The Road From The Coast To The Chosin Reservoir
The Peoples Volunteer Army
The Chinese “First Phase Offensive”
The Battle Of Sudong-ni
Aftermath
The Road From The Coast To The Chosin Reservoir
The area where the Chosin Reservoir is located is called the Kaema Plateau, the “Roof of Korea.” The entire area is both very isolated and very sparsely populated. The hills were largely barren and devoid of trees. The elevation of the Chosin Reservoir is approximately 1,060 meters (∼3,500 feet) above sea level; the plateau slightly higher. The surrounding mountains reach over 2,000 meters (∼6,500 feet) in height. In January and February, temperature extremes can plunge to 40 below zero. The winter of 1950 came early, with ice beginning to form on lakes and streams in early November as the temperature continued to fall. By late November, the reservoir was frozen solid.
There was only one “main” road into the area, a north-south road. The Marines called it the “Main Supply Road” — MSR. This road began at the coast at Hamhung, passed through Hungnam and Oro-ri, then ran north through valleys and the rugged gorge of Funchilin Pass, to the Chosin Reservoir, which it skirted on the eastern side and then beyond, all the way to the Yalu River. The portion of the MSR from Hungnam, where the Marines first came to the road, to Hagaru-ri, a town at the very southern tip of the Chosin Reservoir is about fifty-six miles long. It was narrow and poorly maintained, made up of dirt and gravel the whole way.
The lower part of the road, from Hamhung up to the village of Majon-dong, was on rising but relatively level terrain. This stretch is twenty-two miles long. Above Majon-dong the road entered a narrow valley with increasingly steep hills on both sides. The Marines called it the Sudong Valley. A map carried by an artilleryman attached to the 7th Marines still survives. On it, he captioned it “Nightmare Alley.”
Proceeding further north on the road, the valley narrowed. At Sudong-ni, a small village seven miles north of Majon-dong, the valley floor was less than a mile wide and was closely hemmed in by steep, wooded hills.
In the evening of November 2, RCT-7 would set up their encampment about one mile south of Sudong-ni. Later that night, they would meet the Chinese army for first time.
Six miles north of Sudong-ni was another small village named Chinhung-ni. Chinhung-ni marked the entrance to Funchilin Pass, through which the road, now little more than an ox-cart track, ascended about three thousand feet into the mountains. In much of the pass, the track was actually on bare mountainside; very narrow, with no shoulders to speak of. A force as large as RCT-7 would have to travel in a very long column, one company at a time.
At the north end of the pass, the terrain flattened out into another long valley with steep mountains on both sides. This valley would later be nicknamed “Hell-Fire Valley.” At this point, where the pass ended and the valley began was another small town named Koto-ri. The distance from Chinhung-ni to Koto-ri was ten miles. Eleven miles north of Koto-ri was Hagaru-ri and the Chosin Reservoir itself.
Hagaru-ri, Hell-Fire Valley, Koto-ri, Funchilin Pass, and Chinhung-ni would all become very important places to the 1st Marine Division in December. Sudong-ni would be important much sooner.
-—
No one had seen more than a few Chinese soldiers yet, but they were beginning to come into North Korea, quietly, moving only at night, but in great numbers – about 180,000 in the first wave in mid-October, another 120,000 in mid-November. This latter wave, when it came, was in the form of General Song’s PVA Ninth Army, had as its destination the Chosin Reservoir and its target the 1st MarDiv.
The Peoples Volunteer Army
Shortly after North Korea invaded South Korea in late June, Chairman Mao anticipated that the Chinese would eventually have to intervene. On July 13, Mao ordered that the Thirteenth Army – a unit of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army – China’s regular, active duty army) – to move from southern China to Manchuria (northeastern China) which bordered North Korea. The Thirteenth Army ultimately consisted of six infantry corps, each of which had three infantry divisions – eighteen infantry divisions overall. There were also three artillery divisions and various support regiments which were attached to the Army headquarters. Altogether, at the time of deployment in North Korea, the Thirteenth Army totaled about 250,000 men, 180,000 of whom were infantrymen. On October 19, under strict secrecy, it completed crossing the Yalu River, using the name Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA.) Five of its six corps moved into northwestern North Korea, which would put it in directly in front of the advancing US Eighth Army and the ROK I Corps. The remaining corps, the 42nd, headed toward the Chosin Reservoir.
