We were in a rest area; and then they broke through, and they just pulled us off rest, shoved us back up, and said “here, hold this,” you know, that was our position.
2PPCLI veteran, 19761
You’re sitting there, you’re listening to all these noises of rifle fire, grenades going off, artillery shells going off, the whistle blasts, the bugles, the screams . . . it’s the noise, it’s like, it’s like a symphony of war . . .
3RAR veteran, 20002
Having been alerted by ix corps to the possibility that his brigade might have to assume a blocking position, Brigadier Brian Burke had to decide how best to deploy his units. Topographically the most secure defensive position appeared to be just over three and a half miles north of Kapyong, where three major features dominated the valley floor through which the Kapyong River sinuously curved its way southward and down which any enemy was likely to come. On the western side the irregular high ground peaked at Hill 677 opposite, the hulking form of Sudok-san (Hill 794) to the north, and Hill 504 to the east. With a frontage of almost four and a half miles to defend, a mere three infantry battalions were not going to be able to form a continuous line, but if they each held one of the three main hill features they could collectively still dominate the valley floor. This was likely what was running through the brigadier’s mind when he called an O [Operations] Group of his unit commanders around 9 AM. If the call to arms came, the Middlesex would occupy Hill 794, the Patricias Hill 677, and the Australians Hill 504.3
By the time the battalion commanders were ready to return to their units, however, the possible deployments as imagined by Burke had to be modified. Still hoping that elements of the 6th ROK Division could rally and push up to Line Kansas – Brigadier General Chang Do-yong had indicated that this could be achieved by the late afternoon – the corps commander, William M. Hoge, ordered Burke to send 16 Field Regiment forward again in support of the South Koreans.4 Having seen firsthand the state of the 6th ROK Division, Lieutenant-Colonel John Moodie and his second-in-command, Major R. J. H. Webb, were deeply concerned about the safety of their men, and after returning to their regiment decided to ask for both a written order and an infantry battalion from within the brigade to protect them. As yet the brigadier seems to have thought, in light of what he had heard from corps HQ, that there was still a good chance the rest of 27th Brigade would not in fact be required to move forward, or, if it were, still might not have to fight a major engagement. The Kiwi gunners, on the other hand, would be in the forefront with the ROKs, and he could see that they might need more protection than the unreliable South Koreans could offer. Burke therefore agreed to divert the Middlesex to act as “a bodyguard” for 16 Field Regiment: “Just to make sure we can get you back if there is an emergency,” as he put it to Moodie.5
There were already some indications that the South Koreans were still moving rearward rather than rallying. “From the air,” a New Zealand officer attached to the IX Corps air observation flight noted, “it was a scene of chaos and retreat.” It did not take long for those on the ground to notice that all was not well. “I guess it was the morning of 23 April that someone came shouting around for everybody to get the hell up,” a Patricia remembered. “We looked out the [tent] window and all we could see were South Korean troops flying past us along with those monstrous American vehicles they were supplied with. We didn’t know what the hell had happened.”6 That something was seriously wrong was becoming more and more evident. “Rumors had been sweeping through camp all morning that things were going bad at the front,” recalled a Digger, “These rumors were backed by civilians hurrying past the camp heading south.”7
As yet, however, lack of information from higher formation headquarters meant that the battalion reconnoitering operations in relation to hills 504 and 677, which began before noon on brigade orders, were merely a precautionary measure, the active front supposedly still being at least six to seven miles to the north of these features. “It was a beautiful, warm day with clear, blue skies,” the 3RAR Intelligence Officer (IO) remembered. “War seemed a long way off.”8
He was not the only Australian officer to feel relaxed. “I lay stretched out on the grass enjoying a carefree doze,” admitted the A Company commander, Major Ben O’Dowd. His nap was curtailed in the early afternoon when news arrived that Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Ferguson – who, accompanied by his IO, Lieutenant “Alf” Argent, had gone forward to survey the vicinity of the hamlet of Chuktan-ni, and then returned for a leisurely lunch – wanted his company commanders to join him and go forward for an O Group. “Our task,” wrote O’Dowd of the orders Ferguson gave, “was to reconnoiter the Hill 504 area and the approaches to it for a possible blocking force position should it become required later on.” Once this task was completed, “we could return to the battalion area and get on with our relaxation.”9
At 2:15 PM – at which time Ferguson was still briefing his officers in the valley to the west of Hill 504, and the Canadian reconnaissance party led by Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone likely had corrected an earlier navigation error and was moving toward the northern approaches to Hill 67710 – General Hoge arrived at 27th Brigade HQ and personally passed on the news that reconnaissance would give way to physical occupation of the Kapyong Valley blocking positions.11
Recognizing that what had started out as a mere reconnaissance for future reference was evolving into an actual deployment with the growing chance of contact with the enemy sooner or later, Brigadier Burke was starting to worry that his forces were too dispersed if there was a real likelihood of meeting the Chinese head-on in force. Still sporting a rose in his cap in honor of St. George’s Day, he reminded Hoge that neither the Argylls nor the Borderers were immediately available, as the former, about to set sail for Hong Kong, were handing over much of their equipment to the latter, just arriving from the colony. One or the other could be brought forward within a day or so in an emergency, but for the time being 27th Brigade had only two infantry battalions – 2PPCLI and 3RAR – to work with, as the Middlesex already had been committed to moving forward with 16 Field Regiment in support of the 6th ROK Division. The corps commander seems to have agreed that, if push came to shove and the two battalions were to hold Hill 677 and Hill 504, they would need more support, and he attached – though apparently without ceding clear command authority – two companies of the 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion, two companies of the 74th Engineer Combat Battalion, and most of a company of M4A3E8 Sherman tanks from the 72nd Tank Battalion.12
By mid-afternoon, when news of the change of plan had reached battalion headquarters, there had been further signs that a deployment which Ferguson was still talking of in terms of a precaution “in the event of an enemy break through further north”13 was more and more likely to result in a full-scale fight for 27th Brigade.
