Disaster in Korea

by Roy E Appleman

  A jeep with a lieutenant of Military Police and his driver came running south and tried to pass the stalled column. A CCF sniper killed the driver; the lieutenant found a place on one of A Battery's jeep trailers. During this long stop, many disorganized ROK soldiers and some Turks, some now without their weapons, came off the hills east of the road, where they had earlier been engaged with the enemy and climbed on vehicles wherever they could find space. This took place just south of the northern end of the fireblock, where Colonel Sloane was located.

  The infantry nearest to the artillery, if the Chinese elected to rush it during the oncoming dusk, was Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher's decimated 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry, which was in column about half a mile back. General Haynes called Kelleher up to his position and, with some of his artillery officers, discussed with him and Lieutenant Colonel Norum, the 38th Regimental executive officer, the question of where the infantry might set up a screen to protect the artillery during the evening and night, if necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher said he thought he could do it on Hill 122 on the cast side of the road just north of Sinchangcham and on the long north-south ridge opposite, on the west side of the road. General Haynes said he would wait 15 minutes to see if the road cleared enough to allow them to proceed before making his decision whether to put the guns in a circle and set up a perimeter defense for the night. The jam at the Pass, nearly two miles from the head of the artillery column, cleared enough that the vehicles began to move before the 15 minutes had elapsed, and the artillery followed. It was now dark, except where burning vehicles lighted an area. For some unknown reason, the enemy guns remained quiet when the artillery started up again."

  The 17th Field Artillery Battalion drove on south under blackout. Visibility was generally not good, as the night just then had no moonlight. At one point, a vehicle came to a stop suddenly because another vehicle, motionless on the road, loomed up ahead of it. The driver waited a few moments to see what would happen, and then realized that both men in the jeep ahead were dead. He drove around the jeep. The artillery battalion arrived at the Pass without much trouble, although there was intermittent machine-gun fire from an estimated 8 to 12 enemy guns, emplaced 150 to 300 yards from the road. Up until dark, friendly strafing planes often drove enemy gunners from their guns.

  After dark, enemy fire hit the battalion personnel truck. Its occupants abandoned it on the road without destroying its records. There was a bad accident south of the Pass when one of the 8-inch howitzers rolled over the road edge into a ravine while going down toward the bridge bypass, killing eight ROK soldiers riding on it.

  The front of the artillery battalion cleared the Pass a little after dark. Smallarms fire on it ceased, and it reached the blown bridge on the south side of the Pass about 15 minutes later. The bridge was a two-lane concrete structure. A bypass was in use on its west side, crossing a stream about three feet deep. The south side of the stream bypass was about ten feet high at the stream bank and then crossed terraced rice paddies. Sometime earlier, a bulldozer had bladed down the two banks to provide ingress and egress from the stream. The 17th Field Artillery Battalion found one 2'f~-ton and two --ton trucks stuck and abandoned in the stream, blocking their way. The lead tractor was uncoupled to pull them to the side just as two friendly tanks approached from the south side with their lights on. The bright beams from these tank lights lit up the scene and brought several enemy machine guns into play on the men working at the bypass. One Chinese rifleman was within 30 feet of the lighted scene and was in the act of shooting the A Battery executive officer, Lt. Donald D. Judd, when an artilleryman killed him. The tanks quickly turned their lights off and began firing at the enemy positions. Back on the road the second howitzer missed the bypass turnoff and pulled right up to the edge of the blown-bridge abyss. There the driver jolted to a stop just in time to avoid plunging over. The column behind had trouble backing up enough to let him get out. For the 17th Field Artillery Battalion, the bypass ended the CCF roadblock. A Battery cleared it and drove on to Sunchon. It had eight men wounded in the fireblock, and lost 26 vehicles altogether, including an M-4 tractor. B Battery lost one howitzer. And then, there were the eight ROK soldiers killed in the howitzer accident." Compared to the other artillery battalions that followed it, the 17th was barely touched. According to Col. Walker R. Goodrich, the Division Artillery Headquarters and Headquarters Battery followed the 17th over the bypass.

