[263] Annex Mike to Brig SAR.
LST QO119 was not only the workhorse of normal Shore Party missions; it served also as an improvised hospital ship. For the Medical Section and Company C, 1st Medical Battalion, had an extra responsibility these sweltering days in caring for victims of heat prostration as well as the wounded. Thus it may have set some sort of a record when casualties were evacuated at one time by land, sea and air—motor ambulance, LST and helicopter.
The Changchon Ambush
At sundown on 11 August, as Taplett’s battalion dug in for the night on the road to Sachon, the enemy seemed to be disorganized if not actually demoralized. For the first time since the invasion began, a sustained Eighth Army counterattack had not only stopped the Red Korean steamroller but sent it into reverse.
With the Marines a day’s march from Sachon, the Army 5th RCT was running a dead heat on the shorter Chinju route to the north, where opposition had been light the last 2 days. It might even have appeared on the evening of the 11th that the combined operation had turned into a friendly rivalry between two outfits racing toward their final objective by parallel roads. But any such assumption would have been premature, as General Craig and his staff well realized. They looked for further resistance and were not disillusioned. Within the next 48 hours, in fact, Craig’s men were destined to carry out one of the most astonishing operations in the history of the Marine Corps—simultaneous BLT attacks in opposite directions on two fronts 25 miles apart.
There was no hint of any such development at 0630 on the morning of 12 August, when the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines passed through the 3d Battalion with a mission of seizing Sachon. If anything, the front was too quiet to suit veteran NCO’s, who suspected the enemy of being up to no good. The column moved out behind a 15-man detachment of Recon Company acting as the point under the command of Captain Kenneth J. Houghton. Next came Baker Company with the 1st, 2d, and 3d Platoons in that order. Two Marine tanks were sandwiched in between the 1st and 2d Platoons, and three more M-26’s brought up the rear of Captain Tobin’s company, followed by the main body of the battalion.
No opposition awaited the column. This unnatural calm continued for 4½ hours as the Marines advanced about 11 miles. At noon, with Sachon only 4 miles away, Houghton and the point rounded a bend into the thatched-hut hamlet of Changchon. The first enemy soldiers of the day were sighted when two skulking figures took cover. Several Marines opened fire, and in reply the hills on both sides of the road erupted into flame.[264]
[264] This section is derived from: Brig SAR, 5th Marines, 1st Bn rpt; Maj John L. Tobin, ltr to author, 26 Apr 54 (Tobin, 26 Apr 54); Maj John R. Stevens, ltr to author, 11 Jan 54; and T/Sgt F. J. Lischeski, ltr to author, 14 Jan 54.
The enemy had obviously planned to allow the entire column to come within range. But the trap was sprung prematurely as NKPA machineguns blazed away from the high ground in front and on both flanks. Captain Tobin immediately sent the 1st Platoon to the aid of the point. First Lieutenant Hugh C. Schryver led his men forward along the roadside ditches, and at the cost of three casualties they reinforced the thin line of Recon troops returning the enemy’s fire.
Next, the company commander ordered First Lieutenant David S. Taylor’s 2d Platoon to move up behind three Marine tanks. The M-26’s were unable to maneuver off the road because of the danger of bogging down in rice paddies, but as mobile fortresses they added to Marine fire power.