A brief recap…
When RCT-7 moved into Yudam-ni on November 24, General Smith left two of its nine companies at positions just south of town to keep MSR open. Charlie/1/7 was left at Turkey Hill (Hill 1419) where the Marines dug into rather exposed positions along a rocky spur between the crest of the hill and the road. Fox/2/7 was left on the summit of an unnamed hill which was the northern side of Toktong Pass.
On the night of the initial Chinese attacks throughout the area, November 27-28, both companies were attacked and surrounded by elements of the PVA 59th Division. The next morning, at dawn, Able/1/7 and Baker/1/7 were sent to rescue Charlie Company.
Turkey Shoot At Turkey Hill — The Rescue of Charlie Company
The Relief Of Fox Hill
The Division Arrives In Hagaru-ri
Turkey Shoot At Turkey Hill — The Rescue of Charlie Company
Joe Kurcaba formed us up at first light while the Corsairs were blazing at the enemy hills. He told us that we were going to the aid of Charlie Company, which had been posted on Turkey Hill to guard the MSR. Last night, after we had marched away from the area, the Chinese had poured out of the hills and surrounded Charlie. Charlie was fighting for its life when we went to pull them out.
Able Company went along our left flank, proceeding on the high ground that paralleled our push down the road. We took fire from the hills to the west, but it was scattered and we quickly moved through it. Colonel Davis, forward observers from artillery and the eighty-ones [81mm mortars] and the tactical air team were all with us. The air officer told me that we had Australians flying support that day.
Able had hard fighting on the ridgeline leading to Charlie’s embattled perimeter. They hammered through it, though, and gained a position that led down to a long spine into the perimeter. A substantial enemy force stood between them and what was left of Charlie Company.
Baker-One-Seven suffered a few WIAs from long-range harassing fire as we attacked along the road. Lee had the lead, and when he came into sight of Turkey Hill, he halted the column and spread his platoon off the road into a firing line. Joe Kurcaba told me to set up all three mortars behind Lee.
Through my binoculars I had a good view of Charlie’s perimeter, four hundred yards away. They were in a tight circle not more than seventy-five yards across, halfway up the slope of Turkey Hill. Chinese machine guns and rifles infested the hill around them, firing at any Marine who moved. Charlie’s people were thoroughly pinned down.
Lee put his machine guns on the Chinese who were firing into Charlie’s perimeter from the lower slope. My three mortars had the same target. Able’s machine guns and mortars raked the hill above the perimeter.
Soon our tracers lined the sky, and puffs of black smoke from the mortars dotted the rocky hill. Then the big shells from the artillery and the battalion’s eighty-ones started to fall and the hill rocked with their explosions. Chinese soldiers scurried for cover.
My classmate Jim Stemple led Able’s assault down the ridgeline and into the Chinese. The enemy soldiers had their heads down from the heavy covering fire, and Stemple’s platoon tore into them. Through the binoculars I observed one squad of Stemple’s Marines led by a giant of a man in a flapping parka who swung a huge, double-headed axe. The Chinese soldiers, seeing this great, maniacal devil charging at them brandishing an bloody axe, abandoned their positions in terror.
I gave Kelly a look through my binoculars. “Christ!” he exclaimed. “I’d run, too, if I had that ugly monster coming at me with an axe.”
The Chinese quickly lifted their siege of Charlie Company and made a rapid retreat from Turkey Hill. As they fled Able Company’s downhill assault, they had to cross Baker’s line of fire. Woody Taylor’s platoon had come up to extend our line and every weapon we had was trained on the Chinese as they ran to the protecting slopes on the other side of the valley.
The three companies returned to Yudam-ni. It took almost every able-bodied man that Charlie Company had to bring down their dead and wounded. Their overnight defense of Turkey Hill had cost them dearly.
The Relief Of Fox Hill
The 1/7 Battalion’s next objective was the relief of Fox Company, on top of their hill, eight miles to the south. Fox Hill was surrounded by Chinese and other hills in the area were occupied by them — probably several thousand soldiers in all. Just to get to Fox Hill would require the entire battalion, so this would have to wait until the 1st MarDiv departed Yudam-ni for good. As we have seen, this happened on December 1.
