DRIVE NORTH, U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl€¦ · Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series DRIVE NORTH U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl by Colonel Allan R. Millett U.S. Marine

Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series

DRIVE NORTHU.S. Marines at the Punchbowl

by Colonel Allan R. MillettU.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired

About the Author

The Raymond E. Mason, Jr.,Professor of Military History,

Ohio State University, Allan R.Millett is a specialist in the historyof American military policy andinstitutions. He is the author offour books: The Politics ofInterven-tion: The MilitaryOccupation of Cuba, 1906-1909(1968); The General: Robert L.Bullard and Officership in theUnited States Army, 1881-1925(1975); Semper Fidelis: The History of the United StatesMarine Corps (1980, revised edition, 1991); and In Many aStrife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the U.S. Marine Corps,1917-1956 (1993). His most recent book, co-authored withWilliamson Murray, is A War to be Won: Fighting the SecondWorld War (2000). He also co-authored and co-edited sev-eral other works on military affairs and has contributed orig-inal essays to 25 books and numerous journals on Americanhistoriography, foreign and defense policy, and military his-tory. A noted lecturer and officeholder in many prestigiousmilitary history societies, Dr. Millett is now president of theU.S. Commission on Military History.

A graduate of DePauw University and Ohio StateUniversity, Dr. Millett served on both active and reserveduty, 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 inthe Korean War era, is published for the education and training ofMarines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. MarineCorps, Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defenseobservance of the 50th anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have beendefrayed in part by contributions from members of the Marine CorpsHeritage Foundation.

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS

Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC (RET)

GENERAL EDITOR,


Charles R. Smith

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION

W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist

Catherine A. Kerns, Visual Information Specialist

U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center1254 Charles Morris Street SE

Washington Navy Yard DC 20374-50402001

PCN 190 00319 500

the platoon commanders of 1st MarineDivision in 1951. Their contributionbegan with an interview with CaptainFrederick F. Brower, USMC (Ret) in 1998and went on to access LieutenantGeneral Charles G. Cooper, USMC (Ret)“Blood and Tears,” an unpublishedmemoir; Mr. John E. Nolan, “KoreaComments,” 11 December 1999; andinterviews at the 50th Reunion of the 7thBasic Class (4-7 May 2000) with ColonelEarl T. Roth, USMC (Ret), Mr. HaroldArutinian, and Colonel David J. Hytrek,USMC (Ret).

For sardonic views of the campaignof 1951, see Paul N. McCloskey, Jr., TheTaking of Hill 610 (Woodside, CA:Eaglet Books, 1992); Lieutenant ColonelGerald P. Averill, USMC (Ret), Mustang:A Combat Marine (Novato, CA: PresidioPress, 1987); [Private First Class] BurtonF. Anderson, We Claim the Title (Aptos,CA: Tracy Publishing, 1994); and[Sergeant] A. Andy Andow, Letters to BigJim Regarding Narrul Purigo,Cashinum Iman (New York: Vantage,1994).

The official histories of the 1951 cam-paign for the Marine Corps and Armyare much used and often-cited, butshould not be used as scripture: LynnMontross, Major Hubard 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, G-3, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps,1962) and Billy C. Mossman, Ebb andFlow: November 1950-July 1951 in U.S.Army in the Korean War, five volumesto date (Washington, DC: Office of theChief of Military History, U.S. Army,1990) and Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tentand Fighting Front (1966), another vol-ume in the same series. The Air Forceofficial history is Robert F. Futrell, TheUnited States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953, rev. ed., (Washington, DC: Officeof Air Force History, 1983). The docu-mentation for the close air support con-troversy may be found collected inSubject File K239-04291-1, “Close AirSupport,” Research Archives, Air PowerHistorical Research Center, Air Force

University, Maxwell Air Force Base,Alabama. Allan R. Millett, “Korea, 1950-1953,” in Benjamin F. Cooling, ed., CaseStudies in the Development of Close AirSupport (Washington, DC: Office of AirForce History, 1990) covers the issuesand the source material in detail. LynnMontross, Cavalry of the Sky: The Storyof U.S. Marine Combat Helicopters (NewYork: Harper & Bros., 1954) is a popu-lar account of HMR-161’s Korean Warservice. A more conventional officialaccount is Lieutenant Colonel EugeneW. Rawlins, USMC, Marines andHelicopters, 1946-1962 (Washington,DC: History and Museums Division,HQMC, 1976).

I visited most of the battle sitesdescribed in this study in 1994 and 1998,and I have profited from the advice ofBrigadier General Edwin H. Simmons,USMC (Ret) and Colonel Franklin B.Nihart, USMC (Ret), both veterans of thecampaign in infantry battalions.Gunnery Sergeant Leo J. Daugherty III,USMCR, provided valuable researchassistance.

he rumble of Ame-rican field artillerythrough the morningmists in the valley ofthe Soyang River

gave a sense of urgency to thechange-of-command ceremonyinside the headquarters tent of the1st Marine Division. Four days ofhard fighting in the withdrawalfrom the Hwachon Reservoir hadbrought the division safely to theriver on 25 April 1951. The trekaway from the Chinese 39th and40th Armies had not yet, however,brought the division to the NoName Line, the final defensiveposition 15 miles south of the riverdesignated by Lieutenant GeneralJames A. Van Fleet, commandingthe U.S. Eighth Army. In a simplerite that included only the readingof the change-of-command ordersand the passing of the division col-ors, Major General Gerald C.Thomas relieved Major GeneralOliver P. “O. P.” Smith and tookcommand of a division locked in abattle to stop the Chinese FifthOffensive.

The ceremony dramatized theuncertainty of the Marines in thesecond year of the Korean War.Understandably, General Smith did

not want to turn over command inthe middle of a battle. On the otherhand, General Van Fleet wantedThomas to take command of thedivision as soon as possible, some-thing Thomas had not planned todo since his formal orders from theCommandant, General Clifton B.Cates, designated 1 May 1951 asturn-over day. Thomas hadplanned to spend the interveningweek on a familiarization tour ofKorea and the major elements ofthe Eighth Army. He had thoughthis call on Van Fleet the day beforehad been simply a courtesy visit,but instead he found himselfcaught in a delicate matter of com-mand relations.

General Thomas arrived inKorea to face an entirely new war.The October 1950 dream of unify-ing Korea under the sponsorshipof the United Nations (U.N.) hadswirled away with the Chinesewinter intervention. The war stillhung in the balance as the UnitedNations Command attempted todrive the Communist invaders outof the Republic of Korea (ROK) forthe second time in less than a year.The U.S. Eighth Army and itsKorean counterpart, the HangukGun (South Korean Armed Forces)had rallied in January and February1951, under the forceful leadershipof Lieutenant General Matthew B.Ridgway, USA. United Nations

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by Colonel Allan R. Millett, USMCR (Ret)

ON THE COVER: Two Marine machinegunners “keep the gun hot” in theirpursuit of fleeing Communist troops.National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A8866AT LEFT: Marines quickly demolishenemy bunkers with grenades andplanted charges before moving north.Department of Defense Photo (USMC)A8504

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas, right, meets with MajGen Oliver P. Smith prior to thespartan change-of-command ceremony witnessed by a handful of participantsdrawn from the 1st Marine Division’s staff.

Gen Oliver P. Smith Collection, Marine Corps Research Center

Command had then driven backthe Chinese Communist Forces(CCF) and the North KoreanPeople’s Army (NKPA). The allieshad advanced well north of the38th Parallel in central and easternKorea. Goaded by Mao Zedong,General Peng Dehuai ordered hisjoint expeditionary force of693,000 Chinese and North Koreansoldiers to mount one more grand

offensive. Eleven Chinese armiesand two North Korean corps (40divisions) would smash south justwest of Hwachon Reservoir in thesectors held by the U.S. I and IXCorps. At a minimum the Com-munist forces, about half of Peng’stotal army, would drive UnitedNations forces below the 38thParallel. The maximum objectivewould be to threaten the Han River

valley and the corridors to Seoulwhile at the same time recapturingthe territory south of the SoyangRiver, which opened an alternativecorridor south to Hongchon.

When General Thomas calledon General Van Fleet on 24 April,the Eighth Army commander, acombative 59-year-old Floridianwith a World War II record of suc-cessful command from regiment tocorps in Europe, felt confident thathis forces had blunted the four-day-old Communist offensive.However, he had an organizationalproblem, which was that the 1stMarine Division should be shiftedback to X Corps and redeployed tothe No Name Line under the com-mand of Lieutenant GeneralEdward M. Almond, USA, the divi-sion’s corps commander through-out 1950. The relationship be-tween O. P. Smith and Almond,however, had become so ven-omous that Ridgway assigned theMarine division to IX Corps inJanuary 1951 and promised Smiththat he would not have to copewith Almond, whose style and sub-stance of command angered Smithand his staff. Van Fleet had hon-ored Ridgway’s commitment, butthe operational situation dictatedthat the Almond-Smith feud couldnot take precedence.

Van Fleet explained the plan toshift the 1st Marine Division backto X Corps to Thomas withoutgoing into the Almond-Smith prob-lem. Van Fleet did not give Thomasa direct order to proceed immedi-ately to the 1st Marine Divisionheadquarters near Chunchon.Thomas believed, however, thatVan Fleet had sound reasons towant a change of command now,so he caught a light plane fur-nished by the 1st Marine AircraftWing and flew to the primitiveairstrip that served the division.Escorted by the new assistant divi-sion commander, Brigadier

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General Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller,Thomas went directly to Smith’svan and told him of Van Fleet’srequest and future plans. Smithrefused to relinquish command.Without mounting an argument,Thomas left the van and went tothe operations center to conferwith Colonel Edward W. Snedeker,

the chief of staff, and ColonelAlpha L. Bowser, the G-3, both ofwhom sympathized with Thomasbut thought Smith should remainin command. Thomas thought thedivision was well positioned torefuse the open left flank of XCorps, but he also felt the tensionin the command post.

Thomas decided that the issueof command could not be post-poned—and now at least Smithknew he faced the prospect ofagain serving under Almond.Thomas returned to Smith’s vanwithin the hour and stated simply:“O. P., the table of organizationcalls for only one major general in

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Gerald Carthrae Thomas spent a lifetime dealingwith challenging command relationships andoperational problems inside and outside the

Marine Corps. Born on 29 October 1894 on a farm nearSlater, a western Missouri railroad town, Thomas grewup as a working boy in a working family. He was also agood student and versatile high school athlete. Living inBloomington, Illinois, he attended Illinois WesleyanUniversity (1915-1917) before enlisting in the MarineCorps in May 1917 to fight the Germans. Thomas, age22, mustered in at five feet, nine inches and 160 pounds,strong of wind and limb from athletics and labor. Darkhair and heavy eyebrows set off his piercing blue eyesand strong jaw. He would need every bit of his emo-tional balance and physical stamina—lifelong traits—forthe Marine Corps placed him in the Germans’ sights formost of 1918. As a sergeant and lieutenant in the 1stBattalion, 6th Marines, Thomas learned about war atBelleau Wood, Soissons, and the Meuse-Argonne. Whenthe Silver Star and Purple Heart medals were authorizedin 1932, Captain Thomas, professional officer of Marines,pinned on one award for gallantry and another for beinggassed.

In the interwar years, Thomas had already foughtagainst Haitian guerrillas, served a second tour in Haitias a staff officer, and commanded a Marine detachmenton a Navy gunboat in the Caribbean and CentralAmerica. 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. TheMarine Corps recognized his potential value in wartimeby sending him to five different Army schools (includingthe prestigious U.S. Army Command and General StaffCollege, Fort Leavenworth) and assigning him twice asan instructor in Marine Corps schools.

Between 1940 and 1950, Thomas proved that theMarine Corps had not wasted a minute or a dollar on hisprofessional education. In a decade that saw himadvance in rank from major to major general, Thomasprepared the Fleet Marine Force for war as an instructorat Quantico, military observer abroad, and a staff officerin the 1st Marine Division as the division conducted itslast pre-Pearl Harbor amphibious exercises. When the

division deployed to the South Pacific, LieutenantColonel Thomas went to war as Major GeneralAlexander A. Vandegrift’s operations officer (G-3), anassignment that made him one of the architects of victo-ry on Guadalcanal. A trusted intimate of Vandegrift’s,

Major General Gerald C.Thomas

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A132593

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a division. Either you turn over tome, or I’m going to leave.” Smithdid not respond, and Thomasagain left the van. After severalminutes of more tension, Smithemerged from his van and toldThomas that the change-of-com-mand ceremony would be held at0800 the next morning. The 1stMarine Division had a new com-manding general as it entered anew era in its service in Korea.

The New Division

Although the last veterans of thecampaigns of 1950 did not leaveKorea until the autumn of 1951,the 1st Marine Division had starteda process of transformation in April

1951 that did not depend solely onCommunist bullets. HeadquartersMarine Corps now sent outreplacement drafts not just to fillholes in the ranks from casualties,but also to allow the surviving vet-erans of longest service to return tonew assignments in the UnitedStates or for release from activeduty. The 9th Replacement Draftreached Korea in early June, bring-ing 2,608 Marine officers andenlisted men to the division and 55officers and 334 men to the 1stMarine Aircraft Wing. New navalpersonnel for both Marine organi-zations totaled six officers and 66sailors, mostly medical personnel.The incoming Marines had adeparting counterpart, the 3d

Rotation Draft, composed of 62Marine officers, 1,196 enlistedmen, and 73 sailors; the draftincluded 103 convalescing wound-ed. The 10th Replacement Draftarrived late in June, adding 74more officers and 1,946 men to thedivision and 12 officers and 335men to the aircraft wing. Onenaval officer and 107 sailors joinedthe division and wing.

