Disaster in Korea

by Roy E Appleman

  The 2nd Engineers stretched in an arc from northwest to northeast in their position near the old 2nd Division CP. When the 23rd Infantry Regiment pulled out posthaste on the Anju road about four miles northwest of them, the 2nd Engineers were the northernmost 2nd Division foot troops still in position. They were also now wide open to attack from all the CCF pouring south across the Chongchon River and from those enemy who had been attacking the 23rd Regiment from the east, as well as the Chinese that had gathered at the north end of the fireblock, south of them. The story of the 2nd Engineers, as far as it is known, is sketchy. At dark the 2nd Engineers stood alone-no match for the thousands of enemy that now surrounded them on all sides.

  Apparently the last contact the 2nd Engineer Battalion commander had with anyone in the 2nd Infantry Division with authority to give any instructions or orders was Division Chief of Staff Gerald G. Epley, about 3 P.m. This was shortly before Epley left the old division CP in the afternoon to go south in a reconnaissance of the Sunchon road condition, from which he did not return to the CP. Epley wrote:

  I was in contact with the commander of the Combat Engineer Bn, whose troops were deployed on the hills surrounding the CP area. They were under continuing enemy pressure. I saw him personally just before the CP rear echelon departed and authorized him to assemble his unit and follow the artillery [this was no change from the earlier division withdrawal order]. Unfortunately, the Engineers never were able to complete their assembly. Darkness and the enemy closed in and many including their commander were captured."

  We know from Shriver's account of the withdrawal of Headquarters Company, 9th Infantry, late in the afternoon that some men from the 2nd Engineers were among them, and others joined it later in the hills. Maj. Lawrence B. Farnum, of the Division Artillery, has stated that, when the 503rd and 38th field artillery battalions were halted in the massive road jam and fireblock on the night of 30 November, "a portion of the engineer battalion was in column behind the artillery pieces at the time the column was completely blocked." He gives them credit for being the last troops in the column and for being the division rear guard. These Engineer troops must have been on the southernmost of the two defensive hills the battalion had occupied, and it was from this hill that some escaped. The 2nd Infantry Division War Diary for November 1950 says, "The 2nd Engineer (C) Battalion continued to hold the two critical hills southwest of the old 2nd Division Command Post until well after darkness. Not a man escaped from the northernmost of the two hills." The G-4 Section of the War Diary says further, "The Engineer Bn. was almost completely wiped out as an effective unit and lost over 95% of their T/O&E equipment." Col. Pascal N. Strong, Eighth Army Engineer, writing in the Military Engineer two years later said, "In an effort to hold the road open to permit the divisional artillery to get out, the 2nd Engineers were committed as a rear guard. They were hit on all sides. When they finally extricated themselves, half of the officers were killed, or missing, among them the battalion commander, half of the men were casualties, and all of the equipment was gone.."97

  It is interesting that Major Farnum and Lt. Col. Robert J. O'Donnell, commanding officer of the 38th Field Artillery, both wrote letters to the editors of Combat Forres Journal to comment on and to correct statements of S. L. A. Marshall in his article "They Fought to Save Their Guns," in the May 1953 issue, which was a part of Marshall's book The River and the Gauntlet. In that book Marshall gave the impression that the Division Artillery units were the rear guard of the 2nd Division on the Sunchon road. Major Farnum took the trouble to say specifically that they were not the rear guard but that the 2nd Engineers were behind them.

  At least part of the 2nd Engineers, in column behind the 503rd and 38th artillery battalions, must have been the group that joined the 9th Infantry Headquarters Company in the hills southwest of the Pass and walked out with them to Sunchon on 1 December. It is a matter of regret that some of the Engineer survivors did not leave a record or that a report was not assembled soon after the event and made a part of the official records of the 2nd Division. Such a record would have revealed details of this unit's valor below Kunu-ri in the afternoon and evening of 30 November 1950.

  Location and Extent of the CCF Fireblock

  Perhaps it is desirable to summarize and define rather precisely the location, extent, and nature of the Chinese fireblock southwest of Kunu-n* on 29 November to 1 December 1950 that enmeshed and decimated the 2nd Infantry Division, even though much has been said already in preceding pages about it. Map 12 attempts to illustrate the situation.

