The First Phase Offensive Ends - Where Have All The Chinese Gone?
General Smith Begins To Get His Regiments Back
The Threat From The West
Into Funchilin Pass – The Mouth Of The Trap
The Division Resumes Its Advance
Colder Than Hell
The First Phase Offensive Ends - Where Have All The Chinese Gone?
The Chinese were continuously plagued with logistics problems – they advanced so fast they outran their supply train, which consisted primarily of porters (the familiar word “coolie” is a transliteration of the Mandarin word for porter) carrying supplies on their backs. They were forced to end their First Phase Offensive on November 5. Almost overnight, the Chinese troops disappeared. The area around Onjong and Unsan, and the area around the Chosin Reservoir, were both emptied of Chinese, seemingly overnight.
There was one other notable disappearance. The 3/31 Infantry (from the US 7th Infantry Division, part of General Almond’s X Corps) had been moving west toward the Fusen Reservoir. On November 6, they briefly encountered Chinese forces, from the PVA 126th Division. After a brief skirmish, these Chinese forces also disappeared. The 3/31 also withdrew, back toward the rest of X Corps. Later the 3/31 would become part of RCT-31 – Task Force MacLean/Faith.
After Onjong and Unsan and Sudong-ni, General MacArthur and the UN Command now knew for sure that Chinese forces had been in North Korea, in large numbers, but were unconvinced (or, perhaps, refused to admit) that the Chinese had openly intervened in the war. I am sure that he had not forgotten President Truman’s instructions that he could only take action north of the 38th parallel if “at the time of such operation there was no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese Communist forces, no announcements of intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily...” He did have considerable motivation to deny any Chinese presence in the vicinity.
One reason for this continuing denial was the sudden Chinese disappearance. MacArthur thought that no more than 30,000 Chinese could possibly hide in the mountains and remain unseen. Another reason was inelegantly expressed by General Walker, a Texan, commander of the US Eighth Army, who essentially said that there were a lot of Mexicans in Texas, but this didn’t mean that Mexico had invaded Texas.
The biggest skeptic of this view was General Smith. He was absolutely convinced that the Chinese were present, in large numbers, somewhere to the north and/or the west. His orders were to advance north, toward an enemy whose numbers and location were unknown. He carried out his orders – as a military officer subject to the commands of senior officers he really had no choice – but he did so with great care and caution, taking steps to keep the MSR open, to cache supplies in towns along the road, and to create defensible perimeters around these towns. He used the entire 1st Marines for this purpose, stashing one battalion each in Chinhung-ni, Koto-ri, and Hagaru-ri.
This creation of garrisons was perhaps contrary to the spirit of his orders, and drew considerable pressure from his superior General Almond. Eventually Almond saw the wisdom of Smith’s actions. Orders issued after November 10 gave Smith the authorization to do what he was already doing.
It did reduce the force he had available for attack to the two remaining regiments, but in the end it was the right decision. Largely because of Smith’s actions, the whole of X Corps was saved – including the parts of it directly under Almond’s command.
General Smith Begins To Get His Regiments Back
The heaviest fighting during the Sudong-ni battle was during the first 24 hours, although action continued in decreasing degree until November 6, when the Chinese left. Patrols sent forward found no Chinese in front of the division, so on November 7, Marines advanced into Chinhung-ni, completing this movement by the next day. Continuing patrols to the north, as far as Koto-ri, on the far side of Funchilin Pass, came up empty – no Chinese.
When the 1st MarDiv and the PVA 124th Division fought at Sudong-ni, two thirds of the 1st MarDiv was elsewhere. Only RCT-7 was available to General Smith. He was not happy about this. His notes describe a meeting he had with General Almond once the Sudong-ni battle was over and the Chinese had vanished.
