surge of infantrymen. The US support units pulled out all weapons and equipment but came under fire as they moved east on their narrow access road to join the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion. Hampered further by ROK troops, trucks and equipment cluttering and finally blocking the poor road, Company C, 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion, and the 2nd Rocket Field Artillery Battery reached the 92nd with none of their principal weapons, the 987th Armored Field Artillery Battalion with about half its equipment. Having lost radio and wire communications with his regimental commanders soon after the panic began, General Chang was hard pressed to regain control of his forces, even when they outdistanced the PVA pursuit after midnight. Traveling rear areas throughout the night, Chang and his staff established a degree of order near dawn, collecting about 2500 members of his three regiments some south of the division's original front. To the same depth, the ROK rout had peeled open the flanks of the 24th Division to the west and 1st Marine Division to the east. At the first indication of the ROK retreat, the 1st Marine Division commander, General Smith, had begun to shore up his left flank, drawing a battalion from the 1st Marines in reserve near Chuncheon and sending it out the valley road from Chich’on-ni to establish defenses tied in with the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion. En route aboard trucks before midnight, the 1st Battalion struggled west against a current of retreating South Koreans and scarcely managed to establish a position before dawn. Operating in a zone coinciding with the eastern third of the ROK 6th Division sector and the western edge of the Marine sector, the 40th Army of the XIII Army Group was well situated to exploit the exposed Marine flank. The 120th Division at the army's left, in particular, had virtually the entire night to move deep into the vacated ROK sector and sweep behind the Marine front. But, either unaware of the opportunity to envelop the Marines or, more likely, unable to change course rapidly, the 120th attempted only local frontal assaults on the 7th Marines west of Hwacheon town, none of which penetrated or forced a withdrawal. Farther east, forces of the 115th Division, 39th Army, penetrated the 1st Korean Marine Corps Regiment above the Hwacheon Dam and slashed southwestward to occupy heights commanding the town of Hwacheon in the 5th