Part Four: Aftermath

July 21, 2020 - It is another warm July day in Daejeon. The sound of apartment building construction is omnipresent in my area of the city.  Down below, people go about their daily business, wearing their masks even though the warnings about the latest COVID outbreak in the city have ramped down. An unspectacular Tuesday in the middle of the country during an average Korean summer (halfway through a very notable year).

Seventy years ago, on July 21, 1950, it was a far different scene.  Daejeon (then spelled Taejeon) was in ruins, smoldering after two days of intense urban fighting between the North Korean army and the United States' 24th Division.  Buildings and trees were flattened; streets were strewn with debris.

Beginning at 6 p.m. on July 20th, the 24th Division sounded general retreat and got out as best they could, fighting their way out via the escape route to the southeast.  The division had been mauled over the course of two weeks since the initial Battle of Osan on July 5th, and had suffered 3,600 casualties (about a third of its strength).  Roughly one third of that number were lost in Daejeon.  The casualties for the North Koreans are unknown, but have been calculated by some as roughly equal to this, with the additional loss of armor (again, mainly in the Daejeon battle).

This image of the ruins of Daejeon (taken on Sept. 30, 1950, after the city was liberated)
is part of a set of photos located in the Boston Globe.  With some effort,
you could try to align the mountains in the background with the modern landscape,
and pinpoint the area where the picture was taken.

The surviving elements of the 24th Division linked up with other American forces (who had arrived from Japan), went into reserve and rested, were reformed, and then fought on at the Busan perimeter.  For its delaying actions in and around the city, the soldiers of the 24th Infantry Division were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation.  Daejeon would represent, in some ways, the high water mark for the North Koreans, who by the end of the same year, would be pushed all the way back to their northern border with China.

General William F. Dean, who had joined tank-hunter teams in the city, and had helped wounded soldiers on the way out, was just beginning his odyssey.  He was thrown from his jeep during a crash as he tried to leave, and became separated from his unit.  On foot, for the next 30 days, Dean hiked his way laboriously, with a broken shoulder, through the Korean landscape, attempting to get to Daegu.  He was captured on August 25th, having made it 35 miles south of Daejeon, and transferred to a North Korean prisoner camp for the remainder of the war.  His memoir details out his eventual capture, wrestled to the ground by an informant, as he tries to draw his pistol to engage his pursuers, truly Herculean in his efforts not to get captured.

William F. Dean colorized coin
(available on ebay!)

He was the highest-ranking officer to ever be made a prisoner by the North Koreans, and survived interrogations, but received relatively humane treatment after his identity was revealed, and the U.S. Army was aware of his being captured (until late in 1951, it was assumed he had been killed during the battle).  He was released on Sept. 4, 1953, and returned to a quiet life in San Francisco after a ticker-tape parade through New York City.

If ever a person's life was worthy of a movie, I think of General Dean, and am as impressed with his tale of survival after the battle (especially as I have come to know the steep hills and plunging valleys of the Korean hiking world), as with his battle exploits within the city.

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Daejeon the city spent two months under North Korean control before it was recaptured on September 28, 1950, shortly after the Incheon landings.  As the 24th Infantry Division once more entered the city, there was a report of yet another massacre, as the North Koreans executed 60 Americans in a prison area and a large number of South Koreans (civilians and soldiers) before retreating north.

Daejeon has only a few monuments to remind the casual resident of what took place 70 years ago, and has grown much since 1950, expanding outward, to the north toward the Guem River, and to the west toward Gyeryongsan Mountain.  But I can't help but notice, as I wander around, that there is a "newness" to the city, and that it is very difficult to find any significant clusters of old buildings (pre-1950), which makes me appreciate the fact of having to build a city anew from the rubble of war.  Those that survived, like the Japanese-constructed stone bank building in the market area, and the Dongchundang House, on the eastern fringes of the city, stick out like sore thumbs among the recently-constructed concrete apartment buildings and shops.

Mysterious photo of "victory parade" through Daejeon
(posted by a Korean pinterest user)

The same seems to apply to foliage, as one does not see many "older" trees in and about the city, and I wonder as I perambulate the mountains at the imprint of foxholes on the ridgelines and deep in the forest.  Are these left over from the battle long ago, or are they more recent additions from South Korean army training exercises?

