Hill 1010. En route, the tankers met and took aboard 65 Rangers, most of them wounded. They were all who had survived the breakout attempt. It was late afternoon before the tankers returned with the Rangers and Colonel Wilson got his forces in march order for withdrawing down Route 3A through the positions of the 19th Infantry and into an assembly area four miles behind the Delta Line. The 3rd Battalion led the way south, followed by the 555th Field Artillery Battalion, 1st Battalion, 2nd Battalion, and, as rearguard, Company D, 6th Medium Tank Battalion. A few mortar rounds exploded around the 3rd Battalion as it cleared a defile about from the Delta Line. Battalion members assumed that these were registration rounds fired by the 19th Infantry. Actually, they were the opening shots of a large PVA force occupying the ridges along both sides of the road from the defile north for more than . A crescendo of PVA small arms, machine gun, recoilless rifle and mortar fire brought the remainder of Colonel Wilson's column to an abrupt halt and began to take a toll of men, weapons, and vehicles. Hardest hit was the 555th Field Artillery Battalion. Its return fire, including direct fire from its howitzers, silenced the PVA along the west side of the road; but the fire from obviously larger numbers of PVA on the east side grew in volume and kept most of Wilson's column pinned down. Three attacks by forces of the 1st Battalion were broken up, as was an attempt by the 2nd Battalion to deploy. An attack from the south by Company A, 6th Medium Tank Battalion and a company from the 19th Infantry failed at the narrow lower end of the defile at a cost of two tanks and the infantrymen riding them. Searching for a way around the roadblock, rearguard tankers from Company D meanwhile found a track branching west off Route 3A north of the defile and a connecting road leading south to be free of PVA. Moving out under continuing fire, but not pursued by the PVA, Wilson's forces followed the roundabout route and escaped without further losses, reaching the lines of the 19th Infantry shortly after dark. During the night, aircraft and artillery bombarded the weapons, vehicles, and equipment left behind: 7 tanks, five from Company D, 6th Medium Tank Battalion, and two from the 5th Infantry's regimental