Disaster in Korea

by Roy E Appleman

On the evening of 26 November, B Company, 35th Infantry, held Hill 234 with 203 men in the infantry company, including attached ROKs; a section of mortars from the Weapons Company, 35th Infantry; and a platoon of tanks from the 89th Tank Battalion. Hill 234, Objective 7, was now the most advanced of the task-force positions. It was a large hill mass east of the MSR and nearly opposite H111222. There were good avenues of approach to its crest from nearly all sides, which constituted a weakness if exploited by the enemy. The Chinese did exploit this weakness and used all approaches to the top and B Company's positions during the night. Beginning about 15 minutes after midnight, the Chinese kept up an unrelenting assault on B Company, despite heavy casualties. By morning B Company had only 26 able-bodied men left out of more than 200, but its remnant still held the hill.

  During the night, Chinese assault teams, including suicide groups, knocked out two of the defending tanks by bazooka and satchel charges. Young suicide attackers ran to the tanks and held satchel charges against them and were themselves blown to fragments in the explosions. Details of the B Company fight were not recorded in the official records or in personal recollections and interviews afterward, but its stand on the task-force right front after midnight of 26-27 November was a sacrificial one and helped save the entire force from being overwhelmed that night.''

  Murch's 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry-the Linchpin

  Lt. Col. Gordon E. Murch's 2nd Battalion held the key to the survival of Task Force Wilson on the night of 26-27 November. Its G Company was on a hill south of the task force CP, facing west toward the Kuryong River; its F Company faced north toward the front line and the main battle position and was behind (south of) the task force CP. Already F Company had been weakened by sending a platoon to strengthen the task force CP toward the northwesttoward Hill 222. Another platoon after midnight would have to go to the rescue of the CP itself when Chinese almost overran it. Thus, F Company had only one rifle platoon on line during the critical hours after midnight, reinforced by nearly a platoon from G Company. In the afternoon Murch had sent a patrol forward of his position to Sangcha-dong on the Kuryong River to his left, just south of Hill 222. There was evidence that many enemy had been in that area.

  G Company held a horseshoe-shaped hill south of F Company, the toe of the horseshoe pointing southwest. This put the open base of the horseshoe toward the northeast. The west side of the horseshoe faced the Kuryong River; the east side faced the MSR. Lieutenant Colonel Murch's CP was in a small valley north of the open base of the horseshoe. A saddle in the horseshoe-shaped hill mass made two low-lying hills for the F and G Company positions respectively. Two tanks and two machine guns were placed in low ground of the open end of the horseshoe, and they together with three 60-mm mortars guarded that approach at the northeast from the MSR.

  Capt. Jack Michaely commanded G Company. He had 116 men, including 14 ROKs. The 1st Platoon of G Company was on the horseshoe prong on the northwest side of the company position. It had four machine guns sighted to fire north. Each platoon had a 57-mm recoilless rifle. Michaely's G Company had to send some of its squads to F Company to strengthen it when the latter sent two platoons to help save the task force CP.

  The Chinese started their attack against Murch's 2nd Battalion about 1 A.M., the morning of 27 November. They first hit F Company. A group of Chinese succeeded in getting close enough, undiscovered, to grab a four-man fire team. Three of them wrenched free and ran toward G Company. The CCF held the fourth man and made him carry ammunition up the hills for them the rest of the night. He eventually escaped near daylight. After grabbing the F Company fire team, the Chinese set up a chant to F Company, "How many men you got up there?" The chant spread to the flank and rear of the company. This chant from three directions told everyone the company was nearly surrounded. A grass fire set by Chinese burned toward the F Company hilltop and reached the foxhole line. The men beat at the fire with anything they could find, but the 1st Platoon had to retreat to escape it. Captain Gough ordered his much reduced company to regroup into a tight perimeter on his left flank.

