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DRWE NORTH

U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl

by Colonel Allan R. Millett, USMCR (Ret)

he rumble of American field artillery

through the morning

mists in the valley of

the Soyang River

gave a sense of urgency to the

change-of-command ceremony

inside the headquarters tent of the

1st Marine Division. Four days of

hard fighting in the withdrawal

from the Hwachon Reservoir had

brought the division safely to the

river on 25 April 1951. The trek

away from the Chinese 39th and

40th Armies had not yet, however,

brought the division to the No

Name Line, the final defensive

position 15 miles south of the river

designated by Lieutenant General

James A. Van Fleet, commanding

the U.S. Eighth Army. In a simple

rite that included only the reading

of the change-of-command orders

and the passing of the division colors, Major General Gerald C.

Thomas relieved Major General

Oliver P. "0. P." Smith and took

command of a division locked in a

battle to stop the Chinese Fifth

Offensive.

The ceremony dramatized the

uncertainty of the Marines in the

second year of the Korean War.

Understandably, General Smith did

ON THE CovER: Two Marine machine

gunners "keep the gun hot" in their

pursuit offleeing Communist troops.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-

N-A8866

AT LEFT: Marines quickly demolish

enemy bunkers with grenades and

planted charges before moving north,

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

A8504

not want to turn over command in

the middle of a battle. On the other

hand, General Van Fleet wanted

Thomas to take command of the

division as soon as possible, something Thomas had not planned to

do since his formal orders from the

Commandant, General Clifton B.

Cates, designated 1 May 1951 as

turn-over day. Thomas had

planned to spend the intervening

week on a familiarization tour of

Korea and the major elements of

the Eighth Army. He had thought

his call on Van Fleet the day before

had been simply a courtesy visit,

but instead he found himself

caught in a delicate matter of command relations.

General Thomas arrived in

Korea to face an entirely new war.

The October 1950 dream of unifying Korea under the sponsorship

of the United Nations (U.N.) had

swirled away with the Chinese

winter intervention. The war still

hung in the balance as the United

Nations Command attempted to

drive the Communist inizaders out

of the Republic of Korea (ROK) for

the second time in less than a year.

The U.S. Eighth Army and its

Korean counterpart, the Hanguk

Gun (South Korean Armed Forces)

had rallied in January and February

1951, under the forceful leadership

of Lieutenant General Matthew B.

Ridgway, USA. United Nations

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas, right, meets with MajGen Oliver P. Smith prior to the

spartan change-of-command ceremony witnessed by a handful of participants

drawn from the 1st Marine Division's staff

Gen Oliver P. Smith Collection, Marine Corps Research Center

1
(J

KOREA

Korea

'HINA

Fusen Reservoir Cbosin Reservoir

Sea ofJapan

Asan Bay

Yellow Sea

/

Command had then driven back

the Chinese Communist Forces

(CCF) and the North Korean

People's Army (NKPA). The allies

had advanced well north of the

38th Parallel in central and eastern

Korea. Goaded by Mao Zedong,

General Peng Dehuai ordered his

joint expeditionary force of

693,000 Chinese and North Korean

soldiers to mount one more grand

offensive. Eleven Chinese armies

and two North Korean corps (40

divisions) would smash south just

west of Hwachon Reservoir in the

sectors held by the U.S. I and IX

Corps. At a minimum the Communist forces, about half of Peng's

total army, would drive United

Nations forces below the 38th

Parallel. The maximum objective

would be to threaten the Han River

2

valley and the corridors to Seoul

while at the same time recapturing

the territory south of the Soyang

River, which opened an alternative

corridor south to Hongchon.

When General Thomas called

on General Van Fleet on 24 April,

the Eighth Army commander, a

combative 59-year-old Floridian

with a World War II record of successful command from regiment to

corps in Europe, felt confident that

his forces had blunted the fourday-old Communist offensive.

However, he had an organizational

problem, which was that the 1st

Marine Division should be shifted

back to X Corps and redeployed to

the No Name Line under the command of Lieutenant General

Edward M. Almond, USA, the division's corps commander throughOut 1950. The relationship between 0. P. Smith and Almond,

however, had become so venomous that Ridgway assigned the

Marine division to IX Corps in

January 1951 and promised Smith

that he would not have to cope

with Almond, whose style and substance of command angered Smith

and his staff. Van Fleet had honored Ridgway's commitment, but

the operational situation dictated

that the Almond-Smith feud could

not take precedence.

Van Fleet explained the plan to

shift the 1st Marine Division back

to X Corps to Thomas without

going into the Almond-Smith problem. Van Fleet did not give Thomas

a direct order to proceed immediately to the 1st Marine Division

headquarters near Churichon.

Thomas believed, however, that

Van Fleet had sound reasons to

want a change of command now,

so he caught a light plane furnished by the 1st Marine Aircraft

Wing and flew to the primitive

airstrip that served the division.

Escorted by the new assistant division commander, Brigadier
'41) 4%jf\

General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller,

Thomas went directly to Smith's

van and told him of Van Fleet's

request and future plans. Smith

refused to relinquish command.

Without mounting an argument,

Thomas left the van and went to

the operations center to confer

with Colonel Edward W. Snedeker,

the chief of staff, and Colonel

Alpha L. Bowser, the G-3, both of

whom sympathized with Thomas

but ,thought Smith should remain

in command. Thomas thought the

division was well positioned to

refuse the open left flank of X

Corps, but he also felt the tension

in the command post.

Thomas decided that the issue

of command could not be postponed—and now at least Smith

knew he faced the prospect of

again serving under Almond.

Thomas returned to Smith's van

within the hour and stated simply:

"0. P., the table of organization

calls for only one major general in

Major General Gerald C.Thomas

erald Carthrae Thomas spent a lifetime dealing

with challenging command relationships and

operational problems inside and outside the

Marine Corps. Born on 29 October 1894 on a farm near

Slater, a western Missouri railroad town, Thomas grew

up as a working boy in a working family. He was also a

good student and versatile high school athlete. Living in

Bloomington, Illinois, he attended Illinois Wesleyan

University (1915-1917) before enlisting in the Marine

Corps in May 1917 to fight the Germans. Thomas, age

22, mustered in at five feet, nine inches and 160 pounds,

strong of wind and limb from athletics and labor. Dark

hair and heavy eyebrows set off his piercing blue eyes

and strong jaw. He would need every bit of his emotional balance and physical stamina—lifelong traits—for

the Marine Corps placed him in the Germans' sights for

most of 1918. As a sergeant and lieutenant in the 1st

Battalion, 6th Marines, Thomas learned about war at

Belleau Wood, Soissons, and the Meuse-Argonne. When

the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals were authorized

in 1932, Captain Thomas, professional officer of Marines,

pinned on one award for gallantry and another for being

gassed.

In the interwar years, Thomas had already fought

against Haitian guerrillas, served a second tour in Haiti

as a staff officer, and commanded a Marine detachment

on a Navy gunboat in the Caribbean and Central

America. He also lost one wife to disease, married again

(Lottie Capers Johnson of Charleston, South Carolina)

and started a family of two sons and two daughters. The

Marine Corps recognized his potential value in wartime

by sending him to five different Army schools (including

the prestigious U.S. Army Command and General Staff

College, Fort Leavenworth) and assigning him twice as

an instructor in Marine Corps schools.

Between 1940 and 1950, Thomas proved that the

Marine Corps had not wasted a minute or a dollar on his

professional education. In a decade that saw him

advance in rank from major to major general, Thomas

prepared the Fleet Marine Force for war as an instructor

at Quantico, military observer abroad, and a staff officer

in the 1st Marine Division as the division conducted its

last pre-Pearl Harbor amphibious exercises. When the

3

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A132593

division deployed to the South Pacific, Lieutenant

Colonel Thomas went to war as Major General

Alexander A. Vandegrift's operations officer (G-3), an

assignment that made him one of the architects of victory on Guadalcanal. A trusted intimate of Vandegrift's,
Thomas served as the general's chief of staff during the

final months of the Guadalcanal campaign and then

played the same role in the I Marine Amphibious corps'

landing on Bougainville. He returned to Washington

with Vandegrift when the general became Commandant

in 1944. As a brigadier general, his second "spot" promotion in a row, Thomas fought the battles of demobilization and postwar defense reorganization, 1944-1947,

as the Director of Plans and Policies on the

Headquarters staff and played a critical role in winning

legislative protection for the Fleet Marine Force in the

National Security Act, 1947. He then spent two years as

commanding general, Fleet Marine Force, Western

Pacific, a brigade-sized force that garrisoned the

Shantung peninsula and the city of Tsingtao until the

Chinese Communist military victories in North China in

1948 made the American enclave irrelevant. Thomas

successfully withdrew his force without incident, in

February 1949 and returned to educational and developmental billets at Marine Corps Base, Quantico.

Thomas' rich and exciting career had not, however,

been without professional risks and cost. His aggressive

personality, the force with which he defended his convictions, and his unwillingness to tolerate leadership

lapses that endangered Marines had made him anathema to some of his peers, two of whom stopped his first

promotion to major general. Others thought him too

demanding a colleague. In 1951 only two opinions

counted, those of Commandant Clifton B. Cates and

Lieutenant General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.,

Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, and

Cates' likely successor as Commandant. Although neither Cates nor Shepherd were part of Vandegrift's

"Guadalcanal gang," they knew Thomas well and recognized his special qualifications to go to Korea. In

addition to his recent service as Commanding General,

Fleet Marine Force, Western Pacific, Thomas had done a

pre-war China tour in the Peiping legation guard. And

despite his dogged defense of the Marine Corps in the

Battle of the Potomac, 1945-1947, he got along well with

the U.S. Army. As head of research and development,

Thomas also understood the 1st Division's importance

as test bed for future techniques like vertical envelopment.

After his successful command of the 1st Marine

Division in Korea, April 1951-February 1952, Thomas

returned to Headquarters Marine Corps as a lieutenant

general and Assistant Commandant/Chief of Staff for

General Shepherd. For the next two years, Thomas

focused on reorganizing the Headquarters staff on functional general staff lines, on improving Marine Corps

relations and representation within the Department of

the Navy, and planning the postwar Fleet Marine Force

of three divisions and three aircraft wings, a force more

than twice as large as the Fleet Marine Force in June

1950.

For his "twilight cruise" Thomas became

Commandant, Marine Corps Schools, Quantico (1954-

1955), his favorite post and role as officer-instructor.

Upon retirement he remained in government service as

the first executive director, Net Evaluation Committee,

National Security Council staff from 1956 to 1958. He

then entered private business in real estate and insurance in the Washington, D.C. area. He regularly attended 1st Marine Division Association functions and events

related to Marine Corps history; his four sons and sonsin-laws all served as Marines, two retiring as colonels.

General Thomas died on 7 April 1984 at the age of 89.

a division. Either you turn over to

me, or I'm going to leave." Smith

did not respond, and Thomas

again left the van. After several

minutes of more tension, Smith

emerged from his van and told

Thomas that the change-of-command ceremony would be held at

0800 the next morning. The 1st

Marine Division had a new commanding general as it entered a

new era in its service in Korea.

Although the last veterans of the

campaigns of 1950 did not leave

Korea until the autumn of 1951,

the 1st Marine Division had started

a process of transformation in April

1951 that did not depend solely on

Communist bullets. Headquarters

Marine Corps now sent out

replacement drafts not just to fill

holes in the ranks from casualties,

but also to allow the surviving veterans of longest service to return to

new assignments in the United

States or for release from active

duty. The 9th Replacement Draft

reached Korea in early June, bringing 2,608 Marine officers and

enlisted men to the division and 55

officers and 334 men to the 1st

Marine Aircraft Wing. New naval

personnel for both Marine organizations totaled six officers and 66

sailors, mostly medical personnel.

The incoming Marines had a departing counterpart, the 3d

4

Rotation Draft, composed of 62

Marine officers, 1,196 enlisted

men, and 73 sailors; the draft

included 103 convalescing wounded. The 10th Replacement Draft

arrived late in June, adding 74

more officers and 1,946 men to the

division and 12 officers and 335

men to the aircraft wing. One

naval officer and 107 sailors joined

the division and wing.

Nevertheless, Thomas thought

that the manpower planners had

cut their estimates too close and

requested that subsequent drafts

be increased by a 1,000 officers

and men. Despite the personnel

demands of forming the new 3d

Marine Brigade at Camp

Pendleton, Fleet Marine Force,
I

Pacific, honored Thomas' request.

The 11th Replacement Draft (14

July 1951) brought 3,436 Marines

and 230 naval personnel to the

division and 344 Marines to the aircraft wing, accompanied by 22

sailors. Nevertheless, the division

remained short of majors, company grade artillery officers, and officers and enlisted men in almost

every technical specialization,

especially communications and

logistics.

General Thomas had no complaint about the quality of the

Marines he had inherited from 0.

P. Smith or those sent to him by

Lieutenant General Lemuel C.

Shepherd, Jr., Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific.

The senior officers and company

commanders were proven World

War II veterans, and the lieutenants

were an elite of Naval Academy

graduates, NROTC graduates, and

officer candidate school products

that more than matched the company grade officers of World War

II. The enlisted Marines were a

solid mix of career noncommissioned officers and eager enlistees.

Thomas recognized that the division he now commanded was "in

splendid shape" and prepared to

fight and win in terrain and weather "never designed for polite warfare." He wrote retired Major

General Merritt A. Edson that the

1st Marine Division was "the best

damn division that ever wore an

American uniform."

Thomas went ahead with plans,

coordinated with Shepherd, to

form his own team as the division

staff and to appoint new regimental commanders. Thomas arranged

for Brigadier General William J.

Whaling, an old friend who had

been Thomas' alter ego on

Guadalcanal, to become the assistant division commander on 20

May. Whaling became his eyes and

ears on tactical issues with his

superb knowledge of men,

5

weapons, and fieldcraft. Colonel

Snedeker remained chief of staff

until he gave way on 23 May to

Colonel Francis M. McAlister,

whose command of the 1st

Marines was cut short by wounds

on the 18th. Since he had come to

Korea in 1950 as the division G-4,

McAlister rotated home, to be

replaced temporarily by Colonel

Richard G. Weede, who had taken

Colonel Bowser's place as G-3 on

8 May. Shepherd and Thomas had

someone else in mind for the division chief of staffs post, Colonel

Victor H. Krulak, the G-3 of Fleet

Marine Force, Pacific, and a trusted

colleague of both generals through

World War II and the postwar

years. Krulak became division

chief of staff on 29 June with a

special charge to begin experiments with the Marine Corps' one

operational helicopter squadron.

The rest of the division staff

brought enough character and

expertise to their jobs to please

Thomas. The G-1, Colonel Wesley

M. Platt, had spent World War II as

a Japanese prisoner of war; his

leadership among the prisoners

had won him the admiration of his

peers and great influence on the

staff. Thomas' two G-2s, Lieutenant

Colonels Joseph P. Sayers and

James H. Tinsley, did a workmanlike job. Like Weede, Colonel

Bruce T. Hemphill, and Lieutenant

Colonel Gordon D. Gayle served

as Thomas' G-3s under the close

and critical scrutiny of Colonels

Krulak and Weede, who also

served as division chief of staff.

Colonels Frank P. Hager and Custis

Burton, Jr., performed the thankless task of G-4 until they rotated

to the command of the 5th and

11th Marines, respectively, although Burton later returned as

chief of staff in February 1952 to

replace Weede.

The commanders of the infantry

regiments were all tested veterans

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A156022

The command team of the 1st Marine Division stands outside a briefing tent at

the division headquarters. Pictured from left are BGen WilliamJ. Whaling, assistant division commander, MajGen Gerald C. Thomas, division commander, and

C'ol Victor H. Krulak, division chief of staff
of the Fleet Marine Force, and their

styles varied more than their competence. After Francis McAlister fell

in a precision Chinese mortar barrage on his command group,

Thomas assigned his regiment to

the legendary Colonel Wilburt S.

"Big Foot" Brown, an artillery officer sent Out to command the 11th

Marines. The irrepressible "Big

Foot" Brown (whose homeric 14F

sized-feet required special supply

arrangements, including the airdrop of field brogans into the

wilds of Nicaragua) took command

only to issue an order to withdraw.

As the 1st Marines trooped by his

jeep on the way south to the No

Name Line, the files of men broke

into chicken-like cackles, showing

that their "red leg" colonel looked

"yellow" to them. Colonel Brown

soon showed that their judgment

was a short round by a mile. When

the veteran of World War I,

Nicaragua, and World War II surrendered command to another

World War I veteran, Colonel

Thomas A. Wornham, Brown had

won the affection of the 1st

Marines, "Chesty Puller's Own," a

very tough bunch of Marines to

impress.

The other two infantry regiments went to colonels of high

ability. Colonel Richard W. Hayward brought intelligence and personal elegance (too much some of

his troops thought) to the 5th

Marines, succeeded by Weede on 7

August whose energy and force

exceeded Hayward's. Almond

liked them both, a dubious recommendation. Weede then turned

over command to Frank Hager on

19 November. The 7th Marines bid

farewell to Colonel Homer L.

Litzenberg, Jr., on 15 April and

welcomed Colonel Herman Nickerson, Jr., no stranger to the

Korean War since he had been in

the combat zone since the Inchon

6

landing as the senior Marine liaison officer from Fleet Marine

Force, Pacific to Far East

Command and Eighth Army. No

less professional than the other

regimental commanders, Nickerson brought a driving, no-nonsense command style to the 7th

Marines that made the regiment, in

Thomas' opinion, the best in the

division. Nickerson appreciated

the contributions of his two executive officers, the incomparable

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond G.

Davis, Jr., and Lieutenant Colonel

John J. Wermuth. Promoted to

colonel, Wermuth assumed regimental command on 20 September

when Nickerson's extended overseas tour ended.

The high level of competence at

the regimental level did not drop

off in the division's separate battalions. With an officer corps created

by service in six divisions in the

Pacific War, the Marine Corps
I

n the soft spring of his senior year (June 1950) at

Hilisboro High School, Nashville, Tennessee,

Clarence Jackson Davis, called "Jack" by his family

and friends, discovered several reasons to join the

Marine Corps Reserve. Going to war was not one of

them. Jack Davis planned instead to go to Vanderbilt

University, where his older brother Virice was already a

sophomore and a keen midshipman in the Naval ROTC

unit. Jack admired Vince, but he did not fancy himself

a naval aviator like his older brother. On the other

hand, the local Marine Corps Reserve infantry company

had some openings, and he and some high school football and baseball teammates liked the idea—advanced

by some sweet-talking Marine sergeants—of keeping

their baseball team together under the sponsorship of

the Marine Corps. Marine training seemed little more

than another athletic challenge; the recruiters mentioned

that weekly drill often included a basketball game. The

new recruits had no active duty requirement and the

two weeks summer training sounded like a Boy Scout

camp with guns. Besides, the recruiters insisted, participating in reserve training made a young man draft-proof

from the U.S. Army.

Jack also saw his enlistment as a potential way to

help pay for his college education and, if all went well,

become a Marine officer. More farsighted than many of

his friends and counseled continuously by Vince, Jack

had already talked with the Marine major on the

Vanderbilt NROTC staff, who advised him that enlisted

service would strengthen his chances for selection for

the next summer's Platoon Leaders Class. Serving as an

enlisted officer-candidate in the Marine Corps Reserve

seemed a less-demanding way of helping pay for his

education than attempting to win a football grant-in-aid

playing for the hapless Commodores. The Davis brothers calculated that their military commitments would

allow them to attend school without facing a demanding

working schedule, a financial relief they could stretch by

living at home to study and avoiding the temptations of

campus social life.

Jack enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at the age

of 17 in March 1950. If not quite a youthful lark, his

decision did not seem very momentous, but a combination of good planning, reasonable sense, and anticipated adventure. He would try the life of a Marine, and he

would be paid to camp Out and play sports for the

Marine Corps. His life after high school, however, "did

not work out as planned." One night in June 1950, after

graduation, Jack watched a newsreel at a local movie

theater and learned about some distant war in Korea.

His first reaction: "I was thrilled I was not there."

Lieutenant General Clifton B. Cates, Commandant of

the Marine Corps and a fellow Tennessean, made sure

that Jack Davis learned the true meaning of being a vol7

unteer Marine from the Volunteer State. After the Fourth

of July the ground units of the Marine Corps Reserve

received a warning order that they would soon be mobilized, and on 20 July the Commandant made it official:

Marine reservists in ground units would be called to

active duty "for the duration." Certainly most (if not all)

of them would go to Korea as part of the 1st Marine

Division. After the confusion of in-processing, medical

examinations, and additional issues of 782 gear, the

Nashville Marines of Company C, 14th Battalion, Marine

Corps Reserve, marched off to war from their reserve

center at Shelby Park down Broad Street until they

reached the 11th Street railroad siding off old Union

Depot. Curious spectators watched the young men

march off, their parade dominated by the blaring of high

school bands at the front and rear of the column. With

M-ls and dressed in green utilities the Marines did not

look like their predecessors of the 11th Tennessee

Volunteer Infantry, Confederate States of America, but

the spirit of those young Nashvillians, equally perplexed

and determined in 1861, stiffened the backs of their

1950 successors.

Whatever his expectations, Private Clarence Jackson

Davis, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, did not go off to war

untrained—as did his Confederate ancestors and goodly

part of the U.S. Eighth Army in 1950. At Camp

Pendleton, his "station of initial assignment," Jack's

Company C received the triage of personnel mobilization: true veterans of active duty were culled out for

immediate assignment to the Fleet Marine Force, probably directly to the 1st Marine Division; Marine reservists

whose drills and summer camp more or less approximated boot camp went on to eight more weeks of predeployment field training and physical conditioning; and

the untrained true "boots" like Jack Davis went south to

the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, to begin

their life as real Marines.

The temporary mission of the Marine Corps Recruit
Depot was not turning young men into Marines but into

day laborers and stevedores. All hands spent much of

every day mobilizing the depot for the expected waves

of new recruits; the reservists set up bunks, hauled mattresses out of storage, and carried footlockers into the

reopened barracks. Every night for two weeks the

reservists went to the North Island docks to load ammunition and mount-out boxes for the 1st Marine Division.

Not until the division cleared the harbor for Japan did

the reservists start their formal boot camp schedule,

which now seemed like welcome relief from the role of

slave laborers. Jack Davis found boot camp no special

challenge.

The follow-on field training, eight weeks and mandatory for every Marine regardless of assignment, proved

more and less fun. Jack enjoyed the long days on the

ranges of Camp Elliott. He qualified with ease with the

M-1 and fired the entire range of individual and crewserved weapons found in a Marine infantry battalion.

Jack liked them all except the M-1 carbine, which riflemen did not carry anyway. The last phase of the training focused on cold weather, mountain training at Pickel

Meadow, which was neither meadow-like nor cold.

Temperatures that December reached the 70s, and the

Marines trudged around in the mud and slush in their

layers of cold-weather clothing issue, all of them perilously close to heat exhaustion and dehydration.

Apparently the Marine Corps had found a way to train

the replacements for Korea's winters and summers at the

same time.

In January 1951, Jack Davis and his comrades of the

6th Replacement Draft boarded the Army transport

Randolph for the trip to Korea. The Randolph had come

directly from Pusan where it had disembarked a part of

the 1st Marine Division, recently evacuated from

Hungnam. When Jack and his messmates reached their

troop compartment, they found the canvas bunks decorated with messages from the survivors of the Chosin

Reservoir campaign. Jack did not find the words of wisdom very comforting. A few were clever and humorous,

but most of the collected battlefield folk wisdom struck

Jack as sad, depressing, bewildered, stunned, and even

suicidal. As the messages from the veterans attested, the

war had almost been lost, had almost been won, and

then almost lost again. As General Douglas MacArthur

had just reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jack Davis

and his comrades now faced the Chinese army and an

entirely new war.

could usually find the right combination of leadership and technical

skill to give the separate battalions

a strong commander. Among the

commanders General Thomas

inherited in these battalions were

Marines whose accomplishments

had made them legends: Lieutenant

Colonel John H. Partridge of the 1st

Engineers, who had opened the

route out of the Chosin Reservoir;

Major Lloyd 0. Williams, the master

marksman, who commanded the

1st Ordnance Battalion; and

Lieutenant Colonel Henry J. "Jim"

Crowe of the 1st Shore Party

Battalion, a heroic battalion commander at Tarawa and Saipan as

well as another team shooter.

As the commander of a great

division, whose management he

shared with an able staff, General

Thomas could focus on his relations with Generals Van Fleet and

Almond. Although Van Fleet took a

practical, unpretentious approach

to commanding Eighth Army,

General Almond had become not

one whit more subdued by the

twin blows of surrendering the

independent status of X Corps and

the abrupt removal of his patron,

General of the Army Douglas

MacArthur. Almond retained the

imperiousness and elegant field life

style that characterized many Army

generals of his generation and,

especially, his two models,

MacArthur and General Mark W.

Clark, his army commander in

World War II. Surrounded by staff

officers from central casting—albeit

very talented—Almond favored

high-fashion field uniforms, opulent vans and messes, and imperial

gestures worthy of Napoleon himself, including the haphazard

awarding of medals. Almond's airy

disregard for time-space factors

and enemy capabilities, as well as

his habit of ignoring the chain-ofcommand, had driven General

Smith into tight-lipped rebellion.

