[1] On the night of 17 September an estimated company from the PVA 2nd Battalion, 348th Regiment, probed Outpost Kelly's defenses.

B Company took over Kelly and passed to the operational control of the 2nd Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Carlos Betances Ramirez, early in the morning of 18 September.

The sergeant in charge of the machine gun position managed to escape after he sustained arm injuries in the fight.

[1]: 299–300 To find out whether the PVA intended to occupy the outpost, the regimental intelligence officer ordered the 2nd Battalion to send a platoon as quickly as possible from E Company to reconnoiter the hill.

The patrol cleared the Jamestown Line shortly before daylight on the 19th, but soon ran into machine gun and rifle grenade fire as it advanced up the hill.

Faced with the PVA determination to hang on to the outpost and the mounting casualty list, the two platoons withdrew to the Jamestown Line.

The PVA mortar and artillery became very heavy as the men crossed the valley floor en route to the hill approaches.

Two squads from C Company almost reached the crest of Kelly shortly before noon only to receive mortar concentrations that forced them to fall back to the trenches.

Since the previous efforts by forces ranging from one to four platoons had failed to dislodge the PVA, Colonel Wills received approval to use his three rifle companies.

At 05:20 on 24 September the 105 mm howitzers of the 58th Field Artillery Battalion opened up on the PVA positions on and around Kelly for thirty minutes.

The artillery forward observer managed to hold together ten men from the company, however, and Colonel Wills, the battalion commander, instructed him to continue the attack on Kelly with his small force.

Clinging to the trenches on the south slope of Kelly, the L Company squad was unable to move forward against stubborn PVA resistance.

Colonel Wills left at 09:00 to take over the reorganization of both I and K Company stragglers as they returned to the Jamestown Line without weapons or equipment.

General Dasher told Wills to cease to attack and to continue the reorganization of the battalion, which had suffered 141 casualties in the action.

[1]: 301–2 During the action between 17 and 24 September for Kelly and the surrounding outposts, the 65th Regiment suffered casualties of approximately 350 men, or almost 10 percent of its actual strength.

Colonel Cordero in his command report for the month attributed the poor performance of his combat units to the rotation program.

During the nine-month period from January—September 1952, Colonel Cordero stated, the regiment had rotated almost 8,700 men, including close to 1,500 noncommissioned officers.

Colonel Cordero recommended that his regiment be provided with a monthly quota of 400 replacements including a fair proportion of the upper three grades so that he could remedy this basic weakness.