The name “Peoples Volunteer Army” was meant to be misleading. The soldiers were thinly disguised regular troops of the People’s Liberation Army. They wore essentially identical uniforms with identical insignia. Chairman Mao did not want to give any appearance to the world that his regulars were fighting the United States, so he came up with the fiction that they were just “volunteers” who wanted to help out their fraternal neighbors in North Korea. Some of these troops had as much as fifteen or twenty years of active duty combat experience. They were hardy and well-disciplined, fierce fighters and thoroughly formidable opponents.
I refer to Chinese military units as “PVA” to differentiate between Chinese and American units with similar names. For example PVA 124th Division vs. US 7th Infantry Division. Military writers of the time did not use the PVA acronym. They use instead CCF, for “Communist Chinese Forces.” General Smith referred to the PVA 124th Division as the 124th CCF Division. On battlefield maps of the era the same CCF nomenclature was often used. I consider this term slightly derogatory, considering the era, and prefer not to use it.
The PVA’s huge number of hardy, veteran fighters was a distinct advantage. But the PVA had serious problems which became apparent soon after they entered the war. They were essentially a guerilla army. They were excellent at strong surprise attacks, but they were not so good at sustained campaigns. They were not mechanized. They didn’t use many trucks or other vehicles to move troops or supplies. Everywhere PVA troops went, they walked. They were unable to bring most of their artillery with them from China. They used unskilled porters to carry their ammunition, food, and other supplies on foot. The porters often couldn’t keep up with the soldiers, so PVA units frequently outran their supply line. The PVA troops were used to foraging for food during their attacks, but forage was nearly impossible in the barren landscape around the reservoir, particularly after everything froze. Troops were malnourished – some starved to death, many more were significantly weakened by malnutrition.
Later on, as the weather began to worsen and the advancing Marines took control of the road, the PVA was forced to abandon much of their equipment and whatever artillery they had managed to bring from China. It became too difficult to move heavy items through steep, snow-covered mountains. As the weather became dangerously cold, after November 14, the Chinese were affected by it more severely than the UN troops, who did timely receive winter gear. Initially the PLA had been scheduled for outfitting with winter gear in Manchuria during November. This didn’t happen. The rapidity of the UN advance toward Manchuria forced Mao’s hand. He had to send his PVA into North Korea beginning in October with the gear they had. As the result, the PLA received almost no winter gear for the harsh Korean winter. By the end of the Chosin campaign, more Chinese troops died from the cold than from combat and air raids.
The Chinese “First Phase Offensive”
On October 25, the PVA launched what the Chinese called the “First Phase Offensive.” They had two targets.
o Inland from the west coast the US Eighth Army was still moving north. Its right flank – the eastern side of the line of advance – was covered by the ROK II Corps. On October 25, they had reached the small town of Onjong.
o In the center of North Korea, moving up the MSR from Hungnam, was the ROK 26th Infantry Regiment. They had been detached from the ROK I Corps a few days earlier in Wonsan.
The rest of ROK I Corps was continuing up the east coast road but was not an immediate target. US X Corps was still at sea.
The Battles of Onjong and Unsan
The main focus of the First Phase Offensive was to be in the west. The first part of this was called the Battle of Onjong, which began on October 25 and lasted four days. The PVA 38th and 40th Corps conducted a series of ambushes against elements of the ROK II Corps, which was covering the right flank of the US Eighth Army on its northward advance. The ROK 6th Infantry Division and the 10th Infantry Regiment were destroyed. The survivors fell back about ten miles to rejoin the rest of ROK II Corps, near the town of Kuna-ri.
By November 1, the PVA 39th Corps had encircled the US 8th Cavalry Regiment and the ROK 15th Infantry Regiment, which were leading the Eighth Army continuing advance toward the Yalu. On November 1, the PVA attacked these regiments and overran their positions in what became known as the Battle of Unsan. This was the first direct confrontation ever between Chinese and US forces. The survivors of the battles at Onjong and Unsan pulled back to positions south of the Chongchon River to regroup.
