By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent

SEOUL, South Korea — Trapped by two Chinese divisions, troops of the 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment were left to die in far northern Korea, abandoned by the U.S. command in a Korean War episode viewed as one of the most troubling in American military history.

Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.

North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter the north to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. government has refused to work with North Korea to recover the men of Unsan and others among more than 8,000 U.S. missing in action from the 1950-53 war.

Now, under pressure from MIA family groups, the Obama administration is said to be moving slowly to reverse the Bush administration’s suspension of the joint recovery program, a step taken in 2005 as the North Korean nuclear crisis dragged on.

“If I had a direct line in to the president, I would say, ‘Please reinstitute this program. There are families that need closure,”’ said Ruth Davis, 61, of Palestine, Texas, whose uncle, Sgt. 1st Class Benny Don Rogers, has been listed as MIA since Chinese attackers overran his company — I Company, 8th Cavalry — at Unsan in late 1950.

In this Oct. 24, 1950 file photo, newly landed U.S. paratroopers greet First Cavalry Division tank crewmen at Sukchon, North Korea, during the Korean War. Just a week later, the division's 8th Cavalry Regiment was caught in a trap by two Chinese divisions at Unsan, suffering heavy casualties. The U.S. command had abandoned efforts to rescue the regiment. Some 260 Unsan soldiers remain listed as missing in action. Washington is evaluating whether to work again with North Korea to recover such remains.


It was one of Rogers’ I Company comrades, Pfc. Philip W. Ackley of Hillsboro, New Hampshire, whose identifying dog tag appeared in a photo the North Koreans handed over at Korea’s Panmunjom truce village in January of this 60th year since the war started. The North Koreans also delivered photos of remains, a stark reminder that Unsan’s dead still wait to come home.

The U.S. “has developed the humanitarian issue into a political problem,” complained a North Korean statement urging resumption of the MIA search project, which earned hard currency for the Pyongyang government.

The devastating losses at Unsan, in early November 1950, came as China intervened to fend off a final North Korean defeat. In a last letter home, dated Oct. 30, Rogers told his parents, “It is a lot better over here, but it’s not over yet.”

The U.S. command had ignored intelligence reports that China’s army was moving south, and Rogers and the 8th Cavalry had been sent too far north, just 80 kilometers (50 miles) from China, where they stumbled into a closing enemy vise.

Higher headquarters rejected requests for a pullback, then refused to send artillery forward to support a rescue effort. Finally, it ordered the rescue force withdrawn.

Two of the 8th Cavalry’s three battalions managed to escape, with heavy losses. But only small bands from the five companies of the doomed 3rd Battalion made it out as waves of Chinese infantry attacked their 200-meter-wide (200-yard-wide) defense perimeter.

The 8th Cavalry’s abandonment at Unsan became an infamous chapter in Army annals — “one of the most shameful and little-known incidents in U.S. military history,” wrote Korean War historian Jack J. Gifford.

Some 600 of the 3rd Battalion’s 800 men were lost, about half believed killed and half captured, many of whom died in Chinese-run prison camps.

The U.S. and North Korea established the MIA search in 1996 after lengthy negotiations. Over nine years, working across North Korea, the joint teams recovered 229 sets of remains believed to be those of Americans, including 14 subsequently identified as 3rd Battalion men.

This undated photo provided Wednesday, July 14, 2010 by the U.S. Defense Dept. shows Pfc. Philip W. Ackley's Korean War dog tag. The tag, which was found in North Korea's Unsan battlefield area where Ackley is believed to have been lost, was handed over to the U.S. by North Korean at the Panmunjom truce village in January, 2010.

But an estimated 260 U.S. dead are still unaccounted for at Unsan, among almost 4,600 U.S. MIAs in North Korea.
 

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