On that day, 30 November, the Eighth Army G-2 Section began moving from Pyongyang to Seoul. Some personnel files that day were taken in convoy to the South Korean capital. The Eighth Army G-2 staff report for the day said the evacuation of Pyongyang was a probability.'
Early that morning, at 2:05, Eighth Army sent an order to I Corps to destroy all supplies and equipment that could not be evacuated and to set demolitions and obstructions that would impede enemy advance. This was in fact the general policy pursued by all withdrawing units. As an example of what was done under this army policy in the withdrawal, the 24th Division destroyed by an air strike 62 vehicles at Anju, including 31 2'/.-ton trucks that could not be repaired or towed. I Corps destroyed approximately 1,600 tons of ammunition on the ground.
The hasty abandonment or destruction of supplies had started the day before. The IX Corps transportation officer on 29 November had left 2,000 tons of ammunition at the Kunu-ri ASP when the corps headquarters moved from near Kunu-ri to Chasan. In this case, however, Major Cleveland of I Corps, on learning of the incident, took a train to Kunu-ri and pulled out 1,500 tons of the ammunition and issued the remainder to troops in the Kunu-ri area. I Corps headquarters was still at Sinanju at the time.10
There can be no doubt that large quantities of military supplies of many kinds were left behind or destroyed as all Eighth Army and corps headquarters in the Chongchon valley hurriedly closed down their CPs there and hurriedly started south. The Ordnance Collecting Point at Sinanju in I Corps destroyed two M-46 tanks, three 90-mm guns, four M4 trailers, and 1,600 tons of ammunition because the vehicles could not move on their own power and there were no railcars available to move the ammunition. At Kunu-ri 500 tons of ammunition remained at the ASP there when enemy troops entered the town. At 4 A.M. on 30 November, the I Corps ordnance officer called for a napalm air strike at daylight to destroy this ammunition. When the strike planes arrived, they found Kunu-ri already in flames. At Sunchon, the 702nd Ordnance Company, and part of the 2nd Quartermaster Company that had arrived there ahead of the roadblock on the 2nd Division withdrawal route, left behind 39 vehicles "due to the emergency" when they continued on to Pyongyang.
At the same time, the rail transportation officer asked Eighth Army to order a temporary embargo on all rail movement of supplies north of Seoul. The rail station on the south side of the Han River opposite Seoul was full, and it looked as if anything moved north would be unneeded and possibly lost, since all movement was now south instead of north. This request was approved. But medical supplies and blankets to keep wounded warm until they could be evacuated continued to move north toward the battle front by airlift. On 30 November an emergency airlift delivered 2,000 blankets to K-23 airfield at Pyongyang."
During all the hectic activity on 30 November with Eighth Army troops in movement everywhere headed south, it was mandatory that the Air Force extend its attacks on enemy formations to the maximum. The day dawned with broken clouds and an overcast-not the best harbinger for American air support during the day. But during the day 115 air sorties were flown, and aerial reports claimed heavy enemy casualties. In the vicinity of Tokchon and south of there, Air Force claimed it had destroyed 13 vehicles, 235 horses, an ammunition dump, a supply dump, 4 villages, a bridge, and 690 enemy soldiers and had strafed numerous troop concentrations, for which it gave no estimate of casualties inflicted. Aerial observers reported hundreds of enemy troops moving west in the hills. They also reported Chinese in possession of Kunu-ri at 9 P.M. About 8 P.M., an aerial observer reported there was a 20-mile long convoy of enemy vehicles moving south of the Yalu River between Sinuiju and Sonchon. Aerial strikes strafed and bombed this convoy. Since it was dark, no estimate was made of damage inflicted. There were other air reports of still more damage in the Tokchon area, including the destruction of more than 1,000 enemy troops. Another air report made the claim that air cover over the Kunu-ri area all day long had destroyed 2,500 enemy troops. There can be little doubt that aerial close support and deep interdiction in support of Eighth Army did result in the killing and wounding of an unknown, but very large, number of Chinese troops on 30 November."