Turkey Hill was an intermediate objective. It was between Yudam-ni and Fox Hill. After Charlie/1/7 had been rescued, the Chinese had occupied the hilltop. The 1/7 attacked Turkey hill first and by late afternoon had sole possession of it. After dark the battalion began to move southeast toward Hill 1520. The battalion was relying on the element of surprise – the Marines did not customarily attack at night. As the long hours of darkness went by, the 1/7 attacked and overwhelmed Chinese positions on Hill 1520, then other positions closer to Fox Hill. By dawn then next morning, the battalion had reached the top of Fox Hill and relieved Fox Company. Lieutenant Owen describes that long, cold, foggy night:
Abel Company took the lead for the battalion attack. The Chinese put up their first stiff resistance at Turkey Hill, which they had occupied in strength after we pulled Charlie Company out of there.
Abel had a brutal fight. The enemy knew the terrain as well as we did, and they set up a formidable defense. Abel had to work through a tangle of deep gullies and thick woods. It took them several hours to fight up the steep, slippery slopes to the top. Casualties were heavy, and all day the stretcher teams struggled to bring them off the hill. Many of Abel’s walking wounded elected to stay with their own squads after the corpsmen patched them up.
Colonel Davis sent my sixties [mortars] over to add support to Abel’s attack, but for most of Baker-One-Seven the climbing would be worse than the fighting. We passed through Abel when they took the crest just before nightfall. The stop and start climb in the extreme cold had made it an exhausting day.
As soon as we finished digging in and fired night registration, Joe Kurcaba summoned the company officers to the CP. Colonel Davis was there. He was clean-shaven in contrast to us shaggy-faced company lieutenants, but his features showed the same deep lines of strain and exhaustion that marked us all. The colonel traced a stick in the snow to indicate an audacious plan for attack. Baker would jump off under cover of darkness and lead the battalion in a surprise attack against the Chinese who were positioned between us and Fox Hill.
Since we had been unable to break through in several daylight attempts along the road, the colonel reasoned that we could go overland in the dark to reach the objective. As Marines did not ordinarily attack at night, the Chinese would not expect us; surprise was the essential element of the attack.
Our direction would be marked by star shells, fired at three-minute intervals. Silence was vital; hopefully we could walk through the defenders without being seen of heard. Joe Kurcaba gave Chen Een Lee the point.
A blizzard had whipped up before we formed the company. The men were lethargic from cold, exertion, and lack of rest. They grumbled their disbelief that we were about to launch an attack through trackless mountains in the dark and the blowing snow. Before starting out, we had them jog in place, to check for noisy gear and to get the blood moving.
Lee’s platoon was ready, in column at the line of departure, and my mortars fell in behind Lee, followed by the company CP and the other two platoons. Colonel Davis and his command group followed Baker, although the Colonel spend most of the night forward with us.
Then came Abel, now as battered as we were and down to half strength. Charlie was next with only fifty men. The column’s rear guard was a composite of men from the depleted 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, and replacements sent up from headquarters and artillery units. In all, Colonel Davis’ patched together One-Seven numbered less than five hundred Marines. Still, it made a file nearly half a mile long, an unlikely body to sneak through the encircling Chinese forces.
The first star shell went off far to the south, silhouetting a range of high ridges, Chew Een Lee raised his good arm and signaled us forward. The column of five hundred Marines followed him into the stormy night.
Simultaneously we heard every weapon on the Yudam-ni perimeter commence firing. [The Yudam-ni perimeter was about five air miles north, within the range of the 11th Marines’ howitzers.] Artillery and heavy mortars pounded the slopes. Small arms and machine gun fire built to a crescendo. We hoped that the massive demonstration of fire power would divert enemy attention from our path.
Lee and his men had to plow through the heavy snow to break the trail and, at first, made it easy going for those of us who followed. The second star-shell went off, then the third, all at three-minute intervals. We had no difficulty with our bearing. Soon, though, we came to a dip in the terrain, and Lee’s view of the guiding light was obstructed. When he hadn’t seen a burst for several minutes, he called a halt to read his compass. The column stopped, producing the inevitable accordion effect. In the darkness, men stumbled into each other. Some fell into the snow beside the train. Muffled curses were quickly squelched by whispered warnings from the NCOs.
