It should be mentioned that, during the afternoon, another change took place in the support forces accompanying Task Force Dolvin. General Kean, on Eighth Army order, withdrew the 77th and 82nd field artillery battalions from attachment to the 25th Division and sent them posthaste to rejoin the 1st Cavalry Division, which was about to be committed from Eighth Army reserve to the rear of the ROK II Corps front in an attempt to check the CCF breakthrough there. The 8th Field Artillery Battalion was hurried forward to Ipsok to replace the 77th Field Artillery Battalion. It arrived after dark on 26 November, and went into firing position at the northwest edge of Ipsok, behind Murch's 2nd Battalion.
The night of 26-27 November was a bad one for Task Force Wilson. The CCF were everywhere, all in motion, and everywhere, they launched crushing attacks. By dawn the task force had been decimated and was reeling. B Company was virtually destroyed; E Company barely escaped a similar fate; C Company, 65th Combat Engineers, was overrun; the task force's CP was attacked and had casualties; Murch's 2nd Battalion had been heavily engaged on the western part of its perimeter, and it had to send reinforcements to the task force CP to prevent the CCF from overrunning it; the Medical Company detachment and some of the trains of the 2nd Battalion were ambushed south of the battalion perimeter and destroyed; and the 8th Field Artillery Battalion on the northern and western edges of Ipsok came under persistent enemy close attack. Only the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Murch's 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, behind E Company and the task force CP and north of the 8th Field Artillery Battalion, saved Task Force Wilson from destruction during the night. General Kean never made a wiser decision than when he acted on General Barth's recommendation that he send a reinforcing infantry force to Dolvin on the evening of 25 November.
It seemed that the CCF came at all positions from all directions. At least once a column of Chinese marched right past part of F Company in its perimeter position without paying the slightest heed to it, apparently being on an assigned mission to go straight for Hill 216 on the east side of the road, get behind the task force there, and cut the road at that point.
In the midst of all this CCF movement and battle on all sides, 1st Lt. Robert K. Sawyer and his 3rd Platoon, 25th Reconnaissance Company, held a screening position on the cast side of the Kuryong River south of Hill 222 and C Company, 65th Engineer Combat Battalion. Task Force Wilson's headquarters was located a mile eastward in the same small valley near the MSR. During the night, Sawyer lost radio contact with the reconnaissance company. He had put two machine guns on the point of a ridge north of the valley and some outposts where they should have been able to see and hear anything taking place near the 3rd Platoon's area. The platoon's tanks and vehicles were dispersed in the valley below the ridge and near the Kuryong River. The usual guards were posted. Sawyer sensed that everyone seemed on edge, as if they expected something to happen. Thus far, the platoon had not been engaged in any action with the Chinese. The outpost personnel were nervous and kept reporting strange noises. As night wore on, members could hear small arms firing, particularly to the south, and on occasion they saw brilliant tracers in the sky.
Sometime during the night Sawyer dozed off. He was shaken awake by someone who whispered, "Listen!" Sawyer struggled out of his sleeping bag and then heard distinctly the sound of troops moving from south to north across the valley floor behind his position. Later he said, "The padding of feet and soft clanking of equipment were unmistakeable. How I knew it was Chinese and not American feet, I cannot now say, but perhaps it was because of the rhythm. Anyway, though I could see nothing in the darkness [it was an overcast night, with only an occasional opening of moonlight], I estimated that at least a company was passing behind us."" After a little while the sound died away. Sometime later, about daylight, Sawyer heard heavy small-arms fire and mortars behind his position toward the Ipsok road. He and his platoon luckily had occupied a small island of immunity in a hostile sea during the night.
General Wilson and Lieutenant Colonel Dolvin had been concerned for the past two days that the task force's right flank to the east was entirely open, because the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, had not come up there on the regimental boundary. It appeared to them that, unless the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, came abreast and formed a line with Task Force Wilson, the CCF could easily pass around its right flank and cut off its rear, as well as choose avenues of attack from that flank. Dolvin talked about this concern with Col. John Corley, the 24th Infantry Regiment commander.
