Division.
The division's line ran along the crest of a huge hill mass in East Central Korea, separating the Hongch'on and Soyang rivers. The main line of resistance ran in most places a mile or more beyond the ends of the nearest supply roads, and all materiel of war had to be hand-carried up the thousand-foot slopes.
The 38th Infantry held the left of the division line, and on the regimental left, firmly fixed on a hill mass known as Hill 800, the 3rd Battalion, 38th,dug in.
Lieutenant Colonel Wallace Hanes, the C.O. of the 3/38, gave explicit orders to cut fields of fire, to dig bunkers, and to build covered positions for every man of the rifle companies.
Colonel Hanes discovered what many had discovered before and since—that while the American soldier is among the best in the world at getting his tents up and his socks dry, he has no love for digging in the earth. Inspecting, Hanes found that most men had merely dug a foxhole, put a poncho over it to keep out the cold spring rain, and a few leaves over the poncho as concealment. American troops always despise physical labor.
Hanes roared at his company commanders: 'Damn it, I want solid bunkers with cover to protect you from artillery fire!'
Under Hanes' lashing, the 3/38 cut down trees, to build solid bunker walls. On top of these they put earth, and rock as a bursting pan. They dug deep trenches from firing position to position, and they dug great holes in the mountainsides in which to hide their bunkers.
Still, some positions stuck out, and Hanes insisted on their being covered over with sandbags, by the thousands. He wanted positions that would stand under enemy artillery—or friendly, if the 3/38 were overrun.
With the deep positions ready after a week of Hanes' prodding, wire was strung across the front, and mines emplaced along the forward hill slopes. All of the materiel was carried up the steep slopes on the backs of Korean laborers and laboriously emplaced by the grudging U.S. troops.
When Hanes had first explained to them what he wanted, many had thought him joking.
When Colonel Hanes was satisfied, they had used up 237,000 sandbags,385 rolls of barbed wire, more than 6,000 steel wire pickets, and 39
In addition to fortifications, the 3/38 had to carry its water, food, and ammunition up the hill. It took three to four hours for a round trip.
The only way Colonel Hanes found to get his heavy 4.2-inch mortars up was by the use of Korean oxen.
With his front completely wired in, Hanes now insisted on trip flares and AP mines being strewn over the forward slopes, and his wire communications being placed underground.
The 3/38, which already figured it knew how to fight, now learned how to work. On 12 May Hanes was halfway satisfied.
And the 2nd Division knew that something was in the wind. Enemy patrols were thick out along the Soyang River; refugees and line crossers were pouring in; air reported vehicular traffic and new bridges deep in the enemy mountains.
Waiting in their deep positions, Hanes' men were now proud of their handiwork, and confident. It had dawned on them, that while they had never had positions half so good, they had seen some the Chinese had made that were as good, or better. Once the work was over, they were at last glad they had done it.
Hanes, talking to Major General Ruffner, the division commander, said, 'I'm worried about only one thing now, General—I'm afraid the bastards won't hit us!'
Wallace Hanes need not have worried. On 16 May, after nightfall, the bastards launched their Second Step, Fifth Phase Offensive, which the United Nations Command designated the 'The Second CCF Spring Offensive,' X Corps called 'The Battle of the Soyang,' and the soldiers of the 2nd Division remembered ever afterward as the May Massacre.
On 16 May 1951, the III and IX Army groups, comprising the 12th, 15th,60th, 20th, and 27th armies, CCF, moved 137,000 Chinese and 38,000 North Koreans southward like a muddy, coffee-colored sea. The sky was heavy and overcast, and American air blind and impotent.
The Chinese 'volunteers' had been told of great victories in the offing. They knew they faced the ROK's, of whom they were contemptuous, and the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, whose blood they had tasted before.
The long, undulant, columns chanted and grunted and sang, after the manner of all Chinese at work or on the march, until the hills were hideous with their noise.
At night, on the flare and bugle call, they went into the ROK's holding No Name Line to the east of the 2nd Division. The ROK's, outnumbered, outgunned, and badly led, came apart.
Like a door swung sharply inward, the line east of the 3/38 fell to the south-west, toward Wonju. The ROK's did not run, at first. They fought; they were overwhelmed. They fell back.
By 17 May once again, as at Kunu-ri, the 2nd Division was gaping and exposed on its right flank.
By daylight, the Chinese had struck into the 1st and 2nd battalions of the38th, and had run full into Task Force Zebra, a 2nd Division force whose steel tip was the 72nd Tank Battalion.
They struck fire such as they had never faced before.
Infantrymen held to their hilltops; tanks moved along the valley corridors with machine gun and cannon. Tank gunners and artillerymen fired until they were exhausted from loading shells, and tubes were close to burning out.
On the right flank of the division, finally, the advance was stopped.
The CCF, hurt, milled and coiled about, seeking an easier way. Striking farther to the west, on the left flank of the 2nd Division, the Chinese threw a division against the 38th Infantry's solid hills.
By the prodigal spending of men against wire and flame, C Company of the38th was overrun. East of Colonel Hanes' positions, 1/38 pulled back to the left, and 2/38 also moved back.
The French Battalion was sent forward to plug the gap between Task Force Zebra and the 38th Infantry caused by the loss of C Company. The French could not restore the line, but they held the Chinese at bay until the 72ndTank moved back, and the 23rd Infantry assumed their mission.
Now the Chinese went for the apex of the U.N. defensive line, the hills held by 3/38, which were rapidly assuming the character of a salient, with enemy on either side of them.
The CCF route of approach led them directly into Hill 800, the anchor about which the 3rd Battalion was centered. Dug in atop 800, which they already called Bunker Hill, was Company K, Captain Brownell.
The men of Bunker Hill were deep inside more than two dozen bunkers, the positions Colonel Hanes had forced them to build so painfully a week before.
Shortly after dark, 17 May, waiting in a cold mountain fog, King Company heard the sound of bugles. Soon, then, the men on Bunker Hill heard the Chinese at their first wire barrier; several mines exploded, and the Chinese opened fire on the hill.
Gradually the firing increased as the Chinese neared; some of King's men could even hear querulous Chinese words shouted back and forth. The attackers slipped around the side of the hill, cut the wire, and climbed up the steepest part, where few mines had been laid.
Now King opened fire, with a crackling roar.
Brownell, however, owing to poor communication, was unable to call down artillery fire. A shell landed directly on his command bunker, damaging his radio; and a number of men from Mike, the supporting Weapons Company, under a new, green lieutenant, had left their positions and were falling back across the hill.
Other men joined them. In a thunderous small-arms fire fight, Chinese and Americans were wandering about all over Bunker Hill in the dark.
Captain Brownell, in a superb defensive position, was suddenly in command of complete confusion, for men heard that the line was falling back, and began to pull out.
Colonel Hanes met some of these at the bottom of the hill. 'Get back upon the hill—we don't give up a position until we're beaten, and we're not beaten if every man does his share!'
The men went back. The green lieutenant who had started the pull-out got back into his position with several wounds.
