The 1st MarDiv In Hagaru-ri
Breakout
Tbe Bridge At The Gatehouse
Forgotten Heroes – Task Force Dog and Task Force Childs
Hill 1081
The Last Battle
TRIGGER WARNING: There are two slightly graphic descriptions of Marines being shot. One is Lieutenant Owen, the narrator. The other results in the death of a friend of Lieutenant Owen’s.
The 1st MarDiv In Hagaru-ri
After TF MacLean/Faith and the 1st MarDiv each withdrew from their respective positions on either side of the Chosin Reservoir, they moved to Hagaru-ri. General Smith had always intended to use Hagaru-ri as a concentration point where he could bring his entire division together and fight his way back toward the coast, should this become necessary. It was the only exit from the reservoir.
The survivors of Task Force MacLean/Faith got there first, on December 1, after straggling south on the ice of the frozen reservoir in small groups. The 1st MarDiv arrived on December 3 and 4. The incoming troops would have a brief period of respite an Hagaru-ri, an interval of hot food and warm sleeping accommodations and a little time to recuperate.
Baker-One-Seven was the last rifle company of the 7th Marines to come within the Hagaru-ri perimeter. When we had fought to within sight of the town, we were ordered to a hill overlooking the road to become the rear guard. We watched as beneath us the hundreds of vehicles and all the rifle companies of both regiments crawled along the road. After they had all passed into the shelter, we faced into the wind, set our weapons, and made sure the Chinese did not attack again.
“Why the hell us?” Kelly asked plaintively. “We do the up-front fighting all the way until there’s a place to get warm. Then they make us stay out here so we can freeze our asses off some more. Ain’t fair, Lieutenant. Ain’t one bit fair.”
“Quit your bitching, Kelly. You volunteered for this lash-up.”
“Yeah, but I’m putting in for a transfer. Soon as we get out of this cold I’m putting in for Guam again. Or anyplace else in the Corps where they don’t give you frozen chow three times a day.”
“Sure you are, Kelly. And we’ll all go with you.”
The able-bodied soldiers and Marines would leave Hagaru-ri on December 6.
-—
The airstrip had been completed on December 1. The division’s engineers had used dynamite and heavy earth-moving equipment had leveled an airfield large enough for Air Force cargo planes to fly into and out of. The planes, C-47s, were big and clumsy, were loaded to the gunwales with replacement troops, rations, ammo, and other supplies. For their return trips, the planes were loaded with the most seriously wounded. They were also loaded with the dead, which infuriated General Almond. General Smith insisted that none of the dead be left behind, if there was any way to get them out. Nearly all the wounded and the dead were evacuated by December 5, some 4,500 casualties in all. At the same time, reinforcements (about 500 Marines) and supplies were brought in. This was not enough to bring the 1st MarDiv to anything approaching full strength, but the division was strengthened somewhat.
When the Air Force C-47s landed and took off, they had to fly low through the hills that surrounded Hagaru-ri. They became slow-moving targets for the Chinese guns in the hills. Every one that that left Hagaru-ri was perforated with bullet holes. The ground crews marveled at the courage of the Air Force who kept flying in and out of there.
By December 6, there were about 10,000 Marines concentrated in Hagaru-ri (including 385 soldiers formerly with TF MacLean/Faith but now temporarily designated as the 31/7 — 31st Battalion, 7th Marines — part of RCT-7)
While things were quieter for a couple of days, this did not mean that fighting ceased. Hagaru-ri was still under siege, surrounded by thousands of Chinese soldiers. On December 5, RCT-5 took over defense of the Hagaru-ri perimeter and recaptured East Hill, the last Chinese position directly overlooking the town. That same day, RCT-7 conducted patrols into the hills along the MSR south of the town, looking for Chinese positions to clear out. They encountered the PVA 76th Division and pushed them back during a day of heavy fighting. Despite this, the MSR remained in Chinese hands between Hagaru-ri and Koto-ri. The division would have to fight its way through this.
General Song was not sitting on his hands during this period. He had shuffled and recombined his weakened divisions from Yudam-ni and Fox Hill on the west and the inlet on the east and brought them all south. Some of these combined forces were the ones surrounding Hagaru-ri. Others had continued south and were now filling the hills about Hell-Fire Valley and the desolate area around Funchilin Pass. On December 4 or 5, some of his troops destroyed a sixteen-foot length of the Gatehouse Bridge in the Pass. He figured that this would stop the Marines dead in their tracks for awhile and give him one more chance to destroy them.
