Hill 303 rises 994 feet above the Nakdong River on the northern edge of Waegwan, a small town that sat at one of the most critical junctures of the Korean War. The hill commanded views of the town, the railroad and highway bridges crossing the river, and long stretches of the valley in both directions. In August 1950, it anchored the extreme right flank of the US 1st Cavalry Division's sector along the Pusan Perimeter -- the last defensive line preventing North Korean forces from overrunning the entire peninsula. Five North Korean divisions massed along the opposite bank, probing for crossings. On August 14, a North Korean regiment used an underwater bridge to cross the Nakdong six miles north of Waegwan. By the following morning, G Company of the 5th Cavalry Regiment and a platoon of H Company mortarmen were surrounded on Hill 303, cut off from relief.

The captured Americans -- estimates range from 31 to 42 men -- were marched down the hill and into an orchard, where their captors tied their hands, took their shoes, and promised them transfer to a prisoner-of-war camp in Seoul. That first night, the guards gave them water, fruit, and cigarettes. It was the last food and water they received. The North Koreans intended to move the prisoners across the Nakdong under cover of darkness, but US artillery fire on the river crossings made it impossible. During that night, Lieutenant Hudspeth and a forward artillery observer named Lieutenant Cecil Newman were seen conferring about an escape plan. Both slipped away in the darkness; both were recaptured and executed. Corporal Roy L. Day Jr., who spoke Japanese, overheard a North Korean lieutenant the following afternoon: if American forces advanced too close, the prisoners would be killed.

At 2:00 p.m. on August 17, a UN air strike hit Hill 303 with napalm, bombs, rockets, and machine-gun fire. The battle was closing in. A North Korean officer told the guards that American soldiers were approaching and they could no longer hold the prisoners. He ordered the men executed. The guards -- accounts differ on whether it was all fifty or a group of fourteen directed by their NCOs -- opened fire with PPSh-41 submachine guns into the Americans in the gully. Some guards returned afterward to shoot survivors. Four or five men lived by hiding beneath the bodies of the dead. In all, forty-one American prisoners died in the ravine, twenty-six of them from the original mortar platoon. When the 5th Cavalry Regiment secured the hill by 4:30 that afternoon, they found the bodies with machine-gun wounds, hands still tied behind their backs. The next day, six more executed American soldiers -- tank crewmen -- were found near Waegwan.

General Douglas MacArthur broadcast a denunciation of the atrocity on August 20, and the US Air Force dropped leaflets over North Korean lines demanding accountability. Captured North Korean documents showed that their own commanders were troubled by such incidents; an order from the KPA 2nd Division dated August 16 read, in part: "Some of us are still slaughtering enemy troops that come to surrender." The story made Time and Life magazines. Then it was largely forgotten. In 1985, a young officer named David Kangas, stationed at nearby Camp Carroll, read about the massacre in a military history and realized that nobody knew the exact location. He spent years pinpointing the site through battle records at the National Archives and searching for survivors. The three men who lived -- Fred Ryan, Roy Manring, and James Rudd -- had never been officially designated as prisoners of war and had been denied VA compensation for decades. In 2010, a monument was flown to the hilltop by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Each year, soldiers from Camp Carroll climb the hill and lay flowers at the site.