6th and 7th divisions to penetrate the U.S. 25th Division in the south.
9th, 2nd, 10th, and 4th divisions to destroy the U.S. 2nd Division before Miryang, and to break through to the Pusan-Taegu Road by way of Yongsan.
3rd, 1st, and 13th divisions to break through the U.S. 1st Cavalry and 1st ROK divisions at Taegu.
8th and 5th divisions to smash ROK 8th and 6th divisions east of Taegu.
5th and 12th divisions to penetrate through the ROK 3rd and Capital divisions to P'ohang-dong, Yonil, and Kyongju Corridor on the east coast.
While the greatest effort was to fall on the Naktong Front, in the already corpse-strewn Bulge area, Choe's plan was to put pressure on the straining U.N. wall everywhere. His hope was that somewhere, surely, it must break.
When First Lieutenant Frank Munoz's G Company, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, went back on line on the commanding terrain west of the town of Yongsan, the company had only seventy effectives. Munoz relieved 3rd Battalion, 19th Infantry, on a front that extended 7,000 meters, which spread him as thin as hot butter. Where the 19th had placed a company, Munoz was forced to dig in a squad.
But within a few days, while the front remained fairly quiet, George gradually built up to three hundred men. Most of the replacements were men who had been wounded slightly and returned to duty, or who had collapsed from illness or heat in the first days; all had had at least a brush with combat.
George Company was able to police up a lot of abandoned American equipment, too. Now they had two light machine guns in their light-machine-gun squads, plus some Quad .50's and two twin 40mms to sweep the ground, and Regiment attached a platoon of tanks to them.
They were eating one hot meal a day, and for a little while things weren't too bad. George was beginning to pull together. Good leadership could do a great deal, given time.
But on 31 August, Frank Munoz was smelling something stronger than the usual fecal odor of the rice paddies. George Company, like all American units, had picked up a number of native Korean laborers and servants, and these men demanded their pay on the last day of August. Munoz explained to them that tomorrow, 1 September, was pay day for the U.S. Army and attached personnel—but the Koreans said they couldn't wait that long. At nightfall the indigenous personnel bugged out, to the last man.
Munoz smelled a rat. He talked to Lieutenant Pete Sudduth, Battalion Intelligence Officer. Sudduth, who had his own pipelines, acknowledged that something big was in the wind. He said, 'Expect something hot tonight, Frank.'
'Should I continue those patrols you requested forward of my own lines?'
'Yes,' Sudduth said.
Munoz instructed Sergeant Flowers, the young, slim kid who was to take a standing patrol of four men out to the Naktong bank, to keep his eyes and ears open. Just after dusk, with the night warm and clear and moonless, Flowers and his men moved out.
The patrol had no more than reached its position beside the river when they discovered the night was full of softly moving North Koreans—they were crossing the Naktong in small boats, and the scrub and paddies along the Naktong were alive with padding enemy.
Flowers and his men, unseen, hit the deck. There were already enemy riflemen behind them. Flowers had a walkie-talkie radio. He tried to call Munoz; the damned thing wouldn't work. All he could do now was to hide out and hope the enemy wouldn't stumble over him.
Then, at 2100 hours, 76mm shells began to sweep George's area. It was haphazard artillery preparation, not aimed. Under the shelling, Munoz ordered his platoon of tanks to move on line with the riflemen, and to fire on targets of opportunity. Lieutenant Hank Merritt had gone to E Company, and Munoz talked with his new exec, Lieutenant Joe Manto. He told the New Yorker George was going to hold on its present line no matter what happened.
Manto agreed. They held a good high position, except for the 3rd Platoon, which was on a spur of the ridge, and more accessible to enemy attacking from the front. On their left flank F Company was dug in, and they had contact with units of Colonel Freeman's 23rd Infantry across the road on their right.
Then a violent fire fight blazed in the 3rd Platoon area. The orange-violet winkings of rifle and machine-gun fire flashed all over the finger where the 3rd Platoon had dug in, and the 3rd Platoon leader Sergeant Tworak was on the hot loop, reporting to Munoz, 'They hit us!' 'Stay awake!' Munoz ordered him.
Then, as usual, the wire to 3rd Platoon failed at a moment of crisis. Immediately the blazing fire fight on the spur increased in viciousness. Munoz tried to raise the Artillery forward observer with the company; he wanted to put artillery down in front of the 3rd.
He couldn't reach the FO, who seemed to be at the other end of the company line. And then the NKPA hit George all along the line. They came through the night in long lines of skirmishers, firing and screaming:
They overran the 3rd Platoon, but recoiled from the wall of fire and steel that George threw up from the higher portions of the ridge.
Sergeant Long, 2nd Platoon, reported by telephone that 3rd Platoon had ceased firing at the enemy. 'How are you making out?' Munoz asked Long. 'I can hold.' 'Do it,' Munoz said. Now he had Battalion HQ on the wire, talking to the Artillery liaison officer. 'Fire the preplanned concentrations,' Munoz requested. 'I'll direct—'
By ten o'clock the artillery was crashing down around George's hill, and the NKPA were giving it a wide berth.
But by now, the entire Naktong front was ablaze with gun and shellfire. Munoz realized that a general enemy assault was in progress and that there was trouble everywhere. By midnight the NKPA had breached a gap between his right flank and the 23rd Regiment, and they were pouring down the road in strength beyond George's power to stop. Then the enemy turned, and Munoz could hear them hit the 23rd in the rear.
Contact with Fox Company on the left had been lost.
For the balance of the night, all that Munoz and George Company could do was to stay on their hill and be thankful that they had not been in the path of the Inmun Gun's main efforts.
With the launching of the great North Korean Naktong offensive, every American division immediately came under heavy pressure. Immediately, the dike sprang leaks everywhere, and everywhere there was bitter, prolonged, and bloody fighting. A chapter could be written of each engagement alone, for in the first two weeks of September occurred both the heaviest fighting and heaviest casualties of the Korean War.
A major breakthrough anywhere on the five points of pressure might have resulted in disaster, but again, as in August, the deadliest threat to the Perimeter and Pusan developed in the Naktong Bulge on the southwest.While there was a great similarity to the fighting in each locale, it was in the Bulge again that the most crucial battle raged.
As for the other areas not treated here, let it be said that American and ROK troops fought, bled, died—and held, in the main. Had they not, what occurred in the Bulge would be of little importance.
Just before the great crossing on the night of 31 August, General Pak Kyo Sam, 9th Division, NKPA, opposite the United States 9th Infantry's 20,000-yard front along the Naktong, instructed his division officers as to their mission:
…
…
The 9th Division very nearly succeeded, for with a 20,000-yard front, the companies of the 2nd Infantry Division's 9th Regiment were scattered like dust over a few of the higher hills east of the river. On the far south, or left flank, of the 9th Infantry's area, A Company, with two tanks from A Company, 72nd Tank Battalion, and supporting antiaircraft vehicles, held the Agok area.
In the early evening, heavy fog covered the Naktong, which lay silent except for a continuous barking of dogs from the west bank. Suddenly, at eight, shell- fire fell onto the American side, followed by heavy mortar fire.
A half-hour later the fog suddenly lifted, and in the clear night Sergeant Ernest Kouma, commanding one of the two tanks in Agok, was startled to see a bridge already completed across two-thirds of the Naktong. Kouma
