Category: Korean War

LTC Bateman who took the AP to task for their flawed article about the No Gun-ri article during the Korean War, has been one of the central figures in taking the AP to task once again for flawed reporting in Iraq.  Bateman’s latest article is about the flawed AP reporting of the “Jamil Hussein” controversy can be found over at Media Matters. 

Here is what he had to say about his prior experience dealing with the AP after uncovering the flaws in the No Gun-ri article:

In early 2001 the AP called my boss at work (an Army colonel) and tried to get my research (and book) about events that occurred at a place called No Gun Ri, in the summer of 1950, stopped. I was teaching History at West Point at the time. In effect their efforts were an attempt to have my career ended through an adverse report by my boss. Why would they do this? Well, because my research collided with that of the mighty AP. (Cue the irony bell) Because of information I had uncovered about an AP story which dealt with an event of military history, information that revealed that the AP had been completely duped by at least one fraud (and perhaps as many as three), the AP was not happy with me. The AP would not admit that there were any problems, though, and insisted everything was just fine. They chose to counterattack rather than re-examine. When their efforts to coerce my boss into squelching me failed miserably, they contacted my publisher and tried to censor me that way. Again, they did all of this rather than admit that their story had serious problems. The irony of the largest news organization in all of human history attempting to silence an individual soldier is almost too much to believe.

Here is what LTC Bateman had to say about the latest Jamil Hussein controversy:

The AP, I should note, in their counterattack against those who questioned their story and sources, said, "It’s awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad." The AP executive who said that did so from New York City, but ya know what? Unlike that AP editor, I know something about Baghdad. Having lived in Iraq for a year (returning this past February, if you all recall), and knowing Baghdad well, one additional thing that has blown my mind about this, and the silence from the majority of the media (except E&P, which is covering the story well), is a simple element of geography.

The AP cites their source as being an officer in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad. Fine. Most people in the U.S. and the world don’t know Baghdad’s geography. But the question that hit me is "why is somebody in Yarmouk the main quoted source (originally) for a story about events in Hurriyah?"

Yarmouk is a neighborhood on the north side of what many people know as "Route Irish." Between Yarmouk and Hurriyah neighborhood are the districts of Al Andalous and Al Mansoor (parallel w/ each other), above that is Al Mutanabbi, and above that is Al Urubah … before you get to Hurriyah. It’s more than 3 miles away. Now for country folk like me, 3 miles isn’t but spitting distance. But in a city of 7 million, like NYC or Baghdad, 3 miles is a huge distance.

In other words, in going to their "normal" source for this story, the AP went to the equivalent of a Brooklyn local police precinct for a story that occurred in northern Yonkers! Hello? What would a cop in Brooklyn know about a crime in Yonkers? That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. (And why didn’t the AP reveal, until challenged, that this source was not from the district where the events allegedly occurred, or even from a neighboring district, but is from a moderately distant part of this 7-million-person city?)

To make things even more interesting is that Michelle Malkin has agreed to go to Baghdad with former CNN head honcho Eason Jordan to look for Jamil Hussein.  It will be interesting to see how the AP is going to cover their tracks this time.

The Associated Press of course:

THE most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous – used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong – but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they’re at it again in Iraq.

I have got direct experience of this – from challenging the AP’s seriously flawed 1999 “scoop” about the massacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians’, as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred – there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP’s sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily’s account was chilling. It was also – as AP should have known – a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily’s claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

When I later confronted AP editors with the facts and records that showed their source Daily to be a fraud, they blew me off. What would a historian know about this topic after all, or a soldier?

The AP didn’t issue a retraction, or even attempt to reinvestigate; and it certainly didn’t withdraw the story from the Pulitzer competition. Instead, it attacked the messenger.

Make sure you read the rest of the article.

Robert Bateman wrote the book, No Gun-ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, that exposed much of the sloppy reporting by the AP in their No Gun Ri story and lays out a very strong case of what happened at No Gun-ri based on physical evidence. Due to his efforts, Bateman had to withstand an AP attack on him for exposing their sloppy reporting.

I’m sure Bateman is looking on with some personal satisfaction as the AP has been caught yet again sensationalizing the news. If you haven’t read “Who is Jamil Hussein?” yet, than you have been missing out because you really should. The AP No Gun-ri reporting aided the North Korean enemy in a limited manner by helping to mobilize public opinion in South Korea against the US military, but the Jamil Hussein controversy is the AP directly taking news reports straight from the enemy and reporting it as fact for two years! This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

HT: MM

From the Hanky:

 The Nogeun-ri civilian massacre, a much chronicled event in 1950 that divulged one of the most grueling scenes of the Korean War, has hit bookstores in South Korea and is to advance to Europe in the form of a cartoon book.