On December 5, the day before the1st MarDiv was to begin its breakout from Hagaru-ri, General Smith asked General Almond to provide relief forces that could assist the division with the breakout. Once out of Hagaru-ri, the Marines still had to get through Hell-Fire Valley to reach the relative safety of the Koto-ri perimeter, eleven miles south. After Koto-ri, they still had Funchilin Pass (and the blown bridge) and the upper Sudong Valley to get through. Even with reinforcements, half his division was gone. Almond responded promptly to Smith’s request and had two task forces formed to assist the Marines. Unfortunately, these task forces wouldn’t be available for a few days. Nothing could be done to provide immediate help to the Marines with the next leg of their breakout. Additionally, the weather had turned bad, low clouds and snow.
That night, in a last-ditch effort to stop the breakout, the Chinese launched their customary late-night attack against Hagaru-ri. Two divisions attacked, striking the perimeter from all directions. but they were not to penetrate it. The Marines repulsed the Chinese attacks, inflicting heavy casualties. By morning the town was full of smoke. Fires burned everywhere — supplies and equipment that would be left behind was on fire. The smoke from these fires blended with the exhaust from the hundreds of vehicles that would form the division column when it moved out. At dawn, the temperature was measured at twenty-five below zero, which felt worse to the Marines who had spend somewhat warmer nights in the shelter of the town.
Break Out From Hagaru-ri
The eleven mile breakout to Koto-ri began early on the morning on December 6. RCT-7 was the vanguard while RCT-5 covered the rear. One problem cropped up right away — the Chinese positions along the high ground above the road. The rifle companies of RCT-7 attacked through these hills, from hilltop to hilltop, clearing out enemy positions — just like they had done the day before. This was easier said than done. As soon as a rifle cleared a place and then moved on — it couldn’t stay put on a hilltop and occupy it since the entire division was withdrawing — PVA elements would return to that hilltop and resume attacking the division column as it passed by below. Chaotic fighting broke out within the column and the breakout was slowed to a crawl.
Marine air was essential to the breakout. Overhead, a daytime umbrella of twenty-four planes covered the entire length of the withdrawing column while other aircraft searched the ridges east and west of the road. Night fighters came on station overnight to insure round-the-clock support.
To insure constant artillery support, the Marine batteries leapfrogged each other as they moved south, about half the guns always in firing position. At one point on December 7th Marine howitzers were required to fire parallel to the ground, straight at Chinese formations, rather than arced through the air in a ballistic curve. They couldn’t be dug into the frozen ground. Each shot required several Marines to hang onto the gun with all their strength and restrain it by hand against the recoil. Additional artillery support was provided by howitzers up ahead in Kot'o-ri.
During the day on December 7, the Marine column began arriving in Koto-ri. The last elements arrived at Koto-ri around dusk. Marine casualties for the 38-hour withdrawal were 103 dead, 493 wounded, and 7 missing.
The entire 1st MarDiv – less the 1/1 battalion, which was ten miles south, in Chinhung-n — was in Koto-ri. preparing for the next stage of the breakout. General Smith thought that the stretch between Koto-ri and Chinhung-ni would be the toughest one. It would be a downhill march through barren, wide-open Funchilin Pass. The Chinese were already occupying some hilltops along the MSR in the pass. General Song ordered survivors from the hills above Hell-Fire Valley to move south as quickly as possible to join the others already there. The PVA Ninth Army had taken significant losses during the past week, but the survivors still outnumbered the 1st MarDiv, Song expected his troops to be prepared to fight to the death. Many of them would be.
The days of freezing cold and continuous combat were taking a huge toll on the Marines. Each day was tougher than the last. Lieutenant Owen, whose own role in the war was fast approaching its end, describes a scene just prior to Baker-One-Seven’s departure from Koto-ri, planned for dawn.
Someone came into the tent early the next morning to get us out of our sleeping bags. There must have been fifteen of us on the deck, and during the night our breath had formed a thick coat of frost on the inside of the canvas. Hank Kiser shivered like a soaked dog.
“You OK, buddy?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He coughed, a thick, hacking cough, and went about squaring away his blanket roll and pack. He moved slowly, not at all Hank’s way of doing things, and his hands shook.
