recoilless rifles of the 19th butchered the majority of them, but a few sneaked onto the south shore.
As night deepened, there was sporadic firing. Smoke and the smell of cordite lay heavy over the uneasy lines facing the Kum. No one got any sleep.
Then, exactly at 0300 on 16 July, a single North Korean aircraft flew along the river. A flare popped behind it, and at the signal the north bank of the Kum blazed with fire.
Artillery, tank cannon, mortars, and small arms punished the south shore. The volume of fire was as great as anything Stan Meloy had seen in Europe—and under its cover North Koreans streamed down to the river. They jumped on boats and rafts; they waded; they swam, pouring into the river like a swarm of rats fleeing a forest fire.
Stan Meloy met them with everything he had. And at this critical moment one of the inevitable mishaps of war dealt him a damaging blow.
One 155mm howitzer of the 11th Field was firing flares on call. The flares gave 1st Battalion visibility over the river, and light to shoot by, but they were slightly off the main concentration of enemy. Colonel Winstead requested a slight shift in flare area. The shift should have taken at most a minute or two—but the gunners misunderstood the request, and completely moved the gun around.
For many long, crucial minutes the river stayed dark, and enemy infantry poured across.
Once on the south bank, they poured through the gap between Charley and Easy companies and took the 1st Platoon of C under attack. Hearing the violent firing, C's commander called Lieutenant Maher of the 1st Platoon by telephone.
Cheerfully, young Maher said, 'We're doing fine.'
He put down the phone and took a bullet in the head. Almost immediately, his platoon was overrun. The platoon sergeant was able to rejoin the company with only a dozen men.
Now, under cover of dark, with dawn only an hour away, the NKPA began to filter through the 1st Battalion and to fire on its mortar and CP positions.
To the left of the 19th's front, another crossing was taking place. At first light, men in B Company saw almost a battalion of North Koreans on the high ground to their left and rear. More were coming across every minute.
Then, suddenly, it seemed that the NKPA was everywhere. Colonel Winstead reported to Meloy that his CP and mortars were under attack and that the middle part of his line was falling back. Parts of both Able and Baker companies were overrun. The enemy was coming through the center of the regimental position.
This attack had to be contained. Meloy and Winstead began to organize a counterattack force. With no organized reserve, they called upon all cooks, drivers, mechanics, and clerks in the regiment, and every staff officer present.
This conglomerate force went into action, and by 0900 had driven the attack off. A few North Koreans even fled back to the river and recrossed it. Leading the counterattack, both the 1st Battalion S-3, Major Cook, and the adjutant, Captain Hackett, were killed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Meloy called Dean and reported he had the situation under control.
But Stan Meloy, this confused morning, did not know the whole picture. Almost immediately, Colonel Winstead reported that enemy units were raising hell in his rear areas, and he had nothing with which to fight them. The artillery batteries were under fire, and screaming for assistance.
Something had happened to the air support, which was supposed to be on call at dawn.
Then, a roadblock was reported three miles behind the regiment on the main supply road. Ammunition trucks could not get up to the units.
Enemy infiltrators struck against F Company, the single reserve force, and pinned it down by fire.
Colonel Meloy and his S-3, Major Logan, went back to check on the roadblock in their rear, which was being rapidly reinforced by the enemy infiltrators streaming through the hills. Many of the enemy wore white robes, disguised as farmers.
At the roadblock, Meloy found a sad situation. The American troops in the area, mostly service troops, were not trying to reduce the block, which was a narrow pass between a stream and a forty-foot embankment covered by fire. These troops were lying around, completely disorganized, firing in the general direction of the block, doing no damage at all.
Meloy immediately jumped in and tried to get some order. As he tried to get a group of men to attack the high ground above the pass, he was hit and severely wounded.
He told Logan to pass the command to Colonel Winstead, of the 1st Battalion. Logan, after notifying Winstead, finally reached through to General Dean's HQ in Taejon. He told Dean that: the situation was poor, Meloy down, and Winstead now in command. Dean, worried, replied that he would send men to force the roadblock, and for the 19th to withdraw at once—but to try to bring its equipment out with it. As soon as these messages had been sent, an enemy shell struck the regimental radio truck, and all contact with Division was cut off.
Winstead then ordered Logan to do something about the roadblock, while he went back to his battalion and tried to bring it back from the river. It was now past noon.
Now, in middle summer, the monsoon rains had finally ended, and the Korean sun was beginning to sear with all its fury. By early afternoon the thermometer reached 100 degrees, and the hillsides became humid furnaces. The soldiers of the 19th were in no better physical shape than the other Japanese occupation troops; they were unused to heat and unused to the steep Korean slopes. This was their first action, but they had had no real rest or sleep for three nights. The long midsummer day, with sixteen hours of daylight, following a night of battle, began to be too much for them.
The lightly armed Koreans continued to pour through the hills and take up positions on the high ground in the regiment's rear. The NKPA ran through the valleys stolidly, and bounded up the ridges like rabbits; they had been doing it all their lives.
If Colonel Meloy had had an adequate reserve, he would not have had to lead men personally against the damaging roadblock. The enemy parties in his rear could have done no real damage, and he could have reduced them one by one, since the main line was able to hold until ordered to withdraw.
But every available fighting man was on line up against the Kum, and there was nothing to wipe up the rampaging infiltrators in the rear. By noon, too, demoralization had begun to set in among the men. The long night and the burning sun had reduced them to panting exhaustion. Ordered to climb the high ground to knock the enemy off the blocking positions, the majority of them lay down and looked the other way.
Under fire, the line companies along the river began to withdraw on Winstead's order. Coming out of line, they found they still had a long way to go. From hills and bushes in their rear, enemy machine guns chattered at them.
Again and again, officers were simply not able to organize attacks against the enfilading hills to clear the way. It wasn't that the men were afraid—they were simply unable to walk up the hills to engage the North Koreans.
Trying to organize his men, Winstead was killed.
F Company, the supposed reserve force, was ordered to attack the major roadblock to the south. It was under fire and could not leave its reserve position.
To the south, General Dean was making every attempt to organize a force to rescue the 19th's 1st Battalion. The 19th 2nd Battalion, under McGrail, was ordered to come up from its position on the east flank and break the roadblock.
Colonel McGrail, coming up the road from the south, ran into heavy North Korean fire. His vehicles were set afire, and he was pinned down in a ditch while many men around him were killed or wounded. His G Company, trying to attack the ridges over the roadblock, took casualties and was forced to dig in. The 2nd Battalion men could not climb the hills, either.
At dusk, the effort to break the roadblock ended.
Meanwhile, all afternoon, the troops on the north had waited for the block to clear. Some men did not wait, but began to head south through the hills. Staff officers decided to place Colonel Meloy in the one light tank available and to try to get him to safety. The tank got through, leading about twenty vehicles. Just south of the roadblock, the tank engine failed.
None of the vehicles it had escorted through stopped to pick up its crew or the wounded Meloy. Meloy, badly hurt but conscious, ordered the tank commander to drop a thermite grenade down the hatch while he lay in the ditch and watched.
