A bit of a sticky wicket is developing at the front, gather all Brigade officers and return [to Brigade HQ] at once.
Telephone instructions from 27BCB Duty Officer to 2PPCLI Liaison Officer during farewell party for departing 1A&SH, evening, 22 April 19511
IX Corps ordered 6 ROK to hold this line [KANSAS]. It however became more obvious as time went on that the 6 ROK Div was incapable of holding any line.
16FR War Diary, situation c. 3:30 AM, 23 April 19512
On sunday, 22 april 1951, most of the men of 27th Brigade were if anything even less concerned about the prospect of battle than their counterparts in 29th Brigade. After all, when they had departed the front line a few days earlier for a couple of weeks of well-deserved rest and reorganization in IX Corps reserve, the Chinese were still withdrawing. Arrayed by unit north of the village of Kapyong in relatively idyllic surroundings variously dubbed “Sherwood Forest” and “Happy Valley” – located at this point over twenty-two miles behind the front – soldiers for the first time in weeks had the opportunity to properly bathe, play soccer, watch films, drink their beer ration, and generally put themselves at ease. “Life was very relaxing and pleasant,” Bruce Ferguson, the CO of the Australians (3RAR) recalled. “The weather was warm,” Mike Czuboka of the 2PPCLI mortar platoon remembered, also noting how he and his fellow Canadians “appreciated getting periods of uninterrupted and peaceful sleep” along with hot meals for the first time in weeks.3
Aside from the occasional parade and guard mounting, the only duties revolved around prearranged changes in formation and command structure. In the following days and weeks the two British infantry battalions were due to exchange places with fresh battalions from Hong Kong, 27th British Commonwealth Brigade giving way to 28th Commonwealth Brigade. The first steps were already under way over the weekend, the Argylls departing for Pusan in preparation for the arrival of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers the following Monday. Brigadier Brian Burke was already making arrangements for the handing over of command to Brigadier George Taylor, while within the remaining units the opportunity was taken to send officers and men on R&R to Tokyo, including a pair of company commanders – one from 2PPCLI, the other from 3RAR – and a battery commander from 16 Field Regiment. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone, commanding officer of the Patricias, had only just returned after a mild bout of smallpox. As a 3RAR company commander later reflected, “we believed it was impossible that we could be committed to operations.”4
Though as content as the next man that weekend, a few of those who would find themselves fighting for their lives over the next few days recalled obvious signs that the three South Korean regiments that had relieved 27th Brigade in the line between 16 and 19 April might not be up to the task if the Chinese suddenly turned around and attacked. In marked contrast to the veteran 1st ROK Division on the left flank of 29th Brigade, the 6th ROK Division twenty-plus miles to the north of 27th Brigade was hastily raised, undertrained, inexperienced, and poorly led. Barry Reed, a Middlesex subaltern, remembered thinking at the time that the Korean soldiers taking over his positions “weren’t terribly well organized.” Young conscripts in some cases did not know how to fix bayonets or indeed load their rifles, while junior officers were observed caring more about their personal comfort than the security of unit positions. “I reckon we’ll be back into it soon,” a Digger was overheard to remark. “Somehow I don’t reckon we can depend on these blokes.”5
The Chinese, as it happened, had their sights set on the destruction of both the relievers and the relieved. At the time the Commonwealth troops were going into reserve, Peng Te-haui was summarizing for his army group commanders the main objectives of the Fifth Phase offensive due to start within a few days, objectives for which the elimination of both the 6th ROK Division and 27th Brigade were a necessary prelude. Concerning the South Koreans, the Chinese operational directive read:
The main task of the Fortieth Army [attached to the 8th Army Group] will be to wipe out the 6th Puppet [ROK] Division and open up a critical breach so as to sever the links between the American forces on the eastern and western fronts; once they have succeeded in doing this, the main force will penetrate directly to Mu-dong-ni and Kap’yong and cut the Ch’unch’on road.
