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TASK FORCE SMITH AND THE 21st INFANTRY REGIMENT'S FIRST BATTLES IN KOREA


Of the 406 men in Task Force Smith, only 221 survived the war

Before the North Korean infantry attack began, I heard our bazookas firing, 
but saw their tanks coming through anyway. Assuming our young gunners were 
missing their targets, I went with my bazooka gunner into a ditch leading to 
the road that NK tanks were using to split our company positions. Another 
platoon leader, 2/Lt. Jansen Cox was there already with his bazooka team, and 
we fought from the relatively safe haven of the ditch. (The T-34's co-axial 
machine guns were the only danger we faced from the culvert, so we were safe 
as soon as a tank's big tube passed us by.) The eight hits I made myself on 
the sides of the passing T-34s had no discernible effect, but corrected my 
impression that our gunners were firing wide and taught me a valuable lesson 
for "Love" Company's fight the following week.

My intent is not to tell war stories, but to tap my experience and 
observations to help soldiers and Marines better understand and prepare for 
the world they will confront. Fighters must lead their fellows through 
danger-and, for some, through the last minutes of their lives. "Leader" is a 
formal designation, but its affirmation is always in the hands of those who 
are led. By the conditions of this work, fighter-leaders are themselves 
vulnerable, and often short-lived.

What We Were

In 1945, when North Korea's invasion of South Korea provoked our "Police 
Action," all units of our occupation forces in Japan were under-strength, our 
arms obsolete and in disrepair. Many weapons had been condemned as "unfit for 
combat" by our division ordnance inspectors. One example: a sergeant and I 
had taught a class on flame-throwers the month before we debarked for Korea, 
but we had to cannibalize all eight weapons in the Regiment to get two that 
worked. All had been used hard by the 3rd Parachute Infantry Regiment on 
Corregidor five years earlier. 

The NK attack on the South surprised us. We assumed the Soviets, who had 
belatedly entered the war against the Japanese when it was almost over, were 
using their NK puppets to expand their empire. We also assumed the NK troops 
would turn around and run back home as soon as American troops appeared on 
the field. We would just throw together a task force, drop them into the 
action, and they would be home by Christmas. Then we realized we didn't have 
a single battle-ready regiment in all of Japan.

We stripped essential men and equipment from other already skeletonized units 
to form Task Force Smith. Colonel Brad Smith was being sent to quell a force 
that was better armed and probably better trained for their campaign than his 
occupation troops. Our first fight in Korea was with 406 men who had to move 
up, locate, and prepare a defensive position in less than five days. We were 
roundly defeated. Compare this preparation and result with over 400,000 
troops and five months preparation in the Persian Gulf conflict. 

Only five years after WWII, the victorious American Army had become 
shamefully unready for combat. Our national tradition held that we didn't 
need a standing army once the enemy at hand was beaten. Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki persuaded us that ground forces were no longer relevant. We wanted 
to enjoy the peace we had earned, so we slashed our defense budget and the 
size of our forces. Our intelligence services soon filled with incompetents, 
and we blindly chose to assign our least qualified personnel to units that 
would be first in combat. As a final grave error, we constantly shuffled the 
occupation troops in Japan. A capable fighting unit is far more than a set of 
well-trained and competent individuals. Combat units survive when personnel 
know and trust each other. Unit cohesion - the most beautiful word in the 
lexicon of soldiers-was non-existent.


