“An Entirely New War”
The Siege of Hagaru-ri
Task Force Drysdale
Breakout From Yudam-ni
“An Entirely New War”
On November 29, General Almond reported as ordered to General MacArthur. General Walker, commander of the Eight Army, had received identical orders and was there as well. The three generals had a somber meeting. MacArthur was beginning to realize what was happening to his armies in North Korea. Military historian Clay Blair quoted him as saying, or paraphrased it – I’m not sure, “The wine of victory has turned to vinegar.” (This does sound like MacArthur – grandiose and quasi-Biblical.)
Blair wrote that MacArthur, “had been outsmarted and outgeneraled by a ‘bunch of Chinese laundrymen’ who had no close air support, no tanks and very little artillery, modern communication or logistical infrastructure.” MacArthur’s post-Inchon commands had added up to “an arrogant, blind march to disaster.”
After the meeting, MacArthur sent a message to the Joint Chiefs. They now faced, he wrote, “an entirely new war. This command has done everything humanly possible within its capabilities but is now faced with conditions beyond its control and strength.”
In other words, “It’s not my fault.”
The outcome of the meeting was simple, and inevitable. Almond and Walker had new orders – withdraw your forces. General Walker already was doing this – he had no choice, really. The shattered remains of the Eighth Army were already streaming south from the Chongchon River, and would keep going until they were in the vicinity of Seoul. General Almond’s X Corps (both the 1st MarDiv and RCT-31 at Chosin and the 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions and the ROK II Corps scattered all over eastern North Korea) would retreat to the Hungnam area, where they would establish a strong, defensible perimeter. They would remain there until the Navy could get a sufficient armada in place to evacuate them to sea.
General Smith had been waiting for such an order and was more than ready to escape the trap he had been heading into for nearly a month. The problem for him was that the trap had many sets of jaws. At the moment, most of his division was still in Yudam-ni, surrounded on all sides by Chinese. Meanwhile, Hagaru-ri, fourteen miles south, was in terrible danger.
The Siege of Hagaru-ri
Hagaru-ri was a meant to be a fortress. At least that was the idea. Two weeks earlier, when the 1st MarDiv had begun arriving here, General Smith had set up a large supply dump and begun building an airfield. These were necessary to support his division’s continuing advance. At that time, Smith, as always anticipating the trap, was thinking of being able to withdraw RCT-5 and RCT-7 from their forward locations at the inlet and Yudam-ni respectively back to Hagaru-ri if necessary. Smith had brought the 3/1 Battalion with him to Hagaru-ri, and stationed it there to defend against attack. In Lieutenant Owen’s words, the rest of Hagaru-ri’s garrison consisted of…
...hundreds of rear echelon people who had reverted to riflemen. For three days and nights, the cooks and bakers, the truck drivers and artillerymen, the office pinkies and technicians dug in alongside the infantry Marines.
These Marines had all been trained as combat infantrymen, but up to now had not had to partipate directly in combat operations. They would have to do so now. They were part of the garrison force in a very dangerous and strategically important spot. Their numeric strength was about that of a battalion, which meant that Hagaru-ri would be defended by two battalions – less than 2,000 men. A Chinese division had them in its sights. I’m sure Smith would have liked a stronger garrison force, but this was all he could spare.
General Song had planned to have his 58th Division attack Hagaru-ri at the same time as all the other Ninth Army attacks, in the early hours of November 28, but it ran into trouble. They were using old Japanese maps and got lost in the countryside. They didn’t actually commence their attack against Hagaru-ri until dawn. The garrison commander, LtCol Thomas Ridge, was fully aware of the attacks that were going on all around him. He figured the PVA would attack his position at any time, but he ended up getting about six hours warning. He put virtually everyone in the garrison into defensive positions in a perimeter around Hagaru-ri before the 58th Division even got there. They were as ready as they could be.
A little after dawn, one PVA regiment attacked the perimeter on the southern and western sides, while another one attacked the hills on the northern perimeter. Despite LtCol Ridge’s preparations, his garrison was overwhelmed. The Chinese opened several gaps in the defenses and reaching the rear areas. The resulting chaos, however, caused a breakdown in discipline among the Chinese soldiers, who began looting food and clothing instead of exploiting the situation. (It wasn’t really bad discipline – the Chinese soldiers were freezing, just like the Americans were, but they were also starving.)