While the 40th Army was to strike the left half of the 6th ROK Division, the 20th Army was assigned to the right half. Concerning the Commonwealth brigade, the relevant passage from the operational directive was as follows:
The three armies of 9 Army Group will first concentrate an absolute superiority of troop strength and fire power, and quickly wipe out the British 27th Brigade, while using part of their strength to pin down the American 24th Division, and sever the links between the British 27th Brigade and the American 24th Division; once they have succeeded in doing this . . . attacking from the south east to north west, they can wipe out the American 24th and 25th Divisions.6
That the Chinese were preparing an offensive was well known within the U.N. command, not least because by the middle of April 1951 enemy radio propaganda had been warning of the imminent recapture of Seoul.7 Exactly where and in what strength the enemy would strike, however, remained unclear.8
On 21 April, the 6th ROK Division was still moving forward. The next afternoon, as motorized patrols were ranging three miles ahead of the division main body without incident, artillery observation aircraft from IX Corps began to spot large numbers of the enemy moving southward. Once he had been alerted in the latter part of the afternoon to this development, the divisional commander, Brigadier General Chang Do-yong, ordered his two leading regiments, the 19th on the left and the 2nd on the right, to halt and close up around mutually supporting defensive positions on high ground, and brought up his reserve regiment, the 7th, in direct support of the 2nd.9
In theory, the 6th ROK Division now held a strong defensive position anchored on tactically significant heights between the 1st Marine Division (IX Corps) on the right and the 24th Division (I Corps) on the left. The infantry battalions could call for support from the 105-mm guns of the 27th ROK Field Artillery Battalion and the 25-pounders of 16 Field Regiment – the New Zealanders not having gone into reserve with the rest of 27th Brigade the previous week – as well as the U.S. 4.2-inch mortars of C Company, 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion. The IX Corps commander, Major General William M. Hoge, also sent forward the self-propelled 155-mm guns of the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion, plus the 105-mm howitzers of the 987th Armored Field Artillery Battalion and 2nd Rocket Field Artillery Battery to positions from which they could support the South Koreans.10
In practice, as dusk approached, a disaster was in the making. Even at the divisional headquarters, where map boards showed all to be well, General Chang had been worried enough about the morale of the 2nd Regiment – against whom it was thought the main blow would fall – to try to bolster fighting spirits by ignoring the advice of his senior U.S. liaison officer about maintaining a contingency reserve and placing the 7th Regiment behind the 2nd. This move, however, could do little to alleviate the problems that were developing on the ground hours before the enemy made contact. What was not known at headquarters was that preparation of forward defensive positions was slow and ineffective, that the men were increasingly scared, and that their mostly apathetic and incompetent officers and NCOs were unable to bring order from chaos.11
Thus an hour after dark elements of the Chinese 179th Regiment (60th Division, 20th Army) and elements of the 120th Division (40th Army) were able to pass easily through the gaps and around the open flanks that had not been dealt with, striking without warning first at the left-flank battalion of the 2nd Regiment and then getting behind the rest of both the 2nd Regiment and the 19th Regiment. “Someone’s pushed the panic button up here,” Captain Floyd C. Hines, the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion liaison officer with one of the regiments, radioed back. Terrified of being surrounded, the South Koreans of the two forward regiments “broke and ran,” all and sundry abandoning their weapons and equipment and streaming southward. They were soon joined by the men of the 7th Regiment and the 27th Field Artillery Battalion – which abandoned its vehicles and guns on contact – in what had become a disorganized, headlong flight for safety. As the corps commander bluntly put it a week later, all elements of the 6th ROK Division had during the night of 22–23 April “fled in disorder without offering the slightest resistance, abandoning weapons and equipment and permitting friendly supporting elements to be overrun.”12
The reference to the overrunning of American supporting units was a slight exaggeration, but it was a near-run thing. As the other U.S. artillery units struggled to link up with the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion to the east during the hours of darkness they had to endure both sporadic enemy fire and roads jammed with fleeing ROK troops and their vehicles. The end result was that the 987th Armored Field Artillery Battalion had to abandon half its equipment while Company C, 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion and 2nd Rocket Field Artillery Battery lost every tube and gun.13
The 16 Field Regiment was luckier, though it was at times in serious jeopardy. Left in support of the 6th ROK Division near the village of Panam-ni when 27th Brigade had gone into reserve, it had reverted to brigade control at 7:30 PM on the 22nd and been ordered to return to the brigade area north of Kapyong. Since the brigade was in reserve and the front as yet inactive, the CO, Lieutenant-Colonel John Moodie, decided to postpone the relocation of his batteries until the following morning. 162 Battery, after all, was fully occupied in its own farewell party – a traditional Maori feast – for invited Argylls. As the battalion’s chronicler intimated, the Chinese were the last thing on anyone’s mind:
The plat du jour was a whole bullock [requisitioned from a Korean farmer14] cooked on red-hot stones in a hollow in the ground. This was covered over and water was then poured into it through a small hole in the top. The effect of the steam rising from the heated stones produced the most delicious dish which was one of the gastronomic memories of the war. And after the meal, the New Zealanders gave traditional songs and war dances until it was time to go home.15