One of the greatest mysteries is what happened to Daejeon during that two months it was occupied, and who was left in the city?  I understand that many of the residents had fled either before or during the battle to safer areas.  Did the North Koreans attempt to set up any sort of administration or did they kidnap people and bring them north?  I have found little to nothing about this, although the record of the massacre the week before the city was recaptured point toward bleak answers.  I have also found a fascinating YouTube video of a North Korean tour guide leading people through a "Battle of Taejon" display located in the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Memorial.  For them, it one of their greatest victories of the war.  Be warned: the uniformed guide uses North Korean facts and statistics.

There are a few clues that do give an idea about the city at that time.  There is one unsubstantiated grainy photo of a "victory parade" through the city, mainly tanks and motorcycles driving past blasted buildings, and if it is an actual photograph, there is no one standing about to cheer them on.  There is also the unsettling report of the massacre in the prison, which indicates that the North Koreans did keep prisoners in town.  Finally, there are many photos of the famous "William F. Dean" tank, with graffiti spray-painted on it.  These were taken after the city was recaptured, which indicates that the North Koreans never bothered to retrieve or repair it, which indicates a level of inactivity in the city.  My educated guess is that the bulk of the North Korean forces headed toward the Busan perimeter, and that only the smallest of garrisons was kept in the city.  But it would be interesting to find out more information about this someday.

One of many images of the tank that Dean
helped to blow up with the graffiti on the side
of the turret.  More of them are located at this blog page.

There are other stories that remain.  I have read that the William F. Dean tank remained in the city, at some intersection in town (perhaps as a kind of monument in the midst of a roundabout), until the 1990's, when it was towed away for scrap.  This fascinates me, although I have yet to see any photographic proof of it, and I would think that somebody, somewhere in the city, would have a picture of that.  I also have heard rumors that a group of North Koreans held out in the Bumonsan Mountain area, and were killed, and buried there, but I have found no concrete evidence of that either.

Stories come and go of the battle long ago, and Daejeon moves on to the future.

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Yesterday, on July 20th, I rode the subway out to the City Hall area to note some specifics at the Battle of Daejeon Memorial.  The rain had let up, and I was done with my work for the day.

I looked carefully at the list of 818 names that had been etched in the stone at the corner of Boramae Park, and took some notes.  The men who fought in the city had come from 46 states (Alaska, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming the only exceptions).  Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands were listed as well as three names under "Etc."  Pennsylvania seemed to have lost the most in the turmoil, as 73 names were listed under that state's name.  I thought about the crushing news reaching the families in each of those states, about the awful horror those men had experienced in the city, and how different things were now; how modern, peaceful and "normal" it all was.

Names on Stone

I looked at my phone and gasped as I noticed the time.  It was 6 p.m., the exact hour that final retreat had been called out of the city.  Here I was, the lone foreigner, 70 years later, standing before the monument at the final hour of the final day of battle.  I had to sit and compose myself a bit on one of the nearby benches, as a flood of emotions overwhelmed me.

I looked up and observed the scene around me.  A little girl, in bright pink pants, was chasing a pigeon, as her father and mother laughed, and took pictures of her.  A teenage boy had let his Pomeranian loose, and it bounded onto the roped-off grass, freed from its leash.  Business people, obviously relieved to be done with their work day, strolled along the dirt path, looking at their phones, and laughing and joking with each other, over the thrum of rush hour traffic in the distance.

I felt curiously part of everything, and yet alone.  Who was I to care for these men, and these events, which I had no real part in, and no family connection to?  A stranger who only by chance had moved into Daejeon in 2014.  

I couldn't quite will myself to leave, and so I sat a few more minutes.

I turned to look at the monument and suddenly noticed an older man, well-dressed, also off work, carrying a small umbrella, with his arms folded behind his back.  He was quietly reading the words on the front stone of the monument, reviewing the synopsis of the Battle of Daejeon.  He looked up, observed the other stones of the memorial, and then turned toward me, and started to walk away.  For the briefest moments, we glanced at each other, and I could sense a sort of sadness on his part, or perhaps just the wisdom of something he had forgotten and now remembered.

Another person, thankfully, had borne witness.

And with that, I was free to go.

Battle of Daejeon Memorial at Boramae Park

Part Three: The Faces of Battle

July 19, 1950 - Fighting battles within an urban environment is a decidedly difficult task within the already-chaotic tumult of war.  Soldiers must engage each other building to building, often fighting hand-to-hand.  Snipers are everywhere, and vehicles, usually the masters of the battlefield, are hemmed in and easy targets as they try to navigate clogged streets.