Nogunri Story Volume 1, a 612-page hard-cover illustration by Park Kun-woong, is the latest art work on the tragedy in South Korea where efforts to remember it have gained momentum in recent years through documentaries, theater plays, a novel and a movie.

“It’s a history we should remember. If we forget, it will repeat over and over. There is an idea that usually goes around that during the war we can kill people. I want to break this notion,” Park said.

Based on a novel by Chung Eun-yong, a survivor of the incident who lost his two children to it, the cartoon opens with rural scenes of Nogeun-ri (also spelled as Nogunri), Yeongdong County, North Chungcheong Province, where a little boy plays with his sister floating a paper boat on a village stream. Soon, the village people receive an order from U.S. soldiers to leave their homes in advance of North Korean communists and, during their toilsome evacuation, U.S. warplanes appear and strafe hundreds of them as they walk along a railroad track. Survivors cornered under the railroad bridge are machine-gunned.

The mythology of Nogun-ri continues.  I have my own series about what happened at Nogun-ri that can be read here.  For some good debate go through the comments section in this Marmot’s Hole posting where I lay out many of my viewpoints.  The bottom line on this is that I higly recommend that everyone read all the information out there and make your own opinion.  Don’t listen to the propaganda merchants such as the people making this comic book.

The massacre did happen but what is in dispute are the numbers of dead and the motivations behind what happened.

The Korean War is known as the Forgotten War and now is becoming the Rewritten War especially now with this comic book release and with so many Korean War veterans now passing away they can’t even defend themselves anymore as a mythology of them being war criminals is being created.

HT: Yeolchae

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Here is just a short story from a website with a number of stories from veterans deployed overseas during the holidays. Remember to keep all the US military personnel deployed overseas today in your prayers this Thanksgiving:

Bill Shepard of Plymouth, US Army, Korea: 

“I came back home after the Second World War and then was recalled during the Korean War. It was a shock — I hadn’t even really told my new wife that I was still in the Reserves…
“I wrote a letter home from Korea on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1951, that my wife has saved. You can see by the letter :
Am so full I can hardly move! We just finished eating a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings. I’ll enclose the menu. Typical Army — feast or famine, but today we had the feast.
We were up on the front lines eating cold K rations and then suddenly we go to the rear for Thanksgiving dinner, and then right back to the front line!”

The Marmot’s Hole is reporting that a Korean film about the events of the No Gun-ri tragedy has been completed:

After many news reports and documentaries about Nogeun-ri came out, director Lee Sang-woo felt obliged to make a fictional film to tell the story. He wanted to ask the U.S. government whether there was no other way than war, a question still relevant today.

“Writing the scenario, I asked myself what story I have to tell. This is not going to be about the incident, not the event, but it’s going to be about the people. It is going to tell the relationships that people had in the small community and how intimate and beautiful they were, and ask them (the U.S. military) if they knew what they were doing. They were destroying these beautiful human beings, Lee said after shooting the film’s last scene in Sunchang, South Jeolla Province, early this week.

Expect another anti-American hatefest film much like Welcome to Dongmakgol that drew record Korean audiences with it’s story of North and South Korean soldiers joining together to kill Americans in order to save a rural village during the Korean War.

Why do I think it will be an anti-American hatefest film? Just look at what the Yonhap article says about the No Gun-ri tragedy:

Cows plowing rice farms, children bathing in a nearby stream and elderly men playing chess on a lazy afternoon — this was life in Nogeun-ri, Yeongdong County, central South Korea, before a nightmarish event occurred in July, 1950.

The incident came without warning on the 31st day of the Korean War. The sky split open as U.S. warplanes appeared and strafed hundreds of villagers walking along a railroad track. They were leaving their homes under a directive from retreating U.S. soldiers in the advance of North Korean communists.

Survivors, cornered under a railroad bridge at Nogeun-ri, were indiscriminately machine-gunned. Out of about 500 villagers, only 25 remained, the witness and families of the victims say.

