Word: naktong
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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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...
...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...
Northwest of Waegwan, meanwhile, Allied intelligence had reported four to six North Korean divisions building up west of the Naktong. Despite saturation bombing of the area by B-29s (see The Air War), the enemy divisions mounted a massive (30,000 men) and skillful attack from a jump-off point northeast of the target area and smashed due south, capturing Kunwi and Kumhwa, and pushing back the South Korean ist and 6th Divisions. But the courageous South Koreans managed to regroup. They were reinforced by the 27th ("Wolfhound") Regiment of the U.S. 25th Division, which was hurried to the scene...
Persistent Rats. One of the two remaining airfields in the beachhead was at Taegu-and Taegu itself was gravely threatened. On the central front, it seemed as hard to prevent the Reds from crossing the Naktong as to stop rats from boarding a moored ship. In some places, the sluggish green water was shallow enough to wade across. At night, free from Allied air attack, the North Koreans put tanks across on barges and hastily built log and stone causeways, whose top surfaces were a foot under water and hard to see from the air. Once, in full daylight, under...
...command post above the Naktong River one night last week, infantrymen of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division fiddled with a radio. They picked up a North Korean station and got the brassy blare of a Sousa march. It was followed by the honeyed words (in English) of a woman announcer, urging the boys to "go back home to your corner drugstores" and boasting of fantastic North Korean successes ("already there are 6,000 U.S. dead...