This series of diaries are dedicated to my father, a Marine and one of the “Chosin Few.” He died in 2009. He would never tell his story. I will try to tell it for him.
As night fell on November 27, 1950, about one quarter of the United Nations X (Tenth) Corps – about 25,000 Marines and 3,300 Army soldiers – were in serious danger. They were strung out along about thirty miles of narrow mountain roads around and just south of a ten mile long man-made lake called the Changjin Reservoir. This was deep inside North Korea, about fifty miles south of the Yalu River, the border with Manchuria (northeastern China.)
On the Marines’ maps this place was shown as “Chosin,” the Japanese transliteration of its Korean name, Changjin. Today, we remember the battle which was fought there as the “Battle of Chosin Reservoir” and the men who fought there are often referred to as “The Chosin Few.” There aren’t many left – the battle was 66 years ago. (Chosin is pronounced choe sinn.)
Most of these troops, about 25,000, belonged to the 1st Marine Division (1st MarDiv) which was commanded by Major General (2 stars) O. P. Smith. About 22,000 were spread out in several locations on the southern and western sides of the Reservoir. Another 3,000 or so were a few miles south of the reservoir, in three separate locations on the road from the reservoir to the coast the Marines called the Main Supply Road (MSR.) A single US Army unit, the 31st Regimental Combat Team (RCT-31), was isolated in three locations on the eastern side. The weather was bitterly cold, the coldest winter in Korea in more than a century. On this one particular night, the temperature was about twenty degrees below zero F. It would be a little warmer after sunrise – perhaps about zero F.
In mid-November the (Chinese) Peoples Volunteer Army (PVA) Ninth Army, commanded by General Song Shilun, had begun quietly moving into the Chosin Reservoir area. The PVA Ninth Army comprised about 120,000 troops, organized in three corps, each with four divisions. As the 1st MarDiv and RCT-31 began arriving at the reservoir later that month, the PVA Ninth Army carefully observed and encircled them while remaining virtually undetected themselves.
In the middle of the night of November 27-28, the PVA Ninth Army attacked the 1st MarDiv and RCT-31 positions from all directions. Their instructions were simple – destroy the units and kill as many troops as possible. The initial battles in the hills above the reservoir and the area around it lasted two nights and days. RCT-31 was destroyed with about ninety percent of their men killed, wounded, or captured. Over the next two weeks the 1st MarDiv staged a successful breakout from the Chinese encirclement. The division brought out nearly all its Marines – all the survivors, all the wounded, and most of the dead. They also brought out RCT-31's survivors, about 1,050 men in all. Of these, only 385 were fit to continue fighting. These few became, in effect, temporary Marines for the remainder of the breakout. Unfortunately, many of RCT-31's dead were left behind. Many of the bodies have been recovered in the intervening years, but some are still buried in the lonely, desolate hills east of the Chosin Reservoir.
During the two days of initial battle and the twelve subsequent days of the breakout, or what General Smith reportedly called it, “an attack in another direction,” the PVA Ninth Army suffered casualties in excess of 40%, according to Chairman Mao – probably more – and was eliminated as an effective fighting force for several months. At least two of its divisions were never reconstituted.
The Chosin Reservoir battle and subsequent breakout became one of the great, iconic battles in the history of the modern Marine Corps, along with Belleau Wood in France, Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima in the Pacific, and Khe Sanh in Vietnam.
One of the Marines who fought with the 1st MarDiv at Chosin was my father. He never told his story in any detail to me, or, I suspect, to anyone else, so I going to do my best to tell it for him. Please note that I was never in the USMC, or any infantry unit, for that matter. My military service, such as it was, was in the Air Force. If I made any errors in this diary – and I am sure I did – please attribute it to less than fully adequate research.
My Father
I never knew my father all that well, despite the fact we lived in the same house until I was eighteen. During my first three years of life he attended college full time and worked at various jobs. We lived with my grandparents, in a tiny guest-house in their back yard. My grandfather, a carpenter, also worked, so my universe was mostly limited to my mother and her mother.
When I was about three, my father graduated from college. His graduation was held on a hot afternoon in the Hollywood Bowl. One of my earliest memories is of running up and down the seemingly endless stairs on that hot, sunny afternoon. For a year or so after graduation he tried to find a job as a teacher without any success. In the meantime, he worked as the manager of the liquor department in a market. He stayed at that same job until I was about thirteen. (He would have made a lousy teacher anyway – he had no patience for anyone, and he disliked public speaking, unless he could give orders or shout at people.) During the entire time he worked at the market, his days off were Monday and Tuesday. Now and then he would keep me out of school on one of his days off and we do something together. These were rare occurrences, but they left behind strong memories for me. Aside from this, he was not really part of my life.