As usual the Korean media gets the whole incident wrong from the start. A theme in recent Korean movies is that life in rural villages was some kind of idealistic paradise until the big, bad Americans come and ruined it. If anyone wants a good cinematic example of what life before, during, and after the Korean War was like in rural Korean villages than I encourage you to see the excellent Korean movie The Taebak Mountains. Watch this movie and then compare it to the crap that is Dongmakgol. The people in these villages were dirt poor and life was hard which made many of these villages agreeable towards communism and uprise against the South Korean government including villages in the No Gun-ri area.

Also the villagers were not evacuated by US soldiers and without a doubt they were not strafed by US aircraft during the No Gun-ri timeframe as the Yonhap article claims.  Finally 500 people did not die at No Gun-ri, maybe 50 at best. How do I know all of this? Read my series of postings that I did last year on this very subject. The evidence is overwhelming about what really happened at No Gun-ri but when Pulitzer Prizes and millions of dollars in compensation money are at stake, who cares about the truth?

British sailors who are in port at Pusan stopped by the United Nations Cemetery in Pusan to pay their respects.

If you haven’t been to the UN cemetery in Pusan you really should go.  The cemetery has graves from many of the countries involved in the Korean War and the experience is quite sobering especially when you realize the few thousand graves there are just a small minute fraction of the overall war dead from the Korean War.  Another interesting fact about the cemetery is that it is the only UN operated cemetery in the world.  It is a quiet, pleasant place, which is actually quite amazing considering it sits in the middle of one of Korea’s busiest cities.

The Fall of Taejon 

It was July 17th, 1950, with orders from Lieutenant General Walton Walker to continue to hold the South Korean city of Taejon in order to delay the advancing North Koreans the US24ID commander Major General William Dean found himself with a broken division, which was heavily decimated by the preceding two weeks of fighting. The division was at less than 50% strength, morale extremely low, the division had no communications, few vehicles, little equipment, short on food, running low on ammunition, and completely surrounded by 20,000 pissed off North Koreans. So MG Dean did what any good general would do in these circumstances, he grabbed a bazooka.

For the next three days MG Dean and what few men he had left in his immediate area conducted an urban guerrilla campaign against the North Koreans in Taejon. One of the things LTG Walker had brought with him along with the bad news that the US24ID had to hold on in Taejon, was a supply of a new anti-armor weapon, the 3.5in bazooka that was billed as being able to penetrate the armor of the North Korean T-34 tanks that had so devastated the US combat formations. Using hit and run tactics MG Dean and his tank killer teams actually enjoyed some success in knocking out the T-34 tanks in Taejon including MG Dean’s team personally knocking out one tank.

North Korean T-34 Destroyed by One of MG Dean’s Tank Killer Teams in Taejon.

Some have criticized MG Dean for essentially turning himself into just another infantryman and losing command and control of his combat formations. The problem was he had no formations left to command and control. The soldiers left in the division had essentially turned into individual teams fighting their own war of survival in the city. There was no communications left to organize and command formations with, so MG Dean figured the only way to command and control what he had left was at the front lines and he decided to kill a few North Koreans while he was at it as well.

Ultimately in Taejon the biggest problem ended up not being the T-34s but the amounts of North Korean infantry infiltrating into the city dressed in the white clothes of South Korean civilians. This caused confusion and hesitation for many US soldiers who were hesitant to fire against them.

Remember these soldiers just three weeks prior were lounging around doing occupation duty in post-World War II Japan and now not even a month later they are in the fight of their lives against a ruthless enemy with more men, weapons, and armor who are more than willing to dress like civilians in order to gain a tactical advantage. This willingness to dress like civilians would lead to later controversies as the US was blamed for killing civilians; claims that still resonate to this day from some elements in South Korean society.

Despite all the difficulties General Dean and his men faced, they were able to delay the North Koreans in Taejon from July 17th all the way to July 20th before MG Dean made the decision that he and his remaining men evacuate the city. That day elements from the recently arrived 1st Cavalry Division had arrived on the outskirts of Taejon to help evacuate the 24ID soldiers left in Taejon.  The 24ID had paid in blood to give the 1CAV the time needed for them to deploy from Japan to Korea. The 1CAV was now about to begin paying their own dues in blood as well.

Overall, from the 7 hours Taskforce Smith first bought for the US in the first American battle in the Korean War, to the 3 days MG Dean and his men bought with their guerrilla campaign in Taejon; the destruction of the 24ID and the loss of thousands of American lives bought the US military a total of two precious weeks of time. The American leadership was literally trading lives for time and the 24ID prevented the clock from running out for both the Americans and the South Koreans they gave their lives for to defend.

