1st Cavalry Division and on its main supply road. Responding to the threat, the Eighth Army ordered the US 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division to block the advance. After arriving in Korea, the regiment went to the Uisong area, north of Taegu. On July 13, it moved from there to Andong to support ROK troops, but before it entered action in the fight in that city, it suddenly received orders to move to Sangju to assist the 25th Infantry Division's other two regiments in that battle. En route, it received still other orders to change its destination to Hwanggan, and it closed there in an assembly area on the night of July 22–23. The 27th Infantry's mission at Hwanggan was to relieve the exhausted and decimated ROK units retreating down the Poun road. In the meantime it lost large numbers of its experienced officers as they were shifted to the US 24th Infantry. In carrying out Eighth Army's orders to block the Poun road, regimental commander Colonel John H. Michaelis, a West Point graduate known as an effective commander, assigned the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, to make contact with the first North Korean attacks. On the morning of July 23, Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert J. Check moved the 1st Battalion northward toward Poun from the Hwanggan assembly area. He took up defensive positions in the evening near the village of Sangyong-ni, south of Poun. The battalion assumed responsibility for that sector at 17:00 after South Korean troops fell back through its position. However, the battalion was unable to ascertain from the retreating soldiers the KPA 2nd Division's status or threat. North Korean attack In the evening of July 23, 1st Battalion sent a 30-man patrol northward to locate the North Koreans. Near Poun, the patrol spotted a KPA column approaching. The platoon took up superior positions and ambushed the column as it passed with all its weapons. The North Koreans halted their advance, thinking they had encountered a major position, and held back until daylight. When they turned back, the US patrol returned to the 1st Battalion lines at 04:00 on July 24. It suffered six men missing to an unknown number of North Korean casualties. Check's 1st Battalion was not attacked until 06:30 on July 24, shortly after daybreak in a heavy fog that allowed the North Koreans to approach very close to the US positions before they were