At 1530 [3:30 pm] on 7 November, I had a conference with General Almond. I had been pressing for some time to lessen the dispersion of the Division, pointing out to the Corps Commander that in the 1MarDiv he had a powerful instrument, but that it could not help being weakened by the dispersion to which it had been subjected. At this time the total separation of the infantry battalions of the division amounted to some 170 miles. [RCT-1 was in the Wonsan area, RCT-5 was in the Sinhung Valley, and RCT-7 was in Sudong-ni, ready to advance further up the MSR.] At the conference I again urged that the situation be reviewed; that in view of the approach of winter, consideration be given to stopping the advance to the north in view of the difficulty of supplying units in the mountains during the winter months.
General Almond had already issued orders for the 1st MarDiv. Basically, the division had two objectives.
The main part of the 1st MarDiv (RCT-5, RCT-7, and the division CP and HQ units) were to advance to the north along the MSR to the Chosin Reservoir and beyond, all the way to the Yalu River – about 150 road miles north of Sudong-ni. They were to destroy any enemy troops or units they encountered.
However, when the division arrived at Hagaru-ri, at the southern tip of the reservoir, it was to send a force, at least battalion-size, to Yudam-ni, a small village on the western side of the reservoir, fourteen miles from Hagaru-ri. The reason for this will be explained in the next section.
RCT-1 had new orders. It would be deployed at three critical points along the MSR, Chinhung-ni, Koto-ri, and Hagaru-ri, to create defensible perimeters within which it could guard cached supplies, and from which it could defend stretches of the MSR.
As I said, these were the ultimate orders. Several things had to happen, largely involving an Army unit, the 7th Infantry Regiment, which was not on the scene yet, before they could be fully implemented, and RCT-1 could revert to 1st MarDiv control. General Smith wrote in his notes that he was reluctant to move RCT-5 and RCT-7 forward until RCT-1 was in place, guarding the MSR.
The Threat From The West
General Smith was very concerned with his wide-open left (western) flank. To the division’s left were the Taebaek Mountains. The Marine’s maps showed one winding road that came all the way through the Taebaeks from their western side. This road ended at Yudam-ni. There were – or had recently been – lots of Chinese at the far end of this road, forty miles west. There were also two roads that left from Yudam-ni and headed south. They both connected to the MSR, one directly.
The first of these two roads led directly to the MSR, at Hagaru-ri, about fourteen miles southeast of Yudam-ni.
The second road led south-southwest, down the Taodong River valley, through the town of Sachang-ni and beyond it. This road was west of the MSR and roughly paralleled it, but did not intersect the MSR. However, there were two east-west side roads that connected the Taodong Valley road and the MSR.
The first of these side roads met the MSR at Koto-ri, which was the Marines’ next stop.
The second of these side roads crossed from Sachang-ni to the MSR at Majon-dong. Most of the 1st MarDiv had already passed through Majon-dong, so this junction was behind them. If the Chinese were to move to Majon-dong from the west, the division would be cut off from their only exit route. This possibility eerily echoed MacArthur’s move at Inchon – to separate the head by cutting through a very elongated neck. The military commanders (Marine and Army) referred to this road as the “Hamhung – Sachang-ni Axis” and considered it a real threat. I will use the abbreviation “H-S Axis” to save a few syllables.
It was clear that Yudam-ni had to be blocked. A strong Marine presence there would block all three access points to the MSR from the west (unless there were any Chinese already on these roads.)
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The remaining parts of General Smith’s orders dealt with countering these threats on a temporary basis:
RCT-1 was to patrol through the H-S Axis to find any Chinese who might be there and deal with them. (As it turned out, there were no Chinese there at all.) Once the H-S Axis was cleared, RCT-1 was then to occupy the village of Huksu-ni and establish a blocking position there. Huksu-ni was about ten miles west of Majon-dong, on the Axis.
RCT-5, which had been relieved from its pointless tromp up and down the Sinhung valley, had by now arrived in the Sudong valley. It dropped off the 1/5 Battalion in Majon-dong then continued on to Chinhung-ni, where it joined RCT-7.
When RCT-7 moved on to Koto-ri, another RCT-5 battalion, the 3/5 Marines, would remain in Chinhung-ni. Later, when RCT-7 left Koto-ri and continued on to Hagaru-ri, the third RCT-5 battalion, the 2/5, would remain in Koto-ri.
