Disaster in Korea

by Roy E Appleman

  Our units can advance more quickly by attacking the enemy in rotation. When the enemy is not on the march, the advance guard squad of the advance guard platoon should attack the enemy and drive them away. After the way is cleared, another platoon of the advance guard company takes over the mission of advance guard and the unit continues to advance. If the enemy is encountered again, the process is repeated. Depending upon the situation, the attacking units retreat after the fire fight and fall in at the rear of their battalion or regiment."

  The ROK II Corps collapse on the right flank of Eighth Army was complete by 30 November. The ROK 7th and 8th divisions were out of the fight entirely and in rear areas of Eighth Army, trying to assemble stragglers and take in replacements to reconstitute their units. An exception was the ROK 3rd Regiment of the ROK 7th Division, which, on the extreme left flank of the corps, had moved into the zone of the US 2nd Division and had fought effectively alongside the US 38th Infantry Regiment. This ROK regiment was attached to the US 2nd Infantry Division and had fought with it during the Kunu-ri actions. The only division of the ROK II Corps still at the front and making a pretense of fighting the enemy on 30 November was the weak ROK 6th Division, which had been attached to the 1st Cavalry Division, and was now in the vicinity of Sinchang-ni. Its regiments, the 2nd, 7th, and 19th, were at very low strength, estimated by IX Corps on 29 November to number a total of no more than 3,700 men-1,200 men in the 7th Regiment, 1,500 in the 19th, and 1,000 stragglers in the 2nd. After the heavy fighting of the night of 29-30 November and during 30 November, the ROK 6th Division's strength was certainly even lower, although there is no reliable information as to the extent the ROK 6th Division engaged in the battles at Sinchang-ni.

  To all intents and purposes, the ROK II Corps had ceased to exist as a combateffective force. In five days and five nights of fighting, the CCF 38th and 42nd armies had penetrated 50 air miles south into the rear of the ROK II Corps area on the right flank of Eighth Army and 30 to 40 air miles west. At the end of the month the XIII Chinese Army Group held the imminent threat of a deep envelopment south and west around the right and center of Eighth Army, if not of the entire army.

  It must be remembered that the CCF success at the army's right flank was not an isolated affair. At that same time, the CCF was attacking in great force clear across the rest of the Eighth Army front, except at its extreme western flank near the Yellow Sea.

  Just as the CCF 38th and 42nd armies were in position north and northeast ofTokchon on the Eighth Army right flank, waiting to strike the ROK II Corps, so was the CCF 39th Army waiting in front of the Eighth Army center. This part of the UN line was held by the US 25th Infantry Division in the Yongbyon and Ipsok area, on both sides of the south-flowing Kuryong River, which emptied into the Chongchon River about four miles northwest of Kunu-ri.

  The 39th Army was no stranger to this part of Korea. Just a month earlier it had attacked and defeated the ROK 1st Division and two regiments of the US 1st Cavalry Division in the area around Unsan, on the west side of the Kuryong River, north of Kunu-n. Subsequently it had driven down just short of the Chongchon River in the CCF 1st Phase Offensive. In the fighting around Unsan, the CCF all but dcstroved the 8th Cavalry Regiment and turned back the 5th Cavalry when it tried to rescue the 8th Cavalry.

  After the Unsan campaign, the CCF 66th Army, which at first stood in reserve behind the 39th Army, published a summary of battle conclusions reached as a result of their experiences in that campaign, the only one in the 1st Phase Offensive to engage large numbers of American troops. Now, as the CCF opened their 2nd Phase Offensive against the Eighth Army center, the ROK 1st Division, on line just to the left (west) of the US 25th Infantry Division, captured a copy of this document from the 66th Army on 26 November, the second day of the CCF 2nd Phase Offensive. A few of the conclusions stated in it may help explain their method of fighting and of using to advantage what they thought were fatal weaknesses of the American forces.

  Their infantry men arc weak, afraid to die and haven't the courage to attack or defend. They depend on their planes, tanks, and artillery. At the same time, they are afraid of our fire power... .

  They must have proper terrain and good weather to transport their great amount of equipment. They can operate rapidly along good highways and flat country; not in hill counts'... .