  When the roadblock and fireblock were first reported to the 2nd Division CP by elements of a Turkish convoy about dawn on 29 November, and when a subsequent MP patrol confirmed its presence, it seemed to he at only one place, about three miles south of the CP. Subsequently, it was learned that the same convoy had first encountered an enemy ambush in the Pass area about four miles farther south. Thus, there were at least two places where enemy had established fireblocks on the Sunchon-Kunu-ri road by dawn of 29 November. There may have been other places and more extensive fireblocks at that time not known or suspected. But on the basis of the Turkish report early on the morning of 29 November, and by subsequent reconnaissance, the 2nd Division estimated that not more than an enemy battalion was involved.

  We know from a captured enemy sketch map that two regiments of the CCF 113th Division of the 38th Army were dispatched from Tokchon to establish a fireblock on the Sunchon-Kunu-ri road. But we do not know when they arrived there in full force. It may be that not more than a battalion of enemy were established at the known fireblocks early on 29 November. But it is evident from succeeding events during that day and the next that the enemy constantly reinforced the fireblock, and it is reasonable to assume that, by afternoon of 30 November, two entire regiments of the 113th Division or more had arrived at the scene.

  By the time the 2nd Division CP and Headquarters started through the fireblock about midafternoon on 30 November (they reached the beginning of the fireblock before that time but waited as the 38th Infantry attacked through it), there were enemy machine gunners and mortar crews, as well as infantry, dispersed along a six-to-seven-mile stretch of the road running south toward Sunchon from the northern end of the fireblock, which by then had reached to within one mile south of the Division CP. The enemy fireblock for most units during the day and into the early hours of the night ended at the top of the Pass. The Pass marked the divide between the drainage north to the Chongchon River and the drainage south to the Taedong River. The Pass was about 12 road miles south of Kunu-n and 16 road miles north of Sunchon. At the top of the Pass, the secondary dirt and gravel road, made two-way for most of its distance by earlier work of US Engineer battalions, turned sharply from a southerly direction to the southwest for a distance of a little more than three miles, where it turned south again toward Sunchon.

  The village of Karhyon lay on the south side of the road about a mile and a half west of the Pass. About 400 yards west of Karhyon, the road crossed over a stream by a two-way concrete bridge. This bridge had been blown by the time the 2nd Division arrived there in its withdrawal, and the 30-foot wide, 3-foot deep stream had to be crossed in a bypass. The bypass had the banks cut down for vehicular use, apparently the work earlier of a US Army Engineer bulldozer. The bypass bent sharply down to the stream on the north side just short of the blown bridge. On the south side the bypass climbed a sharp ten-foot bank to a series of terraced rice paddies. This south side of the stream, an uphill, rough climb for vehicles, was the worst part of the bypass. Many vehicles could not climb up this incline out of the stream on their own power.

  After dark, perhaps by 9 P.M., enemy fire from Karhyon hit on the road near and on the bypass, where many vehicles floundered in the stream as men tried to free them. This enemy mortar and automatic fire became severe as the night passed and as more Chinese arrived. If the enemy in Karhyon are considered part of the fireblock in its later stages, then the fireblock and roadblock after dark woul
d be longer in extent than the six or seven miles usually given for it. In its later stages the enemy fireblock would have to be described as being from nine to ten miles long.

  In attempting to gain perspective about the CCF fireblock established on the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road during the night of 28-29 November, it seems clear from an examination of enemy sources that enemy moving westward across country from Tokchon first established the fireblocks. In the late afternoon of 30 November, about an hour or two before dark, the nature of the enemy fireblock seemed to show a marked increase in firepower, especially in mortars and machine guns. Then near dark, and about the same time the 23rd RCT left its rear-guard position and went west on the Anju road, Chinese forces seemed to build up in great numbers as new enemy formations arrived at the fireblock.

