BATTLE OF KOREA: Definitely Saved

The Communists wanted Taegu. The flat, dirty city was the provisional capital of the South Korean government; it was the main Allied supply base and communications hub for the central front; it had a valuable airfield from which U.S. tactical airplanes were blasting the Reds; it also blocked what the Communists considered the main approach to the port of Pusan. The North Koreans last week made frenzied efforts to take Taegu. They failed.

When the Reds began shelling the city from the west bank of the Naktong, President Syngman Rhee’s government made its third emergency move of the war*—to Pusan—and ordered the evacuation of Taegu’s population (swollen from the normal 300,000 to about twice that figure). Soon the roads to east and south were choked with heavily burdened, white-clad refugees.

Inside Taegu, Major General Hobart Gay, commander of the ist Cavalry Division, had set up his headquarters, in a horse barn at the city’s race track. A calm, kindly, humble soldier who was chief of staff to Tanker Patton in World War II, Gay paced up & down in shabby coveralls, looking less like a general than like a Kansas farmer worrying about crops. Pointing to his situation map with a slim, sheathed French bayonet disguised as a riding crop, General, Gay said: “I hope the enemy is as confused about the situation as I am.”

First Threat. But the situation soon became clear. The enemy was forced to give ground all along the front. At Tuksong, southwest of Taegu, the Reds had put a small force across the river at night. When dawn came, they were so close to the U.S. positions that Gay’s gallant troopers fought them off with bayonets, rifle butts, knives, even fists and feet. The Reds seemed to have no taste for this sort of combat and retreated across the Naktong with heavy casualties, but they came back to fight again near Waegwan (called “Wigwam,” “Waukeegan,” or “Podunk” by G.I.s), twelve miles northwest of Taegu. Twice the G.I.s were driven from the top of Hill 303 made infamous by the war’s worst atrocity (see War Crimes), but they scrambled back up. As Gay’s men dug in on top of Hill 303 for the third time, one of them said: “If those maniacs come back, we’re going to have a bad time.” But this time the enemy did not return.

Northwest of Waegwan, meanwhile, Allied intelligence had reported four to six North Korean divisions building up west of the Naktong. Despite saturation bombing of the area by B-29s (see The Air War), the enemy divisions mounted a massive (30,000 men) and skillful attack from a jump-off point northeast of the target area and smashed due south, capturing Kunwi and Kumhwa, and pushing back the South Korean ist and 6th Divisions. But the courageous South Koreans managed to regroup. They were reinforced by the 27th (“Wolfhound”) Regiment of the U.S. 25th Division, which was hurried to the scene all the way from the south coast. The 27th is commanded by 38-year-old Colonel John (“Mike”) Michaelis of Lancaster, Pa., who has made a brilliant record in the Korean war and whose outfit is being used by General Walton Walker as a roving troubleshooter. After a heavy artillery and air bombardment had rocked the Reds, Michaelis’ men and the South Koreans, spearheaded by Pershing tanks, recaptured Kumhwa and drove on toward Kunwi. Thus was exorcised what Eighth Army headquarters called the “gravest threat” to the Allied beachhead in Korea.

Second Threat. There were other danger spots along the front. The week’s fiercest battle developed near Changnyong, where the Communists put their whole 4th Division across the Naktong River. Early last week Major General John Church’s war-weary 24th Infantry Division had attacked the Red bulge, but in the face of withering enemy artillery fire the 24th recoiled. To bolster them General Walton Walker pulled the U.S. 1st Marine Brigade back from its precarious advanced position near Chinju on the southern front (where their chief objective of breaking up the Reds’ south-coast drive toward Pusan had been accomplished) and threw them into battle alongside General Church’s infantrymen at Changnyong.

After the Marines arrived, the U.S. attack got going again. In the bloody battle for their first ridge (see box), the Marines suffered casualties which made their ordeal of the previous week seem a picnic by contrast. But the Marines won the ridge, and after that the enemy broke under ferocious air strafing. The first powerful push of the infantry task force under General Church carried three miles and almost cut the Red bridgehead in two. Great swarms of Reds began trying to get back across the river by any possible means: on rafts, over the girders of demolished bridges, by wading, by swimming. The angry U.S. planes followed them; the invaders died by hundreds in the green water and on gleaming sand spits. At least 1,500 enemy dead were counted and 800 prisoners were taken. General MacArthur announced that the Changnyong bridgehead was completely liquidated except for a few pockets which were being easily mopped up.

Said General Walker: “Taegu has been definitely saved.”

*The first two: from Seoul to Taejon, from Taejon to Taegu.