Thomas had dealt with some difficult Marine generals, but Almond

would be a challenge.

Thomas first made sure that no

one would mistake him for the

8

Almond model of a modern major

general. He truly preferred the look

of the Old Corps of World War II,

not a U.S. Army that had remade

itself in the image of its flamboyant

armor and airborne generals like

Walton H. Walker and Ridgway.

Thomas wore a uniform that was

strictly issue from his battered utility cap and standard helmet to his

canvas leggings and worn, brown

field shoes. Instead of the "generals" version of the Colt .45-caliber

automatic worn the Army-way with

a fancy leather belt, he carried an

issue pistol in a black shoulder-holster. None of his regular field

wear—jacket, sweaters, shirts, and

trousers—would be mistaken for

tailors' work. His only personal

affectation (a very useful one at

that) was his old Haitian cocomaca que walking stick, whose

only local counterpart was carried

by General Shepherd. On special

occasions General Thomas and his

regimental commanders might

sport white scarves and the division staff red scarves, but the idea
was Van Fleet's, who thought the

scarves would show the troops

that senior officers were not allergic to frontline visits.

Still a part of IX Corps—one

wonders now about the urgency in

the change of command—the 1st

Marine Division disengaged from

the Chinese 39th and 40th Armies

and fell back unmolested 15 miles

to the No Name Line, a belt of prepared positions dug by Korean

laborers and Army engineers. The

1st Marines, reinforced by a battalion of the 7th Marines, protected

the bridges and passes while the

rest of the division withdrew in

good order over the Pukhan and

Soyang Rivers, both in flood from

rain and melting snow. By 29 April

the division had put the rivers at its

back and filed into the No Name

Line positions with the 5th

Marines, the 1st Regiment of the

Korean Marine Corps (KMC), and

the 7th Marines on line from west

to east. The 1st Marines went into

division reserve. Colonel Bowser

thought that the retrograde movement—which he and Thomas did

not think necessary—proved that

the division had lost nothing of its

1950 ability to march and fight

superior numbers of Chinese

troops without prohibitive losses.

Meanwhile General Van Fleet met

with his corps commanders on 30

April to discuss Eighth Army's next

move: an active defense of the No

Name Line and maximum readiness to meet another ChineseNorth Korean offensive, predicted

for mid-May by Van Fleet's intelligence staff. In the reorganization

of the front, the 1st Marine

Division would rejoin X Corps,

effective 1 May.

General Thomas first had to

fight off General Almond before he

could focus on killing Chinese.

The two generals met every day

for three days (1-3 May), and

Thomas emerged victorious in

establishing new ground rules for

the Marines' dealing with X Corps.

Thomas had already told his staff

that it would take a hard-line with

"suggestions" from any corps staff

member; one of his assistant operations officers tested the guidance

by telling his Army counterparts

from Almond's headquarters that

he could "go to hell" for giving

orders in Almond's name.

Thomas took a disgruntled

Almond head on. He could be

charming in his own way—he

pointed out his own Virginian and

Confederate roots to Virginia

Military Institute "Old Grad"

Almond—but he insisted that

Almond stop bypassing the chainof-command or allowing his staff

to run roughshod over the proper

channels in the 1st Marine

Division. Almond insisted he was

an active corps commander.

(Meddlesome was the word the

Marines chose.) Thomas told him

that he was an active division commander and that he intended to

make as many visits to regiments

and battalions as Almond made.

Thomas added that he would "execute any order proper for a soldier

to receive." Almond pressed

Thomas to go on, but Thomas now

remained silent as if expecting a

further elaboration of policy.

Almond said he would make many

visits. "Is that all right with you?"

Almond continued. More silence.

Almond went on: "But I can assure

you that I will never issue an order

affecting one of your units except

through you." Now Thomas

responded: "On that basis . . . you

are always welcome." The two

generals remained true to their

Thomas tested the era of good

feeling with X Corps almost immediately and to positive effect. Van

Fleet had the notion that each division should establish a battalionsized outpost from which it could

patrol northwards to make contact

with the Chinese. For the 1st

Marine Division the best place to

establish such a base—which

Thomas and Bowser thought was a

miserable idea—was south of

Chunchon but north of the critical

The 1st Marines regimental headquarters occupies a tent-camp along the road to

Hongchon, just south of the No Name Line. United Nations Command air superiority allowed such administrative arrangements.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A8728

9

word.
d

Morae Kagae Pass, the only route

of escape to the No Name Line.

The position would be outside the

artillery fan of the 11th Marines,

and close air support alone (now

complicated by Air Force scheduling practices) would be no substitute. Thomas argued with Van

Fleet and Almond that he would

perform the mission, but that he

should dictate the size of the force

and its rules of engagement—and

disengagement. When Thomas put

his "patrol base" in place on 5-7

May, he sent the entire 7th Marines

(artillery and tank reinforced)

north toward Chunchon, and he

added the 1st KMC Regiment to

Nickerson's task force. In addition,

he had the 5th Marines put a

screening company in front of

each of its frontline battalions, but

kept the companies well within

artillery support.

Thomas continued to press X

Corps for more artillery since Van

Fleet's intelligence staff insisted

that the next Chinese offensive

might focus on the 1st Marine

Division. Thomas' own ground

and aerial patrols found ample evidence of Chinese troop movements between the Pukhan River

and the No Name Line. The commanding general had also heard

Van Fleet insist that no Eighth

Army unit, a company or larger,

should be isolated and cut-off; Van

Fleet told his generals that night

withdrawals and counterattacks

should be abandoned as operational options. He also insisted that

every division artillery groupment

(the 11th Marines for Thomas)

should use its daily allowance of

shells (the "Van Fleet unit of fire"

or five times the normal allotment

of shells) to fire upon suspected

enemy concentrations and transportation routes. Thomas persuaded Almond that the 1st Marine

Division could not meet Van Fleet's

expectations without some Army

much as possible.

help, and Almond committed two

X Corps general support artillery

battalions to reinforce the fires of

the 11th Marines. Thomas also

negotiated a shortening of his

frontage since he had to put two

battalions of the 1st Marines into

the line to replace the 7th Marines,

which left only one infantry battalion as division reserve. Even

though he had come to conclude

that the Chinese were massing to

the east instead of to his front,

Thomas had no intention of allowing any part of the 7th Marines to

be cut off between the Morae

Kagae Pass and the No Name Line.

He approved a Nickerson-Davis

plan to garrison the pass with a

reinforced battalion (less one rifle

company) and simply announced

the change to Almond, who did

not object to the fait accompli.

Thomas also planned to extract the

7th Marines from its advanced

position as soon as he though he

could justify such an action to

Almond. He anticipated that trouble would develop along the

10

boundary of the 1st Marines and

the U.S. 2d Infantry Division, not

to his front. The 7th Marines would

be his new division reserve, ready

to attack to the northeast. The plan

proved to be prescient.

Changing their operational style

of nighttime infiltration attacks,

characterized by surprise and the

limited use of artillery, the Chinese

Ninth and Third Army Groups,

augmented by the North Korean II

and V Corps, opened the Fifth

Offensive (Second Phase). On the

morning of 16 May 1951, the offensive began with a Soviet-style

preparatory artillery bombardment.

Frustrated in his April offensive,

Peng Dehuai decided that the limited road network and sharp,

rugged mountains of eastern Korea

offered a better area of operations

for a renewed offensive. Van Fleet

and his corps commanders would

find it more difficult to shift reinforcements against the shoulders

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A8898

A Marine patrol secures a hill and moves forward. Its mission was to maintain

contact with the enemy, warn of an impending attack, and delay its progress as
of any breakthrough, and the steep

mountains made it difficult to mass

United Nations artillery fire. The

broken, forested terrain would

provide welcome cover and concealment from United Nations

Command air strikes. The weight

of the Chinese offensive (27 divisions with three artillery divisions

in support) fell on (from west to

east) the U.S. 2d Infantry Division,

the 5th ROK Division, and the 7th

ROK Division of X Corps with

additional attacks upon the neighboring 9th ROK Division of the

Republic's III Corps. The Chinese

did not ignore the western-most

division of X Corps, the 1st Marine

Division, which would be pinned

in its part of the No Name Line by

attacks from the Chinese 60th

Army. The minimal operational

goal was to destroy one or more

U.N. divisions; a major victory

would be the fragmentation of

either X Corps or the ROK III

Corps and a return to a campaign

of movement that would dislodge

the Eighth Army from the Taebaek

Mountains to the Han River valley.

11

Eventually described by X Corps

as the battle of the Soyang River,

16-21 May 1951, the Chinese offensive overran various parts of the

frontline positions and the patrol

bases of the hard-luck 2d Infantry

Division and the three ROK divisions to its right. Despite some

dogged defensive action by

American and South Korean soldiers, the Chinese advanced 30

miles, forcing the three ROK divisions to the south and threatening

to roll-up the right flank of the 2d

Division, which lost the better part

of the 38th Infantry and its

attached Dutch battalion in slowing the Chinese attack. General

Almond decided he needed to

insure that the western side of the

Chinese salient was secure first; he

requested reinforcements from Van

Fleet, who sent the 187th Airborne

Infantry Regiment and U.S. 3d

Infantry Division to blocking positions behind X Corps. In the meantime, Almond wanted the 2d

Infantry Division to refuse its right

flank. Such a redeployment

required the 1st Marine Division to

extend its sector of the No Name

Line to the east and to do so while

in contact with the enemy.

On the first day of the Chinese

offensive, General Thomas visited

Almond's command post at

Hoengsong and saw the crisis

build in X Corps' eastern sectors.

Thomas and Almond discussed

what situations the 1st Marine

Division might face, but Thomas

would make no commitments until

he was sure he could withdraw the

7th Marines (Reinforced) from the

ill-conceived "patrol base" north of

the No Name Line. Closer to the

anticipated Chinese attack, Colonel

Nickerson reinforced the outpost

at Morae Kagae Pass, bringing the

defenders to battalion strength and

including the regimental headquarters and a tank platoon. Having

just joined the 7th Marines—his
regiment in World War Il—Second

Lieutenant Earl F. Roth wondered

who had placed the regiment so

far from the rest of the division. He

reached the Morae Kagae Pass and

the 7th Marines rear defenses only

after a long and lonely jeep ride

across an empty countryside, but

he felt eyes watching him from

every hill. When he later saw the

piles of Chinese bodies at the pass,

he remembered similar scenes

from Peleliu. On the evening of 16

May, a Chinese regiment attacked

the pass in force and lost 112 dead

and 82 captured before breaking

off the action. Nickerson's force

lost two tanks, seven dead, and 19

wounded. The attack gave Thomas

plenty of reason to pull back

Nickerson's entire regiment, ordered that night with Almond's

approval. Colonel Frank T.

Mildren, X Corps' operations officer, correctly assumed that the

Chinese wanted no part of the 1st

Marine Division: "The Marines [are]

just wrapped up in their usual

ball." Mildren's assessment did not

accurately picture the 1st Marine

Division's skillful redeployment to

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A155692

Marines of the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, gather the bodies of the Chinese 179th

Division, which attacked the regiment's patrol base at Morae Kagae Pass on the

night of l6May. As part of the Chinese F/th Offensive (Second Phase), the attack

did not pin the 1st Marine Division to the No Name Line, which allowed its redeployment to the east to aid the US. 2d Infantry Division.

Gen Edward M. Almond Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute

12
release the U.s. 9th Infantry

Regiment for a new mission, saving the rest of its parent division.

After artillery and air strikes

insured that the Chinese 60th

Army marched east to the sound of

somebody else's guns, Thomas

ordered the 1st Marines to shift

right and take the 9th Infantry's

positions while the 7th Marines

marched back to the No Name

Line and took over the 1st Marines

sector. In the meantime, two battalions of the 5th Marines moved

eastwards behind the No Name

Line to refuse the division right

flank north of the crucial road

junction of Hongchon. The 7th

Marines and the 1st KIVIC Regiment

slipped to the left to take over part

of the 5th Marines' former sector.

General Thomas reported at 1730

on 18 May to Almond that the

realignment had been accomplished, but that he also wanted

more corps artillery ready to fire

defensive fires along his thinlymanned front. He requested and

received more aerial reconnaissance from the Cessna light patrol

aircraft (L-19 "Bird Dogs") assigned

to X Corps. Thomas had already

improved his defensive posture by

placing the 1st Marines in positions

almost four miles south of the original No Name Line. The only contact occurred on 20 May when elements of the Chinese 44th Division

marched unawares into the defenses of the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines,

and left behind almost 170 dead

and prisoners when the Marines

shattered the lead regiment with

their battalion weapons, artillery,

and air strikes. The 1st Marine

Division awaited more orders. It

did not expect Almond to remain

on the defensive since X Corps

now had fresh troops and the two

Chinese army groups had placed

themselves inside a vulnerable

salient.

Although he had won the

respect of Almond and his staff in

his first month of division command, General Thomas had no

intention of becoming a compliant

subordinate commander when he

thought Army generals paid too little attention to tactical realities.

Thomas and Almond conferred

twice on 19 May and again on 20

May at the 1st Marine Division

command post. The issue was a

counteroffensive order from Van

Fleet to I and IX Corps, a movement that began on 20 May for the

7th Infantry Division, the IX Corps

element on Thomas' left flank.

Almond wanted the 1st KMC

Regiment to advance beyond the

No Name Line to conform to IX

Corps' advance, but Thomas

"expressed reluctance" to send a

regiment on an axis of advance

that took it away from the rest of

the division and opened a gap in

the division's defensive alignment.

Thomas won a concession from

Almond immediately: he could

make his own arrangements to

secure X Corps' left flank and coordinate the movement directly with

IX Corps.

13

As Peng Dehuai acknowledged,

the collapse of the Fifth Offensive

(Second Phase) gave United

Nations Command an unprecedented opportunity to mount a

counteroffensive of potential strategic consequences. Even though

his army group commanders

protested his withdrawal orders,

Peng called off the offensive on

the afternoon of 21 May and issued

orders that the eastern armies

should withdraw during the night

of 23-24 May to a defensive line

that would run from the Imjin

River to Hwachon to Kansong,

roughly the line occupied by

United Nations Command when

the Fifth Offensive began in April.

Five Chinese armies and three

North Korean corps would defend

the line.

Prodded by General Ridgway,

who flew to Korea to inject some

of his special bellicosity into a flagging Eighth Army, Van Fleet had

stolen half a march on his Chinese

counterpart by ordering I and IX

Corps to start a drive to the Topeka

Line, a phase line on the ground

about halfway to the contemplated

Department of Defense Photo (usMc) A8875

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas checks the frontline situation map with the 5th

Marines' commanding officer, Col Richard W. Hayward, center, and the regiment's operations officer, Maj Robert E. Baldwin.
'1

"44

Chinese defenses. Van Fleet and

the corps commanders of I and IX

Corps, however, could not create

much urgency in their divisions.

Neither Ridgway nor Van Fleet

thought I and IX Corps had seized

the moment. They were thus

pleasantly surprised when Almond, who seized moments

whether they were there or not,

proposed that he could shift to the

offensive as soon as noon on 23

May as long as he retained control

of the 187th Airborne and the 3d

Infantry Division and gained the

use of the brand-new 8th ROK

Division as well. Instead of driving

almost directly north like I and IX

Corps, however, Almond planned

to use his South Korean divisions

to keep the Chinese and North

Koreans engaged at the forward

edges of the salient. His American

divisions would cut across the base

of the salient from southwest to

northeast, roughly on an axis that

followed Route 24 through Chaunni—Inje—Kansong where X Corps

would link up with ROK I Corps.

The counteroffensive, supported

by massive aerial bombardment

and Van Fleet-directed artillery barrages of World War I profligacy,

would bag the survivors of the

Chinese Third and Ninth Army

Groups. Van Fleet approved

Almond's plan, and X Corps issued

its attack order on 21 May.

For the 1st Marine Division the

development of two Eighth Army

counteroffensives with different

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A8867

A .30-caliber machine gun team and a Marine with a Browning Automatic Rfle

occupy recently abandoned enemy foxholes, using them for cover while pursuing Chinese and North Korean forces.

Elements of the 2d and 3d Battalions, 5th Marines, hit the

dirt after taking heavy enemy mortar and machine gunfire

from Chinese forces occupying Hill 1051. Air and artillery

forced the enemy to retire northward and the regiment

secured the commanding high ground.

National Archives Photo (USA) 11 I-SC368657

14
axis of advance provided General

Thomas and his staff with new

challenges. A shift of corps boundaries as far east as a line

Hongchon-Hwachon Reservoir

helped some, but not much. As he

himself later admitted, Almond had

once again promised too much,

too soon in the way of decisive

action. For once he had not underestimated the enemy; the Chinese

army groups in his zone of action

were indeed wounded, but not as

seriously as Eighth Army estimated. (United Nations Command estimated total Chinese casualties for

the Fifth Offensive at 180,000, but

the Chinese put their own losses at

half this total.) The difficulty was

the time and effort necessary to get

the offensive moving with task

forces drawn from the 2d Infantry

Division, the 3d Infantry Division,

the 187th Airborne, and the divisional and corps tank battalions.

The result was that the attacks at

the tip of the salient jumped off on

time (mid-23 May), but the big

drive across the base of the salient

did not begin until 24 May and the

serious, organized advance up

Route 24 did not begin until the

next day, In the meantime the

Chinese, attacked 12 hours before

they began their own withdrawal,

fought back sluggishly as they

moved up their withdrawal schedule, a euphemism for—in some

cases—a Chinese "bug out."

The result of the gelatinous

attack by Major General Clark L.

Ruffner's 2d Division and its

attached task forces was that the

1st Marine Division advance, also

dutifully begun on 23 May, had to

conform to the Army units on its

right. The Marine advance of 24-3 1

May developed into a two-axis

attack with the 1st Marines and the

1st KMC Regiment moving through

the hills south of Soyang, crossing

the river on 28 May, and reaching

the heights above the Hwachon

Reservoir on 31 May. The 5th and

7th Marines started the march

north in a column of regiments,

but the 7th Marines pulled ahead

while the 5th Marines took the

commanding heights of Kari-san

(Hill 1051). The 7th Marines then

turned northeast away from Route

24 to take the shortest route to the

town of Yanggu, just east of the

eastern end of the Hwachon

Reservoir. The 7th Marines assaulted and captured the Yanggu

heights, but watched the Chinese

flee through the open zone of the

tardy U.S. 2d Infantry Division. The

Gen Edward M. Almond Collection, U.S.

DECISIVE RESULTS

ICO*ONGt Ill'

15
-V C

5th Marines shifted right to the hills

east of the road to Yanggu and

drew abreast of the 7th Marines on

29-30 May. The next day all of

Thomas' four regiments occupied

their portion of Line Topeka.

For the rifle companies at the

head of each pursuing battalion,

the war did not look much like the

reassuring blue arrows on an

acetate-covered 1:25,000 map. The

last two weeks of May 1951 proved

to be hot and very dry during the

day, but cold and wet at night as

unusual spring rains kept the hills

slick and the valleys a slough.

Water to drink, however, proved

harder to find than water for discomfort. Few Marines were willing

to chance the ground water or

local streams, but potable water

seemed to take second place to

National Archives Photo (usN) 8o-G-429689 ammunition in the columns of

After securing Kari-san (Hill 1051), Marines search two Chineseprisoners of war Korean bearers. In an era when

for weapons and documents. "water discipline" made "excesHugging the crest of a ridgeline, the 7th Ma rifles prepare to eral assault by other Marine units.

'pour hot lead" into enemy positions as a prelude to a gen- National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A8888

16

----I- — • -.b. — -' — -

,1* I_k.
N J'

defensive positions.

sive" drinking a sin in the Marine

Corps, dehydration stalked the

struggling columns of laden

troops. The columns not only

fought groups of Chinese, but

marched through the Eighth

Army's dying fields of February

and May, passing the bodies of soldiers from the 2d Infantry Division.

Despite the profligate use of

artillery and air strikes, the Marine

rifle companies found their share

of close combat in the last week of

May. Moving along a steep hillside

only by hanging from the trunks of

shattered trees, Second Lieutenant

Earl Roth's platoon saw enemy

mortar rounds fly by them and

explode in the gully below. Roth

suppressed a strong urge to reach

out and catch a mortar round as it

passed by, a vestige of his football

playing days at the University of

Maryland. Although the firefights

seldom involved even a whole

company, they were a world of

war for the engaged Marines. One

platoon of Company C, 1st

Battalion, 5th Marines, stormed a

Chinese ambush position only to

have the defenders charge right

back at them in the most intimate

of meeting engagements, a brawl

won by the Marines with grenades,

clubbed rifles, bayonets, and fists.

Urged on by the company's

Beowulf, Second Lieutenant Paul

N. "Pete" McCloskey, the Marines

left few survivors, but their postfury victory celebration was cut

short by a deluge of 120mm mortar rounds pre-registered on top of

the position. The company lost is

commanding officer and other

Marines in the swift reversal of fortune.

The six days of offensive action

in the last week of May 1951

demonstrated to friend and foe

alike that the 1st Marine Division

remained a fearsome killing

machine. Using artillery and tank

fire, supplemented with battalion

mortars and machine guns, the

infantry regiments methodically

took their objectives with minimal

casualties and no operational

crises. The Marines continued to

run into scattered battalion-sized

remnants of Chinese divisions,

17

none willing to hold any position

against the deluge of fire poured

upon them. On 28 May, however,

the Marines started to discover

organized, company-sized defensive positions manned by North

Koreans and ringed with mines, By

31 May, the day of the division's

heaviest casualties for the week

(126 killed and wounded), the

Chinese had disappeared from the

battlefield. During the week the

division intelligence staff estimated

that the division had inflicted

10,000 casualties; what it knew for

certain was that the regiments had

counted 1,870 enemy bodies and

taken 593 prisoners. The 1st

Marine Division's losses for the

entire month of May were 83 killed

in action or died of wounds and

731 wounded. The "exchange

ratio" against an enemy still considered dangerous and willing to

fight was about as good as could

be expected.

The week of divisional attack

brought its share of surprises. The

enemy provided some of them.

The Chinese, aided by the slow

advance of the 2d Infantry

Division, refused to wait for their

entrappers and poured out of the

salient after the first attacks of 23

May. Chinese soldiers from five

different divisions of the Third

Army Group crossed the path of

the Marines on their way to rally

points at Yanggu and Hwachon;

the chaotic pattern of the Chinese

withdrawal meant that enemy

bands might appear at any time

from the east and south, which

lead Almond and Thomas to confer daily on flank security issues.

When the Marines met the betterarmed and trained infantry of the

North Korean 12th Division, they

also came under fire from Sovietmade artillery and mortars. The

Chinese withdrawal, however,

gave Marine artillery a field day;

between 10 May and 7 June the 1st

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A155279

Marines of Battery L, 4th Battalion, 11th Marines, prepare their 155mm howitzer

for afire mission in support of Marine units around Yanggu. Observed, adjusted artillery fire provided the Marines with essential support against North Korean
Private First Class Whitt L. Moreland

B

orn in 1930 in Waco, Texas, he enlisted in the

Marine Corps in 1948, following graduation

from Junction City High School. After serving

out his active duty, he reverted to Reserve status. In

November 1950, he was recalled to active duty and

sent to Korea. While serving as an intelligence scout

while attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th

Marines, he was killed at Kwagchi-dong on 29 May

1951. The citation of his posthumous Medal of Honor

award reads, in part:

Voluntarily accompanying a rifle platoon in a daring

assault against a strongly defended enemy hill position, Private First Class Moreland delivered accurate

rifle fire on the hostile emplacement and thereby

aided materially in seizing the objective. After the

position had been secured, he unhesitatingly led a

party forward to neutralize an enemy bunker which

he had observed some 400 meters beyond and,

moving boldly through a fire swept area, almost

reached the hostile emplacement when the enemy

launched a volley of hand grenades on his group.

Quick to act despite the personal danger involved,

he kicked several of the grenades off the ridgeline

where they exploded harmlessly and, while attempting to kick away another, slipped and fell near the

deadly missile. Aware that the sputtering grenade

would explode before he could regain his feet and

dispose of it, he shouted a warning to his comrades,

covered the missile with his body and absorbed the

full blast of the explosion, but in saving his companions from possible injury or death, was mortally

wounded—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret) Department of Defense ynoto JSMC&,4t9,(

Marine Division artillery fired

13,157 tons of shells, second only

to the 2d Infantry Division (15,307

tons). The corps artillery group

kept pace, especially since its fires

supported the South Korean divisions. All X Corps divisions surrendered their trucks to keep X Corps

guns supplied with shells. By the

end of May ammunition shortages

had become an operational concern. The artillery expenditures

and the stiffening Communist

defenses suggested that the "happy

time" of X Corps exploitation operations had come to an end.

