The United States Joins the War: July 1950

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The United States Joins the War: July 1950

Though the United States professed to have a strong commitment of support to South Korea in the Korean conflict that was unfolding, it was not backed up by a strong military. Since World War II (1939–45), the administration of President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) had slashed the budget and trimmed the military to a small fraction of what it had been. In Japan at the time there were four U.S. infantry divisions: the Seventh, First Cavalry, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-fifth. All were understaffed, undertrained, and short of arms and ammunition. Many of the troops had no combat experience.

The initial job for the first U.S. troops entering Korea was crucial. The North Koreans had broken the defense line at the Han River, south of the capital city of Seoul, on July 3,1950. From there they were steadily making their way southward. It was necessary for the first U.S. troops to arrive to help the South Korean (ROK) Army stop the North Koreans and hold them in place before they reached the southern tip of the peninsula at Pusan. If they reached Pusan, they would occupy all of South Korea.

The first group assigned to go from Japan to Korea was General William F. Dean's (1899–1981) Twenty-fourth Division. Dean found that the army did not have the capacity to get all his men to Korea by air, so he arranged for the maximum air transport—a small group of 406 men—to go at once, while the rest of the division would cross by ship. The first group was to begin the defense as the others were arriving. Dean was not worried about sending such a small group to fight without any support. Along with many others, he firmly believed that as soon as the North Koreans saw American uniforms, they would turn around and run back to the 38th parallel. (The 38th degree of north latitude, which bisects the Korean peninsula, was considered the border of North and South Korea.)

Task Force Smith

The first group of 406 men to arrive in Korea was called Task Force Smith, after its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith. The men (many were teenage boys) on this team could not have been aware, as they advanced from the town of Taejon (pronounced TIE-shon) to Osan, what a terrifying task they faced. At 3:00 p.m. on July 5, this small force dug themselves into a blocking position near Osan. By 7:00 p.m. they could see the North Korean tank column approaching, and at 8:15 p.m. they began to fire on the tanks with howitzers (short cannons). Their fire had no effect. As the tanks got closer Task Force Smith fired recoilless rifles (heavy weapons with a high blast) at them. The tanks kept moving without even slowing down. Task Force Smith then began to shoot at

the rear of the tanks—their weakest point—with 2.36-inch bazookas (rocket launchers or antitank weapons of World War II vintage). Still, the tanks moved steadily on without damage. Finally two tanks were struck by howitzers using the task force's limited supply of high explosive antitank ammunition (HEAT). It was the only thing that had the power to stop them. Four tanks were taken out that morning, but the other thirty-one tanks rolled right on past, leaving thirty Americans dead behind them.

The survivors in Task Force Smith barely had time to catch their breath when, about a half hour later, two North Korean People's Army (NKPA) regiments—forming a six-mile-long

line of trucks and soldiers, about five thousand men— appeared, clearly not suspecting the American presence. With incredible courage, the task force held its position until the enemy was within a thousand yards and then let them have it with everything they had: rifles, mortars (muzzle-loading cannons that shoot high in the air), and machine guns. Within a couple of hours about one hundred Task Force Smith personnel were dead and the North Koreans had almost completely surrounded the survivors. When the order was given to with draw, a mad scramble amid enemy machine gun fire ensued. The wounded had to be left behind. The rest of Smith's scattered crew eventually regrouped and marched on to Ansong.

At this time, other elements of the Twenty-fourth Division had arrived and were getting into defensive positions in the area. News of what had happened to Task Force Smith spread like wildfire, and the morale of the incoming American troops dropped as they realized the mission in Korea was not the easy task they had been led to believe.

For ROK troops still fighting the North Korean People's Army (NKPA), morale was dropping for another reason. As the weather cleared, the U.S. Air Force started its bombing mission. The fighter pilots had no training and no coordination systems with the ground troops, and the errors in the first few days were disastrous. In one day, July 3, U.S. planes bombed and strafed (attacked with a machine gun or cannon from a low-flying aircraft) the ROK forces at Pyongtaek and Suwon, destroying an ammunition train and the Pyongtaek depot and a large part of the town itself, as well as the Suwon depot and thirty ROK trucks. An estimated two hundred ROK soldiers were killed by these mistaken raids, and no one knows how many civilians casualties there were.

