On the south, in the 25th Division zone, disaster had threatened from mid- night 31 August onward. But the 35th Infantry, surrounded by two NKPA divisions, the 6th and 7th, with at least three enemy battalions in its rear, held fast. The 35th's Colonel Fisher, an experienced West Pointer, explained:
'I never intended to withdraw. There was no place to go.'
The 35th fought the enemy into the ground, and won a Presidential Unit Citation. Colonel Fisher, viewing the paddies strewn with North Korean dead, remarked that even the slaughter at the Falaise Gap in World War II, where ten German divisions had been trapped, could not match the horrible sights along the Nam River.
Flies buzzing over the unburied corpses of Korean dead were so thick in some areas as to obscure the sun.
South of the 35th Infantry, the enemy broke through toward Haman. The 24th Infantry broke and streamed for the rear. Colonel Check's 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, counterattacked, and with great slaughter halted the North Korean drive, and restored the 24th's positions. Again the 24th, reconstituted, did poorly; however, the splendid fighting ability of Fisher's 35th and Michaelis' 27th regiments with the attached 5th RTC, brought the enemy threat to nothing in the south.
On the east coast, the ROK divisions came under heavy pressure on 2 September. Some ROK units were driven back, others crumbled. But again, as in August, the mountains, and supporting American air and armor, tipped the balance. The NKPA could come over the ranges, but it could not fight its troops or keep supplied within the Perimeter. The eastern front held, in spite of local breakthroughs in several areas.
And while the ROK's in the east, the 25th Division in the south, and the 2nd Division in the Bulge were fighting and dying to stem the tide, in front of Taegu the 1st Cavalry Division held a front of thirty-five miles.
And along this front, for two solid weeks, raged some of the most vicious fighting of the war. The 1st Cavalry Division lived in a constant state of crisis. The terrain was hilly, split by many small and isolated valleys, and over these hills and through the rain-fogged valleys, swirled incessant combat similar to that in the Bulge.
By 5 September the threat along three-quarters of the Perimeter had eased, but in front of Taegu the situation worsened. Eighth Army moved its HQ and signal equipment—irreplaceable, if captured—south to Pusan, along with that of the ROK's. General Walker, however, remained in Taegu, pre- pared to fight as Bill Dean had fought two months earlier.
By 8 September, the enemy 1st and 13th divisions were only eight air miles from Taegu. The Cavalry Division was so depleted that one battalion commander said that any company that could muster one hundred men immediately became his assault company for the day. And a critical shortage of ammunition was developing. The expenditures of 105mm artillery shells had to be sharply curtailed, and from Tokyo General MacArthur urgently trumpeted requests that ammunition ships en route to FECOM proceed at all speed consistent with safety.
By 12 September, the 13th Division, Inmun Gun, had occupied the critical Hill 314, known as the key to Taegu. From this ridge, the enemy could see the vital city, and commanded the terrain about the Taegu Valley. The hill mass surrounding 314 was a mile in length, characterized by steep slopes on all sides. Against the enemy troops on this hill, at least 700, 1st Cavalry Division threw Lieutenant Colonel James Lynch's 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.
The effective combat strength of the 3/7 stood at 535. Because of the short- age of 105's, there could be no artillery preparation preceding the attack. In an earlier attack, against another hill, the 3/7 Cavalry had failed badly.
Colonel Lynch, however, massed his companies so that maximum rifle fire could be thrown against the enemy ridge. After an air strike against 314, at 1100 on 12 September, the battalion moved out in the attack.
L and I companies, leading, ran into immediate 120mm mortar fire. The huge mortar shells burst among their thin ranks with great gouts of greasy black smoke as they walked forward; then the air was alive with the green tracers of NKPA machine guns and the snap of rifle bullets.
Many of the two companies' officers went down. But Captain Walker of Love Company, and Lieutenant Fields of Item, without regard for their personal safety, reorganized the two companies and led them on. And under the brilliant example, many men kept on on their own initiative even after their platoon officers were gone.