What We Did

OSAN

As one of only two lieutenants in the regiment trained as parachutists, I was 
sent to the airfield at Kokura, Japan to load out Task Force Smith. I was not 
formally assigned to the unit; Colonel Smith simply said, "Stay on the plane. 
I've got work for you." This was my fourth platoon in eight months, assuring 
me about the same close personal contacts as a hired gun. In our first battle 
at Osan, my platoon in TFS was positioned to delay the attacking NK forces. 
Working all night, we had barely dug in when 33 Soviet built T-34 tanks hit 
us. Our only "anti-tank" weapons, the 2.36inch bazookas, were utterly 
useless. The official history says we failed to get orders to withdraw and 
didn't know the rest of the outfit had left. True, and because we stayed too 
long in a losing fight our platoon was destroyed. The Task Force Executive 
Officer, Major Floyd Martin contends the reason my new TFS platoon never 
received the withdrawal order was that the company commander told Colonel 
Smith I was dead and my platoon gone. This error left my platoon serving as 
rear guard rather than close-in combat outpost line (COPL) originally 
required by our location. 

We could not bring one wounded sergeant with us. We left him to a Korean 
farmer with a wheelbarrow, my rose gold Longines wristwatch, and a note 
asking the first American unit he met to give the farmer $100 cash for 
delivering the sergeant. They arrived in Pusan on the 8th, making it to the 
coast and down on a fishing boat! The remnants of my platoon and other 
stragglers we gathered reached our retreating forces after three days of 
prudent walking through NK units. But our group grew too large. After the 
third time we were nearly caught, I detailed a very young first-rate soldier 
who had been walking scout for us to take about five men with him to another 
road south. They got back a day before us.

We had gone sharply east from Osan, in hilly country, then west to regain the 
main road. I met the 34th Infantry Regimental Commander later at Chonan. We 
broke into a schoolhouse near Ansong and tore a large map from a geography 
book that showed two roads branching south to Chonan. Scraps of a South 
Korean recon unit had been with us the day before, helping with locations. 
Their CO shot one of his men who wanted to surrender and turn us in as proof 
they were willing to become good communists. 

On my schoolbook map I located all NK tank units we had seen (we could not 
have evaded infantry) and explained their locations to the Colonel. I 
described the fight at Osan with particular emphasis on the invulnerable 
tanks. I was adamant about the impossibility of our little 2.36-inch bazookas 
killing tanks, even from the flank where I had been shooting. He asked if I 
had pulled the rocket's safety clips before loading and firing, and 
speculated that the fuses were possibly too old or had been badly stored, so 
damaged in Japan. The fragments I had in my face and hands helped convince 
him that most were exploding fine. 

I did believe some of our bazooka rounds had not exploded, and attributed 
this to the warhead not having time to arm at short range. I showed him how 
we were relatively safe firing from our culvert after the tank's big tubes 
with coaxial-mounted MGs had passed. In General Gavin's book, On To Berlin, 
he details burying parachutists in Sicily with chunks of bazookas ground up 
in their bodies. Officers who knew the bazooka didn't work and failed to 
alert our soldiers to its inability to kill tanks neglected a vital 
duty-especially while they kept the larger, much more effective 3.5-inch 
rocket launcher back in the States. (I am far angrier over this even today 
than this moderate statement reveals.) 

The Colonel had someone with him who knew the tanks were T-34s, the Russians 
most deadly armor at the end of WWII. He identified the slanting, hexagonal 
turret; I had no idea earlier what kind it was. Artillery would have made a 
difference when the NK infantry dismounted and moved in those long lines 
around us, but their tanks had torn out our phone wire and rain took out our 
obsolete radios, stopping all communications. My platoon's light machine gun 
and BARs were not effective once the North Koreans got off their trucks. The 
.50 cal might have reached them (firing from a knob several hundred yards 
behind me) but the Koreans were never in range of my platoon's light weapons 
until dispersing just before their assault. This is almost the same story as 
later at Chochiwon, particularly where long NK columns walked around us. We 
fired; they kept on their course.

Believing I was merely "on loan" to B Company, I went back to "Love" after 
Doc Duerk finished patching me up. Captain Cox had given away my platoon, but 
said one would be available shortly. Very true. Platoon leaders are 
vulnerable.