Bug-out

From July 6 through July 12, elements of the Twenty-fourth Division were stuck in a pattern of setting themselves up in defensive positions in the line of NKPA movement and then retreating from the stronger, better-armed enemy. Over and over, as the Americans met the North Korean forces, they "bugged-out," or panicked and ran away in confusion, leaving behind them weapons that the NKPA would soon be using against them. The bloodshed was overwhelming. Because the men were not standing their ground, the leaders were often killed trying to do the soldiers' work; leaderless troops with little or no combat experience added greatly to the confusion. Marguerite Higgins (1920–1966), the only female American war correspondent in Korea, was on the scene of these battles and later described the prevailing mood of the troops in her book War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent: "In the coming days I saw young Americans turn and bolt in battle, or throw down their arms cursing their government for what they thought was embroilment in a hopeless cause.… It was routineto hear comments like 'Just give me a jeep and I know what direction to go in. This mama's boy ain't cut out to be no hero.'"

As the first week of American fighting ended in Korea, the North Koreans had advanced fifty miles, delayed by the Americans in their southward progress by about two to three days. About three thousand Americans were dead, missing, wounded, or captured, and much of the weapons and ammunition had been lost in the bug-outs.

The air force regroups

The air force, trying to make up for its dismal mistakes of July 3, set up a vital communications process between the fighting aircraft and ground troops. On July 9, an American battalion spotted NKPA tanks and troops and radioed for an air strike. By dusk that evening, the air support had destroyed about one hundred North Korean vehicles, including five tanks. On July 10, air force jet fighters happened to discover a huge NKPA convoy brought to a standstill by a bombed bridge. Gathering more air support, the air fighters destroyed as many as thirty-eight tanks and more than one hundred trucks, killing many NKPA soldiers in the process. This raid drastically changed the North Koreans' patterns. From that day on, the North Koreans were forced to use camouflage (disguises designed to look like the environment) and move their tank columns only at night or in bad weather.

North Koreans begin their occupation

As the North Koreans captured Seoul and then other South Korean cities in battle, they proceeded to move in as occupiers. They began by distributing anti-United States and anti-Syngman Rhee pamphlets. (Rhee [1875–1965] was president of South Korea at the time.) Loudspeakers were installed in every occupied town so that the North Koreans could broadcast their messages. Posters were plastered everywhere. The North Koreans let it be known that they were coming in to liberate South Korea and to reunify the country.

Just prior to the war, in May 1950 there had been an election in South Korea. The original National Assembly had been replaced by moderates and liberals, showing growing dissatisfaction with Rhee's tyrannical (authoritarian or oppressive) government. Some South Koreans, particularly the students and the poor, welcomed the North Koreans, hoping they would bring about a just government and the reunification of Korea. Soon after they arrived, the North Koreans established a People's Committee in Seoul comprised of South Korean communists. (People's Committees were originally formed as local branches of the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence [CPKI], the first organized effort after World War II for Korean independence. In many places they served effectively as the local government. North Korea had a communist government in power, one that advocated the elimination of private property.)

But even among those who welcomed the North Koreans, relations became strained for a number of reasons. The North Koreans quickly began trials and executions of South Koreans involved in Rhee's government or the ROK Army. The North Koreans also started gathering young men and boys in South Korea to serve in the military. At first many volunteered to join, but the draft took more than the population could tolerate. Another factor that turned many South Koreans against the North Koreans was that the soldiers came in to occupy cities with no food or supplies. Compelled to get their food from the people in the city, they often went door-to-door demanding rice. The burden became too great to bear for many of the impoverished of South Korea, who did not have enough to feed their own families. The North Koreans—who, as communists, did not acknowledge organized religion—were also unpopular among the many Christians in South Korea, who watched as the North Korean soldiers arrested missionaries (people who conduct religious or charitable work in a territory or foreign country), some of them elderly men and women, and marched them off to prisoner of war (POW) camps.