Lieutenant Ron Middleton, then 2PPCLI duty officer at brigade HQ, later recalled that about this time an agitated U.S. Army lieutenant colonel had appeared at the door of the command vehicle. He turned out to be the commander of the engineers who had positioned themselves about a mile to the rear of the positions soon to be occupied by 2PPCLI and 3RAR, and stated dramatically that the front had broken and that he wanted to know where he and his men should go. The brigade major, J. D. Stewart, laconically explained that he did not have the authority to give orders to U.S. engineers, but he presumed that if they had to decamp at all they ought to go south. The American officer terminated the exchange by exclaiming, “I’m hauling ass outta here!”14
This was just as the bulk of 16 Field Regiment, accompanied by the Middlesex, had begun to move forward toward the hamlet of Kwanam-ni, roughly two and a half miles south of the gun positions vacated the previous night. As they advanced up the road over the next few hours the infantrymen and artillerymen were impeded by refugees and stragglers moving in the opposite direction, among them ROK headquarters personnel and U.S. advisors. Remembered Corporal Nick Hutley of C Company, 1st Middlesex:
My company marches up the road, and I felt a little peeved then, cos we’re marching up the road and all these Koreans from the 6th ROK, Republic of Korea troops, they’re all pouring back; they’ve left their arms up there and everything, you know, cos they had no rifles or anything. All in trucks just pouring down the road south. And here’s the poor old bloody British Tommy who’s got to go up there.15
Meanwhile as the afternoon wore on the commanders of 3RAR and 2PPCLI were being forced to decide how their limited forces should in practice rather than just in theory be deployed on Hill 504 and Hill 677 respectively. As elsewhere, the high ground was rocky and largely covered in brush and scrub. Both features, particularly 677, had a variety of sharp ridges, spurs, and gullies. Steep slopes were of course helpful to the defense, but the jagged topography meant that once deployed, companies or even platoons would have both a limited field of vision and a circumscribed ability to offer mutually supporting fire, while the Chinese could make use of gullies and other dead ground to approach unseen.16
On the right, Colonel Ferguson was constrained in his planning by the fact that, under pressure from IX Corps headquarters – which wanted a solid presence on the valley floor in order to set an example and to steady any fleeing ROK troops – Burke ordered him to set up his HQ astride the road to the southwest of Hill 504.17 Another constraint was that, because the shift from a theoretical to an actual deployment had caught him unawares and as CO he felt he needed to get back and organize the Australian battalion for its move forward, Ferguson in his own words had “no opportunity for personal reconnaissance” of the high ground.18
Before going back to collect his men the Australian CO roughed out a deployment, very much aware that he had what he estimated to be only half the troops necessary to use Hill 504 – as ordered – to adequately protect the northeastern approaches to the hamlet of Chuktun-ni near where a tributary emptied into the Kapyong River. Battalion headquarters would be located by the road southwest of Hill 504, loosely protected by the machine-guns, anti-tank weapons, and mortars of Support Company. On Hill 504 itself, one and a quarter miles to the northwest, the infantry companies would of necessity each be located in separate areas. D Company was to occupy the summit while A Company took up position on a ridgeline spur extending to the northwest and C Company – acting as reserve force – placed itself on a rear spur. Farthest forward and lowest topographically, B Company would occupy a smallish hill that overlooked the road and a ford northeast of Chuktun-ni. It was, however, left very much up to the company commanders to reconnoiter the ground and decide how best to deploy their platoons. In support of 3RAR were fifteen Sherman tanks under the command of Lieutenant Kenneth W. Koch. These were distributed by platoon, respectively to guard a road north of B Company, to provide direct support for B Company on high ground, and to protect the battalion headquarters area.19
On the left, Jim Stone eventually led his reconnaissance party – which included not only the IO but also company commanders and various officers in charge of signals and supporting arms – to the north side of Hill 677. “I kept thinking that if I was the one trying to take the hill [the CO having undertaken plenty of such tasks with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment in Italy some seven years earlier20], I would move in such and such direction, and so on.” In essence Stone was placing himself in the enemy’s shoes and deciding how to respond. “I then decided which way the attack would come and deployed the battalion accordingly.”21 D Company would occupy the top of Hill 677, with B, C, and A companies occupying lower, separate islands of defense in an arc running from north (B) to west (C). As the CO put it to his officers in an O Group at six in the evening after the company commanders had been given a chance to look over the ground and the party had returned to the Kapyong area half an hour before, “Because of the topography and the extent of the battalion area to be defended, Patricias’ companies cannot be deployed in the classical manner to be mutually supportive of one another.”22