CHONUI


A and D Companies of the 21st Infantry Regiment's First Battalion, not 
committed at Osan and still usable, were in a blocking position at Chonui. 
They were attacked early on 10 July by a force they could not contain. Their 
forced withdrawal left a number of their men behind in uncoordinated 
fragments. The Regiment's Third Battalion counterattacked, recovering the 
position about noon on 10 July. The NK offered considerable resistance, but 
could not offer a coherent defense of the positions. 

The largest group of men we rescued from A Company was about ten. We found 
four men on the 81mm mortar position with hands tied behind them with 
telephone wire, each shot in the head. One was a corporal in khaki, a 
reporter from the Stars and Stripes.

Despite dislocations caused by large numbers of wounded, killed, and 
evacuated during the counterattack, our night withdrawal to our original 
positions north of Chochiwon was tightly controlled. K Company's positions 
had been partially occupied by NK soldiers who flanked us while we were 
focused on Chonui. They fought much of the night, forcing K Company into 
somewhat different placements from their earlier prepared defenses.

At first light, The NK came through our just-evacuated positions at Chonui to 
attack our new locations through heavy fog. One of their echelons moved close 
against our front and kept us under sporadic fire. As the fog cleared we 
could see trotting formations scurrying eastward, parallel to our positions. 
This had happened before at Osan on the 5th. Here also, my light machine guns 
and those of the third platoon could not stop their flanking movements, and 
the company mortars were shooting for first platoon. Our artillery, unknown 
to us, had already been taken out by what proved to be a problematic ally: 
the USAF. They had taken out our field artillery company earlier with MG 
fire. 

"Love" Company was given an idiotic "hold at all costs" order to stay put. We 
got a relief from this at 1100 hours, and were authorized to pull back at 
1130. Captain Cox gave me the artillery FO and instructions to stay in 
position until then. The official history would later say: "This attack on 
the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry was one of the most perfectly coordinated 
assaults ever launched by North Koreans against American troops." Our defense 
would be described as "...the most impressive performance yet of American 
troops in Korea." Small comfort to the men who paid its costs.



CHOCHIWON


We didn't know the NK forces had already flanked our positions and had 
machine guns on the ridge behind us before launching their "pinning" attack. 
Our ammunition had been severely depleted by the previous day's fight, and NK 
roadblocks to the company's rear kept us from being resupplied. Most 
survivors of this fight went due south in small groups into the NK force 
behind us. Twenty-seven of these men found they had no option but to 
surrender. A dozen of these did not survive their stay in "Tiger's Camp." 
("Johnny's list," kept in a toothpaste tube by one of the 15, tells when, 
how, and where these POWs died. See the Readers Digest of January, 1998.)

The official history describes our retreat: "One officer of L Company who 
came out with some men said that after he and others had removed an enemy 
machine gun blocking their escape route, many uninjured men by the side of 
the road simply refused to try to go on. One noncom said, 'Lieutenant, you 
will have to go on, I'm too beat up. They'll just have to take me.'" He was 
not from L Company, so I never learned if he survived prison camp, but his 
odds were grim. Two months later I helped identify the bodies of those who 
had been KIA or wounded early in the fight. All the wounded had been killed, 
as had many who surrendered. Graves Registration led me, sobbing badly, 
through our abandoned positions and the battalion aid station to name the 
ones I could.

Almost all the captured Love Company men were taken after we stayed much too 
long above Chochiwon because of the "hold at all costs" order that kept us in 
place. We delayed the North Koreans for two days, but with tragic losses. The 
lucky handful with me covering the final withdrawal went west across the road 
where the BN CP had been, crossed the railroad track and river, and survived 
to fight again. 

The lessons: first be lucky; then keep a clip of ammunition for the pullout 
you may have to make; and never willingly take the desperate gamble of life 
as a POW. 





What We Learned

Official data regarding rifle companies shows almost 90 % of WWII casualties 
(killed, captured, and wounded) were in the Army. Of these, about 90 % were 
in the infantry's rifle platoons. I suspect 90 % of the other casualties were 
Marine infantrymen. Essentially, the numbers say that being in an infantry 
rifle platoon in combat means you are going to be wounded or killed; not if, 
but when and how bad you will be hit. 

