Word: 3rd
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...least their spokesmen -had regained confidence. Army Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins, back in Washington from Tokyo and Korea, turned in an optimistic report to Secretary Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon had its most buoyant week since November. In the field, the 3rd Division's Major General Robert H. Soule displayed a gamecock's confidence: "If they order us, we will go back and take Seoul. We can stop anything they [the Communists] can throw...
Tank-led infantry teams of the U.S. 3rd Division (evacuated from Hungnam in December) jumped off at 7 a.m., five hours later slogged into Osan without firing a shot, retook two other towns northeast of Osan, and finally, after an advance of twelve miles, ran into Chinese artillery and automatic weapons' fire from high ground positions...
...stop the marines by blowing a dam and a bridge, and by sporadic shooting from the sides of the road. Not once from Koto to the sea did the marines run into a massively defended roadblock. This, of course, was partly due to effective air help and to the 3rd Division's rescue force, which came up from Hungnam and cleared the lower part of the road. Nevertheless, the U.S. column was a force of 20,000 traveling through territory held by about 70,000 Chinese...
...Destroy a Beachhead. After they reached the sea, the marines were promptly evacuated, and the 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions deployed for the perimeter defense, with two R.O.K. divisions on the right. If the Chinese had had enough foresight (and the necessary artillery), they could have shelled Hungnam to ruins before the defense perimeter was erected and before the warships arrived. If they had attacked with a large and concentrated force at one point on the perimeter, they might have broken through to the port area. But they made no serious effort. On Friday, Dec. 15, 2,500 Chinese attacked...
...Action. Hopped-up accounts of the Hungnam fighting kept going out. The U.P. sent out a breathless story of the "crucial final stage" that had the U.S. 3rd Division fighting "with its back to the sea to hold open the escape port of Hungnam against Communist 'banzai' attacks." Actually, MacArthur's headquarters insisted, U.S. forces were engaged in an orderly withdrawal at small cost...