elsewhere.
Formed up in chilly moonlight, before the cloying fog rolled in from the Yellow Sea, the remnants of 9th Infantry marched south toward Sunch'on on the main supply route. Under Sloane's orders, 2nd Battalion was to clear the ridges west of the main supply route, while 3rd Battalion moved on its east. Just beyond the division CP, flanking patrols left the road and clambered through the dark onto the surrounding ridges.
To the left of the route, Frank Munoz's George Company moved across hilly, ridged ground. While the hills to the right of the road seemed to be bare, those in front of Munoz were lightly timbered.
Moving down a dry riverbed, in the dark, George came under fire more than a mile north of where Munoz had been told to expect the roadblock. Stung by orange streaks blazing from the ridges, George Company piled into the ditches or sought cover along the roadway.
Sloane, badly startled to find enemy here, called his battalion commanders in for hasty conference. As the sky turned light in the east, and the fog thickened, an attack line was formed, and once again the regiment went forward. Surprisingly, they met thin air; the enemy had withdrawn.
By 0800, after an air strike had been called on the ridges up ahead on either side of the road, Munoz's men had advanced in skirmish line to the high ground whence the Chinese fire had ripped the road the day before. Even though the men were tired, all was proceeding according to plan. A platoon of the supporting tanks were ordered to advance down the road, to see if it were now clear.
The tanks rumbled south, following the twisting, turning route for some six miles down to an area called 'the pass,' a narrow defile a quarter of a mile in length where the road cut between fifty-foot-high rock embankments. South of this defile, they made contact with elements of Nottingham. They radioed back; the way seemed clear.
Colonel Sloane ordered his units to push on down either side of the road. It was now midmorning. He reported the good news to Division. But immediately, all members of the 9th came under fire from both machine guns and mortars. The heretofore silent hills crawled with Chinese.
Munoz's company was able to make no progress. The others did no better. The ROK's who had been attached to the 38th marched down to aid them. Colonel Chung, the ROK commander, was asked to attack and clear the ridges on the west. Chung said he would be ready to begin at 1030. Chung, like Soane, had no real idea of what he was getting into.
The ROK's attacked. At first they made good progress—then, quite by accident, American tanks supporting from the road fired into them. And by this time Colonel Chung also must have understood he was attacking more than a simple roadblock; he had a bear by the tail. His men ran into swarms of Chinese on the hills.
The ROK attack failed; as some of the ROK's fell down the ridges they threw their arms away in disgust.
General Keiser had come up in time to see the failure of the ROK effort, but he still thought, as did Colonel Sloane, that he was facing only a shallow roadblock, extending south not more than a thousand yards. While Sloane's tired men were having trouble blasting across it, no real volume of fire had so far fallen on the road.
Meanwhile, to the north, Chinese pressure on the rearguard 23rd RCT was mounting steadily. Colonel Freeman could not hold the door indefinitely; Keiser feared the division would soon be overrun from the north and east, regardless of what lay to its south.
It was this pressure to the north that loomed most heavily in Keiser's mind. Also, while no radio contact had been established, he believed that the Nottingham force was only a short distance south of linkup.
Watching the abortive attempts of Sloane's infantrymen to fight their way across the ridges, Keiser suddenly made his decision. He said, 'We've got to get out of here before dark.'
It was noon, and the short winter day was fading.
Even if the ridges could not be cleared, Keiser believed his motorized columns could slam through over the road. To Colonel Peploe, standing beside him, he gave a verbal order to begin moving his regiment toward the pass. The division had already struck its camp around Kunu-ri, and the long lines of vehicles stood waiting for the word to move.
Most of the trains and noncombat vehicles of the 2nd Division had been sent out over the road to the west, toward Sinanju. The 25th Division, which had been on the 2nd Division's north, was retreating down this route. With the right—east—flank of the 2nd Division gaping because of the destruction of the ROK II Corps, it was imperative now for the division to fall back to the area of Sunch'on to the south, to make contact with the British brigade there, and to reconsolidate the U.N. line. With unknown numbers of Chinese flowing down the eastern flank, Keiser realized his division was momentarily in danger of being enveloped and cut off.
He thought, however, that the road south to Sunch'on was relatively clear, and fearing imminent increased pressure from the north, he chose to move over the shortest road to Sunch'on. Also, by moving along the other route to the west, there seemed danger of entangling the 2nd with the retreating 25th Division.
The one thing neither Keiser nor anyone else at 2nd Division HQ knew was that the CCF had already sideslipped a full division south and east and had already enveloped the Kunu-ri-Sunch'on road. The British brigade, brought to full battle twenty miles to the south, was in no position to move north to assist.
The division had to come out. It was in serious peril of being trapped. But in sending it down the Sunch'on road, not disposed for battle but organized only for a motor march, General Keiser, unknowingly, was sending it unprepared into the gauntlet.
Most of Peploe's organic vehicles had been sent out with the trains to the west; he had his men mounted on what were left, some artillery vehicles, and the supporting tanks. Peploe had no intimation that the roadblock was not clear at the time he mounted his regiment; therefore he loaded up for a motor march, not for combat.
Tanks were not kept together, but scattered up and down the long truck column, to give support to the thin- skinned vehicles. Since at least one battalion of the 38th—all of which averaged now about two hundred men—had to ride out on the tank decks, Peploe's command immediately lost all tactical integrity. Companies were split apart as they loaded on many separate vehicles; even squads and platoons split up as the men crowded aboard whatever truck or jeep still had room.
Once mounted thus, even senior officers had command and control over only a single vehicle, the one in which they rode. Peploe's regiment, approaching the interdicted area, was now prepared and disposed to do only one thing: ride out.
At the head of the column went the lead tank of Captain Hinton's 38th Regimental Tank Company. With this tank, commanded by Lieutenant Mace, were eighteen infantryman and three officers of the 2/38, including Lieutenants Knight, Rhotenberry, and a young man eager to get the show on the road, Lieutenant Charley Heath.
Now, as the tanks gunned their engines, Sloane came up to Captain Munoz's thin skirmish line on the ridge and told him two companies of Turks were to attack through George, in a final attempt to clear the ridges. And now, with the plan of maneuver radically altered, the 9th Infantry, including George Company, would have to catch a ride on the convoys as they came through.
Thus 9th Infantry, also, dissolved as a fighting force.
The Turks, in flapping greatcoats, carrying American rifles with fixed bayonets, marched through Munoz's line of riflemen. These two companies were the last of the Turkish expeditionary force. They assaulted the ridges east of the road while Munoz watched.
As they attacked, over the radio came the word to Lieutenant Mace's lead tank at the head of the 38th's column: 'Haul ass!'
Ponderously, like a great snake uncoiling, the miles-long column thrust its head between the hostile hills, picking up speed. Now the action was irretrievably begun. With the fighting elements of the division fractionalized, scattered over dozens of vehicles, and the vehicles on the road, there could be no change of plan. Officers, even General Keiser, could no longer influence more than a few men close to them, and they, like Keiser, would come out not leading a rearguard action but as individuals speeding for their lives.
The first tank roared ahead, while Mace on the .50-caliber machine gun and the riflemen aboard sprayed the surrounding hills with fire. Machine-gun bullets spattered the tank hull from time to time, but no one was hurt. This tank was to be the luckiest of all that came through.
Then, approximately three thousand yards from where they had started, the tank slued to a sudden halt. Directly ahead, blocking the road, were a damaged tank, a truck, and an M-39 carrier, all pointed north. As the tank
