The 24^th Infantry Division

Taro Leaf Division

First to Fight

The 24th Infantry Division's nickname was the Taro Leaf Division, because it was first formed in Hawaii.   It's Motto is "First to Fight" due to it being the first unit to fire on the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.   On 05 JULY 1950, it again became the first to fight, this time in Korea.

The 34^th Regiment, 24^th Infantry Division was among the first units deployed by General Douglas MacArthur to halt the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950. The regiment with nearly 2000 men arrived in Pusan on 2 JULY 1950. Undermanned and poorly equipped, the 34^th suffered heavy losses until 31 AUGUST 1950 when the 184 surviving members were transferred to other combat units, and the 34th Regiment was reduced to paper status.

The Army Morning Reports for Company C, 34^th Regiment, 24^th Infantry Division reflect the following:

	Recruit Alfred Guiel, RA 11 167 908

	Assigned to Company C, 34th Infantry Regiment on 19 JULY 1950.
	Missing in action on 19 JULY 1950.

Thanks to Lacy Barnett (1927 - 2021), Medical Company, 34^th Infantry Regiment, Veteran of WWII, Korea, Vietnam.

A War Department telegram of Sunday, 20 Aug 1950, to Alfred's parents read in part:

  "THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY HAS ASKED ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT
   YOUR SON PVT GUIEL ALFRED HAS BEEN MISSING IN ACTION IN KOREA SINCE 20
   JUL 50 UPON RECEIPT OF FUTHER INFORMATION IN THIS OFFICE YOU WILL BE
   ADVISED IMMEDIATELY...".

The telegram arrived a full month after he was reported missing. Four days later, Thursday,
24 AUG 1950, a message arrived at 56 Hadley Street from amateur radio operator, W3FY,
J.C. Hargreaves of 10709 Amherst Avenue, Silver Springs, Maryland, which read:

	"Am on my way back to the States.  Everything is OK. Alfred Guiel."

An article from the Holyoke Daily Transcript dated SEPTEMBER 1950 said in part:

	Guiel said he was wounded in the fighting west of Masan, about 60 miles
	below Taejon.  He said he was a member of the 34th Infantry Regiment of
	the 24th Division.  The 24th was the first American division to
	see combat in Korea. .......

	"Still a mystery is what happened between JULY 20 when Pfc. Guiel was
	reported to be missing and AUGUST 6 when he was wounded.  He was a
	little fuzzy on that, himself.  He told one reporter he was hit AUGUST 6
	and told another "around JULY 20." .............

Still a mystery, the newspaper said, is what happened between JULY 20 and AUGUST 6.   The exact details of what happened during that period will have to remain shrouded in mystery by the chaos which accompanied those events, by the death of those who could tell the story, and by the passage of time.

Colonel Roy E. Appleman, the author and military historian, spent seven years just researching the events that led to the fall of Taejon.   Battalion and regimental records were often lost, destroyed, or, in some cases, never even created. Retreating units often had no time or desire to keep records when survival was a more urgent concern. But Appleman did, through countless interviews with survivors and with what records did exist, reconstruct the history of the war in great, unbiased detail.

After the fall of Taejon, American troops were being pushed toward Pusan with nothing beyond but the sea.   Pusan was a major seaport vital to supplying war materiel. The fact that they couldn't retreat any farther probably enforced General Walker's "stand or die" order to hold the line which had not previously been a sufficient incentive to fight or counter-attack.

Its part in defending the Pusan Perimeter placed the 34^th Infantry in the Battle of the Naktong Bulge.  About seven miles north of the confluence of the Nam and Naktong Rivers, the Naktong turns westward near Yongsan and begins to form a semi-circular loop which became known to American troops as the Naktong Bulge.   The 3rd Battalion held the regimental front at the river line with the 1st Battalion in reserve four miles back near Yongsan. The first enemy crossing came on 5 AUGUST in the 24th Division's sector near Ohang with the intent of pushing into Yongsan about 10 miles to the east.   This force penetrated between companies of the 3rd Battalion avoiding contact as much as possible in an effort to penetrate behind the defensive positions.