At the same time the PVA 124th Division, part of the 42nd Corps, had passed completely through the Chosin Reservoir area and continued south along the MSR. The ROK 26th Infantry Regiment was moving north on the same road. They were establishing small hilltop perimeters as they moved north. They began encountering the Chinese on October 29, in the upper part of the Sudong valley. By November 2, they were destroyed and most of the perimeters on hilltops they had set up were gone, though some were still in place. ROK survivors fled to the south. The 7th Marines, advancing north on the road, encountered these survivors. Lieutenant Owen describes encountering these fleeing ROK soldiers as the RCT-7 arrived in the Sudong area.
The sky darkened ahead. The road twisted into the mountains and, as we marched we began to see South Korean soldiers streaming toward us from the opposite direction. Soaked with sweat, they ran through us without formation; many were without their weapons. Fright showed on their faces. They were the shreds of the 26th ROK Regiment who had been pushed off their hilltop positions before Able and Charlie could relieve them.
“Chinee. Many, many,” they called to us. Captain Wilcox came on the walkie-talkies and told us to stand by to move out in any direction. He added, however, that no Chinese were on the hill we were to occupy. The South Koreans were still holding there, waiting for us.
The Battle of Sudong-ni
When the Chinese began their First Phase Offensive the Marines were still in Hamhung. They didn’t begin their advance until October 29, going north on the road they had dubbed the MSR. The MSR was…
...little more than a packed earth trail, barely wide enough for the trucks. Hard work would be required of the division‘s engineers before the road could bear the tanks and tractors that pulled the artillery pieces. For the rifle companies, inadequate roads meant that we would go short on support from the big guns and tanks.
On November 2, RCT-7 was approaching Sudong-ni. The unit was about a mile south of it when they stopped for the night. The 1st Battalion was in front, with the 2nd and 3rd closely behind. Baker/1/7's position for the night was on a hillside a little west of the road. Lieutenant Owen remembers a conversation he had with 1Lt Graeber, leader of 2nd Platoon, regarding a few Chinese prisoners they had seen earlier.
“Did you get a look at those Chinese prisoners,” I asked.
“I saw them being interrogated,” said Graeber, the former military cop. “Good- looking soldiers, well fed and healthy. They had on regular Chinese Army uniforms and insignia. They didn’t try to hide any information. Told the ROKs everything they wanted to know.”
“Probably didn’t want any torture treatment,” I said. “Those ROKs can get mean when they ask questions.” We had seen the South Koreans working over their prisoners outside of Seoul.
“Nope. Those [Chinese] sounded as thought they had memorized a script. Name, rank, serial stuff, plus unit number, size, weapons descriptions. They have been up in the hills north of here for two weeks already. They’re waiting for us to come at them.”
“They gave you all that information without persuasion?” It seemed strange that the enemy would be so forthcoming.
“They wanted us to know. Their generals wanted us Marine capitalist dogs to know what we’re up against.”
I said goodbye to my buddy and went to give my people a final check.
“Joe, another thing,” Bill yelled after me. “The prisoners told us that there were ten more divisions hiding in the hills ahead.”
One of those divisions was a lot closer. Unknown to LtCol Homer Litzenberg, the commander of the 7th Marines, his regiment was two-thirds surrounded by the PVA 124th Division. One of its regiments was in the hills to his northwest. Another one was in the hills to his east. A third regiment was being held in reserve nearby.
Baker/1/7 had a new tactical air control officer, 1LT Bob Wilson, whom we meet near nightfall on November 2nd, as the Company is digging in for the night. All three companies dug in part way up the mountainsides; battalion HQ dug in on the valley floor, near the road.
Digging a hole a few yards from Caney [Sgt Milt Caney, the company Top Sergeant] was a second lieutenant I didn’t recognize. He introduced himself as Bob Wilson, sent forward by regiment to be our air-ground liaison officer. He was a fighter pilot by trade, and he had flown support for us in the fight down south.
It was Bob Wilson’s first night with a rifle company. I kidded him about the enormous size of his hole as he dug away, thigh deep in dirt and rocks. He gazed upward at the Corsairs that were searching the valley for prey. “I’d like the war a lot better if I could fight it up there,” he said.
