The 23rd Infantry offloaded in Pusan with little more than their basic gear. Much of their personal and organizational equipment had been packed into "B" bags aboard ships, deemed nonessential, and set aside. What followed was a scramble—equipment sorted, bags lost, essential items misplaced. Some soldiers lost nearly everything that was not strapped to them. The regiment was moved quickly to assembly at Wondong, and under the supervision of the regimental personnel officer, unnecessary gear was further culled.
Until August 18th, the regiment saw no action but adapted quickly to the terrain and to each other. Convoys became skilled at cross-country movement over Korea’s crumbling roads as they traveled day after day. Crews trained in field maintenance and perimeter security became second nature. The 2d Battalion was among the first to see enemy action near Taegu while providing security for their attached field artillery battalions. They pushed back an entire regiment the next day – it was their only action near around Taegu.
In the last days of the month, the Regimental Commander, having learned that the position of C Company had been penetrated by large enemy forces, ordered that F Company, reinforced by elements of H Company, establish a blocking position on the high ground commanding the road leading from the Naktong River, through Poncho, to Changnyong. This force, commanded by the 2d Battalion executive officer Major Lloyd K. Jenson, established the position, which the 23rd Infantry was to occupy through two weeks of the heaviest fighting in its history to that point.
PONCHO
In the scorched hills near Poncho, where the heat clung to the dust and death came on whispering arcs of steel, the 81mm Mortar Platoon supported this movement with suppressive and harassing fire to disrupt the enemy's maneuver routes. The road itself, sunken between banks and choked with tree cover, offered excellent concealment for the enemy—and a straight shot into the regiment’s exposed flank if lost.
Mortars fired in short, sharp missions to disrupt assembly areas and interdicted reinforcements attempting to push through the defile. In the uneven fight across the hills south of Poncho, Corporal Bobby Ellison worked with his squad to ensure the 81mm tubes bought time for maneuver and made it costly for the enemy to press too far along the 16,000-yard front held by the regiment. The gunners fired through dusk and into night, marking the coordinates that would later echo in citations across the platoon.
Chinese and North Korean artillery swept their firing positions day after day across terrain that offered little shelter—only scrub, jagged ridgelines, and sunbaked trenches. Supplies had to be hand carried over much of the terrain, water quickly became precious, and salt discipline was paramount. The air reeked of smoke and rot, punctuated by the mechanical clunk of mortar tubes and the dry metallic shuffle of ammunition crates.
Among the platoon defending the battalion were gunners Ralph Berry and William Murphy, as well as Eugene Jagneaux, whose tubes echoed alongside Ellison’s. Radiomen Daniel Harris and Leslie Cagle fought their own battles to keep lines open between forward observers and the guns behind them. Though scattered across the battlefield, they worked in tight sequence, their efforts tethered by map grids and radio calls. Mortars arced over the infantry companies ahead, slamming into draws and ridges where enemy forces pressed dangerously close. On several occasions, fire missions were called within 100 yards of friendly lines. Ellison's steadiness under pressure kept the salvos accurate, offering riflemen the margin they needed to hold.
Up to September 7th, the regiment faced constant attacks and attempted their own limited objective attacks each day. In the early hours of the next day, the enemy launched a furious assault with artillery and a self-propelled gun, breaking through F Company lines near the center of the regimental front. Mortar crews fired throughout the chaos to support the hasty maneuver. The following morning, the enemy paused to reorganize.
Another intense attack surged across the perimeter at 0335 two days later against all of the battalion line companies. Mortar fire from H Company’s 81mm platoon was constant, directed in support of every rifle company under pressure. By 1100 hours, the situation was dire—casualties piled up and combat effectiveness was at a meager thirty-eight percent with no reserve. Mortarmen laid shells within ten feet of friendly lines to deter banzai charges from North Koreans. Every available man from Headquarters, clerks to cooks to drivers, was pressed into service to plug gaps in the thinning line. By midday, the attack was broken. Airstrikes and indirect fire had inflicted over 800 enemy casualties by the afternoon.
The attacks calmed after that and the regiment resumed patrolling after the demoralized Korean Army. They persisted from the shadows - after midnight on September 12th, a public address system was heard from enemy lines in front of F Company, broadcasting music and propaganda in English. The 2nd Battalion responded with a mortar barrage from Ellison's platoon.
The mortars of H Company had fired nearly without pause through the worst fighting the regiment had endured up to that point. Their impact could be measured in the bodies on the slopes and the breathing space granted to infantry companies struggling to hold. This was Ellison’s introduction to war—fighting over a road no wider than a lane, for a town barely held, in a campaign that had only just begun.
LOST PATROL
Nearly five months later, after a busy interlude through autumn, the 2d Division was just outside the Twin Tunnels area near Wonju. As the winter months enveloped them, they moved north where the Chinese swept down against the Division at Kunu-ri. While the 9th and 38th Infantry Regiments held off the Chinese until they were battered, the 23d Infantry remained intact and at strength, allowing other units in the area to pass through to safety. They ended near Munsan-ni after a long withdrawal south and caught up on sleep and adequate food. They fought similarly south of Wonju at the beginning of January, to their credit destroying an enemy division, and allowed the 38th Infantry to pull back through their lines.
