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* It was bitter cold. The
temperature was below zero. The wind howled.
Snow fell-a snow so dry that dust from the
road mixed with it in yellowish clouds that
swirled about the column of trucks.
Tundra-like, bleak, and without vegetation in
most places, the land was depressing.
Huddled together in the back
of the trucks, the men of the 1st Battalion,
32d Infantry, stomped their feet on the truck
beds in futile attempts to keep their limbs
from becoming stiff and numb. Most of them
wore long woolen underwear, two pairs of
socks, a woolen shirt, cotton field trousers
over a pair of woolen trousers, shoepacs,
pile jacket, wind-resistant reversible parka
with hood, and trigger-finger mittens of wool
insert and outer shell. To keep their ears
from freezing they tied wool scarves around
their heads underneath their helmets. Still
the cold seeped through. Occasionally the
entire column ground to a halt to permit the
men to dismount and exercise for a few
minutes. [1]
Lt.Col. Don C. Faith
commanded the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry. As
part of the 7th Infantry Division and of X
Corps (Maj.Gen. Edward M. Almond), the
battalion was moving from Hamhung north to
relieve marines on the east shore of Chosin
Reservoir and then to continue the attack to
the Yalu River. A man could take even
stinging, stiffening cold if it meant the end
of a war. And that was how things looked on
this 25th day of November 1950. In fact, just
before Faith's battalion left Hamhung
some of the men had listened to a news
broadcast from Tokyo describing the beginning
of a United Nations offensive in Korea
designed to terminate the war quickly.
Originating in General of the Army Douglas
MacArthur's headquarters, the report
predicted that U.S. divisions would be back
in Japan by Christmas. It had been cheering
news. [2]
Having assembled three
divisions at the east coast port of Hungnam
at the end of October, General Almond had
launched his X Corps on an offensive with the
objective of reaching the Manchurian border
as soon as possible. [3] By the third week of
November the corps was scattered across an
area of more than four thousand square miles
of bare, bleak, and rugged mountains. The 1st
Marine Division, attacking along both sides
of Chosin Reservoir, was more than fifty
miles inland. One regiment of the 7th
Division-the 17th Infantry-had gone more than
a hundred miles north of Hungnam and had
reached the Yalu River on 21 November. [4]
Other units of that division were separated
by straightline distances of seventy or
eighty miles. Road distances, tortuously
slow, were much longer. North Koreans had
offered only slight resistance against X
Corps advances, but the obstacles of terrain
and weather were tremendous.
Passing engineer crews
working on the twisted, shelf-like road
notched into the side of precipitous slopes,
the truck column bearing Colonel Faith and
his men northward at last reached Hagaru-ri
at the south end of Chosin Reservoir. Several
Marine Corps units were located in Hagaruri.
The truck column passed a few tents and small
groups of marines huddled around bonfires.
[5] When the road forked, Colonel Faith's
column followed the right-hand road, which
led past the few desolate houses in Hagaru-ri
toward the east side of the reservoir.
At least one or two men from
each company were frostbite casualties late
that afternoon when the battalion closed into
defensive positions a mile or so north of
Hagaru-ri. The night was quiet. There were
warm-up tents behind the crests of the hills
and the men spent alternate periods manning
defense positions and getting warm.
The morning of 26 November
was clear and cold. Since the marines still
occupied the area, Colonel Faith waited for
more complete orders, which had been
promised. Toward noon, the assistant
commander of the 7th Division (Brig.Gen.
Henry I. Hodes) arrived at Faith's
command post with more information on the
planned operation. Having flown to Hagaru-ri
by light aircraft, he had driven north by
jeep. Additional 7th Division units, he
explained to Colonel Faith, were then en
route to Chosin Reservoir. The commander of
the 31st Infantry Regiment (Col. Allan D.
MacLean) was to arrive soon to take command
of all units on the east side of the
reservoir. He was bringing with him his own
3d Battalion, his Heavy Mortar Company, his
Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon, a
detachment of medical personnel, and the 57th
Field Artillery Battalion. The last-named
unit would be short one of its firing
batteries but would have with it Battery D,
15th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion-a unit
equipped with halftracks mounting quadruple
caliber .50 machine guns (M-16s) and dual
40-mm guns (M-19s). [6] General Hodes said
the Marine regiment would move on the
following day to join the rest of the 1st
Marine Division in an attack aimed at
securing another important road northwest
from Hagaru-ri. The mission of MacLean's
task force, and thus of Colonel Faith's
battalion, was to secure the important road
running along the east side of the reservoir
and thence north to the Manchurian border.
[7]
When Colonel MacLean arrived
with his staff later that evening, he stated
his intentions of attacking north as soon as
his task force arrived. He approved Colonel
Faith's plan to take over the
northernmost defensive position as soon as
the marines vacated it the next morning.
[8]
Monday, 27 November, was
another clear, cold day. Marine trucks were
on the road soon after dawn shuttling troops
south. By noon, when the road was clear
again, Colonel Faith moved his battalion
north. The rest of Colonel MacLean's
force arrived that afternoon, moving into
position about three or four miles south of
Faith's battalion.
As night fell on 27 November,
the first order of business was defense,
although a continuation of the northward
drive the marines had begun was planned for
the next day. Lending greater force to common
knowledge that Chinese forces in undetermined
strength were roaming the mountains in the
vicinity of Chosin Reservoir, the marines had
told Colonel Faith that on the day before
several Chinese prisoners had revealed the
presence of three fresh divisions operating
in the area of the reservoir. Their mission,
the prisoners had said, was to sever the
American supply route. [9] The marines also
told Faith's men that on the previous
night, in this same location, a Chinese
patrol had pulled a marine from his foxhole,
disarmed him, and beaten him.
With this in mind, Colonel
Faith placed his companies in a perimeter
that lay across the road facing north, with
the right flank bent south to face mountains
that loomed high to the east. During the late
afternoon the companies dug in their
positions and cut fields of fire through some
scrub brush on the hills. After breaking
through eight or ten inches of frozen earth,
the digging was easy. There were no stones in
the ground. Colonel Faith set up his command
post in a few farm houses in a small valley
less than a thousand yards behind the front
lines. It got dark early, still bitterly
cold. For an hour or two after dark there was
the sound of shell bursts around the
perimeter since forward observers had not
completed the registration of artillery and
mortar defensive fires before dark. For
another hour or two, until after 2100, it was
quiet.
The battalion adjutant,
having driven a hundred and fifty miles that
day from division headquarters, arrived with
two weeks' mail. A few minutes later an
officer from Colonel MacLean's
headquarters brought the operation order for
the attack scheduled for dawn the next
morning. Colonel Faith called his company
commanders, asking them to bring their mail
orderlies and to report to his command post
for the attack order.
