Departure From Koto-ri
“Tank!”
Arrival At The Chosin Reservoir
Ten Days In Hagaru-ri
Toktong Pass
Departure From Koto-ri
While the division was in Koto-ri, General Smith set up a garrison there, very much like the one in Chinhung-ni. Division engineers also began building an airstrip.
On November 13, the 1st MarDiv – now consisting of just RCT-7 and division headquarters units – resumed its advance north. The last remaining battalion of RCT-5, the 2/5, remained in Koto-ri. The next objective was Hagaru-ri. Once RCT-5, in its entirety, finally got to Hagaru-ri, a few days hence, RCT-5 and RCT-7 would split up.
RCT-5 would stay on the MSR and continue north a short distance. It would stop at an arm of the Chosin Reservoir which extended to the east several miles, called “Pungnyuri-gang,” Not surprisingly, the Army and the Marines both called called it “the inlet.” The inlet was about eight miles north of Hagaru-ri. While in that area, it would dig in and establish a perimeter. (This would turn out to be three perimeters, one per battalion.) Further orders would be forthcoming.
RCT-7 would take the back road mentioned above, in a previous section, to the northwest to Yudam-ni and establish the blocking position there. Of course, in order for the regiments to split, they would have to be together in the same place first. RCT-5 was still stuck on garrison duty down south.
Hagaru-ri was eleven miles north of Koto-ri. The section of the MSR between the two towns went through a long, nearly straight valley, limned on both sides by steep hills. As I mentioned earlier, this valley would be nicknamed “Hell Fire Valley” on November 29, after a day of brutal and bloody fighting. As RCT-7 moved north on November 13, it was generally quieter, with a few exceptions…
“Tank!”
As the division moved north from Koto-ri, the 1/7 Marines led the march. Baker company had point. Lieutenant Owen recounts a conversation he had with Gene O’Brien, Platoon Sergeant of 2nd Platoon, which clearly shows that frontline troops were quite concerned about what was ahead.
“Don’t like this one damn bit, Lieutenant Owen. It isn’t natural for the [Chinese] to let us move up this easy. We’re walking into their trap”
“All I know is that MacArthur says the 1st Marine Division is to go for the Yalu River.”
“You don’t think the [Chinese] will let us get that far without lowering the boom on us, do you, Lieutenant?”
“Hell no, I don’t. But just remember this, ‘ours is not to reason why’”
“Yeah, ‘and into the valley of death rode the six hundred.’”
The Marines were very watchful, but were in good humor as they advanced. Then fifty yards up the road, someone yelled. “Tank.” The company had no weapons on hand that could do anything to a tank. Nevertheless they tried. Somebody rolled a hand grenade under the tank where it exploded harmlessly. Two mortar rounds were fired at it, one went a little long, the second too short, where it exploded near Captain Wilcox and some others who were sprinting across the road. According to Lieutenant Owen...
Jim Kovar and his assistant rocket gunner, Bill Regan, were with Captain Wilcox. Kovar recovered quickly from the close explosion, rolled away from the ditch, and went to the kneeling position, the three-five tube on his shoulder. Only fifty yards away, a gigantic sitting duck in his sights, was Kovar’s dream target, a Soviet T-34 tank. He waited for Regan to tap him on the back, the signal that the rocket was armed, ready to fire. [The are referring to a 3.5" bazooka, which can destroy a tank.]
At the rear of the company column was Danny Holland and his tactical air team. At the first panicked cries of “Tank! Tank!” Danny ran forward bringing his radio man. He had a flight of Corsairs on station, covering the team’s advance. Within seconds one of his planes streaked in on the tank.
Also on the road with the battalion was the regiment’s anti-tank team, hungry for action. They sped their jeep, towing a 75-millimeter recoilless rifle, up the road, skidded to a halt in front of Graeber’s ditch, and spun their gun toward the tank. They had point blank aim on their target.
The enemy tank didn’t get off a single round. With an earsplitting roar, only feet above us, a lone Corsair zoomed in and unleashed a rocket that was a direct hit. Simultaneously the seventy-five gun fired in another direct hit. And as the Corsair flew by, Kovar fired off his three-five for a third knockout blow.
The tank jumped a few feet above its dug-in pit. When it settled it was in flames. Baker company’s second tangle with an enemy tank was a win.
All hands took credit for the kill. Danny Holland chalked one up for his fliers. The Regiment’s seventy-five recoilless crew were jubilant over their big hit. In Baker-One-Seven we gave credit to Jim Kovar.