  Then an unusual spectacle occurred. A -force of about 70 enemy soldiers, apparently a Chinese company, marched straight up the hill in a column of fours and passed the left end of F Company where it had regrouped, at its boundary with G Company. At the crest they overran the recoilless-rifle emplacement, which happened to be in its path, killed its crew, and picked up the gun and threw it aside. They continued on, overrunning the F Company CP. They passed within a few feet of two jeeps and a pile of equipment but paid no attention to them. They looked straight ahead and never broke stride. Captain Gough from a distance of 50 feet watched them pass. He had a carbine but did not fire. The mortar section behind Gough's CP heard and saw the Chinese column coming. The mortarmen picked up their weapons and ran for a draw to the southeast. The Chinese could hardly have failed to see this movement, but they paid no attention to it. The enemy column could have turned slightly to its right after going through F Company and struck at G Company. It did not. It kept going straight ahead. This enemy force must have had the special mission of marching through the 2nd Battalion position and occupying Hill 216, on the east side of the MSR. The hill was straight ahead of them in their line of march. Later events showed that enemy did occupy Hill 216 about this time. After the main body of enemy had passed F Company, a few groups at the tail of the column peeled off to stop on the nose of the hill.

  While all this was happening to F Company, G Company, only a mile away, remained quiet. Several times during the night, men in the company could hear Chinese talking on the lower slope of their hill, but nothing came of it.

  The situation in front of and on the left side of Murch's 2nd Battalion was so had that, at 2 A.M., 27 November, General Wilson and Lieutenant Colonel Murch decided they should send their numerous wounded in the Collection Station and the Medical Section personnel to the rear for their protection. An assistant S-3 officer was placed in command of this group and started toward Ipsok. Chinese ambushed the party about 600 yards south of the battalion's perimeter and killed, wounded, or captured all the men and destroyed the vehicles. Four wounded medical personnel escaped from their captors later in the night and reached Murch's CP to tell him what had happened. This calamity made it clear that enemy in force were behind Lieutenant Colonel Murch's 2nd Battalion and Task Force Wilson.

  The next morning a tank officer who had come down the road from the task force (apparently a member of the 25th Reconnaissance Company) told a New York Times correspondent at Ipsok that, at the enemy roadblock where Chinese had ambushed the Medical Section and Collecting Station column the night before, human remains and mechanical wreckage lay scattered around for more than 100 yards. The tank officer was quoted as saying that he had been through two wars but had never seen anything quite so bad-"it was a terrible chewed up mess of dead men."'°

  At Ipsok during the night, the 8th Artillery Battalion had been under a very heavy Chinese attack, without infantry support, and had to fight off enemy within its own perimeter. Then sometime during the night a South Korean bearer and carrier party, moving from north to south in the Task Force Wilson area, came up against the Weapons Company roadblock at the southern end of Murch's 2nd Battalion perimeter. Mistaken by the roadblock force for Chinese, they were killed to a man.

  On the edge of the high ground of G Company's position, Captain Eddington of the Weapons Company and Lieutenant Land of G Company thought they could hear enemy noises and digging across the MSR to the southeast of them. They notified Lieutenant Colonel Murch. He came up and joined them in the hour before dawn. Jointly they agreed it sounded like enemy digging in on the hill opposite them-Hill 216. When first light came, they could see a large enemy force still digging rifle pits along the Hill 216 ridgeline, which ran in an cast-west direction. It dominated the MSR, which was only 300 to 400 yards from its lower finger ridges on the west side. Task Force Wilson was not only bruised and all but combat ineffective as a result of the night's numerous batt
les-it was now cut off from its only avenue of retreat as dawn came on 27 November.'*

  When Eighth Army ordered the recall of the 77th Field Artillery Battalion from Task Force Dolvin on 26 November, so that it could rejoin its parent unit, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 8th Field Artillery Battalion hurried north to Ipsok to replace it. Lt. Col. Terry commanded it. He put the battalion into firing position in the flat ground at the western and northern edges of Ipsok. A Battery was northwest of Ipsok, C Battery was just north of the village, and B Battery was southwest of Ipsok on the north bank of a small stream that flowed from west to east about 300 to 400 yards behind the two front batteries. The battalion headquarters and Headquarters Battery were at the east side of Ipsok. Observation posts were put out on high ground to the north, northwest, and northeast of the battery positions. A small valley ran north-northwest from Ipsok in front of the gun positions. Low ridge lines came down on both sides of this valley. To the east of the right-hand ridge, the MSR ran from Ipsok up to Task Force Wilson's positions. To the right (east) of the road, the 8th Field Artillery had a listening post and two machine-gun positions with a BAR team on a slightly elevated ridge, protecting the approach from that direction. The artillery battalion expected to be called on for its fires immediately. The 77th Field Artillery Battalion had lost two forward observers with Task Force Dolvin's infantry while it was at Ipsok.