Nevertheless, Thomas thoughtthat the manpower planners hadcut their estimates too close andrequested that subsequent draftsbe increased by a 1,000 officersand men. Despite the personneldemands of forming the new 3dMarine Brigade at CampPendleton, Fleet Marine Force,

Thomas served as the general’s chief of staff during thefinal months of the Guadalcanal campaign and thenplayed the same role in the I Marine Amphibious Corps’landing on Bougainville. He returned to Washingtonwith Vandegrift when the general became Commandantin 1944. As a brigadier general, his second “spot” pro-motion in a row, Thomas fought the battles of demobi-lization and postwar defense reorganization, 1944-1947,as the Director of Plans and Policies on theHeadquarters staff and played a critical role in winninglegislative protection for the Fleet Marine Force in theNational Security Act, 1947. He then spent two years ascommanding general, Fleet Marine Force, WesternPacific, a brigade-sized force that garrisoned theShantung peninsula and the city of Tsingtao until theChinese Communist military victories in North China in1948 made the American enclave irrelevant. Thomassuccessfully withdrew his force without incident inFebruary 1949 and returned to educational and devel-opmental billets at Marine Corps Base, Quantico.

Thomas’ rich and exciting career had not, however,been without professional risks and cost. His aggressivepersonality, the force with which he defended his con-victions, and his unwillingness to tolerate leadershiplapses that endangered Marines had made him anathe-ma to some of his peers, two of whom stopped his firstpromotion to major general. Others thought him toodemanding a colleague. In 1951 only two opinionscounted, those of Commandant Clifton B. Cates andLieutenant General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.,Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, andCates’ likely successor as Commandant. Although nei-ther Cates nor Shepherd were part of Vandegrift’s“Guadalcanal gang,” they knew Thomas well and rec-

ognized his special qualifications to go to Korea. Inaddition to his recent service as Commanding General,Fleet Marine Force, Western Pacific, Thomas had done apre-war China tour in the Peiping legation guard. Anddespite his dogged defense of the Marine Corps in theBattle of the Potomac, 1945-1947, he got along well withthe U.S. Army. As head of research and development,Thomas also understood the 1st Division’s importanceas test bed for future techniques like vertical envelop-ment.

After his successful command of the 1st MarineDivision in Korea, April 1951-February 1952, Thomasreturned to Headquarters Marine Corps as a lieutenantgeneral and Assistant Commandant/Chief of Staff forGeneral Shepherd. For the next two years, Thomasfocused on reorganizing the Headquarters staff on func-tional general staff lines, on improving Marine Corpsrelations and representation within the Department ofthe Navy, and planning the postwar Fleet Marine Forceof three divisions and three aircraft wings, a force morethan twice as large as the Fleet Marine Force in June1950.

For his “twilight cruise” Thomas becameCommandant, Marine Corps Schools, Quantico (1954-1955), his favorite post and role as officer-instructor.Upon retirement he remained in government service asthe first executive director, Net Evaluation Committee,National Security Council staff from 1956 to 1958. Hethen entered private business in real estate and insur-ance in the Washington, D.C. area. He regularly attend-ed 1st Marine Division Association functions and eventsrelated to Marine Corps history; his four sons and sons-in-laws all served as Marines, two retiring as colonels.General Thomas died on 7 April 1984 at the age of 89.

Pacific, honored Thomas’ request.The 11th Replacement Draft (14July 1951) brought 3,436 Marinesand 230 naval personnel to thedivision and 344 Marines to the air-craft wing, accompanied by 22sailors. Nevertheless, the divisionremained short of majors, compa-ny grade artillery officers, and offi-cers and enlisted men in almostevery technical specialization,especially communications andlogistics.

General Thomas had no com-plaint about the quality of theMarines he had inherited from O.P. Smith or those sent to him byLieutenant General Lemuel C.Shepherd, Jr., Commanding Gen-eral, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific.The senior officers and companycommanders were proven WorldWar II veterans, and the lieutenantswere an elite of Naval Academygraduates, NROTC graduates, andofficer candidate school productsthat more than matched the com-

pany grade officers of World WarII. The enlisted Marines were asolid mix of career noncommis-sioned officers and eager enlistees.Thomas recognized that the divi-sion he now commanded was “insplendid shape” and prepared tofight and win in terrain and weath-er “never designed for polite war-fare.” He wrote retired MajorGeneral Merritt A. Edson that the1st Marine Division was “the bestdamn division that ever wore anAmerican uniform.”

Thomas went ahead with plans,coordinated with Shepherd, toform his own team as the divisionstaff and to appoint new regimen-tal commanders. Thomas arrangedfor Brigadier General William J.Whaling, an old friend who hadbeen Thomas’ alter ego onGuadalcanal, to become the assis-tant division commander on 20May. Whaling became his eyes andears on tactical issues with hissuperb knowledge of men,

weapons, and fieldcraft. ColonelSnedeker remained chief of staffuntil he gave way on 23 May toColonel Francis M. McAlister,whose command of the 1stMarines was cut short by woundson the 18th. Since he had come toKorea in 1950 as the division G-4,McAlister rotated home, to bereplaced temporarily by ColonelRichard G. Weede, who had takenColonel Bowser’s place as G-3 on8 May. Shepherd and Thomas hadsomeone else in mind for the divi-sion chief of staff’s post, ColonelVictor H. Krulak, the G-3 of FleetMarine Force, Pacific, and a trustedcolleague of both generals throughWorld War II and the postwaryears. Krulak became divisionchief of staff on 29 June with aspecial charge to begin experi-ments with the Marine Corps’ oneoperational helicopter squadron.

The rest of the division staffbrought enough character andexpertise to their jobs to pleaseThomas. The G-1, Colonel WesleyM. Platt, had spent World War II asa Japanese prisoner of war; hisleadership among the prisonershad won him the admiration of hispeers and great influence on thestaff. Thomas’ two G-2s, LieutenantColonels Joseph P. Sayers andJames H. Tinsley, did a workman-like job. Like Weede, ColonelBruce T. Hemphill, and LieutenantColonel Gordon D. Gayle servedas Thomas’ G-3s under the closeand critical scrutiny of ColonelsKrulak and Weede, who alsoserved as division chief of staff.Colonels Frank P. Hager and CustisBurton, Jr., performed the thank-less task of G-4 until they rotatedto the command of the 5th and11th Marines, respectively, al-though Burton later returned aschief of staff in February 1952 toreplace Weede.

The commanders of the infantryregiments were all tested veterans

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Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A156022

The command team of the 1st Marine Division stands outside a briefing tent atthe division headquarters. Pictured from left are BGen William J. Whaling, assis-tant division commander, MajGen Gerald C. Thomas, division commander, andCol Victor H. Krulak, division chief of staff.

of the Fleet Marine Force, and theirstyles varied more than their com-petence. After Francis McAlister fellin a precision Chinese mortar bar-rage on his command group,Thomas assigned his regiment tothe legendary Colonel Wilburt S.“Big Foot” Brown, an artillery offi-cer sent out to command the 11thMarines. The irrepressible “BigFoot” Brown (whose homeric 14Fsized-feet required special supplyarrangements, including the air-drop of field brogans into thewilds of Nicaragua) took commandonly to issue an order to withdraw.As the 1st Marines trooped by hisjeep on the way south to the NoName Line, the files of men brokeinto chicken-like cackles, showingthat their “red leg” colonel looked“yellow” to them. Colonel Brownsoon showed that their judgmentwas a short round by a mile. Whenthe veteran of World War I,Nicaragua, and World War II sur-

rendered command to anotherWorld War I veteran, ColonelThomas A. Wornham, Brown hadwon the affection of the 1stMarines, “Chesty Puller’s Own,” avery tough bunch of Marines toimpress.

The other two infantry regi-ments went to colonels of highability. Colonel Richard W. Hay-ward brought intelligence and per-sonal elegance (too much some ofhis troops thought) to the 5thMarines, succeeded by Weede on 7August whose energy and forceexceeded Hayward’s. Almondliked them both, a dubious recom-mendation. Weede then turnedover command to Frank Hager on19 November. The 7th Marines bidfarewell to Colonel Homer L.Litzenberg, Jr., on 15 April andwelcomed Colonel Herman Nick-erson, Jr., no stranger to theKorean War since he had been inthe combat zone since the Inchon

landing as the senior Marine liai-son officer from Fleet MarineForce, Pacific to Far EastCommand and Eighth Army. Noless professional than the otherregimental commanders, Nick-erson brought a driving, no-non-sense command style to the 7thMarines that made the regiment, inThomas’ opinion, the best in thedivision. Nickerson appreciatedthe contributions of his two execu-tive officers, the incomparableLieutenant Colonel Raymond G.Davis, Jr., and Lieutenant ColonelJohn J. Wermuth. Promoted tocolonel, Wermuth assumed regi-mental command on 20 Septemberwhen Nickerson’s extended over-seas tour ended.

The high level of competence atthe regimental level did not dropoff in the division’s separate battal-ions. With an officer corps createdby service in six divisions in thePacific War, the Marine Corps

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Courtesy of the Naval Institute Press

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In the soft spring of his senior year (June 1950) atHillsboro High School, Nashville, Tennessee,Clarence Jackson Davis, called “Jack” by his family

and friends, discovered several reasons to join theMarine Corps Reserve. Going to war was not one ofthem. Jack Davis planned instead to go to VanderbiltUniversity, where his older brother Vince was already asophomore and a keen midshipman in the Naval ROTCunit. Jack admired Vince, but he did not fancy himselfa naval aviator like his older brother. On the otherhand, the local Marine Corps Reserve infantry companyhad some openings, and he and some high school foot-ball and baseball teammates liked the idea—advancedby some sweet-talking Marine sergeants—of keepingtheir baseball team together under the sponsorship ofthe Marine Corps. Marine training seemed little morethan another athletic challenge; the recruiters mentionedthat weekly drill often included a basketball game. Thenew recruits had no active duty requirement and thetwo weeks summer training sounded like a Boy Scoutcamp with guns. Besides, the recruiters insisted, partici-pating in reserve training made a young man draft-prooffrom the U.S. Army.

Jack also saw his enlistment as a potential way tohelp pay for his college education and, if all went well,become a Marine officer. More farsighted than many ofhis friends and counseled continuously by Vince, Jackhad already talked with the Marine major on theVanderbilt NROTC staff, who advised him that enlistedservice would strengthen his chances for selection forthe next summer’s Platoon Leaders Class. Serving as anenlisted officer-candidate in the Marine Corps Reserveseemed a less-demanding way of helping pay for hiseducation than attempting to win a football grant-in-aidplaying for the hapless Commodores. The Davis broth-ers calculated that their military commitments wouldallow them to attend school without facing a demandingworking schedule, a financial relief they could stretch byliving at home to study and avoiding the temptations ofcampus social life.

Jack enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at the ageof 17 in March 1950. If not quite a youthful lark, hisdecision did not seem very momentous, but a combina-tion of good planning, reasonable sense, and anticipat-ed adventure. He would try the life of a Marine, and hewould be paid to camp out and play sports for theMarine Corps. His life after high school, however, “didnot work out as planned.” One night in June 1950, aftergraduation, Jack watched a newsreel at a local movietheater and learned about some distant war in Korea.His first reaction: “I was thrilled I was not there.”

Lieutenant General Clifton B. Cates, Commandant ofthe Marine Corps and a fellow Tennessean, made surethat Jack Davis learned the true meaning of being a vol-

unteer Marine from the Volunteer State. After the Fourthof July the ground units of the Marine Corps Reservereceived a warning order that they would soon be mobi-lized, and on 20 July the Commandant made it official:Marine reservists in ground units would be called toactive duty “for the duration.” Certainly most (if not all)of them would go to Korea as part of the 1st MarineDivision. After the confusion of in-processing, medicalexaminations, and additional issues of 782 gear, theNashville Marines of Company C, 14th Battalion, MarineCorps Reserve, marched off to war from their reservecenter at Shelby Park down Broad Street until theyreached the 11th Street railroad siding off old UnionDepot. Curious spectators watched the young menmarch off, their parade dominated by the blaring of highschool bands at the front and rear of the column. WithM-1s and dressed in green utilities the Marines did notlook like their predecessors of the 11th TennesseeVolunteer Infantry, Confederate States of America, butthe spirit of those young Nashvillians, equally perplexedand determined in 1861, stiffened the backs of their1950 successors.

Whatever his expectations, Private Clarence JacksonDavis, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, did not go off to waruntrained—as did his Confederate ancestors and goodlypart of the U.S. Eighth Army in 1950. At CampPendleton, his “station of initial assignment,” Jack’sCompany C received the triage of personnel mobiliza-tion: true veterans of active duty were culled out forimmediate assignment to the Fleet Marine Force, proba-bly directly to the 1st Marine Division; Marine reservistswhose drills and summer camp more or less approxi-mated boot camp went on to eight more weeks of pre-deployment field training and physical conditioning; andthe untrained true “boots” like Jack Davis went south tothe Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, to begintheir life as real Marines.

The temporary mission of the Marine Corps Recruit

Clarence Jackson Davis: Every Marine

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Depot was not turning young men into Marines but intoday laborers and stevedores. All hands spent much ofevery day mobilizing the depot for the expected wavesof new recruits; the reservists set up bunks, hauled mat-tresses out of storage, and carried footlockers into thereopened barracks. Every night for two weeks thereservists went to the North Island docks to load ammu-nition and mount-out boxes for the 1st Marine Division.Not until the division cleared the harbor for Japan didthe reservists start their formal boot camp schedule,which now seemed like welcome relief from the role ofslave laborers. Jack Davis found boot camp no specialchallenge.

The follow-on field training, eight weeks and manda-tory for every Marine regardless of assignment, provedmore and less fun. Jack enjoyed the long days on theranges of Camp Elliott. He qualified with ease with theM-1 and fired the entire range of individual and crew-served weapons found in a Marine infantry battalion.Jack liked them all except the M-1 carbine, which rifle-men did not carry anyway. The last phase of the train-ing focused on cold weather, mountain training at PickelMeadow, which was neither meadow-like nor cold.Temperatures that December reached the 70s, and the

Marines trudged around in the mud and slush in theirlayers of cold-weather clothing issue, all of them per-ilously close to heat exhaustion and dehydration.Apparently the Marine Corps had found a way to trainthe replacements for Korea’s winters and summers at thesame time.