In the two days the division was on the road between Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri, RCT-7 destroyed all four of the Soviet tanks that the NKPA had dedicated to support the Chinese army. The narrow, isolated mountain roads were not really suited for deployment of tanks. As the Marines advanced up the single-lane dirt road, they occasionally encountered a farmer or a logger who would tell them that there were many Chinese waiting for them in the mountains. There were indeed, but no one had any inkling of the size of the nightmare that lay ahead.
Arrival At The Chosin Reservoir
RCT-7 began arriving in Hagaru-ri on November 14. A few villagers told the Marines that some Chinese soldiers had been there but had left a couple of days before. They had gone west. Now that the Marines were were Hagaru-ri, they secured the town and established a perimeter. Another cache of supplies was set up, and the engineers began building another airstrip. This airstrip would be extremely important in early December, when many wounded Marines and soldiers who had just arrived in Hagaru-ri were evacuated out of North Korea. The rest of RCT-7 completed its arrival in Hagaru-ri by November 17. General Smith moved the 1st MarDiv CP to Hagaru-ri, along with some division-level support units.
At this point, everything stopped in Hagaru-ri. General Smith had to wait for RCT-5 to arrive in Hagaru-ri before he would move the division any further. This delay gave RCT-7 a chance to recuperate and recover for two extra days from the fighting they had endured coming up from Chinhung-ni. General Smith also hoped that a period of seeming inactivity in Hagaru-ri would lure the Chinese to show themselves.
According to David Halberstam, the ferocity of the battle at Sudong-ni had...
… made Smith warier than ever. His job, he believed, was to slow down the journey into that trap if at all possible and, in his phrase, “not go too far out on a limb.” Thus did tensions with Almond continue to increase. “Our Marine division was the spearhead of Tenth Corps,” as Colonel Bowser, Smith’s operations man, noted. “General Almond had already begun to notice that the spearhead was hardly moving at all. We were in fact just poking along – deliberately so. We pulled every trick in the book to slow down our advance, hoping the enemy would show his hand before we got more widely disbursed than we already were. At the same time we were building up our levels of supply at selected dumps along the way.”
On November 15, General Smith wrote to the Commandant of the Marine Corps expressing his concerns about his mission and related issues. He mentioned several things he was concerned about, but two which really worried him were the fragmentation of his division and difficulty in fighting the Chinese in the mountains in winter.
Time and again I have tried to tell the Corps Commander [General Almond] that in a marine division he has a powerful instrument, but that it cannot help but lose its full effectiveness when dispersed. Probably I have had more luck than the other division commanders in impressing my point. [Not really. The last time his division had been together was back at Wonsan nearly three weeks earlier.]
Someone in high authority will have to make up his mind as to what is our goal. My mission is still to advance to the border. The 8th Army, 80 miles to the southwest, will not attack until the 20th. I suppose their goal is the border. Manifestly we should not push on without regard to the 8th Army. We would simply get further out on a limb. If the 8th Army push does not go, then the decision will have to be made as to what to do next. I believe a winter campaign in the mountains of North Korea is too much to ask of the American soldier or marine, and I doubt the feasibility of supplying troops in this area during the winter or providing for evacuation of sick and wounded.
Ten Days In Hagaru-ri
While waiting in Hagaru-ri for RCT-5 to arrive, RCT-7 was keeping busy. On November 16, it began to send patrols around the area, primarily to the northwest and west. These patrols continued through November 20. During the first two days several PVA positions were destroyed, primarily through initial air and artillery attacks, followed by infantry attack. The next three days brought no direct confrontations with the PVA. Marine aircraft did spot small groups of enemy soldiers to the west of Hagaru-ri. Civilian refugees from these areas also reported much enemy activity, mostly at night, when the Marines stayed behind their perimeter.
On November 19, the first elements of RCT-5 began arriving in Hagaru-ri. The 2/5 Battalion moved north by truck from Koto-ri. RCT-1 was still stuck on the H-S Axis, so the 3/7 Battalion was sent back to Koto-ri to occupy the position just vacated by the by the 2/5. The 2/5 passed right through Hagaru-ri to its newly assigned position near the village of Sasu-ri, on the east side of the reservoir, a few miles south of the inlet. The next day, November 20, the 2/5 began patrolling the area around its position. The RCT-5 CP moved to Hagaru-ri.
The 1st MarDiv made two important troop movements on November 21.
First, the 1/5 moved from Majon-dong through Hagaru-ri to its new position just south of the inlet (north of the 2/5's position.) As we have seen, elements of the 7th Infantry Regiment were scheduled to relieve the 1/5 at some point so it could move north and rejoin the 1st MarDiv. Apparently this had happened, probably that day or the day before, though I could not find any specific reference to it. The next day, the 1/5 and 2/5 continued their patrols in their areas. A PVA squad was encountered and a firefight ensued.