Learning of this, Colonel Beauchamp ordered Ayres to counterattack with his 1st Battalion and restore the perimeter.   C Company was loaded in trucks and sent ahead while A and B companies followed on foot accompanied by a weapons company. One hundred eighty seven replacements had joined the battalion on the previous day.

Ayres and his advance party soon came under fire from the hills above. C Company was just arriving behind them and also came under fire. Some were hit as they jumped from the truck. Ayres directed Captain Clyde Akridge, CO of C Company, to attack the high ground, but Akridge then was hit three times and was evacuated. C Company did not have a chance of success against a numerically superior force holding higher ground. Concentrated small arms and automatic weapons fire was directed at the gulley in which the company was moving and was now strewn with the dead and dying. More than half the company was dead.

Colonel Ayres and some of C Company dashed out of the culvert across a rice paddy to a grist mill where they continued the fight. Some time later, when B Company arrived, Colonel Ayres was able to leave the mill and rejoin the battalion. However, when A Company arrived with a light tank in the lead, the tank fired on the mill thinking it was enemy held and killed and wounded several more Company C men.

The description of this battle is the same as Alfred's story of his last battle as he told it to me in 1950. He must have been evcuated before the tank attack, because I don't remember that. He did say that he thought the rest of his squad died in that gulley. He was already wounded when he entered the mill, but he wasn't sure what hit him. That the morning reports of C Company "have no further accounting of him" after 19 JULY does not mean that he was not in the company in August. The company, the 1st Battalion, and the regiment were all overrun in the time since the fall of Taejon. Some of the men walked, hitchiked rides with convoys, rode trains and even boats to circle south and rejoin their parent units, some were getting medical treatment. If Alfred was less severely wounded on the 19 or 20 JULY, that could explain why he was not in the morning reports.

Alfred, then, was not the only one who was a "little fuzzy" about the events following the U.S. Army's disaster at the fall of Taejon on 19 and 20 JULY 1950 and the two and a half week retreat to the Battle of the Naktong Bulge 60 miles to the South. The U.S. infantry was not yet equipped to fight the North Korean tanks which overran the 34^th Infantry's 1st battalion headquarters late on 19 JULY, the day that Alfred was assigned to that battalion's "C" Company. Confusion had been a widespread factor throughout the regiment resulting from poor leadership, poor training, poor communications, and poor logistics from the outset. The same could be said of the entire 24th Infantry Division.

Out of nearly 2000 men who entered Korea with the 34^th Regiment on 3 JULY 1950, 184 were left at the end of August. The rest had been killed or wounded or were missing in action. Considering that 187 replacements were added to Ayres' 1^st Battalion on 4 AUGUST 1950, the number of casualties equals the total of the original 2000 that entered the war only eight weeks earlier. The 34^th Infantry Regiment was reduced to paper status at that time, and the survivors were integrated into the 19^th and 21^st Regiments to continue payment for Mars' gift to the "Old Warrior".

On Sunday, 25 JUNE 1950, North Korea announced its declaration of war against South Korea with an artillery barrage across the length of the 38th parallel some seven hours before a formal declaration in which North Korea said that South Korea initiated the hostility.

With North Korean forces already in Seoul, President Harry S. Truman authorized General Douglas MacArthur on 27 JUNE, Far Eastern time, to employ air and naval forces against the North Koreans below the 38th parallel.   That night the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for member nations to aid South Korea in repelling the North Korean attack.

Seoul fell on the fourth day of the invasion. The Korean government, for the most part, retreated to Taejon.   Russian built T34 tanks could only be stopped by South Korean volunteers for the suicide mission of hand carrying demolition charges to the enemy tanks.   The only American military presence on the ground in Korea at this time was a handful of advisors in the Korean Military Advisory Group, but American combat troops would soon be faced with the same problem of inadequate anti-tank weaponry.