When we moved again, we went up a steep grade. The trail became icy, packed by the feet of those ahead. Men slipped to their knees, staggered up, and slipped again. The sounds of falling and the involuntary grunts of pain and frustration grew steadily, in spite of our attempts to remain silent.
After a time we started downhill and the star bursts were visible once more. Downhill the icy trail was even more treacherous, especially for the mortarmen and machine gunners with their cumbersome loads. Some of the men tried to sidestep their way, slowing down those who came behind. Others ventured off the trail to make their own way in untrammeled snow. They had to be brought back into the column. In the dark and blowing snow, they could easily become lost.
Exhaustion was telling on us. The falls became heavier, and it took longer for the men to pull themselves up from the snow. Curses and grunts of exasperation grew louder. We stumbled up the hills and we slid down them. We stopped and started, climbed and slipped.
Under the heavy parkas, our bodies sweated with the strain, but our hands and feet were frozen numb. The wind-borne cold attacked with terrible fury. When we stopped for bearings, we stood silent and motionless. Because we needed to maintain silence, we could not slap our hands against our sides or stomp our feet for circulation. The cold gnawed at our toes and fingers and ate into out bodies. The sweat we had generated while climbing froze against our skin. We shivered violently. Men muttered through clenched teeth, “Let’s move out, Goddamn it! We’re freezing to death here.”
During one long halt the frustration spewed out of Joe Kurcaba, down the column. “Find out what the hell we’re waiting for. Pass the word.”
Each man relayed the message up the file, and their hoarse whispers threatened the silence. When the word reached me, I broke the verbal chain. I climbed forward along the column until I came upon Lee.
In front of Lee there was only swirling snow and darkness. Not a distinguishable terrain feature was to be seen, not a tree or a rock to bear on. Lee sent two men to the limit of visibility and bore his compass on their dim shapes. He was still wearing the sling, but he had taken the mitten off his good hand to grip it.
“Haven’t seem the star bursts for ten minutes,” Lee whispered to me. “Tell them back there we can’t go any faster unless we want to walk in circles. Or go over a cliff!”
I returned along the side of the column. Many men had collapsed into the snow, curled into balls like Eskimo dogs. NCOs moved among the fallen, prodding and kicking, urging them to their feet. I collided with another Marine churning forward through the snow. Both of us fell, and as we wearily recovered, I realized that I had knocked down Colonel Davis.
“What’s the holdup. Lieutanant?” was all my battalion commander said. Then he continued breaking throught the snow to the head of the column.
Time had no meaning. We labored through infinite darkness in ghostly clouds of snow over an icy path that rose and fell but seemed to lead nowhere. We saw only the back of the man ahead, a hunched figure in a long shapeless parka, whose every tortured step was an act of will. We carried on with the only strength that was left to us, Marine Corps discipline.
Over the noise of the wind, we heard Chinese soldiers speaking. They were no more than twenty-five yards away but we could not see them. Undoubtedly they heard us too, but in the blinding snow they mistook our column for one of their own. Certainly the Chinese commanders would be positioning troops in response to the big attack down on the MSR. The first encounter of the night went unchallenged.
The nearby Chinese voices had an adrenaline effect. Realizing that we were in grenade range, we were charged with energy and our minds cleared. Gone was our wearied stumbling. The men became surefooted, alert. The nightmare passage we had endured through the dark, frigid storm was ended. We had reached the enemy. The men held their fire and waited for signaled orders. No unlikely noise gave away your presence.
Lee kept his men moving in a column, climbing a rise. We were a file of dark shadows, at ten yards distance indistinguishable as friend of foe. A man lost his footing and fell with a thunderous crash, but he uttered no sound that would identify him. In the wind we caught the whiff of the garlic that often gave away the Chinese positions. The Chinese stopped talking among themselves. The only sounds were the scuffing of Marine shoe-pacs on the icy trail and the wind that howled above us.
Suddenly, a harsh Chinese voice broke the silence. A challenge or command, it came from the crest of the steep rise ahead, no more than fifty yards up. We could see no one up there.