In the earlier part of the afternoon, when Stone and Ferguson had first received word that 2PPCLI and 3RAR were to move up and deploy, the thinking higher up the chain of command was still based on the premise that a reorganized 6th ROK Division would by then have advanced to Line Kansas, that the Middlesex and most of 16 Field Regiment thus would be able to concentrate on defending Hill 794, and that the units farther back on hills 504 and 677 would “settle in for a quiet night” since even if the Chinese pushed the South Koreans back it would take them many hours to advance this far south. These assumptions – which may help explain why the Australian move up to Hill 504 was apparently conducted in a rather leisurely manner23 – were soon to be tested to destruction.24
By 4:30 PM the Kiwi gunners had reached Kwanam-ni, a mile or so northeast of Sudok-san, and Moodie, accompanied by Webb, went off to divisional HQ to find out how the 6th ROK Division was faring. The answer was not well, though it was difficult to know for sure what was happening at the front – due to breakdowns in communication – beyond the fact that its regiments definitely had not moved forward to Line Kansas. At the time Stone was briefing his officers for the move to Hill 677, word arrived at divisional headquarters that the 7th ROK Regiment had been hit from the right and was withdrawing in the face of what turned out to be the newly committed 118th CPV Division (40th Army, 13th Army Group). Going forward to the regimental headquarters to investigate what was happening, the 16 Field Regiment IO, Lieutenant Kelley Griffiths, found a dire situation. The Chinese were in among ROK positions everywhere, and soldiers were fleeing even in the face of ROK military police using their weapons liberally.25
A Middlesex private recalled how by the time the battalion arrived around 6 PM to support the gunners, ROK troops “were already streaming past us to the south, led by jeep-borne staff officers in a mass ‘bug-out.’ Behind them came streams of struggling soldiers, all falling over one another in their haste to escape.” One group of about fifty men passed through aboard a bus that they had somehow acquired, talking wildly of being overrun from all sides. “By nightfall the road was completely blocked with a surging mass of troops,” Julian Tunstall noted, “all but with one intent – to put as many miles as possible between themselves and the Chinese.”26
The total collapse under way put both the Kiwi gunners and the Middlesex infantry in grave peril, and Burke, alerted to the situation over the radio by Moodie, authorized a withdrawal that started at 7 PM when the Middlesex companies were ordered off the hills they had occupied and into the artillery vehicles. The 25-pounders continued to fire blind for over an hour as ROK troops – some in good order, others not – passed southward, the ranges steadily diminishing. By about nine at night the last battery troop had limbered up to go, carrying the regiment’s Korean porters with it, by which time the South Korean retreat had obviously turned into another rout. Civilian refugees, along with sobbing young soldiers (who had to be beaten off when they tried to clamber aboard already overloaded vehicles), slowed the Kiwi retirement to a crawl, and eventually those who refused to move out of the way were simply run over. By 10:30 PM most of the gunners and infantry had reached the positions at Naechon (in the Kapyong Valley southeast of Hill 677) from which they had started out earlier in the day, and efforts were made to get the guns back into action.27
As the Australians moved toward Hill 504 in the late afternoon, they too could see that something had gone badly wrong. “We trucked up the road and after several miles started to pass masses of South Korean soldiers heading in the opposite direction to us,” recalled Joe Vezgoff of 7 Platoon. According to the commander of A Company, “they were streaming down the road, they were shouting, some didn’t have weapons, they were obviously in a panic, in terror of the Chinese.”28
Between about 5:30 and 8:00 PM four companies of 3RAR climbed up and deployed across Hill 504.29 The official line from IX Corps, passed down to the troops, was still that “there was not a Chinaman within 10 miles of our position and we probably wouldn’t see one till the next afternoon at the earliest.”30 In light of what had been observed coming down the valley, though, the Diggers did what they could to improvise defenses before darkness engulfed them. This was not easy, however, with so much rock, brush, and thin topsoil to contend with. But since conventional slit trenches were nearly impossible to dig, walls were the only option; “the hard, rocky ridgeline caused us to build ‘sangers,’” a lance-corporal in C Company reported, “an above ground shelter built of rocks.” No wire or mines had been brought forward.31
Owing to the late return of the reconnaissance party, the Patricias did not set off by vehicle toward Hill 677 until seven in the evening.32 As the battalion prepared to move out, many officers appear to have had a sense that serious fighting was in the offing, practically swamping the quartermaster with requests for extra ammunition.33 For many of the men, on the other hand, it was still not clear that they were heading into a fight. “See, the people above knew what was going on,” one 2PPCLI driver reflected, “and they didn’t funnel it down to the little people to the effect that you’re going out, and somebody’s – for real – going to be shooting at you.”34