Second, elements of RCT-7 – primarily the 1st Battalion – finally set out toward Yudam-ni, to establish the blocking position that had been ordered back on November 13. Their first stop was to be small village named Sinhung-ni, just beyond Toktong Pass. (A lot more on this in the next section.)
On November 23, the 3/5 at Chinhung-ni was relieved by Baker/1/1. The 3/5 moved to its position just north of the inlet. The relief by Baker/1/1 is important. This is the first specific mention of any part of RCT-1 being relieved from the H-S Axis and deployed along the MSR – it was now free to assume its new assignments. Back on November 17, General Smith had written...
Unless forced to do so, the Division [him] desired to avoid committing troops to Yudam-ni or to any great distance north of Hagaru-ri [on the MSR] until RCT-1 could be closed up behind RCT-5 and RCT-7.
RCT-1 was finally coming home. On November 23, General Smith finally had his entire division more or less together, located on a contiguous stretch of MSR about thirty miles from one end (Chinhung-ni) to the other (the inlet.) He issued orders that day directing RCT-5's next move. It was to move north and capture three villages along the MSR – beginning with Kyolmuh-li, twenty miles north of Hagaru-ri. RCT-7 was already on the move toward Yudam-ni, fourteen miles northwest of Hagaru-ri. But before they got to Yudam-ni they had to get through Toktong Pass, which would prove to be a lot harder than anticipated.
Toktong Pass
The winding road from Hagaru-ri to the west was exposed for almost its entire length to the hills and ridgelines on either side. It climbed gently to a little over 4,000 feet to a crest, then descended again. The crest itself was at the apex of a hairpin curve. Troops passing through were in a shooting gallery. This was Toktong Pass.
As was mentioned above, elements of RCT-7 began advancing along this road on November 21. Specifically, Baker/1/7, reinforced by Dog/2/7 amd 81mm mortars from 1st Battalion, set out for the small village of Sinhung-ni. It was just beyond the crest of Toktong Pass. (Sinhung-ni is so small it doesn’t appear on many maps.) About 500 yards short of the pass, the Marines came under heavy small arms and machine gun fire from a company sized PVA element. Lieutenant Owen describes this action:
The weather turned ugly again as we formed up to resume the attack to the north. A bitter cold wind greeted us, filled with a stinging, gritty snow.
-—
Our objective was Toktong Pass, a rocky peak that was the highest point on the roads to Yudam-ni. It was six miles ahead, and we stepped out in parallel columns spread along each side of the twisting, frozen dirt road. Rifle platoons from Abel and Charlie Companies covered our flanks from their positions on the endless, snow-covered hills.
We moved out in the colorless dawn. The men beat their hands against their sides after the finger-numbing ordeal of strapping their gear and checking weapons in the cold darkness. We were helmeted, shapeless figures in long hooded parkas, showing only a small patch of face to the wind.
“Nothing but Chinamen from here to Mongolia,” Kelly muttered to me. He walked backward for shelter against the wind. “I hope them [Chinese] bastards are as cold as we are.”
There were some listless profanities aimed at the cold and the snow that coated us white. Until we caught up with the Chinese again, the weather was our enemy.
-—
The Chinese opened up on us as we approached the top of Toktong Pass. They were embedded around a high spike of rocks, and they took us under fire at two hundred yards. Their machine guns and rifles were sporadic at first, tracers seeking targets. They soon intensified.
Hank Kiser’s platoon had the lead, and they quickly formed a firing line off of the road. Hugo Johnson’s mortar was with them, and I soon heard his raucous directions and rounds thumping out of the tube.
The enemy fire became heavy; about fifty Chinese were dug in against us, and they were serious about defending this place. Chew Een Lee took his platoon off of the road to extend our firing line. Captain Wilcox came forward with Garcia and the big radio and set up in the ditch just behind Kiser. I marveled at his easy, ambling gait during firefights, he always stood straight up. [1Lt Lee had became 2nd Platoon Leader after 1Lt Graeber was wounded at Sudong-ni. Pfc Gilberto Garcia was Cpt Wilcox’s radioman and runner.]
The static of the SCR-300 radio added to the pounding of our own machine guns and BARs. Rifles cracked, Johnson’s mortar thumped out the HE’s [high explosive mortar shells,] and enemy bullets zinged through the air and spun off chips of boulders. Soon came the urgent cries, “Corpsman! Oh, God, Corpsman.”
And the fear came, as it did to me with the onset of every fight. The corpsman cries, the booming explosions, and the whine of bullets, blood-soaked parkas. Dear God, not this time, please.
