21st Infantry Regiment (United States)
The 21st Infantry Regiment ("Gimlet") is a United States Army infantry regiment. The 1st Battalion currently exists as part of 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. The regiment fought in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Task Force Smith, the first American unit to see action in the Korean War, was derived from the regiment's 1st Battalion.
LCM carrying troops up the Mindanao River
10 July 1950 A U.S. Army POW of the 21st Infantry Regiment bound and killed by North Koreans during the Korean War.
B Company/4th Battalion squad leader Specialist 4 Richard Champion shouting instructions to his squad after taking sniper fire on a patrol southeast of Chu Lai
An assault team from C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment clears an objective during a demonstration for Battalion, 5th Group, 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force) during Exercise Yudh Abhyas
The Battle of Osan was the first engagement between the United States and North Korea during the Korean War. On July 5, 1950, Task Force Smith, an American task force of 540 infantry supported by an artillery battery, was moved to Osan, south of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and was ordered to fight as a rearguard to delay the advancing North Korean forces while more US troops arrived to form a stronger defensive line to the south. The task force lacked both anti-tank guns and effective infantry anti-tank weapons and had been equipped with obsolete 2.36-inch rocket launchers and a few 57 mm recoilless rifles. Aside from a limited number of HEAT shells for the unit's 105 mm howitzers, crew-served weapons that could defeat T-34/85 tanks from the Soviet Union had not yet been distributed to the US Army forces in South Korea.
A US soldier, Robert L. Witzig, with a 2.36-inch bazooka prepares to take aim at a North Korean tank during the Battle of Pyongtaek which took place after the Battle of Osan. On his right is Kenneth R. Shadrick, who was later reported as the first American killed in the Korean War.
Task Force Smith arrives in South Korea
The T-34 tank was standard armor by the North Korean Army in 1950 and was used at Osan.
Soldier of the 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Division, captured and executed by North Korean forces, 1950