“You look like hell, Hank.”
He glanced up at me. “You wouldn’t pass inspection yourself, pal,” he said.
A little later…
The cold was a shock, an icy blast that hit us when we came out of the tent. After the night in shelter, it was worse than if we had stayed outside. Hank gasped when it hit him. I stomped my feet and pounded my arms against my sides. Our frozen breath blew into our faces and coated our beards with white ice. The windblown snow was so thick we could hardly see where we were going. It was the worst cold I had ever felt.
Joe Kurcaba was waiting for us when we came to the company assembly area. Hank was slouched over and he was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other.
“Christ, you look bad, Hank” said our company commander.
“I’ll be OK,” Hank said weakly. “I just need to move around a little.”
“We got a tough one today, Hank. You don’t look like you can make it.”
“I told you. I’ll be OK!”
Kurcaba turned to me. “What do you think, Joe?”
“He had the runs and puked all night,” I said.
Joe [Kurcaba] gave Hank a long, careful look. “Sorry, Hank. The shape you’re in, you can’t take care of your men. You go back to sick bay.”
“The hell I will!” Hank exploded. “I brought my platoon this far. I’m not about to...”
“Turn yourself into sick bay,” Joe interrupted.
Tears ran down Hank’s face. They froze on his cheeks. “That an order, Joe?”
“That’s an order, Lieutenant Kiser,” said our company commander.
Hank stared at him for a moment. Then he said, “Aye, aye, Sir.” He turned and wobbled away from from us.
“Sorry, Hank,” Joe Kurcaba called after Hank Kiser.
Kurcaba told me to take over Kiser’s platoon. There were only a dozen men left in it, out of the original forty-two – plus all the replacements who had come and gone. Chew Een Lee’s platoon, and Woody Taylor’s were also reduced to squad size.
Still later...
I told Kelly to take over the mortar section. “Just bring one gun along, Kelly. Won’t be able to see anything to shoot at today, anyway.”
“What do you mean? I’m not going with you?”
“No. You take the mortars.”
“Naw. You need me to stay with you.”
“Take the mortars, Kelly.”
We stared at each other, standing in the cold with the wind blowing snow around us. Kelly’s face was coated with ice, like mine.
“You take the mortars, Kelly. That’s it.”
He shook his head. “Listen, Joe. Listen to me.” Rank was forgotten. We were brothers. “Who do you think kept you alive all this time, Joe? All the stuff we’ve been through. You ain’t gonna last a day without me.”
“Maybe you’re right, Kelly.” I put my head down. If there were tears in my eyes, I didn’t want him to see them. “But you take the mortars. Like I told you. Now do it!”
Kelly turned and stomped away, back along the icy road. He muttered as he went, “Goddamn second lieutenants!”
Corporal Kelly was Lieutenant Owen’s runner — a necessity in terrain where radios didn’t work well, if at all. Kelly had appointed himself Owen’s unofficial bodyguard.
-—
One-Seven, our battalion, and Two-Seven were to lead the breakout from Koto-ri. One-Seven was to take the high ground east of the road; Two-Seven, the west. Four miles south, on the MSR, the Chinese had blown out a bridge over a deep chasm [the bridge at the gatehouse.] A battalion of 1st Marines, coming from the south, would take the ground that commanded the other side of the gap [the 1/1, currently in Chinhung-ni.] Then the engineers would put in a new bridge. Beyond that, it was a full Army division, the 3d, waiting to give us cover. After we crossed the bridge, the Army would take over the fighting.
All we needed to do was to get through a few more divisions of Chinese soldiers.
That was pretty much how the rest of the Chosin campaign went.
-—
It was foggy on the hilltops with blowing snow. Even in full daylight, the Marines
could barely see where they were going. The waiting Chinese, who couldn’t see them any better but who nevertheless knew they were there, put down a sheet of fire — mortars, machine guns, burp guns, rifles. Able Company was in front. Their casualties mounted up. Baker Company took their place. The Chinese were shooting down a hill. Between the blowing snow and the Chinese gunfire the conditions were almost impossible for the Marines, or any fighting force, to deal with.
We were getting nowhere. Joe Kurcaba was standing alongside the road, behind Lee’s platoon, and he called me over to him. Bullets zinged and shrapnel whined around us, but Joe stood straight and I stood with him.