In January 1951, Jack Davis and his comrades of the6th Replacement Draft boarded the Army transportRandolph for the trip to Korea. The Randolph had comedirectly from Pusan where it had disembarked a part ofthe 1st Marine Division, recently evacuated fromHungnam. When Jack and his messmates reached theirtroop compartment, they found the canvas bunks deco-rated with messages from the survivors of the ChosinReservoir campaign. Jack did not find the words of wis-dom very comforting. A few were clever and humorous,but most of the collected battlefield folk wisdom struckJack as sad, depressing, bewildered, stunned, and evensuicidal. As the messages from the veterans attested, thewar had almost been lost, had almost been won, andthen almost lost again. As General Douglas MacArthurhad just reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jack Davisand his comrades now faced the Chinese army and anentirely new war.

could usually find the right combi-nation of leadership and technicalskill to give the separate battalionsa strong commander. Among thecommanders General Thomasinherited in these battalions wereMarines whose accomplishmentshad made them legends: LieutenantColonel John H. Partridge of the 1stEngineers, who had opened theroute out of the Chosin Reservoir;Major Lloyd O. Williams, the mastermarksman, who commanded the1st Ordnance Battalion; andLieutenant Colonel Henry J. “Jim”Crowe of the 1st Shore PartyBattalion, a heroic battalion com-mander at Tarawa and Saipan aswell as another team shooter.

As the commander of a greatdivision, whose management heshared with an able staff, GeneralThomas could focus on his rela-tions with Generals Van Fleet andAlmond. Although Van Fleet took apractical, unpretentious approachto commanding Eighth Army,General Almond had become notone whit more subdued by the

twin blows of surrendering theindependent status of X Corps andthe abrupt removal of his patron,General of the Army DouglasMacArthur. Almond retained theimperiousness and elegant field lifestyle that characterized many Armygenerals of his generation and,especially, his two models,MacArthur and General Mark W.Clark, his army commander inWorld War II. Surrounded by staffofficers from central casting—albeitvery talented—Almond favoredhigh-fashion field uniforms, opu-lent vans and messes, and imperialgestures worthy of Napoleon him-self, including the haphazardawarding of medals. Almond’s airydisregard for time-space factorsand enemy capabilities, as well ashis habit of ignoring the chain-of-command, had driven GeneralSmith into tight-lipped rebellion.Thomas had dealt with some diffi-cult Marine generals, but Almondwould be a challenge.

Thomas first made sure that noone would mistake him for the

Almond model of a modern majorgeneral. He truly preferred the lookof the Old Corps of World War II,not a U.S. Army that had remadeitself in the image of its flamboyantarmor and airborne generals likeWalton H. Walker and Ridgway.Thomas wore a uniform that wasstrictly issue from his battered utili-ty cap and standard helmet to hiscanvas leggings and worn, brownfield shoes. Instead of the “gener-als” version of the Colt .45-caliberautomatic worn the Army-way witha fancy leather belt, he carried anissue pistol in a black shoulder-hol-ster. None of his regular fieldwear—jacket, sweaters, shirts, andtrousers—would be mistaken fortailors’ work. His only personalaffectation (a very useful one atthat) was his old Haitian coco-macaque walking stick, whoseonly local counterpart was carriedby General Shepherd. On specialoccasions General Thomas and hisregimental commanders mightsport white scarves and the divi-sion staff red scarves, but the idea

was Van Fleet’s, who thought thescarves would show the troopsthat senior officers were not aller-gic to frontline visits.

Still a part of IX Corps—onewonders now about the urgency inthe change of command—the 1stMarine Division disengaged fromthe Chinese 39th and 40th Armiesand fell back unmolested 15 milesto the No Name Line, a belt of pre-pared positions dug by Koreanlaborers and Army engineers. The1st Marines, reinforced by a battal-ion of the 7th Marines, protectedthe bridges and passes while therest of the division withdrew ingood order over the Pukhan andSoyang Rivers, both in flood fromrain and melting snow. By 29 Aprilthe division had put the rivers at itsback and filed into the No NameLine positions with the 5thMarines, the 1st Regiment of theKorean Marine Corps (KMC), andthe 7th Marines on line from westto east. The 1st Marines went intodivision reserve. Colonel Bowserthought that the retrograde move-ment—which he and Thomas did

not think necessary—proved thatthe division had lost nothing of its1950 ability to march and fightsuperior numbers of Chinesetroops without prohibitive losses.Meanwhile General Van Fleet metwith his corps commanders on 30April to discuss Eighth Army’s nextmove: an active defense of the NoName Line and maximum readi-ness to meet another Chinese-North Korean offensive, predictedfor mid-May by Van Fleet’s intelli-gence staff. In the reorganizationof the front, the 1st MarineDivision would rejoin X Corps,effective 1 May.

General Thomas first had tofight off General Almond before hecould focus on killing Chinese.The two generals met every dayfor three days (1-3 May), andThomas emerged victorious inestablishing new ground rules forthe Marines’ dealing with X Corps.Thomas had already told his staffthat it would take a hard-line with“suggestions” from any corps staffmember; one of his assistant oper-ations officers tested the guidance

by telling his Army counterpartsfrom Almond’s headquarters thathe could “go to hell” for givingorders in Almond’s name.

Thomas took a disgruntledAlmond head on. He could becharming in his own way—hepointed out his own Virginian andConfederate roots to VirginiaMilitary Institute “Old Grad”Almond—but he insisted thatAlmond stop bypassing the chain-of-command or allowing his staffto run roughshod over the properchannels in the 1st MarineDivision. Almond insisted he wasan active corps commander.(Meddlesome was the word theMarines chose.) Thomas told himthat he was an active division com-mander and that he intended tomake as many visits to regimentsand battalions as Almond made.Thomas added that he would “exe-cute any order proper for a soldierto receive.” Almond pressedThomas to go on, but Thomas nowremained silent as if expecting afurther elaboration of policy.Almond said he would make manyvisits. “Is that all right with you?”Almond continued. More silence.Almond went on: “But I can assureyou that I will never issue an orderaffecting one of your units exceptthrough you.” Now Thomasresponded: “On that basis . . . youare always welcome.” The twogenerals remained true to theirword.

Thomas tested the era of goodfeeling with X Corps almost imme-diately and to positive effect. VanFleet had the notion that each divi-sion should establish a battalion-sized outpost from which it couldpatrol northwards to make contactwith the Chinese. For the 1stMarine Division the best place toestablish such a base—whichThomas and Bowser thought was amiserable idea—was south ofChunchon but north of the critical

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The 1st Marines regimental headquarters occupies a tent-camp along the road toHongchon, just south of the No Name Line. United Nations Command air supe-riority allowed such administrative arrangements.


Morae Kagae Pass, the only routeof escape to the No Name Line.The position would be outside theartillery fan of the 11th Marines,and close air support alone (nowcomplicated by Air Force schedul-ing practices) would be no substi-tute. Thomas argued with VanFleet and Almond that he wouldperform the mission, but that heshould dictate the size of the forceand its rules of engagement—anddisengagement. When Thomas puthis “patrol base” in place on 5-7May, he sent the entire 7th Marines(artillery and tank reinforced)north toward Chunchon, and headded the 1st KMC Regiment toNickerson’s task force. In addition,he had the 5th Marines put ascreening company in front ofeach of its frontline battalions, butkept the companies well withinartillery support.

Thomas continued to press XCorps for more artillery since VanFleet’s intelligence staff insistedthat the next Chinese offensivemight focus on the 1st MarineDivision. Thomas’ own groundand aerial patrols found ample evi-dence of Chinese troop move-ments between the Pukhan Riverand the No Name Line. The com-manding general had also heardVan Fleet insist that no EighthArmy unit, a company or larger,should be isolated and cut-off; VanFleet told his generals that nightwithdrawals and counterattacksshould be abandoned as opera-tional options. He also insisted thatevery division artillery groupment(the 11th Marines for Thomas)should use its daily allowance ofshells (the “Van Fleet unit of fire”or five times the normal allotmentof shells) to fire upon suspectedenemy concentrations and trans-portation routes. Thomas persuad-ed Almond that the 1st MarineDivision could not meet Van Fleet’sexpectations without some Army

help, and Almond committed twoX Corps general support artillerybattalions to reinforce the fires ofthe 11th Marines. Thomas alsonegotiated a shortening of hisfrontage since he had to put twobattalions of the 1st Marines intothe line to replace the 7th Marines,which left only one infantry battal-ion as division reserve. Eventhough he had come to concludethat the Chinese were massing tothe east instead of to his front,Thomas had no intention of allow-ing any part of the 7th Marines tobe cut off between the MoraeKagae Pass and the No Name Line.He approved a Nickerson-Davisplan to garrison the pass with areinforced battalion (less one riflecompany) and simply announcedthe change to Almond, who didnot object to the fait accompli.Thomas also planned to extract the7th Marines from its advancedposition as soon as he though hecould justify such an action toAlmond. He anticipated that trou-ble would develop along the

boundary of the 1st Marines andthe U.S. 2d Infantry Division, notto his front. The 7th Marines wouldbe his new division reserve, readyto attack to the northeast. The planproved to be prescient.

Offensive and Counteroffensive

Changing their operational styleof nighttime infiltration attacks,characterized by surprise and thelimited use of artillery, the ChineseNinth and Third Army Groups,augmented by the North Korean IIand V Corps, opened the FifthOffensive (Second Phase). On themorning of 16 May 1951, the offen-sive began with a Soviet-stylepreparatory artillery bombardment.Frustrated in his April offensive,Peng Dehuai decided that the lim-ited road network and sharp,rugged mountains of eastern Koreaoffered a better area of operationsfor a renewed offensive. Van Fleetand his corps commanders wouldfind it more difficult to shift rein-forcements against the shoulders

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A Marine patrol secures a hill and moves forward. Its mission was to maintaincontact with the enemy, warn of an impending attack, and delay its progress asmuch as possible.

of any breakthrough, and the steepmountains made it difficult to massUnited Nations artillery fire. Thebroken, forested terrain wouldprovide welcome cover and con-cealment from United NationsCommand air strikes. The weightof the Chinese offensive (27 divi-sions with three artillery divisionsin support) fell on (from west toeast) the U.S. 2d Infantry Division,the 5th ROK Division, and the 7thROK Division of X Corps withadditional attacks upon the neigh-boring 9th ROK Division of the

Republic’s III Corps. The Chinesedid not ignore the western-mostdivision of X Corps, the 1st MarineDivision, which would be pinnedin its part of the No Name Line byattacks from the Chinese 60thArmy. The minimal operationalgoal was to destroy one or moreU.N. divisions; a major victorywould be the fragmentation ofeither X Corps or the ROK IIICorps and a return to a campaignof movement that would dislodgethe Eighth Army from the TaebaekMountains to the Han River valley.

Eventually described by X Corpsas the battle of the Soyang River,16-21 May 1951, the Chinese offen-sive overran various parts of thefrontline positions and the patrolbases of the hard-luck 2d InfantryDivision and the three ROK divi-sions to its right. Despite somedogged defensive action byAmerican and South Korean sol-diers, the Chinese advanced 30miles, forcing the three ROK divi-sions to the south and threateningto roll-up the right flank of the 2dDivision, which lost the better partof the 38th Infantry and itsattached Dutch battalion in slow-ing the Chinese attack. GeneralAlmond decided he needed toinsure that the western side of theChinese salient was secure first; herequested reinforcements from VanFleet, who sent the 187th AirborneInfantry Regiment and U.S. 3dInfantry Division to blocking posi-tions behind X Corps. In the mean-time, Almond wanted the 2dInfantry Division to refuse its rightflank. Such a redeploymentrequired the 1st Marine Division toextend its sector of the No NameLine to the east and to do so whilein contact with the enemy.

On the first day of the Chineseoffensive, General Thomas visitedAlmond’s command post atHoengsong and saw the crisisbuild in X Corps’ eastern sectors.Thomas and Almond discussedwhat situations the 1st MarineDivision might face, but Thomaswould make no commitments untilhe was sure he could withdraw the7th Marines (Reinforced) from theill-conceived “patrol base” north ofthe No Name Line. Closer to theanticipated Chinese attack, ColonelNickerson reinforced the outpostat Morae Kagae Pass, bringing thedefenders to battalion strength andincluding the regimental headquar-ters and a tank platoon. Havingjust joined the 7th Marines—his

11

regiment in World War II—SecondLieutenant Earl F. Roth wonderedwho had placed the regiment sofar from the rest of the division. Hereached the Morae Kagae Pass andthe 7th Marines rear defenses onlyafter a long and lonely jeep rideacross an empty countryside, buthe felt eyes watching him fromevery hill. When he later saw thepiles of Chinese bodies at the pass,he remembered similar scenesfrom Peleliu. On the evening of 16May, a Chinese regiment attackedthe pass in force and lost 112 deadand 82 captured before breakingoff the action. Nickerson’s forcelost two tanks, seven dead, and 19wounded. The attack gave Thomasplenty of reason to pull backNickerson’s entire regiment, or-dered that night with Almond’sapproval. Colonel Frank T.

Mildren, X Corps’ operations offi-cer, correctly assumed that theChinese wanted no part of the 1stMarine Division: “The Marines [are]

just wrapped up in their usualball.” Mildren’s assessment did notaccurately picture the 1st MarineDivision’s skillful redeployment to

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Marines of the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, gather the bodies of the Chinese 179thDivision, which attacked the regiment’s patrol base at Morae Kagae Pass on thenight of 16 May. As part of the Chinese Fifth Offensive (Second Phase), the attackdid not pin the 1st Marine Division to the No Name Line, which allowed its rede-ployment to the east to aid the U.S. 2d Infantry Division.

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

release the U.S. 9th InfantryRegiment for a new mission, sav-ing the rest of its parent division.

After artillery and air strikesinsured that the Chinese 60thArmy marched east to the sound ofsomebody else’s guns, Thomasordered the 1st Marines to shiftright and take the 9th Infantry’spositions while the 7th Marinesmarched back to the No NameLine and took over the 1st Marinessector. In the meantime, two bat-talions of the 5th Marines movedeastwards behind the No NameLine to refuse the division rightflank north of the crucial roadjunction of Hongchon. The 7thMarines and the 1st KMC Regimentslipped to the left to take over partof the 5th Marines’ former sector.General Thomas reported at 1730on 18 May to Almond that therealignment had been accom-plished, but that he also wantedmore corps artillery ready to firedefensive fires along his thinly-manned front. He requested andreceived more aerial reconnais-sance from the Cessna light patrolaircraft (L-19 “Bird Dogs”) assignedto X Corps. Thomas had alreadyimproved his defensive posture byplacing the 1st Marines in positionsalmost four miles south of the orig-inal No Name Line. The only con-tact occurred on 20 May when ele-ments of the Chinese 44th Divisionmarched unawares into the defens-es of the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines,and left behind almost 170 deadand prisoners when the Marinesshattered the lead regiment withtheir battalion weapons, artillery,and air strikes. The 1st MarineDivision awaited more orders. Itdid not expect Almond to remainon the defensive since X Corpsnow had fresh troops and the twoChinese army groups had placedthemselves inside a vulnerablesalient.