In another, far different aspect of aerial activity on 30 November, 740 army patients were flown out of Pyongyang, but 300 more were still there waiting to be removed to rear areas and to hospitals in Japan. There were also 130 more at the 8063rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and 300 at the 25th Medical Clearing Company for evacuation."
On 30 November the one major unit that still was in contact with the Chinese in the Chongchon valley area, and indeed cut off on its assigned withdrawal route, was the 2nd Infantry Division. Its plan for 30 November was to break contact with the enemy and withdraw south. Gen. Laurence Keiser and his division staff had spent much of the night of 29-30 November preparing plans for the division's withdrawal from the vicinity of Kunu-ri to Sunchon, about 20 air miles due south. If it succeeded, then all of Eighth Army stood a good chance of escaping from the Chinese envelopment that was growing tighter by the hour, especially around the 2nd Infantry Division.
When Eighth Army ordered its corps and divisions to withdraw from the Chongchon River front, General Keiser prepared to move the 2nd Division CP southward. For his new CP he selected a point on the Kunu-ri-Sunchon road about four miles south of the junction of that road with the Kunu-ri-Anju road. The 2nd Division's zone of responsibility, and also IX Corps's, on the west included the road south from the junction to Sunchon and the flanking-ridges west of it. The new division CP opened in a small schoolhouse about 5 A.M. on 29 November. It was still dark at the time.
The division headquarters staff had just arrived there, said Lt. Col. Maurice Holden, the division operations officer (G-3), "when some members of the Turkish Brigade arrived at the command post breathlessly and informed us that there was a road block several miles south of our CP on the Sunchon road." That was the first information the 2nd Division staff had that an enemy roadblock existed on the planned withdrawal route. The division staff was inclined not to credit the report fully, as they had received unreliable reports from the Turkish Brigade in the past several days during its first combat in Korea and considered the brigade somewhat excitable. Nevertheless, the staff took steps to learn what the situation to the south really was.
The division provost marshal, Lt. Col. Henry C. Becker, sent a military-police patrol at daybreak to investigate the report. Sometime between eight and nine o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Becker reported to the division that the patrol had been "knocked out" and several of its members killed. This incident was said to have taken place three to four miles south of the division CP. Thus, the division CP knew definitely by 9 A.M. on 29 November that an enemy roadblock existed south of it on the Sunchon road.'
Upon receiving the report from Lieutenant Colonel Becker, the division decided to send Captain Kydland and his 2nd Reconnaissance Company south to open the road. Kydland had a reputation in the division as a battle-experienced officer, capable and dependable. The enemy were reported to be in a fireblock position; that is, the CCF were in firing positions with small arms and automatic weapons on both sides of the road. There was no physical roadblock on the road itself. Lieutenant Colonel Becker's MP patrol had determined this point. When the Reconnaissance Company reached the fireblock area, enemy fire almost immediately wounded Captain Kydland. A flash message to the division CP informed it that Kydland would have to be evacuated. By noon the division received further word that the Reconnaissance Company had failed to remove the enemy fireblock and that more strength was needed. General Keiser then ordered Colonel Peploe to send a rifle company from the 38th Infantry to reinforce the Reconnaissance Company. As stated earlier, Peploe sent C Company. It arrived at the division CP about 2 P.M. The company, seriously reduced by previous casualties, numbered only 60 to 75 men, less than half strength. The Division G-3 Section briefed the company commander, and Brigadier General Bradley talked with him, emphasizing the importance of opening the roadblock at once. The C Comp
any commander asked, "What if I can't open this roadblock?" Bradley replied that his job was to attack and open it. Lieutenant Colonel Holden has stated that he believed at the time that the Reconnaissance Company and C Company would be able to clear the fireblock and that the division would be able to withdraw the next day.'