The Battle of Daejeon was no different, with the added discomfort of fighting during the middle of a particularly hot summer.  By July 19th, the North Korean forces had reached the outskirts of the city, and were coming in from all sides to engage with the American forces.

Time Magazine cover (Dec. 7, 1953)

Major General William F. Dean related his view of events to biographer William L. Worden during this period in his appropriately titled General Dean's Story (1954) which is available in its entirety via the 24th Infantry Division Association website.  In the chapter about Daejeon fittingly entitled "Men Against Tanks," Dean related:

On the night of July 19 I went to sleep to the sound of gunfire; and in the morning more gunfire knit a ragged and shrinking border around the city.  I am no longer a young man, and so I awoke very early, although I had been short of sleep for almost a month.  I heard the sound of the sporadic firing and inhaled the odors which no one ever escapes in Korea, of rice-paddy muck and mud walls, fertilizer and filth, and, mixed with them now, the acrid after-odor of cordite from the artillery, indefinable odors of thatch-roofed houses slowly burning.

General Dean is by far one of the most visible faces of the battle, the totemic reference point for the heroic stand by the soldiers of the 24th Infantry Division.  This is championed by the quiet presence of his statue on the slopes of Bomunsan Mountain in Daejeon, standing tall with a bazooka clamped to his shoulder.  It should be left to him to tell the story of that encounter with a tank, which he does later in that same chapter:

The bazooka man and I, moving very cautiously, entered a plastered room, about seven by eight feet.  I think Clarke was in the next room, and others behind us.  Quietly I slipped up beside the street window and looked around the side of it with one eye - directly into the muzzle of the tank's cannon, no more than a dozen feet away.  I could have spat down the barrel.  I signaled  to the bazooka man, who crept up beside me.  Then I pointed to spot just at the base of the cannon, where the turret and body of the tank joined.  The bazooka went off beside my ear.  Plaster cascaded from the ceiling onto our heads and around our shoulders.  Fumes from the blast filled the room, and concussion shook the whole building.  From the tank came the most horrible screaming I'd ever heard (although I did hear its equal later and under different circumstances), but the tank still was not on fire.  I didn't think I"m normally a brutal man, but I had just one idea.  I think I said "Hit them again!" and pointed to a spot on the other side of the turret.  The bazooka fired and more plaster cascaded, exposing the corn stalks to which most Korean plaster is stuck.  A third time the bazooka fired, and the screaming finally stopped.  Smoke rose from the tank.  It was very quiet in the street.

"The Fall of Taejon" (map from John Toland's
In Mortal Combat Korea, 1950-1953)

The memoir is quite interesting for this sense of sensory detail that Dean is able to provoke time and again, the bits and pieces of the Korean countryside, the plastered walls, and the awful sounds of battle, even in the midst of combat.

It also, in these details, depicts a rural, farming-based South Korea far different from the mechanized, technological landscape we have today.

Usually, Dean is lionized for his bravery under combat, and for staying inside the city even during the waning hours of the battle, directing fighting, and helping with wounded.  Like a commander of a sinking vessel, Dean chose only to leave during the final hours when he called for a retreat out of the city late on July 20th.

There are, however, some voices that question his leadership.  British Historian Max Hastings in his book The Korean War referred to him as "a big man of fifty-one with a reputation as something of a martinet," and in a 1985 interview with General John Michaelis (who commanded the 27th Infantry Regiment at the Busan perimeter) captured a feeling among some soldiers that "There was a sense of hysteria.  Nobody seemed to want to go and kick somebody in the butt. I never knew what Dean thought he was doing, as a divisional commander, to grab a bazooka and go off hunting tanks."

But in the end, Dean did seem to capture a sense of heroism that was sorely needed at this point in the Korean War, when the North Koreans were steadily driving south, and it looked like the Korean peninsula would be quickly overrun.  The tough stand had to begin somewhere, and in this instance, it began in the streets of Daejeon.

Statue titled Railway Workers: The Unsung Heroes
located in back of Daejeon Station

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But what of other faces of the Battle of Daejeon?