America gears up for war

Commander of the U.S. forces in the Far East General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) realized by early July that the enemy was showing discipline, skill, and strategy and that it was well armed. In his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he demanded a huge force of troops. (Created in 1949, the Joint Chiefs of Staff is an agency within the Department of Defense serving to advise the president and the secretary of defense on matters of war.) On

July 10, the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) agreed to create a unified Korean Command with MacArthur to serve as the commander in chief of the UN Forces. Rhee then placed the South Korean Army in the service of MacArthur. An emergency airlift began transporting much-needed supplies, weapons, and men from the United States to Korea.

On July 7, Walton H. "Johnnie" Walker (1889–1950), commander of the Eighth Army (all the divisions then available

in the Far East), arrived in Taejon to meet with General Dean, commander of the Twenty-fourth Division. The two generals, seeing how desperate the situation was, decided that the remaining elements of the Twenty-fourth should consoli date in a defensive line along the Kum River and that an all out effort should be made to hold the city of Taejon until more troops arrived.

Defense of the Kum River

On July 14, the North Koreans advanced on the Kum River at Kongju. In two attacks, the North Koreans shattered the two regiments of Dean's Twenty-fourth Division. As they fled from the Kum River line, the men of the Nineteenth Reg iment gathered into small, unorganized bands to fight for their own survival. The North Koreans had circled around from behind and enveloped them. There were NKPA roadblocks stopping all vehicles of fleeing Americans. The wounded that had made it onto trucks for the flight ended up taking more bullets where they lay. There were nine hundred men of the Nineteenth Regiment on the Kum River on July 16. When the defense line collapsed, more than half of them were missing, either dead or captured.

The fall of Taejon

After the fall of the Kum River line, General Dean took stock of the badly damaged Twenty-fourth Division and knew he did not have the power to hold the city of Taejon. Even so, when General Walker asked him to hold on to Taejon for a couple more days, Dean committed his Thirty-fourth Regiment to the task. Some observers have said he was, by that time, too exhausted to think straight.

The NKPA attacked at Taejon on July 19, striking with their usual force. The battalions of the Thirty-fourth Regiment were dug into position and waiting for them. But a second NKPA division began immediately traveling south and then circling east, enveloping the Thirty-fourth Regiment and then attacking with full strength. The Thirty-fourth called for help, and General Dean himself appeared with a unit from the Nineteenth Regiment. By nightfall, both the Thirty-fourth and the added unit were surrounded. During the night, the North Korean tanks entered the city, and an NKPA roadblock was in place just outside the city, impeding the route of retreat. In the morning, the North Koreans attacked in force and shattered the Thirty-fourth and Nineteenth Regiments, completely eliminating organized fighting for the Americans. Leaders were dead; communication lines were gone. By the time retreats were ordered, the troops had already fled.

General Dean, who was still in the city, grabbed two bazooka teams and took off on foot to try to destroy the enemy tanks. He finally did manage to blow one up. By 6:00 that evening, the city of Taejon was on fire and littered with dead bodies. Dean and the other remaining commanders got in their jeeps and tried to leave the city but were stopped by the NKPA roadblock. Abandoning his jeep, Dean took to the hills. He spent the next thirty-six days trying to get back to his troops while avoiding North Korean soldiers. In the end, South Korean civilians turned him over to the North Koreans, and he spent the next three years as the highest ranking POW in Korea.

In the attempt to hold Taejon for two days, 4,000 American soldiers were deployed. Of these, 1,150 were killed, wounded, or missing and presumed dead. At the end of the second week of American fighting, of the 15,965 troops in the Twenty-fourth Division, only 8,660 could be accounted for. The North Koreans had advanced another twenty-five miles on the central front.

In the week after the fall of Taejon, the North Koreans attacked the First Cavalry Division, which was trying to protect the village of Yongdong. Three of the First Cavalry's battalions were destroyed and its efforts to save Yongdong failed. The two remaining regiments of the horribly battered Twenty-fourth Division, under the command of General John H.

Church since Dean's disappearance, were enlisted to attack Hadong, a North Korean-occupied town to the west, with help from two battalions from the Twenty-ninth Regiment. The troops walked right into an enemy ambush near Hadong. The two forward companies were slaughtered, their leaders killed, and once again the survivors fled, fighting to save themselves. In this battle, 313 were killed and 100 were captured.