During the morning of 29 November, after the initial disaster to the 20man MP patrol at the enemy fireblock, a platoon of tanks from C Company, 72nd Tank Battalion, left the 2nd Division CP to run down the road toward Sunchon to contact the British Middlesex Battalion, which was expected to attack north along the road. At 12:45, Lieutenant Harper, commanding the tank platoon, informed IX Corps Headquarters at Chasan, below Sunchon, that he had come through the fireblock, that one did exist about three miles below the 2nd Division Headquarters, and that he saw at least seven overturned 2'hton trucks, some with trailers. He saw four wounded men at the overturned trucks. He said enemy mortar fire was falling on the road at that point and that the fireblock was held by an estimated battalion of enemy troops. The overturned trucks and wounded he saw were presumably the second ambush of the Turkish convoy.'
Lieutenant Harper's message said he had given the British Middlesex Battalion this information. Presumably it was also given to the 2nd Infantry Division, but there is no official record that it came through in that form. There is evidence that Harper or someone in his tank platoon radioed the 2nd Division that he had reached the Middlesex Battalion and found the road openapparently he had meant there was no physical roadblock on it. As far as can be determined, Harper did not mention in his messages to IX Corps and the 2nd Division that he noticed the site of the first CCF ambush of the Turkish convoy about two miles south of the one he did report. After receiving the radio report from Harper's tank platoon, General Keiser had sent the 2nd Reconnaissance Company to the scene of the second and later Turkish convoy ambush.
When C Company, 38th Infantry, left the 2nd Division CP for the fircblock area, a platoon of tanks from the 72nd Tank Battalion accompanied it. This force, combined with the 2nd Reconnaissance Company, renewed the attack against the CCF who held high ground on both sides of the road from which they swept the road area with machine-gun fire. By dark of 29 November they had failed to clear the enemy from their dug-in ridge positions at the fireblock. The division then ordered the troops to break contact with the Chinese.`
Confusing the situation was another development. The Turkish survivors of the fireblock ambush early in the morning of 29 November, due either to their second ambush experience or to the language barrier, failed to tell the 2nd Division staff that they had been ambushed twice on the way from Sunchon. The Turkish convoy had left Sunchon before dawn to carry supplies to the Turkish Brigade, which was fighting a strong enemy force east of Kunu-ri on the road to Wawon and Tokchon. The Turkish convoy had first run into a CCF fireblock two miles south of where they reported the ambush to the 2nd Division. This first fireblock, marked by destroyed Turkish trucks and dead Turkish soldiers, was not known to the 2nd Division until the next day, when its units passed the site and saw the evidence. Had the division known of the first ambush, it would have realized that the enemy fireblock was at least two miles in depth and not confined to the one fireblock site, where the Turkish survivors estimated there was about a company of enemy.
The initial report early in the morning placed the site of the Turkish ambush about three to four miles south of the 2nd Division CP. But by evening the Chinese seem to have expanded their fireblock north to a point only two miles below the Division CP, near the little village of Yangwon-ni. During the day, Korean civilian reports brought to the division headquarters other alarming news. These reports said that 30,000 Chinese troops had moved through Tokchon by 28 November and that three large columns of them were on their way west to Kunu-ii.'
An alarming and foreboding fact stood out at dark on 29 November for the 2nd Infantry Division. It had failed to clear the Chinese fireblock below it on the Sunchon road during all of 29 November, and it had even failed to learn its strength and extent. The division from the start had held a more optimistic view of the fireblock than the facts warranted. The division had failed during the day to acquire enough combat intelligence to understand the true situation. And IX Corps and Eighth Army had not helped it any in gaining this important intelligence.
It will be recalled that, before the 2nd Infantry Division moved its CP to the Sunchon road about daybreak of 29 November, the division artillery had already completed its withdrawal of firing positions southwest of Kunu-ri. These positions were north of the new division CP. There had been some discussion among the artillery officers that Kunu-ri was not a good place to halt the withdrawal because the division was open on its east flank to enemy envelopment and accordingly to enemy fireblocks and roadblocks on the roads leading south. They would have preferred that the withdrawal continue on south at least beyond the Pass on the Sunchon road, which separated the drainages of the Chongchon on the north and of the Taedong on the south, to the vicinity of Sunchon.6
But while tactically desirable from the viewpoint of the 2nd Infantry Division and its artillery concentration, it was hardly feasible because, from the IX Corps and the Eighth Army viewpoint, many troops of the 24th and 25th divisions were still north of the Chongchon River, and the army had to hold Kunuri for another day or two to give these units time to escape to the south side of the river. Many of them would have to use the road network centering on Kunu-ri for the river crossings. Thus, for compelling reasons, the 2nd Division had to be stopped in a vulnerable position at Kunu-ri for the benefit of the rest of the army. The successful withdrawal of Eighth Army to the south side of the Chongchon River in front of and west of Kunu-ri depended on the strength of the 2nd Division shield and the skill with which it was used to ward off repeated enemy blows on the army's right flank. From the night of 28 November on, this shield was at Kunu-ri and held facing north and east.