Without a congressional declaration of war, Truman authorized General Douglas MacArthur on 30 JUNE 1950 to use ground troops in Korea.   At this time, there were no military units in Asia that were equipped, trained, fully manned, or ready for combat, but MacArthur ordered General Walker, Eighth Army commander, to immediately move his 24th Infantry Division from Japan to Korea with General Wiliam F. Dean commanding.   The 24th Division would once again be the first to fight.

The formal orders given to Dean provided for:

1. a delaying force of two rifle companies, under a battalion commander, reinforced by two platoons of 4.2 inch mortars, and one platoon of 75-mm recoiless rifles was to go to Pusan by air and report to General Church for orders;
2. the division headquarters and one battalion of infantry were to go to Pusan by air at once;
3. the remainder of the division would follow by water;
4. and a base was to be established for early offensive operations.

The mission of the advance elements was phrased as follows: "Advance at once upon landing with delaying force, in accordance with the situation, to the north by all possible means, contact enemy now advancing south from Seoul and delay his advance".   General Dean was to assume command of all U.S. Army Forces in Korea upon his later arrival.

Lt. Colonel Charles B. Smith, Commanding Officer, 1st Battalion, 21^st Infantry Regiment, 24^th Infantry Division, was chosen to provide that delaying action with a quickly assembled, under-strength battalion of about 440 men of which only about 406 would actually be airlanded in Korea that day.   "Task Force Smith", joined by the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion, eventually made their way to Osan where, on the morning of 5 JULY 1950, they became the first Americans to engage the North Koreans.   They soon learned that high explosive artillery rounds would not stop the T34 tanks.   High explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds would stop them, but out of 1200 rounds in their possession, only six were HEAT rounds.   The 2.36 inch rocket launcher, the "bazooka", which was only marginally effective against later German tanks in WWII were also ineffective.   On 6 JULY, a head count revealed that 150 men were dead, wounded, or missing from Smith's unit. In addition five officers and 26 enlisted men were missing from the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion.

Meanwhile, elements of Alfred's Regiment, the 34^th Infantry, commanded by Colonel Jay B. Lovless, arrived at Pusan in the late afternoon of 2 JULY.   The first battalion headed north by rail in the early morning of 4 JULY commanded by Lt. Colonel Harold B. Ayres, an officer with battalion-level combat experience in Italy during WWII.   They were right on the heels of Task Force Smith in spite of their poor state of readiness and were also among the first troops to do combat in the Korean War. It is not known what Alfred's role was at this time. He trained at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey as a teletype mechanic before going to Japan and could therefore have been in headquarters company.

Colonel Lovless took command of the 34^th Infantry Regiment a month or two before the outbreak of the Korean War replacing an officer who had failed to bring the regiment to the desired state of training for combat readiness.   Lovless inherited a situation with poorly trained troops and with officers who were unfit for command.   He hadn't had time to make a significant change when the unit was ordered to Korea.

Consequently, the 34^th Regiment as a whole did not do well in combat.   Nor, for that matter, did the 24th Infantry Division.   Little more could have been expected of them in their poor state of war readiness.   Duty in Japan left them physically soft, unable to bear the heat and humidity of the Korean Peninsula.   They literally dropped like flies from exhaustion.   They had no confidence in their leadership, in their weapons, or in themselves.   Coupled with the lack of leadership and logistics, the 34^th in this condition could not hold the line against the North Koreans.   They often retreated to the mountainous terrain where tanks couldn't follow.   Still they suffered heavy casualties, and individual instances of heroism are noted in Appleby's book, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu.   The Naktong River would later be an important element in the defense of the Pusan Perimeter in early August.

On 6 JULY, Ayres prematurely withdrew his 1st Battalion from its defensive position, infuriating General Dean.   The following day, while under fire, the 3rd Battalion deserted a good defensive position without orders.   When they were turned around by a Major Dunn of the 34^th, they encountered a force of only 30 to 40 North Koreans who opened fire wounding Dunn and another officer.   A skirmish line was formed; but even though they were the superior force, the battalion failed to advance.   Soon, they fell back under orders of another officer leaving mortars and wounded behind.   Major Dunn who was seriously wounded was captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW.   He later described the performance of the men in that incident as "nauseating". Such was the fighting ability of the regiment.

