The self-styled Deuce-Four, or 24th Infantry Regiment, the only black infantry regiment in Eighth Army, was commanded by Col. John T. Corley, a crew-cropped red-headed West Point graduate of the class of 1938, 35 years old. One of the most highly decorated battalion or regimental officers in the US Army, he had earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, eight Silver Stars, and a battlefield promotion to colonel. The Department of the Army and Eighth Army had a policy of trying to give the 24th Infantry the best possible leadership. The only other black infantry unit in Eighth Army was the 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regimcnt.16
The 24th Regiment's battalion commanders were Lt. Col. Gerald G. Miller (1st Battalion), Maj. George A. Clayton (2nd Battalion), and Lt. Col. Melvin R. Blair (3rd Battalion). The 159th Field Artillery Battalion supported the 24th Infantry, but for all practical purposes in the Chinese attacks of late November, it was of use only to the regimental headquarters and the 3rd Battalion on the Unhung road. It never advanced beyond positions just east of Unhung.
Strangely, the 24th Infantry met enemy resistance on 25 November that stopped two of its battalions. I and K companies of the 3rd Battalion attack came to a halt at midafternoon, largely because there were no adjacent units up on their flanks. The 2nd Battalion's F Company on its east flank advanced against no opposition, but E and G companies could not join F Company except by using roads that ran through the 2nd Infantry Division sector and then led westward into the hills from the Chongchon River valley at Kujang-dong. E and G companies were on their way through the 2nd Division zone to join F Company when the 2nd Division had to cancel its permission for the two companies to move through the 9th Infantry sector because it learned that CCF forces had established a protected roadblock on the road. The two rifle companies then decided to send their heavy equipment, tanks, artillery, heavy mortars, and vehicles back to the 2nd Battalion headquarters, while they tried to reach stranded F Company by climbing the mountain trails."
The three battalions of the 24th Infantry became widely separated from each other on 26 November. The 2nd Battalion was in the hills north of the Chongchon River and west of Kujang-dong. The 3rd Battalion in the center reached Unhung during the day. The 1st Battalion on the west flank of the regiment slowly moved up on the flank of Task Force Dolvin but passed it during the night. Its companies became lost in enemy territory. Although attached to Task Force Wilson during the day, the 1st Battalion never joined the task force or operated with it as a combat force.
Colonel Corley lost communications during the day with many of his rifle companies-he did not know where some of them were, and this condition grew worse the next day. On the 26th, Corlev visited Task Force Dolvin's CP, north of Ipsok, and conferred with Brigadier General Wilson. He learned there that his 1st Battalion had not come up on the task force's right flank. He promised to do what he could to get it up on line. As a result of this visit he knew that strong enemy forces had already attacked the task force and that the 1st Battalion would very likely meet the same opposition. Neither Task Force DolvinWilson nor the 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, had contact with the 24th Infantry units that were supposed to be on their flanks, even though the 9th Infantry sent out a patrol to find them on the evening of 26 November.
On the 24th Regiment's right flank, E and G companies apparently reached Hill 273 and an adjoining ridge, with G Company on Hill 273 and E on the ridge, isolated far to the northeast of the 3rd Battalion near Unhung. CCF forces surrounded them there, deep in enemy territory. A liaison plane dropped a message to the companies to hold Hill 273 and await an airdrop of food. When the drop planes came over Hill 273, they found that Chinese then held the hill. E and G companies were nowhere in sight.
Before the drop planes arrived over Hill 273, the Chinese had attacked both companies, and in the ensuing fight both sides reported heavy losses. What happened is not clear. It seems that Capt. Leslie C. Terry, Jr., G Company com mander, withdrew his company to the ridge where Capt. Frank 0. Knoeller, E Company commander, had been able to hold his position. Maj. George A. Clayton, the 2nd Battalion commander, was also there.
