…
While the men of the rifle companies had no idea of the enemy's grand scheme of maneuver, or what their own leaders planned, they could look about them, see the missing faces, and know the extent of their hurt. Battalion and regimental staffs, looking for fresh units with which to plug the gaps left by broken ones, were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
East of the Ch'ongch'on and after its first savage night of battle, 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, did its best to recoup. Easy Company, Lieutenant Joe Manto, was in bad shape. Fox was down. Frank Munoz's George was a mass of doll rags. Only the Weapons Company, How, was more or less intact.
But hearing that the enemy had slipped into his rear, establishing blocking positions west of the river, Colonel Sloane had to send the battalion back across the Ch'ongch'on opposite Kujang-dong.
Sloane ordered Major Barberis to move George, How, and Fox into a blocking position against the Chinese, and to try to make contact with the 24th Infantry, 25th Division, which was supposed to be wandering about on the division left.
Munoz's men moved west of the river again, and took a small hill, driving away a squad of Chinese. But they saw neither hide nor hair of the 24th Regiment. In these hills, across the valley was the same as being in the next county. And the men of the 2nd Battalion, shivering in ten-degree cold, hungry, without sleep for several nights, were reaching the point of exhaustion.
Worried, Sloane called Division HQ. He wanted to know what the further mission of the 9th Infantry would be. 'I can't keep these men going till dark, then give them orders to consolidate ground where they stop. They need a decent chance.'
The officer at the other end of the line told Sloane not to get his bowels in an uproar; Division had problems, too.
After dark, what was left of Lieutenant Colonel Hill's 1st Battalion was hit and pushed back across the icy river. The wet, freezing men were given dry clothing, then put back on line immediately.
The 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry, fighting a die-hard action, was driven back into Major Barberis' battalion. All at once, some of the supporting 105's were running short of shells. Painfully, a new day passed.
Frank Munoz, on the hill west of the river, received a radio message from the battalion exec, Pete Birmingham. 'Go to Easy Company CP where we can talk by phone.'
Munoz walked back to Manto's command post, which had wire, a more secure means of communication, strung back to Battalion HQ. Here Birmingham ordered George Company to come back across the river and to take up new positions. 'We're beginning an organized retrograde movement.'
Munoz could figure that out. For a great many hours, as far as he was concerned, all signposts had been pointing south.
After dark, he moved back across the river, and with Easy on his right, Fox on his left, began leapfrogging back some two miles toward Kunu-ri. And on this movement began the next-to-final act of the continuing tragedy.
Retreating toward Kunu-ri to the southwest, the companies heard the ring of Chinese bugles from the direction of the river, five hundred yards away. The enemy was already across, in regimental strength.
Something went into the air, bursting redly like Roman-candle balls. Exactly sixty seconds later, behind heavy firing, long waves of Chinese charged frontally against the retreating 2nd Battalion.
Working their weapons desperately, Munoz's boys knocked the onrushing Chinese back. Just short of his line, the Chinese charge was broken—but some of Munoz's men were beginning to get the shakes. He saw several get up to try to run to the rear.
'Hold it! Hold it!' he bellowed. At his side, Lieutenant Hernandez was trying to help, but Hernandez had had it. A brave man, the lieutenant had been commissioned in the field, but he was so worn down by cold and exhaustion he was almost through.
Then the weirdest experience of Munoz's career took place—suddenly, the battleground was lighted with a brilliant white light, much more intense than that of an artillery flare. He never knew where the light came from, but in it both he and his men had a panoramic view all the way to the Ch'ongch'on. And framed in the white light were more Chinese, in coffee-colored quilted tunics, then Munoz could count.
The low ground along the river was swarming with thousands of enemy, all headed toward him. It was the most terrifying sight Frank Munoz was ever to see.
He saw some of Easy's people start to run from their positions. Later, he learned that Joe Manto had been hit, and was left to be captured. The two tanks supporting Munoz had seen the Chinese sea, too. Now, their engines roaring, they took off to the rear.
Munoz knew it was hopeless. He shouted for his people to move down from their high ground, and to move back through the valleys. His commo was out. fire had no idea where Battalion HQ was.
The Chinese hordes did not press them as they fell back, though they drew some fire. Stumbling through the dark, Munoz led his men back more than two miles, and at last came into his Regimental post, quite by accident.
Here he reported to the regimental adjutant. He told him what was happening, and Munoz said that it looked as if the whole line was gone. He then went back into the tent to report to the S-2, the Intelligence Officer, Captain Murphy.
Regiment began to talk with Division via radio, one phrase Munoz overheard being that 'the situation is fluid all over.'
Then men started to take the big CP tent down.
'What are my orders?' Munoz wanted to know.
He was told to attach his command to the 23rd Infantry, 'just down the road.'
Munoz went back to his company, seething. What the hell was this, every man for himself? He located some ambulances and put his wounded aboard; he found he had about a hundred men still with him. He moved down the road until he located a battalion command post of the 23rd. The battalion commander ordered him to hold his men there until morning.
At 0400 he was able to get breakfast for his people—dry cereal and black coffee—from the 23rd. The night before the battle began west of the river, Munoz's men had ambushed and butchered a Korean steer. Rangy and tough as the animal had been, it was their last good meal for a long time.
Munoz reported to Colonel Paul Freeman, C.O. of the 23rd, at daybreak. Freeman said, 'Take up a position on our right flank.' But then a staff officer from 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, bumped into some of George's people along the trail, and this officer ordered George Company to rejoin.
The 2nd Battalion CP was just up the road.
Munoz went back to Freeman, who accepted the loss of these unexpected reinforcements cheerfully. 'Go on, rejoin your outfit,' Freeman told him. Moving up the frozen dirt road, Munoz saw Major Barberis standing beside a clump of vehicles. The tall, slim battalion commander's eyes lighted as he saw Munoz lead George by.
'God, Frank, I'm glad to see you! I thought you were gone.'
Barberis, one of the most capable infantry officers in Korea, had somehow got most of his battalion back together—all that was left of it. Now he started these men on the final march back toward the road junction at Kunu-ri.
That day, while the 23rd held the door, the shattered 9th pulled back around Kunu-ri. When night came, it was bitterly cold, but the men were allowed to light no fires. When ordered to stop, men fell down on the frozen earth and lay stiffly in little clumps, unmoving. Most of them had been fighting incessantly for more than forty-eight hours.
That night the firing on all flanks died away, and after midnight it grew strangely peaceful across the frozen wastes. Gratefully, the cold and exhausted survivors did not question the peace and quiet.
But had they remembered the history of the United States Army in their own West, they might have guessed the next step in this anachronistic war. Taking a leaf from the Cavalry's book, the enemy was flowing past the 2nd Division, to cut them off at the pass.
The final horror was yet to come.