With the 1CAV trying to evacuate the 24ID, MG Dean and his small team tried to reach them in one of the few Jeeps they have left, but under heavy North Korean fire his driver missed the turn that would have taken them to the outskirts of the city where the 1CAV was located. With North Korean fire increasing the Jeep could not turn around and MG Dean ordered the driver to just keep driving straight and that is what he did. Eventually the General Dean and his men reached the outskirts of the city and split up and hid in the hillsides. They hoped to escape and evade the North Koreans long enough to make it back to friendly lines. MG Dean evaded the North Koreans for 35 days before he was eventually captured. When he was discovered MG Dean attacked the North Korean soldiers hoping they would kill him. However, the North Koreans held him down and tied him up. They brought him back to the local police station where they discovered that this old, dirty, malnourished man was actually an American General.

The saddest part about General Dean’s capture was that his location wasn’t discovered by chance by the North Koreans, but he was rather in fact turned in by South Koreans. A little known fact about South Korea before the Korean War was the amount of communist sympathizers in the southern provinces of the country. The ROK government before, during, and even after the Korean War had to commit ROK Army units to quell multiple communist uprisings in the South Korean countryside. For multiple historical reasons, communism was an attractive ideology for many South Korean peasants. MG Dean was turned in to the North Korean authorities by one of these communist sympathizers in South Korea.

This betrayal of MG Dean would cause him to serve over three years in North Korean POW camps. MG Dean would not see freedom again until September of 1953. After his release from North Korea MG Dean said that he would not have awarded himself a wooden star for what he did, instead the President of the United States awarded him the Medal of Honor.

December 1953 Issue of TIME Magazine Featuring MG Dean

Prior Posting:  Kum River Defense

You can read more of the ROK Drop featured series Heroes of the Korean War at the below link:

Kum River Defense

After the withdrawal south of the Kum River and the destruction of the bridges across it, the US21st regiment now found itself with a total of only 325 men between the two battalions that composed the regiment to face the approximately 20,000 NKPA soldiers bearing down on them on the opposite bank of the river. MG Dean decided to move up the 19th Infantry regiment from Taejon and what was left of the 34th Regiment from their earlier fight in Choenan to reinforce the 21st. With the addition of the 19th and the 34th roughly 4,300 men were now in defensive positions south of the Kum River while the men of 21st took up a reserve positions behind the other two regiments, to face the two advancing North Korean divisions supported by 50 tanks. Total combat power of the division stood at 11,000 men and the US24th Division had already lost roughly 1,800 men and many more would be lost before this battle was over.

The US34th manned the left flank of the Kum River defense. It is important to keep in mind that the US34th’s combat power was greatly diminished after their defeat and withdrawal from both Pyeongtaek and Choenan. The regiment was short of personnel, weapons, and equipment. The equipment they were most short on was radios, which would ultimately play a key role in the failure of the Kum River defense. L company of the US34th was on the farthest left flank of the US defensive line. The company commander had no communications with anyone, which means he had no situational awareness of the overall battle plan. The North Koreans began shelling L company’s position and began their river crossing operation. Seeing the overwhelming North Korean unit approaching and not knowing where the other US units were the commander decided to withdraw his unit all the way back to the battalion headquarters. The commander was relieved on the spot by the battalion commander for leaving his position and allowing the North Koreans to cross the river. Keep in mind that this commander had been withdrawing since his unit first made contact with the North Koreans back in Pyeongtaek. Withdrawing had become a natural reaction to an overwhelming North Korean attack. Retreat had become contagious and L company wasn’t the only ones doing it. Ultimately the entire US34th regiment withdrew leaving the US19th to face the two North Korean divisions by themselves.

Before the North Koreans began any operations on the US19th regiment, their scouts had located the positions of the US field artillery positions located to the rear of the US19th. The North Korean infantry simply crossed the river where the US34th had withdrawn and walked around and to the rear of the US19th to destroy the field artillery locations. The US field artillery were really the only guns capable of stopping the North Korean armor. In one quick attack the North Koreans were able to destroy a battalion of US field artillery and further limit their already desperate ability to destroy NKPA armor.

However, the US19th continued a rugged defense against the NKPA infantry which had crossed the Kum and was eventually able to repel them, while US air power was able to inflict heavy damage on enemy tanks trying to forge the Kum River. Amazingly the US regiment held off two North Korean divisions and even inflicted heavy casualties on them while doing so. For the entire day of July 15th things were actually looking up. However, it wouldn’t last, things would change quite drastically that night.