The enemy attacked while the
meeting was in progress. Probing patrols came
first, the first one appearing in front of a
platoon near the road. When the friendly
platoon opened fire Company A's executive
officer (Lt. Cecil G. Smith), suspecting that
the enemy force was a reconnaissance patrol
sent to locate specific American positions,
tried to stop the fire. He ran up and down
the line shouting: "Don't fire!
Don't fire!" But by the time he
succeeded, the enemy force had evidently
discovered what it needed to know and had
melted away into the darkness. In the
meantime, enemy patrols began to repeat this
pattern at other points along the defensive
perimeter. A few minutes after midnight the
patrolling gave way to determined attack.
While one Chinese company struck south along
the road, another plunged out of the darkness
from the east to strike the boundary between
the two rifle companies that were east of the
road.
The defensive perimeter began
to blaze with fire. In addition to directing
steady mortar and small-arms fire against
Colonel Faith's battalion, the Chinese
kept maneuvering small groups around the
perimeter to break the line. As one enemy
group climbed a steep ridge toward a heavy
machine gun operated by Cpl. Robert Lee
Armentrout, the corporal discovered he could
not depress his gun enough to hit the enemy.
He then picked up his weapon, tripod and all,
cradled it in his arms, and beat off the
attack.
As the night wore on not
every position along the perimeter held as
well. Within two or three hours after they
first attacked, the Chinese had seized and
organized the highest point on the two
ridgelines that had belonged to the two
companies on the east side of the road. Loss
of this ground seriously weakened the defense
of both companies, and also permitted the
enemy to fire into a native house where Capt.
Dale L. Seever had set up his command post.
Forced to vacate, he moved his Weapons
Platoon and command group to the front line
to help defend what ground he had left. On
the extreme right flank the Chinese forced
two platoons out of position. On the left
side of the road they circled wide around the
left flank and seized a mortar position.
Wire communications with
Colonel MacLean's headquarters and with
the 57th Field Artillery Battalion went out
soon after the attack started. After
establishing radio communication, which was
never satisfactory, Colonel Faith learned
that the Chinese were also attacking the
other units of MacLean's task force. This
explained why the artillery, involved with
the more immediate necessity of defending its
own position, was unable to furnish sustained
support to Faith's battalion. [10]
Colonel Faith's battalion
was still in place when daylight came on 28
November, but there were serious gaps in the
line. Although ordered to launch his attack
at dawn, when the time came to carry out the
order Colonel Faith had his hands full trying
to hang onto his perimeter and recover the
ground lost during the night. The night
attack had been costly in casualties and
morale. When it moved to Chosin Reservoir,
Faith's battalion had about ninety per
cent of its authorized strength plus 30 to 50
ROK soldiers attached to each company. Morale
had been good. [11] Although casualties
during the night had not been alarmingly
high, a disproportionately high number of
officers and noncoms had been put out of
action. In Company A, for instance, when Lt.
Raymond C. Denchfield was wounded in the
knee, his company commander (Capt. Edward B.
Scullion) set out to temporarily take charge
of Denchfield's platoon. An enemy grenade
killed Scullion. Colonel Faith then sent his
assistant S-3 (Capt. Robert F. Haynes) to
take command of Company A. He was killed by
infiltrators before he reached the front
lines. Colonel Faith telephoned the executive
officer (Lieutenant Smith) and told him to
take command of the company.
"It's your baby
now," Faith told him.
The strength and
determination of the enemy attack was also a
blow to morale. It now appeared to
Faith's men that, in addition to the
severe weather, their troubles were to be
compounded by fresh enemy troops. The cold
weather was bad enough, especially as there
were no warm-up tents within the perimeter.
During the night, when they had not been
engaged in beating off enemy attacks, the men
could do nothing for relief but pull their
sleeping bags up to their waists and sit
quietly in their holes watching for another
attack, or for morning. The light machine
guns did not work well in the cold. This was
especially true during the night when the
temperature dropped sharply. The guns would
not fire automatically and had to be jacked
back by hand to fire single rounds. The heavy
machine guns, however, with antifreeze
solution in the water jackets, worked all
right.
Similar attacks had fallen
against the perimeter enclosing Colonel
MacLean's force four miles to the south
of Faith's battalion. Chinese had overrun
two infantry companies during the early
morning and got back to the artillery
positions before members of two artillery
batteries and of the overrun companies
stopped them. After confused and intense
fighting during the hours of darkness, the
enemy withdrew at first light. Both sides
suffered heavily. [12]
Colonel MacLean had another
cause for concern. Soon after arriving in
that area the night before, he had dispatched
his regimental Intelligence and
Reconnaissance Platoon to patrol the
surrounding area. Twelve hours after the
platoon had set out, no member had returned.
[13]
Colonel Faith tried all day
to recover the ground lost during the night.
The most critical loss was the prominent knob
at the boundary of the two companies east of
the road. Lt. Richard H. Moore led his
platoon in counterattacks on 28 November and
succeeded in recovering all but the important
knob itself. Repeatedly, Moore got his
platoon to the bottom of the knob only to
have the Chinese-many of whom were firing
Americanmade weapons-drive it back again. The
friendly counterattacks were greatly aided by
mortar fire and by very close and effective
air support by carrier-based Corsairs. There
were planes in the air most of the day.
Front-line observers communicated with the
planes by the regular assault-wire lines to
battalion headquarters, where a Marine
tactical air control officer (Capt. Edward P.
Stamford) relayed the instructions to the
pilots. The planes made some passes so close
to friendly troops that several targets were
marked with white phosphorus grenades thrown
by hand. More frequently the infantrymen used
rifle grenades to mark their targets. [14] In
spite of these efforts, the Chinese managed
to hold the important knob.
Late in the afternoon both
Lieutenant Moore and the battalion sergeant
major were put out of action by the same
burst from an American caliber .45 Thompson
submachine gun. One bullet killed the
sergeant. Another one struck Moore squarely
on the forehead, raised a bump and dazed him
for a short time, but did not otherwise hurt
him. Unable to recover the main terrain
feature within its perimeter, Company C
organized a reverseslope defense directly in
front of the knob.
Sixty or more casualties
gathered at the battalion aid station during
the day. By evening about twenty bodies had
accumulated in front of the two-room farm
house in which the aid station was operating.
Inside, the building was crowded with
wounded; a dozen more wounded, some wearing
bandages, stood in a huddle outside.
During the afternoon of 28
November a helicopter landed in a rice paddy
near the battalion's command post
buildings. General Almond (X Corps
commander), on one of his frequent
inspections of his front lines, stepped out
of the craft. He discussed the situation with
Colonel Faith. Before leaving, General Almond
explained that he had three Silver Star
medals in his pocket, one of which was for
Colonel Faith. He asked the colonel to select
two men to receive the others, and a small
group to witness the presentation. Colonel
Faith looked around. Behind him, Lt. Everett
F. Smalley, Jr., a platoon leader who had
been wounded the night before and was
awaiting evacuation, sat on a water can.
"Smalley," said
Colonel Faith, "come over here and stand
at attention.?