These arrangements were supposed to be temporary. Relief was coming, in the form of the Army’s 7th Regiment. The problem is that the relief was coming very slowly. The 3rd Infantry Division, of which the 7th Regiment was a part, had begun disembarking at Wonsan on November 5. This process would take nearly two weeks. When completed, a lot of dominos would sequentially fall:
The 7th Regiment would eventually provide elements to take over RCT-1's positions at Hukso-ni and along the H-S Axis and RCT-5's position at Majon-dong.
This would free RCT-1 to take over RCT-5's positions in Chinhung-ni, and Koto-ri, and to set up a third position in Hagaru-ri.
RCT-5 could then join up with RCT-7 and proceed with the advance north along the MSR.
This was the plan, anyway. but the first domino wasn’t in place yet. It wouldn’t be in place until November 20 or so. This caused a lot of headaches for General Smith, and a lot of shuffling of his battalions around. The Marines in those battalions probably thought the brass was entirely nuts.
The 1st MarDiv, now consisting of just its own CP and HQ units and RCT-7, did advance to Chinhung-ni on November 8. The Chinese were gone and the short advance was unopposed. The division was entirely in place by nightfall. The next objective was Koto-ri, ten miles north, on the other end of desolate Funchilin Pass. On November 9, General Smith set up a large cache of ammunition and supplies, and positioned the 3/5 Battalion, which had just arrived, in Chinhung-ni, in accordance with the temporary orders. Elements of RCT-7 spent November 9 patrolling ahead. A couple of the patrols went all the way through the pass, stopping just south of Koto-ri. The patrols did encounter some Chinese gunfire, but whatever forces were there seemed to evaporate as the Marines got closer.
On November 10, the division set out from Chinhung-ni and headed up into the dark lower reaches of Funchilin Pass.
Funchilin Pass – The Mouth Of The Trap
Chinhung-ni was located at the extreme northern end of the Sudong Valley. A little further north, less than a mile, was the entrance to desolate Funchilin Pass. The pass was a nightmarish place for an army to march through. In its higher elevations, it was barren and treeless. In the words of General Matthew Ridgway, who took over command of UN operations in Korea after General MacArthur was relieved (i.e. fired), “a narrowing, frightening shelf with an impassible cliff on one side and a chasm on the other.” There was no place to take cover, should the need arise. When the division went through the pass on November 10, it was the overall ease of passage that helped convince General Smith that he was leading his division into a trap.
General Smith described the Funchilin Pass in his notes:
The road from Chinhung-ni to Koto-ri was one lane, winding, and carved out of the mountainside. This resulted in there being a precipitous cliff on one side of the road and an almost vertical drop of several hundred feet on the other side. Temperatures at this time were already dropping to 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit at night. Such snow as had fallen on this narrow road rapidly became ice under traffic. The engineers were able to widen the road to one and one-half lanes over a considerable portion of the distance, and, eventually, it was possible to pass M26 tanks up the road.
Near the top of the pass was a very narrow concrete bridge. General Smith describes the bridge, its location, and its importance:
At this point water coming from the Chosin Reservoir by tunnel emerged from the side of the mountain and was discharged into four penstocks [large concrete pipes] which descended steeply down the mountainside to the turbine of the power plant in the valley below. Where the penstocks crossed the road there was a concrete substation, without a floor, on the uphill side of the road covering the penstocks. [The Marines called the substation “the gatehouse.”] On the downhill side of the substation was a one-way concrete bridge. The drop down the mountain side here was sheer. There was no possibility of a bypass. The integrity of this bridge was vital to us, for without it we would have been unable to get out our vehicles, tanks, and guns.