Platoon Sergeant King, from Taylor’s platoon crouched among some large boulders above me. He shouted down that there was a machine gun near the spike of rocks that marked the main Chinese position. I willed myself to climb up and get a better look. The fear submerged and the cold was forgotten... Kelly was with me, and we slipped frequently and fell to our knees, then scrambled up again.
Progress was slow and we attracted enemy attention. Bullets whined close by, and we made desperate bounds over the snow, up the slope, and into sheltering boulders.
Just below us, Pat Burris had found a rock-rimmed pit for his gun, and I soon had him throwing HE into the rockpile. Our mortars had little effect, the enemy positions were skillfully emplaced. Even with artillery support it would be a long, hard day taking Toktong Pass away from the Chinese.
We were joined by Bob Wilson, the tactical air officer. He and his radioman, Tony Tinelli, had hauled their heavy radio up the near-vertical climb under thickening fire. By now, the Chinese realized that we were an observation post and they concentrated on us. They filled the air with bullets that ricocheted off the boulders and threw off chunks of granite.
“Why the hell can’t you people find your own position?” Kelly growled at Tinelli. Bob Wilson brought in the Corsairs that were on station to cover our advance. I called down to Burris to lay down a round of white phosphorus to mark the Chinese guns, and the fliers came in on the column of white smoke.
They flew in low, barely above us. Their great, racketing noise overpowered all other sound as they flashed by. On their first passes they fired their machine guns and cannons. These had little effect; the Chinese were dug in too well.
They followed with a napalm run, a spectacle of awesome and terrible beauty. The pods slid from the planes, tumbled across the ground, then exploded. Black smoke billowed and red flame leaped against the white snow, and seconds later we felt the blast of heat that consumed the ground two hundred yards away. Chinese soldiers were aflame, running around in frenzied circles. They threw themselves, flailing, into the snow.
There was sudden silence. The Chinese ceased fire and our our own weapons were quiet. We were stunned by the power of that close-in, flaming strike.
There was no further resistance at Toktong Pass. When we reached the top of the open slope, we found several charred Chinese bodies. Other than that, the position was empty; the enemy had withdrawn in good order, with their wounded and their weapons.
We congratulated Bob Wilson and asked him to convey a “Well done!” to his Corsairs for making Toktong Pass an easy fight. We would come back to this place again, when it would be known as Fox Hill. That would be a much more difficult fight. And there would be far fewer of us by far.
The Marines spent that night on the high ground just above the crest of the pass. The next day the entire 1/7 moved to Sinhung-ni and established defensive positions. They also began “aggressive patrolling” between Sinhung-ni and Yudam-ni, paying particular attention to potential avenues of attack the PVA might use. The next morning, November 23, orders came in from division directing RCT-7 to seize Yudam-ni. As the day progressed the 1/7 ran into heavy snow drifts and Chinese roadblocks, which were vigorously defended. Their progress was halted about two miles northwest of Sinhung-ni, and they spent the night there.
On November 23, General MacArthur announced his new “Home-By-Christmas Offensive.” November 23 was Thanksgiving Day. It would turn out to be a most peculiar Thanksgiving Day. Back to Lieutenant Owen.
The road to Yudam-ni writhed like a snake through the mountains, and its frozen mud surface was even narrower than the road up to Hagaru-ri. Much of it was covered with ice, a difficult passage for the company jeep which pulled a trailer filled with the day’s ammunition and the company gear.
-—
The Chinese showed that they would not hibernate from the war because of the cold weather. The farther we advanced, the stiffer was their resistance. The hills continued to grow steeper and each climb we made, encumbered with the heavy clothing, became its own ordeal. Most of our fights were platoon-size, Kiser or Lee or Taylor maneuvering up a slippery , snow-covered slope to dislodge a force of Chinese who fired down at us on the road. When the skies were clear, the Corsairs flew support for us, which made our work easier. [1LT Woody Taylor was Leader of the 1st Platoon. He was a replacement officer, brought in when the original Platoon Leader was wounded.]
Much of the time, though, we couldn’t get air support and, after Toktong Pass, we were beyond artillery’s range; the big guns were still back at Hagaru-ri. The platoons fought up to Yudam-ni on their own. Our sixties and eighty-ones from battalion [the company’s 60mm mortars and battalion’s 81mm mortars,] hundreds of yards behind us were a help, but the rifle squads and machine guns did the heavy work. It was close-in and deadly fighting. After each hill, stretchers were brought down to the road, many with ponchos covering the [dead] bodies.
Next Part
Part 7: Changes Of Plans
Previous Parts
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Korean War Begins
Part 3: MacArthur's War
Part 4: First Encounter With The Chinese
Part 5: Where Have All The Chinese Gone?