Last weekend, I took a bit of a long trip on the bicycle, going to the site of the U.S. Army’s 4th major delaying action of the North Korean advance in 1950. Today, I took a drive to revisit the site on the anniversary of one of the actual days of the battle.
It was kind of nice having Micha with me, even if she isn’t nearly as interested as I am. At least I got to talk through some of the aspects of the battle with her as we drove through the area. I was able to pinpoint a couple of the American positions by the lay of the land, although I’ll need to do even more research of the battle to be sure. Perhaps by next year’s anniversary, I’ll raid the U.S. Army archives to see what I can find. I found a site that seemed to have the 24th Infantry Divisions account of that time frame, but when I clicked on the files, nothing happened. My next step may be to look up some contacts down at Camp Humphreys. There’s not a historian worth his salt that wouldn’t love to dig into something like this, if only someone would ask.
So today was a nice visit, on the 71st anniversary of the second day of the battle.
After our visit, we turned north to Byeongcheon to eat some of my favorite Korean food. Byeongcheon is famous for sundae, a blood sausage, and their sundae soup is also excellent. And today was a bonus — it was market day in the town, and Byeongcheon’s market is especially interesting. It was quite hot and humid, but I was unbothered by it. And Micha picked up some excellent corn and peaches.
It was a good day.