The Chinese, when they disappeared back to the north, had not wrecked the bridge. Had they done so, even Marines on foot would have found passage difficult if not impossible. Had the Chinese destroyed the bridge before the 1st MarDiv got there, that would have seriously delayed or even ended their advance to the north. But they didn’t. To quote David Halberstam,
To Smith, it was like the dog that hadn’t barked. The failure to blow the bridge on the part of so formidable and shrewd an adversary was a sure sign that the Chinese wanted the Americans to cross it – it was virtually an invitation – but it meant nothing to Almond, so disrespectful was he of his adversary.
“Smith was sure that they wanted us to come across, and they were going to blow the bridge after we crossed, thus completely isolating us,” said Major (later Major General) James Lawrence, who had been the executive officer at Sudong when the Chinese struck.
General Smith was right. The Chinese did blow the bridge three times after the division passed it. The first two times it was easily repaired by division engineers from Chinhung-ni and Koto-ri. The third time, in early December, it was not repairable by the division. But the story of the Marines’ return to the bridge at the gatehouse and how it was repaired is still a month in the future and will be covered below.
The Division Resumes Its Advance
At dawn on November 10, elements of RCT-5 and RCT-7 left Chinhung-ni and ascended into Funchilin Pass. Their objective was Koto-ri. Lieutenant Owen describes RCT-7's departure.
We left the Sudong valley, the battalions of the 7th Marines leapfrogging each other in the attack up the single-lane dirt road that wound north into the high country. Charlie Company took the first point [led the column.] They jumped off at dawn and they got clobbered before noon.
The Chinese tactics had us puzzled; sometimes they fiercely resisted our advance and other times they just faded away to the next ridgeline without firing a shot. That morning, by the time we reached Charlie Company’s position to help them out, the Chinese had withdrawn. There were many Marine casualties, though, and we helped Charlie carry them down the road for the meat wagons. Carrying casualties, like climbing and fighting in these steep hills, was difficult work. Soon we would be doing it every day.
By late afternoon on November 10, the Marine force had all arrived at Koto-ri. They encountered some Chinese there. There was a skirmish with an unknown number of PVA troops just to the west of town. Marine aircraft were called in to attack the enemy positions, which were destroyed. Later some mortar shells landed on Marine positions on the north side, but by the end of the day all was quiet. Lieutenant Owen wasn’t particularly impressed with Koto-ri.
Further into the mountains lay the grim little town of Koto-ri. It stretched along the roadway, a string of shacks rough made of lumber and concrete blocks. Most of the buildings had been wrecked by the ROKs as they were being chased away by the Chinese. Our reconnaissance patrols entered the town and found that the Chinese had now abandoned it as well. Koto-ri was ours for the taking, and it would become the base of operations for Chesty Puller and his 1st Marines when they caught up with us.
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Lieutenant Owen noted that cold-weather gear was beginning to be distributed...
Regiment issued heavier sleeping bags, but because of Captain Wilcox’s order we couldn’t get into them at night. We were also given scratchy winter underwear – long johns – and we sweltered in them in the daytime. They were warm at night, though, when the chill set in.
While still in Koto-ri, Lieutenant Owen sent a letter home to his wife.
One of my replacements [*] just broke out a mirror – first I’ve seen of myself since we left Hamhung, three weeks ago. What a sight! Believe it or not, I have not bathed, shaved, brushed my teeth, or changed my clothes since the Chinese first attacked us. I’d give anything for a bath and to put on clean clothes, but no one in the rifle companies has a chance at such luxuries. We’re all the same, a bunch of scroungy looking people.
[* – at intervals, when the division was accessible, troops who had been killed or seriously wounded were replaced. This procedure broke down once the division was surrounded and was in nearly continuous combat. At that point, the division absorbed a high rate of loss at all organizational levels.]
That night, the night of November 10, winter arrived on the Kaema Plateau, which included at Koto-ri.
Colder Than Hell
On November 10, a cold front from Siberia descended from the north and the temperature plunged in interior North Korea. By November 14 the cold had descended to both coastlines. For the remainder of the Chosin canpaign , nighttime temperatures were as low as −35 °F. In the daytime, temperatures seldom rose above 0 °F. It was the coldest winter in about a century. General Smith describes the Marines reaction to the sudden arrival of the Siberian cold.