The officers and men of the 7th Cavalry were not happy with their behavior under their first baptism of fire, when many men had shown shock and fear against Hill 518. Each of them knew that the situation in front of Taegu was desperate and that around Taegu South Korean policemen were moving to the outskirts of the city and digging foxholes. And, as in the south, 'There was nowhere left to go.'
On 314, the 3/7th Cavalry, which had failed its first test, wrote one of the more splendid pages of American military history.
They fought their way up the steep slopes under heavy fire. Officers and N.C.O.'s, wounded, refused to relinquish command and retire. Many men, with minor hurts, refused treatment. As Love and Item neared the crest of 314, still under heavy mortar fire, the enemy rushed out at them in violent counterattack. Hand-to-hand fighting raged along the high slopes of the ridge; twice men of Love and Item reached the crest and were thrown off.
A new air strike roared in, blasting and searing the enemy on the top. When the planes went high again, Captain Walker of Love led a small group to the crest for the third time. Here he stood and shouted down the hill:
'Come on up here! You can see them here. There are lots of them, and you can kill them!'
All the officers of Item were down, including Fields. But the men sprang up the steep slope with those of Love Company; they ran into the North Korean positions, shooting, bayoneting. They swarmed over the face of the hill, and the enemy disintegrated.
At 1520 Captain Walker reported Hill 314 secured. He had forty men left in Love Company, and about the same in Item, and no officers. In the first two hours of combat, 3/7 had taken 229 battle casualties.
On the hill Love and Item found more than 200 enemy dead, wearing American uniforms, boots, and helmets, holding American M-1s and carbines. They also found the bodies of four American GI's, hands bound, shot, and bayoneted. And they found one officer, tied hand and foot, lying charred and blackened beside an empty five-gallon gasoline tin. He had been burned alive by the retreating enemy.
There was no place left to go, and all across the thin Perimeter Line American soldiers were stiffening. Hatred for the enemy was beginning to sear them, burning through their earlier indifference to the war. And everywhere, the first disastrous shock of combat was wearing off. Beaten down and bloody from the hard lessons of war, troops were beginning to listen to their officers, heed what their older sergeants told them.
A man who has seen and smelled his first corpse on the battlefield soon loses his preconceived notions of what the soldier's trade is all about. He learns how it is in combat, and how it must always be. He becomes a soldier, or he dies.
The men of the 1st Cavalry, the 2nd, 24th, and 25th divisions in Korea were becoming soldiers. For underneath the misconceptions of their society, the softness and mawkishness, the human material was hard and good.
There had been many brave men in the ranks, but they were learning that bravery of itself has little to do with success in battle. On line, most normal men are afraid, have been afraid, or will be afraid. Only when disciplined to obey orders quickly and willingly, can such fear be controlled. Only when superbly trained and conditioned against the shattering experience of war, only knowing almost from rote what to do, can men carry out their tasks come what may. And knowing they are disciplined, trained, and conditioned brings pride to men—pride in their own toughness, their own ability; and this pride will hold them true when all else fails.
After 12 September 1950, though heavy fighting continued, the situation about Taegu and elsewhere never seemed so black again. Now it was the enemy who was beginning to crumble, as Americans learned their lessons, and learned them well. Erwin Rommel had written that he had never seen any troops so inept at first as Americans in battle—or any who learned the hard lessons more quickly once the chips were down.
And while the most desperate hours of the men within the Perimeter were passing, a second battle had been raging in their rear, back in the continental United States. When American soldiers went into action, it had become customary to provide them with a free issue of candy, cigarettes—and beer. In the places American troops fought, there were rarely any handy taverns or supermarkets.
Reported to the home front, the 'beer issue' rapidly became a national controversy. Temperance, church, and various civic groups bombarded the Pentagon and Congress with howls of protest against the corruption of American youth. One legislator, himself a man who took a brew now and then, tried a flanking attack against the complainers, saying on the floor of the House, 'Water in Korea is more deadly than bullets!'