Lee signaled his squads into skirmishers, extending to both sides. Quietly he led them forward on hands and knees. The enemy’s first shots came as our riflemen topped the rise. A torrent of oaths and fire erupted from the Marines as they poured across a small Chinese position. An enemy squad had been sleeping on a wide shelf of ground that jutted from a hillside. Most of them were shot in the brief firefight; one was bayoneted in his hole. A few ran off into the snow.
There was no longer any need for silence. Lee and his NCOs bellowed orders to re-form the skirmish line, then sent the riflemen in pursuit up the hill. Light, disorganized small arms fire rained down at us. Our mortars set up on the shelf that Lee’s people had just taken. Joe Kurcaba came forward and ordered the other platoons to attack on Lee’s left flank. Colonel Davis reached us just as a barrage of grenades announced Lee’s arrival at the next Chinese position.
The night exploded with the flash and the sound of the fight. The Marines had the advantage of surprise and momentum. They fought with fierce energy, now released from the hours of cold and misery. The Chinese could do little more than try to escape. Their position was a wide plateau studded with large granite boulders. The snowy field was pocked with small holes and rocks from which surprised Chinese emerged. Many of them were unarmed, and most ran off to the south.
Those with weapons attempted to fight. The night was against them. Under the ghostly blue illumination from the mortars, teams of parka-clad Marines using automatic weapons, bayonets, and grenades blasted through the Chinese who stayed to face them. A few of the enemy tried to fight back with rocks; one used a huge tree limb. All were eliminated.
A squad of mortarmen brought up their weapons to prepare for a counterattack. A few yards from their positions, shadowy figures dodged among the boulders. One of the shadows called, “No shoot! We Cholly Com’ny. We M’leen.” A volley of carbine fire took him down.
Farther forward, the Marines ferreted out Chinese soldiers who were still concealed in holes and crevices. Lee called to them in their language, urging surrender. Some came out working their weapons and were quickly killed. A few of the weaponless responded with their hands up. They were taken prisoner and sent back to battalion for interrogation.
Baker Company quickly secured a perimeter. Despite the prodding of the NCOs, many of the men fell asleep. Others nodded off while in the act of repeating their orders. Colonel Davis walked the line with the platoon commanders. He assured that the officers and NCOs were prepared against counterattack and ordered twenty-five percent watch, one man in four awake. No counterattack came.
Dawn arrived, gray and cold, and we jumped off on the second phase of the breakthrough. Abel and Baker attacked on line, headed for Fox Hill, a thousand yards away. Minutes after we moved out, Kiser’s platoon, on the left, walked into heavy small arms and machine gun fire from a ridge on his flank. The sixties [Lt Owen’s mortars] responded with HE [high explosive] on the ridge, and Kiser’s people broke through deep snow to mount the hill. When they neared the ridgeline, we lifted the mortar fire, and the platoon drove through the enemy position on its own firepower.
We were astonished by our first view of Fox Hill. The snowfield that led up to the embattled company’s position was covered with hundreds of dead Chinese soldiers. Many of them seemed asleep under blankets of drifted snow, but their bodies were frozen in spasms of pain. There were jumbles of corpses in padded green uniforms. A white-clad column had fallen in the formation that had attracted the attention of Fox Company’s machine gunners. Craters of dirt and snow made by the big guns at Hagaru-ri were rimmed with bodies and parts of men. Thick bands of dead Chinese lay at the base of Fox Company’s perimeter.
We stood in wonder. Men bowed their heads in prayer. Some fell to their knees. Others breathed quiet oaths of disbelief. Tears came to the eyes of raggedy Marines who had endured bitter cold and savage battle to reach this place of suffering and courage.
Someone let loose a wild cheer, and we broke forward in a jubilant run. Across the snow-covered and corpse-filled battlefield, the Marines of Fox Company waved brightly colored banners, the blue, yellow, and red remnants of the parachute drops that had sustained them nearly a week.
Around their perimeter Fox Company had constructed barricades of frozen Chinese bodies. From behind these walls of dead, the Marines had mounted their weapons and maintained their fight against an enemy whose numbers never ceased. Now the men of Fox Company arose from behind those gruesome piles to join us. Arm slings and blood-soaked compresses were common among them. Men hobbled about with makeshift leg splints. All hands were haggard and dirty, as were we. We exchanged profane greetings that did not conceal the love that we Marines felt for each other.