On the night of 10-11 November when RCT-7 was located in Koto-ri, the temperature dropped sharply from approximately 32 Fahrenheit to 8 below zero F accompanied by 20- to 30-knot wind. The subzero temperature experienced by RCT-7 at Koto-ri produced an immediate shock reaction on many troops. More than 200 men in various degrees of collapse turned into aid stations for treatment. The medical officers reported these men to be dazed and stunned, with a number of cases having very low respiratory rates. Stimulants were required in addition to warming in order to restore the men to normal functioning. After the initial reaction the men became more accustomed to very low temperatures, for although even more severe weather was encountered later, the shock reaction did not reappear.
The ground froze. Walking on it all day caused an increased danger of frostbite. The Marines had to change their socks twice a day – wet socks could cost a Marine his feet. The roads were icy. Vehicles had trouble staying on them. (General Walker, commander of the US Eighth Army was killed when his Jeep skidded off an icy road. )
Lieutenant Owen describes the effect the cold had on the troops and their operations.
The cold weather was as formidable an enemy as the Chinese. The troops, never prone to minimize a problem, declared that temperature readings were down to thirty below, fahrenheit. There was a thermometer back at regiment, and the daily action reports confirmed the troops’ judgement. Rarely did the reports exceed zero degrees, and there were lows of twenty below.
When we weren’t on the move, we were freezing cold and we spent much of our energy trying to keep warm. Battalion had warming stations, big pyramid tents with kerosene stoves in them, which we rarely used because they were far from our company perimeters. Up on the line we had only our body warmth, which we tried to keep enclosed within the parkas. At night, in the foxholes, the men pressed together to preserve whatever warmth they could generate.
We wore woolen caps under the helmets that kept our ears from freezing. The hoods of the parkas went over the helmets and provided some protection from the bitter winds, but they obscured our peripheral vision. We seldom removed the knitted gloves that we wore underneath canvas mittens. Bare fingers, we found, froze to metal; they froze to weapons, bayonets, buckles, whatever we touched.
Chow was usually a can of half-frozen rations, although we learned to carry the next meal inside our clothing, close to our body heat, so it wouldn’t freeze solid. In daylight, when we weren’t under direct enemy observation, we made small cooking fires. The unused mortar propellant charges served to make a quick starter flame. The mortarmen did a good business trading the propellant charges for cigarettes and fruit rations.
Down on the road, if there was a vehicle nearby, we filched gasoline, then poured it over any dirt or gravel that we managed to scrape from under the snow, and that made a skimpy but adequate fire. We learned that trick from one of our reservists who had been in Europe, the Battle of the Bulge, in 1944.
The cold ration diet caused stomach disorders. We alternated between constipation and diarrhea. It was common to see a man suddenly scamper from the column to the nearest tree or boulder, then desperately unbuckle, unbutton, and slide down several layers of trousers, long johns, and skivvies before he let go. Many times he wouldn’t make it…
Weapons froze and seized up when we used lubricating oil on them. They slowed and jammed when we didn’t. The machine guns and BARs were most affected; on first firing they would hesitate two or three seconds between rounds, then slowly build up to their regular rate of fire. Hair tonic, with alcohol in it, became a fairly effective substitute lubricant. At first the hair tonic was hard to come by, but soon battalion began sending it along with our ammo and rations.
The cold forced the corpsmen to change their way of doing business. With the first sounds of a firefight they would take several syrettes of morphine and put them in their mouths. This kept the morphine liquid until the syrettes were jammed into a wounded man’s flesh to relieve his pain.
The corpmen were the only ones who worked with bare hands in the severe cold, and they found a way to keep their fingers nimble while tending a wounded man. The heat of the man’s blood did the trick, or his guts, as they were stuffed back into the belly.
In addition, the bodies of the dead quickly froze, in whatever position they had been in when they died. The temperature did not significantly warm up until long after the last Marine had left the Reservoir. If anything, it got colder.
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