BATTLE OF KOREA: Definitely Saved

The Communists wanted Taegu. The flat, dirty city was the provisional capital of the South Korean government; it was the main Allied supply base and communications hub for the central front; it had a valuable airfield from which U.S. tactical airplanes were blasting the Reds; it also blocked what the Communists considered the main approach to the port of Pusan. The North Koreans last week made frenzied efforts to take Taegu. They failed.

When the Reds began shelling the city from the west bank of the Naktong, President Syngman Rhee's government made its third emergency move of the war*—to Pusan—and ordered the evacuation of Taegu's population (swollen from the normal 300,000 to about twice that figure). Soon the roads to east and south were choked with heavily burdened, white-clad refugees.

Inside Taegu, Major General Hobart Gay, commander of the ist Cavalry Division, had set up his headquarters, in a horse barn at the city's race track. A calm, kindly, humble soldier who was chief of staff to Tanker Patton in World War II, Gay paced up & down in shabby coveralls, looking less like a general than like a Kansas farmer worrying about crops. Pointing to his situation map with a slim, sheathed French bayonet disguised as a riding crop, General, Gay said: "I hope the enemy is as confused about the situation as I am."

First Threat. But the situation soon became clear. The enemy was forced to give ground all along the front. At Tuksong, southwest of Taegu, the Reds had put a small force across the river at night. When dawn came, they were so close to the U.S. positions that Gay's gallant troopers fought them off with bayonets, rifle butts, knives, even fists and feet. The Reds seemed to have no taste for this sort of combat and retreated across the Naktong with heavy casualties, but they came back to fight again near Waegwan (called "Wigwam," "Waukeegan," or "Podunk" by G.I.s), twelve miles northwest of Taegu. Twice the G.I.s were driven from the top of Hill 303 made infamous by the war's worst atrocity (see War Crimes), but they scrambled back up. As Gay's men dug in on top of Hill 303 for the third time, one of them said: "If those maniacs come back, we're going to have a bad time." But this time the enemy did not return.