American forces defending the perimeter counterattacked and managed to destroy the Chinese forces which had infiltrated. Communications between the Chinese regiments broke down. They didn’t exploit the gaps in the perimeter thay had opened, and American forces were able to close those gaps. When the fighting stopped, the Chinese had gained only a single hill on the northern perimeter called, for some reason, “East Hill.”
Another attack against Hagaru-ri was planned for that night (November 28̀-29) but Marine air raids during the daylight hours broke up the Chinese positions around the town before this could be carried out.
Task Force Drysdale
As we have already seen, Hagaru-ri was critically important to General Smith. The only exit to the south from the reservoir began there. But LtCol Ridge’s garrison was dangerously undermanned. On November 29, while daylight Marine air raids were still underway, Smith ordered the commander of RCT-1, Chesty Puller, to assemble a task force and send it from his position in Koto-ri to Hagaru-ri.
Colonel Puller hastily assembled a task force. With a strength of 962 men, it was approximately battalion-sized. It consisted of troops from the UK 41st Royal Marine Commandos, USMC George/3/1 and USA Baker/1/31 The task force was dubbed "Task Force Drysdale" after its commander, LtCol Douglas Drysdale, who was the commander of the 41st Commandos. (This is, I think, the first time US troops served in a unit commanded by an foreign officer.)
On the afternoon of November 29, Task Force Drysdale pushed north from Koto-ri while under constant attack from the PVA 60th Division (which outnumbered the Task Force about ten to one.) As the Chinese attacks dragged on, the task force became disorganized, then was split into two segments. The lead segment of the task force managed to fight its way into Hagaru-ri that night. The rear segment was destroyed. Overall, the Task Force brought about 300 badly needed infantrymen to Hagaru-ri, but they suffered 162 dead and 159 wounded. The task force's harrowing experience later earned this stretch of the MSR the nickname "Hell Fire Valley".
More reinforcements arrived from Hudong-ni the next day, November 30. These were the eighteen surviving tanks from the 31st Tank Company and RTC-31 command post personnel that had come south from Hudong-ni. The combined garrison forces attempted to recapture East Hill. All efforts failed despite the destruction of a Chinese company. When darkness settled, the PVA 58th Division gathered its remaining 1,500 soldiers in a last-ditch attempt to capture Hagaru-ri. The reinforced defenders annihilated most of the attacking forces, with only the defenses around East Hill giving way. As the Chinese tried to advance from East Hill, they were cut down by the tanks.
By the next day, December 1, the PVA 58th Division was virtually destroyed. The remainder was awaiting reinforcements from the Ninth Army (the PVA 80th and 81st Divisions as mentioned above.) They came, but not in time. Later that day the airfield was opened to traffic, allowing UN forces to bring in fresh troops and evacuate the dead and wounded. According to Major General Field Harris, who was in charge of Marine air operations, 4,500 casualties would eventually be evacuated from the airfield at Hagaru-ri.
Hagaru-ri was safe. It would not be lost.
Breakout From Yudam-ni
Meanwhile, on November 29, after two nights of hard fighting and a day of artillery and air support counterattack, the PVA forces at Yudam-ni, particularly the 79th Division, had suffered heavy losses. General Song, the Ninth Army commander, finally realized he was facing most of the US 1st MarDiv at Yudam-ni.
Here we see again that the PVA was hindered by poor intelligence, both collection and analysis. General Song had originally thought that that the Yudam-ni garrison was smaller, one infantry regiment instead of the two that were actually there. He also thought that the garrisons at the inlet and at Hagaru-ri garrison were both larger than they actually were, at least a regiment in each place. He made his own troop dispositions based on faulty intelligence. The Yudam-ni garrison survived everything he threw at it. By rights, the garrisons at the inlet and at Hagaru-ri both should have fallen by November 29. The inlet lasted until December 2 before it collapsed, Hagaru-ri was relieved on December 1. So, at a cost of about five divisions, General Song had little to show for it except the destruction of RCT-31.
