their ammunition they were forced to carry on their backs.
They could move, in any direction, no faster than their legs might bear them. They could not shift rapidly to meet a changing situation, nor could they at once exploit a breakthrough.
In open battle, openly arrived at, an American army might have slaughtered them. On the fields of Europe, or in the deserts of North Africa, they would have died under the machines and superior firepower of a mechanized host. But now, Lin Piao's hosts were not going to engage in open battle, openly arrived at, with the West.
They would fight, in their own way, in their own mountains, and they would inflict upon American arms the most decisive defeat they had suffered in the century.
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19
Kunu-ri
— From the 'Bugout Boogie,' a folk ballad preserved in the 2nd Division despite its proscription by the powers that be.
SOUTH OF THE broad, shallow Ch'ongch'on, some thirty miles northwestward from the Yellow Sea, the forlorn village of Kunu-ri—on some maps shown as 'Kunmori'—sat drably across the junction of the north-south road from Sunch'on and the lateral road running from Huich'on to a connection with the main coastal highway at Sinanju.
To the east, or right, of Kunu-ri the mountains rose, high and terrifying in a foggy sky, becoming virtually impenetrable at Huich'on. And to the east, along the road, on both sides of the river, spread the 2nd Infantry Division, from Kunu-ri to Kujang-dong to Sinhung-dong. On their right were deployed the two divisions, the 6th and 8th, of the II ROK Corps. West of them the rifle regiments of the 25th Division held the line, on a front generally facing northwest toward Huich'on and the forbidding mountains.
Generally behind the 2nd Division's rifle regiments, facing eastward, the artillery dug in its supporting base on the only flat terrain they could find, an exposed flat draw near Kujang-dong.
The battalions and companies were scattered along the river in weird array, for this was no country for a modern, mechanized army. The hills were not high here, but they were endless. There were no side roads, and no flat spaces anywhere, where command posts, medical aid stations, or anything else could be set up. The hills ran into each other; they overlapped; they blocked vision and hearing in every direction.
Because the terrain was compartmented by the hills, some units stood too close to others; others were out of sight and hearing of those supporting them. Wire often did not reach; the ancient radios did not work. The units of the 2nd Division were not far from each other in yards and miles—but each moved, fought, and worried in almost complete isolation, in a tormented vacuum of its own.
Men who have never walked these hills will never adequately understand what happened to the 2nd Division. Because among these endless ridges the 2nd Division was brought to battle the day after Thanksgiving, 1950, and it was, in detail, defeated.
During the next five days every unit of the division, combat and support alike, would know its moments of danger, of fear and death and destruction. All would suffer, some more than others. What each company, each platoon suffered, is a story in itself.
Enough of the whole, perhaps, can be glimpsed from the ordeal of a few.
Captain Frank E. Munoz, commanding George Company, 9th Infantry, knew that his division was attacking across the Ch'ongch'on. He had no idea that across that same river another, hostile, army was also poised to attack.
In ninety days all the faults of the American Army had not been corrected—there were still men in the ranks who were poorly trained, and replacements who had no stomach for Korea, north or south. The old men had learned, the hard way, but many of the older men were gone. The inexorable law of combat is the disintegration and replacement of rifle companies, and the pool from which replacement came was the same as that which had furnished the first men into Korea.
Because the fighting had lessened in recent weeks, because all believed the war was ending, the hard-won discipline in the ranks had lessened, too. Men had discarded their steel helmets, because they were heavy and awkward over their pile caps. Disdaining their use, most men of the 9th Infantry had tossed aside their bayonets. Few carried grenades, or much ammunition. There were few entrenching tools, and not much food, because in these goddam hills, man, you had to go light.
Because most men equated discipline with the infrequent nonsense of digging six-by-six trenches to bury cigarettes, or scrubbing coal bins white, practices the Army had wisely discarded, many men had discarded discipline, too. They—those who lived—would have to learn again that discipline means keeping a full bandoleer of ammunition and a full canteen, despite their weight, and all the equipment men wiser than they had issued to them.
Over George Company Frank Munoz and his trusted deputies, such as Sergeant Long, worked to exercise their will. It was a never-ending and a thankless job.
But George Company had good clothing: OD trousers, with field cotton pants to go over them, field jackets, parkas, combat boots with overshoes, and arctic sleeping bags. They were eating good food as yet, and they had no real trouble with the bitter weather.
Munoz knew very little of the tactical situation. He knew the Chinese were in. He thought:
He figured the enemy units in front of George were only a screening force. For that matter, so did Colonel Foster, the Division G-2.
On the night of 25 November, 9th Infantry's front began to come apart, but Frank Munoz and company didn't know it. Baker was hard hit; King and Love virtually wiped out. Chinese were pouring into the 2nd Division along the natural corridors by night, seeking the American rear. Where they met no opposition in the dark, they flowed through; where they hit, sometimes by accident, an American unit, they flailed it from all directions. Some, decimated and shaken, held; some broke.
Men could hear the firing, but not even the regimental commanders, with no communication, knew what was happening.
At dawn, 26 November, 9th Infantry, except for 2nd Battalion, which was separated from the other units by the river, was ready for the scrapheap. The 23rd and 38th regiments were heavily engaged in their own areas. And 2nd Battalion's turn was coming.
Dug in along a high hill beside the river, George and Fox companies had been missed by the Chinese as they streamed through. With daylight, the dawn cold and clear, they made contact. Fortunately, George saw them first.
In the first, shadowy winter's light, Master Sergeant William Long, leading George's 3rd Platoon, saw a body of men walking openly along a creek from the area where K and L of the 3rd Battalion should be. Because the troops moved in the open, with no attempt at concealment, the men with Long decided they must be Americans, and ignored them.
