Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [35]
The following morning, the Eighth Army began its drive to the Yalu River.
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On the twenty-seventh, orders came down for the 2nd Division to withdraw. However, the 38th was to hold at all cost while the rest of the division withdrew southward. We were to withdraw to Kujang-dong, which was an important road junction north of Kunu-ri. The following day, the 9th and 23rd__our other two regiments—suffered heavy losses in both men and equipment.4
By the twenty-ninth the situation in Kunu-ri had become perilous. The next day the division was given the okay to withdraw, so we headed south towards Sunchon—going through the Gauntlet and The Pass. This was two days of hell.
We had been under constant attack since the 24th of November, losing 546 men. By the end of December 2nd, we had lost another 632 men.5
We were able to finally stop at the Hoengsong-Wonju (South Korea) area, where we received a much needed rest, and received replacements in both men and equipment—in preparation to head north again.
Around mid-December, the 38th received a battalion of Dutch soldiers. On New Years Day 1951, I walked to their CP to visit with their S-3 section. As I walked through the snow that had fallen the day before, I noticed oblong humps along the sides of the road. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, I went over to one of the humps and kicked away the snow; it was a mother holding her baby. The humps were too numerous to count.
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We had moved up to Hoengsong, and by the 10th of February we were receiving aerial reports that thousands of Chinese forces had been spotted to our front. The following day we saw little gain on the front, and as we came under fire, we had to try and stop the ROK troops from leaving—we were unsuccessful.
As our tanks were pushing stalled vehicles off the road, their turret gunners were taking a beating; they were using their 76mm cannon as direct fire weapons. Our ammo supply had gotten so low, that our rear guard—Company A—was down to fixed bayonets.6
By the twelfth, personnel from BN HQ Company had been organized and placed on the line. Along with a few staff members, Burr, and myself got off the road to set up a temporary CP. A call came in from Major Blackwell telling us that the lead truck had stopped and was under continuous fire from a machine gun that was located on a ridge line to their left. He wanted troops sent to knock out the gun. So, Burr and myself said we would take care of it; there was no objection from the major.
Master Sergeant Guenther Burr was our S-2, Intelligence Sergeant, and I must say, a very good one.
We organized the members of our temporary CP into an assault team, with Burr and myself as the lead. With little trouble, we knocked out the machine gun; however, we didn’t know there was a second machine gun further up the ridge. Suddenly, lead and grenades were flying everywhere until I took a slug to my head, which rolled me down the hill. Burr rolled down the hill with me to see how bad I was hit.7
As he raised up to check my wound, a burst of machine gun fire opened up on us; Burr was nicked in the shin, grazed in the forearm, and had his carbine destroyed. So, we rolled further down the hill, where he was able to dress my wound. Suddenly, six Chinese soldiers appeared motioning for us to follow them—we had no other choice. As they marched us across the road, to an open field, we heard the rest of our team silence the second gun. Now the column of vehicles were able to move.8
We finally joined up with a group of seventy to eighty prisoners, most of who were not wounded. Then we moved south to Chongbong-ni, where we joined another group of prisoners that was about the size of our group. That evening Burr was able to get a better look at my wound, which was still bleeding. I had been hit in the left corner of my mouth, with the bullet passing through my cheek, and jawbone, exiting out the back of my neck. He took a piece of an old Korean blanket and stuffed it in the