No Gun Ri Massacre

On July 23, American soldiers entered two villages in North Chungchong Province in South Korea, warning civil ians to evacuate their homes immediately. The people evacu ated to the nearby village, Im Ke Ri. On July 25, the American soldiers arrived at Im Ke Ri and gathered the refugees, promis ing to take them to safety in the city of Pusan, in the south of the peninsula. The soldiers brought the villagers to Ha Ga Ri and abandoned them there. The next day the villagers began the trip south on their own. When they arrived at No Gun Ri on July 26, American soldiers ordered them to stop. The soldiers inspected them for weapons and found none. Suddenly, an air attack was launched upon the unarmed people.

Many of the refugees were killed in the attack, but the majority escaped into a water tunnel. There they were pursued by U.S. soldiers, who were later identified as members of the H Company, Second Battalion of the Seventh Regiment, First Cavalry Division, who had arrived in Korea only three days before. These troops were young and untrained and knew little or nothing about Korea or its war. For three days the soldiers stood at the ends of the tunnels and fired at the helpless villagers. Those inside who survived had no food or water and were forced to use the bodies of their families and neighbors as shields against the American gunfire. "The American soldiers played with our lives like boys playing with flies," said a South Korean woman named Chun Choon-ja, who was twelve years old at the time, according to an Associated Press article. On July 29, the U.S. soldiers disappeared, evidently due to the arrival of the North Korean People's Army.

It is estimated that three hundred people were killed at the No Gun Ri Bridge and that another one hundred were killed in the air attack. The story only came to light in the United States in the mid-1990s, when a group of survivors petitioned the United States for an apology and compensation, resulting in an investigation by the Associated Press news agency that unearthed convincing evidence. In 2001, President Bill Clinton (1948–) replied to the petition, acknowledging that innocent people at No Gun Ri had died at the hands of U.S. troops.

"Johnnie" Walker's plan

Although in the first month of war the North Koreans had outnumbered the Americans and South Koreans by about four to one, the massive buildup of UN troops had evened things. Along with the three U.S. divisions already in Korea, the battered Twenty-fourth, the First Cavalry, and the Twenty-fifth, there were now a British brigade and a U.S. Marines brigade. Furthermore, the ROK had started a draft and enrolled another forty-five thousand men. New equipment was coming in daily.

General Walker wanted to consolidate all the UN forces in one place. He planned to withdraw the entire Eight Army behind the Naktong River and hold on to a one-hundredmile long, fifty-mile wide area. The area, called the Pusan Perimeter, was bordered by the Naktong River on the west, the Sea of Japan on the east, mountains at the north, and the Korean Strait at the south. There the United States and ROK armies could build a solid perimeter defense (fight the enemy around the outer limits of the area) and turn the war around.

Walker phoned MacArthur's headquarters to get permission to establish the new line. Instead of giving an answer, the next day MacArthur publicly announced that there would be no "Korean Dunkirk." (Dunkirk is a port in Northern France famous for a massive evacuation during World War II.) In other words, MacArthur was saying "no" to the idea of a massive retreat.

"Stand or Die"

On July 29, General Walker gave his famous "Stand or Die" speech, leading his troops to believe they would not be retreating any time soon. The speech was recorded in an attending officer's notes, so the words that most historians quote from the Army historian Roy E. Appleman's records are not exact, but Walker's point is clear:

We are fighting a battle against time. There will be no more retreating, withdrawal, or readjustment of the lines or any other term you choose. There is no line behind us to which we can retreat. Every unit must counterattack to keep the enemy in a state of confusion and off balance. There will be no Dunkirk…; a retreat to Pusan would be one of the greatest butcheries in history. We must fight until the end. Capture by these people is worse than death itself. We will fight as a team. If some of us must die, we will die fighting together. Any man who gives ground may be personally responsible for the death of thousands of his comrades. I want you to put this out to all men in the division. I want everybody to understand that we are going to hold this line. We are going to win.

The planned retreat

Despite Walker's speech, the withdrawals continued, and the general carried out his original strategy to build a fortified line of defense beyond the Naktong River. Soon the whole Eighth Army was behind the line.