After dark, Major Clayton employed a ruse to allow his men to escape. He built fires on one end of the ridge, and then withdrew his men to the other end. When the CCF attacked the area where the campfires burned, he and the two company commanders led the approximately 150 survivors southeast on a trail toward the 9th Infantry lines near the Chongchon River. They reached the 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry. This 2nd Battalion, 24th Infantry, force remained with Colonel Sloane's 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, for the next several days and fought capably with it in the hard battles along the Chongchon. Colonel Sloane subsequently praised E and G companies for their efforts with his regiment.38
The records and other evidence are not clear as to what happened to the 1st Battalion, which was now ahead of Task Force Dolvin and in enemy territory. B Company led the 1st Battalion advance and was somewhere up in front of C Company. B Company led a charmed existence during the night of 2627 November. It was supposed to come abreast of Task Force Dolvin, tie in with it, and hold there. Instead, it passed the task force in the dark and continued on into Chinese territory. In the hectic movements of Chinese forces throughout the night in their frontal attacks on Dolvin and flanking movements to cut the road behind it, they somehow missed encountering B Company. When daylight of 27 November came, Lieutenant Green, commanding B Company, chanced to see Chinese troops laying telephone wire some distance to his flank. He checked some small native villages near his position and found that enemy forces had occupied the villages until dawn. He realized he had spent the night in enemy territory.
Learning by radio of Green's predicament, Colonel Corley apparently ordered C Company to go to the help of B Company. At that time C Company must have been abreast on the east, or nearly so, of B Company, 35th Infantry (Task Force Dolvin), which was on Hill 234, approximately four air miles northeast of Ipsok. Capt. Milford W. Stanley, commanding C Company, 24th Infantry, started north with his company to find B Company. Subsequent events make it appear that he stumbled right into a strong Chinese assembly area. Colonel Corley claimed that evidence he obtained indicated that Captain Stanley surrendered the company without a fight and that, a few days later, Radio Peking broadcast the news that their troops in Korea had captured the company intact. The last word the 1st Battalion had from C Company on 26 November said it was withdrawing toward B Company, 35th Infantry, on its left flank. It was never heard from again, but one officer and six men from the company later came through friendly lines. The details of how this company happened to fall to the enemy almost intact are not known.39 It is known, however, that the hills and ridges north of B Company, 35th Infantry, were in enemy hands from 25 November on, until Task Force Dolvin-Wilson made its fighting withdrawal from north of Ipsok.
The 3rd Battalion, in the 24th Infantry Regimental center, received an airdrop of supplies near Unhung at 4:15 P.M. on 26 November and maintained its positions there with the help of artillery and tank fire. Colonel Corley or dered the 3rd Battalion to withdraw more than a mile the next morning, as both its flanks were wide open.
The 25th Division headquarters early on the morning of 26 November realized that things were going poorly with the 24th Regiment. In the light of the heavy attacks against Task Force Dolvin and the 9th Infantry of the 2nd Division, on either side of the 24th Infantry, it appeared that a big gap in the Eighth Army line was developing on the 24th Infantry front. As early as on 26 November, the 3rd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, then in 25th Division reserve, received an alert for movement on one and a half hours' notice. The 3rd Platoon of C Company, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, was attached to the battalion. At 10 P.m. that night, the 3rd Battalion, 27th Infantry, received orders to move up behind the 24th Infantry. Twenty minutes before midnight it departed from its assembly area at Pong-dong, three miles southeast of Yongbyon, on the Kunu-ri road. At 2:12 A.M., 27 November, it closed in an assembly area at Unhung and established a perimeter defens
e there.'O
On the morning of 27 November there was great confusion in the 24th Regimental headquarters and the 25th Division as to where various units of the regiment were located. Most attempts of communication with them had failed. The rough, hilly terrain made most of the company radios useless. In the early afternoon an air observer reported the 1st Battalion was located about three miles east of Ipsok and engaged with enemy.
On the right flank, F Company, which had survived by itself, started a motorized patrol of twelve men to go to the 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry, to bring back E and G companies, but enemy small-arms and automatic fire turned it back with five men wounded and the loss of two jeeps. The 2nd Battalion headquarters and F Company, with the latter fighting a delaying and screening action, covered by fighter planes overhead, then started withdrawing toward Kunu-ri."
At 9 P.M. on 26 November, Col. John H. Michaelis received orders from the 25th Division to move his 27th Regiment up behind the 24th Infantry. It closed at Unhung at 4:30 A.M. the next morning. The 3rd Battalion of the regiment was already there, as described earlier. The 24th Infantry line, now backed by the 27th Infantry, stretched eastward from Ipsok to the 9th Infantry and 2nd Division boundary near the Chongchon River. Most of C Company of the 89th Tank Battalion was with the 27th Infantry on 27 November when it went up to the line.
