BATTLE OF KOREA: Retreat from Taejon

Taejon, a ramshackle, war-crowded city (normal pop. 37,000), lies amid the hills and paddy fields of southwestern Korea.

Through it runs a double-tracked trunk-line railroad, which twists 125 miles through the mountains to Pusan, the U.S. buildup port in the southeast. Last week the North Korean Reds arrived at the city’s outskirts. U.S. troops of the 24th Division were supposed to hold Taejon two days ; they held it for three.

On the morning of the third day, Communist tanks broke through the city’s northern defenses. Inside Taejon, North Korean guerrillas who had infiltrated during the night opened fire with rifles, light machine guns and mortars. Other Red assault troops outside the city began driving in the defenders’ flanks.

Dead at the Wheel. The Communists moved swiftly. They were aided by one of the classic tragedies of warfare : the head quarters of General William Dean (see below), U.S. commander in Taejon, had sent a message to the commander of his reserve, calling for help to hold the southern rail and highway escape routes open. The reserve commander never got the message; it showed up, hours later, at another headquarters far to the rear. By midafternoon the Communist flank attacks had cut the escape routes.

In the streets of Taejon, some of the trapped Americans fought the Reds at close quarters (see cut); others battled desperately to reopen the southern escape lines. Overhead, U.S. Mustangs and F80 jet fighters wheeled and roared down to attack Communist tanks with rockets. Dense clouds of oil smoke boiled up from detonated U.S. fuel supplies; as ammunition stores exploded, great orange flashes broke through the smoke clouds. Occasionally a U.S. jeep veered crazily off a street and crashed into the side of a building, its driver dead at the wheel.

Dead at the Throttle. At the burning Taejon railroad station, a locomotive engineer who had been tooting his whistle frantically throughout the early hours of the fighting finally decided to make a break for it; his train got through, but a hospital train that tried to re-enter the city later, to take out the wounded, was driven off. The engineer was shot dead at the throttle.

In the street fighting, Reds shot down some G.I.s who had tried to surrender; other U.S. troops were driven to acts of desperation and of heroism. Private Darcy Brady, from Gassaway, W. Va., piled eleven wounded men into a jeep and took off at top speed for the U.S. lines. Red machine-gunners opened fire, seconds too late. Brady’s speeding jeep bounced crazily over the heavily mined no man’s land to safety.

The 34th Regiment scraped together a convoy of 113 vehicles and barreled through the outskirts of the city, but was halted when enemy shells set fire to an ammunition truck at the head of the column. The driver of the next truck drove through a hail of enemy fire, rammed the exploding ammunition truck off the road, and led the rest safely through the lines.

The Stragglers. Days later, Taejon’s beaten defenders were still straggling through to the new U.S. lines south of the city. More were doubtless lost but still alive in the surrounding hills. One sergeant had wandered for 33 miles through the hills in his bare feet. An Arkansas lieutenant showed up clad only in his shorts. But many of Taejon’s defenders did not make it at all. Among the missing: TIME Correspondent Wilson Fielder (see PRESS).

At week’s end the ist Cavalry Division, which had landed earlier at Pohang (see below), arrived to give the 24th the relief it so sorely needed and deserved. The new arrivals were fresh and eager. Their commander, Major General Hobart Gay, promised a bottle of champagne to any man who got a Communist tank. As Gay’s men moved up to the front, they met the gaunt, bone-tired G.I.s of the 24th Division, some barefooted, some almost naked, all staggering from exhaustion.

West of Taejon, the Reds kept right on rolling. This week they launched a heavy attack on the unprotected far left flank of the U.S.-South Korean line, rolled unopposed down the west coast almost to the tip of the Korean peninsula. The Reds who took Taejon did not stay there long. They drove 20 miles to the southeast.