Initially, therefore, the mood among the men was quite carefree.35 Then the Canadians began to see ROKs fleeing the Chinese advance. One soldier recalled:
The first part of the journey was by truck. I was sitting right in the back. There was just a stream of Koreans heading south and we were heading north. I began to think to myself, “Lord Jesus, I am over here supposed to be helping these people and they’re running one way while I am going another.” These guys were coming out as if they were piling out of a bank building. It was like those guys going down the road. It went on for hours and it wasn’t that encouraging.36
Growing apprehension was often mixed with anger toward those who by bugging out were forcing the Canadians back into harm’s way. “I shudder in disbelief at seeing our allies running hell-bent away from the advancing enemy,” remembered Corporal Rollie LaPointe of C Company; “they are a disorganized rabble! Leaving us to face their enemy, to fight for their bloody country!” The sight, he admitted, made him increasingly fearful as to what the immediate future might hold.37
At the village of Tungmudae on the southwestern corner of Hill 677 the infantry debouched from their trucks and started to toil their way up the steep slopes. “We walked our asses off up there,” one soldier remembered.38 Lieutenant Brian Munro of A Company found it “difficult to restrain” his men from shooting at retreating ROKs in the valley as they climbed upward.39 By 11 PM the PPCLI companies were in position, with the exception of elements of Support Company which, owing to the steepness of the single track leading up the hill from the south and the breakdown of a half-track, were not in place until four the next morning when Stone located his HQ on the rear slope overlooking Tungmudae.40
The threat of a night attack suggested a policy of rapid entrenchment. “I can remember on the evening of the 23rd,” related Wayne Mitchell, “the Company Commander, Major [Vince] Lilley, had come up to our forward position which was 6 Platoon Baker Company and he says, ‘we’re here on our own so get over there and dig in deeply, we don’t have much time.’”41 Some soldiers remained unconvinced, leaving entrenching until about dawn when firing broke out across the valley. “I remember not digging our trench too deep that night,” one veteran related; “we went maybe two feet.” Only near dawn when the sounds of war were heard did he and his buddy decide “that we’d better dig that trench a little deeper.”42 The trouble was that the hard, scrub-covered slopes made creating slit trenches problematic, as did the darkness. “We could only dig down three or four feet because of the rocky ground,” remembered Corporal Ken Campbell of D Company.43 In many other cases men could get only to a depth of about two feet or less.44 “It was very difficult to dig there,” recalled Lieutenant Brian Munro of 2 Platoon. “We never really got properly dug in. The slits were shallow.”45 There was, however, enough loose rock and gravel to build a little protection at ground level. “As was often the case,” a corporal in A Company explained, “we couldn’t dig very deep in the rock, so we piled the rocky soil into parapets.”46 There was no wire to be had, but trip flares and booby-trap grenades would eventually be laid out in front of various positions the next day.47
Luckily, aside from a few brief encounters with probing Chinese patrols and parties of retreating ROKs, the Canadians on Hill 677 were left in peace overnight. Not so the Australians on Hill 504 to the east across the valley, who were soon – as the Canadians would see and hear – battling for their lives under a full moon.48
As the light slowly began to fade, a stream of ROK soldiers, which soon became a veritable flood of frightened men, passed southward through the gap between B Company in its forward position near Chuktun-ni and the other 3RAR companies grouped atop Hill 504. “Soldiers were no longer walking to the rear but jogging along and displaying all [the] signs of panic,” wrote Major Darcy Laughlin of B Company. By about nine in the evening white-clad civilians were observed mixed in with the military refugees. To Major Ben O’Dowd commanding A Company this, though “a pitiful sight,” was also an ominous development: “From past experience we knew that, come dusk [c. 9:15 PM], the Chinese would mix in with the refugees, and ROK soldiers for that matter, and use them as cover to infiltrate to our rear.”49
How likely this was is open to debate, for while Caucasian troops may not have been able to distinguish between Koreans and Chinese, the former could spot the latter, in which case their most likely reaction would be to scatter off the tracks.50 The commander of B Company declined to post a filtering party on the track below covered by the Vickers guns when O’Dowd called him up, and when O’Dowd requested of the CO for a second time permission to open fire in order to halt movement on the track, Ferguson accused him of panicking unnecessarily.51 Whether or not there were Chinese mixed in with the refugees, it quickly became apparent that elements of the 354th Regiment of the CPV 118th Division, mostly undetected, had managed to infiltrate from the northeast down into the Kapyong Valley along the western face of Hill 504 and toward 3RAR Battalion HQ. About 9:30 PM that Monday night encounter firefights broke out in several locations.52