Although he had won the

respect of Almond and his staff inhis first month of division com-mand, General Thomas had nointention of becoming a compliantsubordinate commander when hethought Army generals paid too lit-tle attention to tactical realities.Thomas and Almond conferredtwice on 19 May and again on 20May at the 1st Marine Divisioncommand post. The issue was acounteroffensive order from VanFleet to I and IX Corps, a move-ment that began on 20 May for the7th Infantry Division, the IX Corpselement on Thomas’ left flank.Almond wanted the 1st KMCRegiment to advance beyond theNo Name Line to conform to IXCorps’ advance, but Thomas“expressed reluctance” to send aregiment on an axis of advancethat took it away from the rest ofthe division and opened a gap inthe division’s defensive alignment.Thomas won a concession fromAlmond immediately: he couldmake his own arrangements tosecure X Corps’ left flank and coor-dinate the movement directly withIX Corps.

As Peng Dehuai acknowledged,the collapse of the Fifth Offensive(Second Phase) gave UnitedNations Command an unprece-dented opportunity to mount acounteroffensive of potential stra-tegic consequences. Even thoughhis army group commandersprotested his withdrawal orders,Peng called off the offensive onthe afternoon of 21 May and issuedorders that the eastern armiesshould withdraw during the nightof 23-24 May to a defensive linethat would run from the ImjinRiver to Hwachon to Kansong,roughly the line occupied byUnited Nations Command whenthe Fifth Offensive began in April.Five Chinese armies and threeNorth Korean corps would defendthe line.

Prodded by General Ridgway,who flew to Korea to inject someof his special bellicosity into a flag-ging Eighth Army, Van Fleet hadstolen half a march on his Chinesecounterpart by ordering I and IXCorps to start a drive to the TopekaLine, a phase line on the groundabout halfway to the contemplated

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MajGen Gerald C. Thomas checks the frontline situation map with the 5thMarines’ commanding officer, Col Richard W. Hayward, center, and the regi-ment’s operations officer, Maj Robert E. Baldwin.

Chinese defenses. Van Fleet andthe corps commanders of I and IXCorps, however, could not createmuch urgency in their divisions.Neither Ridgway nor Van Fleetthought I and IX Corps had seized

the moment. They were thuspleasantly surprised when Al-mond, who seized momentswhether they were there or not,proposed that he could shift to theoffensive as soon as noon on 23

May as long as he retained controlof the 187th Airborne and the 3dInfantry Division and gained theuse of the brand-new 8th ROKDivision as well. Instead of drivingalmost directly north like I and IXCorps, however, Almond plannedto use his South Korean divisionsto keep the Chinese and NorthKoreans engaged at the forwardedges of the salient. His Americandivisions would cut across the baseof the salient from southwest tonortheast, roughly on an axis thatfollowed Route 24 through Chaun-ni—Inje—Kansong where X Corpswould link up with ROK I Corps.The counteroffensive, supportedby massive aerial bombardmentand Van Fleet-directed artillery bar-rages of World War I profligacy,would bag the survivors of theChinese Third and Ninth ArmyGroups. Van Fleet approvedAlmond’s plan, and X Corps issuedits attack order on 21 May.

For the 1st Marine Division thedevelopment of two Eighth Armycounteroffensives with different

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Elements of the 2d and 3d Battalions, 5th Marines, hit thedirt after taking heavy enemy mortar and machine gun firefrom Chinese forces occupying Hill 1051. Air and artillery

forced the enemy to retire northward and the regimentsecured the commanding high ground.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC368657


A .30-caliber machine gun team and a Marine with a Browning Automatic Rifleoccupy recently abandoned enemy foxholes, using them for cover while pursu-ing Chinese and North Korean forces.

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axis of advance provided GeneralThomas and his staff with newchallenges. A shift of corps bound-aries as far east as a lineHongchon-Hwachon Reservoirhelped some, but not much. As hehimself later admitted, Almond hadonce again promised too much,too soon in the way of decisiveaction. For once he had not under-estimated the enemy; the Chinesearmy groups in his zone of actionwere indeed wounded, but not asseriously as Eighth Army estimat-ed. (United Nations Command esti-mated total Chinese casualties forthe Fifth Offensive at 180,000, butthe Chinese put their own losses athalf this total.) The difficulty wasthe time and effort necessary to getthe offensive moving with taskforces drawn from the 2d InfantryDivision, the 3d Infantry Division,

the 187th Airborne, and the divi-sional and corps tank battalions.The result was that the attacks atthe tip of the salient jumped off ontime (mid-23 May), but the bigdrive across the base of the salientdid not begin until 24 May and theserious, organized advance upRoute 24 did not begin until thenext day. In the meantime theChinese, attacked 12 hours beforethey began their own withdrawal,fought back sluggishly as theymoved up their withdrawal sched-ule, a euphemism for—in somecases—a Chinese “bug out.”

The result of the gelatinousattack by Major General Clark L.Ruffner’s 2d Division and itsattached task forces was that the1st Marine Division advance, alsodutifully begun on 23 May, had toconform to the Army units on its

right. The Marine advance of 24-31May developed into a two-axisattack with the 1st Marines and the1st KMC Regiment moving throughthe hills south of Soyang, crossingthe river on 28 May, and reachingthe heights above the HwachonReservoir on 31 May. The 5th and7th Marines started the marchnorth in a column of regiments,but the 7th Marines pulled aheadwhile the 5th Marines took thecommanding heights of Kari-san(Hill 1051). The 7th Marines thenturned northeast away from Route24 to take the shortest route to thetown of Yanggu, just east of theeastern end of the HwachonReservoir. The 7th Marines assault-ed and captured the Yangguheights, but watched the Chineseflee through the open zone of thetardy U.S. 2d Infantry Division. The

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

16

5th Marines shifted right to the hillseast of the road to Yanggu anddrew abreast of the 7th Marines on29-30 May. The next day all ofThomas’ four regiments occupiedtheir portion of Line Topeka.

For the rifle companies at thehead of each pursuing battalion,the war did not look much like thereassuring blue arrows on anacetate-covered 1:25,000 map. Thelast two weeks of May 1951 provedto be hot and very dry during theday, but cold and wet at night asunusual spring rains kept the hillsslick and the valleys a slough.Water to drink, however, provedharder to find than water for dis-comfort. Few Marines were willingto chance the ground water orlocal streams, but potable waterseemed to take second place toammunition in the columns ofKorean bearers. In an era when“water discipline” made “exces-

National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-429689

After securing Kari-san (Hill 1051), Marines search two Chinese prisoners of warfor weapons and documents.

Hugging the crest of a ridgeline, the 7th Marines prepare to“pour hot lead” into enemy positions as a prelude to a gen-

eral assault by other Marine units.


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sive” drinking a sin in the MarineCorps, dehydration stalked thestruggling columns of ladentroops. The columns not onlyfought groups of Chinese, butmarched through the EighthArmy’s dying fields of Februaryand May, passing the bodies of sol-diers from the 2d Infantry Division.

Despite the profligate use ofartillery and air strikes, the Marinerifle companies found their shareof close combat in the last week ofMay. Moving along a steep hillsideonly by hanging from the trunks ofshattered trees, Second LieutenantEarl Roth’s platoon saw enemymortar rounds fly by them andexplode in the gully below. Rothsuppressed a strong urge to reachout and catch a mortar round as itpassed by, a vestige of his footballplaying days at the University ofMaryland. Although the firefightsseldom involved even a wholecompany, they were a world ofwar for the engaged Marines. Oneplatoon of Company C, 1stBattalion, 5th Marines, stormed aChinese ambush position only to

have the defenders charge rightback at them in the most intimateof meeting engagements, a brawlwon by the Marines with grenades,clubbed rifles, bayonets, and fists.Urged on by the company’sBeowulf, Second Lieutenant PaulN. “Pete” McCloskey, the Marinesleft few survivors, but their post-fury victory celebration was cutshort by a deluge of 120mm mor-tar rounds pre-registered on top ofthe position. The company lost iscommanding officer and otherMarines in the swift reversal of for-tune.

The six days of offensive actionin the last week of May 1951demonstrated to friend and foealike that the 1st Marine Divisionremained a fearsome killingmachine. Using artillery and tankfire, supplemented with battalionmortars and machine guns, theinfantry regiments methodicallytook their objectives with minimalcasualties and no operationalcrises. The Marines continued torun into scattered battalion-sizedremnants of Chinese divisions,

none willing to hold any positionagainst the deluge of fire pouredupon them. On 28 May, however,the Marines started to discoverorganized, company-sized defen-sive positions manned by NorthKoreans and ringed with mines. By31 May, the day of the division’sheaviest casualties for the week(126 killed and wounded), theChinese had disappeared from thebattlefield. During the week thedivision intelligence staff estimatedthat the division had inflicted10,000 casualties; what it knew forcertain was that the regiments hadcounted 1,870 enemy bodies andtaken 593 prisoners. The 1stMarine Division’s losses for theentire month of May were 83 killedin action or died of wounds and731 wounded. The “exchangeratio” against an enemy still con-sidered dangerous and willing tofight was about as good as couldbe expected.

The week of divisional attackbrought its share of surprises. Theenemy provided some of them.The Chinese, aided by the slowadvance of the 2d InfantryDivision, refused to wait for theirentrappers and poured out of thesalient after the first attacks of 23May. Chinese soldiers from fivedifferent divisions of the ThirdArmy Group crossed the path ofthe Marines on their way to rallypoints at Yanggu and Hwachon;the chaotic pattern of the Chinesewithdrawal meant that enemybands might appear at any timefrom the east and south, whichlead Almond and Thomas to con-fer daily on flank security issues.When the Marines met the better-armed and trained infantry of theNorth Korean 12th Division, theyalso came under fire from Soviet-made artillery and mortars. TheChinese withdrawal, however,gave Marine artillery a field day;between 10 May and 7 June the 1st


Marines of Battery L, 4th Battalion, 11th Marines, prepare their 155mm howitzerfor a fire mission in support of Marine units around Yanggu. Observed, adjust-ed artillery fire provided the Marines with essential support against North Koreandefensive positions.

Marine Division artillery fired13,157 tons of shells, second onlyto the 2d Infantry Division (15,307tons). The corps artillery groupkept pace, especially since its firessupported the South Korean divi-sions. All X Corps divisions surren-dered their trucks to keep X Corpsguns supplied with shells. By theend of May ammunition shortageshad become an operational con-cern. The artillery expendituresand the stiffening Communistdefenses suggested that the “happytime” of X Corps exploitation oper-ations had come to an end.

General Thomas had every rea-son to be proud of his division, for

Generals Ridgway, Van Fleet, andAlmond all visited his commandpost and praised the division’s per-formance. General Shepherd andhis senior staff visited the divisionon 28-29 May, and Shepherdadded his congratulations not onlyfor the operational successes, butalso for the good relations with theArmy. And Almond went out of hisway to tell the other generals howmuch he valued Thomas’ wisecounsel. (Thomas was not so surethat Almond listened to anyone,but at least the corps commandernow observed the chain-of-com-mand.) Finding another way tocelebrate a victory, the commander

of the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines,sent one of his lieutenants out on adesperate mission: find ice some-where around Yanggu to cool thebattalion’s beer ration. SecondLieutenant Harold Arutunian’spatrol returned with ice—stolenfrom the body bags of an Armygraves registration unit. For at leastone week the 1st Marine Divisionhad fought by its book, and it suf-fered negligible casualties bypounding every objective withpreparatory air strikes and artilleryconcentrations. For once Almonddid not exaggerate when, on 31May, he characterized the Marinesas “fatigued, but spirits high.”

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Born in 1930 in Waco, Texas, he enlisted in theMarine Corps in 1948, following graduationfrom Junction City High School. After serving

out his active duty, he reverted to Reserve status. InNovember 1950, he was recalled to active duty andsent to Korea. While serving as an intelligence scoutwhile attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, he was killed at Kwagchi-dong on 29 May1951. The citation of his posthumous Medal of Honoraward reads, in part:

Voluntarily accompanying a rifle platoon in a daringassault against a strongly defended enemy hill posi-tion, Private First Class Moreland delivered accuraterifle fire on the hostile emplacement and therebyaided materially in seizing the objective. After theposition had been secured, he unhesitatingly led aparty forward to neutralize an enemy bunker whichhe had observed some 400 meters beyond and,moving boldly through a fire swept area, almostreached the hostile emplacement when the enemylaunched a volley of hand grenades on his group.Quick to act despite the personal danger involved,he kicked several of the grenades off the ridgelinewhere they exploded harmlessly and, while attempt-ing to kick away another, slipped and fell near thedeadly missile. Aware that the sputtering grenadewould explode before he could regain his feet anddispose of it, he shouted a warning to his comrades,covered the missile with his body and absorbed thefull blast of the explosion, but in saving his com-panions from possible injury or death, was mortallywounded.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret) Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A46966

Private First Class Whitt L. Moreland

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North to the Kansas Line

Perched in their most recent fox-holes above the Hwachon Res-ervoir and the blackened ruins ofYanggu—so flattened and inciner-ated that only the charred bankvault gave the town a skyline—theforward infantry battalions of the1st Marine Division could see onlymore sharp hills to the north, risingever higher into the smoky dusk ofthe last day of May. They did notknow that conferences elsewherewere already deciding their fate inthe month ahead.