He had decided to risk a move up the hill on the left flank. “Move your platoon up there, Joe,” he instructed me. “See if you can take those guns out. They’re killing us.” He spread out his map and traced the route that I was to follow.
Then he fell silent. A Chinese bullet had found its target, just below the rim of his helmet, in the center of his forehead. A small, black hole appeared there. Joe Kurcaba’s dead eyes stared at me for several seconds before he slumped slowly to the ground.
I caught him in my arms as he fell and held him for a moment. Then I lowered him gently into the snow. Jesus, God! Joe Kurcaba. My friend. Joe, who had helped me so much. Who had gone to bat for me with Captain Wilcox. Who had been my big brother. Joe Kurcaba, whom I loved.
Lieutenant Lee became the company commander. Later that day, Lieutenant Lee was shot in the face and seriously wounded. He was knocked out of action. Lieutenant Woody Taylor took over as company commander.
Not long after this, Lieutenant Owen was shot and wounded. He describes his final action of the Korean War. At this point, Lieutenant Owen and seven
remaining Marines from his platoon were advancing on a Chinese machine gun position just below the ridgeline. They were following a tank, a relatively safe place when advancing straight at gunfire.
The tank veered sharply to the right. Lupacchini and I were suddenly exposed to the Chinese fire that had been directed toward the tank. Bullet spurted the snow around us and whined close to our heads.
We scrambled to the left, joining the line of advancing Marines. In teams of twos and threes they hit the deck and fired up the hill while the other teams bounded forward. Lupacchini was with me, as was Morrisroe.
Kelly’s mortar pounded the ridgeline, now a hundred yards above us. On the other flank of the attack, I heard Woody shouting for his me to move forward with him. Chinese voices shrilled down at us, “M’line bastard die!” and “Sha! Sha!” [Kill, kill.] The Marines answered with rebel yells and their own cries of fury.
Our line moved up the hill.
Twenty-five yards above me, two Chinese soldiers appeared from behind a large boulder. One had a rifle, the other had a burp gun. As I swung my carbine toward them, I heard a grunt from Lupacchini. His BAR fired straight into the air, and he fell forward into the snow. He did not move and I knew he was dead, the best BAR man we had.
Goddamn! You’ve lost Lupacchini!
I couldn’t get my weapon on the two Chinese above me fast enough. The one with the rifle put a round into my left shoulder that spun me around. Its impact generated a shock, like a powerful jolt of electricity, that went through my entire body.
Damn. How could I be hit? After all this how could I get hit?
I saw the burp gunner trigger a burst at me. The snout of his weapon flashed, and I could not lift my feet above the knee-deep snow to get out of the path of his bullets.
Two slugs tore into my right arm. Two more of the electric jolts, and my carbine flung itself from my grasp. I saw it rise into the air as I fell into the snow.
This cannot be happening!
I tried to raise my head and reach to retrieve my carbine. Get the bastards!
My arms wouldn’t move. I couldn’t raise myself.
“Joe’s down!” someone shouted. Bifulk’s voice.
“Get the bastards!” I heard myself yelling. “Get the bastards.”
I screamed in pain and overwhelming anger, and my Marines rushed past me and up the hill, leaving Lupacchini and me in the snow. “Get the bastards!” I yelled again and again. It was all I could think to do.
The two Chinese soldiers were promptly killed by other Baker Company Marines — Lieutenant Owen thinks it was Morrisroe and/or Bifulk and/or another Marine. The Chinese machine gun was captured and turned against the fleeing Chinese soldiers.
Woody Taylor was the only Baker-One-Seven officer left. He led the remnants of Baker/1/7 to the crest of the hill, fighting as a rifleman himself. Late in the day, the frozen and exhausted Marines achieved their objective. With their small number, they set up a tight perimeter on the high ground overlooking the gap in the MSR caused by the blown bridge.
Meanwhile, Corporal Kelly had lost contact with Baker/1/7 when they went up the hill. He had used up all his ammo covering the assault and was now carrying a mortar down the road, following some tanks. Ditches on both sides of the road were filled with the bodies of the dead and wounded, waiting to be picked up by the meat wagons. Lieutenant Owen lay next to the bodies of Lupacchini and another Marine named Kowalski, whom Owen thinks was the last member of Baker/1/7 to be killed during the Chosin campaign. Kelly almost passed by Owen, but luckily did spot him. He probably saved his life.