Smalley did so. Just then the
mess sergeant from Headquarters Company (Sgt.
George A. Stanley) walked past.
"Stanley," the
colonel called, "come here and stand
at attention next to Lieutenant
Smalley."
Stanley obeyed. Colonel Faith
then gathered a dozen or more men-walking
wounded, drivers, and clerks-and lined them
up behind Smalley and Stanley.
After pinning the medals to
their parkas and shaking hands with the three
men, General Almond spoke briefly to the
assembled group, saying, in effect: "The
enemy who is delaying you for the moment is
nothing more than remnants of Chinese
divisions fleeing north. We're still
attacking and we're going all the way to
the Yalu. Don't let a bunch of Chinese
laundrymen stop you." [15]
Unfolding his map, General
Almond walked over and spread it on the hood
of a nearby jeep and talked briefly with
Colonel Faith, gestured toward the north, and
then departed. As the helicopter rose from
the ground, Colonel Faith ripped the medal
from his parka with his gloved hand and threw
it down in the snow. His operations officer
(Major Wesley J. Curtis) walked back to his
command post with him.
"What did the General
say?" Curtis asked, referring to the
conversation at the jeep.
"You heard him,"
muttered Faith; "remnants fleeing
north!" [16]
Lieutenant Smalley went back
to his water can. "I got me a Silver
Star," he remarked to one of the men who
had observed the presentation, "but I
don't know what the hell for!"
That afternoon Colonel
MacLean came forward to Colonel Faith's
battalion. Toward evening, however, when he
attempted to leave, he was stopped by a
Chinese roadblock between the two battalions,
thus confronting him with the grim
realization that the enemy had surrounded his
position. He remained at the forward
position.
Just before dark, between
1700 and 1730, 28 November, planes struck
what appeared to be a battalion-sized enemy
group that was marching toward the battalion
perimeter from the north, still two or three
miles away. The tactical situation, even
during the daytime, had been so serious that
many of the units did not take time to carry
rations to the front line. When food did
reach the soldiers after dark, it was frozen
and the men had no way to thaw it except by
holding it against their bodies. By this time
most of the men realized the enemy was
mounting more than light skirmishes, as they
had believed the previous evening.
"You'd better get
your positions in good tonight," one
platoon leader told his men that evening,
"or there won't be any positions
tomorrow." [17]
As darkness fell on 28
November, Colonel Faith's battalion
braced itself for another attack. The most
critical point was the enemy-held knob
between the two companies east of the road.
Lt. James G. Campbell (a platoon leader of
Company D) had two machine guns aimed at the
knob, and between his guns and the Chinese
position there was a five-man rifle squad.
Lieutenant Campbell was particularly
concerned about this squad. He was afraid it
was not strong enough to hold the
position.
Enemy harassing fire, fairly
constant all day, continued to fall within
the battalion perimeter after dark. It had
been dark for three or four hours, however,
before the enemy struck again, hitting
several points along the perimeter. As
expected, one enemy group attacked the
vulnerable area east of the road. Lieutenant
Campbell heard someone shout and soon
afterward saw several figures running from
the knoll held by the five-man squad. In the
darkness he counted five men and shot the
sixth, who by then was only ten feet from his
foxhole. Expecting more Chinese from the same
direction, he shouted instructions for one of
his machine-gun crews to displace to another
position from which it could fire upon the
knoll that the five men had just vacated. At
that moment Lieutenant Campbell was knocked
down. He thought someone had hit him in the
face with a hammer, although he felt no pain.
A mortar fragment about the size of a bullet
had penetrated his cheek and lodged in the
roof of his mouth. He remained with his gun
crews. After the first Chinese had been
driven back, enemy activity subsided for
about an hour or two.
While this fighting was
taking place, General Almond was flying to
Tokyo at General MacArthur's order. The
corps commander reported to General MacArthur
at 2200, 28 November, and received orders to
discontinue X Corps' attack and to
withdraw and consolidate his forces for more
cohesive action against the enemy. [18]
Five hours after this
meeting, at about 0300, 29 November, Colonel
Faith's executive officer (Major Crosby
P. Miller) went to the frontline companies
with orders from Colonel MacLean to prepare
at once to join the rest of his force four
miles to the south. Because of the enemy
roadblock separating the two elements of his
task force, Colonel MacLean ordered Faith to
abandon as much equipment as necessary in
order to have enough space on the trucks to
haul out the wounded, and then to attack
south. [19] All wounded men-about a hundred
by now-were placed on trucks that formed in
column on the road. Because of the necessity
of maintaining blackout, it was not practical
to burn the vehicles, kitchens, and other
equipment to be left behind.
When the withdrawal order
reached the rifle platoons, the plan for
withdrawing the battalion segment by segment
collapsed as the men abruptly broke contact
with the Communists, fell back to the road,
and assembled for the march. Enemy fire
picked up immediately since the movement and
the abrupt end of the firing made it obvious
to the Chinese that the Americans were
leaving.
Colonel Faith directed two
companies to provide flank security by
preceding the column along the high ground
that paralleled the road on both sides for
about two miles. Movement of the 1st
Battalion column got under way about an hour
before dawn, 29 November. Because Captain
Seever (CO, Company C) had been wounded in
the leg the day before, he instructed one of
his platoon leaders (Lt. James 0. Mortrude to
lead the company. Slipping and stumbling on
the snow-covered hills, Mortrude and the rest
of the company set out along the high ground
east of the road. Company B was on the
opposite side. Mortrude could hear the
vehicles below, but could see nothing in the
dark. He encountered no enemy. The column
moved without opposition until, at the first
sign of daylight, it reached the point where
the road, following the shoreline, turned
northeast to circle a long finger of ice. The
Chinese roadblock was at the end of this
narrow strip, and here enemy fire halted the
column. The battalion's objective, the
perimeter of the rest of MacLean's task
force, was now just across the strip of ice
and not much farther than a mile by the
longer road distance.
Halting the vehicular column,
Colonel Faith sent two companies onto a high
hill directly north of the strip of ice with
orders to circle the roadblock and attack it
from the east. At the same time, he told
Lieutenant Campbell to set up his weapons on
a hill overlooking the enemy roadblock.
Carrying two heavy machine guns and a 75-mm
recoilless rifle, Campbell's group
climbed the hill and commenced firing at the
general roadblock area. From this hill he and
his men could see the friendly perimeter on
the opposite side of the narrow strip of ice,
and to the south beyond that they could see
enemy soldiers. A hundred or more Chinese
were standing on a ridgeline just south of
the friendly force. About a dozen Chinese, in
formation, marched south on the road. They
were beyond machine-gun range, but the
recoilless rifle appeared to be effective on
the ridgeline.
Down on the road, Colonel
Faith's column suddenly received fire
from the vicinity of the friendly units
across the finger of ice. Believing that the
fire was coming from his own troops, Colonel
MacLean started across the ice to make
contact with them and halt the fire. He was
hit four times by enemy fire-the men watching
could see his body jerk with each impact-but
he continued and reached the opposite side.
