With the capture of Taejon, the 24th Division accomplished its mission
in the pursuit. And sweet revenge it was for the Taro Leaf Division to
re-enter this now half-destroyed town where it had suffered a disastrous
defeat nine weeks earlier. Fittingly enough, it was the 19th Infantry Regiment
and engineers of the 3d Engineer Combat Battalion, among the last to leave
the burning city on that earlier occasion, who led the way back in. But
there was bitterness too, for within the city American troops soon discovered
that the North Koreans had perpetrated there one of the greatest mass killings
of the entire Korean War. American soldiers were among the victims.
While this is not the place to tell in detail the story of the North
Korean atrocities perpetrated on South Korean civilians and soldiers and
some captured American soldiers, an account of the breakout and pursuit
would not be complete without at least a brief description of the grisly
evidence that came to light at that time. Everywhere the advancing columns
found evidence of atrocities as the North Koreans hurried to liquidate
political and military prisoners held in jails before they themselves retreated
in the face of the U.N. advance. At Sach'on the North Koreans burned the
jail, causing some 280 South Korean police, government officials, and landowners
held in it to perish. At Anui, at Mokp'o, at Kongju, at Hamyang, at Chonju,
mass burial trenches containing the bodies of hundreds of victims, including
some women and children, were found, and near the Taejon airstrip the bodies
of about 500 ROK soldiers, hands tied behind backs, lay in evidence of
mass killing and burial.
Between 28 September and 4 October a frightful series of killings and
burials were uncovered in and around the city. Several thousand South Korean
civilians, estimated to number between 5,000 and 7,000, 17 ROK Army soldiers,
and at least 40 American soldiers had been killed. After Taejon fell to
the North Koreans on 20 July civilian prisoners had been packed into the
Taejon city jail and still others into the Catholic Mission. Beginning
on 23 September, after the first U.S. troops had crossed the Naktong, the
North Koreans began executing these people. They were taken out in groups
of 100 and 200, bound to each other and hands tied
behind them, led to previously dug trenches, and shot. By 26 September
American forces had approached so close to Taejon that the N.K. Security
Police knew they had to hurry. The executions were speeded up and the last
of them took place just before the city fell.
Of the thousands of victims only six survived-two American soldiers,
one ROK soldier, and three South Korean civilians. Wounded and feigning
death, they had been buried alive. The two wounded Americans had only a
thin layer of loose soil over them, enabling them to breathe sufficiently
to stay alive until they could punch holes to the surface, one of them
with a lead pencil. Still wired to their dead comrades beneath the soil
and partially buried themselves, they were rescued when the city fell to
the 24th Division. Hundreds of American soldiers, including General Milburn,
the I Corps commander, and General Church, the 24th Division commander,
saw these ghastly burial trenches and the pathetic bodies of the victims.
[37]
South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, Roy E. Appleman, pp587-588
|
