About noon, Second Lieutenant Sweet’s 3d Platoon joined the 2d and added its firepower to the fusillade. Another T-34 was knocked out when Sweet’s men blasted a thicket suspected of concealing an antitank gun. A fifth North Korean tank went out of action when it was abandoned by its crew on the left side of the road.
In the afternoon of 3 September, enemy resistance across 1/5’s front weakened proportionately as it grew stronger in the 2d Battalion zone. Newton launched his attack on Objective Two at 1510, after MAG-33 and 1/11 had softened up the North Korean positions.[341]
Company B drove down the ridgeline paralleling the MSR and in little more than an hour had seized its part of the objective, a peak directly across the road from Hill 117. During the 1,000-yard advance, Fenton reported another large group of enemy fleeing to 2/5’s zone. The information was quickly relayed to Roise, who had ample reason by this time to curse the fortunes of war.
In Company A’s zone, Stevens and his platoon leaders worked out a classic scheme of maneuver for seizing Hill 91, their part of the battalion objective. McMullen’s 1st Platoon and the company machineguns were to remain in position as the base of fire, while Muetzel’s 2d Platoon feinted across the 200-yard valley to the front. Fox’s 3d Platoon, earmarked for the main effort, would then circle to the south and flank the enemy’s right.
[Illustration: 2nd NAKTONG COUNTEROFFENSIVE]
Muetzel’s unit jumped off with Company B at 1510, crossed the low ground, and ascended a draw leading to Hill 91. The Marines miscalculated, however, and climbed too far up the slope, so that they came within grenade range of the crest and were pinned down by machinegun fire. The platoon was split, with Muetzel and two squads on the left of the draw and Corporal Raymond E. Stephens and his squad on the right.
During the preparatory artillery barrage, Fox had led his platoon around to the enemy’s right Hank, concealed en route by a rice-paddy bank. Not knowing when the supporting fire would lift, he withheld his squads from an assault line by a wide safety margin. Thus when the artillery ceased, the North Koreans had time to come out of their holes and hit the envelopment with small arms fire. Fox was wounded, and command passed to Technical Sergeant George W. Bolkow who worked the platoon up into the enemy positions.