  Shortly before midnight, Capt. Lewis Millet, a forward observer, telephoned Maj. Joel M. Gcnung, operations officer, 8th Artillery, and told him that Task Force Wilson up ahead was being hit hard and that enemy forces were drifting to its rear. Headquarters Battery commander, Capt. Robert E. Dingeman, immediately aroused all members of the artillery battalion, distributed more machine-gun ammunition immediately, and sent three or four cases ofgrenades to each battery.

  Earlier in the Korean War, the 8th Field Artillery Battalion had already been under close enemy attack and had learned how to serve as its own infantry to protect itself. About 1 A.M. on 27 November, C Battery reported to the Fire Direction Center that a column of men was marching down the road toward it. A few minutes later it reported another column of men coming toward it from the hill on the left. At 200 yards' distance, this force began blowing bugles. A Battery, to the west, now reported receiving small-arms fire and said that it too could see groups of men out front. The telephone line to Murch's position failed, and a wire team set out to find the trouble and repair it. This wire team ran right into the Chinese force on the road, which fired on it. The five men ran back. Sergeant Soloway helped one of them who was wounded.

  The Chinese did not come right in; they seemed to be sending small groups forward to find specific locations of the battalion positions. But when C Battery opened up on a group of Chinese approaching from native huts on the right side of the road, blasting half a dozen or more of them into the air, the battle erupted all around it. One enemy group ran to one gun position and were quickly killed there. The artillery batteries raked the nearby hilltops and any other place CCF were seen. Machine-gun fire swept the open area down the road, and rockets blew apart houses near the perimeter. The battle lasted three hours, with the CCF using mortar and small-arms fire.

  Beginning about 3 A.M., the 8th Field Artillery Battalion in the next two hours withdrew south 1,500 yards and joined the 64th and 90th field artillery battalions in their positions. It left one gun behind but recovered it the next day. The artillery battalion lost two men killed and about 10 to 12 wounded. After the fight, according to General Barth, Sgt. Manuel P. Viveiros, an old artilleryman, patted his carbine with satisfaction and said, "I always wanted to kill a bugler.""

  A significant new development for Task Force Wilson took place early on 27 November. The CCF began a sharp attack on the 35th Infantry Regiment across the Kuryong River to the west, on the left flank of Task Force Wilson. Up to this time, the CCF had not carried their attack to the 35th Infantry and the left of Task Force Wilson, which they had so severely pressed since the night of 25-26 November. (The account of the 35th Infantry will be told in a subsequent section, but it is noted here to say that simultaneous increased pressure now fell on Task Force Wilson.)

  Soon after daylight on 27 November, E Company, 27th Infantry, and B Company, 35th Infantry, received orders to withdraw from the hills they had barely held during the night. E Company had no more than a platoon of able-bodied men left, and in B Company only 26 men survived unhurt.

  Everywhere in front of Murch's 2nd Battalion perimeter, troop units received orders to pull back after daybreak on the morning of 27 November. Already coming back in small groups, where they could escape, were E and B companies and C Company, 65th Engineer Combat Battalion. Among others, 1st Lt. Robert K. Sawyer's 3rd Platoon, 25th Reconnaissance Company, on the banks of the Kuryong River south of Hill 222, received orders to return to the road and to Murch's 2nd Battalion perimeter.

  Sawyer told his platoon, untouched during the night of battle all around it, to start the tank motors and to get the other vehicles ready to move. Two outpost machine-gun crews stationed on a nose of ground above the little valley came down and loaded on a truck. Before starting, Sawyer checked to see that all personnel and equipment were accounted for. One of his sergeants told him a machine-gun outpost crew had left its machine gun behind. He made the men go back up the hill for it. They lost no time in getting back with the gun. On the way down the narrow, hill-rimmed valley, there was heavy machine-gun and small-arms fire falling on all the adjacent hills, and some mortar fire. What Sawyer thought was a rocket landed close to one of his tanks. It was not long, however, before the 3rd Platoon reached the road and entered Murch's perimeter. There Sawyer took position on the east side of the road. Some American vehicles were burning. In a ditch on the left of the road he saw men from C Company, 65th Engineer Combat Battalion, running toward his platoon. He said, "These men were crawling and scrambling, obviously frightened, and not one had a weapon that I could see."" From within the perimeter, American fire was being placed on the hills to the west. An officer within the perimeter told Sawyer the headquarters group had given up his 3rd Platoon as lost to the enemy during the night.