The North Koreans realized the amount of casaulties from US air strikes during the day made night operations an absolute must. In the early morning hours of July 16th at 0300, all hell broke loose on the Kum River. The North Koreans through everything they had at the US19th across the Kum River. Every element including the regimental command post found themselves under attack sustained enemy attack. Colonel Winstead the commander of the US19th organized a counterattack force of his unit’s clerks, supply personnel, cooks, and staff officers. The counterattack was actually successful at driving a large formation of North Korean infantry back across the river, but both the regiment’s key officers the adjuntant and operations officers were killed leading the counterattack force.

US Soldiers Battle the North Koreans Along the Kum River North of Taejon

The death of officers, particularly senior officers, in the early weeks of the Korean War was a reoccurring theme due to the lack of communications which caused senior officers to personally organize and lead attacks instead of giving commands over the radio to subordinates. This would phenomenom would have a cumulative effect, as unit’s lost their key leaders, discipline of the troops dropped, which contributed to the tendency to instantly retreat once confronted by the enemy. An old axiom says that leaders lead from the front; no where was that more true than the early weeks of the Korean War.

Even though the counterattack caused a large formation of the North Koreans to retreat, many others were able to infiltrate into the regiment’s rear areas and set up road blocks to prevent the resupply of the regiment. Many of the North Koreans setting up these road blocks had infiltrated dressed in the white clothes of South Korean refugees. Supply personnel located in these rear areas were not to keen about mounting any counterattack against the North Korean road blocks.

By late afternoon the regiment was given orders to withdraw, but the roadblocks prevented most of the US units from withdrawing with their vehicles. With many of the regiment’s officers dead, a majority of the US soldiers simply decided to retreat cross country and left all their vehicles where they were at instead of fighting their way through the road blocks. Some made out of the Kum River defense and others didn’t. In fact retreating soldiers straggled into Taejon all that night and the next morning including COL Winstead who was severely wounded and exhausted from the sustained fighting of the Kum River defense. On the morning of July 17th less than half of the US19th regiment had made it back to Taejon. The rest were either dead, captured, or missing.

MG Dean now had three regiments that were actually only regiments in name only. The US21st regiment was depleted from the Taskforce Smith battle at Osan and the hill defense north of the Kum River, while the US34th regiment was smashed at Pyeongtaek and Choenan, and the US19th regiment was now less than half strength from trying to hold the Kum River. MG Dean wanted to withdraw the 24th Division from Taejon, but LTG Walker flew up to Taejon and in a face to face meeting told MG Dean the 24ID had to keep delaying the North Korean advance at Taejon because the follow on US forces had not arrived in theatre yet to defend the Naktong River line. The US forces were literally looking at being pushed into the sea if the 24ID didn’t hold on.

MG Dean understood what LTG Walker ordered was essentially suicide for him and his men, but he obeyed the order and what was left of the 24ID prepared to try and hold Taejon. The fate of the entire Korean War would fall on the shoulders of these few determined men.

Next Posting: The Fall of Taejon

Prior Posting: General William Dean – Part 1

One of the first real heroes of the Korean War was without a doubt Major General William Dean. MG Dean was the commanding general of the 24th Infantry Division. The 24th Infantry Division was stationed in Japan conducting occupation duties prior to the start of the Korean War. With the outbreak of the Korean War the division was picked to deploy from Japan to Korea to stop the North Korean advance. The most famous unit from this division would go down in history known as Taskforce Smith.

Normally a general would want his division to deploy as a single unit and fight as a single formation, however due to the speed of the North Korean assault the 24ID had to deploy piece meal in order to delay the North Korean advance to the southern port city of Pusan. Taskforce Smith was just the first of all the 24ID’s battalions to be deployed to Korea in this piece meal manner.

Starting with Taskforce Smith, which first engaged the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) on July 5th, 1950 just North of Osan, every battalion of the 24ID would eventually be defeated and over run by the numerically and militarily superior NKPA forces. 24ID units were defeated in Pyeongtaek and Choenan as well. What was left of the 24ID fell back to the division headquarters in Taejon commanded by MG Dean.

MG Dean knew immediately the strategic importance of Taejon. The Kum River ran to the north of the city and provided the only natural defensive line for the US forces to take advantage of before falling back to the last and final natural defensive line the Naktong River near Pusan. Additionally the additional units from the US mainland and Japan had not arrived in theatre yet to relieve the 24ID much less set up an defensive line along the Naktong River. The bottom line was that if Taejon fell quickly the war was lost because the North Koreans could quickly advance to Pusan and end the war before US reinforcements arrived on the peninsula. MG Dean knew his division had to fight to the end in order to buy time for the US forces. It was a job no general would want but Dean executed it without complaint.