There he disappeared and was not seen
again.
It now became evident that
the fire was Chinese. Colonel Faith assembled
as many men as he could and led them in a
skirmish line directly across the ice. As it
happened, a company-sized enemy force was
preparing to attack positions of the 57th
Field Artillery Battalion when Faith's
attack struck this force in the rear.
Disorganized, the Chinese attack fell apart.
Faith's men killed about sixty Chinese
and dispersed the rest. In the meantime, the
two rifle companies approached the enemy
force manning the roadblock. Now surrounded
itself, the roadblock force also fell apart
and disappeared into the hills. With the road
open, the column of vehicles entered the
perimeter of the other friendly forces.
[20]
After a search for Colonel
MacLean failed to discover any trace of him,
Colonel Faith assumed command and organized
all remaining personnel into a task force.
Friendly forces, although consolidated, still
occupied a precarious position. During the
afternoon Faith and his commanders formed a
perimeter defense of an area about 600 by
2,000 yards into which the enemy had squeezed
them. This perimeter, around a pocket of low,
slightly sloping ground, was particularly
vulnerable to attack. Except for the area
along the reservoir, Colonel Faith's task
force was surrounded by ridgelines, all of
which belonged to the Chinese. There were
firing positions on a couple of mounds of
earth within the perimeter and along the
embankments of the road and single-track
railroad that ran through the area. Several
Korean houses, all damaged, stood within the
perimeter. There were many Chinese bodies on
the ground, one of which wore a new American
field jacket that still had its original
inspection tags. [21] Rations were almost
gone. Ammunition and gasoline supplies were
low. The men were numbed by the cold. Even
those few who had managed to retain their
bedrolls did not dare fall asleep for fear of
freezing. The men had to move their legs and
change position occasionally to keep their
blood circulating. Automatic weapons had to
be tried every fifteen to thirty minutes to
keep them in working order.
Three factors prevented the
situation from being hopeless. First,
airdrops were delivered on the afternoon of
29 October. The first drop landed on high
ground to the cast, and friendly forces had
to fight to get it. They recovered most of
the bundles, and captured several Chinese who
had also been after the supplies. A second
drop went entirely to the Chinese, landing
outside the perimeter to the southwest. A
third drop was successful. One airload
consisted of rations, the other of
ammunition. The second factor was the Marine
tactical air support, which constantly
harassed the enemy with napalm, rockets, and
machine-gun fire. Throughout 29 and 30
November the black Corsairs hit the enemyeven
during the night between the two days, when
they operated by bright moonlight. Pilots
later reported that so many enemy personnel
were in the area, they could effectively drop
their loads anywhere around the
perimeter.
The third factor was the hope
that friendly forces would break through the
Chinese from the south and effect a rescue.
There was talk that the assistant commander
of the 7th Division (General Hodes) had even
then formed a task force and was attempting
to join them. This was true.
Colonel MacLean had asked for
help the day before (28 November) when he
realized he was surrounded. In a message to X
Corps he had asked that his 2d Battalion,
then at Hamhung awaiting orders from corps,
be dispatched to him at once, even if it had
to fight its way north. [22]
Although corps failed to act
promptly upon MacLean's request, it did
form a task force from several small units
then located at Hudong-ni, a small lumber
town about a third of the distance north
between Hagaru-ri and Colonel MacLean's
force. Under command of General Hodes, this
task force started north at mid-morning, 28
November, but a strong enemy force halted it
just north of the village, and forced it to
withdraw. [23]
The 2d Battalion, 31st
Infantry, meanwhile waited for orders. Late
on the afternoon of the 28th, corps ordered
it to set up a blocking position at
Majon-dong, a third of the distance from
Hamhung to Hagaruri. It was to move by rail,
with its trucks following by road. A little
later corps changed the orders. The 2d
Battalion was to move by rail to Majon-dong,
the next morning. From there X Corps would
furnish trucks to haul the battalion north to
help Colonel MacLean. The battalion arrived
at Majon-dong and spent the entire day
waiting for X Corps trucks. None came. When
the battalion's own trucks arrived, as
part of the initial plan for establishing a
roadblock in the village, X Corps ordered
them off the road. Because of confusion at X
Corps headquarters, the battalion's own
trucks were not released to it, even though
the promised X Corps trucks did not arrive.
[24] Thus, two entire days passed without
progress in providing relief for Colonel
MacLean's surrounded battalions. It was
while his 2d Battalion waited at Majon-dong
that Colonel MacLean disappeared at the enemy
roadblock.
Finally, on the morning of 30
November, the relief battalion got under way.
Before it had gone halfway to Hagaru-ri, it
came under enemy attack itself, and did not
reach Koto-ri until the following morning. By
then, the road between Hagaru-ri and Hamhung
was threatened by the enemy and it became
necessary to divert the 2d Battalion to help
protect the entire corps withdrawal route,
and it was therefore held in Koto-ri.
[25]
Ten miles above Hagaru-ri,
Colonel Faith's task force beat off enemy
probing attacks that harassed his force
during the night of 29-30 November. The
Chinese concentrated on the two points where
the road entered the perimeter, and on the
south they succeeded in overrunning a 75-mm
recoilless rifle position and capturing some
of the crew. There were no determined
attacks, however, and the perimeter was still
intact when dawn came. It was another cold
morning. The sky was clear enough to permit
air support. Inside the perimeter, soldiers
built fires to warm themselves and the fires
drew no enemy fire. Hopefully, the men
decided they had withstood the worst part of
the enemy attack. Surely, they thought, a
relief column would reach the area that
day.
A litter-bearing helicopter
made two trips to the area on 30 November,
carrying out four seriously wounded men.
Fighter planes made a strike on high ground
around Task Force Faith, and cargo planes
dropped more supplies, some of which again
fell to the enemy. As the afternoon wore on,
it became apparent that no relief column was
coming that day. Colonel Faith and Major
Curtis organized a group of men to serve as a
counterattack force to repel any Chinese
penetration that might occur during the
coming night. As darkness settled for another
sixteen-hourlong night, commanders tried to
encourage their troops: "Hold out one
more night and we've got it made."
[26]
On 3o November, again
beginning about 2200, the Chinese made
another of their dishearteningly regular
attacks. From the beginning it showed more
determination than those of the two previous
nights, although it did not appear to be well
coordinated, nor concentrated in any one
area. Capt. Erwin B. Bigger (CO, Company D),
in an attempt to confuse the Chinese, hit
upon the idea of firing a different-colored
flare every time the enemy fired one, and
blowing a whistle whenever the enemy blew
one. [27]
Soon after midnight, when the
enemy attack was most intense, a small group
of Chinese broke into the perimeter at one
end. Faith sent his counterattack force to
patch up the line. From then until morning
there were five different penetrations, and
as many counterattacks. One of the
penetrations, just before first light on 1
December, resulted in enemy seizure of a
small hill within the perimeter, thus
endangering the defenses. Battalion
headquarters called Company D to ask if
someone there could get enough men together
to counterattack and dislodge the
Chinese.
