CHONGCHON RIVER - KOREA
 

The Marine's story is the one that is most often written about to depict the entrance of the Chinese into the war. The Marines did a great number of things right and therefore, extricated themselves from possible disaster. The 2nd Infantry Division on the other hand were not as fortunate. They were strung along the Chongchon River and was involved in General MacArthur's "home by Christmas" final push that started just after Thanksgiving.
 

The 2nd Infantry Division was unknowingly getting close to disaster when it moved further north in the "end of the war" offensive. The 8th Army at that point had a lot in common with General Custer at Little Big Horn. They did not know what was out there either. It was simply that two great armies faced each other, however, one army did not know the other one was there.
 

The first indication the 2nd Division had that the war was not at an end occurred when Col. Charles C. Slone's 9th Infantry Regiment was severely mauled at a place called "Chinaman's Hat." As a result of that engagement his 3,000 man regiment was reduced to 440 able-bodied men. An infantry regiment has nine rifle companies and three heavy weapons companies. He had at his disposal a total of two companies left to start into the roadblock in the pass.

Therefore, the second division was well under strength when the order was given the division to hold the road junction south of Kunu-ri. This junction had to remain open to allow other 8th Army units to withdraw safely. The pass south of Kunu-ri thereafter, known as the "Kunu-ri Pass" would become the division's worst nightmare.
 

General Laurence B. Kaiser, a WWI and WWII veteran commanded the Second Infantry Division . When the time arrived for Kaiser to withdraw his division he was given the choice of going out the west road to Anju or go south through the Kunu-ri Pass. Earlier other units had gone south without interruption.
 

The 25th Division had been withdrawing on the west road to Anju. General Kaiser did not want to run the risk of catching up with the 25th Division and end up stalled and overtaken by the oncoming Chinese. He was not even sure that the west road was still open. He had received some earlier reports of a minor road block at the Kunu-ri Pass but did not consider it a major problem.
 

Prior to his decision to head south through the pass he never had any current reports as to the extent of the enemy buildup in the pass which was increasing hourly. He also made no attempt to see if the Anju road could be used. Therefore, he elected to start the division south through the pass.
 

Unknown to him a full division of Chinese troops blocked the pass. He ordered the 23rd Infantry Regiment to continue to hold the road junction south of Kunu-ri to prevent the Chinese from catching up to the withdrawing 2nd Division. It was better to risk losing one regiment to save the remainder of the division.
 

However, battles don't always go according to plan. In preparing for a later withdraw Colonel Paul L. Freeman Jr. the 23rd Infantry Commander decided to make a last minute check of the road west to Anju to see if the 25th Infantry Division had cleared it and if the Chinese had not yet closed it.
 

He ordered 2nd Battalion Commander Lt. Col. James Edwards to take a patrol out the west road. He reported back that the 25th Division had cleared it and no Chinese were in evidence. That night, on the 30th of November after dark, Freeman ordered his rifle companies to pull off the ridge lines and start out the west road where vehicles from the 15th Field Artillery Battalion awaited them.
 

A platoon from L Company was to remain at the road block and be picked up by a withdrawing unit. They were never heard from again until after the war. Some survived as POW's. Essentially, the 23rd Infantry Regiment never fired a shot after it started out on the Anju Road. It was an entirely different story for the remainder of the division however.

General S.L.A. Marshall described in his book, "The River and the Gauntlet," in great detail the tragedy in the pass. It was littered with burning vehicles, the dead, the dying and the wounded. In Marshall's final page he wrote: "As to men and guns, the statistics of loss in the gauntlet fight have no place in this narrative, in any case they cannot be stated with precision.
 

At Valley Forge, the birth's struggle of a nation, but 3,000 of 7,000 Continentals died or faded from the force one terrible winter. In round figures, the wasting away of the 2nd Division and its attachments is roughly comparable but it all happened in one day." In a positive note, the 2nd Division held the door open below Kunuri so other units could escape. One can only imagine what fate would have befallen those units had the 2nd Division not done so.

It was just so unfortunate that while the division was holding that door open another one closed behind it. The 2nd Division regrouped and re-equipped in December near Seoul.

On New Year's Eve 1950, a month after the tragedy, the 2nd Infantry Division was back in action when it sent the 3rd Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment back on line north of Hoensong to open up a North Korean road block that had South Korean General Yu Jae Hung's II Corps trapped.