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

---

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?