Corley, one of the most decorated battalion commanders in World War II in the North African and European theaters, was not one to allow his regiment to loiter in its tasks if he could help it. Under his urging, the 1st Battalion did come abreast of Task Force Wilson the night of 26-27 November. But it did more-it passed Dolvin's line, apparently without knowing it and without establishing communications, and continued on north into Chinese territory. It was now out front and lost. With luck it might survive if the Chinese did not bump into it.
By this time, the Chinese assault forces in the area had located all the task force's positions and they concentrated their efforts on destroying Task Force Wilson. First, they attacked the front positions-B Company, 35th Infantry, on the right; C Company, 65th Combat Engineer Battalion, in the center; and part of the 25th Reconnaissance Company on the left. But soon they spread their attack to all parts of the task force, even to the artillery in its rear.
When Captain Desiderio and his E Company, 27th Infantry, were ordered to withdraw from Hill 207 in the afternoon of 26 November and to take a reserve position behind the headquarters of Task Force Dolvin, neither they nor the task force headquarters expected the company would have any action that night. It was supposed to be a period of rest and sleep for them. Half an hour after midnight, Lieutenant Colonel Dolvin telephoned Desiderio to have his E Company at the base of the hill just in front of headquarters in 15 minutes. Desiderio woke his men and hurriedly loaded them on five tanks of Headquarters Company, 89th Tank Battalion. They rolled into the CP on time. Dolvin told Desiderio to put his men on the small hill directly north of the CP. There was no enemy action there at the time, nor were enemy known to be on it or Hill 222 west of it near the Kuryong River. But there was the sound of battle to the front and rear.
The hill Desiderio had to climb merits a brief description, in view of what happened there that night. It was about 185 meters high, and on the east side a small stream separated its slopes from the MSR. A shallow saddle connected it on the west with Hill 222. In effect, the unnumbered hill was an eastern knob of Hill 222. The knob and the Hill 222 crest had been part of Objective 6 in the original Task Force Dolvin operation plan, and in the advance north past this objective on 25 November, these hills had been free of enemy. The entire Hill 222 area extended more than a mile from the Kuryong River on the west to the MSR on the east, and it was generally more than half a mile wide in a north-south direction.
At the CP, Lieutenant Colonel Dolvin told Captain Desiderio to put his company on the knob about 500 feet to the north of where they stood. Desidcrio walked with the company to the foot of the hill. The 1st Platoon, in the lead, had hardly taken five steps up the slope when enemy fire struck around the point. The men hit the ground. Enemy fire came from the west-from Hill 222. In a volley of fire and counterfire with the Chinese on Hill 222, Sergeant Cox got the 1st Platoon to the top of the hill, followed soon by Lieutenant Burch and his 3rd Platoon. Then Sergeant Lefler came up with the 2nd Platoon. Captain Desiderio directed them in digging in, facing generally west toward the known enemy position. Lt. Dell G. Evans brought up his mortars and the Weapons Company. After spotting the enemy position by their tracer bullets, he led his mortar men down the north slope of the hill into a depressed area and set up his mortars there. He then began lobbing mortar shells into the Hill 222 positions.
Meanwhile, both sides swept each other's positions with automatic-weapons fire. At their closest points, at the saddle, the Chinese and E Company were only about 200 ya
rds apart. Desiderio quickly decided that he would need the help of tanks on top to hold the hill. The hill had an easy slope from the south, and the tanks should have no trouble in climbing up. Desiderio hurried down the hill to the task force CP and told Dolvin he needed the five tanks on top. Artillery support from the 8th Field Artillery Battalion was not available for E Company because the artillery themselves were under attack in the rear at the edge of Ipsok. Dolvin said to take the tanks.
Desiderio led the tanks up the hill. During Desiderio's absence, Evans's 60-mm and 81-mm mortars had been trying to saturate the Chinese position, the eastern slope of Hill 222 and the saddle, with mortar shells, including white phosphorus. The saddle was bare of tree growth but covered by dry grass. The white phosphorus shells had set this area on fire. The fire spread rapidly. Suddenly about 100 Chinese soldiers burst from their positions and ran rapidly toward the fire at the saddle. They stomped on the fire with their feet. But they paused only momentarily for this work before they divided into two parts. One group ran rapidly across the saddle toward E Company. This force, in full light of the burning grass fire, was cut down by 1st Platoon machine-gun and BAR fire. The other part ran into the valley north of the saddle and began to work its way around to the right flank of E Company.