General Thomas had every reason to be proud of his division, for

Generals Ridgway, Van Fleet, and

Almond all visited his command

post and praised the division's performance. General Shepherd and

his senior staff visited the division

on 28-29 May, and Shepherd

added his congratulations not only

for the operational successes, but

also for the good relations with the

Army. And Almond went out of his

way to tell the other generals how

much he valued Thomas' wise

counsel. (Thomas was not so sure

that Almond listened to anyone,

but at least the corps commander

now observed the chain-of-command.) Finding another way to

celebrate a victory, the commander

18

of the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines,

sent one of his lieutenants out on a

desperate mission: find ice somewhere around Yanggu to cool the

battalion's beer ration. Second

Lieutenant Harold Arutunian's

patrol returned with ice—stolen

from the body bags of an Army

graves registration unit. For at least

one week the 1st Marine Division

had fought by its book, and it suffered negligible casualties by

pounding every objective with

preparatory air strikes and artillery

concentrations. For once Almond

did not exaggerate when, on 31

May, he characterized the Marines

as "fatigued, but spirits high."
Perched in their most recent foxholes above the Hwachon Reservoir and the blackened ruins of

Yanggu—so flattened and incinerated that only the charred bank

vault gave the town a skyline—the

forward infantry battalions of the

1st Marine Division could see only

more sharp hills to the north, rising

ever higher into the smoky dusk of

the last day of May. They did not

know that conferences elsewhere

were already deciding their fate in

the month ahead.

The Chinese Fifth Offensive and

its crushing defeat had opened the

way for a second "entirely new

war," but not one that made any of

the belligerents very happy. The

Communist coalition shared a

common problem with United

Nations Command: was there any

operational option that offered

advantage worthy of the risks of

strategic escalation? What if the

Soviet air forces, for example,

mounted attacks on the American

airbases in Korea? What if the

Soviet navy mounted submarine or

maritime aviation attacks upon the

U.N. naval forces that roamed the

east and west seas with impunity?

Relatively certain that Joseph

Stalin would not authorize any

attacks that might bring American

retaliation on Soviet bases in the

Far East, Mao Zedong sought some

employment of the Chinese

Communist Forces that would

eventually destroy the will of the

United Nations and the Republic of

Korea to continue the war. On 27

May 1951, Mao Zedong opened

discussions on strategy with his

principal commanders in Korea.

Within a week Mao conferred with

eight senior officers of the CCF,

especially First Deputy Commander Deng Hua and Chief of Staff

Xie Fang. Mao told his field commanders that the CCF would conNational Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC382822

The Joint Chiefs of Staff directed the

Commander in Chief UN. Command,

Gen Matthew B. Ridgway, USA, to

continue the offensive but only by

advancing to the Wyoming-Kansas

Line, a phase line in the mountains

north of the 38th Parallel. The underlying objective of these operations was

designed to support a negotiated end

to hostilities.

duct niupitang attritional warfare

of position until United Nations

Command casualties reached

unbearable proportions.

Mao's use of the word niupitang could not have been more

apt since niupitang was a delicious but very sticky candy from

his native Hunan Province, an irresistible sweet that took a very long

time to eat and usually made a

mess. The niupitang strategy

would work well with a policy of

biantan bianda or simultaneous

negotiating and fighting. Within

two months Mao replaced three of

the four army group commanders,

retaining only Yang Dezhi, a modern commander and a protégé of

Deng and Xie, and promoting him

to second deputy commander and

de facto director of operations for

the Communist field forces. Peng

Dehuai remained the titular com19

mander of the CCF, but Deng Hua,

Xie Fang, and Yang Dezhi directed

the new strategy, "On the

Protracted War in Korea," announced in July 1951.

The other Communist co-belligerents reacted to niupitang in

much different ways, but neither

the Soviets nor the North Koreans

had much leverage on Mao

Zedong. If they wanted the war to

continue—and they did—they

depended upon the Chinese army

to bear the brunt of the fighting.

Now that the war had not produced a great Communist victory,

Stalin (beset with political problems at home) saw no reason to go

beyond his commitment of Soviet

air defense forces to "MiG Alley"

along the Korean-Manchurian border and to rearm the Chinese

army. The Soviets, in fact, saw

truce negotiations as a way to

increase their influence in the

United Nations as well as to buy

time to rebuild and rearm the

Chinese forces. The North Koreans—represented by the pestiferous Kim Ii Sung—wanted only

more war and no talks, unless a

truce brought an end to American

air strikes. Kim and his inner circle

agreed, however, that the 38th

Parallel should be restored as an

international border and that all

foreign troops (including the

Chinese) should leave Korea—

after the South Korean army had

been fatally weakened and the

North Korean People's Army

restored to fighting trim and muchenlarged. Kim ordered his generals

to fight to the death for every

rocky foot of North Korean soil.

The process of political-strategic

reassessment, which had begun

with the Chinese intervention in

November 1950, blossomed in May

1951 like the cherry-blossoms in

Washington, D.C. and Korean

coastal resort town of Chinhae.

Hints of peace negotiations sprout-
Close Air Support Controversy

y the spring of 1951, the question of close air

support for United Nations Command ground

forces had become a serious inter-service controversy that pitted the Marine Corps and some of the

senior commanders of the Eighth Army against the

United States Air Force and General Matthew B.

Ridgway, the United Nations and American theater commander. To some degree the controversy involved the

employment of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and several lesser and often false issues, e.g. jets versus propeller

aircraft, but the heart of the problem was simply that the

Air Force did not want to perform the mission. It regarded close air support as a wasteful and dangerous misuse of offensive tactical air power. Marine Corps aviation and Navy carrier-based aviation regarded close air

support as an essential contribution to the ground campaign. The victim in all this inter-service wrangling was

the Eighth Army and the 1st Marine Division.

From the Air Force perspective, the close air support

mission belonged at the bottom of its offensive air missions, although the leaders of the Army Air Forces as

early as 1943 insisted that air power was the equal of

ground combat power in the conduct of war. The same

senior officers donned new uniforms in 1947, but did

not drop their old ideas about close air support, despite

the relatively effective use of ground-directed air strikes

against the German army in 1944-1945. The Air Force

position was rooted in negative experiences: the bombing and strafing of friendly troops; the extraordinary

losses to ground fire in making front-line, low-level

bombing runs; and the conviction that Army ground

commanders knew nothing of fighter-bomber capabilities and would scream for close air support when

artillery was a more rapid and appropriate response to

their indirect fire support requirements. The guidance in

effect for Air Force-Army close air support operations in

1950 was the "Joint Training Directive for Air-Ground

Operations," an agreement only between Tactical Air

Command and Army Field Forces, not the Service headquarters.

In theory and application in Korea in 1950 the doctrine of the "Joint Training Directive," which the Air

Force embraced as authoritative, made close air support

difficult for a ground command to obtain. Basically, the

Air-Ground Operations System (AGOS) required that a

ground commander request air support prior to an

operation and be very specific about his needs.

Requests had to be processed through an Army operations officer (G-3 Air) from regiment through field army

and reviewed by an Air Force officer at each echelon of

command (the air liaison officer) until the request

reached the Joint Operations Center (JOG), run by an

Air Force general, which would allocate the available air

strikes. The request system insured that close air sup20

port strikes were not likely to be tactically relevant, but

the air direction system the Air Force preferred also

added to the problem. The definition of close air support was that air strikes should be coordinated with the

fire and maneuver of the ground forces through the positive direction by a forward air controller (FAG) who was

fully knowledgeable about the ground combat situation.

There was no fundamental disagreement that a Tactical

Air Control Party (TACP) with reliable air-ground communications (vehicle- or ground-mounted) should be

available so the FAG could direct air strikes by sight, just

like an artillery forward observer. The Air Force, however, did not want to use its own personnel for such

missions, and it did not trust the Army to provide a competent FAG. The Air Force might provide an Air Liaison

Party down to the regimental level to do air strike planning, but it was not going to send Air Force officers

(presumably pilots) out to the front to direct air strikes.

In some fairness, the Fifth Air Force did provide such

Tactical Air Control Parties to the Eighth Army in 1950,

and they were shot to pieces—radio-jeeps and people

alike.

The Fifth Air Force in 1950 created an air strike direction system that depended on airborne air controllers,

basically the World War II system. During the course of

the fighting in 1950 the Fifth Air Force and Eighth Army

committed people and equipment to form the 6147th

Tactical Control Squadron, later expanded to wing status. The "Mosquitoes," as the forward air controllers (airborne) came to be known, did yeoman work throughout the war, directing air strikes from their two-seat,

propeller-driven North American AT-6 "Texan" aircraft, a

World War II pilot trainer. The "Mosquitoes" lacked

nothing in courage and skill, but they were still hostages

to the JOC system. Either the air strikes had to be preplanned or they had to be requested as a matter of dire

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A131261
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A130146

emergency or diverted from other missions.

The Navy-Marine Corps system, developed for

amphibious operations in World War II, offered a different approach. The Air Force tried to brand the system

as driven by amphibious operations, which it was to

some degree, but the system had proved itself in land

campaigns on Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, the

Philippines, and Okinawa. The Navy and the Marine

Corps brought the same system to Korea, and it worked.

It worked so well that Army generals, especially Major

General Edward M. Almond, embraced it without reservation. His successor as commander of X Corps, Major

General Clovis E. Byers, also became a convert, and it

cost him his command. Other Army commanders at the

division level envied the system and wondered why

they could not receive adequate support, but they were

too intimidated by Lieutenant General Matthew B.

Ridgway to push the issue.

The Air Force consistently misrepresented the

essence of the Navy-Marine Corps system. The naval

services never challenged the important of air superiority or interdiction operations. The naval services simply

argued—and placed in their own doctrine—that if close

air support missions were to be flown at all, they should

be rapid, responsive, appropriate, and effective. The 1st

Marine Aircraft Wing might be best trained to perform

such missions, but it was the system that counted, not

21

the uniforms of the pilots or the type of planes they

flew. The senior Marine ground commander did not

command aviation units, as the Air Force charged.

Either X Corps or 1st Marine Division did not command

the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.

The Navy-Marine Corps system accommodated

planned requests, but its strength was its tactical flexibility. Each infantry battalion in the 1st Marine Division

had a Tactical Air Control Party of two elements. One

group served as the Air Liaison Party, part of the battalion operations staff. The other group was the Forward

Air Control Party, an officer and communicators who

could process requests for air support and direct air

strikes from the ground, usually well forward with an

infantry company. In practical terms, this system meant

that each Marine infantry battalion had two Marine officers (naval aviators) as part of the battalion staff to

insure that air strikes hit the enemy and did so soon

enough to affect the tactical situation. The system

worked, and the Marine Corps saw no reason to abandon it.

As X Corps commander, General Almond liked the

Navy-Marine Corps system, which he saw at close quarters during the Inchon-Seoul campaign and again during the withdrawal to the Hungnam enclave. In fact, he

ordered his Army divisions to form their own TACPs or

he arranged for the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing to send
TACPs to Army units (American and Korean) within his

corps. The ability of the TACPs to direct strikes naturally drew most of the sorties flown in December 1950 by

the Marine squadrons and the naval aviators flying from

the decks of Task Force 77.

The operational conditions and requirements of 1950

made it appear that the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing had

come to Korea to be General Almond's corps aviation

component. In fact, X Corps functioned much like a

modern Marine air-ground task force, even if Almond

had no direct authority over any of his supporting tactical aviation squadrons. Fifth Air Force, however,

thought this ad hoc arrangement should not continue.

In early 1951, General Ridgway and Lieutenant General

George E. Stratemeyer, Commander General, Far East

Air Forces, insured that General Douglas MacArthur

placed X Corps in the Eighth Army and the 1st Marine

Aircraft Wing under the operational control of the Fifth

Air Force and the Joint Operations Center. The Marines

could perform their close air support magic for all of

Eighth Army, not just X Corps. Ridgway, however,

demanded that Fifth Air Force study the whole close air

support question and find ways to make the JOC system

more responsive to unplanned ground requests for air

strikes.

While Fifth Air Force and Eighth Army both conducted reviews of the Air-Ground Operations System, the

war went on, The 1st Marine Division returned to the

fray in February 1951 without its usual customary air

support, either in quality or quantity. Marine fighterbomber squadrons (F4U Corsairs or F9F Panthers) flew

missions for all of Eighth Army with results that depended entirely upon the ability of either the airborne

"Mosquitoes" or ground spotters (if any) to identify the

targets and communicate with the aircraft. In the meantime, Task Force 77 sailed north to attack Communist

railroads and highways ("the bridges of Toko-ri"), and

Air Force fighter-bombers of varying nationalities (predominately American or Australian) showed up to conduct missions for the 1st Marine Division with mixed

results. Major General Oliver P. Smith asked Ridgway to

use his influence with Fifth Air Force to give Smith operational control of just one Corsair squadron. Ridgway

refused to raise the issue and breach the "single management" doctrine. "Smith, I'm sorry, but I don't command the Air Force!"

Even though Eighth Army and Fifth Air Force made

serious efforts to establish all the personnel and communications elements of the AGOS request and direction organization, the Air Force's lack of interest and

ability in close air support still discouraged ground

commanders from making pre-attack requests. The system virtually guaranteed that emergency requests would

be answered late, if at all. With their own TACPs at the

battalion level, the Marines could and did short circuit

the system by making emergency requests to an airborne Mosquito, who would then divert either outgoing or returning interdiction strikes to the Marines and

release direction of the strikes to the forward air controllers. If the attacking aircraft happened to be flown by

trained Marines, so much the better. The 1st Marine

Division FACs, however, reported that in April 1951 the

JOC had answered 95 percent of their requests, but only

40 percent of the missions were flown by adequate

numbers of aircraft, properly armed, and arrived in time

to make some difference in the battle. In the meantime

losses of aircraft and pilots soared in the 1st Marine

Aircraft Wing, in part because non-Marine controllers

provided poor information about the terrain and enemy

situation. In April 1951, the Marines lost 16 aircraft and

10 pilots (one captured, nine killed) to enemy ground

fire.

Although X Corps received ample close air support

during the Fifth Offensive (Second Phase), Almond still

criticized the AGOS practices. Major General Gerald C.

Thomas entered the fray when he learned that his division had received only two-thirds of its requested air

strikes in late May. Only about half of the delivered sorties were effective, and almost all were over an hour or

more late. The only concession Almond and Thomas

received was the stationing of one mixed Corsair

squadron from Marine Aircraft Group 12 at K-46 a primitive strip near Hoengsong, but the JOC (Kimpo Airfield)

still had to approve the missions. With the AGOS still in

place—albeit somewhat more efficient and flexible—the

war against the niupitan,g Chinese and North Korean

defenders would go on—and the 1st Marine Division

would indeed get stuck.

ed everywhere—most planted by

shadowy Soviet sowers in the

worlds' capitals and at the United

Nations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff

kept General Matthew B. Ridgway

informed on the flood of speculation and hope. Until the last week

of May, however, Ridgway had no

reason to link his sense of the

strategic shifts underway with the

continuing operations in Korea.

Then Van Fleet, pressed by

Almond, proposed a significant

change in the exploitation campaign that followed the defeat of

the Fifth Offensive. When the bulk

of the Chinese forces had already

escaped the bag between X Corps

and ROK I Corps, Van Fleet proposed a series of amphibious

envelopments up the east coast

that would conclude with the cre22

ation of an enclave at Tongchon,

still short of Wonsan, but well

north of the "Iron Triangle," the

central Korean network of transportation connections and mountain corridors bounded by

Chorwon-Pyonggang-Kumhwa

from west to east. Ridgway and

Van Fleet agreed with Almond that

control of the "Iron Triangle," even

from Tongchon, would give either
side an advantage in ending or

continuing the war.

General Ridgway, however, did

not agree that Van Fleet's proposed

Operation Overwhelming could be

mounted because of resistance in

Washington and sheer operational

feasibility. Even a modest shore-toshore movement would require

disengaging the 1st Marine Division and (probably) the 3d Infantry

Division and transporting them to

a port for embarkation. From

Ridgway's perspective, time was of

the essence, and the requirements

of Overwhelming were too overwhelming with truce talks in the

wind. Ridgway's greatest fear was

that someone would give away the

territorial gains already made in

May and the additional ground he

wanted to control in June after

Operation Piledriver, a straightahead push by all four of Van

Fleet's corps. The Eighth Army's

goal would be the seizure and

defense of a cross-peninsula line

(Wyoming-Kansas) that would

retake Kaesong, hold the mountain

ranges and passes northwest of the

Imjin River, secure at least part of

the "Iron Triangle," and hold the

2

mountains north of the Hwachon

Reservoir all the way to the coast

at Tongchon. Anticipating that a

ceasefire would entail the creation

of some sort of territorial buffer

zone, Ridgway wanted to reach a

line (Kansas) well north of the

Wyoming Line, his non-negotiable

position for ensuring the ground

defense of the expanded Republic

of Korea.

Two other considerations

shaped Ridgway's thinking about

the conduct of the war. Some of

the general's critics and champions

later suggested that he had

become too interested in his personal goal of becoming Army chief

of staff or faint-hearted at the

prospect of excessive American

casualties in Korea. Ridgway's

ambition was well-known to his

Army peers, but he realized that

trying to please Washington was a

fool's errand, Nor had Ridgway,

notoriously ruthless in relieving

non-fighters, suddenly become

casualty-shy. He simply saw no

purpose in risking lives in adventures that probably would not produce the promised results.

Moreover, Ridgway had become

convinced that air power could

give him an offensive option to

punish the Communist armies

beyond bearing, his own high

explosive, high altitude version of

niupitang. Recent changes in the

Air Force high command in the

war zone placed very aggressive

and persuasive air generals in

Ridgway's inner council. General

Otto P. Weyland, the Far East Air

Forces director of operations since

early in the war, became the commander, and Lieutenant General

Frank F. Everest assumed command of the Fifth Air Force. Both

Weyland and Everest, tactical aviation commanders in World War II,

championed aerial interdiction as

the most decisive way to use air

power in a war like the Korean
4

conflict. Both also insisted that the

senior theater Air Force officer

should have operational control of

all aviation units with combat

capability, including the carrier air

groups of Task Force 77 and the

1st Marine Aircraft Wing.

Ridgway's coolness to any

amphibious operation and his

warmth toward the WeylandEverest interdiction campaign,

Operation Strangle, would have

critical effect on both the 1st

Marine Division and the 1st Marine

Aircraft Wing for the rest of the

war.

For the 1st Marine Division the

high-level discussions on the relative weight of the ground and air

wars on bringing the Communists

to terms had no immediate effect

since X Corps' mission remained

unchanged: seize the Kansas Line.

Nevertheless, the Marines needed

at least a brief pause, which

Almond would not grant the division on 31 May. He ordered the

attacks to the north to continue,

and on 1 June the 5th and 7th

Marines dutifully pushed on—and

went nowhere. With the 11th

Marines short of artillery shells, air

arrangements uncertain, and the

7th Marines in need of a break,

Thomas did not push Hayward

and Nickerson until they all had a

chance to think about the new

attacks.

The terrain alone appeared formidable. A long, high ridge of the

Taebaek Mountain chain dominated the 1st Marine Division's zone

of action. The ridge was known as

Taeu-san and Taeam-san for its

two highest peaks, 1,179 meters

for the northern most Taeu-san

and 1,316 meters for the southern

Taeam-san. Taeu-san/Taeam-san

were bordered on the west by the

Sochon River, which ran into the

Hwachon Reservoir just past

Yanggu. The Marines also inherited

the southern part of another parallel ridge to the west, but dominated by the Taeu-san/Taeaum-san

hill mass to the east, which meant

that any force attacking directly

north of Yanggu would receive fire

from its right flank. The terrain situation to the east was even more

daunting. The division's eastern

boundary ran generally along the

Soyang; the distance between the

two rivers was 15 miles, more or

less, and the entire zone stretched

another four miles to the west. The

Taeu-san/Taeam-san ridge, however, did not uniformly run northwards. The whole ridge complex

had once been a volcano, and the

crater created a depression in the

mountain, the "Punchbowl," open

at its eastern edge where the

Soyang River had eroded a hole in

the crater wall. The southern lip of

the crater, remained, however, as a

formidable extension at a right

angle east of the main ridgeline,

which provided a transverse position for fire directly along all the

lower ridges to the south. In a

sense the whole Taeu-san/Taeamsan complex looked like a giant

leaf with its thin tip to the south

and its thicker (higher) base to the

A rifle platoon of the 5th Marines does some "ridge-running" as it moves to an

assault position in the broken terrain south of the Punchbowl.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A8868

24
north; many veins (ridges) ran

west and east from the central

spine, some creating separate compartments to cross, others echeloned southwest or southeast and

running uphill to the central stem,

dominated by a series of separate

peaks. The terrain is a defensive

commander's dream.

The 1st Division attack on the

Taeu-san/Taeam-san massif and

the ridge adjoining it to the west

began on 2 June and ended almost

three weeks later with all four

infantry regiments very bloodied,

but unbowed and with three of

them on or beyond the original

Kansas Line. The advance uphill

for about eight miles took the measure of the entire division as had

no fight since the Chosin Reservoir

campaign. For the 1st Marines, its

losses exceeded those of December 1950, and the entire division

suffered 183 dead and 1,973

wounded. Both Generals Van Fleet

and Almond questioned General

Thomas about his division's losses.

Especially aggravated about the

poor quality of his close air support and the Eighth Army's timorous treatment of the Fifth Air

Force, Thomas felt no need to

apologize to Van Fleet for completing his mission. "Well, General,

you told us to take the Kansas

Line, and we took it for you. I'm

sure we paid for what we got, but

we got what we paid for." Thomas

wrote his family that his Marines

were the best he had ever seen,

and "Big Foot" Brown told his

friends that the feats of his regiment had to be seen to be

believed. Thomas fully appreciated

the North Koreans' tenacity: "They

fight like Japs!"

The battle began in earnest on 2

June with the 1st Marines and 5th

Marines attacking abreast, each

with two battalions, with the 7th

Marines and 1st KMC Regiment in

reserve. The 1st Marines took one

intermediate objective (a small hill

called X-Ray) and entered the

lower ridges of the hill mass north

of the Hwachon Reservoir and

west of the Sochon River. The fight

was an uphill slog all the way.

General Thomas learned that the

press identified the engaged

Americans as "GIs." He wrote

home: "That is us, and we are not

GIs." Expert at the coordination of

supporting arms, Colonel Brown

used artillery to the limit of its

effectiveness, but each objective

ultimately had to be taken by

Marine infantry, savaged with

grenades and mortar shells as they

literally crawled uphill. Brown had

to pay special attention to his left

flank, his boundary with the 7th

ROK Division, and he often had to

deploy one battalion against flanking attacks while the other two

continued their forward crawl. As

Brown recalled: "it was the toughest fighting I have ever seen."

Over the same period (2-10

June), the 5th Marines faced an

even greater ordeal, especially its

1st Battalion, whose zone included

seven ascending peaks before it

could reach the crest at Hill 1316

(Taeam-san). The 2d Battalion's

zone was somewhat less demanding, and Lieutenant Colonel Glen

E. Martin more deft in paving the

way with air strikes and artillery, and the weight of the North

Korean defense faced the 1st

Battalion anyway. It took two long

days for the 1st Battalion to capture Hills 610, 680, and 692, a distance of about 2,000 yards. In addition to the stubborn defense by the

North Koreans, the three rifle companies survived one "friendly"

artillery barrage and one errant air

strike as well as tank fire from the

valley below to the west that,

while welcome in bunker-busting,

did not seem especially concerned

about the position of friendly

troops. At one point an inexperi25

National Archives Photo (U5MC) 127-N-A9304

The look on the Ma rine's face tells the

whole story. Having just engaged in a

savage firefight with enemy forces,

these Marines continue their grueling

upward climb.

enced company commander

allowed his men to be trapped in a

North Korean mortar barrage, and

another company, run off its objective by Corsair-dropped napalm,

found itself the target of Communist artillery. McCloskey's platoon in Company C started the

two-day ordeal with sergeants as

squad leaders and ended it with a

corporal and two private first classes in command; almost every platoon commander suffered at least

minor wounds. In the meantime,

the 2d Battalion had advanced

almost 5,000 yards along the eastern edge of the ridge, but its movement did not put it on terrain that

menaced the North Koreans on

Taeam-san.
— ?:, .•

If

1W

it'

r}

r e

'I.'-'

'--.4.

4

At this point, General Thomas

decided he needed to bring his

two uncommitted regiments into

the battle since the burden of close

combat in May-June 1951 had fallen disproportionately upon the 5th

Marines. (Nine members of the

regiment received Navy Crosses

for heroism, the 7th Marines four,

and the 1st Marine two.) The 7th

Marines, after all of two days rest,

went into the attack on the right of

the 1st Marines, which allowed

Brown to slide left to guard his

loose connection with the 7th ROK

Division. Nickerson's regiment also

inherited the highest and most

heavily defended ridgelines that

ran eastwards to Taeu-san (Hill

1179) and the western rim of the

Punchbowl. Thomas put the 1st

fter a short stop at Kobe, Japan, the Marines of

the 6th Replacement Draft joined the 1st Marine

ivision in late January 1951. In the process of

retraining and reorganizing, the division was conducting

counter-guerrilla operations around Pohang, an east

coast port within the Republic of Korea. Jack Davis (pictured on the left in the first row) was assigned to

Company G, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, somewhere near

Andung, northwest of Pohang. Known within the regiment as "Bloody George" Company, Jack's new comrades were little more experienced than he was with the

exception of a handful of officers, noncommissioned

officers, and privates. The original Company G had

landed across Blue Beach at Inchon and fought in the

liberation of Yongdung-po and Seoul. It earned its nickname during the Chosin Reservoir campaign. The company first met the Chinese at Majon-ni and lost nine

dead and 15 wounded (including attachments) when its

26

truck convoy was ambushed. Filled with wide-eyed

reservists from the 1st and 2d Replacement Drafts, the

company started north toward the Yaki with a full complement of seven officers and 224 enlisted men. It also

had a new company commander, Captain Carl L. Sitter,

a World War II combat veteran. He had replaced the first

company commander, quietly sent home after breaking

down in combat in Seoul.

