Two of its crew leaped from the turret with their hands up; the third came out holding a burp gun.
This soldier, seeing an American machine-gun crew dug in beside the road, fired at it, killing an assistant gunner. The Americans immediately shot down all three tankers. But the first American had been killed in Korea.
Very soon the dead American would have company.
The other tanks still did not stop, but continued on down the road. The howitzer gunners relaid their pieces directly on the tanks, and fired. At ranges from 300 to 1.50 yards, the 105's just bounced off.
But the tankers had buttoned up, and could not locate the artillery's firing position. Answering the fire only haphazardly, they continued down the road, past the artillery site and beyond. One more tank was hit in the track and immobilized. But the antitank ammunition was now gone, and a badly shaken group of American gunners watched the Communist armor rumble on.
After the main body of the tanks had disappeared, Colonel Perry, commanding the 52nd Field, who had come up to fight with his single engaged battery, organized a squad of men to destroy the halted tank. He called for its crew to surrender, and was shot through the right leg for his efforts.
The howitzers slammed at the tank until its crew deserted it. The two men who got out were killed in a brief fire fight with some of Perry's men.
Now it was found that the tanks had cut all the wires leading up to the infantry positions farther north. The radios were wet and old and wouldn't work, and the gunners had no idea of what was happening up ahead. They knew only that a hell of a lot of tanks had come through, and that wasn't supposed to happen to them.
Ten minutes later, another long string of tanks poured down the road toward the guns emplaced alongside it. They came singly, in twos, and threes, apparently without any organization, and, like the first, not accompanied by enemy infantry.
To any troops with solid training, armed with the weapons standard to any advanced nation at the middle of the century, they would have been duck soup. But Task Force Smith had neither arms nor training.
As the new wave of tanks burst into view, the artillery battery started to come apart. Officers ordered fire on the tanks, but the crew members began to take off. Some men scuttled off; others simply walked away from the guns. The officers and senior sergeants suddenly found themselves alone.
Cursing, commissioned officers of the battery grabbed ammunition and stuffed it into the tubes. The noncoms laid the guns and pulled the lanyards.
Again, the tanks did not pause to slug it out with the battery but passed through the gap to the south.
Colonel Perry, hobbling on one leg, leaning against a tree, together with First Lieutenant Dwain Scott, talked the men into coming back on the guns. Many of the second echelon of tanks did not fire on the battery at all, and the guns were able to knock out one more by disabling its track.
But one howitzer had been struck by an 85mm shell, and destroyed, and a great many of the battery vehicles, which had been parked off the road, were smashed and burning. Other than Colonel Perry, only one other artilleryman had been hit.
Farther north, Colonel Smith's infantry had lost some twenty dead or wounded to tank fire.
After the last tank had passed, the roadside grew quiet again. The gunners sat down around their guns, resting, while the riflemen began to dig their holes deeper. The steady rain continued to come down.
Then, after an hour had passed, Smith through his glasses saw a long column of trucks and walking infantry moving south from Suwon. At first sight he estimated the column to be at least six miles in length. Leading this new column were three more tanks, followed by trucks and miles of marching men.
This column was the 16th and 18th regiments of the NKPA 4th Division, the conquerors of Seoul.
For about an hour, the column closed upon Task Force Smith's position. The men were no longer cocky or happy. They were scared.
Smith held his fire until the leading tanks and trucks were only a thousand yards away. Then he said, 'Throw the book at them!'
The North Korean column was congested on the narrow road; it was not prepared to fight. Apparently it was not even in communication with the tank columns of the 105th Armored Brigade that had preceded it down the road; and it did not anticipate trouble.
While tough and battle-hardened, with a core of veterans, and psychologically prepared for battle, the NKPA was by no means a scientific military instrument by twentieth century standards. With no body of technical skills to fall back upon, the handling of communications and mechanized equipment, or even of artillery larger than mortars, by its peasant soldiery was inept. When its core of veterans had been exhausted in battle, the newer forced- inductees would be less reliable, and the NKPA would falter.
But in the early months of the war, the NKPA was a better army, more ready for war, than those it faced.
Colonel Smith gave the order to fire. Behind the ridge, mortars coughed, throwing their shells in a high arc over the ridges, sending them crashing down on the truck column. Trucks exploded and burst into flame. Shouting Koreans ran for the ditches. Machine guns ripped at them as they ran.
Some died on the road. Others reached the ditches, and were blown apart by the 4.2 shells that fell among them. The column of North Koreans stopped and began to pile up in confusion.
But now again Colonel Smith had nothing with which to stop the three tanks. The armored vehicles moved up close to his ridges, only 200 yards from the holes, and began to shower them with machine-gun slugs and to belt them with cannon fire. Americans began to die along the ridge.
Now, behind the smoke of the burning trucks, Smith could see a thousand North Koreans in mustard-colored uniforms start to deploy out into the rice paddies beside the road. A wave of them started for his ridge; it was broken up by rifle and machine-gun fire.
Surprisingly, although they brought some machine guns around, the enemy made no real effort to flank the ridge.
Enemy artillery began to burst along his position now—but Smith had no communication with his own supporting battery. Either artillery or air could have wreaked havoc on the North Koreans congested on the road in front of him, but he had neither. Smith believed the artillery had been destroyed by the tank column, though actually only one howitzer had been knocked out.
While the infantry fought along the ridge, the artillery sat it out. Twice Perry ordered wire parties to try to get the lines back in, but twice the men came back, complaining that they had been fired on.
Wet and old, none of the radios would work.
Smith, a courageous and competent officer, held his ridge as long as he dared. He held fast until the early afternoon, blocking the enemy, but he was running low on ammunition, and he realized that he was going to have to extricate his force, and soon, if he was going to save any of it from destruction.
Not only did he have a great number of enemy in front of him, but now men with automatic weapons were flowing across his flanks.
A withdrawal under fire is one of the most difficult of all military maneuvers. With seasoned troops it is dangerous, but with green men, undisciplined, badly shocked by the new and terrifying experience of battle, it can be fatal.
Smith ordered his two companies to leapfrog backward down a finger ridge on his right, toward Osan. While one platoon was to withdraw, others would cover it by fire.
C Company started back first, followed by the medics and battalion HQ.
But one platoon of B Company never received the withdrawal order. Fighting, Lieutenant Bernard, its commander, suddenly realized he was all alone on the position. He gave orders for his men to pull out after the others had already gone.
The withdrawal immediately became ragged and chaotic. Nobody wanted to be last in a game where all advantage obviously lay with being first. The men got out of their holes, leaving their crew-served weapons. They left their machine guns, recoilless rifles, and mortars for the enemy.
Getting up from its holes to withdraw, Task Force Smith now came under heavy machine-gun fire from the flanks, and here it took its heavy losses. At close range, automatic weapons chewed the retreating Americans, breaking them up into small, disorganized units.
They left their dead where they lay, and abandoned the thirty or so wounded who were too hurt to walk. One medical sergeant, whose name has been lost, refused to leave the wounded. He was not heard from again.
