OSAN, South Korea — Hastily deployed early in the Korean War, the untested soldiers of Task Force Smith believed they were going to evacuate U.S. Embassy staff and other Americans.
Instead, they faced the brunt of North Korea's invasion force.
"Holy smokes! What have I got myself into?" U.S. Army platoon leader Philip Day remembers thinking on July 5, 1950, when he saw the fearsome Soviet-made T-34 tanks of the North Korean military roll southward, trailed by trucks loaded with infantry.
Day, 74, of Columbus, Ga., and two other members of Task Force Smith, the first U.S. ground force to confront the more numerous, better-armed communist invaders, were honored at a ceremony Wednesday on the hillside where they first fought.
Sweating in the summer sun, war veterans laid flowers at a monument to fallen fighters as U.S. Air Force jets from nearby Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, streaked overhead. An officer played taps and American soldiers saluted.
The battle 50 years ago killed 30 percent of Task Force Smith's 540 members, and was a sharp reminder of the U.S. military's ill-preparedness after five years of post-World War II downsizing. The Korean War ended after three years without a peace treaty.
The lesson was one that Washington never forgot on the divided peninsula, where 37,000 U.S. soldiers play a key role in the standoff between the Koreas. Washington and Seoul say there are no plans to withdraw the troops despite a first-ever summit last month between leaders of the Koreas.
In a conciliatory gesture matched by the North, South Korea scaled back commemorations of the anniversary of the June 25, 1950, start of the Korean War.
At the Osan ceremony, the speakers did not mention the North Korean threat as they might have done in more acrimonious times. But the old animosity was evident on a monument plaque honoring the Task Force Smith soldiers that referred to North Korea's "vicious troops."
Wayne Leach of Oklahoma City was an 18-year-old Army mechanic in the U.S. occupation force in Japan when he got the call to go to Korea, a place he knew little about.
Leach and others in the force named after Lt. Col. Charles "Brad" Smith dug foxholes around a main road north of Osan and watched in the rain as 33 North Korean tanks and thousands of troops bore down on them. Their bazooka rounds bounced off the tanks and they were soon forced to flee.
"It was all just stragglers. We had no organization left," Leach said. "We had never been trained for withdrawal."
The American force retreated after about seven hours, a span that some U.S. veterans say gave their commanders crucial time to get reinforcements to South Korea in time to build a defensive line at the Naktong River west of Pusan.
The tide of the war shifted in September when Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed troops at Inchon port in a daring amphibious maneuver that undercut North Korean advances. Fortunes changed again when Chinese forces entered the war in late 1950 and drove back U.S.-led United Nations troops.
It was Day's first trip to Korea since the war, and he was startled by the rows of apartment blocks and commercial bustle that long ago replaced the ruin of war. He ruled out another invasion.
"I don't think the North could do it again. They'd get caught up in the traffic."