Before they started, however, Fralish thought about Lieutenant Colonel O'Donnell. He went back to where his body lav to make sure he was dead. He was conscious! But he was badly wounded from the five machine-gun bullets in his body. Lieutenant Warneke wrapped O'Donnell in a blanket and carried him to the lead dual-40 and lashed him to it with ropes. In this way O'Donnell rode through the fireblock and survived to tell his story. The AAA gun carriages led the artillery forward to the Pass. Their concentrated fire silenced the enemy as they entered the Pass. These quad-50s and dual-40s, and some of the trucks and jeeps behind them, must have been the last vehicles to get through the Pass and the bypass ford across the stream south of it. None of the 155-mm howitzers got through the ford. By the time they arrived there, it was clogged to their passage and the Chinese had the ford again under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire.
After going over the Pass and turning downhill, the trucks in the column carrying wounded came in view of the village of Karhyon, two or three miles to the southwest at the bottom of the hill. The small village of about 20 huts was burning fiercely and lighted up much of the surrounding area. Many Chinese could be seen within the glare. In a quick conference at the spot officers decided to send the AAA gun carriages and the trucks with the wounded on a run past the burning village, with the AAA vehicles in front, and each to fire all weapons at Karhyon as it passed. A driver and two guards would ride each truck with the wounded. The remainder of the now bunched-up men, about 100, would strike off into the hills and attempt to walk out. Capt. Simon J. Stevens, commanding officer of A Battery, 82nd AAA Battalion, led the quad-50s and dual-40s. He lost two of his five-gun carriages in running down the hill and past Karhyon. One quad-50 was knocked out by enemy fire. The other missed the turnout for the bypass and ford at the blown bridge and dropped into the hole at the bridge site."
Meanwhile, Fralish and Grinnell and their approximately 100 men started up the hill to circle around and pass cast of burning Karhyon, Grinnell in the lead. They circled the burning town and then turned south toward Sunchon. There was some straying from the column for one reason or another, and soon individuals or groups of two or three were on their own. The main party stopped at 5 A.M. to rest. Two hours later, at daybreak, they reached a high point of ground. From there they could look back and see Karhyon. Through field glasses the ruined village looked as if it were in the center of a large enemy encampment. Mongolian pony picket lines were visible. In another direction, Grinnell's party saw in the distance a party of walking men and subsequently joined them. Together they waded across the Taedong River. At this point a small American plane landed on a sandbar in the river and delivered water, rations, first-aid packets, and maps to them, with information as to how best to reach Sunchon.es
Writing many years later about the ordeals of the Division Artillery in the fireblock below Kunu-ri, Col. Walker R. Goodrich of the artillery wrote, "Too much credit and recognition cannot be given to Major Fralish, S-3, 503rd for his actions as you have described them. Of all artillerymen his courage, coolheadedness, stamina and leadership was the most outstanding.""
We return briefly to the 503rd and 38th artillery battalions in their attempted passage of the fireblock and their ultimate fate. In connection with the 38th Field Artillery Battalion, its commander, Lt. Col. Robert J. O'Donnell, whom Major Lavell had thought dead, survived the war, and in a letter to the editors of Combat Forces journal in 1953, he told what happened to him and his battalion as he remembered it:
When the head of the 38th FA Bn column was stopped by the tail of the 503rd FA Bn column, I walked forward to determine the cause of the holdup. Before I reached the head of my battalion column, enemy fire from small arms and mortars hit one of the firing batteries. The battery returned the fire and temporarily silenced the enemy. From my existing knowledge of the situation I realized that I was faced with the decision of destroying our howitzers and fighting out on foot, or attempting to continue farther south on the road. The essential clement of information lacking was "How effectively was the road ahead blocked?" In such a crucial decision I felt that first-hand knowledge was essential.