  They specialize in day fighting. They are not familiar with night fighting or hand-to-hand combat. They arc afraid of our big knives and grenades; also of our courageous attack, regular combat, and infiltration.

  If defeated, they have no orderly formation. Without the use of their mortars, they become completely lost and (as in the operation) [at Unsan, in October 19501 are killed off. They become dazed and completely demoralized.

  Map 5. The US 25th Infantry Division's attack and the CCF counterattack, 24-29 November 1950.

  They are not good in a fight. At UNSAN, they were surrounded for several days yet they did nothing.

  They are afraid when the rear is cut off. When transportation comes to a standstill, the infantry loses the will to fight... .

  Those surrounded by us will think we are well organized and equipped with weapons. In this case, they will surrender rather than fight.'

  An earlier chapter told of Task Force Dolvin's advance in the US 25th Division attack on 24-25 November. The task force was the specially created combat group to spearhead the division's attack north toward the Yalu. It was in the division center, with the 35th Infantry Regiment (-) on its left and the 24th Infantry Regiment on its right. Task Force Dolvin's composition has been given in an earlier chapter. It was a strong force of combined tank, infantry, and artillery.

  Lt. Col. Welborn G. Dolvin, commanding officer of the 89th Medium Tank Battalion, commanded the combined task force. Dolvin's 89th Tank Battalion headquarters served as his task-force command staff. B Company, 35th Infantry, had been attached to the task force as its last component when the decision was made to strengthen its infantry element.

  The task force led off north from Ipsok on 25 November in its continuation of the Eighth Army attack to the border. The Ranger Company and E Company, 27th Infantry, on the west side of the road, and B Company, 35th Infantry, on the east side advanced north under constant enemy observation and harassment. We have noted earlier that the Ranger Company had a very hard fight late in the afternoon taking Hill 205, a steep circular knob, immediately west of the road. This position was the northern-most held by Task Force Dolvin, although E Company, 27th Infantry, on Hill 207, a mile to the southwest, was almost as far. B Company, 35th Infantry, was on the opposite (east) side of the road on Hill 234, a mile and a half south of the Ranger Company. During the afternoon it had failed to advance abreast of the Ranger Company when a Chinese screening force on the ridge northward turned it back. E Company was on an elongated ridge a mile westward immediately above a big eastward bend of the Kuryong River and separated from the Ranger Company hill by a finger of land that was half a mile wide. Ascending ridges of high ground led into both hills from the north.

  Task Force Dolvin had advanced on 24 and 25 November under Operation Order No. 6, dated 10:00 A.M., 23 November. An objectives overlay (1:50,000scale map) accompanying this order located nine objectives, all high ground on both sides of the road north of Ipsok-only Objective 1 was south of Ipsok, about one and a half miles southwest of the town. Correlating the objectives overlay with a topographical map of the area gives the following hill locations and numbers for the objectives:

  Objective 1-Hill 201, west of road, SW of Ipsok

  Objective 2-Hill 205, west of road, NW of Ipsok

  Objective 3-Hill 218, west of road

  Objective 4-Hill 216, east of road, opposite Hill 218

  Objective 5-Hill 200 (unnumbered on map), east of road

  Objective 6-H111222, west of road

  Map 6. Task Force I)olvin, 25th Infantry Division, 25-27 November 1950.

  Objective 7-Hill 234, east of road

  Objective 8-Hill 20
5, west of road

  Objective 9-Hill 120-160 (unnumbered on map), astride road

  Objective 10- Hill 207, west of road

  At dark on 25 November Task Force Dolvin had passed over Objectives 1 through 6, occupying Objectives 7, 8, and 10. Only Objective 9 lay north of its lines. The Ranger Company was on Objective 8, Hill 205; E Company, 27th Infantry, was on Objective 10, Hill 207; and B Company, 35th Infantry, was on Objective 7, Hill 234. All these objectives were within the eight miles of road east of the Turtle's Head and Camel's Head bends of the Kuryong River.

  Opposite the neck of the Camel's Head bend of the river, the road bent sharply northeast, forced in that direction by the course of the Kuryong River. In the afternoon of 25 November Lieutenant Colonel Dolvin established his task force CP in the little valley just southeast of Hill 222, west of the road. A distance of a little more than half a mile separated the road and the Kuryong River at this point. The 77th and 90th field artillery battalions emplaced their guns in firing positions just north of Ipsok to support the task force and fired heavily in late afternoon in support of the Ranger Company.