The Chinese Fifth Offensive andits crushing defeat had opened theway for a second “entirely newwar,” but not one that made any ofthe belligerents very happy. TheCommunist coalition shared acommon problem with UnitedNations Command: was there anyoperational option that offeredadvantage worthy of the risks ofstrategic escalation? What if theSoviet air forces, for example,mounted attacks on the Americanairbases in Korea? What if theSoviet navy mounted submarine ormaritime aviation attacks upon theU.N. naval forces that roamed theeast and west seas with impunity?

Relatively certain that JosephStalin would not authorize anyattacks that might bring Americanretaliation on Soviet bases in theFar East, Mao Zedong sought someemployment of the ChineseCommunist Forces that wouldeventually destroy the will of theUnited Nations and the Republic ofKorea to continue the war. On 27May 1951, Mao Zedong openeddiscussions on strategy with hisprincipal commanders in Korea.Within a week Mao conferred witheight senior officers of the CCF,especially First Deputy Comman-der Deng Hua and Chief of StaffXie Fang. Mao told his field com-manders that the CCF would con-

duct niupitang attritional warfareof position until United NationsCommand casualties reachedunbearable proportions.

Mao’s use of the word niupi-tang could not have been moreapt since niupitang was a deli-cious but very sticky candy fromhis native Hunan Province, an irre-sistible sweet that took a very longtime to eat and usually made amess. The niupitang strategywould work well with a policy ofbiantan bianda or simultaneousnegotiating and fighting. Withintwo months Mao replaced three ofthe four army group commanders,retaining only Yang Dezhi, a mod-ern commander and a protégé ofDeng and Xie, and promoting himto second deputy commander andde facto director of operations forthe Communist field forces. PengDehuai remained the titular com-

mander of the CCF, but Deng Hua,Xie Fang, and Yang Dezhi directedthe new strategy, “On theProtracted War in Korea,” an-nounced in July 1951.

The other Communist co-bel-ligerents reacted to niupitang inmuch different ways, but neitherthe Soviets nor the North Koreanshad much leverage on MaoZedong. If they wanted the war tocontinue—and they did—theydepended upon the Chinese armyto bear the brunt of the fighting.Now that the war had not pro-duced a great Communist victory,Stalin (beset with political prob-lems at home) saw no reason to gobeyond his commitment of Sovietair defense forces to “MiG Alley”along the Korean-Manchurian bor-der and to rearm the Chinesearmy. The Soviets, in fact, sawtruce negotiations as a way toincrease their influence in theUnited Nations as well as to buytime to rebuild and rearm theChinese forces. The North Kor-eans—represented by the pestifer-ous Kim Il Sung—wanted onlymore war and no talks, unless atruce brought an end to Americanair strikes. Kim and his inner circleagreed, however, that the 38thParallel should be restored as aninternational border and that allforeign troops (including theChinese) should leave Korea—after the South Korean army hadbeen fatally weakened and theNorth Korean People’s Armyrestored to fighting trim and much-enlarged. Kim ordered his generalsto fight to the death for everyrocky foot of North Korean soil.

The process of political-strategicreassessment, which had begunwith the Chinese intervention inNovember 1950, blossomed in May1951 like the cherry-blossoms inWashington, D.C. and Koreancoastal resort town of Chinhae.Hints of peace negotiations sprout-


The Joint Chiefs of Staff directed theCommander in Chief, U.N. Command,Gen Matthew B. Ridgway, USA, tocontinue the offensive but only byadvancing to the Wyoming-KansasLine, a phase line in the mountainsnorth of the 38th Parallel. The under-lying objective of these operations wasdesigned to support a negotiated endto hostilities.

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By the spring of 1951, the question of close airsupport for United Nations Command groundforces had become a serious inter-service contro-

versy that pitted the Marine Corps and some of thesenior commanders of the Eighth Army against theUnited States Air Force and General Matthew B.Ridgway, the United Nations and American theater com-mander. To some degree the controversy involved theemployment of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and sever-al lesser and often false issues, e.g. jets versus propelleraircraft, but the heart of the problem was simply that theAir Force did not want to perform the mission. It regard-ed close air support as a wasteful and dangerous mis-use of offensive tactical air power. Marine Corps avia-tion and Navy carrier-based aviation regarded close airsupport as an essential contribution to the ground cam-paign. The victim in all this inter-service wrangling wasthe Eighth Army and the 1st Marine Division.

From the Air Force perspective, the close air supportmission belonged at the bottom of its offensive air mis-sions, although the leaders of the Army Air Forces asearly as 1943 insisted that air power was the equal ofground combat power in the conduct of war. The samesenior officers donned new uniforms in 1947, but didnot drop their old ideas about close air support, despitethe relatively effective use of ground-directed air strikesagainst the German army in 1944-1945. The Air Forceposition was rooted in negative experiences: the bomb-ing and strafing of friendly troops; the extraordinarylosses to ground fire in making front-line, low-levelbombing runs; and the conviction that Army groundcommanders knew nothing of fighter-bomber capabili-ties and would scream for close air support whenartillery was a more rapid and appropriate response totheir indirect fire support requirements. The guidance ineffect for Air Force-Army close air support operations in1950 was the “Joint Training Directive for Air-GroundOperations,” an agreement only between Tactical AirCommand and Army Field Forces, not the Service head-quarters.

In theory and application in Korea in 1950 the doc-trine of the “Joint Training Directive,” which the AirForce embraced as authoritative, made close air supportdifficult for a ground command to obtain. Basically, theAir-Ground Operations System (AGOS) required that aground commander request air support prior to anoperation and be very specific about his needs.Requests had to be processed through an Army opera-tions officer (G-3 Air) from regiment through field armyand reviewed by an Air Force officer at each echelon ofcommand (the air liaison officer) until the requestreached the Joint Operations Center (JOC), run by anAir Force general, which would allocate the available airstrikes. The request system insured that close air sup-

port strikes were not likely to be tactically relevant, butthe air direction system the Air Force preferred alsoadded to the problem. The definition of close air sup-port was that air strikes should be coordinated with thefire and maneuver of the ground forces through the pos-itive direction by a forward air controller (FAC) who wasfully knowledgeable about the ground combat situation.There was no fundamental disagreement that a TacticalAir Control Party (TACP) with reliable air-ground com-munications (vehicle- or ground-mounted) should beavailable so the FAC could direct air strikes by sight, justlike an artillery forward observer. The Air Force, how-ever, did not want to use its own personnel for suchmissions, and it did not trust the Army to provide a com-petent FAC. The Air Force might provide an Air LiaisonParty down to the regimental level to do air strike plan-ning, 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 suchTactical Air Control Parties to the Eighth Army in 1950,and they were shot to pieces—radio-jeeps and peoplealike.

The Fifth Air Force in 1950 created an air strike direc-tion system that depended on airborne air controllers,basically the World War II system. During the course ofthe fighting in 1950 the Fifth Air Force and Eighth Armycommitted people and equipment to form the 6147thTactical Control Squadron, later expanded to wing sta-tus. The “Mosquitoes,” as the forward air controllers (air-borne) came to be known, did yeoman work through-out the war, directing air strikes from their two-seat,propeller-driven North American AT-6 “Texan” aircraft, aWorld War II pilot trainer. The “Mosquitoes” lackednothing in courage and skill, but they were still hostagesto the JOC system. Either the air strikes had to be pre-planned or they had to be requested as a matter of dire

Close Air Support Controversy


21

emergency or diverted from other missions.The Navy-Marine Corps system, developed for

amphibious operations in World War II, offered a differ-ent approach. The Air Force tried to brand the systemas driven by amphibious operations, which it was tosome degree, but the system had proved itself in landcampaigns on Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, thePhilippines, and Okinawa. The Navy and the MarineCorps brought the same system to Korea, and it worked.It worked so well that Army generals, especially MajorGeneral Edward M. Almond, embraced it without reser-vation. His successor as commander of X Corps, MajorGeneral Clovis E. Byers, also became a convert, and itcost him his command. Other Army commanders at thedivision level envied the system and wondered whythey could not receive adequate support, but they weretoo intimidated by Lieutenant General Matthew B.Ridgway to push the issue.

The Air Force consistently misrepresented theessence of the Navy-Marine Corps system. The navalservices never challenged the important of air superior-ity or interdiction operations. The naval services simplyargued—and placed in their own doctrine—that if closeair support missions were to be flown at all, they shouldbe rapid, responsive, appropriate, and effective. The 1stMarine Aircraft Wing might be best trained to performsuch missions, but it was the system that counted, not

the uniforms of the pilots or the type of planes theyflew. The senior Marine ground commander did notcommand aviation units, as the Air Force charged.Either X Corps or 1st Marine Division did not commandthe 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.

The Navy-Marine Corps system accommodatedplanned requests, but its strength was its tactical flexi-bility. Each infantry battalion in the 1st Marine Divisionhad a Tactical Air Control Party of two elements. Onegroup served as the Air Liaison Party, part of the battal-ion operations staff. The other group was the ForwardAir Control Party, an officer and communicators whocould process requests for air support and direct airstrikes from the ground, usually well forward with aninfantry company. In practical terms, this system meantthat each Marine infantry battalion had two Marine offi-cers (naval aviators) as part of the battalion staff toinsure that air strikes hit the enemy and did so soonenough to affect the tactical situation. The systemworked, and the Marine Corps saw no reason to aban-don it.

As X Corps commander, General Almond liked theNavy-Marine Corps system, which he saw at close quar-ters during the Inchon-Seoul campaign and again dur-ing the withdrawal to the Hungnam enclave. In fact, heordered his Army divisions to form their own TACPs orhe arranged for the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing to send


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ed everywhere—most planted byshadowy Soviet sowers in theworlds’ capitals and at the UnitedNations. The Joint Chiefs of Staffkept General Matthew B. Ridgwayinformed on the flood of specula-tion and hope. Until the last weekof May, however, Ridgway had noreason to link his sense of thestrategic shifts underway with thecontinuing operations in Korea.

Then Van Fleet, pressed byAlmond, proposed a significantchange in the exploitation cam-paign that followed the defeat ofthe Fifth Offensive. When the bulkof the Chinese forces had alreadyescaped the bag between X Corpsand ROK I Corps, Van Fleet pro-posed a series of amphibiousenvelopments up the east coastthat would conclude with the cre-

ation of an enclave at Tongchon,still short of Wonsan, but wellnorth of the “Iron Triangle,” thecentral Korean network of trans-portation connections and moun-tain corridors bounded byChorwon-Pyonggang-Kumhwafrom west to east. Ridgway andVan Fleet agreed with Almond thatcontrol of the “Iron Triangle,” evenfrom Tongchon, would give either

TACPs to Army units (American and Korean) within hiscorps. The ability of the TACPs to direct strikes natural-ly drew most of the sorties flown in December 1950 bythe Marine squadrons and the naval aviators flying fromthe decks of Task Force 77.

The operational conditions and requirements of 1950made it appear that the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing hadcome to Korea to be General Almond’s corps aviationcomponent. In fact, X Corps functioned much like amodern Marine air-ground task force, even if Almondhad no direct authority over any of his supporting tacti-cal aviation squadrons. Fifth Air Force, however,thought this ad hoc arrangement should not continue.In early 1951, General Ridgway and Lieutenant GeneralGeorge E. Stratemeyer, Commander General, Far EastAir Forces, insured that General Douglas MacArthurplaced X Corps in the Eighth Army and the 1st MarineAircraft Wing under the operational control of the FifthAir Force and the Joint Operations Center. The Marinescould perform their close air support magic for all ofEighth Army, not just X Corps. Ridgway, however,demanded that Fifth Air Force study the whole close airsupport question and find ways to make the JOC systemmore responsive to unplanned ground requests for airstrikes.

While Fifth Air Force and Eighth Army both conduct-ed reviews of the Air-Ground Operations System, thewar went on. The 1st Marine Division returned to thefray in February 1951 without its usual customary airsupport, either in quality or quantity. Marine fighter-bomber squadrons (F4U Corsairs or F9F Panthers) flewmissions for all of Eighth Army with results that depend-ed entirely upon the ability of either the airborne“Mosquitoes” or ground spotters (if any) to identify thetargets and communicate with the aircraft. In the mean-time, Task Force 77 sailed north to attack Communistrailroads and highways (“the bridges of Toko-ri”), andAir Force fighter-bombers of varying nationalities (pre-dominately American or Australian) showed up to con-duct missions for the 1st Marine Division with mixedresults. Major General Oliver P. Smith asked Ridgway touse his influence with Fifth Air Force to give Smith oper-ational control of just one Corsair squadron. Ridgwayrefused to raise the issue and breach the “single man-

agement” doctrine. “Smith, I’m sorry, but I don’t com-mand the Air Force!”

Even though Eighth Army and Fifth Air Force madeserious efforts to establish all the personnel and com-munications elements of the AGOS request and direc-tion organization, the Air Force’s lack of interest andability in close air support still discouraged groundcommanders from making pre-attack requests. The sys-tem virtually guaranteed that emergency requests wouldbe answered late, if at all. With their own TACPs at thebattalion level, the Marines could and did short circuitthe system by making emergency requests to an air-borne Mosquito, who would then divert either out-going or returning interdiction strikes to the Marines andrelease direction of the strikes to the forward air con-trollers. If the attacking aircraft happened to be flown bytrained Marines, so much the better. The 1st MarineDivision FACs, however, reported that in April 1951 theJOC had answered 95 percent of their requests, but only40 percent of the missions were flown by adequatenumbers of aircraft, properly armed, and arrived in timeto make some difference in the battle. In the meantimelosses of aircraft and pilots soared in the 1st MarineAircraft Wing, in part because non-Marine controllersprovided poor information about the terrain and enemysituation. In April 1951, the Marines lost 16 aircraft and10 pilots (one captured, nine killed) to enemy groundfire.

Although X Corps received ample close air supportduring the Fifth Offensive (Second Phase), Almond stillcriticized the AGOS practices. Major General Gerald C.Thomas entered the fray when he learned that his divi-sion had received only two-thirds of its requested airstrikes in late May. Only about half of the delivered sor-ties were effective, and almost all were over an hour ormore late. The only concession Almond and Thomasreceived was the stationing of one mixed Corsairsquadron from Marine Aircraft Group 12 at K-46 a prim-itive strip near Hoengsong, but the JOC (Kimpo Airfield)still had to approve the missions. With the AGOS still inplace—albeit somewhat more efficient and flexible—thewar against the niupitang Chinese and North Koreandefenders would go on—and the 1st Marine Divisionwould indeed get stuck.