It was only later in the evening that news of something seriously going wrong at the front reached the CO. Major David Wilson, a company commander in the Argylls who had evidentially lingered after the party had ended, remembered how “panic stations set in” and thinking to himself “‘What the hell?’ – we were used to foul-ups by now, but this seemed to be on another plane altogether.”16 A telephone call from IX Corps artillery HQ indicated that the Chinese had attacked in strength and that the 6th ROK Division was retreating, and Moodie was strongly advised to start the withdrawal to the Kapyong area scheduled for the following morning. Contact was made with the tactical headquarters of the 6th ROK Division to try to confirm the seriousness of the situation. There was clearly a good deal of confusion, but Moodie was left with the impression that the ROK division was now in the process of regrouping. He therefore decided to stick to the original plan for a daylight withdrawal, and the gunners who had been stood-to when the first reports of trouble had come in were allowed to go back to sleep.17
Within an hour or two, however, South Korean soldiers steadily began to filter back through the regimental position. The intelligence officer, Second-Lieutenant H. K. Griffiths, was roused from slumber and sent off to find out what was happening at the headquarters of the 19th ROK Regiment. Making his way there in a scout car with an interpreter, Griffith found only confusion and disorganization. Radioing this information to Moodie, he was ordered back to 16 Field Regiment HQ. At 2:30 AM on Monday the 23rd, the gunners were once more woken up, and shortly after 3 AM put on immediate notice to decamp.18 By this time more and more ROK soldiers were passing through the gun lines, and as Gordon Menzies (162 Battery) observed, these thoroughly demoralized Koreans were not inclined to rally:
There was no sign of officers or any NCO willing to take command and we could not communicate with them except by signs. They made gestures with their fingers pointing to their rifles which did not make sense to us but they eventually conveyed that they had no ammunition. It was a capital offence for them to discard their rifles but they had cleverly decided that they could not be asked to fight with no ammunition. We had no ammunition for their American rifles and there was no sign of any Korean command to handle these surplus soldiers. So our hopes of some infantry protection vanished as fast [as] they vanished down the road when we let them go.19
Even those few ROK officers who tried to halt the flight by firing their weapons over or even into groups of fleeing men were unsuccessful in stemming the tide, and by 4 AM, with small-arms fire observed 1,200 yards in front of the forward battery, it was clearly time to go. Taking everything with them, the batteries found their progress impeded by the masses of ROK troops clogging the road paralleling the longitudinal Kapyong River. At first there was some sympathy for the plight of youths who were clearly terrified and in some cases crying with fear. A growing sense that this mass of humanity was imperiling the safety of the guns by slowing and sometimes halting vehicular movement, however, caused empathy to turn into concern. “They were trying to clamber on our trucks,” Corporal Tom Frazer related, “but [our officers] told us ‘don’t let anyone on the trucks, we don’t know who the hell they are, they could be infiltrators’ . . . quite frightening.” Boots and rifle butts were used to try and loosen the dozens of youngsters trying to climb aboard, and some of those who fell off may have been run over by the following truck. By 8 AM 16 Field Regiment had reestablished itself near the village of Naechon, about four miles north of Kapyong.20
Though the 1st Marine Division to the right and the 24th Infantry Division on the left were soon under attack as well, it was only the 6th ROK Division that disintegrated. A gap several miles wide had opened up overnight in the IX Corps line as a result of the rout of the 6th ROK Division. “The Chinese were pouring through mile after mile without opposition,” as Eighth Army commander James A. Van Fleet recalled.21 As yet, however, the full magnitude of what had happened was not apparent at corps HQ due to breakdowns in communication. Through the night the more patriotic ROK officers, up to and including the mortified divisional commander, had been desperately trying to stem the headlong flight to the rear. Toward dawn a motley force of about 2,500 men had been assembled about ten miles south of the original positions.22 At this point the retreat had outstripped the enemy advance, and once communication had been restored between divisional and corps headquarters, the twenty-eight year old Chang – whom Hoge later dismissed as “no good”23 – seems to have allowed his corps commander to believe around dawn that there was a chance that the 6th ROK Division could pull itself together and advance three miles north to establish a defense along Line Kansas (roughly the 38th Parallel).24
Having monitored the progress of the New Zealanders through the night, 27th Brigade HQ was already in a state of alert when Brigadier Burke awoke at 7 AM and heard over the Armed Forces Radio network that the expected enemy offensive had begun. Studying his maps, the brigadier at once guessed that the Chinese would – as they had in their last offensive – come down the Kapyong Valley. He therefore ordered that a reconnaissance party be assembled and sent north to reconnoiter possible defensive positions.25 This was prescient; at 8:30 AM a message arrived from IX Corps ordering Burke to establish locations for a possible blocking position northeast of the village of Kapyong. General Hoge, it seemed, was not completely convinced that the South Korean troops could be relied upon to hold Line Kansas, given that it was becoming increasingly clear that “the situation had collapsed beyond control” the previous night. It later emerged that well over 2,000 rifles, 168 machine-guns, 66 bazookas, 42 mortars, and 87 trucks had been abandoned by the South Koreans. Hoge thus wanted to prepare to “form a line in rear of 6ROK Division” as insurance.26
As the sun rose in the east it became obvious that Monday, 23 April was going to be another sunny, fine, clear day, the temperatures by the afternoon reaching what felt like 80° Fahrenheit.27 What was less clear was what the men of 27th Brigade would be facing in the course of the coming hours, though as an officer in the Argylls put it, there were “disquieting signs” after Reveille was sounded that something was up. “Firstly,” he noticed, “the Middlesex had not run up their Union Jack and Regimental flag outside their camp; and secondly, there was a certain ominous activity round Battalion Headquarters, and the sight of company commanders hurrying to and fro boded ill.”28 Much would now depend on the behavior of the Chinese People’s Volunteers and of what remained of the 6th ROK Division in the coming hours.