  Earlier we have described Colonel Goodrich's trip south on the Sunchon road to find General Haynes and to relay to him Colonel Freeman's request that the artillerymen of the 503rd and 38th artillery battalions, still north of the old division CP, join the 23rd Infantry RCT and fight as infantrymen under his command. When General Haynes gave his resounding "No!" to that proposal, he told Goodrich there was no need for him to go back to the artillery battalions, as they already had their orders. Accordingly, Goodrich joined Haynes's Artillery Command at the north end of the Pass and waited for an impending attack to suppress enemy fire on the Pass so that the column could proceed. His comments on ensuing events follow:

  Darkness had set in when the Arty Hdqrs started up the Pass. I (S3) was in the rear. A quad 50 was immediately ahead. The column was moving at a steady rate-estimate about 10 mph. Only once was I aware of any enemy fire and that was machine gun fire coming down across the road from a draw to the West and just short of the crest. A burst struck the road in the interval between the Quad 50 and the S-3 jeep. The machine gun was well positioned to damage, halt, and thereby back up the column.

  Driving down the pass was more difficult than going up. The roadway was completely littered.... I saw no wounded or walking soldiers. Nor was I conscious of any enemy fire.

  Next came the dropped bridge. The by-pass was as you have described it. The banks had been "bladed." Failure to negotiate it slowly in 4-wheel drive was the danger-motor flooding and stalling. However, all vehicles ahead had cleared it; there was no enemy fire; nor were there any British.

  The drive from the by-pass to our assembly area near Sunchon was without incident.

  A few vehicles passed over a period of about 1 hour and then no more-an ominous sign of major problems. The night was bitterly cold.

  At daylight to my happy surprise was the presence of the Opn Sgt and the FDC team. His vehicle moved to and thru the Pass with no particular problem. The problem came when he reached the By-Pass. The area was clogged with vehicles and was being subjected to machine gun and mortar fire. The Sgt stated his driver got thru by bull-dog determination-(threatening to shoot anyone who blocked his way and by driving skill in skirting vehicles clogging the by-Pass). Comment: This information I passed on to Division officers early-about 0800 that morning. (I do not recall stating that it was a stalled 155 mm howitzer and prime mover that caused the trouble.) The FDC vehicle was ahead of the 503rd [155-mm howitzers]. Whether the FDC was ahead of the 37th FA I do not know. The 37th Bn was ahead of the 503rd and only 1'/: firing batteries came through the block.14

  It would appear from Colonel Goodrich's statement that traffic past his assembly area continued for only about one hour and then ceased and that the blown bridge bypass had become so badly clogged that it became impassable to vehicles about an hour after the Division Artillery Command Group passed over it.

  When the 17th Field Artillery started for the Pass after its long wait at the enemy machine-gun positions near the village of Sahyoncham, Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher's 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry, survivors followed behind it toward the Pass. They had little trouble in getting there. Kelleher noted 22 burning vehicles and about another 100 wrecked or abandoned on the road or in the ditches. All sorts of equipment and litter lay about on the road and at its sidestents, bedrolls, mattresses, packs, barracks bags. The road shoulders were littered with bodies. Wounded who could crawl from the ditch to the road often were seen among the dead, hoping for someone to rescue them and put them on a vehicle. Sometimes this happened. For many it never did. In the dark, the vehicles of
ten bumped over rather soft objects on the road; they might have been American dead or badly wounded. In many places along the road, officers would stop their vehicles and search the road for American dead and wounded before they continued. In the chaotic scramble to get through the fireblock, however, there was no uniform practice in this matter. Kelleher had his 1st Battalion examine the road going into the Pass to see that they did not run over their own dead or wounded. His jeeps and vehicles, therefore, climbed to the top at a slow pace. At the top of the Pass, Kelleher found that the road was blocked again by a smashed jeep and trailer. A group of his men pushed the wreckage off to the side. Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher has told what he saw on the south side of the Pass:

  For the next 500 yards the road was temporarily impassable because of the numerous burning vehicles and the pile-up of dead men, coupled with the rush of the wounded from the ditches, struggling to get aboard anything that rolled. When we checked to make a turnout, away from a blazing wreck, either there would be bodies in our way, or we would be almost home down by wounded men who literally threw themselves upon us.