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side an advantage in ending orcontinuing the war.

General Ridgway, however, didnot agree that Van Fleet’s proposedOperation Overwhelming could bemounted because of resistance inWashington and sheer operationalfeasibility. Even a modest shore-to-shore movement would requiredisengaging the 1st Marine Divi-sion and (probably) the 3d InfantryDivision and transporting them toa port for embarkation. FromRidgway’s perspective, time was ofthe essence, and the requirementsof Overwhelming were too over-

whelming with truce talks in thewind. Ridgway’s greatest fear wasthat someone would give away theterritorial gains already made inMay and the additional ground hewanted to control in June afterOperation Piledriver, a straight-ahead push by all four of VanFleet’s corps. The Eighth Army’sgoal would be the seizure anddefense of a cross-peninsula line(Wyoming-Kansas) that wouldretake Kaesong, hold the mountainranges and passes northwest of theImjin River, secure at least part ofthe “Iron Triangle,” and hold the

mountains north of the HwachonReservoir all the way to the coastat Tongchon. Anticipating that aceasefire would entail the creationof some sort of territorial bufferzone, Ridgway wanted to reach aline (Kansas) well north of theWyoming Line, his non-negotiableposition for ensuring the grounddefense of the expanded Republicof Korea.

Two other considerationsshaped Ridgway’s thinking aboutthe conduct of the war. Some ofthe general’s critics and championslater suggested that he hadbecome too interested in his per-sonal goal of becoming Army chiefof staff or faint-hearted at theprospect of excessive Americancasualties in Korea. Ridgway’sambition was well-known to hisArmy peers, but he realized thattrying to please Washington was afool’s errand. Nor had Ridgway,notoriously ruthless in relievingnon-fighters, suddenly becomecasualty-shy. He simply saw nopurpose in risking lives in adven-tures that probably would not pro-duce the promised results.Moreover, Ridgway had becomeconvinced that air power couldgive him an offensive option topunish the Communist armiesbeyond bearing, his own highexplosive, high altitude version ofniupitang. Recent changes in theAir Force high command in thewar zone placed very aggressiveand persuasive air generals inRidgway’s inner council. GeneralOtto P. Weyland, the Far East AirForces director of operations sinceearly in the war, became the com-mander, and Lieutenant GeneralFrank F. Everest assumed com-mand of the Fifth Air Force. BothWeyland and Everest, tactical avia-tion commanders in World War II,championed aerial interdiction asthe most decisive way to use airpower in a war like the Korean

conflict. Both also insisted that thesenior theater Air Force officershould have operational control ofall aviation units with combatcapability, including the carrier airgroups of Task Force 77 and the1st Marine Aircraft Wing.Ridgway’s coolness to anyamphibious operation and hiswarmth toward the Weyland-Everest interdiction campaign,Operation Strangle, would havecritical effect on both the 1stMarine Division and the 1st MarineAircraft Wing for the rest of thewar.

For the 1st Marine Division thehigh-level discussions on the rela-tive weight of the ground and airwars on bringing the Communiststo terms had no immediate effectsince X Corps’ mission remainedunchanged: seize the Kansas Line.Nevertheless, the Marines neededat least a brief pause, whichAlmond would not grant the divi-sion on 31 May. He ordered theattacks to the north to continue,and on 1 June the 5th and 7thMarines dutifully pushed on—andwent nowhere. With the 11thMarines short of artillery shells, air

arrangements uncertain, and the7th Marines in need of a break,Thomas did not push Haywardand Nickerson until they all had achance to think about the newattacks.

The terrain alone appeared for-midable. A long, high ridge of theTaebaek Mountain chain dominat-ed the 1st Marine Division’s zoneof action. The ridge was known asTaeu-san and Taeam-san for itstwo highest peaks, 1,179 metersfor the northern most Taeu-sanand 1,316 meters for the southernTaeam-san. Taeu-san/Taeam-sanwere bordered on the west by theSochon River, which ran into theHwachon Reservoir just pastYanggu. The Marines also inheritedthe southern part of another paral-lel ridge to the west, but dominat-ed by the Taeu-san/Taeaum-sanhill mass to the east, which meantthat any force attacking directlynorth of Yanggu would receive firefrom its right flank. The terrain sit-uation to the east was even moredaunting. The division’s easternboundary ran generally along theSoyang; the distance between thetwo rivers was 15 miles, more orless, and the entire zone stretchedanother four miles to the west. TheTaeu-san/Taeam-san ridge, howev-er, did not uniformly run north-wards. The whole ridge complexhad once been a volcano, and thecrater created a depression in themountain, the “Punchbowl,” openat its eastern edge where theSoyang River had eroded a hole inthe crater wall. The southern lip ofthe crater, remained, however, as aformidable extension at a rightangle east of the main ridgeline,which provided a transverse posi-tion for fire directly along all thelower ridges to the south. In asense the whole Taeu-san/Taeam-san complex looked like a giantleaf with its thin tip to the southand its thicker (higher) base to the

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A rifle platoon of the 5th Marines does some “ridge-running” as it moves to anassault position in the broken terrain south of the Punchbowl.


north; many veins (ridges) ranwest and east from the centralspine, some creating separate com-partments to cross, others eche-loned southwest or southeast andrunning uphill to the central stem,dominated by a series of separatepeaks. The terrain is a defensivecommander’s dream.

The 1st Division attack on theTaeu-san/Taeam-san massif andthe ridge adjoining it to the westbegan on 2 June and ended almostthree weeks later with all fourinfantry regiments very bloodied,but unbowed and with three ofthem on or beyond the originalKansas Line. The advance uphillfor about eight miles took the mea-sure of the entire division as hadno fight since the Chosin Reservoircampaign. For the 1st Marines, itslosses exceeded those of Decem-ber 1950, and the entire divisionsuffered 183 dead and 1,973wounded. Both Generals Van Fleetand Almond questioned GeneralThomas about his division’s losses.Especially aggravated about thepoor quality of his close air sup-port and the Eighth Army’s timo-rous treatment of the Fifth AirForce, Thomas felt no need toapologize to Van Fleet for com-pleting his mission. “Well, General,you told us to take the KansasLine, and we took it for you. I’msure we paid for what we got, butwe got what we paid for.” Thomaswrote his family that his Marineswere the best he had ever seen,and “Big Foot” Brown told hisfriends that the feats of his regi-ment had to be seen to bebelieved. Thomas fully appreciatedthe North Koreans’ tenacity: “Theyfight like Japs!”

The battle began in earnest on 2June with the 1st Marines and 5thMarines attacking abreast, eachwith two battalions, with the 7thMarines and 1st KMC Regiment inreserve. The 1st Marines took one

intermediate objective (a small hillcalled X-Ray) and entered thelower ridges of the hill mass northof the Hwachon Reservoir andwest of the Sochon River. The fightwas an uphill slog all the way.General Thomas learned that thepress identified the engagedAmericans as “GIs.” He wrotehome: “That is us, and we are notGIs.” Expert at the coordination ofsupporting arms, Colonel Brownused artillery to the limit of itseffectiveness, but each objectiveultimately had to be taken byMarine infantry, savaged withgrenades and mortar shells as theyliterally crawled uphill. Brown hadto pay special attention to his leftflank, his boundary with the 7thROK Division, and he often had todeploy one battalion against flank-ing attacks while the other twocontinued their forward crawl. AsBrown recalled: “it was the tough-est fighting I have ever seen.”

Over the same period (2-10June), the 5th Marines faced aneven greater ordeal, especially its1st Battalion, whose zone includedseven ascending peaks before itcould reach the crest at Hill 1316(Taeam-san). The 2d Battalion’szone was somewhat less demand-ing, and Lieutenant Colonel GlenE. Martin more deft in paving theway with air strikes and artillery,and the weight of the NorthKorean defense faced the 1stBattalion anyway. It took two longdays for the 1st Battalion to cap-ture Hills 610, 680, and 692, a dis-tance of about 2,000 yards. In addi-tion to the stubborn defense by theNorth Koreans, the three rifle com-panies survived one “friendly”artillery barrage and one errant airstrike as well as tank fire from thevalley below to the west that,while welcome in bunker-busting,did not seem especially concernedabout the position of friendlytroops. At one point an inexperi-

enced company commanderallowed his men to be trapped in aNorth Korean mortar barrage, andanother company, run off its objec-tive by Corsair-dropped napalm,found itself the target of Com-munist artillery. McCloskey’s pla-toon in Company C started thetwo-day ordeal with sergeants assquad leaders and ended it with acorporal and two private first class-es in command; almost every pla-toon commander suffered at leastminor wounds. In the meantime,the 2d Battalion had advancedalmost 5,000 yards along the east-ern edge of the ridge, but its move-ment did not put it on terrain thatmenaced the North Koreans onTaeam-san.

25


The look on the Marine’s face tells thewhole story. Having just engaged in asavage firefight with enemy forces,these Marines continue their gruelingupward climb.

At this point, General Thomasdecided he needed to bring histwo uncommitted regiments intothe battle since the burden of closecombat in May-June 1951 had fall-en disproportionately upon the 5thMarines. (Nine members of the

regiment received Navy Crossesfor heroism, the 7th Marines four,and the 1st Marine two.) The 7thMarines, after all of two days rest,went into the attack on the right ofthe 1st Marines, which allowedBrown to slide left to guard his

loose connection with the 7th ROKDivision. Nickerson’s regiment alsoinherited the highest and mostheavily defended ridgelines thatran eastwards to Taeu-san (Hill1179) and the western rim of thePunchbowl. Thomas put the 1st

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After a short stop at Kobe, Japan, the Marines ofthe 6th Replacement Draft joined the 1st MarineDivision in late January 1951. In the process of

retraining and reorganizing, the division was conductingcounter-guerrilla operations around Pohang, an eastcoast port within the Republic of Korea. Jack Davis (pic-tured on the left in the first row) was assigned toCompany G, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, somewhere nearAndung, northwest of Pohang. Known within the regi-ment as “Bloody George” Company, Jack’s new com-rades were little more experienced than he was with theexception of a handful of officers, noncommissionedofficers, and privates. The original Company G hadlanded across Blue Beach at Inchon and fought in theliberation of Yongdung-po and Seoul. It earned its nick-name during the Chosin Reservoir campaign. The com-pany first met the Chinese at Majon-ni and lost ninedead and 15 wounded (including attachments) when its

truck convoy was ambushed. Filled with wide-eyedreservists from the 1st and 2d Replacement Drafts, thecompany started north toward the Yalu with a full com-plement of seven officers and 224 enlisted men. It alsohad a new company commander, Captain Carl L. Sitter,a World War II combat veteran. He had replaced the firstcompany commander, reassigned to Quantico, Virginia,as an instructor at The Basic School.

In just about one month, the second Company Gpractically disappeared, lost to battlefield deaths,wounds, and frostbite. The company fought its way intoHagaru-ri on 29 November as the spearhead of TaskForce Drysdale, taking 48 casualties from the gauntlet offire the Chinese created for the convoy of tanks andvehicles. At Hagaru-ri the company tried to retake EastHill, but faced too many Chinese with too few Marines.The dwindling ranks of Company G, nevertheless, heldthe shortened perimeter and took 60 more casualties.

Private First Class Jack Davis: Combat Marine

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Captain Sitter received the Medal of Honor, and 10 othercompany Marines were awarded decorations for valor,including a Silver Star for the first sergeant, MasterSergeant Rocco A. Zullo. Within 10 days of battle, thecompany lost all but 87 officers and men, and fully athird of these “originals” had been wounded andreturned to duty. Jack Davis had not yet experienced thephysical and emotional ravages of combat when hejoined Company G, but he could appreciate having evena handful of veterans around to stiffen the thirdCompany G.

Assigned to the 3d Platoon as a BAR-man, Jack soonlearned that Sergeant Robert W. “Blackie” Jones, new tothe company but a World War II veteran, had strongopinions about weapons. Sergeant Jones liked theBrowning Automatic Rifle, and he had a way of findingadditional BARs for his squad. Sometime in February,between Operations Ripper and Killer, as the EighthArmy 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?” heasked the squad sergeant. “Three, sir!” Jones smartlyresponded. “How many BARs do you have in your firstsquad, sergeant?” Puller continued. “Six, sir!” Pullerthen asked: “How did you get these weapons?” Jonesresponded with even more snap in his voice: “We liber-ated them from the Army, sir!” Puller grunted hisapproval and went on without further comment. Jack,standing next to Johnson in the ranks, almost laughed atthe spirited exchange.

Sergeant Jones also demonstrated quick thinkingunder fire. Sitting on a rice paddy dike somewherebetween Wonju and Hoengsong in late February, Jack’ssquad watched spouts of cold, muddy water rise fromthe paddy less than a foot beyond their outstretchedboots. “Blackie” did a back-gainer off the dike to alower-level paddy and screamed at his men to takecover. The Chinese burp-gunner faded into the woodswithout molestation. Jack also learned the value ofwater from Sergeant Jones and soon carried two can-teens, the only man in the squad to do so. He checkedhis water sources carefully, especially after he found arotting horse upstream in one clear, bubbling brook, andused halazone tablets liberally. His health remainedgood despite his constant fatigue and unrelenting diet ofC-rations. Nevertheless, he lost weight and seemed toshrink within his parka and field equipment.

The new Company G received another opportunity toadd to its “bloody” reputation in the first days of theChinese Fifth Offensive, April 1951. Upon the collapseof the 6th ROK Division on the division’s left flank,Major General Oliver P. Smith sent the 1st Marines westof the Pukhan River to seize the critical hills that domi-nated the river valley and the only road by which he

could extract the 5th and 7th Marines from the HwachonReservoir sector to the north. Hill 902, a 3,000-foottower, became the 3d Battalion’s objective; the hill dom-inated a road into the Pukhan River valley and a criticalbridge on the road south to Chunchon and the No NameLine where the division was to establish a new defensi-ble position. The battalion beat the Chinese to the peak(aided by Marine trucks) and moved down three paral-lel western ridges where Lieutenant Colonel Virgil W.Banning, the battalion commander, expected to meetthe Chinese on their belated climb toward the peak ofHill 902. Banning placed one rifle company on each ofthe three entrant ridges and arranged his supportingarms into the evening of 23 April. Around 2000 theChinese attacked, first striking Company G, the mostadvanced (by plan) and defender of the center ridgeline.