  In considering the nature of the enemy fireblock below Kunu-ri, it must be recognized that, by 29 November the 2nd Infantry Division had two Chinese armies converging on it, one coming down the valley of the Chongchon and another driving the 25th Infantry Division south before it in an approach to the Chongchon River crossings in the vicinity of Won-ni and Kunu-ri. The 112th and 113th divisions of the Chinese 38th Army were bearing down against its front and left flank, and the 118th and 120th divisions of the Chinese 40th Army were approaching it from the north and northeast. From the Tokchon area and east of Sunchon, another Chinese army was moving against the rear of the 2nd Infantry Division.

  Enemy troops that crossed the Chongchon at Won-ni and Kunu-ri in the afternoon and evening of 30 November in large numbers certainly account for the rapid enemy buildup at the northern end of the fireblock after dark set in. At the same time, large numbers of troops began to show up at the southern end of the fireblock south of the Pass and near Karhyon. By midnight, and after, Chinese were in ever-increasing numbers below Kunu-ri, moving toward Sunchon.°"

  A special word should be said about aerial support for the ground troops at Kunu-ri. As the Chinese 2nd Phase Offensive began rolling back the Eighth Army on the Chongchon River front in late November, the Joint Operations Center of the Fifth Air Force gave more and more of its close ground support missions and some bombing missions to the 2nd Infantry Division, which was fighting a critical, delaying rear-guard action for the entire army. The division held the vital pivotal position where the enemy had to he slowed to prevent a massive flanking movement around the army's eastern, or right, flank after the Chinese routed the ROK II Corps on that flank in the first night and day of their offensive. The 38th Infantry on the extreme right of the division, for instance, received aerial strikes one day that sealed a mine shaft in its rear, where an estimated 600 Chinese soldiers were seen to enter and where it was believed many perished. Another typical strike caught about 50 Chinese soldiers in the open and dropped napalm on them, burning just about all of them to death. The most air strength, however, was assembled and put over the 2nd Division on 30 November when it was trying to break through the Chinese fireblock south of Kunu-ri. General Keiser on 30 November sent an urgent call to the Fifth Air Force for maximum close support for his troops. It was given until darkness came. There appears to have been little air presence, however, for a period in midafternoon.

  East of the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road, Fast Carrier Task Force 77 flew in two propeller-plane strikes involving 14 Corsairs and five ADs. They dropped 14 tons of napalm on enemy troop concentrations in the 2nd Division area. To help the Fifth Air Force on 30 November protect the division, Carrier Task Force 77 divided its sorties between X Corps and Eighth Army. It sent armed reconnaissance flights through the big bend of the Taedong River northeast of Sunchon and along the route of the retreating 2nd Division, ready to unload their munitions on any target selected for them by any controller they could reach. Unfortunately, they found the controller situation chaotic in this area, and their potential effectiveness was not used to its maximum. Of four jet flights over the 2nd Division, only one made contact with a controller.

  A weak air-controller situation over the 2nd Division on 30 November was due, in part at least, to the fact that enemy advances had forced the Fifth Air Force from its forward staging field at Sinanju, that many of the TACPs with the ground troops had been lost by then to enemy action, that irreplaceable radio-control equipment had been lost, and finally that the Mosquito control planes based at Pyongyang were being evacuated from there. But despite some failures, there was strong air support along the fireblock during daylight hours. Later, General Keiser praised without reservation the aid given by the close support and said that those of his division who escaped might never have made it through the Chinese fireblock without that aerial aid.99

  There was not universal praise, however, for the air support over the Kunuri-Sunchon road on 30 November. Chief of Staff Epley said that, in the two hours or more that he was in the enemy fireblock area in midafternoon to late afternoon, he did not see a single aircraft. Some of the Division Artillery officers had similar observations. 100 It seems to have been a mixed picture in that the air support was excellent when planes were over the fireblock area, but there were some gaps in their presence there.

  Many survivors who rode, walked, or scrambled through the Pass at the end of the fireblock have left comments about the ferocity of air attacks in the late afternoon on the Chinese soldiers who occupied the heights above the Pass, a defile about 450 yards long at its highest part where embankments of rocks and dirt rose 50 feet high on either side of a cut. This part of the fireblock was initially free of enemy machine-gun emplacements, but by the latter part of the afternoon enemy observers saw the importance of this strategic spot and rushed enemy gunners and mortar crews to it, emplacing machine guns on either side. It then became a scene of carnage, and the road was repeatedly blocked by knocked-out vehicles and debris. Fighter-bombers hit the Pass repeatedly during this period with napalm, which spilled down the embankment sides to the road; .50-caliber bullets from strafing planes chipped a cascade of rocks and dirt from the sides; and rockets hit with concussion blasts.