Lovless was replaced on 7 JULY at 1800 hours by a Colonel Martin who was a friend of General Dean since WWII.   Martin was killed the following day, 8 JULY, cut in half by an 85 mm tank round as he prepared to fire an obsolete 2.36 inch rocket launcher or "bazooka" at that North Korean tank. He was replaced on 16 JULY by Colonel Beauchamp.

On 19 JULY, the day that Alfred was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, the 34th came under heavy aerial and artillery bombardment. Communications were disrupted. In the pre-dawn hours of 20 July 1950, the 34th and 19th Regiments again failed to offer serious resistance to the tank-led North Korean advance toward Taejon. Bazooka teams abandoned their positions allowing the tanks to advance. Rifle companies did not stay in place and moved into the hills where tanks could not follow. The North Korean tanks broke through the lines of 1st Battalion near an airfield north of the city. Taejon fell and surviving elements of the 34th retreated down the Kumsan road.

Not more than an hour or so after the 1st Battalion's position was overrun, Beauchamp was wounded when a tank fired its machine gun at his jeep.   He crawled a few hundred yards and located a Combat Engineer Battalion bazooka team armed with the new 3.5 inch rocket launcher.   They destroyed the tank and captured its crew.   This was the first known use of the new bazooka against the T34 tank.   Taejon fell, the 34^th regiment was overrun, but the North Koreans lost 15 tanks in Taejon due to the arrival, however late, of the new anti-tank rocket launcher.

It was unfortunate for the men of the 34^th Regiment as well as for the war effort that this untrained unit was among the first to engage the advancing North Koreans in the early stages of the war.   The 24^th Infantry Division itself was under-manned, poorly trained, ill equipped, poorly led, and not combat ready.   The 34^th Regiment in particular suffered the demoralization of being placed in combat by a derelict, neglectful command which expected fight-to-the-death heroics in an undeclared war.

General Dean, commander of the 24^th Infantry Division, bragged like a corporal on 20 JULY 1950, "I got me a tank" while his division suffered humiliating losses of men and equipment. His North Korean counterpart at the same time could well have been bragging, "I got me a regiment!" Dean spent almost three years of the war as a POW and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in spite of his performance.

In addition to these inadequacies were the problems of logistics and communications.   Field radios didn't have batteries, land mines were unavailable, artillery units lacked rounds that were effective against the Russian-made T34 tanks, WWII bazookas were also ineffective against them.   U.S. artillery units were firing on their own troops, American pilots were strafing American infantrymen and convoys, the Australian Air Force destroyed trains and depots that were to supply the ROK forces. They inflicted heavy casualties on South Korean troops and civilian refugees. Confusion ruled the day because of a lack of coordination and communication between forces.

General MacArthur in his typically arrogant style once stated that the Korean Conflict was "Mars' gift to an old warrior", but it was not a gift to the men for whom he was responsible. MacArthur became desperate in a stalemated conflict to maintain his image as an invincible commander who would accept nothing less than victory. He developed his own plan to conquer China which had entered the war, and he assumed an insubordinate posture toward President Truman who was trying to negotiate an end to the war. Just as Truman usurped the authority to commit combat troops to foreign soil without a congressional declaration of war, the general was taking on Napolean-like ambitions toward Asia in excess of the commander-in-chief's intentions. Truman had no choice but to relieve MacArthur of his command, a decision which brought his presidency to its lowest point of public esteem. MacArthur, like the old soldier of the West Point barracks ballad to which he referred in his farewell speech, just faded away, replaced by Lt. General Mathew B. Ridgway in April 1951.

If you or a family member was awarded a medal or decoration for U.S. Army service but did not receive it or no longer have it, you can request one at the following address:

U.S.Army Reserve Personnel Center
Attn: ARPC-VSE
9700 Page Avenue
St. Louis, MO 6312-5100