When I was thirteen, he left the market and took a job with the county probation department. For his first couple of years with them he was assigned to work at one of the juvenile halls. He worked very peculiar hours, often at night. Eventually, when I was about fifteen, he got something approximating a regular work schedule, with Saturdays and Sundays off. For the first time in my life, we began eating dinners together as a family. It felt nice, but very weird. I really didn’t know this man at all.
Korean War Veteran
One thing I did know from an early age was that he had once been a Marine and had been in a war in a place called Korea. He mentioned other places, such as Camp Lejeune and Parris Island. He had been to various places in the Caribbean, one of which was called Barbados, where he was bitten on the inside of his thigh by a six-inch-long centipede while using an outhouse. I heard all these stories, but I wasn’t too clear about what a “Marine” was. Sometime when I was around eight or nine I began to get an idea, when we watched a movie called “The D.I.” It starred Jack Webb and was about Marine Corps boot camp. This was my father’s favorite movie, I think. He never missed it.
Over time, I gradually became aware of a few details of his military service. I would pick up a fact here or there or I would see something and ask about it. His answer would generally be brief, to the point of terseness. With one exception, he never substantively discussed his experiences there with me, and even that one exception was sketchy and was aided by intoxication.
He had a tattoo on his left upper arm of the Marine emblem (an eagle, a globe and an anchor) with the letters U.S.M.C. under it. I remember that it had gotten blurry.
When I was about ten, I saw a U.S. Treasury check on my parents’ dresser. It was for $314. I asked my father what it was. (I knew what checks were, but I had never seen one from the government.) He told me that the government had sent him this money because he had killed 314 Chinese soldiers during the war. My mother quickly started to object to his saying this, then just as quickly choked her objection off, which I thought was odd. Looking back on it now, I suspect my father was probably drunk when he said this and that the check was probably a tax refund. Nevertheless, his comment made quite an impression on me.
At around the same time, I came across a little booklet with a dark blue cover. It was a Korean-English phrase book, issued by the Marines. I kept that book until I left home when I was eighteen. I only remember one phrase from it, transliterated (as best as I can recall) as “Ahn yung hee choo moo suss soom nik gah,” which, according to the book, literally meant, “I hope you slept well.” It was used to say, “Good morning.” (To any Korean speakers out there, I apologize if I got this wrong – this is a fifty-plus-year-old memory. The only reason I remember it at all is that I made a conscious effort to memorize it.
A couple of years later, I discovered ribbon bars for two medals. I looked in the encyclopedia and figured out that they were a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. The Purple Heart had a star on it, which meant the recipient had been wounded twice. The Bronze Star had the letter “V” on it, which meant the recipient had been decorated for combat heroism. When I asked my father about these, he told me they were his, but evaded talking about them or how he came to have them.
He almost never went wading in the ocean or any lake or river – never even got his feet wet if he could help it. I asked him about this once. He told me that it was because he had frostbite in Korea, and could not stand getting his feet wet in cold water. I didn’t know what frostbite was. I remember looking at his feet when he said this. They looked OK to me.
There were two primary brands of TV dinners which were sold in the 1960s. He flatly refused to buy one of these brands, because, he said with some anger, they were war profiteers. He said that they manufactured canned rations for the Marines in Korea that were utterly inedible. The men just threw them away and went hungry.
Many of our father-son excursions were to the nearby Mojave Desert, where we would camp out and spend the day target shooting. We had a place we often went to, which we called “the pit.” It had a large annular earthen berm, about sixty feet in diameter. The berm rose about five feet above the desert floor and the enclosed circle within it was about ten feet below the top of the berm (i.e., sunk about five feet below the desert floor. I think it was a sump of some kind – the floor was stained dark and stank. Over by the road were some large concrete structures, the remains of a foundation for some unidentifiable activity. These were about one hundred feet from the side of the berm. On the side of the berm nearest the road and the mysterious concrete structures was an opening cut entirely through it – about a six foot wide slice was missing. If one went through this opening, one could walk all the way to the sump without leaving ground level. We would put cans on top of the berm or paper plates on its side and use these as targets. My father had a lot of guns.
One afternoon, on one such trip, when I was nine or ten, my father got the idea of showing me that ‘you always hear a gunshot twice” – those were his exact words. I didn’t know what he meant by this. He didn’t explain what it was or how he knew it or why I needed to know it. I should add that he had been drinking – he always was.
To demonstrate the point he was trying to make, he had me go behind the berm and crouch down, near the opening but well to one side of it. He would then fire several shots over my head. Once I was “safe” behind several feet of earth, he proceeded to shoot. I was supposed to listen carefully, but I didn’t really know what I was listening for. Also, frankly, I was a little scared. All I heard was the “cra-a-ack” of a .22 rifle each time he fired it – five of six times. When he was done – I hoped he was done, but I didn’t feel too sure about it – I gingerly emerged from behind the safety of many feet of compressed dirt. I told my father that I had heard “it.” It seemed somehow safer to say this. Later, when I told my mother about it, she was furious. I suspect they “discussed” it later.
