The situation was considered so serious in the Turkish Brigade that Eighth Army sent a liaison officer to Kaesong to make a report on the situation. His report was included in the Eighth Army G-3 Journal for 5 December. The report said there were 2,500 Turks at the Kaesong assembly area and that 1,000 more were expected there by train. The personnel losses in the brigade were reported as 20 percent. Equipment losses were reported as 90 percent of communications equipment and vehicles. The latter included jeeps (112 lost out of 125), 1'-ton trucks (56 lost out of 77), and 2'/4-ton trucks (87 lost out of 139).
As a result of the Turkish Brigade's heavy losses around Kunu-ri in late November, Brigadier General Yazici complained that his forces were employed without regard to their relative immobility compared to that of American infantry forces-they had 60 percent fewer vehicles than a comparable-sized American force. The matter of the Turkish Brigade's alleged improper employment in the November actions was being discussed in Turkish by General Yazici and members of the Turkish-Korean delegation. Although the Eighth Army liaison officer attended this conference, he did not understand the language and could not report on it. He did report, however, that Kaesong was the wrong place for the brigade to be assembled, that it was blocking and interfering with military traffic there, and that it was difficult to control the Turks because of the language barrier. He estimated it would require 15 days to reorganize and reequip the brigade. He emphasized the brigade would have to be moved to another location. He also stressed that a senior staff officer of Eighth Army should be sent to talk with General Yazici and his staff to avoid embarrassing complica tions arising from any misunderstandings between Turkish and Eighth Army officers. The Eighth Army issued orders at once that the Turkish Brigade should move to a new assembly area, Sosa-ri, a few miles cast of Inchon on the main road between that place and Seoul. The Turks were expected to close on Sosa-ri on 7 December, and at that time would revert to Eighth Army control."
There is little doubt that the traffic jam at Kaesong at this time was unbearable for a large army that was trying to funnel through it southbound. One official Eighth Army journal at the time says that, on 6 December the "traffic situation at Kaesong is terrible. Turks, Indians, British, ROKs, Nubians [Ethiopians] are running in all directions." And there were no military police in town. The confusion that reigned at Kacsong is reflected in a delayed report on 7 December of ten trucks dispatched to Kaesong with supplies for the Turks that arrived at 4 P.M. in the afternoon of the fifth, but the noncommissioned officer in charge of them could not locate the British officer who was to be his contact or anyone else who could speak English. He finally was able, with considerable difficulty, to get Turkish soldiers to unload blankets from the trucks and turned them over to a Turkish captain at 7:30 P.m. Two trucks were loaded with rations for the Turks. He even had trouble in getting the Turks to unload the food intended for them. In the end, two trucks were not unloaded .12
Other Complications in the Evacuation
While it is impossible to give an account of unit after unit of service troops and depots of various stores and equipment that were evacuated from Pyongyang and other nearby storage centers, even if the information were available, some examples of what happened to several of them will illustrate the general situation during the evacuation of the city. The 15th Quartermaster Company supported the 1st Cavalry Division. On 29 November the Quartermaster Company opened a supply point at Sunchon, around which the 1st Cavalry Division was posted at various points to guard against CCF units outflanking the army from the cast. But it never issued any supplies at Sunchon, withdrawing before it could do so. On 1 December its most advanced supply point was in Pyongyang. The next day it began clearing out its clothing and petroleum supplies for movement south. Lt. Col. Marcus E. Cooper, the quartermaster of the 1st Cavalry Division, requested of Eighth Army 10 to 11 boxcars to evacuate the supplies. The army was unable to supply them. Cooper already had two partly loaded boxcars, so he filled them quickly so they could be moved out that night. The next morning, 3 December, four empty boxcars and two gondolas of empty gasoline drums were found in the freight yard. The RTO agreed to allow the 1st Cavalry Division to use the cars. It unloaded the empty gasoline drums and loaded the cars with quartermaster supplies. About 8:45 P.m. that evening, before the cars could be moved, an ammunition dump several city blocks away caught fire. Shells began to explode, at which time all locomotives in the area departed. Two of the Quartermaster warehouses burned as well as the two gondolas. The four boxcars survived.
