The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 27: Showing off force (3)
While North Korean tanks were easily breaking through Task Force Smith's position, the 34th was trying to establish a position in Pyeongtaek, a town on the west coast.Pyeongtaek is about 10 miles south of Osan, on a major road and rail corridor.Lieutenant Colonel Harold Ayers dispatched several bazooka squads as soon as he received word of the North Korean breach.Lieutenant Charles Payne led several infantry advancing north and encountered a North Korean tank on the railway embankment five miles south of Osan.

Sergeant Ray Turnbull, a photojournalist accompanying the army, walked with the patrol, hoping to take a live photo of the bazooka squad destroying the tank.He followed Kenneth Shadrick, an 18-year-old private who had dropped out of a high school in Skin Fork, West Virginia.In a cemetery outside a small village, the bazooka squad opened fire.Turnbull later said:

I took a few satisfactory pictures, but the two tanks stopped a little farther away and Shadrick and his companions moved to another position to try to knock them out.I followed closely.

They fired a few rockets.Then Shadrick made an agreement with me that he counted "1, 2, 3" before shooting, and when he counted to "3", I could take a photo of the tail of the bazooka emitting flames.Shadrick counted to "3," then stood up and headed toward where the rocket was headed to see if it hit its target.One bullet entered his chest and another penetrated his right arm.

Shadrick moaned, "Oh, my arm." I saw the bones break above the elbow.He fell to the ground, and a lieutenant ran to him, but I said, "It's too late, he's also been shot in the chest." The lieutenant felt for his pulse, which had stopped.I photographed this scene.Within half a minute, Shadrick was dead.

A military doctor shouted: "It's really not a place to die."

Task Force Smith retreats

Task Force Smith had a brief, calm lull after the North Korean tanks disappeared to the south, but Bradford Smith knew that it would not be long before North Korean infantry would follow along the way.His soldiers seized the short respite to repair bunkers, try to restore broken communication lines, and check weapons and ammunition.The heavy rain continued. "War in such a ghost place." A second-class soldier cursed in a low voice, and no one argued with him.

The quiet time did not last long.Around 11 a.m., Smith spotted the first signs of North Korean movement around Suwon as he scanned the horizon with a telescope.As the minutes passed, Smith realized with a shudder that a terrifying force was pressing on his men: a column of trucks and soldiers on foot stretched at least six miles long, It is 6 tanks. (According to the interrogation of the captives later, what Smith saw were two entire regiments, namely the 3th and 2th regiments of the 4th Division of North Korea, a total of 16 people. One of the reports on the interrogation of Colonel Li Xuejiu indicated that North Korea at that time People did not know, or expected, that the United States would enter the war. The Pyongyang government was "surprised" when they did.)
Smith was now surrounded by enemies: south of his advance force was a North Korean tank column he could barely delay, let alone destroy, and now he was trying to stop an army perhaps 10 times his own size.

At this juncture, any soldier who lacks the courage to fight has every reason to retreat, but Smith is very clear about his task: to delay the advance of the North Koreans as much as possible and to show his strength, so that it knows that it is not a deserter before it. South Korea Army, but a formidable adversary.With the nervousness and calmness of a gambler, Smith watched the North Korean marching column approaching step by step.Finally, when the convoy got within 1 yards, Smith, as he put it, "whack 'em hard."

At the command to fire, mortar shells flew towards the convoy, and .0.50 caliber machine gun bullets swept across the North Korean marching columns.Trucks exploded and burst into flames, and North Korean soldiers jumped out of their vehicles or were thrown onto the road.In mere seconds, the intense fire killed untold numbers of North Koreans.

But the North Koreans quickly regrouped. 3 tanks rushed to the American position, firing cannon and machine guns at the hilltop position only 200 to 300 yards from the artillery position.Howling, commanders drove more than 1000 North Koreans out of trucks and ditches and moved along the east side of the road toward the summit.The rest of the North Korean troops were on standby in trucks away from the burning vehicles.Apparently, they thought that the defenders would eventually be routed and flee, just like the Korean troops in the early days of the war.

The attacking North Korean troops gradually moved to both sides of the U.S. position, forcing the U.S. troops on the east side of the road to shrink their defensive circle.The opponent's mortar firepower became more and more intensive.The North Koreans moved doggedly south in an attempt to completely cut off Task Force Smith's retreat.

Although the American soldiers participated in the war for the first time, they fought very tenaciously.The tripod of the machine gun used by Private First Class Vern Mulligan was damaged by the opponent's fire. He put the barrel on the empty ammunition box and continued to fire.The empty ammunition box was smashed again, at this time, six North Korean soldiers rushed towards him.Mulligan fired with a machine gun on his left forearm, and all six soldiers were killed.

While in Japan, Lt. Raymond "Body" Adams was a pitcher for the regimental baseball team, and he threw the crucial pitch of his career.He lobbed a grenade 40 yards beyond what seemed to be manpower's reach, landing straight on a North Korean machine gun emplacement, killing it.

Two hours later, Smith realized that his situation was hopeless and that holding his position meant the death of his men.He later said: "It was hopeless, with heavy casualties, lost communications, lack of transport, ammunition out, and North Korean tanks behind me. In this situation, I faced a choice. Where should I go?"

"Survive and die with the position, or try to lead the rest of the army to break through? I can hold on for an hour at most, and then the whole army will be wiped out. I chose to break through, hoping to save my life and fight again in the future."

Abandoning all his mechanized equipment, Smith led a small force in an attempt to clear a passage out of the North Korean encirclement.One of Smith's lieutenants crawled back to the position, dragging his badly wounded body, and encountered six soldiers lying motionless.One of the soldiers shouted, "Lieutenant, what should we do?"