After getting across the river, the First Cavalry was instructed to blow up the bridges across the Naktong. A flood of panicking refugees— people who had been forced south in their attempt to stay within United Nations territory—kept following the soldiers across the bridge, making it impossible to destroy it. In the end, the commander of the First Cavalry gave the order to blow up the bridge with civilians on it; many were killed. It was a nightmarish end to a dismal chapter in the war in Korea.

Where to Learn More

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, revised edition, 2000.

Appleman, Roy E. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu: United States Army in the Korean War. Office of the Chief of Military History. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961.

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New York: Times Books, 1987.

Higgins, Marguerite. War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951.

Summers, Harry G., Jr. Korean War Almanac. New York: Facts on File, 1990.

Toland, John. In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950–1953. New York: William Morrow, 1991.

Varhola, Michael J. Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950–1953. Mason City, IA: Savas Publishing, 2000.

Web sites

"Bridge at No Gun Ri." Associated Press (AP). [Online] http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/nogunri/(accessed on August 14, 2001).

Feldman, Ruth Tenzer. "Women in the War." Cobblestone: Korean War Fiftieth Anniversary Issue. [Online] http://korea50.army.mil/cobblestone/29.html (accessed on August 14, 2001).

United States Army. "Women in the Korean War." Fiftieth Anniversary of the Korean War Commemoration Site. [Online] http://korea50.army.mil/history/factsheets/women.html (accessed on August 14, 2001).

Words to Know

battalion: a military unit usually made up of about three to five companies. Generally one of the companies is the headquarters unit, another the service unit, and the rest are line units. Although the numbers differ greatly, a battalion might consist of about 35 officers and about 750 soldiers.

bazooka: a light and portable rocket launcher or antitank weapon fired from the shoulder that consists of a large tube that launches antitank ammunition.

bug-out: to panic and run away from a battle in confusion; a disorderly retreat without permission.

camouflage: disguise to look like the surrounding plants and environment.

casualties: those who are killed, wounded, missing, or taken prisoner in combat.

evacuation: removal of people from a dangerous area or a military zone.

howitzers: short cannons.

infantry division: a self-sufficient military unit, usually about 15,000 to 16,000 soldiers strong, under the command of a major general. Communist Chinese army divisions were closer to 10,000 soldiers strong.

integration: the act of bringing all the groups of individuals within an organization into the whole as equals; the elimination of separate facilities and structures for different racial groups.

missionary: a person who takes on organized religious work with the purpose of converting people to his or her faith.

morale: the way that a person or a group of people feels about the job they are doing or the mission they are working on.

mortar: a muzzle-loading cannon that shoots high in the air.

perimeter defense: fighting the enemy around the outer limits of the area.

POW: prisoner of war.

recoilless rifles: heavy weapons with a high blast.

refugee: someone who is fleeing to a different country to escape danger in his or her own nation.

reunification: the process of bringing back together the separate parts of something that was once a single unit; in Korea, this usually refers to the dream of a single Korea ruled under one government, no longer divided into two nations at the demarcation line.

segregation: the separation of different groups of individuals within an organization or society.

strafe: to fire upon at close range with machine guns from a low-flying plane.

38th parallel: the 38th degree of north latitude as it bisects the Korean Peninsula, chosen by Americans as the dividing line between what was to be Soviet-occupied North Korea and U.S.-occupied South Korea in 1945.

Military Women in the Korean War

American women were not permitted to serve in combat during the Korean War, and in 1950 men and women in the military were not integrated. Nevertheless, thousands of American military women served in the war. Just four days after Task Force Smith arrived in Korea, a group of fifty-seven army nurses (all women) coming from Japan arrived at Pusan to help set up the first U.S. Army hospital. On July 8, 1950, twelve nurses went to the battlefront at Taejon to set up a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH).

When the war started, there were about twenty-two thousand women in American military service. About one-third were in health care positions, and the rest worked in the Women's Army Corp (WAC), Women in the Air Force (WAF), Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or Navy Women's Reserve (WAVES) and Women Marines. Only a few women in non-health care positions served in Korea, but many military women served at the Far East Command headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, in administration, communication, personnel, supply, and food service. In Japan, some of the women became senior noncommissioned officers or served in supervisory positions normally held by men.