The next morning, 4 December, locomotives returned to pull out loaded cars. When the boxcars began to move, they derailed. It was then learned that the ties had burned under the cars and the track had collapsed. The Quartermaster unit unloaded supplies from the boxcars and put them on trucks. These trucks were taken to the road, where a Quartermaster soldier stood by and offered to all units that passed anything they wanted or could take with them. During the night of 3 December and on 4 December, the Quartermaster Company hauled food and gasoline from Pyongyang across the river, where its personnel stopped vehicles and offered to them what they might be able to use. At 6 P.M. that evening it destroyed the gasoline and rations it could not give away or evacuate. Between 15,000 and 30,000 gallons of gasoline, all of it in drums, was destroyed. By 8 December, this Quartermaster Company delivered the supplies it had been able to truck away from Pyongyang to Ascom City, near Inchon."
All night of 4 December the streets of Pyongyang were warm from many fires. Roaring flames sent a rosy glow over the ice along the edges of the Taedong River and parts of the city.
In the evacuation of Pyongyang there were many mishaps for any number of reasons, and evacuations of many supplies and much equipment were not carried out before bridges were blown. Some of it was due to the lack of sufficient railcars to load the material on, and locomotives were frequently lacking to pull the loaded trains out of the rail yards. For reasons not clear (perhaps just because of plain oversight), 16 new M46 Patton tanks were still standing on flatcars in the railyard and not evacuated when the city was abandoned. An examination of them by a tank unit passing by showed that some parts were missing, such as carburetors, and they could not be driven away on their own power. On learning this condition, the passing tank unit stopped long enough to send maintenance men to salvage other parts it could use.24
When the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, crossed the Taedong River, it stated in a message that 20 new tanks and six cars of equipment were still standing on a railroad trestle east of Pyongyang. The evacuation of the city was not an example of superb planning and execution; it was done in great haste. In its last days in American control, the situation was chaotic and characterized by too much haste and fear in Eighth Army that the Chinese would appear, although intelligence was adequate to indicate there was still time to save and evacuate military supplies and equipment."
In passing one of the airports on his way from the Chongchon front, 1st Lt. Francis Nordstrom said that he saw the Air Force burning a lot of parkas and that he would have liked to halt his D Company of tanks, 89th Tank Battalion, long enough to get one for himself-but he could not stop the tank column. At the airstrip at the north edge of Pyongyang, he said all kinds of supplies were burning as they passed it."
One of the greatest losses for any unit at Pyongyang occurred in the 822nd Engineer Aviation Battalion. It had a good start in loading its equipment for evacuation and had most of it on flatcars. But before its trains could move, an explosion erupted in one of the ammunition cars in the main rail yards and stopped all further rail movement from there. About 185 carloads of engineering equipment and supplies, approximately 75 percent of the battalion's property, had to be abandoned for destruction.=' Army Service units and supply installations were so sorely pressed for time in accordance with orders delivered to them for evacuation that 8,000 to 10,000 tons of supplies and equipment were unnecessarily lost. The regrettable aspect of these losses is that most of them could have
been prevented if two or three days more had been given for evacuation." It seems certain that this amount of time was indeed available if panic had not seized those in authority. The Chinese did not enter Pyongyang, or come close to it in any numbers, for at least that length of time after the final evacuation. The rear guard, the 29th British Brigade, was never engaged, and other troops could have been held close to the city for possible engagement of advanced elements of the CCF moving toward Pyongyang if they had threatened the city before it had been evacuated in an orderly way.
One of the larger ordnance units with a depot in Pyongyang when the withdrawal started was the 44th Ordnance Company. It was the first field ordnance depot to arrive in Korea, entering Pusan harbor on 8 July 1950. Its mission then was to supply ordancc equipment to the US 24th Division, the first American infantry division to be committed in the Korean War. Later the ordnance company supplied I Corps with ordnance equipment. In execution of this mission it arrived at Pyongyang on 31 October, and established itself at the Military Academy of North Korea on the north side of the Taedong River, the personnel occupying some of the then-empty buildings. Its supplies and equipment were trucked to it from Pusan and Inchon, with some reaching it from Chinnampo in the last few days prior to withdrawal. A truck round trip to and from Pusan required ten days.