At this juncture, the first two tanks reached the top of the knob and took under fire the Chinese in the flat ground below Burch's 3rd Platoon position. These tanks in the center of Burch's part of the line drew fire. Because of this, Burch soon had eight casualties, four of them ROK soldiers. Chinese bugles sounded at both ends of the line, and E Company men could see Chinese soldiers crawling toward them. They could also see many Chinese bodies in the saddle and in the valley to the right. The tanks spaced themselves about 25 yards apart, with riflemen between them. They fired their cannons at Hill 222, and their machine guns swept the intervening ground. The tank fire effectively silenced the enemy machine-gun and small-arms fire but did not find the Chi nese mortars. These had found the range of E Company's position. They fired in salvos of four. Neither could Lieutenant Evans's mortars locate the enemy weapons. In this phase of the battle, E Company had about 14 casualties, most of them from enemy mortar fire. These same enemy mortars were firing salvos into Task Force Dolvin's CP. Also, enemy soldiers had infiltrated to within smallarms fire of it. In two hours of battle the Chinese on Hill 222 had not succeeded in reaching E Company's position, largely because of the great volume of tank fire against them-the tanks up to this time had fired 45 boxes of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.
Chinese bugles sounded recall. There followed a lull in the fighting, as the enemy regrouped and decided what to do next. Except where the burning grass fires had lighted up the landscape, the night was dark, with an overcast sky. During the lull, clerks and cooks from headquarters carried a resupply of ammunition to E Company, and the mortars received 400 rounds to replenish their exhausted supply.
The lull lasted an hour or more. Then before dawn, the Chinese were ready for another try. This time their tactic changed. At their main position on Hill 222, they had added two more machine guns to the four that had fired from there earlier. And under cover of darkness a line of grenadiers had crawled unseen to within 15 yards of E Company foxholes. Suddenly the six machine guns on Hill 222, perfectly trained on the E Company position, opened up with concentrated fire. At the same time, the grenadiers hurled their stick grenades into E Company and then jumped to their feet and rushed the foxholes. Some of these leading grenadiers fell from their own machine-gun fire from Hill 222, hit in the back as they ran toward the American holes.
Behind the grenadiers came another line of Chinese, armed with rifles and submachine guns. A bazooka team got into the perimeter and made for a tank. They hit the tread of one tank with their first round, disabling it. This team fell from BAR fire. Another bazooka team started for the tank. Rifle fire cut it down. But a number of grenades landed on the tanks' hulls, and their explosions caused many American casualties among soldiers grouped near the tanks. Enemy mortar fire also came in on the tanks. The Chinese obviously had decided that the tanks were the primary obstacle to their success. A mortar fragment wounded Captain Desiderio in the shoulder (he had taken his place near one of the tanks), and the same round wounded four other men in the vicinity, including Capt. Bayliss, E Company executive officer. One group of about a dozen Chinese got inside the perimeter; seven of them reached the tanks in a rush and clambered up the hulls. Sergeant Cox and his 1st Platoon were near this penetration. They left their positions on the line temporarily and ran for the tanks. At a range of only a few feet, they shot the seven Chinese soldiers off the tanks.
The battle was now at close quarters everywhere in the E Company perimeter, and many Americans fell dead or wounded. In the 1st Platoon position on the left, Sergeant Bryers with his machine gun and a squad of riflemen had stopped the enemy in the saddle. In the center of the line, the grenade battle continued in Burch's 3rd Platoon. Desiderio sensed that his men were nearing exhaustion. He went from one group to another, despite increasing weakness caused by his wound. Survivors say that he went around the hilltop yelling as loudly as he could, "Hold until daylight and you have it made."