Later on, I figured out what my father was talking about. When one is being shot at, the bullet generally arrives a split-second before the sound does. This is particularly true with a rifle. A rifle bullet initially travels at at least twice the speed of sound. As it passes by, a little sound is heard – I have generally read it described as “zing.” Lieutenant Owen describes it that way, or “whine.” In combat, the shooter is generally some distance away so the interval between arrival of the bullet and the sound of the gunshot is long enough to be perceptible. When my father tried his demonstration he was only about one hundred feet from me, not enough for a significant difference. In some cases, the sound of the gunshot is attenuated or blocked entirely, by such things as an adverse wind or precipitation or a noisy environment. It occurred to me that my father would have heard a lot of these “zings” when he was in Korea.
All this being said, I can tell you that it feels very uncomfortable to have bullets shot in your direction, even under such “friendly” circumstances as I have described. I hesitated for perhaps thirty seconds after my father shouted at me to come out. I have never been in combat. I cannot imagine how many orders of magnitude more frightening an experience that would be.
Finally, one night when I was about fifteen he opened up, just a little, and told me about his military service and his time in Korea. I think he wanted me to enlist in the Marines. (This was about 1968 – Marines were being maimed and killed in large numbers in Vietnam just then. I didn’t find this an attractive option.)
He had enlisted in 1948, when he was 19. I know nothing about his service prior to Korea, except that he contracted malaria somewhere – I think when his unit was visiting Barbados. Every few years it would recur, bringing fever, heavy sweating, pronounced shaking, and mental confusion.
He had been in the Korean War. He went there in 1950 after the war started as part of the 1st Marine Division. He was a radio operator. He participated in a battle at a place called Chosin Reservoir. It was terrible battle, very brutal. He described the battle to a limited extent. He was wounded twice – he said that the enemy shot at the jeep with the radio in it. And it was desperately cold there, well below zero at night, scarcely above in the daytime.
He had immense hatred for an Army General named Almond. (He wouldn’t mention his name without preceding it with an obscene word.) At the same time, he had immense respect for an Marine officer named Chesty Puller. Chesty Puller was famous outside the Marine Corps. He was (and remains) the most decorated Marine ever, with five Navy Crosses and one Distinguished Service Cross (from the Army.) These are America’s second-highest military decorations, second only to the Medal of Honor. Puller is the only serviceman ever to win six of them. He was the first (and for a long time, the only) Marine whose name I had ever heard. My father revered him.
He never said anything to me about his service after Chosin, though I believe he remained in the Marines until late 1951 or early 1952, and the 1st MarDiv remained in Korea for the duration of the war. Aside from these thin facts I have no other information that came from him.
There were two other things. Years later I developed a taste for kim chee (essentially Korean sauerkraut with red pepper.) I ate some once in front of my father. He was disgusted. He couldn’t believe I’d eat such a thing. This particular kim chee came from a company in Hawaii. This mollified him somewhat, but he remained disgusted. The other time he told (DKos member) agita that he had kept some peppermint hard candy in his helmet on one occasion. It had partially melted. Later on, he cooked some rice in the same helmet. He discovered that peppermint-flavored rice was as disgusting as kim chee. Also it made his head sticky.
Old Photographs, Old Memories
My father died in early 2009, just after his 80th birthday. He had been ailing for a number of years and had been living in a assisted living facility. Near the end of June of that year, my mother visited us for the last time. (She died that September.) She brought with her a few things which my father had wanted me to have. These included a Time Magazine special issue entitled “The Year In Review 1950" and a old, slightly yellowed paperback book entitled ‘Colder Than Hell.” The subtitle was “A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir.”
The Time Magazine special edition had a picture on its cover which showed a jeep coming toward the camera on a snowy road. In the background are mountains. There are men walking, more or less in single file, on either side of the road. One Marine is slightly visible inside the jeep, in the back seat on the passenger side. All that can be seen of him is part of his right side – mainly his right arm. He seems to be holding something. There is a Marine slouched on the hood of the jeep. He is clearly in shock; his eyes are haunted. There is a black radio aerial just visible on the back of the jeep. My mother said that my father told her this was his jeep. That it was his arm visible in the back. He remembered the photographer walking along the road with the troops, a little ahead of the jeep, then turning to photograph the jeep as it came toward him. At that point they had very nearly escaped the trap sprung on them at Chosin. They were nearly out. He was most adamant about this recollection. That was him. That was his jeep.
The paperback book “Colder Than Hell” is a vivid recounting of the experiences of one Marine rifle
company, called “Baker-One-Seven.” (This is Marine shorthand for Company B, 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment.) Baker-One-Seven was a unit of about 215 Marines who saw combat action, first north of Seoul, then at the Chosin Reservoir. (Baker-One-Seven continued in the war after Chosin, of course, but with almost entirely different officers and men. What the company did after Chosin is beyond the scope of the book, though.)
