On the phone to Tokyo, Eighth Army's Chief of Staff, General Allen, told MacArthur's HQ, 'Things down here are ripe for something to break.'
Corporal James B. Mount, Medical Corps, was at Letterman General Hospital, San Francisco, when the Korean War broke. From Detroit, Mount had been a rifleman scout in the 10th Infantry in World War II, and he had seen enough fighting to keep him happy for the rest of his life. When the replacements for Korea began to sail through the Golden Gate from Fort Mason, Mount went down to the Presidio of Sail Francisco and waved the boys goodbye.
It was a nice gesture, but wasted. He beat most of them to Korea.
For when he reported back to the hospital, his C.O. asked him, 'Can you think of any reason why you shouldn't go to Korea?'
For the first time in his life, Mount, a stocky, bespectacled man with thick sandy hair and a pungent manner of speech, regretted he wasn't faster on the draw. A few hours later, on 20 August 1950, he was on a Pan American clipper to the Far East.
The Army was scraping up men from everywhere, but Mount wasn't particularly worried. He was thirty-five years old, and he figured he'd end up in a hospital in Japan, as a medical technician.
Stopping at Hawaii, the replacements were fed in the Sky Room at Honolulu. Once, when Mount went to the door to take a look about, an MP tapped him on the shoulder. 'You're going the wrong way, Corporal.'
He didn't see much of Hawaii.
Then it was down at Wake, and Wake to Haneda. From Tokyo he was put on a train to Sasebo, and at Sasebo a ship bound for Pusan. After the usual Army milling about in Pusan, he was put on a train headed west, assigned for the 24th Division. By this time, he had given up all ideas about getting duty in a nice clean hospital.
At 24th Division HQ, he was assigned to Item Company, 21st Infantry, as a company aid man. Unlike most of the other new men coming in with him, he knew what it was all about, and he wasn't looking forward to it one bit.
Nobody knew what was going on in Korea, however. On the train from Tokyo to Sasebo, an officer had set up a blackboard and given a lecture trying to motivate the new men for combat. But it was a little too late for that; most of the men with Mount kept asking, 'Why me?'
At Pusan, Mount was able to get his hands on a San Francisco paper. He couldn't find anything on the front page about Korea, though there was something on Page 2. Apparently, the pennant race and the upcoming World Series were more interesting to the people at home. The men around him didn't like that one bit—if they were going to get killed, they wanted it done with bands playing, girls crying, and great men telling them how they were going forth to save the world.
After all, that was the way war should be, wasn't it?
At the 24th Division, all the new men heard was, 'Naktong—Naktong, everybody killed on the Naktong.'
They also heard a new phrase, one Mount had never heard: 'Bug out.' 'Bug out, bug out, everybody bugged out.'
The division was getting ready for a push to the west, out of the Perimeter, and the troops were a little less than eager. The 21st's C.O., Colonel Richard Stephens, assembled all the men for a pep talk.
'There's only a shell of resistance in front of us,' the bluff, rugged Dick Stephens told them, 'When we break through that, we're on our way.'
But, as it turned out, the colonel was right.
The 21st went forward, into a little town torn apart and taken by the 5th Regimental Combat Team on its way to the Naktong. As Item Company went through, Mount saw a ROK soldier lying deserted by the road. He fell out and went over to check the man.
He knew from the smell even before he looked that the ROK had gangrene in a wounded leg. He gave the man a shot of morphine. 'Nothing more I can do for you, fella.'
The ROK tried to smile at him, and said something, so he packed the wound with cotton, and went on. On the other side of town, wounded GI's were beginning to stream back. Mount went into business.
But as soon as they saw his armband, or the red cross marking an aid station, Korean civilians came out of the ruins and the woods and the fields. There were crippled old men, and women with sick, wailing kids, begging for treatment.
But he was a medic, and he did what he could, when he could. His first job was to help GI's—but it was soon apparent who the real losers of this war were going to be. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans had been torn from the land as each army marched through, fighting, killing, burning. Nobody really wanted to hurt the civilians, but they were in the way. Nobody could help it if they got hurt.
When he could, Mount did whatever he could for them.
The 21st Infantry pushed up to the Naktong and went across in assault boats. Artillery was falling in, and I Company lost a few men. Mount had four Korean KATUSA's assigned to him for litter bearers, and he put these men to work. He couldn't talk to them, but he could make do with sign language and a lot of cussing.
Assembling to cross the river, Item had taken cover in an apple orchard. Mount, from his own experience, could have told them that apple trees splinter under shell fire. By the time he had dug out a few splinters, everyone in the company knew it.
By the time the company was across the Naktong, Mount had his wounded all to the rear. He himself crossed, but ran into a GI hit in the leg. Taking this man back across the river, he returned to find Item Company gone.
A new outfit came into the area, and Mount asked a lieutenant if he knew where Item was. The lieutenant took out a map and showed him where I should be. Mount took off, and followed a path across the hills for two hours before rejoining his company.
A few minutes afterward, the company received orders to return to the river. But they had broken through the shell, and the enemy was retreating. Now, it meant a long march each day to make contact, if contact was made at all, and then up on the high ground at night to dig in.
At dawn, it was up and away again.
The enemy was on the run.
For the first three days of the United Nations offensive, with the exception of the 38th's crossing of the Naktong in the south, there were no material gains. Everywhere the NKPA battled stubbornly, and everywhere—in the 5th RCT, in the 1st Cavalry Division north of them, and the 1st ROK still farther north, friendly forces suffered heavy losses in desperate, seesaw battle.
And then, suddenly, on 19 September, the day after Peploe's 38th crossed the Naktong, the Korean front began to fall apart. The single biggest factor, undoubtedly, was the knowledge of the Inch'on landing in the NKPA's rear. The North Korean High Command could conceal the disaster no longer; the news was out, spreading chaos and panic among the men around the Perimeter.
During the hours of darkness 18-19 September, the enemy 6th and 7th divisions in the far south, the farthest from North Korea, began a precipitate withdrawal.
On the cast coast the 3rd ROK retook P'ohangdong, while the enemy 5th Division retreated northward. Just west of the coast, in the rugged mountains, the ROK's suddenly found they could advance, and did.
On 19 September the 5th RCT took Waegwan. On the same date General Paik Sun Yup's 1st Division discovered a gap between the lines of the enemy 1st and 13th divisions. The hard-fighting ROk 12th Regiment shot through thirteen miles into the enemy's rear.
Only the 1st Cavalry, meeting stubborn, fanatical resistance in the hills around Taegu, could not advance. The Cavalry took frightful losses among its rifle units; but at the same time it was wreaking worse havoc on the enemy. And the enemy, with the knowledge that the 1st ROK Division had made a penetration, suddenly retreated north to Sangju.
And, retreating, the enemy came apart. The 3rd Division went from 5,000 men to less than 2,000 in two days. Entire units were caught on the roads by American air, or ground to pieces by American infantry and armor.