Lt. Robert D. Wilson, a
platoon leader, volunteered for the job.
"Come on, all you fighting men!" he
called out. "We've got a
counterattack to make."
During the night Lieutenant
Wilson had directed mortar fire, but the
ammunition was gone by this time. Assembling
a force of 20 or 25 men, he waited a few
minutes until there was enough light. His
force was short of ammunition-completely out
of rifle grenades and having only smallarms
ammunition and three hand grenades.
Lieutenant Wilson carried a recaptured tommy
gun. When daylight came the men moved out,
Lieutenant Wilson out in front, leading. Near
the objective an enemy bullet struck his arm,
knocking him to the ground. He got up and
went on. Another bullet struck him in the arm
or chest.
"That one bit," he
said, continuing. A second or two later,
another bullet struck him in the forehead and
killed him.
SFC Fred Sugua took charge
and was in turn killed within a few minutes.
Eventually, the remaining men succeeded in
driving the Chinese out of the perimeter.
[28]
Even after daylight, which
usually ended the enemy attacks, the Chinese
made one more attempt to knock out a 75-mm
recoilless rifle that guarded the road. In
about two-platoon strength, they came up a
deep ditch along the road to the south.
Lieutenant Campbell rushed Corporal
Armentrout forward to plug the gap with his
machine gun. Hit by a mortar round the night
before, the water jacket on the machine gun
was punctured and, after several minutes, the
gun jammed. Armentrout sent his assistant
back for the other heavy machine gun, the
last good one in the section. With it, and by
himself, Corporal Armentrout killed at least
twenty enemy soldiers and stopped the attack.
[29]
At 0700, 1 December, as
Lieutenant Campbell was telling the battalion
S4 (Capt. Raymond Vaudrevil) that everything
was under control, a mortar shell landed ten
feet away and knocked him down. Fragments
sprayed his left side, and wounded two other
men. Someone pulled Campbell under a nearby
truck, then helped him to the aid station.
The aid-station squad tent was full; about
fifty patients were inside. Another
thirty-five wounded were lying outside in the
narrow-gauge railroad cut where the aid
station was located.
Dazed with shock, Lieutenant
Campbell lay outside about half an hour.
Colonel Faith appeared at the aid station,
asked all men who could possibly do so to
come back on line.
"If we can hold out
forty minutes more," the Colonel
pleaded, "we'll get air
support."
There was not much response.
Most of the men were seriously wounded.
"Come on, you lazy
bastards," Faith said, "and give
us a hand."
That roused several men,
including Campbell. Because he could not
walk, he crawled twenty yards along the
railroad track and found a carbine with one
round in it. Dragging the carbine, Campbell
continued to crawl to the west. He collapsed
into a foxhole before he reached the lines,
and waited until someone helped him back to
the aid station. This time he got inside for
treatment. The medical personnel had no more
bandages. There was no more morphine. They
cleansed his wounds with disinfectant, and he
dozed there for several hours.
As it was everywhere else in
the perimeter, the situation at the aid
station was most difficult. Near the medical
tent a tarpaulin had been stretched over the
railroad cut to shelter additional patients,
and other wounded were crowded into two small
Korean huts. Company aid men, when they
could, assisted the medical officer (Capt.
Vincent J. Navarre) and three enlisted men
who worked continuously at the aid
station.
Two thirds of the No. 2
medical chests were lost during the
withdrawal from the first positions. The jeep
hauling them had simply disappeared. Thus,
most of the surgical equipment was gone. Aid
men improvised litters from ponchos and field
jackets. One splint set was on hand, however,
and there was plenty of blood plasma. The aid
station had one complete No. 1 chest. When
bandages were gone, aid men used personal
linens, handkerchiefs, undershirts, and
towels. They gathered up parachutes recovered
with the airdropped bundles, using white ones
for dressings and colored ones to cover the
wounded and keep them warm. Sgt. Leon
Pugowski of the Headquarters Company kitchen
had managed to save two stoves, coffee, and
some cans of soup. He set the stoves up in
the aid station, and the seriously wounded
got hot soup or coffee.
Task Force Faith had been
under attack for eighty hours in sub-zero
weather. None of the men had washed or shaved
during that time, nor eaten more than a bare
minimum. Frozen feet and hands were common.
Worst of all, the weather appeared to be
getting worse, threatening air support and
aerial resupply. Few men believed they could
hold out another night against determined
attacks.
Captain Seever (CO, Company
C) sat on the edge of a hole discussing the
situation with Major Curtis (battalion S-3).
An enemy mortar shell landed 10 to 15 feet
away and exploded without injuring either of
them. Seever shrugged his shoulders.
"Major," he said,
"I feel like I'm a thousand years
old." [30]
A single low-flying Marine
fighter bomber appeared over the surrounded
task force about 1000 on 1 December.
Establishing radio contact with the tactical
air control party, the pilot stated that if
the weather improved as forecasted, he would
guide more tactical aircraft into the area
shortly after noon. He also stated that there
were no friendly forces on the road between
Faith's perimeter and Hagaru-ri.
Colonel Faith decided to try
to break out of the perimeter and reach
Hagaru-ri in a single dash rather than risk
another night where he was. He planned to
start the breakout about 1300 so that it
would coincide with the air strike. He
ordered the artillery batteries and the Heavy
Mortar Company to shoot up all remaining
ammunition before that time and then to
destroy their weapons. He placed the 1st
Battalion, 32d Infantry, in the lead,
followed by the 57th Field Artillery
Battalion, the Heavy Mortar Company, and the
3d Battalion of the 31st Infantry. Halftrack
vehicles of Battery D, 15th AAA Automatic
Weapons Battalion, were interspersed
throughout the column. To minimize danger
from enemy attack, Colonel Faith wanted the
column to be as short as possible -only
enough vehicles to haul out the wounded. All
other men would walk. Vehicles, equipment,
and supplies that could not be carried, or
that were not necessary for the move, he
ordered destroyed. The men selected
twenty-two of the best vehicles-2 1/2-ton,
3/4-ton and l/4-ton trucksand lined them up
on the road. They drained gasoline from the
other vehicles and filled the tanks of the
ones they were going to take. Then they
destroyed the remaining vehicles with white
phosphorus or thermite grenades.
About noon someone roused
Lieutenant Campbell and said, "We're
going to make a break for it."
He and the other wounded
men-several hundred of them by this time-were
placed in the vehicles. They lay there for
about an hour while final preparations for
the breakout attempt were made. Enemy mortar
shells began dropping in the vicinity.
Colonel Faith selected
Company C, 32d Infantry, as advance guard for
the column. Lieutenant Mortrude's
platoon, the unit least hurt, was to take the
point position for the company. Supported by
a dual 40-mm halftrack, this platoon would
clear the road for the vehicle column.