The 27th Infantry with the tanks went into position on the high ground north of Unhung, a long southwest-to-northeast ridge extending from Hill 208, a mile west of Unhung. It was an excellent defensive position covering the main road back to Yongbyon. This force held there for the next two days, covering the withdrawal of the 24th Infantry to the Kunu-ri area on the Chongchon River. It broke contact with the enemy on 29 November and then itself started withdrawal.
According to Colonel Corley, General Kean forced the hand of IX Corps in committing the 27th Infantry on the left of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Infantry, after the debacle of E and G companies on 26 November. The 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, was attached to the 27th Infantry on 27 November.
On the morning of 27 November the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry, withdrew as ordered the previous evening. Chinese troops had established a road block about three miles east of Yongbyon on the road to Unhung, thereby cutting off the 27th Infantry and the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry. But Lieutenant Colonel Blair, 3rd Battalion commander, counterattacked this roadblock force with tanks and M Company, his Heavy Weapons Company, and destroyed it. Blair's rifle companies were farther forward than the battalion CP and M Company. On 27 November they came under heavy attack from an estimated regiment. The 1st Platoon of D Company, 89th Tank Battalion, with an infantry escort held a blocking position for them as they tried to extricate themselves. They thought their best chance to escape was to try to reach the 9th Infantry lines near the Chongchon River."
Meanwhile, a patrol from K Company, 27th Infantry, with tanks left Unhung early in the morning of 27 November, and at 7 A.M. established contact with F Company, 24th Infantry, at a roadblock two miles southwest of Unhung. The 27th Infantry, with gaps on both flanks, kept patrols out to protect itself. The patrols were not allowed to go out of sight of the main assembly area.
All elements of the 24th Infantry withdrew toward the Chongchon River and the Kunu-ri area on 28 November. The regimental headquarters withdrew toward Yongbyon at 2 A.M. The 1st Battalion, under 27th Infantry control, withdrew southward after daylight to a point five miles southeast of Yongbyon and that night crossed the Chongchon River to a blocking position west of Kunu-ri on the road to Anju. Most of the infantry of the 2nd Battalion, E and G companies, were with the 9th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Division and fought with that regiment in its withdrawal and blocking actions on the Chongchon River road south of Kujang-dong and toward Kunu-ri. The 2nd Battalion headquarters and F Company continued their withdrawal to Kunu-ri, and from there on south to Chosan.
The Weapons Company of the 3rd Battalion held its roadblock near Unhung during the night of 28 November. CCF attacked the roadblock at 2 A.M., 29 November. The roadblock force held its position until 4 A.M. and then withdrew southeast. D Company tanks of the 89th Tank Battalion helped cover the withdrawal of most of the 24th Infantry units, except for E and G companies with the 9th Infantry.
Behind the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, the 3rd Battalion, 27th Infantry, brought up the rear of the withdrawal from the left and center of the 24th Infantry zone, starting back from the Unhung area about 10 A.M. During the afternoon, it came upon equipment the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, had abandoned. A tank platoon accompanying the 3rd Battalion destroyed this abandoned equipment. Marching on foot, the 3rd Battalion, 27th Infantry, reached Pongdong, at 10 P.M., a town four road miles southeast of Yongbyon, on the main road from there to Kunu-ri. It established a defensive perimeter there for the night."
By 29 November, Colonel Corley had only a fraction of the 24th Infantry under his control. The 1st Battalion was under control of the 27th Infantry, and most of the 2nd Battalion had joined the 9th Infantry temporarily to fight its way out with it, south along the Chongchon River road. Lt. Col. Melvin R. Blair's 3rd Battalion was the only battalion still under Colonel Corley's control. General Kean, according to Corley, was worried about the situation in the right, or eastern, part of the 24th Infantry Regimental zone, initially held by the 2nd Battalion. That battalion's rapid disintegration there left a big gap next to the 9th Infantry, which had been hard hit by massive Chinese attacks beginning the night of 25 November.
To guard this area Corley shifted the 3rd Battalion eastward. It was the only sizable body of the 24th Infantry still north of the Chongchon River on 29 November. It essentially was along the east side of the regimental boundary, next to the 9th Infantry, just north or west of the Chongchon River, opposite Wonni (or Pugwon, as some maps had it). The rifle companies of the 3rd Battalion were about five miles north of Kunu-ri on 29 November. The 24th Infantry and the 25th Division boundary here ran just east of Kunu-ri, almost straight north past the west side of Won-ni, and seven air miles to the north passed a short distance cast of Unhung. This was also the boundary between I and IX corps.