  Some of those who benefited from the air strikes thought they destroyed more enemy soldiers and gun and mortar positions than the ground troops themselves in trying to force a passage. This may not, however, represent a balanced judgment. Overall, the air cover would certainly have been more effective if there had been adequate Mosquito planes and ground forward controllers with more of the various division serials who could have conveyed target information to the strike planes.

  Air strikes on masses of enemy in the flatlands of the Chongchon River valley in the vicinity of Won-ni and Kunu-ri to the northeast of the fireblock area, however, seem to have been devastating to the Chinese caught in the open there, but they came on in spite of it. Air cover here was most telling in delaying enemy forces from engulfing the 2nd Infantry Division sooner than they did.

  IX and I Corps Actions on Keiser's Option to Use Anju Road

  It may be useful in reflecting on the fate of the 2nd Infantry Division at Kunu-ri to review briefly actions taken by the IX and I corps in connection with proposals made on 29 and 30 November that the 2nd Division might or should use the Anju road through the I Corps sector, not the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road in the IX Corps sector, in withdrawing from the Chongchon River front and Kunu-ri after the CCF fireblock was established on the Sunchon road below the division.

  Many of the communications during this period between the two corps and the 2nd Division were verbal over voice radio or telephone and were not made a part of the G-3 Journal entries and therefore were never officially recorded. Also, it must be remembered that, while the I and IX corps records for this period survived, those for the 2nd Infantry Division did not. Records for the division that survived predated the evening of 29 November, when the Service trains were sent out on the Anju road. For the critical day of 30 November, no division records got out. In fact, few were ever entered on paper that day. The records for the 2nd Infantry Division, such as they are, were compiled later from the memory of a few participants. But even so,
certain facts can be established with reasonable certainty concerning the roles played by Maj. Gen. John Coulter, IX Corps commander; Maj. Gen. Frank W. Milburn, I Corps commander; and Maj. Gen. Laurence Keiser, 2nd Infantry Division commander. So far as has been determined in this research, Lt. Gen. Walton Walker, Eighth Army commander, played no direct role in the matter of the withdrawal route of the 2nd Infantry Division. Perhaps he should have.

  An examination of the I Corps G-3 Journal entries shows that there is only one message recorded on the subject. On 29 November at 7:15 P.m., the IX Corps transmitted a message to I Corps stating that "2nd Division requests use of road from Kunu-ri to Anju." There is no record of a message of approval from I Corps.'°' The IX Corps G-3 Journal contains no entry on the subject, although two officers who were on duty at the time in the IX Corps G-3 Section stated a year later that a 2nd Division request was received and cleared with I Corps and transmitted to the division.102 We know, however, that I Corps did receive such a message at 7:15 on 29 November.

  We have indicated earlier that General Milburn gave General Keiser his approval by telephone to use the Anju-Sinanju road on the evening of 29 November for the movement of the 2nd Division Service trains and such noncombat units as the G-1 Section. C Battery of the 1st Observation Battalion also went out on the Anju road. According to Lt. Col. Maurice C. Holden, 2nd Division G-3, Generals Milburn and Keiser were close personal friends. It appears from all the evidence available that General Milburn was willing to let General Keiser use the Anju-Sinanju-Sukchon road in his I Corps sector, but he was not, ofcourse, in command of the 2nd Division-Maj. Gen. John Coulter was. About noon of 30 November, General Milburn telephoned General Keiser and offered use of the Anju road if he thought it necessary to get his division out. Colonel Epley, the division chief of staff, said General Keiser told him of this conversation immediately after it had taken place. And General Milburn said in early 1952 that he had telephoned General Keiser and offered use of the Anju road to him and that he would hold the 5th RCT roadblocks in place east of Anju until his columns had passed.'o'