Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [103]
On our left flank was Love Company. The other two battalions set up positions along the west and south sides of the road; thereby forming a three-sided defense line. From the center of the arc, Col. Freeman directed the fight. The regiments mission: to prevent the Chinese from catching up with the 2nd Division as they withdrew south to Sunch’on, and to keep the road to Sinanju open for our escape route.
By this time the temperature was dipping around twenty degrees below zero. In our five-man squad, I was the odd man out and had to dig a foxhole by myself. Chipping away at the frozen ground trying to dig the standard knee-deep, six feet long, and three feet wide hole was slow going. We had our trenching tools with the shovel-blade locked at a right angle; even in the extreme cold, I sweated.
While we were digging, there were two or three-hundred Chinese soldiers standing around huge bonfires—directly in front of us—on the railroad tracks next to the village. They didn’t know we were digging in, but we could hear them hollering, blowing their bugles, and beating their pans. However, around midnight they returned to the village and we kept on digging until just before daylight. At dawn we stopped all activity and every eye, and ear, was pointed in the direction of the village. Just before full light they appeared—Chinese soldiers walking single file, about fifteen feet apart—in an unending line.
As they crossed the bridge to our side of the river they turned in our direction, passing five-hundred yards in front of us. They were on their way to cut off the Sinanju Road. Sergeant “George” Chamberlain, our first platoon sergeant, quietly passed the word down the line for us to hold our fire until Love Company’s machine guns opened fire. When they did, all hell broke loose. Every weapon, up and down the line, opened up. It was like a shooting gallery at a local carnival; many Chinese soldiers hit the ground—never to get up.
By mid-morning, a pair of B-26 Bombers from the Air Force came on the scene and worked over the village; the column of Chinese soldiers having already been destroyed, the road going to the west was still open. Shortly afterwards, some P-80 Shooting Star Fighters joined in the fight. Several Chinese had taken refuge underneath the bridge they had previously crossed, and with a ringside seat, we watched as the bridge was cleaned out after each plane made two runs apiece.
Before noon Major General Laurence Keiser, Commander of the 2nd Division, made a fatal decision; the division would move south on the Sunch’on Road.
At dusk, word was passed down the line to prepare for withdrawal. After dark, a few men at a time—from each platoon—quietly slipped off the ridge into the draw behind their position. Then we walked a mile back to where the men of the 15th FA had been patiently waiting. By this time they had already fired all their ammo, and destroyed all their guns.
The 30th of November was a costly day for the 2nd Division, as we ran through “The Gauntlet” and “The Pass.” The division lost four-thousand men killed, wounded, or captured, as we made our way through that seven-mile deep roadblock—it was a nightmare.
As I look back through the “fog of time,” the 23rd was sacrificed to save the division.
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We passed through Wonju as we traveled north of Hoensong. Arriving at an open field located next to the road; the field sloped upwards to a line of trees. Since we were a few miles behind the front line, we only set out a couple of guards. Not having any rice straw to lay on the four inches of snow, I trampled the snow down then laid some freshly cut pine branches down for my bed. Crawling into my mountain bag, with only my boots off, I warmed up and went to sleep.
Someone yelled, “Wake up, you guys.” I got out of my bag and sat on it to put on my shoe-pacs. However, with the minus twenty degrees, the laces