Lieutenant Colonel Blair and his 3rd Battalion headquarters group were in Kunu-ri the night of 28-29 November. He had been in the rear of his rifle companies, and during his withdrawal, in an effort to contact them, he made a considerable detour on roads and trails, became lost when he turned northeast, got his jeep stuck, then turned his headlights on and turned back downstream toward Won-ni. The temperature was near zero. Blair took his party through water several times, and they got their feet wet before arriving at Kunu-ri. That meant danger of frostbite. When Colonel Corley saw Lieutenant Colonel Blair that night at Kunu-ri, he felt that Blair was suffering "combat fatigue.""
The story of the 24th Infantry in the Eighth Army attack of 24-28 November is largely one of disorder, ineptness, breakdown of communications, units getting lost in bad terrain, heavy personnel and equipment losses, and a cause of concern to friendly units on its flanks. It accomplished very little in action against the Chinese. Records and other information did not survive to allow a very detailed account of its many misfortunes, and regrettably many things about it are inadequately known.
General Milburn's I Corps, which held Eighth Army's left flank, saw less action during the CCF 2nd Phase Offensive than did the army's other two corps. I Corps was composed of two infantry divisions on fine. On its extreme left was the US 24th Division; on its right was the ROK 1st Division. This division, by general agreement, was the best in the ROK Army. Excepting its 5th RCT, the 24th Infantry Division had almost no combat in the 2nd Phase Offensive. After the ROK 1st Division came under heavy Chinese attack, the US 24th Division sent its 5th RCT to the division's eastern boundary, adjacent to the ROK 1st Division.
Leading the 24th Division advance in the Eighth Army attack on 24 November was Col. Richard W. Stephens's 21st Regiment, along the western coastal road. Trailing it was Col. Ned D. Moore's 19th Infantry Regiment. Back of both
and echeloned to the east of them was Lt. Col. John L. Throckmorton's 5th RCT Maj. Gen. John H. Church commanded the 24th Division. All these commanders were veterans of the Naktong perimeter battles.
Brig. Gen. Paik Sun Yup commanded the ROK 1st Division. He had led it since the beginning of the war, when the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel on 25 June 1950. General Palk had been a young lieutenant platoon leader with the Japanese army in China. His personal leadership and previous combat experience, together with his division's performance in the opening days of the war, quickly brought him to the fore among the ROK division commanders. The American commanders found that he and his division could pull their weight against the North Koreans and later against the Chinese. The ROK 1st Division was considered a reliable combat force.
It will be recalled that the 24th Division advanced from the vicinity of Pakchon along the west coastal road on 24-25 November as far as Chongju- approximately 20 miles. The 21st Infantry Regiment entered Chongju on 25 November and secured the town in the early afternoon. There had been no enemy resistance, although 60 North Korean soldiers surrendered to it. After the regiment occupied Chongju, K Company, 21st Infantry, sent a patrol to Hill 192 and lost one man killed there in an encounter with an enemy force. The next day, 26 November, Eighth Army ordered the 21st Infantry to remain at Chongju. It spent the day patrolling the vicinity. The division had one encounter with enemy forces during the day.
The 19th Infantry, behind the 21st Infantry, held the area in the vicinity of Nacchong-jong (Napchong-dong on later maps). The 19th Infantry had received many civilian reports of strong Chinese forces around the town of O'hang, about five miles northwest of Naechong-jong and six miles northeast of Chongju. I Company of the 19th Infantry had occupied Hill 227. Just before on 26 November, a Chinese battalion of horse cavalry, probably a reconnaissance and screening force, attacked I Company on the hill. The 13th Field Artillery Battalion fired in support of the company, and air strikes were quickly called in on the enemy force. The fight lasted about half an hour before the Chinese withdrew. Air strikes punished the cavalry unit considerably as it tried to get away. Ground and aerial estimates placed the number of enemy dead at approximately 250. At midafternoon the 19th Infantry Regiment ordered I Company to withdraw from the hill to the vicinity of Naechong-jong.'
Disaster in Korea Page 22