“Not me,” I replied. “I’d rather be down here where I can jump into a hole when the shooting starts.”
The Chinese attack began after midnight, in the early hours of November 3. As the Marines would soon learn, the Chinese customarily began their attacks late at night with flares overhead, bugle calls, and whistles to send commands to the troops. The fighting continued all night. All three of 1st Battalion’s rifle companies suffered heavy casualties. When morning came, there were still Chinese soldiers in the valley. Air and artillery attacks throughout the day managed to flush out the Chinese and fragment their formations into small groups and individuals. Lt Owen describes the beginning of the Chinese attack, starting with one Marine’s slightly spooky early warning...
Pat Burris [a mortar squad leader] slept comfortably in the roomy, burlap-lined hole he had inherited from the ROKs. Suddenly, though, a loud command was shouted, “Out of your hole, Burris! Out of that hole! On the double!”
He kicked the sleeping bag off his legs, snapped his carbine to ready, and scrambled out of the hole. “And stay out of there!” The command seemed loud enough to alert the entire mountain, but no one else in the mortar section stirred.
Burris crawled through the dark to Sergeant Wright’s hole. “You want me? What’s up?” he demanded.
“No, I don’t want you, “ answered Wright.
“What did you call me for, then?”
“Whaddya talking about? I didn’t call you. You getting shook already, Pat?”
“Somebody just yelled for me to get out of my hole. You didn’t hear somebody yelling?”
“I didn’t hear a damn thing. Haven’t heard a sound since I took the watch.”
“Hey, somebody called me out of my hole,” Burris insisted. “The lieutenant didn’t call me either?”
“Nobody called you.”
Corporal Burris was puzzled. He returned to his bunker and pulled his sleeping bag out of there. He spread it on the ground and put his legs into it. He would sleep outside tonight. He knew that someone had called him to get out of that hole. Or something.
Meanwhile...
In the brush before Kiser’s platoon, Chinese assault squads waited in disciplined for the rockets and bugles that would signal them to attack. Their quilted uniforms kept them from shivering in the chill night. They already knew, in detail, how Kiser’s defenses were set up and the location of each forward hole and our weapons. During the late afternoon their officers watched Baker-One-Seven dig in, and they knew our line as well as we did. Under cover of darkness, the assault teams had crept noiselessly into their jump-off positions, within grenade range of Marine lines.
These soldiers were honored that they would be the first Chinese to attack American Marines. Marines, they were taught to believe, were selected from the dregs of imperialism, the scum of a criminal society. Marines were vile men, chosen for their depravity, and given license to rape and plunder. They were to be exterminated like snakes in a hole. And like all oppressors, went the doctrine, Marines would turn coward and flee before the righteous Chinese liberators.
The Red soldiers were made even more confident by their easy wins the past week against the ROKs. It heartened them, too, that fifty miles to the west their comrades of the People’s Liberation Army had struck at American Army units and sent them into disorderly retreat. [This refers to the battles of Onjong and Unsan.] Paper tiger, the American Army. Bullies to be taught a lesson, the American Marines.
The sound of a rocket ripping through the air close above us jolted me awake and brought me upright in our hole. A streak of fluorescent green crossed out line, followed by a red rocket from the other direction. Bugles blared and whistles shrilled along the Sudong Valley. The luminous hands on my watch said 0300. Baker-One-Seven was under attack.
A sudden clamor erupted from Hank Kiser’s side of the hill: the eerie chant, “M’leen die! M’leen die!” issuing from a chorus of Chinese voices, then the crash of mortars, the boom of concussion grenades, and the sharp sputter of burp guns. Seconds later there was the deeper sound of answering Marine rifles and BARs, joined by the pounding of our machine guns and explosions of Marine grenades. The screams of wounded men soon added to the melange of sounds, along with profanities of rage in both languages. More rockets streaked above, splashing eerie tints of green and red. Enemy mortars walked the ridgeline, thundering along the company CP and raining clods of earth on my mortarmen. One of the first rounds landed past its designated target, the CP, and was a direct hit on the hole that Pat Burris had so recently evacuated.