The Pusan railroad became operational to Taedong Station on the south side of the Taedong River at Pyongyang only about two weeks before all of Eighth Armv was in full retreat from the city. At this time the 44th Ordnance Company Depot carried 550 tons of stock, three times its normal capacity and intended to supply 25,000 troops. Its 550 tons of stock was considered able to supply one army corps. In addition to the 550 tons of current serviceable supplies, it had 1,500 tons of captured enemy and unserviceable UN and American supplies. Capt. Wayne Kallimuki commanded the 44th Ordnance Company at the time; Capt. Robert M. Elser was executive officer.29
The drill field of the North Korean Military Academy was large, about 15 to 20 acres. From the beginning the 44th Ordnance Company used this big open space as a collecting point for disabled ordnance. In November it had collected here a vast amount of items held for repair. There were between 30 and 40 US tanks, none of them operational; 200 2'h-ton trucks; 300 weapons carriers and jeeps; one 8-inch howitzer; three or four 105-mm howitzers; 10 to 15 high-speed tractors used as prime movers for artillery pieces; and about 2,000 boxes of truck engines, transmissions, differentials, and transfer cases. When the word for withdrawal came, the Ordnance Company closed the collecting point; no more damaged or inoperable ordnance was received, and every unit with such items had to try to get its equipment out to safety as best it could. The amount of transportation in Pyongyang when the Eighth Army began its withdrawal made it almost certain that very few inoperable items would ever get out. This prospect applies to the huge collection point of the 44th Ordnance Company. Because of this situation, the gates of the collecting point were opened on 2 December, and cannibalization of the equipment invited to all who could make use of parts to keep their own organic equipment operational for the withdrawal.30
The 44th Ordnance Company received an alert at 9 P.M. on 30 November to be ready to move from Pyongyang no later than 2 December. Captain Kallimuki started at once to load less critical items such as tank treads, engines, and other items that normally would not be needed for use at once. The more critical items such as tires, the GMC front springs, spark plugs, fan belts, small arms, and antifreezing compounds were issued to the division ordnance companies. The 15 105-nim howitzers it had were issued to the 24th infantry and the 1st Cavalry Divisions. Other supples and equipment available were issued on request, regardless of whether such units would normally be authorized to draw them. On 1 December, 35 railcars were made available to the company at the rail station, which was nine miles from the ordnance depot. It required two hours for a truck from the depot to make a round-trip to the rail station in the snarl of traffic it had to pass through. The loading of the boxcars at the station continued throughout 1 December and after dark. The night was cold, and the ordnance personnel built a bonfire to keep themselves warm during the unloading and reloading. Moonlight during part of the night helped. By daylight of 2 December all boxcars had been loaded. The remaining supplies and equipment were loaded on 2'h-ton trucks and 15-ton semitrailers at the ordnance depot. At 8 A.M. on 2 December 18 semitrailer vans and trucks started from the ordnance depot, crossed the Taedong River, and headed south on the MSR. The 44th Ordnance personnel rode on 15 trucks.
An Engineer detachment with some bulldozers arrived at the depot and pushed all equipment that could not be evacuated into a large pile, where it was burned. When the convoy left the depot, five semitrailers were left parked there because prime movers were not able to pull them.
The ordnance convoy found that, out on the road, traffic was bumper to bumper, with average speed for a while at one and a half miles an hour. March discipline seemed to he completely lacking on the road, with numerous accidents and blockages. Snow started falling on the night of the second, and by morning of 3 December there was six inches of it on the ground. The 44th Ordnance Company arrived at Yongdong-po at 8 P.M. on 3 December.
Captain Kallimuki detached five tractors from the semitrailers they had been pulling and, on 4 December sent them back to Pyongyang to bring out the five loaded semitrailers left parked in the 44th Ordnance Depot, north of the river. When they arrived at the Taedong River, they found the bridge had already been blown, and they could not cross to the north side. The guard that had been left with the five semitrailers had left on 4 December. Since the bridges were blown on the morning of 5 December, and the tractors arrived there that day, it can be seen that a short delay in destroying the Taedong bridges would have saved this ordnance materiel. It is not known what happened to these five loaded semitrailers. Each semitrailer was loaded with 15 tons, making a total of 75 tons of ordnance lost. The 44th Ordnance Company had successfully evacuated 18 vans loaded with 10 tons each for 180 tons, and 2'h-ton trucks brought out another 20 tons, for a total of 200 tons saved. Captain Elser said he did not know what happened to the 35 railcars loaded with ordnance ma tericl they left ready to be pulled out in the Pyongyang rail yard. Since he and the 44th Ordnance Company never heard of them again, there is a presumption that they did not get out." Sfc. John H. Wright of the Ordnance Company said that, at this time during the evacuation of Pyongyang, if anyone got cold he would burn his spare tire for warmth.