Accordingly, I instructed Major Kopischkie, as executive officer, to assemble the battalion in a defensive area, and to be prepared for either decision. I then walked forward and found Major Lavell and Major Fralish at the tail of the 503rd column. I asked them to report on the extent of the physical block on the road ahead, and was informed that the 503rd column had been hard hit but that they did not know whether it was possible to get our trucks and howitzers past the damaged vehicles. Without delay I continued to walk forward with the intention of personally determining the effectiveness of the block. As related by Major Fralish I was then fired upon and seriously wounded. Believing me dead, Fralish and Lavell returned to the rear of the 503rd column and informed the 38th officers of my death. From accounts I have since received, Major Kopischkie then decided to destroy the materiel and to fight out on foot."'
It would seem from the above that the 38th Field Artillery Battalion destroyed its pieces on the road, and the personnel then tried to make it out on foot.
But what happened to the 503rd Field Artillery Battalion of 155-mm howit zcrs just ahead of it? Some of the howitzers and personnel were lost to enemy fire on the road, but most of the howitzers made it over the Pass and to the bypass at the blown bridge. Lieutenant Colonel Holden gives one version of what happened there to the 503rd:
About three miles south of the road block area, there is a little mining town [Karhyon]. It is the first town north ofSunchon as I recall. On the south [west] side of this town, there had been a two-lane concrete bridge. Someone had blown the bridge several days before we got there. There we were forced to bypass it and to ford the river. The Division headquarters crossed this river at approximately 1730 hours. The water was quite deep and so it was difficult for jeeps to make it, but with the help of some manpower, we made it without any trouble. At the time we made this crossing, we received some very long range machine gun fire, possibly .50 caliber from about 500-700 yards due west. I remember the Division Air Controller was with us and he immediately put an air strike against this enemy position and the firing stopped.
Now, here is apparently what happened. The 8-inch Howitzer battalion, which was pulled by tractors crossed the ford without any trouble, but the first 155 Howitzer, pulled by its M-6 tractor, stalled in the middle of the ford. The men tried to get the howitzer and the tractor out of the way but were unable to do so. This ford constituted a serious threat and stopped all traffic to the rear. I feel that if this unfortunate incident had not happened, we would have gotten all the artillery pieces out intact . . . all the vehicles to the rear were trapped. Personnel had to abandon their vehicles and escape on foot."
Despite Lieutenant Colonel Holden's statement, made in February 1952, about one 155-mm howitzer and its tractor blocking the ford, which in the first instance was based on hearsay evidence, the bypass may have been blocked by other factors and before the first howitzer of the 503rd Artillery Battalion reached the ford. Holden gave Colonel Goodrich as his authority for the statement to him that the first 155-mm howitzer to enter the ford got stuck and closed it to subsequent traffic. Goodrich wrote many years later in a personal letter that he did not recall having made such a statement and that the Artillery Fire Direction Center operations sergeant, who was ahead of the 503rd Artillery Battalion, found the ford virtually closed when his driver barely got across it.89 The sergeant's description of his crossing of the ford has already been given. It is possible that, after 30 years, Lieutenant Colonel Holden confused Goodrich in his memory with someone else. We also know that, whatever closed the ford (if indeed it was totally closed), the 38th Field Artillery Battalion, following behind the 503rd, could not have crossed in any event because it was destroyed by its own men several miles back in the fireblock, as stated by Colonel O'Donnell. The facts concerning the final end of the 503rd Artillery Battalion are uncertain. We do know, howeve
r, that it did not get across the bridge bypass at the river opposite Karhyon, south of the Pass.
