24ID had suffered badly when the CCF first came into the war in September 1950, and had been in the brunt of the fighting almost from the beginning. Their commanding general William F. Dean was captured at Taejon in the Pusan Perimeter.

The CCF Phase Campaign had substantial initial success. Eventually, they would overextend theemselves and face danger of entrapment when General Ridgway sent Eighth Army into a decisive counter attack from which the CCF never recovered until Truman stopped our advancing forces mostly above the 38th Parallel. But, at the beginning, they ran wild yet again. This Chinese photograph in the Beijing Korean War Museum says elements of CCF 40th Army threatened to encircle the US 24th Infantry Division east of Kapyong.