  Safe inside Murch's perimeter for the moment, Sawyer made radio communication with his commanding officer, Capt. Robert H. Harrington, who was in Ipsok. Harrington told Sawyer to join the 25th Reconnaissance Company there.

  During the night, the 25th Reconnaissance Company's 2nd Platoon had been driven from its position, and the company withdrew to Murch's perimeter after daylight. There, Harrington received orders to run an enemy roadblock known to be south of Murch's position, go to Ipsok, and help protect that place and the artillery, which by now had moved to the south of the village. Harrington made the run successfully with five tanks carrying riflemen on their decks.

  Clanking down the road after receiving Harrington's instructions, Sawyer stood in the turret of the lead tank, "feeling very exposed." On the south slope of a low divide about a mile north of Ipsok, Sawyer's tank and vehicle column passed two tanks of the 25th Reconnaissance Company going north. When Sawyer arrived in Ipsok a few minutes later, Captain Harrington threw his arms around him and greeted him as one who had been given up for lost.

  While they were talking, one of the men nearby ran across the road and excitedly told them the two tanks Sawyer had just passed were in trouble-one knocked out and the crews of both tanks pinned down by enemy fire-in the roadside ditches. Sawyer got back in his tank, and with Sfc. Floyd DeCorrevont, his 3rd Platoon sergeant, following in the No. 2 tank, they headed back up the road. Just beyond the point where they had passed the two tanks on their way south into Ipsok, Sawyer and DeCorrevont rounded a curve, and across a depression ahead saw a tank burning on the next curve. A second tank had stopped just behind it. Sawyer could also see a tank crew member lying in the road and two or three others huddled in the adjacent ditch. Sergeant DeCorrcvont now came up, and the two dismounted from their tanks to discuss the situation. Heavy small-arms fire centered on the
two tanks up ahead.

  After a few exchanges, the sergeant said, "Lieutenant, those are our men." That ended the discussion. Sawyer and DeCorrevont started running down to the intervening valley and up toward the burning tank. They reached a point from where they could call to Staff Sgt. Raymond N. Reifers, who was one of the men in the ditch, to learn the condition of the tank crew. Reifers shouted back that a small Chinese boy had run to the lead tank and had thrown a satchel charge under its treads. He said he thought the man lying in the road had a broken back. Sawyer and DeCorrevont got to the man, who was conscious. Ammunition in the tank was exploding, and the tank itself was still burning. If the man was to be saved, he had to be dragged away at once. In response to a question, he nodded that he could endure the pain of being dragged away. Sawyer and DeCorrevont each grasped an arm and dragged the wounded man down into the valley, where they stopped a moment to rest. While Sawyer was shifting his slung M-1 rifle from his shoulder to his hand to carry it the rest of the way, he felt something like an electric shock hit him in the right ankle-a bullet that knocked him to his knees. Sergeant DeCorrevont helped him up the road to where they had left their tanks. Sawyer's crew lowered him down through the turret. Enemy fire hit all around while this was being done. The valiant platoon sergeant, DeCorrevont, was killed before the crews got the two tanks turned around.

  Sgt. Raymond N. Reifers and William Anderson were last seen still in the ditch near the forward, knocked-out tank. They were listed as missing in action. During the day, Lieutenant Sawyer and 14 other wounded men of the 25th Reconnaissance Company were evacuated.='

  There could be no doubt that enemy were on the road south of Murch and the task force all the way to Ipsok, and only a strong combat force had a chance to fight through. After daylight of 27 November it was indeed a question whether Task Force Dolvin-Wilson could be saved.

  Decision to Withdraw Task Force Dolvin-Wilson