In just about one month, the second Company G

practically disappeared, lost to battlefield deaths,

wounds, and frostbite. The company fought its way into

Hagaru-ri on 29 November as the spearhead of Task

Force Drysdale, taking 48 casualties from the gauntlet of

fire the Chinese created for the convoy of tanks and

vehicles. At Hagaru-ri the company tried to retake East

Hill, but faced too many Chinese with too few Marines.

The dwindling ranks of Company G, nevertheless, held

the shortened perimeter and took 60 more casualties.
Captain Sitter received the Medal of Honor, and 10 other

company Marines were awarded decorations for valor,

including a Silver Star for the first sergeant, Master

Sergeant Rocco A. Zullo. Within 10 days of battle, the

company lost all but 87 officers and men, and fully a

third of these "originals" had been wounded and

returned to duty. Jack Davis had not yet experienced the

physical and emotional ravages of combat when he

joined Company G, but he could appreciate having even

a handful of veterans around to stiffen the third

Company G.

Assigned to the 3d Platoon as a BAR-man, Jack soon

learned that Sergeant Robert W. "Blackie" Jones, new to

the company but a World War II veteran, had strong

opinions about weapons. Sergeant Jones liked the

Browning Automatic Rifle, and he had a way of finding

additional BARs for his squad. Sometime in February,

between Operations Ripper and Killer, as the Eighth

Army ground its way back toward the 38th Parallel,

Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller inspected Company G.

Puller found Jones' squad armed in an unusual manner.

"How many BARs are there in a Marine rifle squad?" he

asked the squad sergeant. "Three, sir!" Jones smartly

responded. "How many BARs do you have in your first

squad, sergeant?" Puller continued. "Six, sir!" Puller

then asked: "How did you get these weapons?" Jones

responded with even more snap in his voice: "We liberated them from the Army, sir!" Puller grunted his

approval and went on without further comment. Jack,

standing next to Johnson in the ranks, almost laughed at

the spirited exchange.

Sergeant Jones also demonstrated quick thinking

under fire. Sitting on a rice paddy dike somewhere

between Wonju and Hoengsong in late February, Jack's

squad watched spouts of cold, muddy water rise from

the paddy less than a foot beyond their outstretched

boots. "Blackie" did a back-gainer off the dike to a

lower-level paddy and screamed at his men to take

cover. The Chinese burp-gunner faded into the woods

without molestation. Jack also learned the value of

water from Sergeant Jones and soon carried two canteens, the only man in the squad to do so. He checked

his water sources carefully, especially after he found a

rotting horse upstream in one clear, bubbling brook, and

used halazone tablets liberally. His health remained

good despite his constant fatigue and unrelenting diet of

C-rations. Nevertheless, he lost weight and seemed to

shrink within his parka and field equipment.

The new Company G received another opportunity to

add to its "bloody" reputation in the first days of the

Chinese Fifth Offensive, April 1951. Upon the collapse

of the 6th ROK Division on the division's left flank,

Major General Oliver P. Smith sent the 1st Marines west

of the Pukhan River to seize the critical hills that dominated the river valley and the only road by which he

could extract the 5th and 7th Marines from the Hwachon

Reservoir sector to the north. Hill 902, a 3,000-foot

tower, became the 3d Battalion's objective; the hill dominated a road into the Pukhan River valley and a critical

bridge on the road south to Chunchon and the No Name

Line where the division was to establish a new defensible position. The battalion beat the Chinese to the peak

(aided by Marine trucks) and moved down three parallel western ridges where Lieutenant Colonel Virgil W.

Banning, the battalion commander, expected to meet

the Chinese on their belated climb toward the peak of

Hill 902. Banning placed one rifle company on each of

the three entrant ridges and arranged his supporting

arms into the evening of 23 April. Around 2000 the

Chinese attacked, first striking Company G, the most

advanced (by plan) and defender of the center ridgeline.

Huddled behind barriers of rocks—no foxholes could

be dug here—Company G threw back a Chinese regiment with the assistance of Companies H and I, which

fired across its flanks and sent reinforcements. Marine

and Army howitzers and mortars showered the attackers

with shellfire. Rallied by Technical Sergeant Harold E.

Wilson, an Alabama reservist, the center platoon of

Company G barely held. Jack Davis' platoon held its hillside position along the southern slope of George Ridge;

the platoon suffered two or three killed and several

more wounded, popping up to spray the Chinese in

between the artillery barrages. Jack made it through the

night unscathed, but the next morning, as the battalion

backed away from the Chinese under an umbrella of

close air support strikes, Jack fell victim to some

unfriendly "friendly fire." As he and some other Marines

struggled down the steep eastern slope of Hill 902 with

stretchers loaded with dead and wounded Marines, two

Marine F4U Corsairs strafed the column, showered the

cowering infantrymen with ricocheting bullets and rock

fragments. Although he took no life-threatening hits,

Jack found himself a bleeding, lacerated, and thoroughly enraged member of the "Society of Walking

Wounded" and headed for the battalion aid station for

treatment. Rested, fed, and patched up, he returned to

the company on the No Name Line.

Although he avoided telling his parents about his

combat experience, Jack wrote his brother Vince that he

should forget about leaving Vanderbilt and joining the

Marine Corps to fight in Korea. If Vince became an officer, his chances of surviving would not be as good as an

enlisted man's since the Marines expected all officers to

lead from the front. Artillery officers—to which Vince

aspired—had no greater chances of survival since they

all had to serve as forward observers with rifle companies before assigned to the comparative safety of a firing battery. "Stick to the Navy for my sake as well as the

folks. I'll do both our shares of the dodging." Jack's war

had just begun.

27
r U'

KMC Regiment into the 5th

Marines hard-earned foothold

below Hills 1122, 1216, and 1316

(Taeam-san). Hayward's regiment

(with the exhausted 1st Battalion

in reserve) moved into an expanded sector east of the Taeusan/Taeam-san massif and started

to work its way north toward the

southern lip of the Punchbowl.

Thomas did not pressure Hayward

to move aggressively since such an

advance would have put the 5th

Marines in a salient below an Lshaped hill mass still occupied by

much of the 12th NKPA Division.

Before the 5th Marines could press

forward to its share of the Kansas

Line, the South Korean Marines

would have to take Taeam-san.

For five days (5-10 June), the 1st

KMC Regiment repeatedly assaulted the Hill 1122-1218-1316 complex but, despite maneuvering to

the right and left of the peaks, the

Korean Marines made no progress

and lost over 500 men without taking even one objective. Anytime

the Marines gained a foothold, a

North Korean counterattack threw

the Marines back. Neither side

took prisoners; one South Korean

assault discovered 10 bound ROK

Marines executed with neat headshots. In desperation, Colonel Kim

Suk Bum, the Korean Marine regimental commander, decided to

abandon the American way-of-war

and ordered a three-battalion

unsupported night attack. on Hill

1122, the most exposed North

Korean position. Advancing by

slow infiltration, the South Korean

Marines fell on the Communists at

0200 with complete surprise and

ran the defenders off to Hill 1216.

With a solid hold on at least a part

of the crest, the Korean Marine

regiment held its ground while its

American advisers called in

artillery and air strikes on Hills

1216 and 1316. The North Koreans

soon fell back to the north to

each tree an enemy sniper.

Taeu-san to avoid being cut off by

the American Marines now

advancing steadily on both their

flanks.

Service with the 1st KMC

Regiment came as a surprise to

some Marine officers. Assigned

against his wishes to the 1st Shore

Party Battalion, Second Lieutenant

David J. Hytrek, a former private

first class in the 5th Marines in

1950, wanted an infantry assignment to avenge the deaths of his

comrades who had already fallen

in Korea. Instead a crusty master

sergeant serving as a personnel

officer assigned many of the former enlisted men of the 7th Basic

Class to combat service support

battalions. "Let the college boys

get killed in this war," he growled.

Hytrek, however, had barely

arrived at his new unit when he

received orders to report to the

Korean Marines as a liaison officer.

General Thomas wanted experienced lieutenants sent to assist the

Koreans, so David Hytrek found

plenty of war in the battles fought

28

by the Korean Marines around the

Punchbowl.

To the west the 1st and 7th

Marines fought from one hill to the

next hill with consistent but costly

success. The 1st Marines reached a

line of hills identified as the Brown

Line, a more defensible position

than the original Kansas Line,

which ran through the Sochon

River valley to the regiment's rear.

The 1st Marines started the regimental advance on 6 June and

completed its mission on 14 June.

The experience of the 2d Battalion

represents the regimental ordeal.

After two days of modest

advances, the battalion, with the

1st Battalion on its left flank, ran

into a very stubborn and skilled

North Korean force on Hill 676.

The attack stalled, in part because

a heavy mortar concentration fell

short and inflicted 40 casualties,

including the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K.

McClelland. On 10 June, the battalion sent two companies against the

eastern face of the hill since it

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A155066

The natural beauty of this quiet scene in North Korea means little to these

Marines as they rest during a lull in the struggle for the Punchbowl. In the wide,

calm valley before them, each green field may hide a Communist gun position,
B

orn in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1931, he attended

public schools in Las Vegas, Nevada, before

enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1948 at the age

of 17. Following recruit training at Parris Island, South

Carolina, and a short assignment on board the USS

Noble, he was sent to Korea in 1950 where he took part

in five successive operations: Inchon, Seoul, Chosin, and

two against the Chinese Communists. For his bold

actions on 7 November 1950, he was awarded the

Commendation ribbon with Combat "V.',

As a fireteam-leader with Company E, 2d Battalion,

1st Marines, he gave his life on 10 june 1951 at Hill 676

near Hangnyong. His Medal of Honor citation reads, in

part:

While advancing with his platoon in an attack

against well-concealed and heavily-fortified enemy

hill positions, Corporal Abrell voluntarily rushed

forward through the assaulting squad which was

pinned down by a hail of intense and accurate

automatic-weapons fire from a hostile bunker situated on commanding ground. Although previously

wounded by enemy hand-grenade fragments, he

proceeded to carry out a bold, single-handed

attack against the bunker, exhorting his comrades

to follow him. Sustaining two additional wounds

as he stormed toward the emplacement, he resolutely pulled the pin from a grenade clutched in

his hand and hurled himself bodily into the bunker

with the live missile still in his grasp. [He was]

Corporal Charles G.Abrell

fatally wounded in the resulting explosion which

killed the entire enemy gun crew within the

stronghold—Captain John C, Chapin, USMCR

(Ret)

could then take advantage of supporting tank fire from the valley

below. Many of the North Korean

bunkers, however, were sited to

protect them from tank guns,

75mm recoilless rifles, and 3.5-inch

rocket launchers. Air strikes would

have eliminated them, but repeated requests for close air support

went unanswered until 2000 when

one four-plane strike broke the

North Korean defense. All day

long, Marine squads inched

upwards through the bunker complex, eventually destroying the

bunkers with grenades and satchel

charges. In one case a lone Marine

jumped into a bunker, killed three

Koreans with his rifle and strangled the fourth with his bare

hands. Throughout the day "chiggy

bearers" struggled forward through

constant shelling with ammunition

and water and stumbled backwards with loaded stretchers. In

two days the battalion took more

than 300 casualties and lost more

than 200 members of its loyal force

of Korean porters. The Marines

found more than 100 North Korean

bodies in the bunkers, including

the NKPA battalion commander.

The battalion went into reserve on

12 June when the 3d Battalion

replaced it.

Wedged into a narrow but difficult sector between the 1st Marines

and the 1st KMC Regiment, the 7th

Marines fought for 10 days (9-19

June) to establish the regiment

(two battalions abreast) along the

critical hill complex to the west

29

and the Taeu-san/Taeam-san

peaks to the east above the

Punchbowl. Colonel Nickerson

used his supporting tank company

to good effect, but Communist

mines in the Sochon River valley

put more than half of the company

(10 of 17 tanks) eventually out of

action despite heroic and costly

efforts by Marine engineers to

sweep the ground. Nickerson's use

of supporting arms mirrored

Brown's—long on artillery and

short of crucial close air support. If

the 7th Marines rifle companies

took their assigned hills with

slightly less cost than the 1st

Marines, they had to defend them

against even more stubborn nightly counterattacks. The NKPA battalion commander in this sector
,.-

.4

• \_ -.--' .. _rzta.: .

employed reverse slope defenses,

which swept each topographical

crest with fire and put the North

Korean soldiers close enough for

sudden assaults. One 7th Marines

company had to throw back five

such attacks in one night before it

could call its hill secure.

On the eastern side of Taeusan/Taeam-san ridge, the 5th

Marines advanced through the

ridges that ran down to the Soyang

River valley. Alternating in the

attack, Hayward's three battalions

had to cross five different east-west

transverse spur ridges before they

reached the last (and highest)

ridgeline above the Punchbowl,

some 8,000 yards from the regiment's original line of departure on

6 June. As the regiment pushed

north, the North Korean defenders

took their toll, although somewhat

less than the regiments to the west.

Again, supporting arms and close

air strikes that arrived broke the

defensive positions until the regiment, lead by the 1st Battalion,

reached the last objective, the Hill

907-Hill 920 ridgeline. No longer

able to fall back to another defensive position, the remaining soldiers of the defending North

Korean regiment went into their

bunkers with no intention of conceding Hill 907 to the oncoming

Marines.

The final assault on Hill 907, the

regimental objective of the 5th

Marines, caught the desperate

character of the mountain war in

Korea in June 1951. The long, narrow ridge that led to Hill 907

allowed no more than a reinforced

platoon to deploy against the line

of North Korean bunkers that

stretched to the peak. So the 1st

Battalion, 5th Marines, had the

objective, which it assigned to

Company B, which passed the mission (at Lieutenant Colonel John L.

Hopkins' direction) to Second

Lieutenant Charles G. Cooper's 3d

Platoon. As the Marines worked

methodically through the bunker

system, supported by mortar and

machine gun fire, their casualties

mounted. Cooper called in more

artillery and air strikes, but enemy

fire from his front and from two

flanking ridgelines cut his ranks

down to squad size. He lost two

radio operators and then had the

disconcerting experience of listening to Hopkins, who had turned

ferocious on the eve of his change

of command, screaming obscene

challenges to the North Koreans

over the battalion tactical net, presumably to confuse the listening

enemy. Cooper managed to

arrange for one more air strike, Air

Force jets armed with napalm.

Marking the target with white

smoke, Cooper ordered an

advance through the swirling

mess, only to find the North

Koreans attacking him. Knocked

down by a ricocheting bullet in the

back, Cooper lost his carbine to

another bullet and ended the fight

30

with a Ka-Bar and a hole in his left

side that filled with blood and a

damaged kidney. Just as the surviving Koreans reached the "Last

Stand of the 3d Platoon," the Air

Force jets—which had flown one

dummy run to get the route right—

returned and dumped their napalm

tanks in the middle of the melee,

only 30 yards from Cooper's position. The Marines almost suffocated, and most of them suffered

burns, but the North Koreans disappeared, incinerated in the

flames. The Marine attack ended

100 yards short of the summit, but

the next day the 3d Battalion occupied Hill 907, abandoned by the

North Koreans after the division

headquarters they were protecting

had displaced.

On 18 and 20 June, General

Almond and General Thomas visited the high ground now held by

the 1st Marine Division, and the X

Corps commander agreed that

patrols in the mountains ahead

would be all the offensive action

Department of Defense Photo (USMc) A8745

Crewmen of Battery C, 1st 4.5 Inch Rocket Battalion, reload their multiple-rocket launcher for another devastating ripple against North Korean troops. The battery of six launchers could fire 144 rounds on target in less than a minute.
required of the Marines. In the

meantime, the defensive positions

of the Kansas Line should be

developed into complexes of

trench lines, barbed wire, bunkers,

and minefields, and before the

summer monsoon made the supply effort even more difficult than

it already was. Thomas could tell

that major changes in the war

might be underway since he had to

entertain an endless stream of visiting military officers of all the

Services, most of whom simply

wanted to see the Punchbowl from

the 5th Marines' observation post.

Only admirals bearing gifts of

good bourbon were truly welcome. General Thomas knew his

division needed rebuilding with

replacements and some rest. In the

meantime, he had some unfinished

business with Eighth Army over

the issue of close air support.

When the 1st Marine Division

settled down to a life of night

patrols and the daytime construction of trenches and bunkers, two

different changes of climate

enveloped the men spread along

the mountain ridges of the Kansas

Line. The changes started a summer of discontent, a season of discomfort and uncertainty that did

not reach the level of demoralization, but nevertheless took its toll

on the morale of the Marines. The

first change in the weather was

predictable, the arrival of the summer monsoon, which advances

northward from the island of

Cheju-do until it reaches central

Korea in late June and blankets the

hills with daily showers and occasional downpours that seem to

wash half of Korea into the west

sea. The summer rains of 1950 had

been light, a welcome blessing for

American airmen. Even though it

arrived weeks behind schedule,

the next monsoon reversed the

trend. The rains of 1951 gave

Korea its normal ration of water.

Twenty-six inches fell in July, and

August brought about 20 inches

more rainfall before the deluge

stopped in September. The

omnipresent mud and cascading

streams made the patrols and construction an ordeal, even without

an active enemy.

The other atmospheric change

began with the preliminary truce

negotiations on 7 July between the

military delegations of China and

North Korea on one side and a

group of American officers on the

other. When the negotiators at

Kaesong—a neutral enclave within

Communist lines—finally came to

an incomplete agreement on an

agenda, the one that most affected

the Marines was the question of a

ceasefire boundary between the

two armies. The Communists

wanted a return to the 38th

Parallel. The United Nations

demanded a line based on the forward edge of the battlefield if and

when an armistice went into effect.

Presumably the two forces would

fall back by some agreed distance,

and the intervening No Man's Land

would become a demilitarized

zone. To those with no sense of

military geography, one hill

seemed no different from another,

but the relationship of dominant

peaks, road networks, river valleys, and intersecting corridors in

the mountains made the control of

terrain an important issue, not just

a matter of "face." From the frontline foxholes, however, the gloomy

mountains all looked alike and

simply reinforced the sense that no

disputed peak could be worth

dying for. Conditioned by World

War II to think of victory in terms

of geographic advances, the combat troops of the Eighth Army felt

their martial ardor wash away with

the rain.

No stranger to the challenges of

command created by poor weather

and endless action—Guadalcanal

had provided both—Gerald C.

Thomas pressed his regimental

Marines wait for an air strike by Marine aircraft before moving on an enemy

position. National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A9308

31
rc .%

j

National Archives Photo (USN) 8O-G-432028

United Nations delegates to the Kaesong ceasefire talks pose Craigie, USAF, MajGen Paik Sun Yup, ROKA, VAdm C.

with Gen Matthew B. Ridgway atMunsan-ni. Picturedfrom TurnerJoy, USN, Gen Ridgway, and MajGen Henry!. Hodes,

left are RAdm Arleigh A. Burke, USN, MajGen Laurence C. USA.

Pictured from left are Chinese and North Korean negotia- Cho, and Gen Chang Pyong San of the North Korean

tors, MajGen Hsieh Fang and LtGen Teng Hua of the People's Army.

Chinese People's Army, and Gen Nam II, MajGen Lee Sang National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-431929

32

7zr.

Jr t_ T

7fr7#
net.

commanders to do the digging and

patrolling Almond ordered, Sporadic shelling by the Communists

provided extra incentives, and the

Marines still took casualties, 39 in

the last week of June. Thomas

fought a successful rearguard

action against Eighth Army and X

Corps to hold pointless casualties

down. On 22 June, Almond

ordered Thomas to execute an

Eighth Army plan to push forces

northwards to the Badger Line,

between a mile-and-a-half to twoand-a-half miles in front of the

Kansas Line defenses. (Later in the

war the Badger Line would be

called the Combat Outpost Line.)

Each frontline regiment was supposed to occupy a combat outpost

of battalion strength; Thomas got

Almond on 26 June to agree that

one outpost was sufficient for the

entire 1st Marine Division front,

given the nature of the terrain. The

1st Marines sent its 3d Battalion

forward to Hill 761 and received a

7th Marines battalion to plug the

gap. Like Thomas, "Big Foot"

Brown thought the patrol base

concept dangerous and pointless;

both sides had maintained very

close contact with shelling and

patrols and needed no additional

action. The North Koreans immediately shelled the patrol base with

such enthusiasm that Thomas and

Brown withdrew the battalion and

then told Almond that they would

meet X Corps reconnaissance

requirements in other ways.

Aware that Almond would soon

leave command of X Corps,

Thomas had one overriding reason

to remain on friendly terms with

his difficult corps commander: the

close air support controversy. With

a pause in the action, Almond marshaled an array of studies for

Eighth Army that demonstrated

that the Fifth Air Force's close control of each day's quota of close air

33

support sorties limited the ground

advances and caused avoidable

casualties. Thomas consistently

raised the issue with high-ranking

military visitors to his headquarters, including Van Fleet, who dropped in on 8 July to give

Thomas, Nickerson, Hayward, and

five other Marines the Distinguished Service Cross. Thomas

persuaded Major General Frank F.

Everest to approve the movement

of Marine Aircraft Group 12, the

premier close air support group of

Marine Corsairs, from Hoengsong

to the east sea fishing town of

Kangnung. The move to Airfield K18 put the Marine fighter-bombers

closer to their supply sources and

only 40 miles from the front. Sheer

proximity offered new opportunities to circumvent the Joint

Operations Center request system,

including Everest's promise to allocate 40 sorties a day for offensive

operations. Closer division-wing

relations seemed at least temporarily acceptable to Eighth Army and

Fifth Air Force because Van Fleet

had his planners hard at work on

another version of Operation

Overwhelming, the amphibious

landing up the east coast that

would involve the 1st Marine

Division.

General Almond, however, did

not relent in his demands for more

fighting of dubious value. His

aggressiveness brought General

Thomas' only embarrassment as a

division commander, the Taeu-san

Affair, an abortive operation that

remained unnoticed because the

victims were the valiant men of the

Korean Marine Corps' 1st Regiment. Almond had convinced

himself that the North Koreans

(despite the Hill 761 experience)

would not fight for the lines they

currently held. Therefore, Almond

ordered the 1st Marine Division to

capture the peak of Taeu-san (Hill

1179) and develop it into a regiNational Archives Photo (USA) 11 1-SC378978

R!flemen of the 5th Marines are issued a portion of the initial 40 armored vests

developed by the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory, Camp Lejeune, North

Carolina, for field-testing in Korea. The new vest weighed eight-and-one-half

pounds and combined curved, overlapping doron plates with flexible pads of basket-weave nylon. The garment was said to stop a .45-caliber pistol or Thompson

submachine gun bullet, all fragments of a hand grenade at three feet, 75 percent

of 81mm mortar fragments at 10 feet, and the full thrust of an American bayo-
ith a chastened Jack Davis back in its ranks,

the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, held its part of

the No Name Line and watched the last

Chinese offensive of May 1951 slide past the 7th Marines

to its front and fall upon the left flank of the 2d Infantry

Division. With the 1st Marines on the corps and division

left flank, the Marines went on the attack on 23 May and

a week later reached the high ground overlooking the

reservoir. Squeezed out of the advance, the 1st Marines

reverted to division reserve.

With the 5th and 7th Marines struggling to penetrate

the Communist hilltop positions north of Yanggu, the 1st

Marines soon joined the slugfest. Somewhere in the barren ridges Jack Davis' platoon found itself in a grenadethrowing match with the stubborn—and uphill—

Chinese defenders. Chinese mortar shells fell among the

attacking Marines and took their toll, mostly in wounded. Jack saw five Marines from his squad go down in

one shower of grenade and mortar fragments. Amazed

by his own apparent invulnerability, Jack attacked a

Chinese position with his rifle and grenades after crawling to a protected firing position. His attack and a flank

assault by his buddy Frank Brown (carrying a BAR)

wiped out the Chinese bunker and spider-traps. More

American grenades completed the task. Jack thought he

might have killed three Chinese, his only victims of the

war.

During the fight, Jack received his second wound of

the war, a grenade fragment that tore open his upper left

arm and made him a one-armed Marine. While a corpsman bandaged Jack, his platoon commander asked him

if he would take charge of three other walking wounded and lead them down the mountain to the battalion

collecting and clearing station. Jack agreed, and off he

went—slowly—trailed by his more seriously wounded

comrades, one of whom had both eyes bandaged. As

night fell, Jack's forlorn band had reached the foot of the

mountain, but had strayed through a "no man's line"

into the lines of the 5th Marines. Jack had no idea what

the challenge and password was, so he simply

screamed: "Wounded Marines! Wounded Marines!"