An ammo carrier – Branek? – fired his carbine into the darkness. Sergeant Wright cursed at him and told him to cease fire. Winget and Burris were at their guns, ready for orders. I yelled for Winget to throw illumination over Kiser’s front. The field telephone gave its dull ring and Kelly handed it to me. [Sgt Mark Winget was a mortar squad leader. Cpl Robert Kelly was Lt Owen’s runner – later his unofficial “guardian.”)
Captain Wilcox was on the hook. He said that the line to Kiser had been blown out. There was no way we could get fire direction from that flank. He wanted illumination over there.
“It’s on the way, Skipper,” I said, just as the flare popped high in the air, over the left end of the perimeter, and the sky turned a garish blue-white.
Burris didn’t wait for me to order the HEs [High explosive mortar shells.] He already had three rounds up and headed for the registered target area. Winget had another round of illumination on the way by the time Burris’ HEs exploded in front of Kiser’s line. Kee-rack! Kee-rack! Kee-rack! We heard them go off from seven hundred yards away.
A string of enemy mortar shells, incoming, hit between our position and the CP. My phone line to the skipper went dead. I put Kelly’s hand on our end of the wire and told him to follow it to the break and make a splice.
“Take a man with you, “ I told Kelly. “Take Perkins.” Then I shouted, “Perkins! Get over here!” [Pfc Merwin Perkins was a mortar ammo carrier.]
Merwin Perkins came crashing over to us and threw himself to the deck. In the bluish reflection from the star shells his eyes showed big and white, as did Kelly’s. Two scared Marines. Three, counting me. The night had quickly turned scary.
Kelly said, “Let’s go, Perk,” and they crawled on all fours, following the broken wire. Perkins said nothing. He went behind Kelly and they were gone into the night.
In front of Kiser’s platoon our illumination lit the ground and revealed the Chinese attackers already pouring into the Marine positions. The following salvo of our HEs, one hundred yards out, landed without effect, well behind the Chinese assault. With the phone line to Kiser cut, and no help from the walkie-talkies, we could not adjust our fire to come in closer. Except for the illumination, our mortars were of no help, and we were short on illumination.
Chinese grenades exploded into the line and their burp guns blazed. The first wave of enemy soldiers rushed in, and the forward holes were buried in mounds of quilted uniforms. Clubbing and stabbing, the Chinese surged up the 3rd Platoon’s hill. Behind them were left dead Marines and wounded men who cried for for the help of their corpsman.
Ed Toppel’s hole was near the top of the hill, next to Lieutenant Kiser. The eruption of battle below awakened him. At the cries of “Corpsman! Corpsman!” he grabbed his aid bag and hurtled down the black slope toward the noise. In the dark, he collided with Sergeant Archie Van Winkle [platoon sergeant for the 3rd platoon,] and the pair tumbled toward the ground.
As Van Winkle and Toppel got up, they found themselves caught in the midst of a forward squad of onrushing Chinese. Toppel pulled out his pistol and shot into the enemy soldiers. By the light of muzzle flashes and exploding grenades he glimpsed Van Winkle firing his carbine on automatic and slashing his bayonet at the Chinese swarm. Then he saw the burly Van Winkle lift a Chinese above his head and hurl him into a group of enemy soldiers. They fell into a heap; Van Winkle and Toppel fired into them.
Van Winkle threw a grenade into the next squad of attackers and charged down the hill at them. He yelled for the shaken Marines to come with him, and they rallied with rifles and BARs. The enemy pulled back before his revived men and faded into the night.
Ed Toppel crawled from man to man, using the light of rifle flashes and exploding grenades to tend the wounded. He worked flat on his belly and was soon soaked with the blood of wounded men. Bullets grazed the slope and shrapnel whined past his head, but Toppel willed his hands to stop trembling while he worked and prayed.
Van Winkel readied the Marines near him for the next Chinese attack, putting his people into recaptured fighting holes. The men stacked Chinese bodies in front of the holes for greater protection. Somebody yelled to Van Winkle that his own shoulder was bleeding. The big sergeant felt his arm and found that a Chinese bullet had indeed passed through it. Toppel was busy, so Van Winkle asked one of the riflemen to sprinkle the shoulder with sulfa powder and wrap it with the compress bandage from his aid pouch. He put the foil-wrapped morphine syringe into his pocket for later use.