On 27 November, the 57th Ordnance Recovery Company, Capt. Willard Baker commanding, was at Anju and Kunu-ri. It was an I Corps unit, its mission to undertake battlefield recovery of disabled tanks and to assist in recovery of other disabled ordnance items. Two days later it was getting caught in the early withdrawal of heavy ordnance equipment. The 2nd Platoon arrived at Pyongyang and bivouacked at the large drill grounds of the North Korean Military Academy, where the 44th Ordnance Depot Company was established. At 4 P.M. the afternoon of 29 November, Captain Lawrence, the motor officer of the 6th Heavy Tank Battalion, arrived at the platoon's area tired and excited. He told Captain Baker that nine tanks of the 6th Tank Battalion were some miles north of Pyongyang, limping along, and needed help. Some of the tanks were on the main road toward Sukchon, others were on the road from Sunchon. These two roads converged about two miles north of Pyongyang, where the Sunchon road joined the main Sukchon-Anju-Sinanju road. Captain Baker asked his operations officer, Lt. Gentle S. Banks, if he could help. Banks replied he thought he could. Banks together with Lts. Robert L. Brown and LeRoy Ingram went to the motor pool to see what they could send out to help the tanks get in. They found they could send five tractors on the rescue mission. Lieutenant Brown took the Sukchon road, and Lieutenant Ingram took the Sunchon road. Southbound traffic was heavy on both roads.
A regimental officer of an infantry column moving south met Ingram's tractors and ordered Ingram to pull them off to the side of the road, because they were interfering with a tactical withdrawal.
Ingram pulled his tractors off to the side for an hour while the infantry column passed. He then continued toward Sunchon, and nine miles from Pyongyang, at 11 P.M., he found some of the tanks. Their drivers had pulled the tanks off at the side of the road and had built a fire. They were cold and dispirited. Ingram attached his three tractors to three Patton tanks and pulled them into Pyongyang. On the Sukchon road, Lieutenant Brown met crippled tanks 13 miles north of Pyongyang at 9:30 P.m. and pulled two more Patton tanks into Pyongyang. Ingram and Brown pulled these tanks over the pontoon bridge to Tacdong Station on the south side of the river. They arrived there about midnight.
The next morning, Lieutenants Banks and Ingram went to the Taedong Station to make arrangements with the RTO for use of flatcars to evacuate the tanks. They learned no cars were available at the station. Lieutenant Banks then decided to move the tanks over a dirt road to Sadon Station, a small railmarshaling yard five miles east of Pyongyang. On the way the lead tank damaged a bridge, and there was a delay until Engineers made necessary repairs. The tanks arrived at Sadon Station just before noon. The tractors left the tanks there and returned to their own organization to pull their own trailers south across the Taedong River.
At Sadon Station, Lieutenant Banks had urged the RTO to load the tanks, saying that two of them had special, secret new equipment-torquematic trans missions and bore evacuators-that could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Lieutenant Flicker, the RTO, told Banks that Eighth Army had given the Air Force priority loading privileges at Sadon Station. The Air Force was loading an assortment of boxes, tables, chairs, and office equipment. Banks told Lieutenant Flicker that he would need the use of the ramp to load the tanks but that the Air Force could load its equipment without the use of the ramp. Flicker then pointed out that Banks had no cars at the station to load the tanks, even if he had use of the ramp. Banks said he would try to get some cars. Flicker said he would talk with the Air Force lieutenant colonel who was in charge of the Air Force loading operation, to see if he would agree to give up use of the ramp. Banks overheard the conversation that followed. The Air Force officer flatly refused, saying he had priority and he wanted to use the ramp and all the cars. The situation at Sadon Station remained unchanged throughout 30 November.
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