Persuaded that no Chinese could scream with a Tennessee accent, the Marines brought in the wounded

and sent them off to safety by jeep. Jack had a second

Purple Heart, but his second wound was not severe

enough for the Navy doctors to invoke a welcome

Marine Corps policy: two wounds serious enough to

require hospitalization bought a Marine a trip home.

Jack's arm healed more rapidly than his spirit. After

almost six months in a rifle company with no real

escape from the most primitive and exhausting field living conditions as well as combat, Jack Davis felt himself

34

weakening in the psychological sense. He wrote Vince

that he was not sure whether he could take the constant

mortar and artillery fire. "You can't imagine what it does

to a man's insides to see a big, six-foot man crying and

shaking with fear, just because his mind has had all the

killing and bloodshed it can take. When this happens to

man, it also [is] because he is scared to death and wants

to run but his loyalty won't let [him] and that if he did

run, there's no place to go. Sometime they get evacuated and sometimes they don't . . . if they do come back

in a couple of weeks . . . as soon as the first mortar or

artillery shell comes screaming over and explodes nearby they are worse than ever." Jack was proud that he

had not yet broken down, but he had some doubts

about his ability to carry on. "I was a dope fiend about

the last month I was in the hills." He took a quarter grain

of Phenobarbital, dispensed by a corpsman, so that he

would quit shaking from cold and fear while he stood

watch at night. He could not eat or sleep without drugs.

Unfortunately, the barbiturates gave him a "don't give a

shit attitude" that worried him.

Upon his return to Company G, Jack requested an

interview with the new company commander, Captain

Varge G. Frisbie, and asked if he could get some credit

for his two Purple Hearts and be transferred somewhere

out of the battalion. Frishie promised to take the matter

up with the battalion personnel officer, and within days

Private First Class Jack Davis had orders to report to the

Service Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, for retraining

as an artilleryman—and a survivor.
mental patrol base on which to

anchor the Badger Line. Thomas

objected to the mission, pointing

out that all the evidence suggested

that Taeu-san anchored the main

defensive position of the entire

North Korean V Coi'ps. Unmoved,

Almond ordered the attack to be

made, and Thomas assigned the

mission to the 1st KIVIC Regiment,

whose lines were closest to Taeusan and who had shown some

aptitude for mountain warfare.

One suspects that Thomas saw no

reason to squander one of his own

Marine regiments on a forlorn

hope. Colonel Kim Dae Sik accepted his assignment without a murmur, and the 1st Marine Division

provided all the fire support it

could possibly mount on behalf of

the 1st KMC Regiment. Han Pon

Haepyong Un Yongwon Han

Haepyong! (Once a Marine, Always

a Marine!)

For five days (8-12 July), the

Korean Marines—one battalion at

a time—tried to take and hold

Taeu-san but managed only to

hang on to Hill 1001, a hillock only

halfway to Taeu-san. Successive

assaults on Hill 1100 produced

dead Korean Marines, but no permanent foothold on the Taeu-san

main ridge. All combinations of

shelling, air strikes, and infantry

attacks did not break the North

Korean defenses. Colonel Gould P.

Groves, senior adviser to the 1st

KIVIC Regiment, demanded that the

fruitless attacks cease before the

regiment became permanently

ruined by the loss of its key leaders; one KMC battalion lost all its

company grade officers and all but

five of its sergeants. Thomas insisted to X Corps that Taeu-san would

take an entire American regiment

to capture (as indeed it later did)

and that the security mission could

be performed without the Badger

Line. Almond insisted, however,

that the Koreans hold on to the

outpost on Hill 1001 even if the 1st

KMC Regiment returned to the

Kansas Line, which it did on 12

July. Of the 77 Marines killed or

missing and 360 wounded in July,

55 of the dead or missing and 202

of the wounded were South

Koreans.

At the 1st Division headquarters

the bad taste of the Taeu-san Affair

35

faded with two bits of welcome

news: Almond was finally leaving

X Corps for a new posting in the

United States and the division had

been ordered to turn over its sector to the U.S. 2d Infantry Division

and withdraw to corps reserve.

Almond flew off to Seoul after giving Thomas a Distinguished

Service Medal. He left X Corps in

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC382938

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas joins MajGen Clovis E. Byers, left. Gen Edward M.

Almond's replacement as commander of X Coips, on board a helicopter at

Kwandae-ri, the Coips' airstrip. Thomas and Byers developed a strong working

relationship that profited the 1st Marine Division.
—-

II

the capable hands of Major

General Clovis E. Byrs, a 52-yearold Ohioan and Military Academy

graduate (class of 1920) with an

impeccable professional reputation

and companionable personality.

Thomas, who knew Byers, could

not have been happier. In World

War II, Byers had served with distinction in the Southwest Pacific

theater as commanding general,

32d Infantry Division, chief of staff

of I Corps, and chief of staff of

Eighth Army. He had then commanded the 82d Airborne Division,

the Army's only combat-ready contingency force, before becoming

the G-1 (Personnel) of the Army

Staff. Byers, however, had one glaring weakness. In a faction-ridden

Army, he was a protégé of

Lieutenant General Robert L.

Eichelberger, just retired, and not a

member of the European clique of

Generals Eisenhower, Bradley,

Collins, Ridgway, and Van Fleet.

After the various elements of the

1st Marine Division reached their

reserve areas, Thomas ordered a

demanding training program of

live-fire exercises, designed by his

new chief of staff, Colonel Victor

H. Krulak, and the G-3, Colonel

Richard W. Hayward, former commander of the 5th Marines. Thomas

prowled the regimental training

areas by helicopter and jeep: the

5th Marines near Inje, the 7th

Marines near Yanggu, and the 1st

Marines near Hongchon. The pattern of deployment (with the battalions of the 11th Marines positioned to either fire for the 2d

Infantry Division or train with the

Marine infantry regiments) reflected Byers' concern about a sudden

attack on the 2d Infantry Division

or the 5th ROK Division. Byers also

felt some anxiety about his eastern

flank with the South Korean I

Corps. Eighth Army's nervousness

exceeded Byers', and Van Fleet

ordered X Corps to form a task

force built around the 1st Marines

(Task Force Able) to be prepared

to move east for a preemptive

offensive. Thomas liked none of

this business and said so to Byers,

who supported Thomas' insistence

that Army ad hocery would give

way to Marine command if a real

crisis arose. There was none, but

Thomas and Byers cemented their

sound working relationship. As

Byers wrote another Army general:

"the 1st Marine Division under the

command of Major General

Thomas, with Brigadier General

Whaling as Assistant Division

Commander and Col. Krulak as

Chief of Staff, has become a vastly

different outfit from that which it

was under its former commander.

They cooperate with the other divisions of the Corps smoothly and

willingly."

Byers showed his appreciation

in tangible ways. His staff ensured

that the equipment rehabilitation of

the division went forward without

friction. X Corps engineers and

artillery helped the Marines turn

swamps into muddy camps with a

few amenities like shower and

mess tents with floors and

drainage. Army and Marine technical experts worked together to

train novice personnel and put

everything from ordnance, tanks,

radios, watches, motor vehicles, to

engineering equipment in working

order. The military policemen of

both Services cooperated in trying

to control the flood of Koreans

sweeping toward the Marine tent

camps to sell carnal and alcoholic

pleasures. In turn, Thomas ordered

12 special Marine training teams

from his infantry regiments to work

with the 1st KMC Regiment to

improve the regiment's use of supporting arms. All units conducted

at least a third of their training at

night. Night patrols went to work

with rounds in the chamber and

Combat-ready division replacements disembark from a US. Naty landing ship.

In the movement of Marines the Coips functioned as a single great unit, even

though an ocean separated the vanguard in Korea from rear echelons in the

United States.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) Al 57123

36
engaged guerrillas along the rear

area roads. Marines worked with

Korean security forces and laborers

constructing additional defensive

positions to protect both I Corps

flanks.

Although only Thomas and his

immediate staff knew about the

continuing exchanges between

Ridgway and Van Fleet over future

operations, the focus and pace of

the 1st Marine Division training

program suggested that the division might provide the spearhead

of a new Eighth Army offensive.

Van Fleet urged Operation

Overwhelming upon Ridgway, but

only if Eighth Army received

American reinforcements. The new

Ridgway, a paragon of caution, did

not embrace the plan. Thomas and

Krulak anticipated a landing until

they received a clear signal that

there would be no Inchon in their

future when Van Fleet on 3 August

ruled that the 1st Amphibian

Tractor Battalion and 1st Armored

Amphibian Battalion would not be

returned to the division's operational control.

The disappointment did not

change the urgency of bringing the

1st Marine Division to a new peak

of strength in numbers and effectiveness. Two new replacement

drafts (the 11th and 12th) would

arrive in August and early

September with more than 4,000

officers and men, more than

replacing casualties and a small

rotation draft. By mid-August the

division had the responsibility of

caring for 32,000 American and

Korean personnel, making the

division almost a small Army

corps. The division's combat

power—enhanced by its ability to

use close air support as available—

made it difficult for Van Fleet to

move it from the eastern part of

the front where the only other

American division was the hardused 2d Infantry Division.

From General Byers' perspective

X Corps and the neighboring ROK

I Corps occupied a vulnerable part

of the Kansas Line, more vulnerable than the western sectors and

the "Iron Triangle" where U.S. I

and IX Corps faced the bulk of the

recovering Chinese expeditionary

force. Byers' G-2 made a special

study of the activities of the North

Korean III Corps (three divisions of

8,500 each) and concluded that the

North Koreans had the capability

to mount a serious offensive on

any X Corps division sector along

the Kansas Line. Well ahead of the

Chinese rearmament programs, III

Corps had accepted a full set of

new Soviet weapons and showed

every intention of using them

again in the attack. Over the latter

part of August the intelligence analysts saw the usual omens of an

attack: increased patrolling and

counter-patrolling ambushes, increased desertions, a reduced flow

of refugees, tank sightings, the

mass distribution of ammunition

and rations, a decline in vehicle

movement, and the imposition of

radio silence. In the meantime, at

Van Fleet's insistence, Byers had

ordered the 2d Infantry Division

into action west of the Punchbowl,

and the division had exhausted

itself again fighting the North

Koreans and the rain over terrain

only too familiar to the Marines.

Only the names of the hills

("Bloody Ridge" and "J Ridge") and

the Service of the bodies changed.

To the west Major General Paik

Sun Yup's ROK I Corps made no

significant progress against three

NKPA divisions, all entrenched and

very combative in the hills east of

the Punchbowl. The campaign

wrecked the North Korean II

Corps, but III Corps remained ready

to enter the fray, perhaps in a major counteroffensive. The only

fresh force in the eastern sector

was the 1st Marine Division.

37

With neither a ceasefire nor

great offensive in prospect,

General Van Fleet ordered his

corps commanders to plan operations that would improve their

control of the critical terrain in

their sectors. They should prepare

either for some later offensive

(should the truce talks remain in

recess) or to defend South Korea

for the indefinite future. With the

defenses of the Kansas Line largely

completed, Van Fleet on 30 July

decided to convert the combat outpost line (the Wyoming Line) into

an advanced main line of resistance where the terrain allowed.

The distance between Kansas Line

and the Wyoming Line varied

between two miles and 10 miles.

In X Corps' sector Van Fleet

thought that the trace of the front

in July did not allow Byers to dominate the Punchbowl and the

Sochon and Soyang River valleys.

Van Fleet wanted X Corps to shift

the focus of its attacks to the high

ground (including Taeu-san) west

of the Punchbowl, but the heavy

rains of early August made it

impossible for Byers to begin the

attacks of the U.S. 2d Infantry

Division and the 7th ROK Division

(Brigadier General Kim Yong Bae).

The 8th ROK Division (Brigadier

General Choi Yong Hee) would

attack the dominant hills east of

the Punchbowl.

Having designated an intermediate phase line (Hays) between the

Kansas and Wyoming Lines, Byers

quickly learned that the terrain, the

weather, and the North Koreans

would prevent any easy victories.

The battles west of the Punchbowl

produced such disappointing results and bad blood between the

American and Korean commanders

that Byers narrowed the division

sectors and committed the 5th

ROK Division (Brigadier General
WI

-. a'- -

Mm Ki Shik) west of the 2d

Infantry Division, which meant that

X Corps had three committed divisions west of the Punchbowl and

only the 8th ROK Division in the

Soyang River valley and the dominant hills on either side of the valley. On 23 August, Byers warned

Van Fleet that he might have to

relieve the 2d Infantry Division

with the 1st Marine Division,

which was "very anxious to take

action," but Van Fleet still had an

amphibious role in mind for the

Marines, and he vetoed the idea.

Van Fleet thus spared the 1st

Marine Division the mission of

capturing "Heartbreak Ridge."

Only the 8th ROK Division had

done better than anticipated, capturing some of the high ground

east of the Punchbowl, but the

South Korean divisions on its eastern flank had not kept pace, thus

giving Byers some concern about

his corps boundary.

Meeting on both 25 and 26

August, Van Fleet and Byers concluded that they could no longer

hold the 1st Marine Division in

reserve since all the rest of X Corps

divisions had bogged down, and

the corps could not change the tactical balance with artillery and

close air support alone. Ammunition shortages, caused principally

by transportation problems, had

already affected operations. Troop

movements, for example, on 28-30

August prevented the stockpiling

of 1,800 tons of munitions. The

Fifth Air Force, anticipating a break

in the weather that would allow a

surge in the interdiction bombing

campaign, announced on the 23d

that the Eighth Army would have

to manage with less close air support through the end of the month.

On 26 August, Byers called

General Thomas and told him to

move at least part of his division to

the front east of the Punchhowl

where the Marines would take up

the missions of the 8th ROK

Division. Thomas had four days

warning since Byers alerted him to

a possible move on 23 August.

With the plans already in place,

Thomas ordered the 7th Marines to

start for the front that night, followed by the 1st KMC Regiment.

The 5th Marines would move last,

and the 1st Marines not at all since

the regiment would be the only

corps reserve.

Thomas knew that the division

Rain and mud fail to halt the mortarmen of the 5th mortars at enemy-held positions.

Marines' 4.2 Inch Mortar Company as they fire their heavy National Archives Photo (USA) 11 1-Sc380808

38
would receive an offensive misSiOn: capture a ridgeline, an eastern extension of the hill mass that

formed the northern rim of the

Punchbowl. A corps objective designated Yoke, the ridge had four

dominant west-to-east peaks (Hills

930, 1026, 924, and 702) and

another north-south extension that

began at Hill 702 and ran south

through Hills 680, 755, and 793,

thus forming a large L just west of

the Soyang River. The river itself

curled westwards, bounding Yoke

Ridge on the north. Since the

North Koreans showed no sign of

reduced morale and fighting tenacity—they, in fact, had mounted

many aggressive counterattacks

west of the Punchbowl—the

assignment had nothing easy about

it. The rains and planning changes

made 27-3 1 August some of the

most discouraging days Thomas

and his Marines had faced together.

From the division commander's

perspective, the mudslides and

floods that slowed his truck convoys were bad enough, but the

operational confusion within X

Corps, fed by tactical errors and

bad blood between the 2d Infantry

Division and 8th ROK Division,

made the changes of orders reach

epidemic proportions. Before it

could displace, the 5th Marines

detached a battalion to the operational control of the 2d Infantry

Division to defend the Kansas Line

while the 23d Infantry slipped to

the west. The 1st KMC Regiment

also picked up part of the Kansas

Line defense, which meant that

only the 7th Marines, struggling to

cross the swollen Soyang River by

wading or by a shuttle of DUKWs

(amphibian trucks) could man the

sketchy positions on the edge of

Yoke Ridge held by dispirited soldiers of the 8th ROK Division.

Confusion reigned, and the rain

fell. Warning orders flooded the

airwaves, and commanders and

staff officers scurried by helicopter

and jeep from headquarters to

headquarters. General Byers, for

example, made 12 commands calls

in one week (25-31 August) and

received General Van Fleet three

times. General Thomas and his

staff made the best of a bad situation, pushing the 7th Marines and

1st KMC Regiment into their for39

ward positions. He tried to prevent

the diversion of the 5th Marines to

the 2d Infantry Division and kept

the 1st Marines ready for such

time, as Byers would release the

regiment from corps control. In the

meantime, the 11th Marines fired

missions all along the corps front,

scattered about the valleys in a

desperate attempt to stay close to

its ammunition supply and to

Courtesy of the Naval Institute Press
4.. - — - - -S ___

e

• Is.- - I————

I

__.1

r I

r

avoid having its fires masked by

the hills to its front.

During a Van Fleet-Byers conference on 29 August, the army and

corps commanders agreed that

they could not wait for more success west of the Punchbowl before

ordering the 1st Marine Division

into action. Byers passed the news

to Thomas the next day: attack

Yoke Ridge on 31 August. Two factors related to the enemy situation

helped shape Thomas' plan.

Patrols by the division's Reconnaissance Company and the 5th

Marines discovered enemy patrols

active on either side of the Kansas

Line, but no more than a nuisance.

On the other hand, North Korean

prisoners taken by the 8th ROK

Division and the Marines reported

large troop movements to the

north and much talk about another

Communist offensive while the

weather limited United Nations

Command air support. Visual sightings and other intelligence sources

J

ack Davis, an old man at 19, found a new home in

Service Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines. His principal responsibility was driving a dump truck and

working as a laborer on the battalion's gun positions and

other construction projects. As the weather cooled in the

fall of 1951, the 1st Marine Division resumed its attacks

on the high ridges northeast of the Punchbowl. Its opponents were troops of the re-born Korean People's Army

2d Division. Another enemy was a monsoon season that

lasted through the entire month of August, washing

away roads and bridges and making life generally miserable for all hands. Jack Davis found his dump truck in

high demand. In addition to the usual construction mate40

rials, Jack hauled cut wood for the battalion's stoves. He

became an expert at fitting out bunkers with furniture

made from used shell boxes and other handy materials;

he and his fellow engineers used layers of sandbags,

logs, and loose dirt to build sleeping bunkers that could

withstand a direct shell hit. Jack estimated that they

made seven-foot thick ceilings to provide overhead protection.

Even if the pace of the combat froze along with the

weather and Panmunjom peace talks, danger still waited

for the unwary and unlucky. Employing their new

Russian field artillery, the Chinese and North Koreans

started to fire short counterbattery barrages late every
second or third afternoon. Even the bunkers to which

the Marines fled to avoid the shelling could be death

traps of their own; weakened by the rains and shellings

and too heavy for their supporting walls, bunker roofs

habitually collapsed. One such roof fell on top of Jack,

bruising his body and pride and burning parts of his

body when a stove overturned and ignited the bunker's

interior. Jack took his third trip to sickbay with cracked

ribs.

There were few diversions north of the Soyang River.

Jack grew his third mustache, not as long and menacing

as his "infantry mustache" of the summer. One day he

received a call to report to battery headquarters, only to

learn that the battery commander and first sergeant had

arranged a little ceremony to award Jack his first and second Purple Hearts (a medal with gold star affixed). Jack

had no idea what to do with the medal and presentation

box until the first sergeant suggested he send it home.

The final package featured paper torn from boxes in the

mess tent, secured with communications wire. The Davis

family received the box and properly concluded that

Jack had not been entirely honest in his summer letters.

Although his anxiety about dying eased some, Jack's

fears about living grew as his tour in Korea shortened.

Under the rotation policy adopted in 1951, he could

expect to rotate home sometime in early 1952, and the

Marine Corps, having little need for short-timer reservists

at the end of a two-year contract, promised to release

him go to college short of his two-year obligation. Jack

thought about getting his personal life in some order.

He wrote a "Dear Jane" letter to a girl friend whose religiosity and immaturity now struck Jack as intolerable.

He warned Vince that no one in Tennessee should discuss his love life. Jack also continued to send money

home for his college savings account. His sense of duty

received a jump-start with his promotion to corporal iii

November. His greatest leadership accomplishment to

date was organizing the theft of an Army jeep that the

battery sorely needed. He did his work, and he stayed

out of trouble as he watched veterans of earlier replacement drafts turn in their equipment and head for processing for a flight or transport berth back to California.

By Thanksgiving the 3d Battalion had endured two

snowfalls, general freezing, and the news that it was not

on the itinerary for Bob Hope's Christmas show. Jack

bought a contraband bottle of Canadian Club to hoard

until Christmas. He liked the brand new thermal boots

issued to the battalion—until he had to change his

sweat-soaked socks in the cold. After a muted celebration of Christmas, Jack started watching the organization

of each rotation group. He wrote Vince that he now

stood 29th on the list and that 37 men had started home

in December. Jack reported that he was "kinda nervous

about coming home. I'm still not doing much work per

usual." He worried about his future relations with his

parents, whom he remembered as full of sermons about

all the things he should not do and think. "If they start a

bunch of harping and bulishit, I ship into the regular

Marines because I really like this outfit." He admitted to

Vince, however, the he would really have to be aggravated with civilian life to re-up for a second tour. He certainly was not going to miss his ride back to the United

States. On 18 February 1952, Jack Davis left Korea for

home.

confirmed that fresh enemy troops

were going into position on Yoke

Ridge. The 1st Marine Division

attack of 31 August was designed

to squeeze out the Koreans on the

eastern part of Yoke Ridge and to

prevent the objective area from

being reinforced from the north

while the battle raged. Two

Korean Marine battalions advancing in column from their position

on Hill 755 would attack north to

take Hills 1026 and 924 while two

battalions on the 7th Marines

would attack westwards from the

Soyang River valley with two battalions abreast. They would seize

the ground east and north through

Hill 702 to Hill 602, another lower

ridge that ended at the river as it

changed its direction from eastwest to north-south. Catching the

North Korean 2d Division in the

process of moving into the

bunkers of the North Korean 1st

Division on the morning of 31

August, the initial Korean Marine

and 7th Marines attacks still faced

extensive minefields and mortar

barrages as the troops worked

their way uphill. Marine artillery

fire damped some of the enemy

fire. The two 7th Marines battalions

took their objectives, but the 1st

KMC Regiment advanced no farther than the base of Hill 924, the

most heavily-defended position

encountered on eastern Yoke

Ridge. Almost all the division's

casualties for August (three killed

and 57 wounded) fell on the first

day of the Battle for Yoke Ridge.

Second Lieutenant Frederick F.

Brower moved into his first big

41

fight at the head of the 1st Platoon,

Company H, 3d Battalion, 7th

Marines. Occupying Hill 680 on 30

August, the company had endured

a heavy mortar barrage and

learned that North Korean regulars

had replaced the scattered Chinese

the company had chased north of

the Punchbowl. The next day the

company attacked Hill 702, Yoke

Ridge, against "light resistance."

Brower had commanded his platoon for three months, but he and

his Marines had not yet closed with

the enemy since they always

seemed to be patrolling the division's western-most flank, keeping

an eye on the neighboring South

Korean division. As the skirmish

line approached Hill 702, the

North Koreans greeted it with a

barrage of mortar fire. Only mm-
4—

utes into the battle, Brower crumpled with multiple wounds in his

left leg, and he looked with dismay

at his bloody and misshapen left

knee. Pistol marksman, model

Marine platoon commander, dedicated to a career in the Marine

Corps, Brower ended his first battle on a stretcher carried by nervous Korean "chiggy bearers."

Although he eventually served his

full Korean tour as a semi-cripple,

his career in a rifie company ended

on 31 August 1951, and his damaged knee forced him into disability retirement in 1955. It had been

a short but final war for Second

Lieutenant Brower.

The fight gave few hints of the

ordeals ahead. On 1 September,

General Shepherd visited General

Thomas and found no cause for

alarm. Thomas felt confident that

the attacks that day would take

care of the Yoke Ridge problem.

After seeing Byers, they agreed

that X Corps had problems west of

the Punchbowl where the 2d

Infantry Division still had not

secured all of "Bloody Ridge"

despite the loss of 2,772 American

and attached Korean soldiers since

18 August. For the Marines, however, the attacks of 2 September

took only Hill 924 (but not Hill

1026) and consolidated the 7th

Marines defenses on Hill 602.

Throughout the day and the next,

the North Koreans bombarded

Yoke Ridge and mounted counterattacks of up to battalion-size. The

1st Marine Division's modest successes came in no small part from

the artillery fire from two 11th

Marines battalions and three Army

corps artillery battalions, which

fired 8,400 rounds on 1-2

September, an amount of fire that

exceeded the "Van Fleet Day of

Fire" for the five battalions (6,000

rounds). The battle drew in the

remaining battalions of the 1st

KMC Regiment and the 7th

Marines. With American Marines

holding the northern edge of Yoke

Ridge, the South Korean Marines

finally took Hills 924 and 1026,

which completed the mission. It

did not end enemy counterattacks

and shelling, but the two regiments

held the objective. The 7th Marines

suffered five dead and 75 wounded, the Korean Marines 70 dead

and missing and 274 wounded.

The North Koreans left behind

almost 600 bodies to be counted

and 40 prisoners. None of the

allies thought the victory had been

easy.