Nearby, a man sat on the ground, sobbing and shaking. “My buddy! My buddy! [Chinese] shot his head clean off!”
The orange glare of a Chinese grenade illuminated the sobbing Marine. Van Winkle crawled to the man and grasped his arm, saying, “Come on with me, kid. You’ll be all right.” He rose from the ground and pulled the kid from the ground with him. Together they headed for the center of the platoon position, where the enemy fire was more intense.
Further up the hill, Hank Kiser gathered together all the nearby Marines and prepared to counter the Chinese thrust. They were now hitting furiously at every point. Communication with the rest of the company was lost; he had no means to call for supporting fire or reinforcements to plug the gaps and push back the attackers. He sent his runner, Jack Gallapo, up the trail to the company CP to restore contact. Then he mustered the few men he could find in the confused darkness and rushed down the spine of the hill where his center squad was losing ground to the rampaging Chinese.
Immediately a storm of enemy bullets hit the small detail and forced it to the ground. Kiser hastily organized a meager line. Telling his men to hold there, he went in search of more Marines to help stem the attack.
The push on the center of Kiser’s line, across the lower spine of the hill,was the enemy’s main effort, and they quickly massed their grenadiers and assault squads to exploit the penetration. The first wave of their soldiers stormed forward but were dropped to the deck, casualties of the rifles and BARs that Kiser had placed above them. More of them charged through, climbing over the bodies of their fallen comrades. They were checked again, this time by a barrage of Marine grenades. More Chinese poured in, then more. One Marine foxhole fell silent, then another. The Marines who gave way crawled up the hill, turning to fire into the relentless enemy and tossing scarce grenades.
Kiser moved from man to man, building a base of aimed fire on the Chinese who kept coming on.
Archie Van Winkle now found himself on the lower fringes of the Chinese attack. He ignored his wounded shoulder and fired his carbine, one-handed. He called for nearby Marines to follow and launched his own attack into the flank of the Chinese who were moving up toward Kiser.
That was about six pages from Lieutenant Owen’s book. The rest of that one long night took up another twelve pages. While Baker-One-Seven was engaged in its desperate struggle with the PVA, Lieutenant Wilson, the tactical air controller, was engaged in a struggle of his own, starting with being abruptly awakened by a Chinese mortar shell.
The air liaison officer, 2Lt Bob Wilson, spent his first night in a foxhole at the forward edge of the Baker-One-Seven command post. He had selected a good position for his air-control work; the slope in front of his hole was too steep for the enemy to climb, and when daylight came he would have a long, unobstructed view up the valley.
When enemy mortars began to pound the CP, one round exploded just yards from his deep hole. Wilson, jolted from sleep by the ear-splitting noise, emerged from his bag and was just coming out of his hole when another round hit, close by. The shrapnel missed, but the concussion carried him through the air and landed him part way down the hill. He couldn’t climb back up. The slope was too steep and the incoming mortars were landing close together on the ridge.
His only alternative was to go down into the valley. Wilson began to feel his way downward. He hoped he would be able to dodge the platoons of Chinese he knew were crisscrossing the wooded terrain below. And he hoped, too, that tomorrow would be a clear day so that he could hurl his death-dealing Corsairs at the Chinese mortars that were causing him these difficulties tonight.
Later that same night...