The sun came out later and Marines appeared along the skyline to the north. Then we saw Marines marchind down the MSR toward us. There were columns of riflemen at first, followed by a long trail of vehicles and artillery pieces. Our Corsairs swooped in close, their crooked wings wagging in salute. The 5th and 7th Marines had broken out of Yudam-ni.
Fox Company, like the other rifle companies in 1st MarDiv, had a little over 200 Marines assigned to it. During the five days it spent under siege, its casualties (officially) were 26 killed, 89 wounded, and 3 missing. Six of the seven officers had been wounded, including the company commander, Captain William Barber. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the PVA siege. LtCol Raymond Davis, the commander of 1/7, also received a Medal of Honor for his successful relief of Fox Hill.
One of the Marines who was there with Fox Company, Harry Burke, a bazooka gunner from Minnesota, had the following to say:
When I left after five days, 83 of us out of the 240 were able to walk away. We left a lot of our dead up there, sorry to say. All of them weren't wounds. But a majority of 'em were wounded, but some of them, they just got so cold they couldn't walk any more.
Later that morning, December 1, the 1/7 battalion and those Marines of Fox Company still able to fight secured the entire Toktong Pass area. This was the only real chokepoint on the road between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri, so the way out was essentially clear.
The Division Arrives In Hagaru-ri
As the afternoon of December 1 went by, General Song realized that there couldn’t be very many Marines still in Yudam-ni. He scrambled his 79th Division to resume attacks there that night. The ferocious fighting forced the rear covering forces still in Yudam-ni to call in night fighters to suppress the attacks. The fighting lasted well into the morning of December 2 when the last of the Marines managed to withdraw from Yudam-ni.
Although the road itself was now open between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri, the convoy still had to fight past numerous Chinese positions on the hills overlooking the road. On the first night of the retreat, the Chinese struck the convoy in force and inflicted heavy casualties upon the 3/5 battalion. Although strong air cover suppressed most of the Chinese forces for the rest of the march, the cold weather, harassing fire, raiding parties, and road blocks slowed the retreat to a crawl while inflicting numerous casualties. Despite those difficulties, the convoy reached Hagaru-ri in an orderly fashion. The first elements arrived there during the afternoon of December 3. The last elements arrived there early the next morning. Lieutenant Owen describes the arrival of the division at Hagaru-ri:
The rifle companies of the 5th and 7th Marines stayed in the hills, guarding the MSR as the column pulled into Hagaru-ri. The garrison of the town came out to meet the bedraggled Marines who had run the fourteen-mile gauntlet of fire and ice. There were trucks and jeeps with their windshields shot away and their hoods and sides peppered with bullet holes and gashed by shrapnel. Wounded men were stuffed in layers in the backs of trucks; others were lashed across the hoods or tied to the fenders. There were many more trucks filled with corpses than had started the journey.
As the walking wounded came within sight of the town, someone commanded them to fall into ranks. Maybe it was the limping sergeant who gave the command, the old salt who had set the defenses along Bob Fisher’s stretch of the column; it could have been Father Griffin. Or Sergeant Winget or Corporal Burris or Corporal Johnson.
The wounded men, and some who were unharmed but who staggered from exhaustion, formed up into three files, shouldered their weapons, and marched in ragged step. Slowly, the tread of their thick, rubber-soled shoe-pacs on the icy road became a steady, sure cadence, and the haggard and hurt Marines put their heads high.
Captain Wilcox, who couldn’t carry a weapon, was in the forward ranks. His arm was in a huge cast and splinted so that it was horizontal to the deck; his head and face were a cocoon of bandages. But holding himself erect, he picked up the cadence and marched standing straight into Hagaru-ri.
A battalion surgeon took time away from the hundreds of wounded men he tended in the Hagaru-ri aid station to witness the column’s arrival. “Those bastards! Those magnificent bastards!” were the words the doctor used to describe the worn and torn Marines from Yudam-ni.
The Marines brought out about 1400 casualties, of whom about one third were non-battle (almost all frostbite,) all of whom were to be evacuated by US Air Force aircraft from the newly-constructed air strip.
The next stop was Koto-ri, eleven miles to the south. To get there still required passing through Hell-Fire Valley, and there were still soldiers from about six Chinese divisions in the hills overlooking the valley.
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