The most effective leader of fighters I've known was a sergeant who deserted 
24th Infantry Division headquarters to come forward to our rifle company. 
Watching everything he did, learning why, and imitating him is likely why I'm 
alive today. He was even younger than I, but his previous experience with 
Merrill's Marauders was of far more value than my non-fighting role in the 
7th Marines. You may never encounter such an exemplar of military virtue when 
you need him most, but borrow the right things from each of the best you do 
come across. 

The sergeant poked a loaded carbine's muzzle through the pistol port they had 
opened to shoot us off the back of their tank, and ricochets inside took out 
the crew. He burned the tank an hour later. I asked him why he was burning 
it, as the crew was already dead. His answer: "I want them others to know 
where this one is, what happened to it, and for them to be discouraged about 
the idea of coming where we are." 

The only flaw in his theory was the noxious, brown trail of smoke that helped 
US Air Force pilots see it. They strafed the dead tank in the middle of our 
position for the next two hours! We were dug in so well by then that none of 
us were hit. Double Lesson: dig yourself in if anyone's aircraft are in the 
area, as they do not discriminate well. And don't count on your own planes to 
solve your problem with dug-in enemy infantry. This only happens in 
Hollywood. Much of the advantage we think our airplanes should provide 
disappears fast; the enemy also learns to dig in. 

The backbone of any Army is its rifle squads and platoons. Their leadership 
is absolutely critical. The words: "your team has to function after you get 
hit," means you must prepare all of them to lead when you are gone. Men fight 
for comrades, those with them in the battle, seldom thinking of larger and 
more glorious goals. The "fighting" I speak of is an intimate horror to which 
only walking infantry are exposed and must endure. My word picture of 
fighting: "Crawl on your belly like a serpent close enough to throw grenades 
at the hostile wretch with the noisy machine gun." This narrow view requires 
one to throw the grenade and another to stand up and shoot the gunner as he 
swings the tube around to kill the grenade pitcher. Machine gunners come with 
support crews who stay alive by knowing and countering your form of attack. 
Being outfought comes at high cost, with no appeals.

Such roles are ultimate, unnatural acts that neither you nor the grenade guy 
may survive. But there are no other solutions. Do not expect Rambo to come by 
and do it for you. You and your team are the only sure resource you have for 
staying alive. Fighting means moving with the rest of your rifle squad into a 
lonesome void that you all feel seethes with menace. The sound of a machine 
gun, including the screams of the men it hits, makes your possession of 
confidence transient at best. The role and responsibility of the leader is to 
earn, acquire, and share critical confidence with all of his men. Earn is 
again the key word. 

Everyone in a body of fighting men, everyone is responsible for all the 
others. Survival is mutually dependent. Your role is taking care of yourself 
and each of your men as you sort out how to accomplish your mission. Trust is 
crucial. It must be mutual, and it must be earned. 

Being terrorized by circumstances of battle is natural and wholly 
concentrates the mind. It must not numb it. Knowing this is your best 
protection against it. Note that my focus has been on tanks. It is not 
coincidental. The most terrifying sound you will ever hear is the crunching 
sound of tank tracks getting closer. They are looking for your body to grind 
under their treads. This is the most effective psychological warfare they can 
practice on those infantrymen who survive. And a tanker's immediate target 
may already be dead. A man is a large sack of blood whether he is alive or 
not, and the tanker's intention is to lower the morale of those of you who 
observe the carnage. Yes, it works.

Knowing you are about to be killed can paralyze you, making it easier for the 
enemy to do. It also makes it easy for you to throw down your empty rifle and 
plead for your life. That makes it even easier for your enemy to kill you. 
Such psychic shocks can be overcome with forethought, another word for 
training.