Heavy mist had started to settle just before dawn. It was particularly bothersome at the far right of the line in the 2nd Platoon area, at the eastern tip of the hill, where thick brush covered the slope. An enemy force had found this weak point. A Chinese fire team had crawled close to the American machine gun, and suddenly they rushed the position. These Chinese were in the platoon position before Sergeant Lefler and his men knew what was happening. The Chinese grenaded the machine gun. Corporal Savage tried to fire his BAR into the Chinese. The gun quit. Savage fell dead a moment later, and an enemy burp gunner killed Sergeant Delotaba a few feet away. In a few moments 12 men of the 2nd Platoon were casualties. Lefler saw that his platoon in a matter of minutes would be completely wiped out. He yelled, "Follow me to the back slope!" Those still on their feet did so.
Meanwhile, the E Company mortar men had fired the last of their ammunition, and they now ran up the slope to the tanks. From there they could see and hear that the 2nd Platoon at the right had cracked and that part of the line was gone. Some of them started to yell, "The line's gone-get the hell out!" Two of the tank crews started their tanks off the hill. Dcsiderio and Lieutenant Otomo ran to the tanks, pounded on their hulls, and somehow got them stopped and back on the line.
The enemy were pressing in close, having seen momentary panic in the center among the tanks, and the right-flank position overrun. Desiderio realized the crisis was at hand. He told Otomo to take one side of the remaining portion of the line and he would take the other side. He had barely uttered these words when a Chinese burp gunner close to Desiderio ripped open his side up to the heart area. Desiderio pitched forward, dead within seconds. A short distance from Desiderio, Otomo was hit by a grenade at nearly the same time and badly wounded.
The Chinese were on the point of wiping out E Company. At this moment Sergeant Lefler and his remaining men of the 2nd Platoon reappeared on the hill. They had dropped only part way down the slope. Lefler reorganized the men with him, saw to it that each had grenades, and then told them they were going back up and retake their positions. They did just that. As he and his men neared the crest, they started throwing grenades. In one of the strange quirks of battle, the Chinese there broke and ran for the underbrush. It was nearly dawn, and the Chinese had apparently already decided they would call off the fight for the present. E Company survivors held the hill. But 60 of its men became casualties during the fight, eight killed. They had burned up all nine of their BARS, except one that had been knocked out by enemy bullets. The men of E Company mourned the loss of their dead commander. Desiderio received the Congressional Medal of Honor, Posthumously, for his staunch leadership that night."
The Chinese force on Hill 222, at the same time it engaged E Company, also threatened to overrun the Task Force Wilson CP. It was only
half a mile from the crest of Hill 222. Enemy snipers and infiltrators got into a ravine only 20 to 30 yards from the CP. One of their bullets killed Maj. Leon F. Morand, Jr., the task force executive officer. The situation at the CP was so precarious by 27 November that General Wilson telephoned Lieutenant Colonel Murch and asked him to send another platoon to restore the position. Murch sent a second platoon from his F Company to the CP, and after a fight with the Chinese there, the platoon drove them away.
Murch's battalion by this time was itself under fire. The enemy had launched a coordinated attack almost everywhere just after midnight against Task Force Wilson.
C Company, 65th Engineer Combat Battalion, on the defense line that night lost heavily. It was somewhere on Hill 222 or one of its finger ridges. It is possible that the unexpected midnight appearance of the strong Chinese force on Hill 222 that later engaged Desiderio's E Company, 27th Infantry, made a successful surprise attack that overran the Engineer Company and occupied its position. We do know that C Company, 65th Engineers, was overrun that night and that Capt. Anthony Pecoraro, its commander, and one of his platoon leaders were both missing in action, together with 34 enlisted men and 10 attached Korean soldiers. Only one of the missing later returned to the task force. But the ground where the Chinese overran the Engineers was never recovered, so it was not possible to know how many had been killed or severely wounded. An aerial report said that a body of men in the C Company Engineers area was surrounded by Chinese and that some of them were captured, but the observer could not identify the men as the Engineer Company. First Lt. Robert K. Sawyer, commanding the 3rd Platoon, 25th Reconnaissance Company, said that, when he arrived at Lieutenant Colonel Murch's perimeter on the morning of 27 November, he saw some C Company Engineers, without weapons, scrambling along ditches to the safety of the perimeter."
Disaster in Korea Page 18