Lieutenant Mortrude, who was wounded in the
knee, planned to ride the halftrack. Company
A, followed by Company B, would act as flank
security east of the road. There was no
danger at the beginning of the breakout from
the direction of the reservoir, which was to
the west.
Friendly planes appeared
overhead. Mortrude moved his platoon out
about 1300. Lieutenant Smith led out Company
A. The men of these units had walked barely
out of the area that had been their defensive
perimeter when enemy bullets whistled past or
dug into the ground behind them. At almost
the same time, four friendly planes, in close
support of the breakout action, missed the
target and dropped napalm bombs on the lead
elements. The halftrack in which Mortrude
planned to ride was set ablaze. Several men
were burned to death immediately. About five
others, their clothes afire, tried
frantically to beat out the flames. Everyone
scattered. Disorganization followed.
Up to this point, units had
maintained organizational structure, but
suddenly they began to fall apart.
Intermingling in panic, they disintegrated
into leaderless groups of men. Most of the
squad and platoon leaders and the commanders
of the rifle companies were dead or wounded.
Many of the key personnel from the battalions
were casualties. Capt. Harold B. Bauer (CO,
Headquarters Company), Major Crosby P. Miller
(battalion executive officer), Major Curtis
(battalion S-3), Capt. Wayne E. Powell
(battalion S-2) and Lt. Henry M. Moore
(Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon leader) had
all been wounded. The same was true of the
important non-coms. No one had slept for
several days. One thought drove the men: they
had to keep moving if they were to get out.
Even those who were not wounded were strongly
tempted to lie down and go to sleep; but they
knew they would be lost if they did.
Lieutenant Mortrude gathered
ten men around him and proceeded to carry out
his orders. Firing as they advanced, they
dispersed twenty or more enemy soldiers who
fled. As they ran down the road screaming
obscenities at the enemy, Mortrude and his
men encountered several small Chinese groups,
which they killed or scattered. One such
group was putting in communication lines.
Another was repairing a wrecked jeep. Out of
breath and hardly able to walk on his wounded
leg, Mortrude and those men still with him
reached a blown-out bridge two miles or more
south of the starting point. Attracting no
enemy fire, they stopped there to rest and
wait for the column. A little later a Company
A platoon leader (Lt. Herbert E. Marshburn,
Jr.) came up with a group of men and joined
them. Together they crossed under the bridge
and moved to the east, then south, to
reconnoiter. Enemy fire came in from the high
ground to the northeast. Most of the men fell
to the ground to take cover. Lieutenant
Mortrude wondered why the vehicles were not
coming down the road, since he had expected
the column to follow closely. As he lay on
the slope of the ridge, a bullet struck him
in the head and knocked him unconscious.
The main body of the column,
meanwhile, waited until Colonel Faith could
reorganize it. Since Company C and part of
Company A were disorganized by the burning
napalm, he ordered Company B to take the lead
and to advance with marching fire to the
blown-out bridge. The vehicular column moved
slowly down the road, keeping abreast of
Company B, which was sweeping the high
ground. Air cover was continuous.
It was mid-afternoon or later
when the truck column stopped at the
blown-out bridge where it was necessary to
construct a bypass over the rough and steep
banks of the stream. A half-track towed the
trucks across while the able-bodied men with
the column took care to prevent them from
overturning. In the middle of this tediously
slow process, Chinese riflemen began firing
at the trucks and men. One truck-the one in
which Lieutenant Campbell was lying-stalled
in the middle of the stream bed. Enemy fire
struck some of the wounded men in the truck.
Campbell, figuring it would be better for him
to get out and move under his own power,
crawled out of the truck. He started walking
up the ditch toward the lead vehicles, which
had stopped again a third of a mile ahead.
After he had gone about two hundred yards
enemy riflemen began shooting at him, forcing
him to the ground. He discovered his head was
clear now, and the feeling of weakness had
vanished. Although his leg and side pained
him, and although his cheek and mouth were
swollen from the wound he had received three
days before, he felt pretty good. When a
3-ton truck came by after about twenty
minutes, he got on it. He never did learn
what happened to the truck he had left.
Back at the blown-out bridge
the column moved forward as fast as the
halftrack could drag the trucks through the
bypass. The battalion motor officer (Lt. Hugh
R. May) stood in the road supervising the
operation. He appeared to be unconcerned
about the enemy fire, which remained heavy as
long as there were men and trucks at the
roadblock. It was late in the afternoon
before the last truck was across. [31]
When Lieutenant Mortrude
regained consciousness on the slope of the
ridge, he noticed friendly troops moving up
the hill in the area south of the blown-out
bridge. An aid man (Cpl. Alfonso Camoesas)
came past and bandaged his head. Then
Mortrude stumbled across the ridgeline,
passing many American dead and wounded on the
slope. Dazed and in a condition of shock, he
followed a group of men he could vaguely see
ahead of him. The group went toward the
reservoir and walked out onto the ice.
While all of this was taking
place, another enemy roadblock halted the
lead trucks in the column at a hairpin curve
a half mile beyond the blown-out bridge. At
least two machine guns and enemy riflemen
kept the area under fire. Colonel Faith, a
blanket around his shoulders, walked up and
down the line of trucks as he organized a
group to assault the enemy who were firing
from positions east of the road. Each time he
passed his jeep in the center of the column
he fired several bursts from the caliber .50
machine gun mounted on it. Heavy enemy fire
also came from the west side of the road,
from the direction of the reservoir. This
fire raked the truck column, hitting the
wounded men in the trucks. Darkness was not
far off. Colonel Faith was desperately
anxious to get his column moving and the
wounded men out before the Chinese closed in
on them. He got some wounded into the ditch
to form a base of fire and then organized
several groups to assault the enemy
positions.
One group of men, under
Captain Bigger (CO, Company D), was to clear
out the area between the road and the
reservoir. Colonel Faith instructed the S-2
of the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry (Major
Robert E. Jones), to gather all available men
and move them onto the high ground south of
the hairpin curve, while he himself organized
another group to move onto the high ground
just north of the roadblock at the hairpin
curve. They would then attack from opposite
directions at the same time. [32]
Captain Bigger, blinded in
one eye by a mortar fragment and wounded in
the leg, supported himself on a mortar aiming
stake and waved his group up the hill,
hobbling up himself. Like Captain Bigger, the
majority of his group was walking
wounded.
It was almost dark when Major
Jones and Colonel Faith, each with a hundred
men or less, launched their attacks against
the roadblock and knocked it out. Colonel
Faith, hit by grenade fragments, was mortally
wounded. A man next to him, hit by fragments
of the same grenade. tried to help him down
to the road, but was unable to do so. Some
other men came by, carried him down to the
road, and put him in the cab of a truck.