  At one point, I got out of the quarter-ton to remove a body from the road. Then I saw that the man was still living. He was a wounded ROK soldier. I squeezed him into our trailer. But as I put him aboard, other wounded men piled on the trailer in such numbers that the jeep couldn't pull ahead. It was necessary to beat them off.

  We got underway. Then I heard a scream behind me and stopped. The press of bodies had pushed a wounded Turk between the jeep and the trailer and we were about to tear him apart. Again I had to get out and wrestle off a dozen wounded who were trying to board us. There wasn't space for even one of them and I couldn't give my place because I had to keep my battalion moving."

  Kelleher's men received no enemy fire in descending the south side of the Pass. They went through the blown bridge bypass at the stream below, and then on south down the road. They were out of it.

  While some military police patrolled the road alongside the 2nd Division, the bulk of the 2nd Military Police Company and the provost marshal's staff were in line behind Kelleher's 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry. They had more trouble than the 17th Field Artillery Battalion, and in some places more than Kelleher's men. Each succeeding unit in the march order faced increased danger and higher losses after dark as the night wore on. For one thing, enemy riflemen and submachine gunners moved closer to the road once darkness had fallen.

  Lt. Col. Henry C. Becker had started out with his staff and the 2nd Military Police Company on 34 vehicles. Before they stopped behind the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry, on the road near Singchanchong, they had not lost a vehicle. But as soon as they stopped, an enemy machine gun on the west side of the road began to riddle the line of vehicles. In the midst of this destruction came six explosions. Some of the men yelled from the ditches that it was mortar fire. But Becker could tell from the sound that it was not mortar fire but artillery. Furthermore, he recognized it as American artillery. Apparently, 155-mm shells from the 503rd Artillery Battalion, firing from the north and behind him on one of the enemy-held ridges, were "overs." This one salvo wounded 21 men, started one vehicle burning, and demolished five others. A jeep's horn began blaring from a wiring short and added to the tumult. About a third of the company was soon afoot because of vehicle destruction. Becker moved his group a little farther down the road, but again enemy machine-gun fire stopped them. Then a line of riflemen left the road and stalled vehicles ahead of him and started west toward the high ground beyond Sahyoncham, where the enemy machine guns were emplaced. Becker called out, asking who they were. They said they were Engineers and were going over to clear out that flank.

  Becker ran back down the line of vehicles a short distance to two tanks. He ordered them up to the front of his column, telling the commander of one tank to start pushing the knocked-out and stalled vehicles off the road so mobile ones could pass. He told the other tank crew to put supporting tank fire on the ridge beyond the nearby village on the west to help the Engineers. When Becker turned away to attend to other matters, both tanks took off for the Pass. Lieutenant Secton, Becker's assistant, soon brought up a quad-50 from back in the column and placed it to deliver supporting fire for the Engineers. Under the effects of this combined attack, the enemy machine guns on the west ridge quieted down. Becker and Epley now got the column moving south again."

  The tanks in the division column did not cover themselves with glory. They showed a marked tendency to run off after a stop and leave the infantry who had been riding on their decks stranded in the ditches, and some of them deliberately left their assigned mission during the breakout to seek their own safety.

  23rd Infantry Regiment Leaves Rear-Guard Position

  It is necessary to interrupt the story of the 2nd Infantry Division withdrawal on the Sunchon road to tell of the unexpected development southwest of Kunu-ri that affected ruinously the sixth and seventh serials in the withdrawal column. As darkness descended, about half the division remained in, or had not yet entered, the enemy fireblock and roadblock area. The unexpected event disastrously changed the plan of withdrawal for them."'

  The eighth and last serial in the withdrawal plan, the 23rd RCT rear guard for the division, the strongest infantry and combined arms regimental force now left in the division, left its rear-guard covering position southwest of Kunu-ri. This movement, unexpected by the rest of the division, began to unfold about 4 P.m., perhaps an hour before dark, and within another hour the entire 23rd RCT was hurrying west toward Anju, having broken completely with enemy forces. This ominous action was taken while the 17th Artillery Battalion and the 2nd Division Artillery command group were still trying to get through the Pass at the southern end of the enemy fireblock.