With regard to C Battery of the 82nd AAA AW going through the bypass ford earlier in the day with the 2nd serial, Lieutenant Colonel Killilae, commander of the 82nd AAA Battalion, wrote subsequently that elements of the 38th Infantry and two sections of C Battery "were pulled out of the column and placed in an emergency assembly area with some tanks. These vehicles were given the mission of assisting others in getting out. Twice the M-19s reentered the roadblock area to silence enemy fire and tow other vehicles through the ford."90 We know from this account that vehicles were getting stuck in the ford by midafternoon and that some had to be pulled through by full-tracked vehicles. We do not know how long the M19s remained at the south end of the bypass to help in this work, but those of C Battery had left before the congestion reported by the operations sergeant of the Artillery Fire Direction Center an hour or two after dark. It is certain that after dark it became increasingly difficult for vehicles of any kind to cross the ford. This problem was compounded after enemy began arriving at Karhyon in considerable force and placed the bypass area under mortar and automatic-weapons fire. Just when this began to take place is not certain, but it was well before midnight. The first 155-mm howitzer and its tractor may well have become stuck in the bypass, known to have been already badly clogged, and completed its closure. It may be stated with some certainty that the 155-mm howitzers of the 503rd Artillery Battalion and the 105-mm howitzers of the 15th and 38th artillery battalions were all left behind or destroyed north of the bypass.
Casualties in the 38th and 503rd battalions were heavy during the night of 30 November, but many men of both artillery battalions walked out with other men caught in the last units of the division withdrawal column.
Among the last troops to start south from the vicinity of the now-abandoned 2nd Division CP was the 9th Infantry Regimental Headquarters Company, stragglers of the regiment who had arrived at the CP during the day, and some stragglers from the 2nd Engineers.
The 9th Infantry Headquarters Company moved out at 4 P.m. but progressed very slowly, coming to a stop about 7 P.m. It had reached the beginning of the fireblock, only a mile or less from where it started. There it sat for two hours, with no chance to move farther-the road was blocked ahead of it. Some of the Headquarters Company officers walked up and down the sides of the stopped vehicles telling the men they were at the fireblock and would run for it when they could move. There was no enemy fire on the vehicles at this time. The officers suggested that the men fortify the sides of the trucks. This was done by piling sleeping rolls, bags, and any equipment at hand along the sides.
After a long wait, enemy small-arms fire began to come in from the east side of the road. The troops ignored it for a time and stayed in the trucks. Shortly, however, the fire became intense. The men in the vehicles piled out onto the road and milled about. Soon an excited sergeant came along and asked, "Doesn't anyone here know what to do?" "Not me" or "I've always been a medical soldier" came the answers. The sergeant turned to Sgt. Richard H. Shriver and put the question to him directly. At that, Shriver walked down the line of vehicles and told the men to get into the ditches, to scatter along it, and he told them where the enemy fire was coming from. They all seemed to welcome being told what to do, and they acted on Shriver's suggestions at once.
In a few minutes Lt. Jim Wise, the Headquarters Company's executive officer, came along and ordered everyone to move up to the head of the column. Some of the men were hit by enemy fire while doing so. The rest gathered near the head of the column of vehicles, which stretched two abreast for about a quarter of a mile on the road. Most of the men, apparently, expected to go back to the trucks, because they took no personal possessions with them when they got out. But they never returned to the trucks.
Shortly after they had assembled, about 9:30 Pmt., Capt. Lincoln Wray and 1st Sgt. Larry Craften formed the approximately 300 men into two single-file columns. Captain Wray ordered the men to follow, as he and Sergeant Craften led them west from the road into the hills. On top the first crest they stopped to get their bearings and study the situation below on the road. During this stop, the sound of much shouting, blasts from bugles, and small-arms fire came to them from the road below. They moved deeper into the hills. The moon was out at this time, the temperature near zero. As the party went farther south into the hills, they continued to hear bugle calls and sounds of firefights in their rear. Sometimes the column broke into a dogtrot; no one wanted to be left behind, and all tried to keep up.91
An hour before midnight, the men stopped on a high rise of ground to rest. While there, another group of American soldiers joined them after a flurry of fire between the two groups. The newcomers proved to be mostly men from the 2nd Engineers. The combined group then continued, often skirting groups of Chinese soldiers. Some of the Chinese sat around fires they had made. About 4:30 in the morning of 1 December, the men came to a road that they believed would lead into the 2nd Division MSR-the road to Sunchon. Much relieved, they stopped for a drink, only to find their canteens had frozen solid. They started on down the road. Within a short distance they were challenged in English. Captain Wray answered, "GIs." They were told to come through single file, five yards apart.