“Jesus! That you, Joe?” Kelly dropped the mortar and knelt by me. “You alive? Jesus!”
No response. I was still out from the morphine, and blood dribbled from my mouth, from the nicked lung.
“Goddamn it, Joe! I told you you’d get it without me, didn’t I?” my runner whispered at me, but I didn’t hear him.
An ambulance was parked fifty yards away. Its engine was running and two corpsmen sat inside getting warm before resuming their grisly work of picking up mangled men and transporting them to the aid station. Kelly ran to it.
“I got a wounded lieutenant who needs to be taken back. On the double,” Kelly told the corpsmen.
“There’s a whole bunch of wounded people we need to take back,” one of the corpsmen said. “We’ll get to him as soon as we get warmed up here.”
Kelly took the carbine from his shoulder and snapped the bolt. His face was red from the cold and his beard was matted with ice. “You people are warm enough already. My lieutenant’s in a ditch down the road. Follow me.”
The corpsmen looked into the face of a man whose sanity was not to be relied upon, and at the carbine he had poked into their warm ambulance. They followed Kelly to the ditch and loaded me aboard and took me to the aid station.
I was one of the last casualties flown out of Koto-ri the next day. I remember very little of what happened until I regained consciousness in a clean, warm Navy hospital in Japan.
Lieutenant Owen continued having his wounds treated in US Navy hospitals for seventeen months. He was unable to regain full use of his right arm, and was given a disability retirement from the Marine Corps, at the rank of First Lieutenant.
The Bridge At The Gatehouse
The bridge had been damaged by PVA troops three times. The first two times, Marine engineers had been able to repair it. The third attempt was more successful. This time the damage was severe enough that the engineers couldn’t repair it with the materials they had on hand. General Song hoped that his remaining forces, along with the blown bridge and other obstacles, would be enough to slow or even stop the retreating UN forces until he could bring other military units from farther away to Funchilin Pass.
For the time being, the path out of the mountains now completely blocked. Then, on December 7, the US Air Force wrought a logistical miracle. That day, eight C-119 “Flying Boxcars” dropped eight portable bridge sections, called Treadways, by parachute. Each Treadway was eighteen feet long and weighed 2,900 pounds. The Air Force had never done this before; their only trial run had failed. The C-119 was an ungainly and rather slow airplane. They had to come in low, flying flat and steady. The Chinese had a field day shooting at the planes with their rifles as they lumbered by. Like the C-47s at Hagaru-ri, all eight had numerous bullet holes when they returned to base after the drop.
One ot the Treadways crashed into the ground and was destroyed. Another fell behind Chinese lines. What they did with it is not known. The remaining six came to earth where the Marines could retrieve them. As it turned out, only four sections were needed to repair the damage, but the sections weren’t usable by themselves.
Treadway bridges designed for vehicles with tracks, such as tanks, or for large trucks. They are laid out in pairs, side by side, with a gap between them, rather like wide railroad tracks. Because of the large gap between them, smaller vehicles such as jeeps could not use them. A Treadway bridge could be made usable for smaller vehicles, using lumber to fill in the gap between them. There was lumber available for this. It had been either (a) stacked up at the gatehouse at some time in the past, or (b) dropped from the airplanes along with the Treadways. (I found one reference for each source of the lumber.) However the lumber was procured, the bridge was successfully repaired by Army and Marine Corps combat engineers by the morning of December 9. The way was now clear through Funchilin Pass.
The Marines formed up and were ready to move out that afternoon. The nearby PVA divisions had not been expecting a successful repair and were not immediately in place to block the division column as it resumed moving down the MSR. They responded quickly, however, resuming their attempts to slow the division’s advance with ambushes and raids. One thing in the Marine’s favor was that after weeks of non-stop fighting, there weren’t all that many Chinese left. Those who were left were occupying hills which overlooked the MSR. The MSR passed directly under these hills for many miles, all the way down to Chinhung-ni.
The most dangerous of these hills was Hill 1081, which would have to be cleared before the Marines could bypass it. Fortunately for the 1st MarDiv, General Almond had acted very promptly on General Smith’a request for assistance. This assistance would arrive in the form of two task forces – TF Childs and TF Dog.
