This violent eruption of enemy activity on the night of 24 June was followed by a brief period of greatly reduced ground action. Late on the 29th, however, the battlefront lull was broken when the 1st KMC Regiment sent out a raiding party to capture Chinese soldiers and their weapons and equipment, to inflict casualties, and to destroy positions. Second Lieutenant Kwak Sang In had his reinforced platoon from the 3d Company, 1st Battalion, equipped with rifles, carbines, machine guns, flamethrowers, and explosives. Target for the attack was an enemy outpost four miles south of Panmunjom that overlooked the Sachon River. The patrol followed the general pattern of previous raids. It made use of supporting elements positioned on high ground in front of the objective. In this action the patrol struck from the rear, using artillery fire for both the assault and the withdrawal. Another similarity existed in that the results were nearly the same--no prisoners taken but fewer casualties to the attackers. One difference from earlier operations was that this patrol employed flamethrowers and TNT for destroying bunkers and inflicting casualties. Both weapons were credited in the killing of 12 and the wounding of 6 Chinese, in destroying 1 mortar and 7 bunkers, and in burning 3 other bunkers and numerous automatic weapons and rifles. Because of the heavy weight of a loaded flamethrower and the small size of the Korean Marines carrying these weapons, the flamethrower operators were fairly well exhausted by the end of the patrol. _A Long Fourth of July_[139] [139] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 5, Chap. 8; and 1stMarDiv, 5thMar, 7thMar, 11thMar, 1/5, 2/5, 1/7, 3/7, 1st TkBn ComdDs, Jul 52. The approach of the American Fourth of July holiday marking an earlier struggle for freedom was appropriately accompanied by ground action initiated by all of the mainland MLR regiments. In the KMC area, a 3 July raiding party struck at forward enemy positions before dawn, killing nine Chinese. In the center regimental sector Colonel Thomas C. Moore’s[140] 7th Marines were also engaged in an active sector defense. In the left battalion spot 3/7, which had replaced 2/7 on line, dispatched raids on each of the first three nights of the month. Its Company G patrol on the night of 2–3 July was to be involved in one of the most costly small unit actions in the western Korea tour of duty for the Marine division. [140] Colonel Moore took over regimental command on 11 June. The former CO, Colonel Honsowetz, had been named Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 of the 1st Marine Division.