US 8th Army Commander Lieutenant General Walker and Major General Dean Confer before the Battle of Taejon

MG Dean utilized what was left of his 24ID’s, 21st Infantry Regiment (Taskforce Smith was part of), 19th Infantry Regiment, and the almost combat ineffective 34th Infantry Regiment which had it’s commanding officer killed in action and the entire regiment almost destroyed before retreating from Choenan. Dean assigned the 3rd Battalion of the 21st Infantry the sister battalion of Taskforce Smith, to man the hill tops north of the Kum River. The Taskforce Smith remnants would remain in reserve. The regiment was commanded by COL Stephens who was given orders on July, 10th 1950 by MG Dean to hold the positions for 4 days.

The next day the regiment found themselves in a life and death battle with first the North Korean 3rd Division which days earlier the North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, had designated the “Seoul” Division for “liberating” Seoul. The NK 3rd Division’s morale was high and headed straight for the US3-21 battalion. The NK 3rd Division used their tried and true tactics of massing fire on the Americans while tanks and infantry flanked around them and set up road blocks denying the Americans their natural avenues of retreat. These road blocks caused units to disentegrate as soldiers ran wildly to escape the North Koreans instead of conducting an orderly withdrawal. Often the soldiers when they did retreat would just drop their rifles and helmets due to their weight and run as fast as possible once their unit was over run by the NKPA. By mid-day on July 11th the lead 21IN battalion was overrun and their battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Jensen killed along with most of his staff.

COL Stephens from his command post in the rear began to round up the straglers retreating from the front. COL Stephens quickly reorganized the soldiers and then committed the 1-21 battalion (Taskforce Smith) into action once again. By this time the battalion plus worth of soldiers was now facing two complete North Korean Divisions, both the NK4th and NK3rd Divisions. Ironically enough the Taskforce Smith soldiers had retreated once from the NK4th and now found themselves going into battle once again against them.

On a side note, some may remember both of these North Korean divisions as well from an earlier posting I did on The Battle of Uijongbu.

Russian Made T-34 Tank that Devastated Both ROK and US Militaries During the Early Years of the Korean War

Much like the original Taskforce Smith battle against the NK4th north of Osan, the unit aquitted themselves quite well, but just didn’t have the man power and equipment to handle the North Korean tanks and their superior numbers. In fact it is amazing the 21st Infantry held out until July 12th before requesting withdrawal south of the Kum River from MG Dean. MG Dean agreed and the 21st moved south of the Kum River by 1600 on the 12th. MG Dean had ordered the 21st to hold their positions for 4 days, it was quite amazing I think that they even lasted the three days they did against the two North Korean divisions.

If anything this fight so far had demonstrated that the NKPA divisions were not the unstoppable force at the beginning of the war as is widely believed. The NK4th could have been forced to retreat by the ROK7th Division during the Battle of Uijongbu if the ROK2nd Division hadn’t withdrew during the battle allowing their rear to be exposed by the NK3rd. Earlier the during the battle in Pocheon further up the highway 43 corridor north of Seoul the ROK2nd actually forced the NK3rd into retreat before the ROK2nd was forced to retreat to Uijongbu where they did ultimately collapse. With a shortage of men and no anti-armor weapons the ROK military actually aquitted themselves quite well considering the circumstances and now the Americans with the same limitations in fire power and men had also proven that this was not an invincible enemy when confronted by determined men.

Though history has judged Taskforce Smith harshly, the reality is that the soldiers of not only Taskforce Smith, but also the entire US21st Infantry Regiment fought bravely and should be remembered for the determined defense they put up against tremendous odds early on in the Korean War. As courageously as they fought, more fighting for the US21st and the rest of the 24ID was to come.

Next Posting: The Kum River Defense

In honor of the 56th anniversary of Taskforce Smith engaging the North Koreans for the first time during the Korean War today; I have decided to repost my prior series of postings covering the deployment and battle of the American unit to Korea.

Here are the links below to my complete series covering the soldiers of Task Force Smith:

The Soldiers of Task Force Smith

The Deployment of Task Force Smith

Task Force Smith Engages the Enemy

Routed But Not Forgotten

The Lessons Learned From Task Force Smith