Chinese faded into the bills.
Turner began to collect American wounded men who could walk, and he passed his bottle around. With three other men, all hurt, he approached the north end of the pass. Here a machine gun opened fire on the little group, and they hit the ditches. Resting, Turner passed the bottle once more.
There were wounded men all around, crawling, groaning, trying to move south into the pass. Tom Turner took another swig from his bottle, then got up. Hardly feeling his ankle, he trotted forward, under the embankment. And here American soldiers shouted to him to get down; a Chinese gun was dug in only twenty-five yards above him, spraying the road.
Turner asked for a grenade, but none of the men near him had any. Shaking his head to clear it, he then asked, 'Who'll join me in rushing that gun?'
The suggestion went over like a lead balloon. One soldier told him, 'You want it, you go take it, Lieutenant.'
Somebody else said, 'Take it, and shove it up your ass.'
Giving up on the Americans, Turner went back the way he had come, shouting for any ROK or Turk who could talk English to come forward. He found one ROK who could. The man brought more than thirty other ROK's with him. Turner explained what he wanted—and the ROK's agreed.
He set some of them up as a base of fire to pin down the enemy gun, while he explained to the others that they would attack it behind him. Then he moved out. Looking back, he was shocked to see the whole group coming with him—they had not understood his orders.
Operating on his own genuine courage and the stimulus of the liquor, Turner figured what the hell. He yelled,
Turner's group swamped the gun crew before they could swivel it to meet the charge. Eager to go on, Turner's ROK's wanted to rush another gun, but he held them back, trying to get them into some kind of fighting order first.
At this moment an aircraft whistled low over the ridges, firing into them. A rocket exploded, and once again Tom Turner, bruised and concussed, lost consciousness.
But while he lay on the cold dust, other men were beginning to take charge.
The low-flying planes, howling angrily over the pass, had knocked over gun after gun as the sun sank. And both General Keiser and his assistant commander, General Bradley, now where organizing rifle parties to sweep over the enfilading ridges. Other officers, Munoz from the 9th, and several from the 38th, got together small groups to move across the hills.
By now it was within minutes of becoming dark. The Chinese fire seemed to slacken a bit, and Munoz moved his ammo truck with the .50 caliber forward along the road. Eight or ten Chinese suddenly appeared in front of the truck, apparently trying to surrender. But these men carried weapons, though their hands were high.
A Korean lieutenant yelled at Munoz: 'Don't trust them—they're trying to get in close!'
Munoz and the Chinese opened fire at almost the same time. The Chinese went down, but now somebody ran up the line yelling, 'Cease fire! Cease fire! The Chinese are trying to surrender!'
Now two light tanks from the 2nd Recon Company came into the defile, and with them an officer of the 38th was able to push the blocking debris out of the way. Suddenly, painfully, the serpentine column began to wind once again through the narrow pass, around the curve, and up onto the wooded British ridge beyond.
Munoz heard Keiser say, 'We've got to get through here before dark—' and the general hopped into his jeep and started through the pass. Behind him, Munoz and the others followed.
The movement broke the will of the hovering Chinese. The ravaging fury of the American air, blasting out guns, spilling the enemy hordes trying to move up onto the hills to reinforce the defenders, the courage of a few ROK's and Americans, and the impact of a bottle of I. W. Harper had all added up to clear the pass.
As it grew dark, Tom Turner, once more on his feet, led a column of mixed allied troops through draws to the southwest on foot, reaching friendly lines at last.
Munoz lost twenty-five of his people in the gauntlet, but coming into Nottingham, he found—miracle of miracles—his company kitchen truck. At that moment he would rather have had it than diamonds.
As the sun flared redly in the west and went out, the long jam at the pass was broken—but a great part of the 2nd Division was still north of the defile when the sun went down.
When General Keiser had first encountered the stoppage at the pass, he had tried to raise Colonel Freeman's 23rd Regiment, holding the gate north of Kunu-ri. Keiser had hoped for help from the embattled 23rd—but he could not make contact because of the hills and distance.
But Colonel Sloane, 9th Infantry, was in contact with both headquarters, and he relayed the messages.
Freeman, to the north, was under pressure equal to that of Keiser at the pass. Minute by minute, the Volume of fire falling on the rear guard was increasing; Freeman could hear the ominous bugling from surrounding hills as Chinese massed for the kill. Both he and the commander of his attached artillery, Keith, agreed that if the 23rd RCT did not soon withdraw it would never get the chance.
Freeman, sending messages through Sloane to Keiser, was thinking about his own withdrawal. He wanted permission to move out by way of the Sinanju road to the west instead of coming through the pass. In the sending and relay of messages, both Freeman and Keiser, thinking of different problems, became somewhat confused. To Freeman came the message, 'Go ahead, and good luck.'
Later, neither Keiser nor his ADC, Bradley, could remember having authorized the change of plan. But as Keiser told Freeman, 'Thank God, Paul, that it all worked out for the best.'
For upon getting the relayed message, Freeman and Keith at once decided to fire all ammunition on the ground, and to abandon the heavy guns. The road west was unfit to move howitzers by night on a fighting withdrawal.
As the riflemen of the 23rd began to leave their positions on the high ground about Kunu-ri, the cooks, clerks, and drivers of the 15th Field Artillery formed daisy chains from the ammunition dumps to the guns. Only a few thousand yards beyond, Chinese were pressing down from the hills in column. With every man in the artillery bearing a hand to bring up the ammunition, the gunners opened fire.
In twenty minutes, the battalion sent 3,206 rounds through the tubes; the earth before the advancing Chinese trembled and exploded in fire and death. Paint burned and peeled from the guns; breechblocks went dark from heat. Then, the ammunition gone, Keith's gunners' removed the firing locks and sights and thermited the tubes, and made for their trucks.
But the hail of explosives had saved the regiment. Running into such unprecedented fire, the Chinese stopped—and believing they were about to be counterattacked, they dug in. Though they would come out again later and attempt pursuit, they would never be able to catch up with the motorized column on foot.
As dark fell, Freeman's command started west, to the main coastal road, and came through intact. The last men and vehicles did not clear Kunu-ri till midnight—and after these came still the hard-pressed rear guard of the 25th Division, elements of Corley's 24th Infantry.
At 0200, 1 December, Blair's 3/24th still held Kunu-ri. While Blair was reporting to Colonel Corley by field phone, Chinese swarmed into his CP. By dawn, the 3/24 had dissolved as a fighting force, and it was every man for himself.
Ironically, the Chinese allowed those who ran toward the west to escape, and in many cases actually helped these men along by picking them up and carrying them until they were close to American lines.
Those who stayed and fought were not seen again.
The 2nd Division Artillery, less Keith's 15th Field, was the last element of the division to come through the gauntlet on the south. They had been waiting all afternoon. Because Freeman went west, the artillery became not an element in the column, but fighting rear guard for the division. Thus, the gunners had the terrible chore of moving, trying to support the column by fire, and defending the guns all at once. For a while, the artillery was in a quandary as to what to do.
Just at dark, the pass cleared, and seeing the vehicles ahead of the artillery move out, Brigadier General Haymes, Divarty Commander, realized his decision had been made for him. He ordered the artillery columns to proceed through the pass.
With the artillery came engineers, MP's, and dozens of stragglers from the infantry serials that had gone
