JOHN HERBERT COSKEY
Private First Class, United States Army
Personal Information: PFC John H. Coskey, Service Number: RA23931029, served in K Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. Reportedly, he became a prisoner of war (POW) on 11 July 1950, and fellow soldiers indicated that he died on 12 November 1950 in a POW Camp located in Chunggang-jin, North Korea. His name is not listed on the “Johnnie Johnson List”, but is cited in the “Missing in Action-Captivity” report compiled from accounts provided by repatriated POWs. PFC Coskey is referenced in Field Search Case #006F.
General Military Situation and Circumstances of Loss: By mid-July 1950 the war on Korea was less than three weeks old, and was going very badly for the Republic of Korea (ROK) and American forces. The North Korean People’s Army (KPA) had been able to sustain the battlefield successes since its 25 June surprise invasion of South Korea. Given its superiority in men, artillery and armor, the KPA overwhelmed every defensive position that the allies had hastily erected. The allies, woefully weak in heavy artillery and anti-armor weaponry, had no chance of stopping, much less defeating, the advancing KPA armored columns. Instead, the ROK and American soldiers tried to slow the KPA advances in order to buy the time needed for the allied ships to bring the U.N. reinforcements from around the world.
Each of the few American and South Korean units in the field had to hold an enormous amount of the ever-changing “defensive line”. From 5-13 July 1950, PFC Coskey’s 21st Infantry Regiment was involved in a series of battles during the allies’ fighting retreat from the Pyong’aek to Choch’iwon (about 16 miles southeast of Ch’onan) areas of South Korea. It was during particularly heavy fighting in an area near Choch’iwon on the morning of 11 July 1950 that PFC Coskey was captured. He and his comrades in the 3rd Battalion were entrenched in positions they had just won back from the KPA the evening before. At 0630 on the morning of 11 July, they heard KPA tanks and troops advancing on their position, but couldn’t see the enemy due to heavy ground fog. Moments later, an accurate KPA mortar barrage hit many of the American positions. Within minutes, the barrage destroyed the Battalion’s command post and its communications equipment. Just before 0700, four enemy tanks broke through the defensive line into the center of the Battalion’s position. Over one thousand KPA troops, with additional tanks, soon flanked the besieged units. The helpless Americans didn’t have any communications gear left with which to call in artillery support. By 1200, the entire 3rd Battalion was overrun, and the Americans had to break into small groups and retreat through the enemy line as best they could.
At the start of the day the 3rd Battalion had 667 men deployed along the defensive line; but by the end of the day only 150 men had made it back to the safety of friendly lines. Another 172 survivors straggled to friendly lines over the next four days. Overall, the battalion lost over 60 percent of its men in the 11 July battle of Choch’iwon.
Various accounts indicate that the POWs captured during the period of 5-13 July were marched north by stages, along the main supply route, first to Seoul, then to Pyongyang. Subsequently, trains moved them to Manpo located on the south bank of the Yalu River (international border between China and Korea) in a mixed group of 750 POWs and civilian internees. On 31 October 1950, this “Tiger Group,” named after its brutal North Korean’s leader’s nickname, began its infamous death march northward to the “Apex” camps, about 50 miles away on the southern bank of the Yalu River. Nearly 100 men and women perished during the march. Throughout this ordeal, they received little food and water, and had no medicines or treatment for their wounded and sick. Wintertime temperatures fell as low as 50 degrees below zero, and PFC Coskey and his comrades had only summer-weight clothing (the temperature had been 100 degrees or more when they were captured). They slept in unheated, windowless rooms that were overcrowded and unsanitary. Disease, exposure, malnutrition, and lack of medical care combined to create a ghastly mortality rate of 60 percent among the POWs captured in 1950. PFC Coskey reportedly died of cold exposure on 12 November 1950.
Continuing Efforts: In an effort to achieve the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. servicemen, DPMO has negotiated with the government of North Korea for access to crash sites, battlefields and prison camp cemeteries. The North Koreans have authorized limited access to their main military museum and national library in Pyongyang for POW/MIA-related research. The North Koreans provided our researchers with a selection of documents and artifacts from these archives for review during visits in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Unfortunately they found no information on PFC Coskey. DPMO and the Army’s Central Identification Library, Hawaii (CILHI), excavations in North Korea, 1996-2002, have resulted in the recovery and repatriation of remains of over 170 U.S. servicemen and that effort is expected to continue in coming years. CILHI also recovered four sets of remains of servicemen from Army sectors of the South Korean side of the DMZ-two in 2000 and two in 2003 (the North Koreans have not yet allowed us access to their side of the DMZ). For 2003 our recovery operations in North Korea will take us back to Unsin County and the Chosin Reservoir area. We continue to actively seek information about this loss, and conducts regular dialogue with Korean War veterans associations, in the hope of developing new leads. DPMO will forward new discoveries to family members through the U.S. Army Casualty Office.
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