Forgotten Heroes – Task Force Dog and Task Force Childs
Upon receiving General Smith’s request on December 5, General Almond delegated the task of assembling two task forces from elements of the 3rd Infantry Division to two senior officers in his command, Brigadier General Armistead Mead and Colonel William Harris. The two task forces were completed and ready for action that same night. They were known as TF Dog and TF Childs..
TF Dog is barely remembered, and then only as a peripheral part of the overall story of the Chosin Reservoir campaign. TF Childs seems only to have been remembered by one person – Colonel Gilberto Villahermosa. Both references to it that I found were written by him. Despite this lack of an historical record, both task forces were essential to the 1st MarDiv’s breakout from the reservior. The two task forces had separate but interconnected missions.
Without TF Dog, the 1st MarDiv would not have made it out of Funchilin Pass without at least incurring serious casualties. At worst, they would have been stopped in their tracks by Chinese on the hills with rifles and mortars.
Without TF Childs, both the 1st MarDiv and TF Dog would have seriously mauled or stopped altogether as they moved south from Chinhung-ni to Majon-dong.
The primary combat elements of TF Dog were the 3rd Battalion, 7th Regiment and the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion (which had 155mm howitzers.) The 3/7 was already in Majon-dong, having arrived there on December 1, the same day the remnants of RCT-31 arrived in Hagaru-ri.
TF Dog’s mission was to relieve the USMC 1/1 Battalion, which was still in Chinhung-ni guarding the MSR, the railhead, and a supply dump, and waiting for the rest of the division to arrive. This would free the 1/1 to attack toward the northeast and to seize the Chinese-occupied hills overlooking the pass and the MSR from the east side. The 3/7 would temporarily take over the task of protecting Chinhung-ni, which was the 1st MarDiv’s next destination. While there, the 3/7 sent scouting patrols into the hills north and west of Chinhung-ni to locate Chinese positions.
This is where TF Childs comes in. The primary combat elements of TF Childs were the 2/65 and 3/65 Infantry Battalions, a tank company, and three artillery batteries. It was given a two-fold mission: to defend Majon-dong, and to protect the withdrawal of the 1st MarDiv and TF Dog from Chinhung-ni, mainly by attacking Chinese positions in the hills above the MSR on west side.
Thus, while TF Dog's mission was to help the Marines fight their way southward from the gatehouse bridge, TF Childs' mission was to clear the high ground to the west of the withdrawal route.
-—
Late in the evening on December 5, TF Childs moved into into defensive positions near Majon-dong. The next morning, the Chinese attacked these positions but were beaten back with heavy losses. As that engagement tapered off, the 2/65 began began moving into the hills west of the MSR from just north of Majon-dong up to Sudong-ni. They came across pockets of Chinese and eliminated them. By December 8, the hills near the MSR were clear and the MSR seemed secure. Once the battalion commander was was confident of this, he withdrew the TF Childs back to Majon-dong, except for one company, George/2/65, which was left in position on the heights west of Sudong-ni.
This withdrawal of the 2/65 to Majon-dong was part of the plan, but in view of later events, I think it was a mistake. As happened in the hills above Hellfire Valley, as soon as a hill was clean and the Marines moved on, the Chinese returned. This would happen here, which would cause problems for both George Company and the 1st Marine Division when they arrived along this stretch of the MSR later on.
-—
In the early hours of December 7, TF Dog left Hamhung and moved north up the MSR. It passed TF Childs and arrived in Chinhung-ni later that day. Some of their advance scouts could see the damaged bridge, about three miles farther up the road in Funchilin Pass. They watched as the Treadway sections were dropped by parachute, “a thrilling sight.” By 10PM that night, the main body of the 1st MarDiv had reached the northern side of the damaged bridge, where they had to stop and wait for the engineers to fix it.
Hill 1081
Early the next morning, December 8, the 1/1 moved out of Chinhung-ni. Their objective was Hill 1081, which was about a mile east of the bridge. Hill 1081 had a commanding view of a long stretch of the MSR. From the top, the Chinese could easily see all the way to the bridge. Once it was repaired, the Marines would be coming straight at Hill 1081, marching straight into gunfire. If the defenders on top of the hill looked southwest, they could see about three miles. Marines who got past the hill would then be moving away from it with their backs presenting easy targets. Hill 1081 had to be taken.
At first, the 1/1 met stiff resistance and was unable to make much progress. A little later that day, they were augmented by a company from the 73rd Engineer Combat Battalion and TF Dog’s self-propelled antiaircraft and 155th mm artillery units. Even with this backup, it was a difficult fight. Hill 1081 was not secured until the next day, December 9, when Able/1/1 finally made it to the top and took control.