  In the afternoon of25 November, Brig- Gen. George B. Barth, commanding general, 25th Division Artillery, went forward to look over the situation. He noted that, where Task Force Dolvin's infantry advanced northward during the day and passed the Camel's Head bend of the Kuryong River, the road bent sharply east. This change of direction uncovered the two artillery battalions emplaced north of Ipsok. When the infantry turned east at the road bend, the artillery was left exposed and unprotected. It seemed like an open invitation for enemy to come through the gap and hit the artillery. General Barth immediately reported this weakness to Maj. Gen. William B. Kean, commanding the 25th Division, at his CP in Yongbyon, ten road miles south of Ipsok. The latter ordered Lt. Col. Gordon E. Murch to start his 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, immediately toward the scene and, upon arrival, to take a position north of the artillery for its protection.'

  CCF Destroy Ranger Company

  First Lt. Ralph Puckett commanded the 8213th Ranger Company-the Eighth Army Ranger Company, as it was then commonly called. The Ranger Company was the first of a new kind of special force unit the army was then experimenting with. Basically, it was an infantry-trained unit, with some special skills needed for special missions.

  The Ranger Company went into the fight on Hill 205 in the afternoon of 25 November with two platoons, numbering in all only 85 men. Casualties in taking the hill late in the afternoon reduced the number of able-bodied Rangers left to defend the position during what threatened to be an unpredictable night. A platoon of B Company tanks, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, supported the Rangers.

  Enemy probing teams arrived at the Ranger position about 10 P.M. It did not take them long to locate the defense line, and soon the hilltop was under heavy assault. The platoon of tanks and the 77th Field Artillery Battalion near Ipsok fired in support of the Rangers. The battle raged on the hill at close quarters for more than three hours. At 2:55 A.M. on 26 November, the 89th Tank Battalion headquarters section, serving as the task force's CP, received a radio message from tanks with the Ranger Company that they and the Ranger survivors had been forced off Objective 8, Hill 205. Lieutenant Puckett, the Ranger commander, was reported wounded; one of his platoon leaders, Lt. Charlie Bunn, had been killed, and the other platoon leader wounded. The Ranger survivors reverted to 25th Division reserve status at 10:30 A.M. that morning. Only 21 men came out of the Hill 205 fight.3

  In contrast to the Ranger Company, E Company, 27th Infantry, had incredibly good luck on the night of 25-26 November, all things considered. Capt. Reginald B. Desiderio commanded E Company. He had been its commander for some time and already had left his mark on the company. His men considered him brave and a skillful and inspiring commander. He led them by example. Desiderio had quit school when 15 years old to enlist in the army. When his enlistment term ended, he finished high school. He was in the California National Guard when it was called into federal service in 1941. Desiderio became a second lieutenant in 1942. He earned his paratroop wings and served in the 70th Infantry Division in Europe in World War II, where he earned a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. Now in Korea in 1950, he was about 30 years old, an experienced combat soldier and officer.

  In moving toward Objective 10, Hill 207, a northeast-southwest ridge hard by the Kuryong River on its west side, on the afternoon of 25 November, E Company had had no trouble. As it neared its objective, some scattered longrange small-arms fire came to it from the right, probably from Hill 205, a mile away. Lt. William Otomo led a 12-man patrol ahead of E Company to Hill 207 and found it unoccupied. The main body of the company followed and occupied its objective without opposition. It seems strange that the Chinese had such a strong screening force on Hill 205, but none on Hill 207. Perhaps it was because Hill 205 was directly west of and overlooked the road leading north into their assembly areas, and they expected the Americans to be roadbound here.

  Lieutenant Colonel Dolvin had ordered Captain Desiderio to post his company so that it covered all the little valley leading back to the task force CP. This may have been partly responsible for an unwise disposition of his troops at Hill 207. He placed only one of his rifle platoons, the 2nd, on top the hill. He sent Lt. J. C. Burch with his 3rd Platoon north of Hill 207 to outpost three knobs of high ground overlooking the valley northward. These knobs were about one-third of a mile beyond the main company position.