This is a most difficult task, even more so than finding the places of the battle, as we are reaching the end point of available first-hand witnesses to the battle.  The majority of these are the American soldiers, South Korean advisors, or civilian-residents, refugees from Daejeon who most likely retreated to safer quarters in the southeastern section of the peninsula.  The vast majority of these witnesses are in their 90's at this point in history.  And so we have to rely mainly on written sources and research.

Searching through the internet, one can find a face here or there of the ordinary soldier, who survived the battle.  One particularly intriguing story is of Lou Repko, a jeep driver who shipped over with the 24th Infantry Division from Japan, bore the brunt of the fighting in July, and whose likeness came to adorn the cover of LIFE magazine from the end of that month.  More than 50 years later, his picture was taken again holding the magazine, and he related in the online story on the website "Don Moore's War Tales" (which has over 900 stories) on how others in the photo weren't as lucky.  Such are the vicissitudes of battle.

Lou Repko and his LIFE magazine cover
from the Battle of Daejeon

Another storehouse of video accounts can be found at MyWarHistory YouTube page, including a first-hand account of infantrymen fighting T-34 tanks in Korea, relayed by Carl Cossin, who warned others to stay away from the blast of the bazooka, and to aim for the bogey wheel at the front of the treads.

There were only scattered units from the South Korean army, mainly soldiers and advisors helping out the American units (one of whom can be seen in the Repko photo) but the Korean railway played a major role in the battle, since Daejeon was and still is a major rail hub.

There is a very prominent statue of three railwaymen in the square behind Daejeon Train Station, and a plaque details out how 19,000 railwaymen participated in the larger conflict, risking their lives transporting military personnel and equipment.

Railway workers suffered the third highest casualty rate in the Korean War behind soldiers and policemen.  In one quiet corner of the National Cemetery in Daejeon, there are numerous displays in an air-conditioned railway car, as well as a video of railwaymen's exploits.

A plaque under the statue in Daejeon explains who the three men are:

The statue depicts three railroad workers that voluntarily put their lives on the mission to rescue US Army Major General William F. Dean, whom was missing from the Battle of Daejeon.  At the center is the Chief Engineer Kim Jae-hyun, who blows the steam whistle; on the left is Assistant Engineer Hwang Nam-ho holding a "train pass" - which was used as a permit for trains to enter a train station; and the right is Assistant Engineer Hyun Jae-young holding a shovel, which was used for shoveling coal for the engine.

Many of these names of these less famous men are lost to history, and it is interesting how everyone seems to fly around the orbit of the famous General Dean (Repko's story mentions Dean's actions during the battle as well).  The bazooka general was that omnipresent at the moment.

There is also, finally, the issue of the North Koreans.  They are often treated, in the historical accounts of the battle, as a unified mass, threatening and overwhelming all units on their way south to Busan, prone to massacre and savagery.

T-34/85 tanks - the mainstay of the North Korean
forces and a frightening presence
in the early stages of the war.

This image is perhaps bolstered by the myriad stories of the frightening North Korean bogeyman, the metal face of the "personage-monster," technically known as the T34/85 tank, the 27-ton mainstay of the North Korean invasion force.  The North Koreans had been gifted these from the Soviet Union (this tank was one of the main battle tanks for the Soviets in World War 2) and the DPRK invaded South Korea with 120 of them; at least 50 took part in the Battle of Daejeon.  Stories of the battles of June and July 1950 are rife with descriptions of obsolete bazooka rockets and howitzer artillery shells bouncing off the armor, allowing the North Koreans to roll south with relative ease.  In the urban setting of Daejeon, the buildings and access points of battle were able to negate this to some extent, as the story by Dean above has shown.  Around 20 of them were destroyed or disabled during the battle. 

The T34/85 maintained its dominance until the stalemate at the Pusan perimeter when it began to face some of the heavier tanks that had finally been shipped over by the Americans from Japan, such as the Pershing tank, and other allied heavy tanks, such as the British Centurion.

Unfortunately, there is little information available to us regarding individual leaders and combatants under the haze of North Korean censorship and propaganda. Lee Kwon-mu was one of the main commanders of the North Koreans during the drive south, and a very short Wikipedia page lists out his biography as well as his post-war accomplishments which turn out to be relatively few, as he all but disappeared from public life after a purge in the late 1950's by Kim Il-sung.  Perhaps sometime in the future, these stories from "the other side" will come more into light.

The Battle of Daejeon is coming to a climactic close.  What can we glean from the aftermath of this tumultuous chapter of the Korean War?