War: Ambush at Hoengsong

Forty half-burned trucks and jeeps and the blown-out barrels of six 155-millimeter field pieces were scattered along the road. In the vehicles and under them lay the burned and decomposed bodies of U.S. and South Korean soldiers. Other bodies, stripped of their uniforms, sprawled by the roadside.

This was the sight met last week by advancing U.S. Marines two miles northwest of Hoengsong. It was part of the most horribly concentrated display of American dead since the Korean war began. Near the road the marines found two wounded, half-frozen U.S. soldiers—a 19-year-old infantry corporal, and a 35-year-old pfc. in the artillery. They were the only survivors of a U.S. 155-mm. battery and its infantry guard, ambushed and annihilated three weeks ago. In an aid station at Wonju airstrip, the corporal and the pfc. told their stories.

On Feb. 12 the battery, together with a battalion of 105-mm. artillery and an infantry unit, started north from Hoengsong to back up the South Korean 8th Division. When a ROK regiment broke under attack, the U.S. troops found themselves on their own.

"The Chinks hit us about 2 a.m.," the corporal said. "There was shooting all over the place. They sent me and 14 other riflemen out to secure the guns. We helped get them in convoy, but only three of us came back."

Next day the convoy crawled southward, the infantry fighting off the Communists from the rear. That night, the guns fired in a circle. The infantry tried to take a hill to clear a path southward, but the Reds drove them back.

"Everybody Got Rattled." The Americans broke through the Reds early the second night, only to run into an ambush.

The black-bearded pfc. took up the story: "The Chinks hit the driver in the front machine, and that stopped the column. Everybody got rattled. As soon as somebody fell, the Chinks would grab his weapon. Somebody hollered 'There's one!' and I fired. But it was only a tree. Somebody hollered 'Let's get out of here.' I turned around and the world seemed to explode at my feet. Blood gushed everywhere. I knew I had had it then and there . . ."

The corporal, already hit, was riding in a jeep trailer. An infantryman yelled: "Get out, you guys, and fight for your lives!" Weaponless and unable to walk, the corporal remembered crawling up on a truck loaded with wounded.

"Some Chinks climbed up on the truck," he said, "and started to punch us with their rifle muzzles. They were American M-i rifles. We yelled 'Wounded,' but they threw us out on the road.

"One Chink came up and put his M-t against my head and pulled the trigger. The bullet creased my skull. The muzzle blast nearly tore my eardrum out. I flopped over and pretended I was dead."

"Just Like Home, Eh?" Later, a Chinese soldier showed the corporal a hut, where the pfc. had already taken refuge.

They were joined by a third wounded G.I. "I don't know his name," the corporal said. "He was a headquarters man. He had a gut wound, and wanted water all the time. He was always crawling out of the hut to get water. We knew he was going to die. He lasted four days."