This book was written by one of the company’s officers, Lieutenant Joseph R. Owen. He had served in the Marines as an enlisted man during WW2. He was discharged after the war. A couple of years later he obtained a commission as a Second Lieutenant. He completed the extensive training provided to new lieutenants a couple of months before the Korean War began. He was wounded two days before the division completed its two-week breakout. His wounds were of such severity that, after spending seventeen months in the hospital, he was given a disability retirement from the Marines.
My father had marked his copy of the book. Four names in the Acknowledgements were underlined, General Ray Davis, Joe Hedrick, Tony Tinelli, and Bob Wilson. In the book’s index, three of these four men (everyone except General Davis) had little tick marks next to their names. Along with these three, there was a fourth man with a tick mark, Danny Holland. These four men (everyone except General Davis – more on him just below) were all members of the regimental tactical air control team.
In the USMC during the Korean War – and in infantry units in other wars in other wars too – tactical air control teams were attached to front line combat units. Judging from Lieutenant Owen’s narrative, each company had its own team. Their job was to spot locations from which enemy fire was originating and to direct aircraft by radio to those locations to destroy them. The teams consist of two or three members. One was an officer (often a grounded pilot) who determined the location of the target. He sometimes did the spotting. The other was an enlisted man who operated the radio. Sometimes there was a separate spotter, also an enlisted man. The index entries for these four men direct the reader to several short sections of the book. In these sections, the actions of the tactical air control team members are described, within the context of Baker-One-Seven’s combat situation at that point.
There were also several photographs in the book. One of them showed a group of ten marines relaxing on a hillside. The men were shaved and their uniforms were clean and neat, which told me they haven’t seen any combat yet. They were identified as “Tactical air control party in support of the rifle companies.” Their names were shown under the picture. Three of the four men whose names were ticked in the index were also in the photograph.
The photograph showed one other thing. There was a small “x” over the head of one of marines. Below, where their names were listed, there was a circle around a name. That name was Corporal Wright, my father. It appears that when my father said he was a radio operator, he was talking about operating a tactical air control radio. So, in a sense, these five sections of “Colder Than Hell” are representative of my father’s own story, and the combat situations were representative of combat situations my father was in.
As I mentioned above, the remaining name was General Ray Davis. During the Chosen Reservoir battle, Davis, then a Lieutenant Colonel, was the commander of 1st Battalion, to which Baker-One-Seven belonged. (Davis had a long and distinguished career with the Marines. He ended up as a 4-star General and was assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. He also won a Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during the Chosin campaign.)
Diarist’s Note
Don’t worry. I do not plan to present a complete history of the Korean War here. I did however expand on my original purpose, which was to quote the sections of “Colder Than Hell” I mentioned above, and to place each quotation within the the broader story of Baker-One-Seven’s battlefield situation at that point. My original idea was to try and reconstruct an approximation of my father’s unspoken experiences based on those of the four tactical air controllers mentioned in the book, who were clearly my fathers colleagues. They did the same job he did, certainly in the same regiment, perhaps in the same battalion. I think it is safe to infer that he was involved in very similar actions. This is still a significant part of the story.
As I was writing this diary, however, I found myself getting into more and more detail about the entire Chosin campaign, from cautions entry into the trap to the desperate battles to an even more desperate withdrawal from the trap, well beyond the story of the tactical air controllers. It became clear to me how remarkable a story this was. The Marines and the soldiers exhibited almost unimaginable endurance and bravery.
The diary grew into a much more complete description of the campaign – from the Marines’ first encounter with the Chinese Army at Sudong-ni on November 2 until the final break out from Chinhung-ni to Hamhung on December 11 – less than six weeks. The regiment’s air controllers, all of whom were fully-trained and armed infantrymen, would have been experiencing the same conditions, the same privation, the same bitter cold, and the same constant firefights with the Chinese as did the members of Baker-One-Seven and the entire division throughout this period. I feel that by writing the larger story, my father’s smaller story can be inferred.
I also felt I needed to set this story up by describing the early days of the war – the initial success for the North Koreans and their very nearly successful conquest of South Korea, the defense of the Pusan Perimeter and the UN counterattack, the Inchon landing and subsequent battles in and around Seoul, and the invasion of North Korea. How did these events lead to 28,000 men being trapped in that dreadful place and very nearly either killed or captured?
So, yes, there is a fair amount of history in this diary. Please bear with me. My first step is to set up the war itself, starting with how bloody, three-year-long war came to be fought on a small, obscure peninsula in Asia that hardly anyone had ever heard of at the time, or for that matter, now.
This diary in in thirteen parts – this is part one, I hope you stay with me through to the end. Thank you.
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