2 October under the code name Touchdown, General Young assigned the following objectives to his regiments. The 9th Infantry Regiment would advance on the western side of the Mundung-ni Valley and seize Hills 867, 1005, 980 and 1040. To the 23rd went the task of securing Hill 931 and the ridge line running west of that peak. In addition, the 23rd Infantry Regiment would be ready to attack Hill 728 or to help the 38th Infantry Regiment capture it, as the case might be, and to take Hill 520, west of Hill 851. The 38th would secure Hill 485 and then provide infantry support to the 72nd Tank Battalion. Target date for Touchdown was 5 October. The preparations for Touchdown required a period of tremendous activity on the part of the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion and its commander, Lt. Col. Robert W. Love. The road along the Mundung-ni Valley was a rough track unsuitable for the medium M4A3E8 Sherman tanks of the 72nd Tank Battalion and to get it quickly into condition to carry the Shermans was a herculean task, but Love and his men were willing to try if they had adequate fire cover while they worked. Craters dotted the track and the KPA had planted mines along the way. At one point they had heaped large rocks high and sprinkled the pile with hand grenades, each with its pin pulled. The 2nd Engineers put 110 pounds of explosives around this roadblock and detonated the grenades when the explosives went off. Rock from neighboring cliff walls was blasted to provide fill for the craters. Working with shovels because their bulldozers were undergoing repair and would, in any case, have drawn artillery fire from the KPA on the heights further up the valley, the engineers fashioned a usable road. To take care of the mines along the trail, they placed chain blocks of tetryl at intervals on the sides of the track and then set them off. The explosions detonated the mines nearby. When the craters and mines were too dense, the engineers shifted the road to the stream bed, which had not been mined, and cleared the boulders blocking the way. Bit by bit they advanced northward up the valley. While the engineers prepared the path for the tank attack, the 2nd Division regiments received replacements to bring their battalions up to full strength and built up their supplies