  Burch put a squad on each knob. He stayed with the squad on the middle knob, on the top of which was a Korean graveyard, with stone burial slabs and burial mounds protruding upright at many places. He kept one of his machine guns with this squad; the other he sent with the squad to the knob on his right. The right-hand outpost-squad position was farther than the others from pany's main position. By 5:30 P.M., at dark, Burch's squad was dug in on the middle outpost. Burch was unable to link his three squads by telephone, as his length of wire was too short.

  Only two days past full moon and the sky clear, the landscape was flooded with a silvery half light and many shadows. This half darkness had scarcely settled when there was a sudden burst of machine-gun fire and a few rifle shots at the right-hand squad position. Then silence.

  Burch and his squad soon saw two men, dragging two wounded buddies, struggling up the slope to their middle knob. The two told their story when they reached the top. They said a CCF fire-team had snuffed out the right-hand squad outpost in an instant. One of the squad members had left his foxhole to relieve himself. He was not seen again. Seconds later a group of Chinese soldiers swarmed over the crest and were man-handling the machine-gun crew before they were able to open fire. The machine-gun burst that Burch and his men heard occurred when the gunner opened fire aimlessly before he was struck down. The CCF apparently cut down most of the squad with rifle or submachinegun fire. Private First Class Melzer, in spilling out the story to Burch, said he saw Private First Class Mays, firing his BAR, walk straight into the Chinese.

  The main E Company position and the left-hand and middle outpost positions had remained quiet during this brief outburst at the right-flank outpost. But Mclzcr had hardly finished his story when Burch and others on the middle outpost began to hear a singsong jabbering on the slope below them. They could see nothing. Burch tried to get through on his SCR 300 radio to call for mortar and artillery fire on his forward slope, but the overcrowded channel was already full of other talk, and he could not get a connection. After about 20 minutes of this frustrating situation, the singsong jabbering in front of him stopped. The hill was quiet for a few moments. Then a shower of grenades exploded in the squad position among the gravestones. Chinese grenadiers had crawled undiscovered to within a few yards of the position.

  Burch was still in the shadow of a gravestone trying to get through on his radio, but other voices cut in when he thought he was about to succeed. When the grenades came in, he looked up quickly and saw two of his attached ROK soldiers standing clear in the moonl
ight. They had given away his position. In the next instant a grenade exploded where they stood. Almost simultaneously a dozen Chinese came over the crest. Private First Class Navarro, the machine gunner, got off only one short burst. The enemy assault force went straight for the gun. A Chinese tommy gunner, standing directly over them, shot and killed Navarro and his assistant gunner, Private First Class Beverly. A grenade hit Sergeant Hawkins, who was lying next to Burch, shattering his leg and lifting him up. He fell back down on Burch. One of the men who had escaped from the right-hand outpost was hit again. Someone yelled, "The BAR'S jammed!" All these things happened almost simultaneously.

  Burch got loose from Hawkins, and now on his feet, he could see nearly 100 Chinese soldiers advancing in a semicircle formation so close he could have hit them with a rock. He knew his position was untenable and shouted the order, "Fall back on the company!" His outpost survivors took off at a run. Burch stood and covered their getaway with carbine fire. His carbine fired automatic with no malfunction, and at 15 feet he killed two Chinese who tried to rush him. Other enemy close to them hesitated when they fell. Burch turned and ran hard down the path. Not a shot followed him. The Chinese now seemed content to walk around among the gravestones on the captured outpost, yelling to the fleeing Americans, "Come on back, GI. Afraid, GI."

  The 3rd Squad outpost on Burch's left had its contact with Chinese just after Burch and his survivors left the middle outpost. In the 3rd Squad outpost, Private First Class Fletcher, in his foxhole, was suddenly startled to see a man standing only 30 feet downslope in front of him. He said to Fletcher in perfect English, "I'm an FO [forward artillery observer]." Fletcher asked, "From where?" The man ignored the question and asked "How many men you got up there?" Fletcher fired but missed. The man ran into the underbrush. The Chinese then began their attack with tommy-gun and rifle fire. The crest was bare for perhaps 50 to 60 feet downslope, and visibility was good for the defenders. This made it hard for the Chinese to crawl to within good grenade range for a steep uphill throw. (The Chinese were reputed to have weak throwing arms.)