Farthest forward of the U.S. units supporting 27th Brigade was the 4th Platoon of Company A, 72nd Tank Battalion. Deployed to cover the northeastern track approaches to Chuktun-ni, but not in radio contact with the Australians and with no infantry support from the fleeing ROKs, its five Sherman tanks were on their own. An enemy patrol of about two dozen men managed to infiltrate the platoon area but was easily mown down by machine-gun fire. About half an hour to an hour later, however, the Chinese were back in company strength.53 Now that the light had completely faded, the tank commanders found that, owing to the absence of proper night vision equipment, even under the full moon they could not see what was going on with turret hatches closed. They were therefore forced to operate with their turret hatches open, which quickly led to several fatal and non-fatal wounds to the head. The subsequent shutting of the hatches allowed the Chinese to close in and do all they could to disable the Shermans, including firing a captured bazooka at close range. No damage was done, but just before being mortally wounded the platoon commander decided to pull his tanks back. With no one in command the withdrawal was, as the gunner in one Sherman delicately put it, “somewhat out of control.” Reviewing its actions later on, the company commander was blunter. “Disorganized,” wrote Lieutenant Kenneth W. Koch, “the platoon began to withdraw in flight.”54
The 1st Platoon was located about 6,000 yards farther back, its tanks camouflaged and positioned on the left flank of Hill 504 in support of B Company. In command was First Lieutenant Wilfred D. Millar, who had heard over his radio that 4th Platoon was under attack but little else. Alerting his crews to prepare for action, Millar went down on foot onto the valley floor road to try to get a sense of what was happening. There he met Lieutenant Jim Young, the second-in-command of B Company, 3RAR, also engaged in a personal reconnaissance. Suddenly the 4th Platoon tanks appeared. Millar signaled for them to halt, which, though their crews were “excited and nervous” and talking of the enemy “coming in great numbers,” they did.55
Millar had the wounded loaded onto two of the Shermans and sent them rearward. Still on foot, he ordered the remaining three tanks to turn around and follow him up the road. Jim Young, meanwhile, had been conversing with one of the tank commanders, and in return for a promise to see to the evacuation of the wounded had persuaded him to turn his tank around and move forward with Young on foot acting as a guide. Seeing one of the three Shermans turning northward, and assuming – incorrectly, as it happened – that the other two were about to follow suit, Millar started forward on foot as well. Suddenly he spotted two columns of figures less than a hundred yards ahead on either side of the road. Unsure if they were Chinese or ROKs, Young shouted out “come here” in Korean. The sight of stick grenades having made it clear that these were enemy troops, both Millar and Young dove off the road to avoid those that were thrown at them and the single Sherman sharply reversed away at speed down the road. Both officers managed to dodge the Chinese and eventually join up with their units, but the tanks of 4th Platoon did not stop until they reached the 3RAR HQ area and were flagged down by Lieutenant Koch with 2nd Platoon.56
At about the time the first enemy patrol bumped into the tanks of the 4th Platoon, Chinese parties were probing between the positions held by B and A companies, 3RAR .57 Initial probing attacks launched against elements of both companies were easily beaten off, but it was obvious that, in order to properly secure the route southward down the Kapyong Valley, the Chinese would have to take on 3RAR in force. Between ten and eleven at night the Chinese focused their attention on A Company in general, and 1 Platoon – on the lower-left flank of the company – in particular, launching successive massed infantry assaults.58
Bugles and whistles heralded the forming up of troops below and their approximate location, which prompted O’Dowd to call for artillery support to help break up the enemy before they could close in. He was horrified to discover this was not possible. Second-Lieutenant Dennis Fielden, the rather inexperienced New Zealand FOO dispatched to the company earlier in the day, told him that, since 16 Field Regiment had occupied its current position after dark, the guns had not been surveyed in and that therefore – even if he could contact the regiment, which he could not because the terrain was interfering with his radio and there was no landline established – he could not relay target information.59 Telling Fielden to get out of his sight, O’Dowd then turned to the American FOO sent up by B Company, 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion. He too could offer no help, since it seemed that the mortar company, coming into direct contact with the enemy, had abandoned most of its tubes and vehicles located down the valley and disappeared into the hills to the east. That left the battalion’s own 3-inch mortars, but as the Mortar Platoon was itself under attack by this point, they could offer no support either. The fight would therefore be “soldier against soldier in the dark at very close range.”60