Huddled behind barriers of rocks—no foxholes couldbe dug here—Company G threw back a Chinese regi-ment with the assistance of Companies H and I, whichfired across its flanks and sent reinforcements. Marineand Army howitzers and mortars showered the attackerswith shellfire. Rallied by Technical Sergeant Harold E.Wilson, an Alabama reservist, the center platoon ofCompany G barely held. Jack Davis’ platoon held its hill-side position along the southern slope of George Ridge;the platoon suffered two or three killed and severalmore wounded, popping up to spray the Chinese inbetween the artillery barrages. Jack made it through thenight unscathed, but the next morning, as the battalionbacked away from the Chinese under an umbrella ofclose air support strikes, Jack fell victim to someunfriendly “friendly fire.” As he and some other Marinesstruggled down the steep eastern slope of Hill 902 withstretchers loaded with dead and wounded Marines, twoMarine F4U Corsairs strafed the column, showered thecowering infantrymen with ricocheting bullets and rockfragments. Although he took no life-threatening hits,Jack found himself a bleeding, lacerated, and thorough-ly enraged member of the “Society of WalkingWounded” and headed for the battalion aid station fortreatment. Rested, fed, and patched up, he returned tothe company on the No Name Line.

Although he avoided telling his parents about hiscombat experience, Jack wrote his brother Vince that heshould forget about leaving Vanderbilt and joining theMarine Corps to fight in Korea. If Vince became an offi-cer, his chances of surviving would not be as good as anenlisted man’s since the Marines expected all officers tolead from the front. Artillery officers—to which Vinceaspired—had no greater chances of survival since theyall had to serve as forward observers with rifle compa-nies before assigned to the comparative safety of a fir-ing battery. “Stick to the Navy for my sake as well as thefolks. I’ll do both our shares of the dodging.” Jack’s warhad just begun.

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KMC Regiment into the 5thMarines hard-earned footholdbelow Hills 1122, 1216, and 1316(Taeam-san). Hayward’s regiment(with the exhausted 1st Battalionin reserve) moved into an expand-ed sector east of the Taeu-san/Taeam-san massif and startedto work its way north toward thesouthern lip of the Punchbowl.Thomas did not pressure Haywardto move aggressively since such anadvance would have put the 5thMarines in a salient below an L-shaped hill mass still occupied bymuch of the 12th NKPA Division.Before the 5th Marines could pressforward to its share of the KansasLine, the South Korean Marineswould have to take Taeam-san.

For five days (5-10 June), the 1stKMC Regiment repeatedly assault-ed the Hill 1122-1218-1316 com-plex but, despite maneuvering tothe right and left of the peaks, theKorean Marines made no progressand lost over 500 men without tak-ing even one objective. Anytimethe Marines gained a foothold, aNorth Korean counterattack threwthe Marines back. Neither sidetook prisoners; one South Koreanassault discovered 10 bound ROKMarines executed with neat head-shots. In desperation, Colonel KimSuk Bum, the Korean Marine regi-mental commander, decided toabandon the American way-of-warand ordered a three-battalionunsupported night attack on Hill1122, the most exposed NorthKorean position. Advancing byslow infiltration, the South KoreanMarines fell on the Communists at0200 with complete surprise andran the defenders off to Hill 1216.With a solid hold on at least a partof the crest, the Korean Marineregiment held its ground while itsAmerican advisers called inartillery and air strikes on Hills1216 and 1316. The North Koreanssoon fell back to the north to

Taeu-san to avoid being cut off bythe American Marines nowadvancing steadily on both theirflanks.

Service with the 1st KMCRegiment came as a surprise tosome Marine officers. Assignedagainst his wishes to the 1st ShoreParty Battalion, Second LieutenantDavid J. Hytrek, a former privatefirst class in the 5th Marines in1950, wanted an infantry assign-ment to avenge the deaths of hiscomrades who had already fallenin Korea. Instead a crusty mastersergeant serving as a personnelofficer assigned many of the for-mer enlisted men of the 7th BasicClass to combat service supportbattalions. “Let the college boysget killed in this war,” he growled.Hytrek, however, had barelyarrived at his new unit when hereceived orders to report to theKorean Marines as a liaison officer.General Thomas wanted experi-enced lieutenants sent to assist theKoreans, so David Hytrek foundplenty of war in the battles fought

by the Korean Marines around thePunchbowl.

To the west the 1st and 7thMarines fought from one hill to thenext hill with consistent but costlysuccess. The 1st Marines reached aline of hills identified as the BrownLine, a more defensible positionthan the original Kansas Line,which ran through the SochonRiver valley to the regiment’s rear.The 1st Marines started the regi-mental advance on 6 June andcompleted its mission on 14 June.The experience of the 2d Battalionrepresents the regimental ordeal.After two days of modestadvances, the battalion, with the1st Battalion on its left flank, raninto a very stubborn and skilledNorth Korean force on Hill 676.The attack stalled, in part becausea heavy mortar concentration fellshort and inflicted 40 casualties,including the battalion comman-der, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K.McClelland. On 10 June, the battal-ion sent two companies against theeastern face of the hill since it


The natural beauty of this quiet scene in North Korea means little to theseMarines 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,each tree an enemy sniper.

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could then take advantage of sup-porting tank fire from the valleybelow. Many of the North Koreanbunkers, however, were sited toprotect them from tank guns,75mm recoilless rifles, and 3.5-inchrocket launchers. Air strikes wouldhave eliminated them, but repeat-ed requests for close air supportwent unanswered until 2000 whenone four-plane strike broke theNorth Korean defense. All daylong, Marine squads inchedupwards through the bunker com-plex, eventually destroying thebunkers with grenades and satchelcharges. In one case a lone Marinejumped into a bunker, killed threeKoreans with his rifle and stran-gled the fourth with his barehands. Throughout the day “chiggy

bearers” struggled forward throughconstant shelling with ammunitionand water and stumbled back-wards with loaded stretchers. Intwo days the battalion took morethan 300 casualties and lost morethan 200 members of its loyal forceof Korean porters. The Marinesfound more than 100 North Koreanbodies in the bunkers, includingthe NKPA battalion commander.The battalion went into reserve on12 June when the 3d Battalionreplaced it.

Wedged into a narrow but diffi-cult sector between the 1st Marinesand the 1st KMC Regiment, the 7thMarines fought for 10 days (9-19June) to establish the regiment(two battalions abreast) along thecritical hill complex to the west

and the Taeu-san/Taeam-sanpeaks to the east above thePunchbowl. Colonel Nickersonused his supporting tank companyto good effect, but Communistmines in the Sochon River valleyput more than half of the company(10 of 17 tanks) eventually out ofaction despite heroic and costlyefforts by Marine engineers tosweep the ground. Nickerson’s useof supporting arms mirroredBrown’s—long on artillery andshort of crucial close air support. Ifthe 7th Marines rifle companiestook their assigned hills withslightly less cost than the 1stMarines, they had to defend themagainst even more stubborn night-ly counterattacks. The NKPA battal-ion commander in this sector

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1931, he attendedpublic schools in Las Vegas, Nevada, beforeenlisting in the Marine Corps in 1948 at the age

of 17. Following recruit training at Parris Island, SouthCarolina, and a short assignment on board the USSNoble, he was sent to Korea in 1950 where he took partin five successive operations: Inchon, Seoul, Chosin, andtwo against the Chinese Communists. For his boldactions on 7 November 1950, he was awarded theCommendation 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 676near Hangnyong. His Medal of Honor citation reads, inpart:

While advancing with his platoon in an attackagainst well-concealed and heavily-fortified enemyhill positions, Corporal Abrell voluntarily rushedforward through the assaulting squad which waspinned down by a hail of intense and accurateautomatic-weapons fire from a hostile bunker situ-ated on commanding ground. Although previouslywounded by enemy hand-grenade fragments, heproceeded to carry out a bold, single-handedattack against the bunker, exhorting his comradesto follow him. Sustaining two additional woundsas he stormed toward the emplacement, he res-olutely pulled the pin from a grenade clutched inhis hand and hurled himself bodily into the bunkerwith the live missile still in his grasp. [He was]

fatally wounded in the resulting explosion whichkilled the entire enemy gun crew within thestronghold.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR(Ret)

Corporal Charles G.Abrell


employed reverse slope defenses,which swept each topographicalcrest with fire and put the NorthKorean soldiers close enough forsudden assaults. One 7th Marinescompany had to throw back fivesuch attacks in one night before itcould call its hill secure.

On the eastern side of Taeu-san/Taeam-san ridge, the 5thMarines advanced through theridges that ran down to the SoyangRiver valley. Alternating in theattack, Hayward’s three battalionshad to cross five different east-westtransverse spur ridges before theyreached the last (and highest)ridgeline above the Punchbowl,some 8,000 yards from the regi-ment’s original line of departure on6 June. As the regiment pushednorth, the North Korean defenderstook their toll, although somewhatless than the regiments to the west.Again, supporting arms and closeair strikes that arrived broke thedefensive positions until the regi-ment, lead by the 1st Battalion,reached the last objective, the Hill907-Hill 920 ridgeline. No longerable to fall back to another defen-sive position, the remaining sol-diers of the defending NorthKorean regiment went into theirbunkers with no intention of con-ceding Hill 907 to the oncomingMarines.

The final assault on Hill 907, theregimental objective of the 5thMarines, caught the desperatecharacter of the mountain war inKorea in June 1951. The long, nar-row ridge that led to Hill 907allowed no more than a reinforcedplatoon to deploy against the lineof North Korean bunkers thatstretched to the peak. So the 1stBattalion, 5th Marines, had theobjective, which it assigned toCompany B, which passed the mis-sion (at Lieutenant Colonel John L.Hopkins’ direction) to SecondLieutenant Charles G. Cooper’s 3d

Platoon. As the Marines workedmethodically through the bunkersystem, supported by mortar andmachine gun fire, their casualtiesmounted. Cooper called in moreartillery and air strikes, but enemyfire from his front and from twoflanking ridgelines cut his ranksdown to squad size. He lost tworadio operators and then had thedisconcerting experience of listen-ing to Hopkins, who had turnedferocious on the eve of his changeof command, screaming obscenechallenges to the North Koreansover the battalion tactical net, pre-sumably to confuse the listeningenemy. Cooper managed toarrange for one more air strike, AirForce jets armed with napalm.Marking the target with whitesmoke, Cooper ordered anadvance through the swirlingmess, only to find the NorthKoreans attacking him. Knockeddown by a ricocheting bullet in theback, Cooper lost his carbine toanother bullet and ended the fight

with a Ka-Bar and a hole in his leftside that filled with blood and adamaged kidney. Just as the sur-viving Koreans reached the “LastStand of the 3d Platoon,” the AirForce jets—which had flown onedummy run to get the route right—returned and dumped their napalmtanks in the middle of the melee,only 30 yards from Cooper’s posi-tion. The Marines almost suffocat-ed, and most of them sufferedburns, but the North Koreans dis-appeared, incinerated in theflames. The Marine attack ended100 yards short of the summit, butthe next day the 3d Battalion occu-pied Hill 907, abandoned by theNorth Koreans after the divisionheadquarters they were protectinghad displaced.

On 18 and 20 June, GeneralAlmond and General Thomas visit-ed the high ground now held bythe 1st Marine Division, and the XCorps commander agreed thatpatrols in the mountains aheadwould be all the offensive action

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Crewmen of Battery C, 1st 4.5 Inch Rocket Battalion, reload their multiple-rock-et launcher for another devastating ripple against North Korean troops. The bat-tery of six launchers could fire 144 rounds on target in less than a minute.

required of the Marines. In themeantime, the defensive positionsof the Kansas Line should bedeveloped into complexes oftrench lines, barbed wire, bunkers,and minefields, and before thesummer monsoon made the sup-ply effort even more difficult thanit already was. Thomas could tellthat major changes in the warmight be underway since he had toentertain an endless stream of vis-iting military officers of all theServices, most of whom simplywanted to see the Punchbowl fromthe 5th Marines’ observation post.Only admirals bearing gifts ofgood bourbon were truly wel-come. General Thomas knew hisdivision needed rebuilding withreplacements and some rest. In themeantime, he had some unfinishedbusiness with Eighth Army overthe issue of close air support.

A Summer of Discontent

When the 1st Marine Divisionsettled down to a life of night

patrols and the daytime construc-tion of trenches and bunkers, twodifferent changes of climateenveloped the men spread alongthe mountain ridges of the KansasLine. The changes started a sum-mer of discontent, a season of dis-comfort and uncertainty that didnot reach the level of demoraliza-tion, but nevertheless took its tollon the morale of the Marines. Thefirst change in the weather waspredictable, the arrival of the sum-mer monsoon, which advancesnorthward from the island ofCheju-do until it reaches centralKorea in late June and blankets thehills with daily showers and occa-sional downpours that seem towash half of Korea into the westsea. The summer rains of 1950 hadbeen light, a welcome blessing forAmerican airmen. Even though itarrived weeks behind schedule,the next monsoon reversed thetrend. The rains of 1951 gaveKorea its normal ration of water.Twenty-six inches fell in July, andAugust brought about 20 inches

more rainfall before the delugestopped in September. Theomnipresent mud and cascadingstreams made the patrols and con-struction an ordeal, even withoutan active enemy.

The other atmospheric changebegan with the preliminary trucenegotiations on 7 July between themilitary delegations of China andNorth Korea on one side and agroup of American officers on theother. When the negotiators atKaesong—a neutral enclave withinCommunist lines—finally came toan incomplete agreement on anagenda, the one that most affectedthe Marines was the question of aceasefire boundary between thetwo armies. The Communistswanted a return to the 38thParallel. The United Nationsdemanded a line based on the for-ward edge of the battlefield if andwhen an armistice went into effect.Presumably the two forces wouldfall back by some agreed distance,and the intervening No Man’s Landwould become a demilitarizedzone. To those with no sense ofmilitary geography, one hillseemed no different from another,but the relationship of dominantpeaks, road networks, river val-leys, and intersecting corridors inthe mountains made the control ofterrain an important issue, not justa matter of “face.” From the front-line foxholes, however, the gloomymountains all looked alike andsimply reinforced the sense that nodisputed peak could be worthdying for. Conditioned by WorldWar II to think of victory in termsof geographic advances, the com-bat troops of the Eighth Army felttheir martial ardor wash away withthe rain.