The army, air force, and navy nurses who served in Korea worked in the same extreme conditions as the soldiers fighting the war, wearing fatigues and living in tents near the front. No American military women were killed by the enemy during the war, but one army nurse was killed in a plane crash on her way to duty in Korea, and two air force nurses were killed in another aircraft accident.

The Far East Air Forces

The United States Air Force (USAF) was only three years old when the Korean War started in 1950, having formerly been a branch of the army. The United States's Far East Air Force (FEAF), based in Japan, was responsible for combat in Korea. At the beginning of the war the FEAF was composed of 33,625 personnel and 657 aircraft. One year later it had 1,441 aircraft, and by the end of the war there were 112,200 personnel in the FEAF.

In the early days of the war, it became apparent that the aircraft the United States had used in World War II (1939–45) was not sufficient to take on the planes being used by the North Koreans, Russian-made MiG-15s, that had been produced in 1947. The MiG-15 was heavily armed and could climb to high altitudes more quickly than any of the jets the Americans were using. The United States then acquired new models for the war. Aircraft used by the United Nations Command in Korea (of which the United States was a part) were:

F-86A "Sabre": This single-pilot fighter aircraft, introduced in December 1950, became the standard in the war. Although a more stable plane than the Soviet MiG-15, the F-86A could not climb at as rapid a rate until later improvements were added.
B-29A "Superfortress": The largest aircraft used during the war by either side, the B-29 was used against stable land targets, such as buildings and factories, or against whole units of advancing enemy troops. With a wingspan of 141 feet and a length of 99 feet, this bomber was armed with a 20-millimeter cannon and ten .50-caliber machine guns. It could carry 20,000 pounds of bombs.
F-4U1D "Corsair": Updated from the famous World War II Corsairs, the Corsair was a single-pilot fighter plane used by the navy and the marines. Launched from aircraft carriers off the coasts of Korea, the Corsairs were armed for battle with six .50-caliber machine guns

and could carry up to 2,000 pounds of bombs.

According to Michael J. Varhola in Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950–1953, during the war the FEAF claimed the following accomplishments:• It dropped or fired 476,000 tons of bombs, rockets, and ammunition in 720,980 sorties (air missions).

It destroyed 900 enemy aircraft in the air and many more on the ground.
It destroyed 1,100 tanks, 800 bridges, 800 locomotives, 9,000 railroad cars, 70,000 motor vehicles, and 80,000 buildings.
It inflicted nearly 150,000 North Korean and Chinese casualties.

During the Korean War, 1,466 FEAF aircraft were lost, 1,180 air force personnel were killed in action, 368 personnel were wounded in action, and 5,884 died from illness or wounds. Thousands of air force personnel from the Korean War are still missing in action.

As the war progressed, other nations besides the United States provided air power in Korea, particularly South Korea, South Africa, Australia, Britain, and Canada.

A Soldier's Experience of the Fall of Taejon

William Caldwell, a platoon leader in the First Battalion of the Thirty-fourth Regiment (Twenty-fourth Division), remembers the chaos that followed the fall of the city of Taejon on July 20, 1950:

The first battalion was decimated. I ended up on the high ground south of Taejon with Marks and three other officers and about two hundred men, many of them wounded. We had no maps, no communications, no ammo, except that on our backs, no food, no water, no vehicles. We headed south, then west, moving rather ponderously because of the injured and wounded. On the third day without food, men went into the fields and dug up potatoes and vegetables and ate them raw, a distressing sight.
On the third or fourth night Marks and I, who were in superb condition, were elected to go ahead of the main party and try to find friendly forces and get help—transportation. We finally managed to reach a ROK headquarters, where we were refused help until Marks threatened to create an "international incident". The ROKs relinquished three trucks, and we shuttled the men to the [ROK] headquarters. The ROKs would do nothing more for us, nor would the [American] Army command in Pusan, which we raised by landline. We then commandeered a train and went due south to Yosu on the coast, cooking our first edible food—eggs—in the engine boiler and washing them down with sips of sake and beer, the first purified liquid we'd had since Taejon. At Yosu we commandeered a boat, loaded our troops, and sailed for Pusan, where we were issued new gear and sent back into the line—every soldier in that group now a fighter.

Source: Clay Blair. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New York: Times Books, 1987.