The foremost started, when the voice said again, "Are you all Americans?" The American soldiers never used the word "American" in referring to themselves. At this last, suspicious challenge, all the men scurried back for cover. The outpost they had run into opened up with small-arms fire. No one was hit, and the group got back on high ground. Captain Wray later told Shriver he had seen two tanks. This must have meant that Wray and his men had encountered a Middlesex Battalion outpost somewhere southwest of the Pass. The party, however, skirted the place. The time was 6 A.M. They knew it would be daylight about seven o'clock. At 6:30, Captain Wray, looking from a hilltop, said he thought the Sunchon road was just beyond. He was right. At daybreak they came to the Sunchon road. The group now numbered about 200, as individuals and small parties had dropped off during the night or had become lost.
Soon after daylight it developed that there was an unidentified lieutenant colonel with them who had kept quiet all night. Now he began to act like an assistant commander. He deployed the little force into the paddies on either side of the road, with a point out ahead, as they followed down the road. A Korean interpreter with them said they were about 12 miles from Sunchon.
During the morning a jet plane came over from the south. One of the men grabbed a panel from a nearby knocked-out truck and waved it, and the newly found lieutenant colonel told all to stand up and wave so the pilot would know they were friendly. The plane dove down at the group as if it was going to strafe, but it did not. It circled them a few times, then continued on north. Soon a propeller plane came over, presumably as a result of a radio report from the jet, and dipped its wings. Then another plane arrived and at 11 A.M. dropped a message that read, "You are on the right road, keep following it as you are and Sunchon is about 10 miles farther on. There will be trucks waiting for you.."93 The happy group now limped on down the road. Nearly all had blistered and bloodied feet. Some men, however, just dropped by the side of the road and lay there. Some of these men were never heard of again.
The trudging, bedraggled men who could stay on their feet reached Sunchon about 2:30 P.M. on 1 December. Someone in the 9th Infantry Headquarters Company estimated that the mixed body of men had traveled about 40 miles across mountainous terrain in the 17 hours that had elapsed since the main party had left the road near the north end of the enemy fireblock.93 An estimate of 30 miles would seem a more reasonable figure.
Since the 9th Infantry Company Report for 30 November-1 December 1950 does not mention members of the 503rd and 38th field artillery battalions with Major Fralish and Lieutenant Grinnell being with this group, it must be assumed that they came in separately about the same time.
After arriving at Sunchon, a few of the group climbed
on some tanks there and went another seven miles south. Most, however, waited for trucks, thawed out water at fires, and found some food. Shriver wrote of Sunchon at that time, the afternoon of 1 December: "All that was left in the town were a few MPs and a scattering of others who had waited for us when the planes had informed them we were up the road. A few jeeps traveled up the road we had come as far as they dared to pick up stragglers and wounded." The trucks came during the afternoon, but so few that the men had to pack into them, 40 to a truck. They were in the trucks about eight hours, and at 3 A.M., 2 December, they finally were delivered to an assembly area at Chunghwa, 15 miles south of Pyongyang. That morning, the exhausted, sleeping men were roused to fall in line to form platoons. In the platoons, where there had been 50 men five days before, there were now from 18 to 30.9'
The 2nd Engineer Battalion's Fate as Rear Guard
When the 2nd Engineers went to the two hills just south and southwest of the 2nd Division CP about midmorning of 30 November, they went in a defensive role to prevent CCF from reaching the CP from the south and southeast while the 9th Infantry and other units were trying to clear the northern end of the enemy fireblock. As it turned out, they were the rear guard of the 2nd Division in the evening when it was in the fireblock below Kunu-ri. Just what happened to the 2nd Engineers at the end is not known precisely. It is known, however, that it suffered one of the highest rates of battle casualties in all of Eighth Army in the CCF 2nd Phase Offensive. Its authorized strength was 977 men. It numbered only 266 men when a count was made after the 2nd Division withdrawal through the Chinese fireblock on 30 November and 1 December.95
Disaster in Korea Page 44