The capture of Yoke Ridge

might have been less costly if the

Marines had received more effective close air support, General

Shepherd made it one of the highest priority issues when he visited

the war zone from 27 August to 12

September. The Commanding

General, Fleet Marine Force,

Pacific (and likely Commandant)

met with the Major General

Christian F. Schilt, commander, and

Brigadier General William 0.

Brice, deputy commander of the

1st Marine Aircraft Wing. "A discussion of the close air support

problem revealed that unsatisfactory conditions still prevail in regard

to close air support for the 1st

Marine Division." Shepherd then

complained about the poor air

support to Van Fleet and Everest

even before he consulted with

Byers and Thomas on 1

September. Shepherd recruited

Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy,

Commander, Naval Forces, Far

East, to join a coalition of senior

officers who would force the issue

with Ridgway.

During his Korean inspection trlp, LtGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., Commanding

General, Fleet Marine Force, Pac/ic, left, discussed not only close air support, but

also the performance of the Sikorsky HRS-1 helicopter. Pictured to his left are

MajGen Christian F Schilt, Commanding General, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing,

LtCol George W. Herring, commander officer of Marine Helicopter Transport

Squadron 161, and newly-promoted MajGen William 0. Brice, the wing's deputy

commander.

Department of Defense (Photo) A131870

42
4

The battle of Yoke Ridge provided ample evidence that the Fifth

Air Force would not modify the

request system and that the real

purpose of the Joint Operations

Center was to prevent the diversion of fighter-bombers from

Operation Strangle, the campaign

against the Communist lines of

communication. The 1st Marine

Division had requested 26 aircraft

to support the attack of 1

September. Despite the fact that

the requests had been made 40

hours before the mission, only 12

aircraft were assigned. Requests

made by the forward and other air

controllers in the heat of combat

took more than an hour to produce aircraft on station. One 7th

Marines request for air strikes

against a heavy North Korean

counterattack had been canceled

by X Corps' G-2 because he did

not believe the counterattack was

real. Despite the mounting evidence—and much of it came from

the 2d Infantry Division's ordeals

to the west—the Fifth Air Force

made no concessions. The 1st

Marine Division's fire support

coordinator made the point in his

briefing for Shepherd: "Close air

support furnished by the Fifth Air

Force JOC was inadequate and

often not opportune."

Shell shortages, complex planning by both Eighth Army and X

Corps headquarters, and the determination of the North Koreans

brought a pause of six days to 1st

Marine Division operations. The

likely artillery shell expenditures of

any future offensive—combined

with road conditions between

Hongchon and the front—would

make an immediate offensive

beyond Yoke Ridge difficult. The

division goal was to stockpile 10

days of fire in artillery shells ("Van

Fleet days") at ammunition supply

post-60B, the ammunition dump

and distribution point run by X

Corps and division ordnance men

located 48 miles from Hongchon

and five miles from the gun line.

Until the roads dried and engineers

repaired the washouts and

strengthened the roadbed, the

round trip to ASP-60B took 25

hours. Some trucks still had to be

diverted to lift troops to and from

the front. In fact, the estimates for

shells fell short of the actual

expenditures, 24,000 tons (874,000

rounds) for X Corps in September

1951.

Intelligence officers believed

that X Corps would need every

shell it could find. The combat

around the Punchbowl revealed a

system of defensive fortifications

that had been built before 1951

and strengthened since April.

Much of the NKPA I Coips had

been withdrawn, but its replacement—the NKPA III Coips—was

one of the largest (30,000 soldiers)

and best-trained in the North

Korean army. Unlike the Chinese,

the North Koreans had plenty of

artillery, too, out-numbering

Marine artillery pieces in the

Punchbowl sector. In the Marine

division's zone of action the NKPA

1st Division appeared to be

assigned the bunker defense role

while the NKPA 45th Division

mounted counterattacks.

General Van Fleet did not win

approval of his amphibious hook

north to .Tongchon, but his planners produced some more modest

variants that might have put all or

part of the 1st Marine Division

within the ROK I Corps area and

closer to the air and naval gunfire

support that Task Force 77 could

provide. An offensive westward

from the coast might bring the

Marines and the ROK I Corps in

behind the fortified belt so wellmanned by the North Koreans. For

almost 10 days, Van Fleet and

Byers examined their contingency

plans and ruled them out as too

risky and subject at any moment to

another Ridgway veto. The result

of the operational paralysis was

that General Thomas learned on 8-

9 September that he would repossess the 1st Marines from corps

reserve, which would release the

The body of a Communist soldier lies atop a bunker captured by elements of the

7th Marines during the assault against Hill 673.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC380918

43
The "Chiggy Bearers"

They

could be found trudging along after every

Marine rifle company in Korea's mountains in the

summer of 1951. Small men, powered by muscular but thin legs, bent under the loads of their A-frames

or cbigae, struggling along with ammunition, rations,

and water, they were the "chiggy bearers." The 1st

Marine Division depended upon them to close the gap

between the supply points served by trucks and the

Marine companies engaged in battle. The "chiggy bearers" made it possible for the Marines to search out and

destroy the enemy.

Organized by the U. S. Eighth Army in 1950 and originally called the Civil Transportation Corps, this army of

Korean laborers provided the United Nations forces with

constructidn workers and pack bearers. For carrying

supplies, the Koreans relied upon their traditional

wooden A-frame packboard or chigae. Although

renamed the Korean Service Corps (KSC) in 1951, the

bearer corps remained the chigaebudae (A-Frame Army)

or "chiggy bearers" to the Marines.

The "chiggy bearers" had either been drafted into

their country's service or had volunteered. Members of

the KSC had to be medically unfit for duty in the South

Korean army or be over age 38. Marines often characterized the "chiggy bearers" as "elderly," but, in fact, the

KSC included men and boys who had convinced someone that they were unfit for frontline service in the South

Korean army. The South Korean government had almost

absolute power to commandeer people and things for

the war effort, but in reality the KSC competed with

other American-financed Korean service agencies for

personnel and could count only on unskilled workers

(often displaced farmers and farm laborers) for the bulk

of its manpower.

In many ways the lot of the average "chiggy bearer"

was not a happy one, however essential. His contract

said that he would carry up to a 50-pound load for as

many as 10 miles each day, but the bearers often carried

heavier loads for longer distances, especially if measured from valley floor to hilltop. The lines of bearers,

shepherded by Korean soldiers assigned as KSC

cadremen, often came under artillery and mortar fire.

American divisions did not keep track of KSC casualties.

Any man could be pressed into service as a bearer for

six months, and the living and medical conditions for

the bearers were no better than most refugee camps.

the end of the war an estimated 300,000 Koreans had

served a tour as a "chiggy bear," and at the height of the

fluid war of 1951 the South Korean government

impressed an average of 3,000 men and boys a week

into the KSC. A postwar accounting of KSC personnel

listed 2,064 porters killed in action, 2,448 missing in

action, and 4,282 wounded in action.

44

If a KSC "regiment"—with one assigned to each

American division—had efficient and honest officers,

the KSC bearer did not fare badly—provided he lived to

collect his pay. Clothing and food were not a problem,

which could not be said for his countrymen; the "chiggy bearer" ration was supposed to provide 3,500 calories a day and included a ration of 10 cigarettes. After

some strident protests in 1951, KSC pay scales moved

from' those set for the South Korean army toward those

paid other Koreans working as civilians for the United

Nations Command.

One American army logistician calculated that an

American infantry company required just about as many

bearers as its own strength, around 150-200. If so, the

1st Marine Division had a "chiggy bearer" shortage since

it had only 1,922 KSC members in support in May 1951.

The bearer "gap," however, applied to all of United

Nations Command. By war's end the KSC had a paper

strength of 133,000, but its "A-frame strength" was about

100,000 or roughly one bearer for every six American

and allied soldiers in Korea. Like everyone else on the

United Nations side of the war, the "chiggy bearers" carried more than their prescribed load.

Del
5th Marines from the Kansas Line

for additional offensive operations

east of the Punchbowl. Except for

the 8th ROK Division on Thomas'

right flank, the rest of X Corps

would seize another hill mass soon

called "Heartbreak Ridge." Byers

expected the Marines to resume

the attack on 11 September.

With only 48 hours to mount an

attack, Thomas had little alternative but to look again to the 7th

Marines to lead the advance on

Kanmubong Ridge, the hill mass

directly north of Yoke Ridge and

the division's next objective. The

concept of the operation envisioned a two-phase operation that

would begin with the 7th Marines

seizing the two most dominant

peaks at the eastern edge of the

ridge, Hills 673 and 749. To eliminate a transverse ridge spur (Hill

680), a secondary attack would

strike directly north from the Hays

Line on Yoke Ridge. This mission

went to 3d Battalion, 7th Marines,

commanded by Lieutenant Colonel

Bernard T. Kelly, with the main

attack to 1st Battalion, 7th Marines,

under Lieutenant Colonel James G.

Kelly, relatively untouched by the

fight for Yoke Ridge. When the 7th

Marines had secured the Hill 673-

Hill 749 area, the 1st Marines

would come forward and continue

the attack up Kanmubong's long

axis, "ridge-running," to capture a

series of peaks designated (east to

west) Hills 812, 980, 1052, and

1030. The scheme of maneuver

would allow tanks to fire across

the front of the advancing troops

and artillery fire (even naval gunfire) to converge in concentrations

from the firing positions to the

south and southeast. The advances

had to be supported by hundreds

of "chiggy bearers" since there

were no roads of any kind to bring

the ammunition, food, and water

forward in any other way.

Fighting from cleverly-concealed and strongly-built bunkers

and trench systems, the North

Koreans made the 7th Marines (all

three battalions) pay dearly in

three days of fighting, 34 dead and

321 wounded. The assault companies that crossed the line of departure in the morning fog of 11

September did not expect a walkover. Despite the hour of intense

artillery preparation, the North

Korean defenders fought with

unflagging tenacity until killed.

Each bunker system came ringed

with mines and booby-traps, and

Korean mortar shells and grenades

showered crippling fragments

across every contested position.

Long-range heavy machine gun

fire from higher up Kanmubong

Ridge took its toll among the

Marine assault units that struggled

forward with flamethrowers and

satchel charges.

Once again dark memories of

Iwo Jima and Okinawa came to the

veterans. More heirs of the

Japanese military tradition than the

Soviet, the North Koreans showed

no hesitation in launching counterattacks large and small and at

unexpected times and from unexpected directions. Although the

enemy did not overrun any Marine

positions, only quick shooting and

quick thinking broke the backs of

the attacks with bullets and

artillery shells. Although the 3d

Battalion took its objective with no

assistance, Colonel Nickerson had

to commit his 2d Battalion to aid

the 1st Battalion on 12 September.

Only a converging two-battalion

attack—the companies in column—finally seized Hill 673, and

the subsequent 2d Battalion attack

on Hill 749 fought itself Out far

short of the crest. In all the fighting

tank fire proved decisive when the

bunkers could be identified and

fired upon, line-of-sight. Many

bunkers, however, could have

been reached by close air support,

45

conspicuously absent. The key

ground maneuver came from a

company of the 1st Battalion that

made an undetected night march

to reach a poorly-defended entrant

to Hill 673, then assaulting through

a breach in the North Korean

defenses. Nevertheless, the 2d

Battalion's attack on Hill 749

stalled with the three rifle companies reduced, scattered, and battling back small counterattacks in

the dark before a battalion of the

1st Marines replaced them on 13

September. So hard-pressed and

scattered were the Marines of 2d

Battalion, 7th Marines, that the battalion misreported its location and

gave Nickerson the impression that

his regiment had taken Hill 749,

which it had not. Moreover, the

approaches to the hill were still

held by some very combative

North Koreans. Assuming operational control of the 2d Battalion,

the 1st Marines, under Colonel

Thomas A. Wornham, picked up

the responsibility for occupying

Hill 749. Only a helicopter reconnaissance proved that Hill 749

would have to be taken first.

The logistical burden of supporting five committed infantry

battalions (the situation on 13

September) proved too much for

the "chiggy bearers" of the Korean

Service Corps 103d Division, but

the Marines now had an alternative

for the emergency resupply of

ammunition and medical goods

and the evacuation of the seriously-wounded: the Marine Corps

helicopter. Although the light helicopters of Marine Observation

Squadron 6 (VMO-6) had been a

fixture in operations since August

1950, the battle for Kanmubong

Ridge opened a new era in Marine

Corps history, the combat employment of helicopters as an integral

part of Marine air-ground operations. General Thomas and

Colonel Krulak had both played
Second Lieutenant George H. Ramer

B

orn in 1927 at Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, he

enlisted in the Navy in 1944. After the war, he

entered Bucknell University, from which he graduated in 1950 with a degree in Political Science and

History. While attending Bucknell, he enrolled in the

Marine Corps Reserve Platoon Leader's program and

was commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserve. He

taught high school civics and history in Lewisburg.

Pennsylvania, before being called to active duty in

January 1951 at his own request.

As a platoon leader with Company I, 3d Battalion, 7th

Marines, in Korea, his bravery in covering the withdrawal of his platoon on Kanmubong Ridge on 12

September 1951 was recognized by the posthumous

award of the Medal of Honor. His citation reads, in part:

Second Lieutenant Ramer fearlessly led his men up

the steep slopes and, although he and the majority of his unit were wounded during the ascent,

boldly continued to spearhead the assault. . . . he

staunchly carried the attack to the top, personally

annihilated one enemy bunker with grenade and

carbine fire and captured the objective with his

remaining eight men.

Unable to hold the position against an immediate,

overwhelming hostile counterattack, he ordered

his group to withdraw and single-handedly fought

the enemy to furnish cover for his men and for the

evacuation of three fatally wounded Marines.

Severely wounded a second time, Second

Lieutenant Ramer . . . courageously manned his In 1963, a facility for physical conditioning at Marine

post until the hostile troops overran his position Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, was named in his memand he fell mortally wounded. ory.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)

key roles in developing the concept of vertical envelopment and

fighting for funds to procure and

test helicopters in HMX-1, the

experimental helicopter squadron

created at Marine Corps Air Station,

Quantico, Virginia. HMX-1 gave

birth in January 1951 to Marine

Transport Helicopter Squadron 161

(HMR-161), commanded by a helicopter pioneer, Lieutenant Colonel

George W. Herring. Herring

brought HMR-161 to Korea in

August 1951 ready to make its

combat debut under the sharp eye

of Krulak, who had made vertical

envelopment his latest magnificent

obsession. Herring's squadron of

300 Marines and 15 Sikorsky HRS1 transport helicopters arrived at

the airstrip (X-83) near the division

command post at Sohwa-ri and

moved in with VMO-6. Anticipating some employment in the

weeks ahead, Krulak and Herring

prepared the squadron for operations in combat landing zones and

declared it ready for commitment

on 12 September. Thomas told

HMR-161 to carry supplies to the

embattled Marines near Hill 793.

Operation Windmill I on 13

September lasted only about three

hours, but its impact stretched into

the future by years. In the short

term it made sure that 2d Battalion,

46

1st Marines, commanded by

Lieutenant Colonel Franklin B.

Nihart, faced another day's battle

with plenty of ammunition, water,

and rations and without the burden of casualties. The first lift

brought in a helicopter support

team from the 2d Battalion to run

the landing zone, and the remaining 27 flights delivered nine tons of

cargo and evacuated 74 casualties.

Not one helicopter was lost to

ground fire or accident. A similar

resupply mission would have

required almost 400 Korean bearers and a full day to accomplish.

Unlike an earlier parachute resupply mission to the Korean Marines,
4'

-,——IlII.

;4 'I -

Whirlybirds

hen Marine Transport Helicopter Squadron

(HMR) 161 deployed to Korea, the squadron

took with it an aircraft that pushed the technical state-of-the-art in helicopter design into a new frontier. Designated the HRS-1, the Sikorsky-designed and

built helicopter had endured the inevitable ups and

downs that characterized the introduction of any pioneering aircraft. Without government contracts, the

Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the Vought-Sikorsky

Corporation, Stratford, Connecticut, produced an aircraft

designated the S-55, first flown in 1949. Initially marketing the aircraft as a commercial utility helicopter, Igor

Sikorsky hoped the S-55 could compete with the Piasecki

H-21 (or PD-22), which had been adopted by the U.S. Air

Force for its air rescue service. The Navy, however, was

in the hunt for a general-purpose helicopter that could be

adopted for shipboard use. Naval aviators liked the S-55

because of its economical design, modest size, and serviceability.

Redesignated the HO4S-1 in its naval model, the S-55

represented at least two major engineering advances: the

addition of a tail rotor for greater stability in flight and a

front-mounted Pratt & Whitney R-1340-57 engine that

could generate a respectable 600 horsepower. The engine

placement helped solve a nagging problem of weight-distribution and flight characteristics. Prior helicopter models placed the engine directly under the rotor-blades, a

design that gravely limited any so-designed helicopter to

47

very light loads and insured flight instability. The frontmounted engine dramatically increased the helicopter's

carrying capacity and simplified maintenance since the

HRS-1 had clam-shaped nose doors that provided easy

access to the engine for the ground crew mechanics. The

new design also improved vertical flight stability.

In the earliest stage of evaluation, 1948-1949, Navy and

Marine Corps officers, encouraged by Sikorsky, saw capabilities the helicopter did not yet have, even under optimum weather and altitude conditions. The original

requirement the naval aviators placed on the helicopter

was a 10-man load (225 pounds per Marine) to be carried

150 miles. The requirements shrank, as it became more

and more obvious that the HRS-1 was not going to be a

two-ton-plus lifter. All the helicopter's other characteristics, however, made it the aircraft of choice for the

Bureau of Aeronautics, and the Marine Corps joined the

program in August 1950, with an initial order of 40 aircraft.

The HRS-ls that went to Korea came into service with

a gross weight rating (7,000 pounds at sea level) about

1,000 pounds slighter than originally designed with a

payload reduced to 1,420 pounds under optimal flight

conditions. Its troop load dropped from 10 to four to six.

The helicopter's maximum speed remained at 90 knots,

but its range had dropped by half to 70-mile round trips.

Nevertheless, the HRS-1 was not a "whirlybird" of disappointment, but promise.

National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-433347

w
t4

none of the cargo drifted off to

places and users unknown. The

use of externally-slung, quickrelease loads in cargo nets made

easy. For the corpsmen and

wounded Marines, helicopter evacuation meant that a hard-hit casualty could be transported to a medical clearing station ("battalion

med") in 30 minutes, not doomed

to a day-long stretcher ride. Even

without accumulated statistics,

medical personnel could already

tell that medical evacuation helicopters would save lives and boost

morale.

The plan for the 1st Marines to

attack up Kanmubong Ridge continued to unravel despite the helicopter resupply and the commitment of two battalions, the 2d

Battalion to take Hill 749 and the

3d Battalion to seize the ridgeline

across the Soyang on Nihart's right

flank. Nihart's battalion finally

cleared Hill 749 after sharp fighting

one company at a time with only a

platoon in battle by the evening of

14 September. Before Nihart could

mount another attack the next day,

the North Koreans deluged his

Marines with heavy artillery and

mortar fire, pinning them to their

Hill 749 positions. The North

Korean regiment with accompanying artillery tried to throw the 2d

Battalion off Hill 749 for four hours

during the night of 15-16

September and left almost 200

bodies and many blood trails

behind when it withdrew, but the

battle cost the 2d Battalion almost

200 casualties and limited it as an

offensive threat. Two Korean

deserters reported that their regiment had 1,200 casualties.

Wornham now had to commit

his reserve 1st Battalion to ensure

that the complete Hill 673-Hill 749

complex was secure, leaving

Thomas only one unbloodied regiment (the 5th Marines) to assault

the heights of Kanmubong Ridge.

At the cost of more than 800 casualties in the 7th and 1st Marines,

the 1st Marine Division had only

seized the ground identified five

days before as the departure point

for the more demanding advance

up the spine of the ridge. Now it

was the turn of Colonel Richard G.

Weede's 5th Marines to continue

the attack.

The battle of Kanmubong Ridge

continued for four more days (16-

20 September) and ended with the

5th Marines reduced by some 250

casualties and only Hill 812 securely under Marine control. The commanders of Weede's two assault

battalions believed they could also

have taken Hill 980, but it would

have been difficult to hold with the

peak (Hill 1052) still under North

Korean control. The problems of

Communist enfilade fire from the

north simply got worse as the

Marines worked their way to the

west along the ridge. The

Lieutenant Colonel Donald R.

Kennedy's 3d Battalion in the left

zone of action had its flank protected by Yoke Ridge and by tank

fire, but the 2d Battalion working

along the opposite slope enjoyed

no advantages in cover and friendly fire, except close air support—

which did not arrive. Staggered by

its mounting casualties, the 2d

Battalion stormed Hill 812 on the

evening of 17 September. Without

physical contact, the two battalions

went into perimeter defenses,

expecting North Korean counterattacks from the heights to their front

or, in the case of the 2d Battalion,

from the broken ground to the

A wounded squad leader of the 5th Marines ensures that a North Korean

emplacement no longer threatens the advance along Kanmubong Ridge. The

September attacks into the ridge mass north of the Punchbowl produced the most

intense combat since the Chinese Ffth Offensive of April and May.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A156867

48
Sergeant Frederick W. Mausert III

B

orn in 1930 in Cambridge,

New York, he enlisted in

the Marine Corps in 1948.

Following recruit training at Parris

Island, South Carolina, he was stationed at Cherry Point and Camp

Lejeune, North Carolina, before

going to Korea, where he participated in campaigns in South and

Central Korea. Serving as a squad

leader with Company B, 1st

Battalion, 7th Marines, he was

wounded on 10 September 1951.

Two days later at Songnap-yong

(Punchbowl), he was killed in a

courageous action for which he

was awarded the Meal of Honor.

His citation reads, in part:

Sergeant Mausert unhesitatingly

left his covered position and ran

through a heavily mined and

fire-swept area to bring back

two critically wounded men to the comparative safety of the lines.

Staunchly refusing evacuation despite a painful head wound. . . [he]

led his men in a furious bayonet charge against the first of a literally impregnable series of bunkers. Stunned and knocked to the

ground when another bullet struck his helmet, he regained his feet

and resumed his drive, personally silencing the machine-gun and

leading his men in elimination several other emplacements in the

area. Promptly reorganizing his unit for a renewed fight to the final

objective on top of the ridge, Sergeant Mausert. . . still refused aid

and continued spearheading the assault to the topmost machine-gun

nest and bunkers, the last bulwark of the fanatic aggressors. Leaping

into the wall of fire, he destroyed another machine-gun with

grenades before he was mortally wounded by bursting grenades and

machine-gun fire.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)

Department of Defense

north and east. Acutely aware of

his danger and reduced supply circumstances, the 2d Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel

Houston "Tex" Stiff, asked for helicopter resupply. In Windmill II, the

helicopters of HMR-161 delivered

six tons of scarce ammunition and

engineering supplies in less than

an hour on the afternoon of 19

September.

Just to hold his line across the

ridge line, Colonel Weede had to

bring up his uncommitted 1st

Battalion, which fell in on Stiff's

right and rear and allowed the

hard-pressed 2d Battalion to consolidate its hold on Hill 812 and to

find the 3d Battalion on its left.

Even with the 5th Marines' lines

more or less connected, the North

Koreans made life miserable for

the troops by sniping with longrange, high velocity antitank

artillery guns and by attacking any

patrols or outposts pushed forward

of the main line of resistance. Two

companies of the 2d Battalion

became embattled for two days

over control of "The Rock," a granite knob about 700 yards west of

Hill 812. In a close-quarters melee

49

of almost 24 hours, the Marines

finally chased off the last of the

Korean raiders. The Marine victors

found 60 dead North Koreans scattered among the shattered rocks,

but the victory cost the 5th Marines

five dead and almost 50 wounded.

Major Gerald P. Averill, the battalion operations officer, watched

Marines shoot fleeing Koreans

from the off-hand position while

one Marine took photographs of

the Korean corpses.

The battle for "The Rock"

seemed almost symbolic since it

had been a no-quarters fight for a

piece of ground of little tactical significance. It also was the last part

of the battle for Kanmubong Ridge,

for General Van Fleet on 20

September ordered Byers to stop

the offensive. The simultaneous

battle of Heartbreak Ridge to the

west of the Punchbowl had produced few results except soaring

casualties in the 2d Infantry

Division, and Van Fleet wanted all

of X Corps fire support committed

to that struggle. In addition, he

approved of Byers' plan to shift the

8th ROK Division since the division—one of the better units in the

South Korean army—had taken its

objectives east of the Soyang River,

though at prohibitive cost. Only in

disgruntled retrospect did the

Marines realize that they had

fought in their last division offensive in Korea. The relief of the 8th

ROK Division simply meant that

the South Koreans would• shift

from the eastern to the western

flank of X COrps.