Bob Wilson, the air-ground controller who had been blown out of his hole at the CP found himself in heavy brush at the base of the steep hill. By the light of the battle he oriented himself to the road and the railroad tracks and started crawling. He didn’t get far before he heard men moving close by, a large force of Chinese moving south on his side of the tracks. Armed only with his pistol, the earthbound aviator determined that he had neither tactical advantage nor sufficient firepower to oppose this superior force. Burrowing under a heavy clump of brush, he vowed revenge for this humiliation…
We don’t hear about Bob Wilson against at Sudong-ni, but he is with the company later at Toktong Pass. In the events that follow, the tactical air controller is 1Lt Danny Holland, who was with the Company at Uijongbu. Sometime late that night, a single North Korean T-34 tank came down the road through Baker Company’s 2nd Platoon. In Lieutenant Owen’s words, it…
...barreled through them, its machine guns blazing, its powerful searchlight picking out targets. Neither the ROKs nor our own intelligence had warned of enemy armor. As a result, Jim Kovar’s rocket launcher was not set up, and Graeber was not armed to repel the huge clanking monster that sped through their line. Graeber’s men held fire as the tank roared by, staying low in their holes on both sides of the road and along the railroad tracks. The best the platoon could do was to fix bayonets, prepare grenades, and wait for the enemy foot soldiers they expected would soon follow. [Pvt Jim Kovar, rocket gunner]
And follow they did, but it was poorly executed. The soldiers were too far behind the tank, and were beaten back. The tank, when its crew realized they were was all by themselves without any support, reversed course and went back up the road the same way they had come. This tank, and three others would be encountered again, very soon.
According to Lieutenant Owen...
Baker-One-Seven lost more men that night than we had in the entire five days against the North Koreans south of Uijongbu. Captain Wilcox raised hell when he heard that Sergeant Dale and his men were killed in their sleeping bags. He made it standard operating procedure that the company stay out of their sleeping bags at night when we were on line. “Tell your people that they can put their feet in the bags and loosen their boondockers. That’s as far as they go,” he told us. [Sgt Dale had been the 1st Platoon guide.]
From then on, no matter how cold it became, we slept outside of our bags and our boots came off only to exchange socks.
Aftermath
Total Marine casualties for the two days of battle were 52 killed and 264 wounded (General Smith’s figures.) The 7th Marines had about 2250 combat infantrymen, so this is a significant number of casualties – nearly 15%. But the PVA 124th Division was in much worse shape. It was so badly mauled that it was eliminated as an effective fighting force for several months. General Smith later wrote, about the Chinese losses...
In RCT-7's action against the 124th CCF Division from 2 to 7 November, reports indicated that about 1500 of the enemy had been killed, 62 prisoners were captured and all regiments of the 124th were identified. POW interrogation indicated that losses were heavier than reported by RCT-7. These interrogations revealed that losses were particularly heavy from artillery fire and that the combination of infantry, artillery, and air action had so decimated the division that not more than 3000 of the original 12,500 were left as a group. The combat effectiveness of this division was manifestly destroyed. It was several months before it appeared on the front again.
After the battle ended, the surviving Chinese soldiers vanished into the hills, just like they had after Unsan. Sergeant Van Winkle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in the Battle of Sudong. He recovered from his wounds and returned to action. Later he received a commission and retired from the Marine Corps as a Colonel.
-—
The battle of Sudong-ni can be considered to be the opening skirmish of the Chosin Reservoir campaign, which began three weeks later and in several locations further north. It was the first meeting between the Marines and the Chinese army. It gave each one an idea of the others’ tactics and their strengths and weaknesses. Both sides adjusted their tactics after this. The ultimate course of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was in part determined by this smaller battle.
The Marines learned that to “nullify Chinese night attacks, regardless of large-scale penetrations and infiltration, defending units had only to maintain position until daybreak. With observation restored, Marine firepower invariable would melt down the Chinese mass into impotency.” They would put this into use very soon.
The Chinese decided that the best way to deal with the advancing Marines was to pull back into the hills and set a gigantic trap for them. The Chinese plan was to occupy the hills around the Kaema plateau, around the Chosin Reservoir, moving only at night to remain unseen. Once the 1st MarDiv had moved onto the plateau, then the entire Chinese Ninth Army would surround and attack them simultaneously from all directions with overwhelming force. The Chinese knew who their opponent was. They though it would be a great achievement to annihilate an entire Marine Division, which had never been done before.
Five weeks later, on December 11, the Marines would pass through here again, after fifteen days of constant fighting and twenty-five days of bitter cold. Waiting for them then would also be Chinese soldiers, other ones, who would give the 1st Marines the last battle of the Chosin campaign. It would be a much smaller battle — both sides were exhausted, and were in much smaller numbers. It would be a fitting goodbye to the Chosin Reservoir.
Next Part
Part 5: Where Have All The Chinese Gone?
Previous Parts
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Korean War Begins
Part 3: MacArthur's War