  We must now turn to the 23rd RCT and its story during the afternoon to keep events in their proper sequence and perspective. On the morning of 30 November, the 23rd RCT held its rear-guard blocking position two miles southwest of Kunu-ri and about two miles north of the Division Artillery. The 2nd Division CP was about two miles farther south from the artillery, making it four miles south of the 23rd RCT. The 23rd RCT was under direct orders from General Keiser to act as the division rear guard and to follow the rest of the division south on the Sunchon road, continuing its mission of division rear guard. The division order, as stated earlier, derived from Major General Coulter's IX Corps order to General Keiser and applied to the entire division.

  Colonel Freeman kept in touch with General Keiser by radio during the moming until about 10 A.M., informing him of the developing situation at Kunu-ri and along the Chongchon River, where Chinese had begun to cross to the south side directly in front of him. Colonel Buys states that the Division Artillery Headquarters had constant communication with Lieutenant Colonel Keith and his 15th Field Artillery Battalion, which gave direct support to the 23rd Infantry. After 10 A.M., Freeman had personal and radio contact with only Major General Bradley, the assistant division commander, and with Colonel Sloane and Col. Gerald Epley. This contact with Bradley and Sloane was over Colonel Sloane's 9th Infantry jeep voice radio. Epley, the division chief of staff, has said there was good communication with 2nd Division units until the Division Headquarters left its CP to enter the enemy fireblock about noon.68

  Quite early in the morning of 30 November, about 6 A.M., the 23rd Infantry CP, as well as its front-line troops, received some enemy mortar fire. At that time the 23rd Regiment CP and the Service trains withdrew about 1,000 yards west on the road toward Anju and Sinanju. It appears that the regimental CP remained there until the regiment's withdrawal late in the afternoon. As the day wore on, it seemed to Colonel Freeman that enemy in his front were moving increasingly to the east of him. He thought they were going south to reinforce the enemy fireblock below the 2nd Division. He felt that the 23rd Regiment was being surrounded. He reconnoitered the road west toward Anju and found it free of enemy and roadblocks. It is apparent that Colonel Freeman began thinking that he should not take his regime
nt south on the Sunchon road as the division rear guard but that its survival depended on going west toward Anju. In the afternoon he made repeated efforts to get authority for this move.69

  A previous chapter told how the 23rd Infantry helped to save parts of two companies, K and I,, of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry, of the 25th Division in getting across the Chongchon River and escaping to its lines, afterward reaching Anju and safety on the afternoon of 30 November. It was about noon when the 23rd Infantry made arrangements to try to help the two companies of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry, escape from the large numbers of pursuing Chinese that had them pinned against the Chongchon and in the paddy lands just south of it. The 23rd Infantry arranged for a heavy artillery barrage to hit the Chinese and had a liaison plane drop a note to L Company that they should then make a run for it toward their lines. When the artillery barrage commenced, the soldiers started hack, with the Chinese running after them. Observers in the 23rd Regiment saw Chinese soldiers run right up to many of them and push them to the ground and motion for them to stay there. About one-half of K and L companies, perhaps 175 to 200 men, made it to the Anju road and the protection of the 23rd Infantry. This episode gave Colonel Freeman the impression that the area in front of him and to the north was swarming with Chinese.

  As this drama was unfolding in his front, an estimated regiment of Chinese soldiers, in three echelons, appeared in the flat plain of the Chongchon valley. Air strikes hit them with napalm and rockets and strafed them. Observers in the 23rd Infantry were astonished that the Chinese appeared to pay no attention to these punishing attacks and did not even break ranks. When they reached the impact area of the artillery, however, they executed a column left, still in formation, and moved north out of the artillery impact area.'° There can be little doubt that the 23rd Infantry, and the 15th, 37th, and 38th field artillery battalions, which delivered this mass fire, saved those men of K and L companics who escaped. Some tanks and antiaircraft vehicles that were sent out behind some dikes to add their fire also contributed.