The change meant that the 1st

Marine Division assumed about

five miles more of front in a sector

already 15 miles in length. With

the 1st KMC Regiment still holding

the northern lip of the Punchbowl

and the 5th Marines defending part

of Kanmubong Ridge and the

Soyang River valley, the 1st

Marines assumed the mission of
occupying the sector east of the

river since the 7th Marines were

the corps reserve. To take possession of its sector the 1st Marines

had to control Hill 854 and Hill

884. Lieutenant Colonel Foster C.

LaHue's 3d Battalion found to its

dismay that the 21st ROK Regiment

occupied the summit of Hill 854,

but that the North Koreans still

held almost all the northern face.

For two days the battalion attacked

and ran the survivors off, but the

Marines lost 11 men to uncharted

South Korean minefields and 50

more casualties in the fighting.

LaHue's requests for essential air

strikes were answered too late or

not at all, again bringing the close

air support issue to a boiling point

with Thomas and Krulak.

Marine helicopters, however,

provided one of the bright spots in

the sector extension. To buy some

time for another 1st Marines battalion to move to Hill 884 and to

explore the possible routes to the

hill—and any enemy ambushes or

friendly minefields—Thomas ordered the division's Reconnaissance Company to move by helicopter to the summit of Hill 884

50

and to establish a patrol base there

as well as replace the South

Koreans. On 21 September, HMR161 carried the first fully operational combat unit into a potential

battle. Despite poor landing sites

and marginal weather, the helicopters delivered 224 Marines and

almost nine tons on supplies and

equipment in four hours. The

troops disembarked by "hot rope,"

a rappelling technique that does

not require a snap-ring hook-up;

the Marines and accompanying

load slung from each aircraft could

be delivered in 90 seconds after an

eight minute flight from X-83, 15

miles away. General Thomas and

Colonel Krulak complimented all

hands with glowing messages. Van

Fleet and Byers sent their own

congratulations, fully realizing the

potential of helicopter operations.

The next operations, Blackbird on

27 September and Bumblebee on

11 October, produced mixed

results, but Blackbird proved that

HMR-161 could do limited nightwork, and Bumblebee demonstrated that HMR-161 could move an

entire battalion into a non-hostile

landing zone. A helicopter-mobile

briefing became a standard stop,

dictated by Van Fleet, for VIPs,

which included the Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General

Omar N. Bradley, USA. After his 1

October briefing, Bradley, no fan

of the Marine Corps, admitted to

his staff and accompanying journalists that the Marines might have

discovered an operational technique that might change the conduct of land warfare. The September fighting that might not have

been Iwo Jima II for the 1st Marine

Division, but Bradley's faint praise

gave a little more meaning to the

battle for Yoke Ridge and

Kanmubong Ridge. The surviving

Marines felt that strange mixture of

grief, guilt, relief, and satisfaction

of veterans. They had upheld the

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A157221

A rifleman of the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, disembarks from a Sikorsky HRS-1

helicopter of Marine Helicopter Transport Squadron 161 during Operation

Bumblebee. The operation allowed two Marine infantry battalions to exchange

positions on Hill 702 by air4ft not overland march.
reputation of the 1st Marine

Division and X Corps for never

shirking the most dangerous and

onerous missions.

With the 1st Marine Division in

place in its part of the Hays-Kansas

Line, the division could assess its

latest month of Korean combat.

First, the North Korean army had

proved more skilled and determined than the Chinese, but not

immortal. The division intelligence

section estimated that the Marines

had inflicted about 10,000 casualties on the enemy. The number of

enemy bodies actually counted

numbered 2,799, and the Marines

had taken 557 prisoners. Measured

against its most taxing battles in

World War II, Peleliu and

Okinawa, the 1st Marine Division

losses, compared with the casualties inflicted, appeared acceptable:

227 killed in action, and 2,125

wounded in action for a total of

2,452 casualties. Almost all the

casualties occurred in the four

infantry regiments and their attachments. The single most costly 24-

hour period (39 killed and 463

wounded) was 13-14 September in

the first phase of the attack on

Kanmubong Ridge, which involved two battalions each of both

the 1st and 7th Marines.

What gave the battles for Yoke

Ridge and Kanmubong Ridge a

special quality was the discouraging impact of the geography. If

one stands along the Demilitarized

Zone today—as the author did in

1994 and 1998—in the sectors in

which the Marines fought around

the Punchbowl, the mountain

ranges stretch off without visible

end into North Korea. It is difficult

not to feel that there must be a better way to conduct war than to

mount one attack after another

against those forbidding (and still

fortified) mountains. Surely the

same thoughts came to the Marines

of 1951 as they felt the first chill

While battles still raged to the

western zones of I and IX Corps

and most of X Corps focused on

the capture of Heartbreak Ridge,

the 1st Marine Division secured its

own portion of the new Minnesota

Marines' bunkers started to include

stoves and makeshift furniture

Kansas Line.

winds of winter on the Hays- Line. For the Marines the front

became the Kansas Line bent,

twisted, and renamed to include

the terrain captured on the Yoke

and Kanmubong Ridges. The signs

of approaching winter were many.

The distribution of cold weather

clothing and equipment went on

throughout the division, and the

51

Private First Class Edward Gomez

Born

in 1932 in Omaha,

Nebraska, he attended

Omaha High School before

enlisting in the Marine Corps

Reserve in 1949. In Korea, he participated in three operations and

was wounded in June 1951. With

a strong premonition of death, he

wrote his mother in September: "I

am writing this on the possibility

that I may die in this next assault

• I am not sorry I died,

because I died fighting for my

country and that's the Number

One thing in everyone's life, to

keep his home and country from

being won over by such things as

communism . . . .Tell Dad I died

like the man he wanted me to

be."

On 14 September, he was killed

on Kanmuhong Ridge, while serving as an ammunition bearer with

Company E, 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, and saving the lives of four of his

squad members. His Medal of Honor citation reads, in part:

Boldly advancing with his squad in support of a group of riflemen

assaulting a series of strongly fortified and bitterly defended hostile

positions on Hill 749. Private First Class Gomez consistently exposed

himself to the withering barrage to keep his machine-gun supplied

with ammunition during the drive forward to seize the objective. As

his squad deployed to meet an imminent counterattack, he voluntarily moved down an abandoned trench to search for a new location

for the gun and, when a hostile grenade landed between himself and

his weapon, shouted a warning to those around him as he grasped

the activated charge in his hand. Determined to save his comrades,

he unhesitatingly chose to sacrifice himself and, diving into the ditch

with the deadly missile, absorbed the shattering violence of the

explosion in his own body.

After the war, a plaque was dedicated in his honor at the Omaha Boys

Club. —captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)
Corporal Joseph

Vittori

B

orn in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1929, he attended high school and worked

on his father's farm before enlisting

for three years in the Marine Corps

in 1946. After being discharged, he

joined the Marine Corps Reserve in

1950 for an indefinite tour of active

duty. He trained at Camp Lejeune,

North Carolina, until January 1951,

when he joined Company F, 2d

Battalion, 1st Marines, in Korea.

Having been wounded in June near

Yanggu, he was killed in the fight

for Hill 749 in the Punchbowl on 15

September 1951 and became the

second Marine of 2d Battalion, 1st

Marines, within a 48-hour period to

receive the Medal of Honor. His

citation reads, in part:

Corporal Vittori boldly

rushed through the withdrawing troops with two

other volunteers from his

reserve platoon and

plunged directly into the

midst of the enemy.

Overwhelming them in a

fierce hand-to-hand struggle, he enabled his company to consolidate its positions. . . he assumed position under the devastating

barrage and, fighting a single-hand battle, leaped from

one flank to the other, covering each foxhole in turn

as casualties continued to

mount, manning a machinegun when the gunner was

struck down . . . With the

situation becoming extremely critical. . . and foxholes left practically void by

dead and wounded for a

distance of 100 yards,

Corporal Vittori continued

his valiant stand, refusing to

give ground as the enemy

penetrated to within feet of

his position. . . . Mortally

wounded by enemy machine-gun and rifle bullets

while persisting in his magnificent defense of the sector, where approximately

200 enemy dead were

found the following morning, Corporal Vittori

undoubtedly prevented the

entire battalion position

from collapsing.

In 1986 there was a parade and

memorial service in his honor, with

a park named after him in his hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts.

Corporal Jack A.

Davenport

n ardent athlete and a Golden Gloves champion, he

was born in 1931 in Kansas

City, Missouri, and enlisted in the

Marine Corps in July 1950. Sent to

Korea that December, he took part

in four successive operations. Then,

as a squad leader with Company G,

3d Battalion, 5th Marines, he died in

a valorous action at the Punchbowl

on 21

September 1951. His citation for the

52

Medal of Honor read, in part:

While expertly directing the

defense of his position during a probing attack by hostile forces attempting to

infiltrate the area, Corporal

Davenport, acting quickly

when an enemy grenade

fell into the foxhole which

he was occupying with

another Marine, skillfully

located the deadly projectile

in the dark and, undeterred

by the personal risk

involved, heroically threw

himself over the live missile,

thereby saving his companion from serious injury or

possible death. His cool and

resourceful leadership were

contributing factors in the

successful repulse of the

enemy attack.

The man in that same foxhole

was Private First Class Walter L.

Barfoot, and, due to Davenport's

heroic self-sacrifice, he survived the

war. Later, a gymnasium at Camp

Pendleton, California, was named in

honor of Corporal Davenport.

—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR

(Ret)

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A4971
made from ammunition and equipment boxes. American fighting

men make their lives as comfortable as possible; the Marines had

no desire for a Valley Forge in the

Taebaek Mountains. They also followed their instructions to make

the Minnesota Line defensible

without unnecessary casualties or

the commitment of reserve forces.

For the first time division staff officers reported how many sandbags

the troops filled and placed and

how many yards of barbed wire

they strung in front of their positions.

Even without some progress in

the armistice negotiations—and

the plenary sessions did not

resume until 25 October at a village along the Kaesong-Masan

road called Panmunjom—the onset

of winter alone would have given

urgency to the 1st Marine

Division's energetic development

of its defensive area, some 14 miles

across and 30 miles deep. The division could hardly afford to take its

defensive mission lightly. On its

left the 11th ROK Division showed

some reluctance to either man the

boundary or patrol it very carefully, which concerned the division

staff. The U.S. 7th Infantry Division

in the ridges west of the

Punchbowl did better. The only

advantage to the west was that the

terrain and corridors offered less

opportunity for the North Koreans.

The division had few troops to

spare since Byers decreed that one

of the American Marine regiments

would be the corps reserve and

occupy positions 17 miles to the

rear, but at least the reserve (initially the 7th Marines) could conduct rear area security patrols.

After trying several combinations,

Thomas committed six battalions

on the main line of resistance and

held three battalions in either regimental and/or division reserve.

The division reserve battalion had

the mission of patrolling the

Kansas Line and protecting the

main supply routes.

The principal objective of the

operations along the Minnesota

Line was to drive the North

Koreans away from their observation posts, combat outposts, and

forward slope bunker defenses,

and the Marines made major

advances in this terrain cleansing

in October and November 1951.

The 11th Marines, occasionally

rcinforced by corps artillery, provided the umbrella of counterbattery fire that kept the Communist

artillery in its caves. Their fire support burden eased with the arrival

in January 1952 of an artillery battalion (four firing batteries) of

Korean Marines; the U.S. Marine

artillery advisors who had trained

the battalion accompanied it to the

front. The war on the bunkers,

however, required much more

than saturation shelling, given the

strength of the Korean positions.

The Marines went after the

bunkers with 90mm tank guns,

75mm recoilless rifles, rocket

launchers, and flamethrowers, supplemented by snipers with .50-caliber machine guns and scoped

rifles. Some of the operations did

not require close combat, but in

other cases only heavy combat

patrols, sometimes with tanks,

would suffice. Such actions—night

or day— cost some American lives.

The Marines killed many more

Koreans.

53

• Some of the raids took the

Marines time and again back to terrain they had learned to hate in

September. Hill 1052 on

Kanmubong (a North Korean

strong point and observation post)

became a favorite target, and "The

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas talks with MajGen Clovis E. Byers, USA, X Corps cornmander, center, and Gen Ornar N. Bradley, USA, during the Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff's visit to Marine frontlines. Among the tactics and problems

discussed, Gen Bradley made note of the Marines' unique use of the helicopter in

battle.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A132072
a•

'F,

k.. w

The Year of the Boot

n the autumn of 1951, the 1st Marine Division

received a new piece of cold weather clothing: the

boot, combat, rubber, insulated or Insulated Rubber

Boot. No one called it anything else but "Mickey Mouse

Boots" since their outsized shape and black color gave

the wearer some podiatric similarity to Hollywood's

famous rodent. Other names for the boots were less

complimentary, but compared with the "shoe-pacs" they

replaced, the Mickey Mouse boots quickly proved their

value in preventing frozen feet.

The U.S. Army had conducted experiments with a

cold weather boot during and after World War II, but by

1949 it had abandoned the effort since all the experimental prototypes did not meet Army standards for

long-distance marching. Less concerned about the

marching requirement, the Navy and Marine Corps conducted their own boot tests, 1948-1951, and concluded

that one boot had merit. The field tests included wear

in all sorts of cold weather and terrain conditions, and

the Marines hiked in the boot and found it at least

acceptable as winter footwear since no one marched

very fast or far in inclimate conditions anyway. The

Mickey Mouse boots arrived in Korea in August 1951.

The design of the insulated rubber boot was based

on the concept that body-heat from the feet could be

stored as a vapor barrier between two layers of feltlined rubber. The airtight boot allowed the wearer to

keep his feet warm with captive air, created by the

wearer's own movement. The vapor barrier principle

and the boot's all-rubber construction meant that cold

and moisture from outside the boot would be defeated

before they reached a Marine's precious feet. Only a

boot puncture by shrapnel or some sharp object could

ruin the boot's airtight integrity, and the boot, like early

automobile tires, came with a patching kit.

Mickey Mouse boots, however, could turn the

unwary and careless Marine into a frostbite casualty.

The boots trapped more than heat. They also trapped

sweat, and even if the feet remained warm, the moisture—with its ability to transfer heat four times more

rapidly than dry air—accumulated, too. If a Marine did

not stay on the move, the feet cooled, and the more

sweat-soaked one's socks, the faster one's feet froze.

One hour of inactivity could bring on an attack of frostbite. The standing operating procedure, therefore, for

Mickey Mouse bootwear included a provision that each

Marine had to dry his feet and change to dry socks at

least once a day and preferably more often.

The next worse thing to having frozen feet, however, was preventing frozen feet. Changing socks and drying feet in the open air of a Korean winter tested the

staunchest Marines. Units tried to establish a warming

tent of some sort where the machocistic ritual could be

performed with a hint of comfort and adequate time.

Fortunately, the static winter war of 1951-1952 allowed

such luxuries and cases of frozen feet in the 1st Marine

Division dropped dramatically. The Mickey Mouse

boots had come to stay.

Department of Defense Photo (usMc) A167955

Rock" received a new name that

suggested the permanency of its

final residents, "Luke the Gook's

Castle." Marine patrols prowled the

unoccupied terrain at night to discourage infiltrating Koreans. The

frontline battalions had no monopoly on armed nighttime strolls. The

rear areas of the 1st Marine

Division (like those throughout

Korea) were not safe from guerrillas, who preyed on road transport.

The greater threat was teams of

Communist artillery observers who

infiltrated the 11th Marines positions and called in counterbattery

fire of considerable accuracy, if not

heavy weight of shell. Marine gun

batteries lost both men and field

pieces in such shoots. The rear

area patrols used one capability to

advantage: helicopter transportation. With every mission, the work

of HMR-161 became more routine,

and only the lift of entire battalions

to and from the main line of resis54

tance now justified codenames and

special publicity. The squadron

also received an aggressive new

commander, Colonel Keith B. McCutcheon, whose work in aerial

innovation had made him a legendary figure in the Corps.

None of the virtuoso campaign

against the North Korean bunker

system could reach the growing

Communist in-depth system of fortifications, all duly observed and

photographed by aerial observers.
• a •sa

i, TCEt4a LW.:

_: r"•, •.4j1

I I -

ii —.

.!4 "

Naval gunfire—8- and 16-inch

shells from cruisers and the battleship New Jersey (BB 62)—contributed to the bunker-busting, but

not enough. The missing ingredient was close air support. Two

Marine aircraft groups operated

fighter-bombers within an hour's

flight from the front, but they seldom came when called, and their

Air Force and Navy comrades

seemed even less available as they

flew off to bomb railroads, tunnels,

and roads off a target list dictated

by Fifth Air Force.

General Thomas had grown

ever unhappier with the lack of

close air support. When he learned

that Van Fleet had told Byers on 28

September that X Corps requested

too much air, he ordered his staff

to do a study on the lack of close

air support in the September battles. His anger grew with his division's casualties. As a veteran of

World War I, Thomas had his heart

hardened early, but he never measured success by counting his own

losses. He knew that the fights for

Yoke Ridge and Kanmubong Ridge

would have been much easier with

Marine air on call. His own anger

was fueled by deaths that touched

him personally. One was the loss

of his G-1, Colonel Wesley M.

"Cutie" Platt, on 27 September. The

most senior Marine officer to die in

Korea, Platt had earned a special

place in the Corps' history as one

of the heroes of the defense of

Wake Island. Now a shell ended a

distinguished career and a special

person. Thomas also knew that his

division included as many as 20

sons of Marine generals and

colonels, all eager to prove their

own mettle. He wrote his wife that

he worried about these "juniors"

constantly, but could hardly ruin

their careers and lives by protecting them. When one of the

"juniors," First Lieutenant John C.

Breckinridge died in combat,

Thomas immediately pulled First

Lieutenant James Breckinridge out

of his infantry battalion and did so

without regret since he wanted the

family line of Major General James

55

C. Breckinridge to survive Korea.

The September battles had also

turned Thomas into a critic of the

Truman Administration, and he

wrote his brother that the concept

of "limited war" was ridiculous.

China should be ruined as a

Communist revolutionary power,

and it would be easier to do it

now, not later. The administration's

concept of limited war offended

him because "the wounds and

worse acquired by Americans here

had a real one hundred percent

appearance . . . our guys are off

base in D.C. and plenty."

Against this emotional background, Thomas again challenged

the U.S. Air Force. Thomas fired

the first shot in the new war with a

letter asserting that his September

casualties could have been reduced with timely close air support. He forwarded a study done

by his staff that showed how much

air he had requested and how little

he had received. The 1st Marine

Division had made 271 requests

and had only 187 granted. More

Ma rifle foot patrols ranged farther into enemy territory during October, while tank-infantry raids in company strength,

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A157015

supported by air and artillery, were launched at every

opportunity.
A

fter an ocean voyage to California, three or four

days of out-processing, and an air flight to

Tennessee, Corporal Jack Davis, U.S. Marine

Corps Reserve, returned to Nashville in March 1952. He

had been gone almost two years, and he was not quite

20 years old. In his well-tailored green service uniform,

bearing ribbons for his two Purple Hearts, a Presidential

Unit Citation, and a row of Korean service ribbons, Jack

marched across the tarmac towards his waiting parents

and older brother. They did not recognize him. He had

been the only Marine in uniform on the plane. He also

had lost 30 pounds and still sported "a Joe Stalin" mustache. Jack walked past his mother and father, then

turned back to them: "You don't know your own son?"

As Jack recalled, "mild bedlam ensued for a few

moments."

After three or four days at home, however, Jack realized that he was having serious difficulty adjusting to life

outside a combat zone. His brother went off to classes

at Vanderbilt, and his parents both had full-time jobs.

He even felt strange driving a new Nash Rambler after

months of driving a Marine truck on Korean country

roads. After about a week, he went out and found a job

driving a big truck for a local construction company,

and for the first time he felt mildly comfortable, earning

75 cents an hour, and enjoying the company of hard

men doing hard work. He did not miss being shelled.

His parents found his job puzzling and worried about

his sanity, but his new job started Jack on the road to

normalcy. "The Marine Corps does a marvelous job

making civilians into warriors, but then to turn those

persons back to civilian life approximately thirty days

after leaving a combat zone, with no decompression

period stateside, acclimatizing back to a quasi-polite

environment, leaves a bit to be desired."

With his usual enthusiasm, Vince Davis tried to help

his brother reenter Nashville—actually Vanderbilt—

social life, but the well-intentioned effort on Jack's

behalf did not go well. Jack found little in common with

Vince's friends in Vanderbilt's senior class, and he concluded they would find his service stories meaningless.

Besides, Jack hardly trusted his ability to carry on a

social conversation without lapsing into standard Marine

language, which would have set all of Davidson County

on fire. "I was so unsure of my polite verbal utterances

that I was barely better than a mute. And for a while I

preferred not to go out in polite society until I had reacquired some social skills."

In the autumn of 1952, Jack Davis entered Vanderbilt

University, his education partially funded by a disability

pension and the GI Bill. When he graduated with a

degree in geology in 1956, he also had a new wife, Joan

Fortune of Lafayette, Georgia. Even with a Master's of

Science in geology (1959) Jack found the life of a petroleum geologist too uncertain for a family man (two

sons), and he shifted into sales management in the oil

and pharmaceutical industries until his semi-retirement

and return to Tennessee in 1971. A small advertising

business he and some local friends created keep him

busy enough—along with church and civic activities in

his new hometown of Winchester, Tennessee—until the

partners sold the business to a larger Texas-based company in 1998. Jack and Joan now have more time to

enjoy their hobbies and extended family.

Jack has never returned to Korea, but he is proud to

have been the teenage rifleman of 1951 who found himself in Korea with "Bloody George" Company, 3d

Battalion, 1st Marines.

serious to operations, only 32 had

arrived within 30 minutes, the

Marine Corps standard. During various conferences in October,

Thomas had an opportunity to discuss the issues with General J.

Lawton Collins, USA, the Army

Chief of Staff, and General

Ridgway. Although Byers appreciated his aggressiveness, Van Fleet

and Everest did not. Thomas

thought Collins and Ridgway liked

his letter, "a stick to beat the Air

Force with." Ridgway said he

wanted Van Fleet and Everest to

look at the Joint Operations Center

system and see if it could be

adjusted, at least to give the 1st

Marine Division 40 sorties a day.

Van Fleet, however, argued that X

Corps got too much air support

already. Thomas and Byers decided to push the issue; Byers' outrage was fueled by another problem, the unwillingness of the Army

to send its best officers and noncommissioned officers to combat

assignments in Korea. Byers also

bridled at Van Fleet's suggestion

that his faltering generalship
Marine position on close air support.

explained the losses of the 2d

Infantry Division on Heartbreak

Ridge. Byers put his staff to work

on studies like those underway in

the 1st Marine Division. Byers and

Thomas also raised the related

issue of dictated artillery shell

expenditures, which they claimed

produced predictable shortages

when real fighting occurred. Van

Fleet was not happy with the two

senior generals of X Corps.

Byers and Thomas mustered

more evidence in November that

the Joint Operations Center had

willfully prevented X Corps from

receiving effective close air support. The 1st Marine Division

claimed that it had made 188

requests for air support and

received only 53 strikes in response. In the case of 86 requests,

Fifth Air Force said it had no aircraft available, and poor weather

had affected most of the other

requests. The 1st Marine Division's

statistics provided an even more

damning picture. During the 30

days of November, the division

had requested air support on 26

days and received no response at

all on 12 of those days. On the

days that the Joint Operations

Center responded, it approved

only 52 of 125 close air support

requests. In terms of aircraft and

ordnance, only four missions were

flown as requested, and only one

arrived in less than an hour from

the original request. The only mission that went as planned occurred

on 10 November when 89 aircraft

from the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing

celebrated the Marine Corps'

57

Birthday with a heavy strike north

of Kanmubong Ridge. The X Corps

study, directed by Lieutenant

Colonel Ellis W. Williamson, a pioneer in Army aviation and air

mobility operations, produced similar results. For 1-20 November, the

entire corps had made 224

requests and had 145 requests

filled in some way. Forty-six

requests took more than two hours

to fill, and Williamson, X Corps G3, judged that 42 of these strikes

came too late to have the anticipated results.

The X Corps' analyses, like studies submitted earlier in the year by

General Almond, changed nothing.

Van Fleet and Ridgway saw no

immediate advantage in pressing

the issue, whatever their personal

views. The major influence on

their commitment to the Joint

Operations Center-status quo was

the news from Panmunjom. The

negotiators had accepted the

United Nations position that the

armistice line should be the line of

troops when the armistice was

signed, not the 38th Parallel. Each

belligerent coalition would withdraw four kilometers from the

point of contact and thus establish

a neutral zone between the armies.

Van Fleet had anticipated the

agreement on 14 November and

ordered that no operations by a

battalion or larger formation could

be mounted without the approval

of the corps commander. When the

negotiators signed an agreement

on 25 November on the line-ofcontact solution, Eighth Army

interpreted the agreement as an

omen of an early ceasefire. The

word went forth throughout the

front to hold down casualties, conserve ammunition, defend the current positions, and even to limit

patrols to those areas where earlier patrols had made contact with

the enemy. These rules of engagement would be in effect for at least

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC382827

Gen Matthew B. Ridgway, left to right, Genj Lawton Collins, US. Army Chief of

Staff GenjamesA. Van Fleet, US. Eighth Army commander, and MajGen Clovis

E. Byers, commanding general of US. X Corps, study the situation map during

Gen Collins' tour of the frontlines in Korea. Within a month of Collins' visit,

Ridgway relieved a stunned Byers for what some believed was his support for the
I

- (I..