The Chinese had understood the importance of this hill very well and had not given it up easily. They had defended it literally to the last man. The Marines found no survivors but they did find 530 bodies of dead defenders on Hill 1081. Taking the hill had been costly – Abel/1/1 lost 111 men, about one half their strength.
Within a couple of hours of Abel Company’s success, the 1st MarDiv began crossing the repaired bridge. The way was now clear for the division to get through Funchilin Pass as far as Chinhung-ni without enduring a rain of bullets and mortar shells from above.
The path down the MSR was reasonably secure, at least as far as Chinhung-ni. The 1/1 on Hill 1081 guarded the lower end of Funchilin Pass. The 3/7 Infantry was in Chinhung-ni. George/2/65 was near Sudong-ni, but it was all by itself, three or four miles from Chinhung-ni to the north and three or four miles from Majon-dong to the south – a very large space for just one company to defend. For most of that distance the the hills were very close by the MSR, and the Chinese had returned to them.
The Last Battle
The following day, December 9, the Chinese began a series of assaults on George Company in an attempt to break through to the MSR, block it, and once again halt the withdrawal of the 1st MarDiv. For two days the soldiers of George Company held their ground, repulsing one Chinese attack after another. I don’t know how many Chinese soldiers there were here – I don’t think anyone does – or how well they were organized and commanded. However many there were, I’m quite sure they outnumbered a single infantry company many times over.
While this was going on, the 3/7 was anxiously waiting in Chinhung-ni for the advance elements of the 1st MarDiv to come over the mountains and cross the bridge leading into town from the north.
A last word from Lieutenant Owen...
Woody Taylor brought the remnants of the [Baker] company down from the hills, marching them across the bridge, and into the shelter of the town of Chinhung-ni: their battle ended there. Sergeant Richard took roll call. His final count was twenty-seven men.
According to Colonel George Taylor, at the time a platoon leader in Love Company (Love/3/7), part of TF Dog …
The first Marines reached Chinhung-ni very early on the morning of December 10. It was evident that the brave men in the Marine column had experienced heavy fighting and terrible hardship. Ed Smith [another platoon leader in the same company] has said that, “Each vehicle had as many Marines as it could carry; if it had a bumper, ... a fender, ... or a gun barrel, dead Marines were tied to them.” He feels that he will never “erase the sight from [his] mind.” It is quite remarkable that they were able to survive the onslaught of the enemy’s seemingly endless manpower and still remain a viable fighting force.
They would need that fighting viability the next morning.
The Chinese mounted three more attacks near Sudong-ni during the morning of December 11. During the third attack, they finally succeeded in breaking through the defensive positions and swarming onto the MSR. Word of the Chinese breakthrough quickly reached the 1st MarDiv just north in Chinhung-ni. A counterattack was quickly organized. The 1st Marines and soldiers of TF Dog came south, broke the Chinese attack, and drove them off the MSR and back into the hills. There were no more Chinese attacks after this.
The division column continued its withdrawal, with TF Dog and the 1st Marines leading the and TF Childs shielding the rear from following counterattack. After they reached Majon-dong, the two task forces were disbanded, having helped save more than 10,000 Marines and soldiers from a much worse fate. It is a shame they have been nearly lost to history. The last UN forces left the mountains and reached the Hungnam perimeter by December 11.
The 1st MarDiv’s battle casualties during the move from Koto-ri to the coast numbered 75 dead, 256 wounded, and 16 missing.
The division’s total losses for the withdrawal from Hagaru-ri (December 6-11) was 178 dead, 749 wounded, and 23 missing. The marines also had suffered 1,534 non-battle casualties during this period, mostly frostbite cases. Marine losses thus totaled 2,484, or just over 20 percent of the 11,686 marines involved in the withdrawal from Hagaru-ri.
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was over. (This series of diaries isn’t. There is one more part with a few final thoughts.) .
Next Part
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?
Part 6: Into The Trap - Koto-ri To Toktong Pass
Part 7: Changes Of Plans
Part 8: The Chinese Spring Their Trap
Part 9: Task Force MacLean/Faith - A Tragedy In Five Days
Part 10: An Entirely New War
Part 11: The Relief Of Fox Company