60 Years Ago: Task Force Kingston

Task Force Kingston

By COL (ret.) John Collins

Task Force Kingston, a reinforced platoon of K Company, 32d Infantry, 7th Infantry Division, crossed cruel North Korean terrain and braved brutal winter weather en route to the Yalu River in November 1950. The Task Force Commander was 2d Lt Bob Kingston, my best friend for 50 years, whose bobtailed rifle platoon of 20 Americans comprised the nucleus. Attachments eventually included a few additional U.S. infantrymen; two tanks; three Jeep-mounted machine guns; three quad 50s and four twin 40 antiaircraft guns on half tracks; heavy mortars; an engineer platoon; an artillery forward observer; a tactical air controller; and a bulldozer to help clear road blocks. Task Force Kingston maxed out at 111 men, including one major, three captains, and five first lieutenants, with a cherubic 22-year-old shavetail in charge.

The 32d Infantry Regiment had only one relevant map, because its fast offensives after landing at Inchon had outrun available supplies. Bob’s pick-up team therefore left for the Yalu on 22 November, guided only by one hand-drawn strip map, which unfortunately covered only the first 10 of 32 miles. Calls for tactical air support were tricky, because Bob’s map lacked coordinates, so the best he could do was tell carrier-based Marine Corsair pilots, “The bad guys are in rock piles 500 meters beyond my point man on the road and 50 meters to his right. Go get ’em.” Mortarmen and artillery relied on Kentucky windage.

Enemy infested vertical cliffs flanked the narrow route on one side and dropped off abruptly on the other, which made cross-country movement infeasible. Even unopposed progress was slow, because drivers struggled to keep from sliding off the slippery, snow-covered road into a gulch. Temperatures that averaged more than twenty degrees below zero chilled men, threatened to immobilize transports, and made many crew-served weapons malfunction – – crystallized mortar base plates cracked and artillery shells often failed to detonate. Snow crackled under foot. Whoever coined the term “Frozen Chosin” scored a bullseye.

Task Force Kingston reached the Yalu gorge on 28 November 1950, after taking heavy casualties. All hands wanted to pee in the river, but feared they’d frost family jewels. They watched Chinese Communist cavalry festooned with ammunition belts trot south across the rock solid Yalu on little long-haired Mongolian ponies, followed by light armor – – the vanguard, they later learned, of more than a million men that Chairman Mao called “volunteers.” Vastly outnumbered and soon surrounded, Bob and his men slipped through enemy lines, rejoined their parent battalion, then fought their way southeast to safety at the far distant port of Hamhung, where defeated U.S. forces conducted an amphibious departure.

Please see Task Force Kingston by Martin Blumenson in Army Magazine for much more.