roads and the 2nd Division south of it. It was vital that they hold their positions if the 2nd Infantry Division was to start its withdrawal in an orderly fashion."
General Keiser accompanied Colonel Peploe and his men when they moved out to reach the beginning of the enemy fireblock. Soon after they arrived at Sloane's position, two companies of Turks appeared there. General Keiser ordered them to attack on the east side of the road, where increased enemy fire had developed, and where the attack by I Company, 9th Infantry, had stalled.
The 38th Infantry Enters the Fireblock
Lieutenant Colonel Skeldon's 2nd Battalion, 38th Infantry, was ready when General Keiser gave Colonel Peploe the signal to start his men down the enemydominated road. Keiser expected the regiment would meet the Middlesex Battalion within a short distance, although he had had no communication from it during the morning.
The 2nd Battalion -of Sloane'9th Infantry came off the hills as the lead tanks were preparing to start ahead of Skeldon's 2nd Battalion. Many of them, having no transportation to ride through the fireblock because the 9th Infantry trains had gone out the Anju road the previous night, got on Skeldon's tanks and any other vehicles they could reach. The lead tank, for instance, carried three officers and 18 men from the 9th Infantry.
Captain Hinton, commanding the 38th Tank Company, relayed the order from Colonel Peploe to Lt. James Mace, Tank Platoon leader in the lead tank, to go. In this way the division breakthrough started about 1:30 P.m. Lieutenant Mace fired his tank .50-caliber machine gun, sweeping every curve of the road when the tank approached it. The infantry troops riding the tank deck covered the sides of the road with rifle fire. This lead tank encountered five enemy machine guns in the first mile and a half but got past them without casualties. Then suddenly, Lieutenant Mace yelled to the tank driver to stop. Mace saw a physical roadblock just ahead. It comprised an American M-4 tank, an M39 ammunition carrier, and a 2%-ton truck. A wounded Turk was at the side of the road. The vehicles apparently were part of the Turk convoy that had been ambushed earlier. As the tank stopped, the infantry on its deck slid off and formed firing lines in the roadside ditches. Mace's tank pushed the immobile tank and truck off the road. The ammunition carrier, its brakes locked, could not be moved. When this was discovered, Lieutenant Heath, from the 38th Infantry and one of those riding on the tank deck, climbed aboard the carrier and tried all levers and gears he could find and finally stumbled onto the lateral levers and released them. Mace was then able to push the vehicle off the road. Heavy enemy fire fell on this spot as the men worked to clear the road. Lieutenant Mace held his tank until Lieutenants Knight and Heath got their men from the ditches and back aboard it. Then it took off down the road. This was a rare occurrence among the tanks that followed. When most of them stopped for any reason, they took off again as soon as they could and left their infantry riders stranded in the ditches.
As Mace's lead tank resumed its run, an F-51 came in strafing and firing rockets. One of the rockets hit close to the tank, and Lieutenant Heath was blinded temporarily in one eye. As Mace sped down the road, his tank passed other destroyed Turk convoy vehicles. The second tank in line had no infantrymen riding its deck. The third tank had 22 infantrymen on its deck and sides. Only ten of them survived the ride. One noncommissioned officer on this tank, Cpl. Jacob Schnabel, held two wounded men, one on either side of him, until enemy fire hit both men a second time and they slipped from his grasp.
Mace's tank, still in the lead, reached the half-mile-long Pass, a cut with steep 50-foot high slopes, approximately six miles from the starting point. Surprised Chinese in the cut ran off to the left and got away. At the south end of the Pass, six Chinese soldiers squatted eating a noonday meal. They too escaped. More wrecked Turkish vehicles were in the Pass. Heading downhill on the south side from the cut, Mace's tank ran into a barricade of three vehicles blocking the road. Chinese soldiers had piled all kinds of material on them. The tank rammed the barricade at full speed and ran over it. Later, Mace's tank met another coming toward it from a Middlesex Battalion outpost. American artillery at the Middlesex position apparently had been firing at Chinese on the His to their north most of the morning, and enemy had kept up a harassing fire at times on them. But there is no indication that the Middlesex Battalion ever moved out and mounted an attack against the Chinese during the morning. Mace's tank radio, from the south side of the Pass, could not establish contact with the 2nd Division to give a report of what he had experienced."
It appears that the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, broke up as a unit when it came off the ridges and down to the road at the head of the fireblock. In groups or individually, the men boarded any 38th Infantry transportation they could find, either tank or truck, as Lieutenant Knight's group had done, and fought with them through the roadblock. Some of the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, were in Sunchon by 4 P.m., among the first of the 2nd Division to get through the fireblock. The 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry, on the other hand, now about half a mile into the fireblock, went into a perimeter defense on the road and held there while the 2nd Division units went through it and continued south into the fireblock. The 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry, therefore was among the last of the division units to run the roadblock late in the afternoon. The 9th Infantry Headquarters, still back near the 2nd Division CP, did not start through the fireblock until late in the afternoon."
When Colonel Peploe started his regiment through the fireblock, he had his infantry mount tank decks and get into artillery vehicles. All vehicles were ordered to keep moving. But the miscellaneous vehicles in the column did not keep pace with Lieutenant Mace's lead tanks. Most of the 2nd Battalion got only 500 yards down the road when the column stopped. Colonel Peploe, in one of the vehicles, described what happened:
I started through the block with my assigned driver at the steering wheel of my jeep. After we had gone a short distance the road turned abruptly to the right. There blocking the road were some empty vehicles with crews hugging the ditches on both sides of the road. Small arms fire was hitting the position from the nearby ridge on the right (west) side. We tumbled out of the jeep into the ditch on the left (east) side. Mortar fire from the east fell a short distance to our left. It was necessary to get the vehicles moving. So we scrambled into the jeep with Manning taking the wheel. It was overloaded with men. With my wounded Korean orderly on my lap we took off with the other vehicles following."
Capt. William E. Manning of the 3rd Battalion had not originally been in
Colonel Peploe's jeep. He had started with Special Units farther back in the column. When the column halted, Manning walked up the road to see what had caused the halt, was not fired on, and soon came upon Colonel Peploe trying to get the column moving. When Peploe and his men started for their jeep, Manning ran along with them and got behind the steering wheel. Manning drove the jeep around the stopped vehicles to take the lead, and then those behind started after them as soldiers from the ditches hurriedly reloaded into the vehicles.
After a short distance, Manning came upon a sergeant in the road. He stopped them and said there was an enemy sniper just ahead and that he had located him and would dispose of him shortly. Again the column halted briefly while the sergeant got rid of the sniper. Peploe's Korean orderly had been shot in the neck and was bleeding profusely, rapidly turning Peploe's new parka a new color. When the sergeant signaled that the sniper was no more, Manning started up again, this time going around a tank standing in the road. The tank followed him, and the other vehicles followed the tank. Manning drove the jeep rapidly down the road, the rest careening after him. Nothing happened until Manning came to a small hill pass near the village of Wadong (at map coordinate 4989), about two and a half miles from the beginning of the roadblock. Then, suddenly, automatic-weapons fire struck near the head of the column, and the enemy gunner sprayed fire down the column. The gunner apparently had meant to hit the lead vehicle, but he had not given his burst of fire enough lead at the moving column, and his first bullets hit behind it. The first few vehicles escaped unharmed, but the enemy machine-gun fire hit and knocked out six vehicles behind them. Again the column halted. The men scrambled from the vehicles into the roadside ditches and returned the enemy fire. In the resulting firefight, the enemy fire was mostly silenced. Again, the 2nd Battalion men got into and onto the operational vehicles and drove fast toward the Pass.
Disaster in Korea Page 39