The attacks on A Company quickly developed a pattern. Once the Chinese had formed up and bugles and whistle blasts had ceased, the enemy advanced en masse but quite quietly on soft-soled canvas shoes, their arrival in front of the trenches heralded by a shower of grenades – some men seemed to be armed with nothing but a good supply of these, picking up other weapons from fallen comrades as they went – preceding a general rush forward. Supported only by Vickers and Bren gun fire, the Diggers, their commander said, in addition to their Owen guns and grenades “had to employ every bit of rapid fire they could, with those murderous, stupid bloody single-shot rifles we had.” Illuminating parachute flares fired by the 2-inch mortars of 3 Platoon proved to be more of a hindrance than a help, as they destroyed night vision and could not be kept in the air indefinitely. O’Dowd therefore ordered them stopped, which left men straining to see an enemy who might only appear at a range of five and a half yards or less.61
Successive waves were beaten off after about fifteen or twenty minutes and the wounded sent back in the intervals, but each assault took a toll, particularly among the more exposed men of 1 Platoon, who by midnight had endured three major attacks. “The bugles would start again,” the acting CSM related, “and 1 Platoon would cop it again.”62 By midnight all three Bren gunners had been killed or wounded and only thirteen men, some wounded, remained out of the original thirty. Around one o’clock in the morning the platoon commander, Lieutenant Fred Gardiner, took the opportunity afforded by a pause between assaults while the enemy regrouped to dash up to Company HQ and report on his situation. O’Dowd ordered him to bring the remnants of 1 Platoon farther up the feature and deploy them between 2 and 3 Platoons. Immediately thereafter Company HQ and the Vickers section – which had lost its sergeant – regrouped around 3 Platoon.63
The Chinese advanced and occupied the position vacated by 1 Platoon and probed the rest of the A Company perimeter down to about 4:30 AM – 3 Platoon enduring at one point a particularly ferocious forty-five-minute attack (“we just never thought it was going to finish,” one private recalled64) – and vigilance had to be maintained to prevent the enemy from exploiting a gap between 2 Platoon and 3 Platoon. At about 2:30 AM a Chinese officer or NCO, having identified the weak spot, climbed a scrub pine and began blasting on his whistle to summon assistance. “For Christ’s sake, get that bastard,” O’Dowd shouted out to anyone within firing range. This particular individual was quickly silenced,65 but two hours later ten or so well-armed Chinese soldiers, including one with a light machine-gun, arrived at the same spot and, as O’Dowd put it, “proceeded to make life very uncomfortable by directing fire into us.”66 Thankfully the machine-gunner, who loosed off what sounded like over two dozen magazines, fired rather high, but he and his companions were well hidden in a gulley and making movement very difficult. Toward dawn a handful of men armed with Owen guns and sent down from 2 Platoon to make contact with Company HQ accidentally reached a point where they could see the enemy party and at once charged in and killed six at the cost of one fatally wounded private.67
By this point the enemy’s attention had widened to include B Company for about the last six hours. On their own but arrayed for all-round defense on a long, relatively low-lying feature (roughly 100–150 meters in height) near the northwest base of Hill 504 and supported by the Shermans of 1st Platoon, Major Darcy Laughlin and his men had been witnesses earlier on to the retreat of the 4th Platoon Sherman tanks with the Chinese in hot pursuit. Laughlin had called for artillery and mortar fire into the now open track between B Company and A Company through which the enemy was pouring, but with – initially at least – no more success than O’Dowd.68 In the hour before midnight, having discerned signs that the enemy was massing for an assault, Laughlin prudently withdrew an isolated outpost on a high point back into the main company positions. Close to one in the morning 4 Platoon was attacked, but with the help of concentrated fire from a Vickers machine-gun section and bombs from 2-inch mortars the Diggers were able to force the Chinese to withdraw within the space of forty-five minutes. For some hours the enemy confined himself to infiltrating past B Company down into the Kapyong Valley.69
Then, at 3:30 AM, 6 Platoon was attacked fiercely by a force of about sixty Chinese while ten others attempted to engage 5 Platoon. “The enemy made a determined thrust and succeeded in penetrating our perimeter,” Laughlin later reported. A section position in the 6 Platoon sector was overrun and the enemy broke into the company area, something that might have caused the collapse of the entire position, but thanks to support from the well-camouflaged Shermans of 1st Platoon, 6 Platoon was able to regroup and recapture the lost ground. A final major assault came at a quarter to five in the morning and involved anywhere between fifty and seventy Chinese soldiers. “This attack was launched from the right flank,” the company commander added, and was evidently meant to split the company by driving into the Company HQ position. This too was driven off through a combination of tank and small-arms fire, the enemy never getting beyond the edge of the perimeter.70