Beginning January 9th, the 2d Battalion, 23rd Infantry launched an attack near Hill 247. Facing well-dug-in enemy resistance, the hill was captured after a day-long battle but had to be relinquished at night, only to be recaptured repeatedly in a grueling back-and-forth struggle. Each night the battalion withdrew and left behind dummy positions rigged with booby traps and barbed wire. The H Company mortarmen supported each push and withdrawal with precise interdiction fire, targeting vacated ground as the enemy moved to reoccupy it. This effort was coordinated with airstrikes and the fires of two artillery battalions. A major counterattack by the French Battalion and 2d Battalion retook the hill yet again in frigid, -25°F conditions. The enemy’s flanks were collapsing, and hundreds of enemy dead littered the foxholes - many victim to the 81mm mortar fire from rear slopes into the tree-lined enemy trench systems.
After Hill 247, the 23rd Regimental Combat Team was reorganized into a large horseshoe-shaped perimeter of six infantry battalions and supporting elements, tying in with the 38th Infantry and Dutch forces along the Wonju-Mokyedong and Wonju-Chungju roads. On January 28th, a patrol was sent to the Twin Tunnels but encountered no contact. The next day at 0700 hours, not far from the Twin Tunnels near Noean-ni, a patrol of thirty men from C Company had moved out to reconnoiter the area.
They were not heard from until a liaison pilot returned with a report that they were desperately trapped. Colonel Freeman ordered an airstrike and relief from 2d Battalion who were already about ten miles forward of the regimental line. F Company under Captain Tyrell was dispatched to break through, rescue the trapped men, and recover the dead. Master Sergeant John Fultz took a section of the mortar platoon with the company, including Sergeant Ellison’s squad. In less than two hours, the rescue force was ready and moved out at 1515 before the early winter dusk approached.
The convoy came under immediate fire as it advanced north into the area of C Company and it was immediately clear they would have to fight their way to the trapped patrol. Machine guns cracked from the slopes and mortar shells thudded around the vehicles. In the dimming evening gloom, Tyrrell sent his infantrymen up the slopes of Hill 453. He instructed the mortars to 'plaster the hill during the attack, moving the shell bursts up the ridgeline just in front of the advancing platoons.' Within twenty minutes under fire, the section scrambled to dismount and Bobby directed the setup of his 81mm tubes on the icy road. There was no time for calibration—the gunners fired by direct line of sight.
Each round Ellison’s team dropped landed along the ridges and defiles sheltering enemy troops, providing crucial suppression as F Company advanced. Mortar fire struck the hillsides, stalling enemy maneuver just enough to give hope to the beleaguered C Company. From their perspective, after having just received a note dropped by a liaison pilot stating "Friendly column approaching from the south. Will be with you shortly," mortar rounds exploded on the top of Hill 453. The blasts were indeed from the relief column. Ellison’s rounds fell with deadly precision, curving into treelines where flashes of gunfire had appeared seconds earlier.
In half an hour, the Chinese had fled the peak of Hill 453 under the berating mortar and heavy machine gun fire, but it was several hours before the rescue force was able to reach C Company. It was 0245 on January 31st by the time they fought their way to the 1st Battalion unit. The mortars had been quiet for some time as the forward platoons navigated through the darkness through what was later estimated to be two battalions of Chinese.
Later citations would commend multiple members of the 81mm platoon for actions that day—John Fultz, Calvin Mitchell, Lewis Peterson, Raymond Wilson, and again, William Murphy. Together, they delivered precision and violence at a turning point. It was a feat of experience and composure – firing 81mm mortars, each round weighing up to 15 pounds, from tubes that together with their baseplates and bipods weighed 136 pounds. In the dark, under fire, without time for plotting range cards, they fired by direct line of sight, adjusting in real time based on instinct and impact. The mortars struck within feet of friendly positions, their operators balancing raw muscle, speed, and fire discipline to suppress a force twice their number. It was the type of performance only possible from an experienced and entirely unflinching crew.
Beyond the Twin Tunnels battle remained more engagements during Ellison's Korean tour—Chipyong-ni, the May Massacre at the Soyang River—and more throughout his second summer. But Poncho and the extraction of the lost patrol were the two that defined his Korean tour and for which he was decorated. Riflemen were often credited with turning the tide of battle, and rightly so, but battles were not won by them alone. The 81mm mortar platoon was the long arm of the battalion—delivering fire support in darkness, through fog and snow, over ridgelines and tree cover. When ammunition ran low, they still found ways to fire. When the enemy pushed close, they dropped shells with incredible skill within meters of friendly positions. While rifle companies bore the weight of the enemy’s charge, it was heavy weapons and supporting arms like Ellison’s that blunted it, slowed it, and turned it back.