War: From the Naktong

On the southern front, the job of leading the breakthrough from the Naktong went to Lieut. Robert W. Baker, 25, hamhanded, barrel-chested commander of Company C, yoth Tank Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division.

On Tuesday morning Baker received an order to head northward from Poun and keep going until he linked up with the U.S. 7th Division. At 11:30 a.m., his company took off—three Sherman tanks, preceded by three intelligence and reconnaissance jeeps. At Chongju, a group of weeping women told Baker’s dust-stained men that the Reds in the town were holding their husbands and families as hostages and that all would be killed if the tanks continued their advance. Said Baker later: “Our orders were to go through, so we went through.”

It was 37 miles more to Ipchong, and there the column ran almost smack into two troop-laden Red trucks. The enemy fled, and Baker used the gas from their vehicles to refuel his own. At Chonan, another eight miles, enemy soldiers began to appear on both sides of the road. Baker’s column kept rolling, fired ahead and to its flanks as it rolled. One of Baker’s gunners kept score on its hits in a little notebook: “9:05 p.m.—two more; two more; seven more; 9:35 p.m.—30 Reds, two carts; two more; two mule carts full of Reds; one jeep; six more . . .”

About five miles north of Osan, enemy antitank fire sheared off the mount of the .50-caliber machine gun on Baker’s No. 3 tank. The gunner’s head was sheared off.

At 10:30 p.m. Baker saw U.S. tank treadmarks on the road just below Suwon. He halted his column and jumped out yelling: “This is 1st Cavalry. This is 1st Cavalry!” G.I.s of the 7th Division, who were dug in by the roadside waiting to take care of what they thought was a Red advance, recognized his vehicles. Baker had led a dash of 106.4 miles in eleven hours, had tied the U.N. advance from the south with U.S. troops in the north. It was a slender thread soon to become a mighty noose around 50,000 enemy troops.

In Baker’s wake the main body of the Eighth Army thrust into the enemy’s southwestern army. For many a G.I. the road back meant a settling of old scores. A tank gunner moving up to Taejon, where the 24th U.S. Division had fought a desperate delaying action before retreating on July 21, sang:

“The last time I saw Taejon it was not

bright and gay;

Today I’m going to Taejon and blow

the place away.”