Compared to A and B companies – each overlooking as they did one side of the gap through which the enemy would have to pass from the northeast in order to move southward down the Kapyong Valley – C and D Companies had only sporadic and limited contact with the enemy that night.71 The men in these companies had no idea how their fellow Diggers were faring. According to a member of 9 Platoon, “we had no information at all” on how things were going; “nothing came down my way when I was in my platoon.”72 The fighting, though, was uncomfortably close and audible, which made him uneasy. Particularly worrying for those with an aural sense of direction was the fact that many of the sounds of war were coming from the valley floor where 3RAR Battalion Headquarters was located, slightly to the southwest.73
When the HQ position astride the road had first been established in the afternoon, its location had not appeared problematic. It was there to help stiffen the resolve of 6th ROK Division, whose own headquarters was ahead of it and the regiments of which were supposed to be fighting hard. Several U.S. units were also deploying in the Kapyong Valley behind the ROK division: two companies of engineers, most of a tank company, and a mortar battalion. Moreover, toward midnight the 25-pounders of 16 Field Regiment and the 105-mm howitzers of the U.S. 213th Field Artillery Battalion had moved in behind. 3RAR HQ, as well as being located far below and a mile or so away from the four infantry companies on Hill 504, was therefore not arrayed for battle. Its various components, including the Regimental Aid Post, as well as the sub-units of Support Company, were spread out over a square kilometer of ground and were mostly not dug in beyond what the MO described as occasional “shallow weapon pits.”74
In the course of Monday night it became rapidly apparent that Ferguson and his headquarters were in a precarious position. After dark those in the valley encountered first a trickle and then a stream of South Korean soldiers in headlong retreat, shedding equipment, abandoning vehicles, fleeing the sound of isolated shots behind them. The ROK divisional HQ, it later emerged, had decamped without informing 3RAR. The enemy was indeed very close behind the retreating Koreans, as Temporary Sergeant Fred From, acting commander of the anti-tank platoon, soon discovered. ROK soldiers were trotting down the road, with South Korean officers “running down there with their pistols in hand trying to stop this flow of people going past.” Fred From left his position and went up the road a few dozen yards to try to find out what the situation was, but those he tried to interrogate simply pushed past and he suddenly became aware that the men coming down were now dressed in light khaki rather than army green.75
Starting at around 10 PM it became clear that the Chinese were not only coming down in front of 3RAR HQ but had infiltrated behind it and established a road block. Bullets started flying and men were hit, wounded, or killed as fighting flared up around and indeed inside the HQ area. There was a good deal of noise and confusion, with sub-units ranging from the anti-tank gunners to the military police having to defend positions as best they could. By midnight Lieutenant Koch was issuing orders to the American crews of 2nd Platoon to “fire in all directions, to cover each other, and to prevent enemy soldiers getting on the tanks.”76
Colonel Ferguson was largely in the dark, both literally and figuratively. Though he was able to reach some of his subordinates by telephone – “What’s happening down there?” he queried Fred From after the initial exchanges of fire, adding “don’t let anybody panic”77 – of those up on Hill 504 only the commander of B Company could be contacted.78 Tanks and other vehicles had cut the wires across the road and elsewhere, while radio communication proved extremely problematic.79 The mass of Hill 504 between his HQ and the forward infantry companies certainly played a role in this, as, perhaps, did unfamiliarity with recently received 31-type sets. According to the signals sergeant, “some of the senior people who should have known better didn’t really understand them.”80
About an hour after midnight Ferguson decided that, in order to let Brigadier Burke know in detail what was happening to 3RAR – at least insofar as he could work it out from what he himself was witnessing and the limited intelligence he could glean from others – he would have to go back to the position occupied by the Middlesex battalion HQ about two miles farther down the valley; it likely seemed from the amount of firing going on in his vicinity that his current position was in danger of being overrun. Leaving at about 1:15 AM in a jeep, the colonel took the rear-link 19 Set with him, depriving those who remained in the HQ position of any chance of directly communicating with brigade (the brigade war diary notes that communication with 3RAR was lost). Ferguson, though he did not take his signalman along, had presumably planned to use the 19 Set farther back. Unfortunately it failed to work, and he was forced to use the 1MX rear-link radio to converse with Burke at 1:40 AM.81
By this point the brigadier was getting reports of contacts with Chinese infiltrators from other parts of the valley floor. With the enemy apparently in the vicinity of the gun lines, 16 Field Regiment along with the American 213th Field Artillery Battalion began withdrawing from the vicinity of Naechon southward toward the village of Chunch’on-ni near brigade headquarters shortly after two in the morning. 163 Battery continued to do what it could to support the Australians for another forty-five minutes, one of its troops holding on until dawn in support of 3RAR until its ammunition was exhausted.82