On November 29, General Song determined that any further direct assaults against the Marine positions at Yudam-ni would be both futile and costly. He knew that the Marines would have to leave Yudam-ni sooner or later, and that their only possible route was to go back the way they had come. Song felt that the 1st MarDiv would be easier to deal with while strung out along fourteen miles of narrow road between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri, with his Army waiting in ambush. General Song ordered his divisions (those not already tied up at Hagaru-ri and the inlet) to move to locations overlooking this road to await the Marines when they came by.
One division, the 59th, was already in place. Unfortunately for General Song, it was also very busy. Back on the night of November 27-28, the 59th Division had surrounded a single Marine company, Fox/2/7, which had been on top of a hill in Toktong Pass. They were still there, two days later, successfully holding back the 59th.
General Song’s decision gave General Smith some much needed breathing room. He had received his new orders from General Almond on November 29 – to pull the 1st MarDiv out of its perimeter at Yudam-ni and return to Hagaru-ri.
I don’t know if Smith was aware that Song had already begun shifting his forces into the same area, but I suspect that he was. He was very shrewd when it came to anticipating the enemy. Smith knew there would be tough fighting ahead. Someone mentioned the word “retreat” to General Smith, who was reported to have replied, “Retreat, Hell! We’re not retreating. We’re just attacking in another direction.”
This was a little wartime exaggeration. General Smith’s initials (O.P.) were the basis for his nickname, “Old Professor.” He was a careful and thoughtful man. What he actually said was, essentially, that if one’s force is completely surrounded, then one is attacking no matter in which direction one is headed. The newspapers preferred the more flamboyant wording, and the public, which was well aware if the division’s plight, ate it up. They also enjoyed a comment made at around the same time by Chesty Puller, commander of the 1st Marines, who obligingly told war correspondents, “We've been looking for the enemy for several days now. We finally found them. We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of finding these people and killing them."
According to Lt Owen:
Joe Kurcaba returned from a meeting with Colonel Davis and the other company commanders to tell us that the Marines were pulling out of Yudam-ni. We were heading back to Hagaru-ri where the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines and some Army troops had a stronghold. Our battalion, One-Seven, would attack east of the MSR to break through the Chinese, who held almost all of the fourteen miles to Hagaru-ri and the high ground that commanded it. In parallel columns the battalions of the 5th Marines would hit along the MSR and the hills to the west.
The enemy did not hold Toktong Pass, the highest point in the route. Fox Company of the 7th Marines occupied that vital terrain. They had fought off two regiments of Chinese attackers for three days and three nights to keep it in Marine hands. Toktong Pass was now known as Fox Hill; it was our main objective, eight miles away through mountains and thousands of Chinese soldiers. [“...three days and three nights...” as of December 1.]
The breakout started in the morning of December 1. The division formed a convoy which would travel down the MSR. In front was a single Sherman Tank. Immediately behind the tank, acting as the Division’s vanguard, was the 3/5 Battalion. There were three more battalions covering the rear.
There were two hills flanking the road about halfway between Yudam-ni and Toktong Pass, Hill 1542, on the west side of the MSR, and Hill 1419, on the east side of the MSR. (Hill 1419 was “Turkey Hill.”) The PVA had already established positions consisting of remnants of the 59th Division on top of these hills. From these positions, they could fire down at the Marine column moving south on the MSR. The 3/7 Battalion was tasked with attacking and capturing Hill 1542, while the 1/7 Battalion was tasked with Hill 1419. Air cover would be provided by the 1st Marine Air Wing, flying from Wonsan, about 100 air miles away.
The 3/7 engaged the PVA troops atop of Hill 1542. The tenacious defenders soon forced the Marines to dig in on the slopes between the road and the peak when the convoy began passing 3/7's position that afternoon. Despite this initial setback, Hill 1542 fell that night.
At the same time, the 1/7 attacked the PVA position on Hill 1419, consisting of the last five platoons remaining from the 59th Division. They also refused to yield, but, as night approached, the Marines captured the hill. How/3/7 spent the night on Hill 1419, but 1/7 continued to march southeast through the hills on the east side of the road. Their goal now was relief of Fox Company, and it was getting dark.
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