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