[33]
Colonel Faith's task
force, which had started to break up soon
after it got under way that afternoon, now
disintegrated completely because those men
who had commanded the battalions, companies,
and platoons were either dead or wounded so
seriously they could exercise no control. The
task force crumbled into individuals, or into
groups of two or ten or twenty men. Major
Jones, with the help of several others, took
charge of the largest group of men
remaining-those who stayed to help with the
trucks carrying the wounded. Enemy fire had
severely damaged the truck column. Several
trucks were knocked out and blocked the
column, and others had flat tires. The time
was about 1700, 1 December, and it was almost
dark.
Those who were able, now
removed all wounded men from three destroyed
2 1/2-ton trucks which blocked the column,
carried the wounded to other trucks, and then
pushed the destroyed vehicles over the cliff
toward the reservoir. Someone shouted for
help to gather up all men who had been
wounded during the roadblock action. For half
an hour the able-bodied men searched both
sides of the road. When the column was ready
to move again the wounded were piled two deep
in most of the trucks. Men rode across the
hoods and on the bumpers, and six or eight
men hung to the sides of each truck. After
re-forming the truck column with all
operating vehicles, Major Jones organized as
many able-bodied and walking wounded men as
he could-between a hundred and two hundred
menand started south down the road. The
trucks were to follow. [34]
The group of men that had
gone with Captain Bigger, after having run
the Chinese off of the high ground on the
west side of the road, found that there were
still enemy soldiers between it and the road.
Rather than fight back to the road, Bigger
led his men west and south to the reservoir
shore, and then out onto the ice. Another
group of about fifteen men, including
Lieutenant Smith (who had commanded Company
A), Lt. Richard E. Moore (one of his platoon
leaders), and Lieutenant Barnes (an artillery
forward observer), after knocking out one of
the enemy machine guns on the same side of
the road, watched Captain Bigger and his men
heading toward the ice. They debated what
they should do. They could see the trucks
stalled along the road. They were out of
ammunition. Deciding there was no reason to
go back, they continued toward the reservoir
ice. A group of 15 or 20 Chinese, trying to
head them off, came as far as the reservoir
bank and fired at them without effect. One
enemy soldier, however, did follow them out
on the ice to bayonet a man who had fallen
behind. Six men of this group, including
Smith, were wounded or had frostbitten
feet.
Lieutenant Campbell stayed
with the column of trucks following the men
with Major Jones. Just before leaving the
last roadblock position, Campbell happened to
meet his platoon sergeant (MSgt. Harold M.
Craig). Craig was wounded in the middle of
his back and was about to throw away his
carbine and rely on his bayonet. Figuring
that he would have to make a break for it as
soon as darkness came, Craig felt his carbine
would encumber him. Campbell gladly accepted
the carbine. It had a "banana clip"
in it, with thirty rounds. As the trucks
moved forward he found one with a place on
the side to which he could cling. There were
five other men clinging o the same side. It
was a ragged and desperatelooking column of
men and vehicles. Those following Major Jones
had little semblance to a military unit.
Without subordinate leaders, without
formation or plan, they were a mixture of the
remnants of all units, a large percentage
being walking wounded. About 15 of the
original 22 trucks were left.
A mile or two beyond the
roadblock two burned-out tanks partly blocked
the road and delayed the column until men
could construct a bypass. Beyond that, the
column made steady but slow progress for
another mile or so. Some of the men began to
believe they were safe. There were stragglers
along the road-men who had struck out for
themselves during previous delays. Some of
them swung onto the passing trucks. By this
time, it was nearly 2100 and the column,
having covered more than half of the
approximate ten miles between the last
defensive perimeter and Hagaru-ri, approached
Hudong-ni, the small lumber village. As the
leading truck, which was some distance ahead
of the rest of the column, entered the town,
Chinese soldiers opened fire and killed the
driver. The truck overturned and spilled out
the wounded men, a few of whom managed to
work back up the road to warn the rest of the
column. At this point Major Jones decided it
would be advisable to get away from the road
and follow the railroad tracks south. The
railroad paralleled the road but was closer
to the reservoir shoreline. Some of the men
followed him. [35]
About 75 to 100 men stayed
with the vehicles. An artillery officer
collected all who could walk and fire a
weapon, and led them forward. At the edge of
the village they began to receive fire from
rifles and at least one automatic weapon of
an enemy unit of undetermined size. After
returning the fire for a few minutes, the
group returned to the vehicles. They picked
up several wounded men from the overturned
truck and took them back. The trucks moved a
little closer to the village and halted. It
was then 2200 or later, 1 December.
A group of officers and men
decided they would wait where they were. Word
of their situation, they argued, must surely
by then have gotten through to Hagaru-ri. Aid
would undoubtedly arrive soon.
They waited about an hour or
so until the rear of the column began to
receive small-arms and mortar fire. Then they
decided to make a run for it. Lieutenant
Campbell was still hanging to one of the
trucks. "We'll never make it
through," he thought.
As the column proceeded
through the village, moving slowly, enemy
fire killed the drivers of the first three
trucks. The column halted and an enemy
machine gun immediately raked it at
point-blank range. Jumping off the tailgate
of the third truck, Lieutenant Campbell
scrambled for the right side of the road
where an embankment separated it from a small
plot of cultivated ground eight or ten feet
beneath. In the darkness he could see only
outlines of the trucks on the road and the
flashes of a machine gun firing from a hill
on the opposite side of the road. Leaning
against the embankment, he fired his carbine
at the machine gun's flashes. A body, an
arm torn off, lay nearby on the road. The
overturned truck, its wheels in the air,
rested in the small field below the road.
Someone pinned under it kept pounding on the
truck's body. Wounded men, scattered
nearby, screamed either in pain or for help.
Up on the road someone kept yelling for men
to drive the trucks through. Chinese soldiers
closed in on the rear of the column. Campbell
saw a white phosphorus grenade explode in the
rear of a truck at the end of the column.
"This is the end of the
truck column!" he said to himself.
Someone yelled, "Look
out!"
Campbell turned in time to
see a 3/4-ton truck coming over the
embankment toward him. As he scrambled to one
side, the truck ran over his foot, bruising
the bones. Someone had decided to try to get
the lead vehicles off the road. Pushed by the
fourth, the first three trucks, without their
drivers, jammed together, rolled off the
embankment, and overturned. Wounded men
inside were spilled and crushed. The frantic
screams of these men seemed to Lieutenant
Campbell like the world gone mad. He fired
his last three rounds at the enemy machine
gun, headed for the railroad track on the
opposite side of the tiny field, and dived
into a culvert underneath the railroad. It
began to snow again-a fine, powdery snow.
Everyone scattered. Corporal
Camoesas (company aid man) found himself in a
group of about fifteen men, none of whom he
knew. Carrying six wounded, the group reached
the reservoir. As Camoesas walked out on the
ice, he looked back. Several trucks were
burning.
Lieutenant Campbell crawled
through the culvert. He found a man, wounded
in the leg, who could not walk. Two other
soldiers came over the embankment and joined
him. Dragging the wounded man, the group
walked in a crouch across the rice paddy to a
large lumber pile in the middle of the field.
