At 1330 a wheezing Korean engine manned by a Korean crew pulled out of Wonsan with the rifle companies riding in gondola cars. It was a bright blue day, with a hint of frost in the air; and not a sign of enemy resistance appeared along the 39-mile route, though several tunnels might have been utilized for a guerrilla attack.
Upon their arrival late that afternoon, Kojo proved to be the most attractive town the men had seen in Korea—an almost undamaged small seaport flanked by the white beaches and sparkling blue waters of the bay.
There remained for the Marines the task of relieving ROK units and protecting an area consisting of a coastal plain about 5000 yards in diameter which stretched from the bay to a semicircle of hills ranging from 150 to 600 feet in height (see Map 4). The ROK officers assured the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hawkins, that his men would find their duty at Kojo a tame assignment. They admitted that small bands of escaping NKPA soldiers had sometimes raided the villages for rice, but added that ROK patrols had scoured the hills without meeting any organized resistance.
The night passed uneventfully for the battalion in a perimeter northwest of Kojo while the ROKs occupied outposts along the southern fringe of the coast plain. In the morning the Marines found the rice paddies glazed with the first ice of the autumn. After completing the relief of the 2d Battalion of the 22d ROK Regiment at 1200, they watched with amusement that afternoon as the Koreans crowded into the gondola cars with their women, children, dogs, and chickens for the ride back to Wonsan. When it seemed that the train could not hold another human being, a ROK officer barked out an order and everyone squeezed farther back with audible sighs and grunts. At last, as a grand climax, the officer shouted a final command and the entire trainload of Koreans sat down simultaneously, like collapsing dominoes.
It was an ironical circumstance that the ROKs on the overcrowded train took with them the remnants of the supply dump that 1/1 was assigned to guard. However important this dump may have been in its heyday, it had apparently been consumed by the ROKs to the point where only a few drums of fuel oil remained along with other odds and ends.
KOJO AREA
Unit locations are those of 1700
27 Oct 50
MAP-4