In fact the situation in the early morning hours on the valley floor may not have been as bad as it first seemed, since the initial contacts with the Chinese did not quickly develop into large-scale attacks. Once the Shermans of 4th Platoon had rallied, moreover, there was enough tank support to allow for the breaking of the Chinese roadblock to the rear.83
Ferguson, however, who seems to have been on the move much of the time, remained worried that 3RAR battalion headquarters was in danger of being overwhelmed. He was not alone in this, the commander of the tanks later asserting that the HQ had in fact been overrun by a force of about 300 Chinese during “a fierce battle” in the hours after midnight. Shortly after four, Ferguson requested that brigade send reinforcements to help shore up the position.84
Within twenty minutes D Company of the Middlesex was on its way up the main track, soon coming under mortar fire and having to double forward and use the paddy bunds on one side as protection against splinters.85 The infantry company was met 200 yards south of the headquarters by Ferguson and directed to deploy on high ground to the west that overlooked the position. D Company raced up in the face of tracer fire around 5 AM to take the ridge, but as soon as it got up there, came under attack from Chinese troops located on higher ground about seventy-five yards away. A nasty grenade, light machine-gun, and rifle firefight developed, the Middlesex unable to match a Chinese light mortar because the single 2-inch mortar brought along broke after the first bomb was launched. A sergeant in addition to his grenades used a super bazooka as an anti-personnel weapon to great effect, but the Chinese, firing a captured U.S. recoilless rifle, wounded five men at once in one section of 10 Platoon and caused momentary panic until the men were rallied by Second-Lieutenant Barry Reed (who was later awarded an MC for his efforts). The enemy also began to work their way round the left flank in an effort to cut the road behind 3RAR headquarters. Throughout this action the company commander, Major Clinton Nolda, had been very much on his own, as his 31 Set appeared to be dead. Suddenly, however, the radio came back to life, and Nolda was able to report on his increasingly precarious situation to the battalion CO. Hearing that D Company was being cut off and facing superior numbers, Lieutenant-Colonel C. H. Nicholson gave orders for Nolda to withdraw his men. Thanks to a wide detour the company was able to extricate itself with minimal casualties and join up with the rest of the Middlesex roughly seven hours later.86
The withdrawal, however, further exposed the Australian headquarters area. Though the enemy refrained from shooting when ambulances with Red Crosses prominently displayed were being loaded with wounded for transport rearward, the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) across the road from HQ had been under sporadic fire all night. The enemy not only proved chivalrous but also apparently had a sense of humor, one Chinese sniper around dawn tying his shirt to his rifle and waving the signal for “washout” after Fred From of the anti-tank platoon tried and failed three times to hit him.87 Nevertheless, sporadic firing from all directions, coupled with the way in which radio failures left individual sub-units in the dark and without artillery support, contributed to a feeling that the Chinese had the upper hand. “Although we had little information in the R.A.P. area about what was going on,” Chaplain A. W. A. Laing remembered, “it was quite obvious that a serious situation was rapidly developing.”88
By about 4 AM, as the Chinese intensified their fire, Ferguson had concluded that the time had come to go:
Just before dawn I decided that the position of my headquarters would not enable it to regain control of the battle and that I should withdraw to the higher ground occupied by the Middlesex Regiment. Hopefully, with better communications there, I could regain control and thus provide the full weight of supporting fire, including aircraft and artillery support, both of which were vital if the forward companies were to receive the relief they so urgently needed.89
This, though, would leave the forward Australian companies cut off more than two miles behind enemy lines. It therefore appeared to Ferguson that it would be best to start thinking about ordering B Company, still on its own, to cross over and join up with C and D companies on the main part of Hill 504, “thus forming,” in the words of Major Darcy Laughlin, “a complete perimeter on the high ground.”90
As dawn approached 27th Brigade was in an ambiguous but potentially perilous position. On the one hand, 2PPCLI held Hill 677 on the left flank, while in the center Brigade HQ, 16 Field Regiment, and the Middlesex had moved back in good order to positions guarding the southern end of the Kapyong Valley. Brigadier Burke also had 1KOSB in reserve. On the other hand, the main fighting strength of 3RAR had been cut off, leaving it vulnerable to assault and possible destruction as casualties mounted and ammunition ran out. As for the Australian headquarters and its supporting units, their withdrawal down the valley might turn into a catastrophe if it turned out the Chinese had infiltrated enough men to once more cut the road behind. If both these eventualities occurred, then 27th Brigade would lose approximately one-quarter of its fighting strength and half of its most experienced infantrymen. Much would depend on what the Chinese chose to do once full daylight arrived and with it the threat of air attacks and increased danger from U.N. artillery units.