There, two more soldiers joined them. At the
edge of the reservoir, three quarters of a
mile away, several others joined
Campbell's party. Staying close to the
shoreline, the men walked on the reservoir
ice. Campbell was not sure where Hagaru-ri
was, but he felt they would reach it if they
followed the reservoir shore.
The reservoir ice was not
slippery. The wind had blown off most of the
snow, leaving a rough-surfaced crust, and it
was so thick that 76-mm shells had ricocheted
off without appreciable effect.
At a North Korean house, an
ROK soldier with them asked where the marines
were. He was told that American jeeps came
down the road every day. Some of the group,
suspicious of the North Koreans, wanted to
continue across the reservoir, but Lieutenant
Campbell thought he recognized the road. He
led off, and the rest followed. By then, he
had seventeen men with him, of whom three
were armed. Two miles down the road, the
group reached a Marine tank outpost, and the
tankers directed them to the nearest command
post, where a truck took them to a Marine
hospital in Hagaru-ri. Lieutenant Campbell
arrived there at 0530, 2 December. The shell
fragment in the roof of his mouth began to
bother him.
Individuals and other groups
straggled into Hagaru-ri for several days
beginning on the night of 1 December.
Lieutenant Smith and those men with him, who
had left the column at the second roadblock,
reached a Marine supply point at Hagaru-ri
about 2200 that night. A plane had dropped a
note in a canteen instructing them to keep
away from the shoreline and continue across
the ice. A little later that night, Captain
Bigger hobbled in with his group.
The men who went with Major
Jones, after following the railroad tracks
for some distance, had been fired on by an
enemy machine gun. Many of the men took off
toward the reservoir and began arriving at
the Marine perimeter soon after midnight.
Most of the men who had
served with Task Force Faith were left where
the truck column stopped near the lumber
village of Hudong-ni, or were strewn along
the road from there to the northernmost
position. When those few men who could move
had left, the others were either captured or
frozen.
PFC Glenn J. Finfrock (a
machine gunner from Company D) became
unconscious from loss of blood about the time
the truck column came to its final halt. It
was daylight on the morning of 2 December
when he regained consciousness again. He
moved down the road a short distance until he
found several wounded men trying to build a
fire by one of the trucks-the one in which
Colonel Faith had been placed the previous
evening. His frozen body was still in the
cab. Since the truck appeared to be in good
order, Finfrock and another man tried
unsuccessfully to start it. As they were
working on the truck some Chinese walked
toward them from the village, and several of
the men ran toward the ice. Other were
captured. The Chinese gave morphine to
several men, bandaged their wounds and, after
caring for them for several days, freed them.
[37]
Lieutenant Mortrude, wounded
in the knee and in the head, walked to
Hagaru-ri from the blown-out bridge. It was
0330 on 2 December when he reached friendly
lines.
Corporal Camoesas (the aid
man) and his group carrying the six wounded
men, after hiding in brush near the reservoir
shore in order to rest, followed the railroad
track until they came to the road leading
toward Hagaru-ri. About 0800 they met a
Marine tank, and three hundred yards beyond
were trucks and ambulances waiting to take
them to the rear. All day other men made
their way back to friendly lines.
On 4 December, when most of
its survivors had returned, the 1st
Battalion, 32d Infantry, counted only 181
officers, men, and attached Republic of Korea
troops, of the original 1,053 that had begun
the operation. The other battalions in the
perimeter had suffered equal losses. [38]
This was not the immediate
end of trouble, since the enemy still
controlled much of the road between Hagaru-ri
and the port city of Hungnam. But at
Hagaru-ri the 1st Marine Division had a solid
perimeter that included the airstrip, and
there were food and ammunition and medical
supplies. From Hungnam the more seriously
wounded were evacuated by plane. For the
others, ten days of fighting lay ahead.
* NOTES
[1] Unless otherwise noted,
this account is based on a narrative prepared
in Korea by Capt. Martin Blumenson. To this
account the author has added some information
obtained from official records, and some
obtained by supplemental interviews or by
letters from men who participated in the
action.
[2] Major Wesley J. Curtis,
letter and enclosure to OCMH, 28 January
1953.
[3] X Corps, command report:
Special Report on Chosin Reservoir, 27
November to 10 December l950 (hereafter cited
as X Corps: Chosin Reservoir).
[4] X Corps, war diary:
monthly summary, 1 November to 30 November
l950; Drive to the Yalu (hereafter cited as X
Corps: Drive to the Yalu).
[5] Lt. James G. Campbell, in
an interview by the author, 14 August
1952.
[6] X Corps: Chosin
Reservoir; Curtis, op. cit. [7] X Corps:
Drive to the Yalu.
[8] Curtis, Op. Cit.
[9] X Corps: Chosin
Reservoir.
[10] Curtis, op. cit.
[11] Ibid.
[12] 7th Division: command
report on Chosin Reservoir, 27 November to l2
December l950; narrative section (hereafter
cited as 7th Division: Chosin Reservoir).
[13] Curtis, op. cit.
[14] Campbell, op. cit.
[15] X Corps: Chosin
Reservoir (command section, General
Almond's diary, 28 November l950); Lt.
Cecil G. Smith, in an interview by Capt.
Martin Blumenson, 6 August l950; Mrs. Ervin
B. Bigger, letter to the author, 6 September
; Curtis, op. cit.
[16] Curtis, op. cit.; Smith,
op. cit. [17] Campbell, op. cit.
[18] X Corps: Chosin
Reservoir.
[19] 7th Division: Chosin
Reservoir.
[20] Ibid. (statement of
Major Robert E. Jones).
[21] Campbell, op. cit.
[22] X Corps: Chosin
Reservoir (narrative section).
[23] 7th Division: Chosin
Reservoir (narrative section).
[24] Ibid. (statement of
Lt.Col. Reidy, CO, 2d Battalion, 31st
Infantry).
[25] Ibid.
[26] Curtis, op. cit.
[27] Ibid.
[28] The account of this
counterattack is based upon statements by
Sgt. John Doritsky, PFC Royce Jensen, PFC
Gainius E. Woodby, Lt. James G. Campbell, and
Cpl. Edward Deland. All of these men belonged
to Companies C or D, 32d Infantry.
[29] Campbell, op. cit.
[30] Curtis, op. cit.
[31] Campbell, op. cit.
[32] 7th Division: Chosin
Reservoir (statement of Major Robert E.
Jones).
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.; Campbell, op.
cit. [35] Jones, loc. cit.
[36] Campbell, op. cit.
[37] 7th Division: Chosin
Reservoir (statement of SFC Willard
Donovan).
[38] 7th Division: Chosin
Reservoir. The statement of Major Jones in
this report lists the total strength of the
battalion by companies on 4 December. The
command report for the 32d Infantry Regiment
for November provides a list of the daily
strength of each battalion. The figure for 21
November was used.
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