Chinese Fireblocks on the Anju-Sunchon Road West of Kunu-ri
It was not only the enemy fireblocks south of the 2nd Division on the Sunchon road that occupied attention on 29 November. There were also enemy fireblocks for a short time on the next road west, the road that ran on a diagonal from Anju to Sunchon. These enemy fireblocks on 29 November were the farthest west that Chinese troops reached in their encircling movement behind the rear of the Eighth Army front at the Chongchon.
On 29 November, the Chinese established two fireblocks on the AnjuSunchon road, five and seven air miles southeast of Anju. They indicated that perhaps the CCF were trying to reach the Sinanju coastal road, Eighth Army's main withdrawal road. They are mentioned here because they were beyond (west of) the 2nd Division planned withdrawal road. They were on the road of withdrawal of the 24th Division from Anju to Sunchon, where Eighth Army wanted the 24th Division to concentrate to help stop the Chinese deep envelopment of the army's rear.
The 24th Infantry Division spent most of 29 November in moving from the Anju area southeast to Sunchon. Part of the division moved by the diagonal road from Anju. The first knowledge of enemy penetration to this road came at 10 A.M. on 29 November, when enemy ambushed a mail carrier for the 25th Division. He escaped and reported the incident. An army major reported that he had come under enemy fire at 12:30 while going north on the road from Sunchon. The Korean police chief of Yongbong-ni, about eight miles northwest of Sunchon, reported late in the morning that Chinese troops had appeared five miles north of his village. At 12:45, Lt. William Carr, commanding an ordnance detachment of the 25th Division located on the road and learning of the reported presence of Chinese nearby, evacuated all the vehicles he had that were operable and towed some others. At 1:30 P.M., Capt. Ivar Peterson prepared to destroy all the remaining 41 vehicles with gasoline. He destroyed them at 2:10 when small-arms fire erupted in his vicinity, and a large number of Korean civilians drew near. Twenty minutes later Lt. Jack Wadley of the 25th Ordnance Company destroyed at Yongbong-ni 15 truckloads of ordnance material, including 2
45 automatic pistols, 217 M-1 rifles, 119 carbines, 14 BARS, 40 .30-caliber machine guns, 54 .50-caliber machine guns, and 32 .45-caliber submachine guns. Military police of the 24th Division reported at 1:30 that there was an enemy roadblock five miles southeast of Anju on the Sunchon road. A medical detachment on the road turned back when it ran into a roadblock eight miles south of Anju. Korean civilians told the medical detachment that they estimated there were from 300 to 500 enemy in the area. At 3 P.M., the 519th Military Police Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division at Sunchon reported an enemy roadblock on the Anju-Sunchon road, strength unknown, and that an engineer unit southeast of Anju was burning equipment and supplies.'
During the afternoon of 29 November the 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Division, was moving from Anju to Sunchon by the diagonal road. A column of the regiment halted south of Anju when it received word of the enemy roadblocks farther down the road, and they rerouted back through Anju to Sinanju and Sukchon. At this time, about 2 P.M., the leading elements of the 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry, attacked the northernmost fireblock a little more than a mile below Tohoc-ri, where the enemy held Hill 273 on the west side of the road near Yongjon-ni (or Yongdam-ni on some maps). The 1st Battalion dispersed this enemy force, estimated at 150 CCF armed with mortars and machine guns, by 3 P.M., killing an estimated 15 and capturing three Americanmade 60-mm mortars.
Disaster in Korea Page 36
