It was a battle fought for possession of an unimpressive crossroads village less than a mile in length, a few blocks wide, and already reduced to rubble by previous combat actions in the ebb and flow of a savage war. Yet here, at Chipyong-ni (ni means ‘village in Korean) in February 1951, the U.S. Army’s 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division fought the Red Chinese to the death. And I, for one, will never forget it.
Just a few weeks after the disastrous defeat and winter retreat of United Nations forces in North Korea in late November 1950, General Matthew B. Ridgway had issued new orders to patrol aggressively, to seek, fix and kill, as initial steps of Operation Thunderbolt, a forthcoming U.N. attack northward. On January 29, 1951, a motorized patrol from my own 23rd Infantry had been ambushed, bloodied, and finally rescued after uncovering a major outpost line of the Chinese 125th Division at the Twin Tunnels, just three miles southeast of strategic Chipyong-ni. There, the Seoul-Chipyong-Wonju railroad was tunneled under two ridgelines before continuing south and east to Wonju, and Twin Tunnels became a designation on military maps.
