Word: kumchon
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...flank and rear. The Kum line could not be held. The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and the 25th Infantry Division arrived from Japan to help the battered 24th, and Lieut. General Walton Walker was appointed MacArthur's ground cornmander in Korea. The Americans fell back from Taejon to Kumchon, the next important junction on the rail and road line to Pusan...
...Perimeter. The North Koreans had missed another big chance. They were still maintaining heavy pressure on the main axis of their advance-Taejon-Kumchon-Taegu-trying to turn the U.S. retreat into a rout. In this they failed. If, instead, they had diverted a heavier force to the south-coast drive-four divisions, for example, they would almost certainly have smashed through the thin U.S. crust and seized the vital port...
...this time, the Allies, having lost Kumchon, were standing on a fairly well-defined perimeter-with flanks on the south and east coasts-which was to grow smaller before it grew bigger. The south flank rested just west of Masan, the center of the line shielded Taegu, the vital "turntable," and on the east coast the line touched the sea north of Pohang. To defend his perimeter, Walker had, or soon would have, elements of five U.S. divisions-the 24th, 25th and 2nd Infantry, the 1st Cavalry, the 1st Marine...
Hardly were the stand-or-die orders out of General Walker's mouth (see above) than the U.S. forces began to give more ground. Kochang fell, on the central front, and Kumchon, an important strongpoint on the Taejon-Taegu railroad, was threatened from the southeast. At Chinju on the south coast, after a heavy fight in which Communist dead littered the ground "like confetti," the defenders pulled back and two Red regiments rushed in. Chinju, 55 miles from Pusan, was the closest Communist approach to the all-important supply port...