30 days. The instructions had "a

considerably inhibitory effect on

the operations of the division."

They also meant that a change in

the system of air support had been

overtaken by events.

An examination of the fighting

by the 1st Marine Division in

October and November 1951 suggests how large an opportunity

cost the ground forces paid for the

Air Force interdiction campaign.

The aggressive ground operations

and use of artillery and naval gunfire demonstrated that even without close air support, the 1st

Marine Division (and probably

most of the U.S. Army divisions in

Korea) could still inflict substantial

casualties on the enemy. The

Chinese might have unlimited

manpower to throw into the battle,

but the North Koreans did not. In

two months of operations that can

only be characterized as "defensive," the 1st Marine Division killed

1,117 North Koreans and captured

575 more at a cost of 87 dead or

missing Marines (both American

and South Korean) and 573

wounded. The 1st Marine Division

order-of-battle analysts estimated

that the division and air strikes had

caused as many as 12,000 more

casualties in the three North

Korean divisions that faced the

Marines. Even if wildly optimistic,

the estimates were probably not

completely illusory. If, for example, the Marines had killed or

wounded only one-third of the

enemy estimated, they still would

have accounted for more than

6,000 enemy casualties at a cost of

660 losses of their own. An

exchange ratio of 10:1—given the

rules of engagement—is an operational achievement in any war, but

the Eighth Army missed the lesson.

As the pace of the war congealed with the coming of winter

and the hope of an armistice, the

1st Marine Division passed through

another set of organizational milestones. It celebrated the Marine

Corps' 176th birthday with the traditional ceremonies of reading

John A. Lejeune's birthday message

and cake-cutting; General Thomas

added a special wrinkle, a oneround salute at noon 10 November

from every weapon in position,

which the commanding general

found "very satisfying." Thomas

then hosted Byers and X Corps

staff for lunch.

Thomas also drew satisfaction

from an extensive study done by X

Corps for the Department of

Defense. Sensitive to Army carping

about Marine tactics and casualties,

Thomas could point to irrefutable

statistics: in both raw number and

percentages the 1st Marine

Division in 1951 had one of the

three lowest loss rates in the

Eighth Army. Within X Corps its

losses in combat were half those of

the U.S. 2d Infantry Division in

percentage terms and 50 percent

lower in raw numbers. Between 1

June and 15 October, the Army

division suffered 6,247 casualties,

the Marine division, less the 1st

KMC Regiment, 4,241. During the

first 10 months of 1951, the 1st

Marine Division had rotated 11,637

Marines out of Korea and received

13,097 replacements, which did

not quite cover the losses from all

sources. In the autumn of 1951

there were still almost 5,000

Marines in the division who had

joined the division in 1950, but by

Christmas these veterans (the vast

majority technical specialists) had

all gone home. By the end of

December, one-third of the division's Marines had come to Korea

since early September, but the division showed no signed of reduced

effectiveness. The 14th Replacement Draft (2,756 officers and

men) closed the gap, but the 11th

("Home for Christmas") Rotation

Draft opened it again.

From the perspective of

Headquarters Marine Corps and

the Commanding General, Fleet

Marine Forces, Pacific, the 1st

Marine Division had done a splenA rifle platoon celebrates the traditional Marine Corps Birthday, 10 November,

with a no-frills cake cutting on the revee slope of battle-scared Kanmubong

Ridge.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A159434

58
La - '—-'S

S A

did job in 1951 as a fighting organization and as a source of favorable publicity. Both Generals Gates

and Shepherd visited Thomas in

the last two months of 1951 and

congratulated him on his successful command. By November,

Shepherd knew that he would

replace Gates as Commandant and

he told Thomas and Krulak that he

wanted both of them back in

Washington to run the staff of

Headquarters Marine Gorps.

Thomas' successor pleased the

incumbent division commander:

Major General John Taylor Selden,

an accomplished officer who had

commanded the 5th Marines on

Cape Gloucester and served as the

division chief of staff on Peleliu. A

Virginian of "First Family" roots as

well as another "mustang" of the

World War I era, Selden had a

deserved reputation for getting

along well with the Army without

compromising Marine Corps interests.

The change of command for X

Corps showed none of the good

feeling that accompanied Thomas'

departure in early January 1952.

On his latest visit to Korea in

November, J. Lawton Collins asked

Van Fleet how Byers was doing as

a corps commander and whether

he met the World War II standards

of the Army in Europe. Van Fleet

responded that Byers did not

match the best corps commanders

of Eisenhower's army, which

meant that Byers was not Collins,

Ridgway, or Van Fleet. Without

warning, Byers learned from Van

Fleet on 24 November at a ceremony presenting a Presidential

Unit Citation to the 2d Infantry

Division that Byers would be reassigned as commanding general,

XVI Corps, the theater reserve

force just constituted in Japan.

Without ceremony or any chance

to visit his subordinate commanders, Byers flew to Japan as

ordered four days later, his distinguished career in eclipse. His

replacement, Major General

Williston B. Palmer, was a

Europeanist and a Collins intimate.

General Thomas remained convinced that Byers had been too

friendly with the Marines for

Collins' and Ridgway's taste and

too assertive in demanding

changes in the close air support

system.

The best way to deal with the

other armed forces, whether the

battlefield was in Washington or

the entire Pacific theater, had

always been obvious to Gates,

Shepherd, Thomas, and Shepherd's successor in Hawaii,

Lieutenant General Franklin A.

Hart. The answer was to attack and

withdraw at the same time. Hart's

mission was to support the 1st

59

Marine Division and 1st Marine

Aircraft Wing, but he had a second

responsibility, which was to prepare a new 3d Marine Brigade and

supporting aviation elements for

possible use (including amphibious operations) in the Pacific.

Pending legislation in Congress

suggested that in 1952 the Marine

Corps would add a third division

and aircraft wing to the Fleet

Marine Force. The Marine Corps

also was investigating arming itself

with tactical nuclear weapons.

With Colonels Wornham, Hayward, and Nickerson on Hart's

staff, the interests of the 1st Marine

Division would not be ignored, but

as a Service the Marine Corps was

not inclined to pursue the close air

support issue when the interservice relations landscape looked

good for the moment and the

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A159279

With a resumption of the armistice talks, a lull set in along the 1st Marine

Division 's front in December. While patrols were sent out to maintain pressure

on the enemy, work continued on winterizing bunkers and improving defensive

installations, such as this machine gun position.
future of operations in Korea so

uncertain. Another factor was simply that Fleet Marine Force, Pacific,

and its Navy superiors, including

Admiral Arthur H. Radford,

Commander in Chief, Pacific, proposed that the 1st Marine Division

and 1st Marine Aircraft Wing be

withdrawn from Korea and placed

in strategic reserve. When General

Hart made his first command tour

of Korea and Japan, he found the

senior commanders in Korea and

Japan convinced that Eighth Army

would waste its Marines. The division and aircraft wing should be

placed in Japan and brought to a

peak state of readiness for battles

that mattered.

Nothing that occurred in

December 1951 along the Minnesota Line gave any clues that the

war would either end or be fought

with any rational purpose, as seen

from the 1st Marine Division. The

division's defensive posture faced

no serious menace from the North

Koreans, although the Communist

troops became progressively more

aggressive with their patrolling and

use of artillery fire. A summary of

one day's operations (8 December

1951) catches the winter war along

the Minnesota Line. A 5th Marines

patrol exchanged gunfire with a

Korean patrol without known

results; the regiment called in 117

rounds of naval gunfire on a

bunker system and did acceptable

damage to seven bunkers. The 7th

Marines sent out a patrol to

retrieve the body of a dead Marine

and engaged in a firefight with an

enemy patrol. The Korean Marines

sent out two patrols, which were

fired upon by machine guns in

hidden bunkers, but took no casualties. The 11th Marines fired 14

observed missions on bunkers or

in patrol-support. The following

days were no different. On

Christmas Day, the North Koreans

tried to disrupt the division's hot

holiday meal and a visit by

Cardinal Francis J. Spellman but

only drew smothering artillery and

naval gunfire on the NKPA combat

patrols. The next day a heavy

snow slowed the action even

more, and on 27 December Eighth

Army announced that even though

no truce agreement had been

signed, the restrictive rules of

engagement remained in effect.

The dawn of a new year did not

change the pattern of warfare for

the 1st Marine Division. Such novelties as psychological warfare

units—the masters of the surrender

leaflet and the insinuating broadcast—became regular fixtures at

the front, first a source of amusement and later an object of contempt. Army searchlight batteries

added little light to the operations.

An epidemic of boredom and carelessness spread throughout Eighth

Army. To give at least a hint of battle, Van Fleet's staff dreamed up

Operation Clam-Up, 9-15 February

1952, as a way to draw the Chinese

Cpl Kevin j Griffin receives a blessing from cardinal Francis Speilman during

the cardinal's Christmas visit to the 1st Marine Division.

National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-436954

60
and North Koreans into an aboveground killing zone through

deception. The basic concept was

that the frontline battalions would

either go underground or appear

to withdraw from the front; allied

artillery would reduce their firing

to almost nothing; and the usual

patrols would not go out.

Presumably, the collective impression would be that the United

Nations forces had fallen back to

the Kansas Line. Van Fleet's grand

deception did not fool the

Communists—at least not much. In

the 1st Marine Division sector—

especially on Yoke and

Kanmubong Ridges—the North

Koreans sent out only patrols,

which set off a series of small battles. The North Koreans also deluged the main line of resistance

with artillery fire, a sure sign that

they had not been fooled. For all

the sound and fury the casualties

showed how insignificant Clam-Up

had been. For February the

Marines lost 23 killed and 102

missing; they killed by count 174

Koreans and took 63 prisoners.

Whether they had actually inflicted

an additional estimated 1,000 more

casualties was guess work.

In other aspects of the division's

operations, the order-of-the-day

became doing less with less. The

helicopters of HMR-161 developed

stress fractures in their tail assemblies, so Colonel McCutcheon

grounded his squadron until the

defects could be corrected. The

lack of helicopters slowed the

modest counter-guerrilla campaign

in the rear areas. Certainly the

North Korean lines had become

impenetrable. The G-2 estimated

that 21 infantry battalions and nine

artillery battalions, all embedded in

the ridges to the north of the main

line of resistance, faced the division. Although the Marines did not

yet know what great plans Eighth

Army held for them, their campaign in east-central Korean was

ending not with a bang, but a

shrug.

From its initiation in battle as

part of the U.S. Eighth Army in

January 1951 until its eventual

movement to an entirely new zone

of action in western Korea in early

1952, the 1st Marine Division

fought with as much distinction as

its 1950 edition, the division that

landed at Inchon, liberated Seoul,

chased the North Korean army

away from Korea's northeast coast,

and blunted the first appearance of

the Chinese army in the battle of

Sudong. The advance to the

61

Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir and

"the attack in another direction" to

Hungnam added more honors to

the 1st Marine Division and created a tradition of valor and professionalism that shares pride of place

in the memory of Marines with

Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

Yet the 1st Marine Division in

1951 added a new and equally

useful tradition of valor: that a

Marine division in war of diminishing rewards, fought under unpleasant physical conditions and

uneven Army leadership, could

maintain the Corps' highest standards even without the constant

stroking of admiring reporters and

camera crews. To be sure, the division suffered more casualties in all

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A159378

Oblivious to the wet snow and North Korean harassing fires, Marines line up for

a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
a

It

'a

'4.

t

4

I

'I,

1•

categories per month of combat in

1950 (1,557) than it did in 1951

(747) or 1952 (712), but there is no

convincing evidence that the division inflicted more casualties upon

the enemy in 1950 (per month of

combat) than it did in 1951, only

that its battles had been more dramatic and photogenic.

In an official sense, the 1st

Marine Division in 1951 received

the same recognition as its 1950-

predecessor, the award of a Presidential Unit Citation "for

extraordinary heroism in action

against enemy aggressor forces in

Korea." There are, however, no

battles in the citation, no identified

geographic locations like Hill 902

or Taeu-san and Taeam-san

Mountains or Yoke Ridge or

Kanmubong Ridge. The only geographic location mentioned is the

Punchbowl and some vague terrain "north of the Hwachon

Reservoir." The citation gives only

three sets of dates: 21-26 April, 16

May-30 June, and 11-25 September

1951. There is no book like

Andrew Geer's The New Breed to

honor the 1951 Marines, no collection of memorable photographs by

David Douglas Duncan to freeze

the fatigue and horror of war on

the faces of young men turned old

in a matter of days in December

1950. The same faces could have

been found on Hill 924 or Hill 812

if anyone had looked.

In addition to adding to the her62

itage of heroism in the second year

of the Korean War, the 1st Marine

Division and the 1st Marine Aircraft

Wing made history for its introduction of the transport helicopter to

American ground operations. In

January 1951, the Landing Force

Tactics and Techniques Board,

Marine Landing Force Development Center, approved the first

doctrinal study of vertical envelopment in Employment of Assault

Transport Helicopters. When the

first operational squadron, HMR161, was formed, its original name

was "Marine Assault Helicopter

Squadron 161" until Marine aviation bureaucrats protested that

they and the Navy thought the

more comprehensive designator of

National Archives Photo (USMC) 27-N-A159OTh

Marine TSgt John Pierce gives some North Korean soldiers phosphorus grenade into the bunker's entrance.

hiding in a bunker a warm reception as he throws a white
"transport" was more appropriate.

The name mattered less than the

mission. When the squadron

began operations with Windmill I

(13 September 1951) until the tail

section fractures grounded the

helicopters on 28 February 1952,

HMR-161 conducted six major

operations and many hundreds of

other less dramatic flights with

troops, weapons, and supplies. A

concept developed for amphibious

assaults received its first test

among the mountains of Korea, an

irony that bothered no one among

the community of Marine helicopter pioneers. The future arrived

to the sound of flailing rotors and

storms of ground-effect dirt on a

bit of ground on the lower slopes

of Hill 749, Kanmubong Ridge.

Today the site is somewhere within the Demilitarized Zone.

What make the fighting qualities

of the 1st Marine Division, aided

without stint by VMO-6 and HMR161, even more remarkable was the

growing difficulty in obtaining close

air support and the suspicion after

July 1951 that there would be a substitute for victory. As the 1st Marine

Division proved in September 1951,

the young riflemen and platoon

commanders might not be ready to

kill and die for a stalemate, but they

were more than willing to kill and

die for each other, and that was

what was important to them then.

And it still is.

An alert Marine rifleman, framed in the doorway, provides

cover while another Marine searches through an a bandoned Korean farmhouse. Guerrilla and infiltrator attacks

forced all Marine units to mount security patrols and to

defend their positions.

National Archives Photo (U5MC) 127-N-A159239

63
Essay on Sources

The archival sources on the 1st Marine

Division, X Corps, and the U.S. Eighth

Army for the campaign of 1951-1952 are

voluminous, but the place to start is the

monthly organizational historical reports,

usually containing annexes of other

reports and studies, submitted to the service headquarters for permanent retendon and reference use. For the 1st

Marine Division, I used the monthly historical reports for April 1951 through

February 1952, supplemented by similar

monthly historical reports made by

Headquarters, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific

(FMFPac), for the same period. Both 1st

Marine Division and FMFPac reports

included invaluable appendices. Of special use for this study were two Type C

Special Reports:'Employment of Assault

Helicopters." 4 October and 15 November 1951; and "1st KMC Regiment and Its

Relationship to the 1st Marine Division,

September 1950-May 1952," 13 june

1952. The FMFPac historical reports

include memoranda for the record of the

weekly staff conferences and the travel

reports for Generals Lernuel C. Shepherd,

Jr., and Franklin H. Hart for their visits to

Korea and Japan. The original reports are

in the Records of Marine Corps Field

Commands, Record Group 127, in the

National Archives, but copies may often

be found at the Marine Corps Historical

Center, Washington, D.C., and the Marine

Corps Research Center, Quantico,

Virginia.

The X Corps Command Reports for

April 1951- February 1952 may be found

in Command Reports, 1949-1954,

Records of U.S. Army Field Commands,

Record Group 407, but these records—

which include such things as the

"Commanding General's Diary," which is

schedule and commentary as maintained

by his aides—can also be found in duplicate form in key Army educational and

research repositories like the U.S. Army

Center of Military History, Ft. Leslie J,

McNair, Washington, D.C. and the U.S.

Army Military History Institute, Carlisle

Barracks, Pennsylvania. Like their Marine

Corps counterparts, the monthly "Command Reports" include special studies,

which for X Corps included analyses of

close air support and personnel matters.

The senior Army and Marine commanders in Korea, 1951-1952, maintained

extensive personal files that are open to

researchers, and I used these invaluable

sources extensively. General Matthew B.

Ridgway, Commander, United Nations

Command, and Commanding General,

Far East Command during this study,

kept extensive correspondence and

memoranda files, Matthew B. Ridgway

Papers, U.S. Army Military History

Institute (MIII), His successor as Commanding General, U.S. Eighth Army,

General James A. Van Fleet, maintained a

personal journal and conducted an

extensive correspondence with his military and civilian contemporaries, all preserved in the James A. Van Fleet Papers,

George C. Marshall Library, Lexington,

Virginia. Van Fleet, like Eidgway, kept

essential data, studies, maps, memoranda.

of staff meetings, and orders/instructions,

but unlike Ridgway, he never wrote a

book about the war. His papers are especially important on interservice and intercoalition command relations.

Lieutenant Generals Edward M.

Almond and Clovis E. Byers saved extensive files for their periods of command of

the U.S. X Corps. which included all but

two months of the period covered in this

study. Especially important is Headquarters, X Corps, "Battle of the Soyang

River," June 1951, a special report with

extensive intelligence studies and fire

support studies. Almond's papers are

essential sources on the conduct of the

Korean War. Almond did an especially

good job at creating subject files, two of

the most important containing material

on close air support and artillery employment. Like Van Fleet, Almond kept extensive personal notes. After his retirement

Almond became a subject of extensive

interviewing, the most exhaustive by

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Ferguson,

USA (Almond's son-in-law), Professor D.

Clayton James, and John Toland, and

these transcripts are attached to the

Almond Papers and the Douglas

MacArthur Papers, the General Douglas

MacArthur Library and Memorial,

Norfolk, Virginia. Throughout his retirement Almond continued to collect documents and add them to his collection. A

complementary view of X Corps may be

found in the oral memoir of General

Frank T. Mildren, the corps G-3 in 1951,

Senior Officers Oral History Project,

1980, MIII. The Clovis E. Byers Papers

are held at the library of the Hoover

Institution on War, Revolution and Peace,

Stanford, California, and include his

64

copies of the corps reports and studies

and his "Commander's Diary." Byers also

corresponded with many of his Army

contemporaries and friends in other services. He kept a personal diary that

includes the touching story of his "reassignment." Byers' comments on the

South Korean divisions in his corps are

important in giving a full picture of corps

operations.

General Gerald C. Thomas did not

maintain the vast correspondence files or

intimate diaries of his Army contemporaries, but he wrote his wife, his brother,

and his oldest son and son-in-law, both

Marine officers and both 1952 members

of the 1st Marine Division. The Thomas

family allowed me to read this correspondence while I did research on In

Many a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomas

and the US. Marine Corps, 1917-1956

(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993).

General Thomas also left multiple, extensive oral histories, 1966-1979, and assorted files, now part of the Oral History

Collection and Personal Papers

Collection at the Historical Center and

Research Center. Other personal collections and oral histories from important

sources are the late General Lemuel C.

Shepherd, Jr., USMC; Lieutenant General

Herman Nickerson, USMC (Ret);

Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak,

USMC (Ret); the late General Keith B.

McCutcheon, USMC; the late Major

General Wilburt S. Brown, USMC; and

the late Major General Thomas A.

Wornham. During my research on

General Thomas, Generals Krulak and

Nickerson furnished me with personal

papers and did so again on this project.

A more extensive discussion of Marine

Corps sources may be found in the

Thomas biography and my Semper

Fidelis.' The History of the United States

Marine Corps, rev. ed. (New York: The

Free Press, 1991).

The official documents and perspectives of the senior officers of the X Corps

and 1st Marine Division do not provide a

complete picture of the campaign of

1951 in human terms. With his complete

cooperation, I used the story of Corporal

Clarence Jackson Davis, USMCR, as a

way to see the fighting from the perspective of the enlisted combat Marine. I

focused on the experiences of a special

group of Marine officers, the 7th Basic

Class, those Marine lieutenants commissioned in the spring of 1950 who became
he Raymond E. Mason, Jr.,

Professor of Military History,

Ohio State University, Allan R.

Millett is a specialist in the history

of American military policy and

institutions. He is the author of

four books: The Politics of

interven-tion: The Military

Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909

(1968); The General: Robert L.

Bullard and Officership in the

United States Army, 1 881-1925

(1975); Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States

Marine Corps (1980, revised edition, 1991); and In Many a

Stmfe: General Gerald C. Thomas and the US. Marine Corps,

1917-1956(1993). His most recent book, co-authored with

Williamson Murray, is A War to be Won: Fighting the Second

World War (2000). He also co-authored and co-edited several other works on military affairs and has contributed original essays to 25 books and numerous journals on American

historiography, foreign and defense policy, and military history. A noted lecturer and officeholder in many prestigious

military history societies, Dr. Millett is now president of the

U.S. Commission on Military History.

A graduate of DePauw University and Ohio State

University, Dr. Millett served on both active and reserve

duty, retiring in 1990 with a rank of colonel in the U.S.

Marine Corps Reserve.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in

the Korean War era, is published for the education and training of

Marines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine

corps, Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defense

observance of the 50th anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have been

defrayed in part by contributions from members of the Marine Corps

Heritage Foundation.

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HIS TORYAN1) MUSEUMS

Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC (REr)

GENERAL EDITOR,

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Charles R. Smith

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HIS TORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION

W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist

Catherine A. Kerns, Visual Information Specialist

U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center

1254 Charles Morris Street SE

Washington Navy Yard DC 20374-5040

2001

PCN 190 00319 500

th

the platoon commanders of 1st Marine

Division in 1951. Their contribution

began with an interview with Captain

Frederick F. Brower, I TSMC (Ret) in 1998

and went on to access Lieutenant

General Charles G. Cooper, USMC (Ret)

"Blood and Tears. an unpublished

memoir; Mr. John E. Nolan, "Korea

Comments," 11 December 1999; and

interviews at the 50th Reunion of the 7th

Basic Class (4-7 May 2000) with Colonel

Earl 1. Roth, USMC (Ret), Mr. Harold

Arutinian, and Colonel David J. Hytrek,

USMC (Ret).

For sardonic views of the campaign

of 1951, see Paul N. McCloskey, Jr., The

Taking of Hill 610 (Woodside, CA:

Eaglet Books, 1992); Lieutenant Colonel

Gerald P. Averill, USMC (Ret). Mustang:

A Combat Marine (Novato, CA: Presidio

Press, 1987); [Private First Classi Burton

F. Anderson. We Claim the Title (Aptos,

CA: Tracy Publishing, 1994); and

[Sergeant] A. Andy Andow, Letters to Big

Jim Regarding Xarrul Purigo,

Cashinum Iman (New York: Vantage,

1994).

The official histories of the 1951 campaign for the Marine Corps and Army

are much used and often-cited, but

should not be used as scripture: Lynn

Montross, Major Huhard D. Kuokka,

USMC, and Major Norman Hicks, USMC,

The East-Central Front, Vol. IV, U.S.

Marine Operations in Korea, 1950-1953

(Washington, DC: Historical Branch, G3, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps,

1962) and Billy C. Mossman, Ebb and

Flou': November 195O-fuly 1951 in U.S.

Army in the Korean War, five volumes

to date (Washington, DC: Office of the

Chief of Military History, U.S. Army,

1990) and Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent

and Fighting Front (1966), another volume in the same series. The Air Force

official history is Robert F. Futrell, The

United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-

1953, rev. ed., (Washington, DC: Office

of Air Force History, 1983). The documentation for the close air support controversy may be found collected in

Subject File K239-04291-1, "Close Air

Support." Research Archives, Air Power

Historical Research Center, Ar Force

University, Maxwell Air Force Base,

Alabama. Allan R. Millett, "Korea, 1950-

1953," in Benjamin F. Cooling, ed., Case

Studies in the Development of Close Air

Support (Washington, DC: Office of Air

Force History, 1990) covers the issues

and the source material in detail. Lynn

Montross, C'avalmy of the Sky: The Story

of U.S. Marine c'on,bat Helicopters (New

York: Harper & Bros., 1954) is a popular account of HMR-161s Korean War

service. A more conventional official

account is Lieutenant Colonel Eugene

W. Rawlins, USMC, Marines and

Helicopters, 1946-1962 (Washington,

DC: History and Museums Division,

HQMC, 1976).

I visited most of the battle sites

described in this study in 1994 and 1998,

and I have profited from the advice of

Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons,

USMC (Ret) and Colonel Franklin B.

Nihart, USMC (Ret), both veterans of the

campaign in infantry battalions.

Gunnery Sergeant Leo J. Daugherty III,

T.TSMCR, provided valuable research

assistance.