The lieutenant handed him a grenade and said, "This is the best I can do for you."

Smith later said: "It was the worst thing of its kind, when wounded and dying soldiers begged you to help them, and there was nothing you could do to help them."

Abandoning the wounded on the battlefield also violates U.S. military regulations.Soldiers fight more valiantly if they know they won't be left behind when they're wounded.Unfortunately, the phenomenon of abandonment of wounded was not limited to Task Force Smith.

Keep going
On the night of July 7, stragglers from Task Force Smith trickled into the 5th Regiment's sector, bringing first dismal reports.Task Force Smith was all wiped out, some soldiers said, and a large army of North Korean tanks would follow.Later, Smith arrived here with 34 survivors, 86 of whom were seriously wounded and had to stay in the regiment for treatment.

The head of the regiment, Colonel Lovelace, also faced a problem: all communications between the various units stationed in Pyeongtaek, Anseong, and elsewhere were lost.South Korean soldiers and civilians who fled along the way cut the telephone wires from time to time and used them to bundle luggage and carry items.With units far apart and unable to use radio communications networks, commanders had to use communicators to communicate, but the reports lagged far behind actual combat developments.

Another issue is confusion over command authority.General George Bath, who had previously deployed artillery units into position to support Task Force Smith, was now in the 34th.In the absence of a higher commanding officer, Bath began issuing orders to Lieutenant Colonel Ayers of the 1st Battalion.Bath believes that's how it should be done in a crisis situation.He ordered the blowing of a road bridge north of the city, and instructed Ayers to hold its position as long as possible, but to withdraw immediately if Ayers thought the battalion was in danger of being cut off from its retreat.Ailes "isn't like Bradford Smith after all".Evidently, neither he nor Bath had alerted Colonel Lovelace to what was happening up north, nor had Lovelace received any instructions from Dean regarding Bath's duties.Nevertheless, the colonel did not argue with the general on the battlefield, so Lovelace set about drawing up a plan for retreat.One company remained in the rear guard and entered these positions when the 1st Battalion withdrew from Pyongtaek.

Meanwhile, on the banks of the river two miles north of Pyeongtaek, soldiers of the 1st Battalion were crouching in narrow, water-filled trenches, crying out.At the crack of dawn, the cold C rations could hardly dispel the melancholy in their hearts.Through the fog and rain, the roar of the motor came.

Through the haze, Ailes and the other soldiers could see the silhouettes of tanks at the far end of the bombed bridge, followed by foot soldiers and convoys.The lead tank stopped by the bridge, and the crew jumped out to inspect the destroyed bridge.The tanks behind also stopped, 13 in total.The North Korean infantry did not stop, they walked straight towards the river, and the individual soldiers began to wade across the river.

U.S. mortars rushed to the vicinity of the bridge with intensive firepower, destroying a truck.The opponent's tank immediately returned fire, and soon silenced the American artillery.The North Koreans swarmed across the river, and within minutes they were closing in on the American positions, whose rifles could be clearly seen being loaded by American soldiers.

Ayers saw all of this.He ordered the entire battalion to withdraw to Cheonan, but the road was blocked by fleeing North Korean civilians and soldiers.The retreat was chaotic, and by the afternoon the road from Pyeongtaek to Cheonan was littered with discarded equipment and clothing.

Task Force Smith was undermanned and poorly equipped to effectively delay the North Korean advance; the outnumbered 34th was similar—but there was a fundamental difference.Smith's men fought until they were driven from their positions.Relatively speaking, the 34th regiment had no contact with the North Koreans.As soon as the North Koreans appeared, the regiment packed up and left.

No one was more shocked and outraged by the retreat of the 34th than General Dean.By the time he got the news, the regiment was 15 miles from his chosen defensive position along the coast along the river.Dean said: "The troops in Ancheng retreated a full 20 miles from the place I designated before they were beaten."

Dean jumped into the jeep and headed straight to Cheonan to find out what was going on and why the 34th Regiment didn't stick to the riverside position.When he arrived, he found that the whole regiment had withdrawn to the south of Cheonan. "I should have said, 'Turn back and go now.' But to avoid further chaos and an ambush at night, I said to them, 'Well, stay here until I have new orders. .'"

Official Army sources are careful to describe the ensuing "unpleasant" confrontation between General Dean and Bath and other officers.Dean asked point-blank who ordered the retreat from Pyeongtaek, and was answered with an awkward silence.In the end, Ailes said he took responsibility.

Dean ordered the 34th to retrace the same route the next morning until it encountered the North Koreans and then engaged in a delay.But he no longer has the advantage of the terrain, with results he calls "tragic".The North Koreans swept across the West Coast along a network of roads, meeting little more than an eccentric paramilitary force called the Northwest Youth League.These non-communist North Koreans numbered between 500 and 1000 and were armed by the South Korean government but were not part of the regular army.Some American and South Korean officers had faith in the team, but Dean did not.Over the next few days, North Koreans repeatedly harassed American and South Korean forces from the left.

The next morning, Dean did something else.The 34th Regiment was placed under the command of Colonel Robert Martin, with whom Dean had served with the 44th Division in Europe, and Dean was then a combat regiment commander.Martin rushed from Tokyo to North Korea after receiving the order, and when he arrived, he was still wearing low shoes, wearing an overseas guard cap, and had no helmet, weapon or field equipment.A few hours later, he was on the front lines.That afternoon, Lovelace was formally relieved of his duties.

(End of this chapter)