The battle on the hills east of Waegwan reached a climax on the 19th when the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, and the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, engaged in very heavy fighting with the KPA on Hills 300 and 253. Elements of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, gained the crest of Hill 300. On that hill the 1st Battalion suffered 207 battle casualties, 28 Americans killed, 147 wounded, and 4 missing in action, for a total of 179, with 28 additional casualties among the attached South Koreans. At noon, F Company reported 66 men present for duty; E and G Companies between them had 75 men. That afternoon the battalion reported it was only 30 percent combat effective. The 5th Cavalry's seizure of the 300 and 253 hill mass dominating the Taegu road southeast of Waegwan unquestionably helped the 5th RCT to capture Waegwan that day. But to the north of these hills, the KPA on Hill 371 in a stubborn holding action turned back for the moment all efforts of the 5th Cavalry to capture that height. In its subsequent withdrawal from the Waegwan area to Sangju the KPA 3rd Division fell from a strength of approximately 5,000 to about 1,800 men. Entire units gave way to panic. Combined UN ground and air action inflicted tremendous casualties. In the area around Waegwan where the 5th Cavalry Regiment reoccupied the old Waegwan pocket a count showed 28 KPA tanks, 27 T-34s and one US M4 Sherman refitted by the North Koreans, as destroyed or captured. During the 19th General Gay started maneuvering his forces for the encirclement movement, now that the hard fighting east of Waegwan had at last made it possible. Clainos led his 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, from the division right to the left flank, taking position in front of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, to start the movement toward Tabu-dong. Gay ordered the 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, to shift the next morning from the right flank to the left, and prepare to follow the 1st Battalion in its dash for Tabu-dong. On the morning of 20 September the 3rd Battalion boarded trucks north of Taegu and rolled northwest on the road toward Waegwan. The regimental commander, apparently fearing that KPA mortar and artillery fire would interdict the road, dismounted his troops short of their destination.