No stranger to the challenges ofcommand created by poor weatherand endless action—Guadalcanalhad provided both—Gerald C.Thomas pressed his regimental

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


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United Nations delegates to the Kaesong ceasefire talks posewith Gen Matthew B. Ridgway at Munsan-ni. Pictured fromleft are RAdm Arleigh A. Burke, USN, MajGen Laurence C.

Craigie, USAF, MajGen Paik Sun Yup, ROKA, VAdm C.Turner Joy, USN, Gen Ridgway, and MajGen Henry I. Hodes,USA.


Pictured from left are Chinese and North Korean negotia-tors, MajGen Hsieh Fang and LtGen Teng Hua of theChinese People’s Army, and Gen Nam Il, MajGen Lee Sang

Cho, and Gen Chang Pyong San of the North KoreanPeople’s Army.


commanders to do the digging andpatrolling Almond ordered. Spor-adic shelling by the Communistsprovided extra incentives, and theMarines still took casualties, 39 inthe last week of June. Thomasfought a successful rearguardaction against Eighth Army and XCorps to hold pointless casualtiesdown. On 22 June, Almondordered Thomas to execute anEighth Army plan to push forcesnorthwards to the Badger Line,between a mile-and-a-half to two-and-a-half miles in front of theKansas Line defenses. (Later in thewar the Badger Line would becalled the Combat Outpost Line.)Each frontline regiment was sup-posed to occupy a combat outpostof battalion strength; Thomas gotAlmond on 26 June to agree thatone outpost was sufficient for theentire 1st Marine Division front,given the nature of the terrain. The1st Marines sent its 3d Battalion

forward to Hill 761 and received a7th Marines battalion to plug thegap. Like Thomas, “Big Foot”Brown thought the patrol baseconcept dangerous and pointless;both sides had maintained veryclose contact with shelling andpatrols and needed no additionalaction. The North Koreans immedi-ately shelled the patrol base withsuch enthusiasm that Thomas andBrown withdrew the battalion andthen told Almond that they wouldmeet X Corps reconnaissancerequirements in other ways.

Aware that Almond would soonleave command of X Corps,Thomas had one overriding reasonto remain on friendly terms withhis difficult corps commander: theclose air support controversy. Witha pause in the action, Almond mar-shaled an array of studies forEighth Army that demonstratedthat the Fifth Air Force’s close con-trol of each day’s quota of close air

support sorties limited the groundadvances and caused avoidablecasualties. Thomas consistentlyraised the issue with high-rankingmilitary visitors to his headquar-ters, including Van Fleet, whodropped in on 8 July to giveThomas, Nickerson, Hayward, andfive other Marines the Distin-guished Service Cross. Thomaspersuaded Major General Frank F.Everest to approve the movementof Marine Aircraft Group 12, thepremier close air support group ofMarine Corsairs, from Hoengsongto the east sea fishing town ofKangnung. The move to Airfield K-18 put the Marine fighter-bomberscloser to their supply sources andonly 40 miles from the front. Sheerproximity offered new opportuni-ties to circumvent the JointOperations Center request system,including Everest’s promise to allo-cate 40 sorties a day for offensiveoperations. Closer division-wingrelations seemed at least temporar-ily acceptable to Eighth Army andFifth Air Force because Van Fleethad his planners hard at work onanother version of OperationOverwhelming, the amphibiouslanding up the east coast thatwould involve the 1st MarineDivision.

General Almond, however, didnot relent in his demands for morefighting of dubious value. Hisaggressiveness brought GeneralThomas’ only embarrassment as adivision commander, the Taeu-sanAffair, an abortive operation thatremained unnoticed because thevictims were the valiant men of theKorean Marine Corps’ 1st Reg-iment. Almond had convincedhimself that the North Koreans(despite the Hill 761 experience)would not fight for the lines theycurrently held. Therefore, Almondordered the 1st Marine Division tocapture the peak of Taeu-san (Hill1179) and develop it into a regi-

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Riflemen of the 5th Marines are issued a portion of the initial 40 armored vestsdeveloped by the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory, Camp Lejeune, NorthCarolina, for field-testing in Korea. The new vest weighed eight-and-one-halfpounds and combined curved, overlapping doron plates with flexible pads of bas-ket-weave nylon. The garment was said to stop a .45-caliber pistol or Thompsonsubmachine gun bullet, all fragments of a hand grenade at three feet, 75 percentof 81mm mortar fragments at 10 feet, and the full thrust of an American bayo-net.

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With a chastened Jack Davis back in its ranks,the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, held its part ofthe No Name Line and watched the last

Chinese offensive of May 1951 slide past the 7th Marinesto its front and fall upon the left flank of the 2d InfantryDivision. With the 1st Marines on the corps and divisionleft flank, the Marines went on the attack on 23 May anda week later reached the high ground overlooking thereservoir. Squeezed out of the advance, the 1st Marinesreverted to division reserve.

With the 5th and 7th Marines struggling to penetratethe Communist hilltop positions north of Yanggu, the 1stMarines soon joined the slugfest. Somewhere in the bar-ren ridges Jack Davis’ platoon found itself in a grenade-throwing match with the stubborn—and uphill—Chinese defenders. Chinese mortar shells fell among theattacking Marines and took their toll, mostly in wound-ed. Jack saw five Marines from his squad go down inone shower of grenade and mortar fragments. Amazedby his own apparent invulnerability, Jack attacked aChinese position with his rifle and grenades after crawl-ing to a protected firing position. His attack and a flankassault by his buddy Frank Brown (carrying a BAR)wiped out the Chinese bunker and spider-traps. MoreAmerican grenades completed the task. Jack thought hemight have killed three Chinese, his only victims of thewar.

During the fight, Jack received his second wound ofthe war, a grenade fragment that tore open his upper leftarm and made him a one-armed Marine. While a corps-man bandaged Jack, his platoon commander asked himif he would take charge of three other walking wound-ed and lead them down the mountain to the battalioncollecting and clearing station. Jack agreed, and off hewent—slowly—trailed by his more seriously woundedcomrades, one of whom had both eyes bandaged. Asnight fell, Jack’s forlorn band had reached the foot of themountain, but had strayed through a “no man’s line”into the lines of the 5th Marines. Jack had no idea whatthe challenge and password was, so he simplyscreamed: “Wounded Marines! Wounded Marines!”Persuaded that no Chinese could scream with aTennessee accent, the Marines brought in the woundedand sent them off to safety by jeep. Jack had a secondPurple Heart, but his second wound was not severeenough for the Navy doctors to invoke a welcomeMarine Corps policy: two wounds serious enough torequire hospitalization bought a Marine a trip home.

Jack’s arm healed more rapidly than his spirit. Afteralmost six months in a rifle company with no realescape from the most primitive and exhausting field liv-ing conditions as well as combat, Jack Davis felt himself

weakening in the psychological sense. He wrote Vincethat he was not sure whether he could take the constantmortar and artillery fire. “You can’t imagine what it doesto a man’s insides to see a big, six-foot man crying andshaking with fear, just because his mind has had all thekilling and bloodshed it can take. When this happens toman, it also [is] because he is scared to death and wantsto run but his loyalty won’t let [him] and that if he didrun, there’s no place to go. Sometime they get evacuat-ed and sometimes they don’t . . . if they do come backin a couple of weeks . . . as soon as the first mortar orartillery shell comes screaming over and explodes near-by they are worse than ever.” Jack was proud that hehad not yet broken down, but he had some doubtsabout his ability to carry on. “I was a dope fiend aboutthe last month I was in the hills.” He took a quarter grainof Phenobarbital, dispensed by a corpsman, so that hewould quit shaking from cold and fear while he stoodwatch at night. He could not eat or sleep without drugs.Unfortunately, the barbiturates gave him a “don’t give ashit attitude” that worried him.

Upon his return to Company G, Jack requested aninterview with the new company commander, CaptainVarge G. Frisbie, and asked if he could get some creditfor his two Purple Hearts and be transferred somewhereout of the battalion. Frisbie promised to take the matterup with the battalion personnel officer, and within daysPrivate First Class Jack Davis had orders to report to theService Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, for retrainingas an artilleryman—and a survivor.

Private First Class Jack Davis: Seasoned Infantryman

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mental patrol base on which toanchor the Badger Line. Thomasobjected to the mission, pointingout that all the evidence suggestedthat Taeu-san anchored the maindefensive position of the entireNorth Korean V Corps. Unmoved,Almond ordered the attack to bemade, and Thomas assigned themission to the 1st KMC Regiment,whose lines were closest to Taeu-san and who had shown someaptitude for mountain warfare.One suspects that Thomas saw noreason to squander one of his ownMarine regiments on a forlornhope. Colonel Kim Dae Sik accept-ed his assignment without a mur-mur, and the 1st Marine Divisionprovided all the fire support itcould possibly mount on behalf ofthe 1st KMC Regiment. Han PonHaepyong Un Yongwon HanHaepyong! (Once a Marine, Alwaysa Marine!)

For five days (8-12 July), theKorean Marines—one battalion ata time—tried to take and holdTaeu-san but managed only tohang on to Hill 1001, a hillock onlyhalfway to Taeu-san. Successiveassaults on Hill 1100 produceddead Korean Marines, but no per-manent foothold on the Taeu-sanmain ridge. All combinations ofshelling, air strikes, and infantryattacks did not break the NorthKorean defenses. Colonel Gould P.Groves, senior adviser to the 1stKMC Regiment, demanded that thefruitless attacks cease before theregiment became permanentlyruined by the loss of its key lead-ers; one KMC battalion lost all itscompany grade officers and all butfive of its sergeants. Thomas insist-ed to X Corps that Taeu-san wouldtake an entire American regimentto capture (as indeed it later did)and that the security mission couldbe performed without the BadgerLine. Almond insisted, however,that the Koreans hold on to the

outpost on Hill 1001 even if the 1stKMC Regiment returned to theKansas Line, which it did on 12July. Of the 77 Marines killed ormissing and 360 wounded in July,55 of the dead or missing and 202of the wounded were SouthKoreans.

At the 1st Division headquartersthe bad taste of the Taeu-san Affair

faded with two bits of welcomenews: Almond was finally leavingX Corps for a new posting in theUnited States and the division hadbeen ordered to turn over its sec-tor to the U.S. 2d Infantry Divisionand withdraw to corps reserve.Almond flew off to Seoul after giv-ing Thomas a DistinguishedService Medal. He left X Corps in


MajGen Gerald C. Thomas joins MajGen Clovis E. Byers, left, Gen Edward M.Almond’s replacement as commander of X Corps, on board a helicopter atKwandae-ri, the Corps’ airstrip. Thomas and Byers developed a strong workingrelationship that profited the 1st Marine Division.

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the capable hands of MajorGeneral Clovis E. Byers, a 52-year-old Ohioan and Military Academygraduate (class of 1920) with animpeccable professional reputationand companionable personality.Thomas, who knew Byers, couldnot have been happier. In WorldWar II, Byers had served with dis-tinction in the Southwest Pacifictheater as commanding general,32d Infantry Division, chief of staffof I Corps, and chief of staff ofEighth Army. He had then com-manded the 82d Airborne Division,the Army’s only combat-ready con-tingency force, before becomingthe G-1 (Personnel) of the ArmyStaff. Byers, however, had one glar-ing weakness. In a faction-riddenArmy, he was a protégé ofLieutenant General Robert L.Eichelberger, just retired, and not amember of the European clique ofGenerals Eisenhower, Bradley,Collins, Ridgway, and Van Fleet.

After the various elements of the1st Marine Division reached theirreserve areas, Thomas ordered ademanding training program oflive-fire exercises, designed by hisnew chief of staff, Colonel VictorH. Krulak, and the G-3, ColonelRichard W. Hayward, former com-mander of the 5th Marines. Thomasprowled the regimental trainingareas by helicopter and jeep: the5th Marines near Inje, the 7thMarines near Yanggu, and the 1stMarines near Hongchon. The pat-tern of deployment (with the bat-talions of the 11th Marines posi-tioned to either fire for the 2dInfantry Division or train with theMarine infantry regiments) reflect-ed Byers’ concern about a suddenattack on the 2d Infantry Divisionor the 5th ROK Division. Byers alsofelt some anxiety about his easternflank with the South Korean ICorps. Eighth Army’s nervousnessexceeded Byers’, and Van Fleet

ordered X Corps to form a taskforce built around the 1st Marines(Task Force Able) to be preparedto move east for a preemptiveoffensive. Thomas liked none ofthis business and said so to Byers,who supported Thomas’ insistencethat Army ad hocery would giveway to Marine command if a realcrisis arose. There was none, butThomas and Byers cemented theirsound working relationship. AsByers wrote another Army general:“the 1st Marine Division under thecommand of Major GeneralThomas, with Brigadier GeneralWhaling as Assistant DivisionCommander and Col. Krulak asChief of Staff, has become a vastlydifferent outfit from that which itwas under its former commander.They cooperate with the other divi-sions of the Corps smoothly andwillingly.”

Byers showed his appreciationin tangible ways. His staff ensuredthat the equipment rehabilitation ofthe division went forward withoutfriction. X Corps engineers andartillery helped the Marines turnswamps into muddy camps with afew amenities like shower andmess tents with floors anddrainage. Army and Marine techni-cal experts worked together totrain novice personnel and puteverything from ordnance, tanks,radios, watches, motor vehicles, toengineering equipment in workingorder. The military policemen ofboth Services cooperated in tryingto control the flood of Koreanssweeping toward the Marine tentcamps to sell carnal and alcoholicpleasures. In turn, Thomas ordered12 special Marine training teamsfrom his infantry regiments to workwith the 1st KMC Regiment toimprove the regiment’s use of sup-porting arms. All units conductedat least a third of their training atnight. Night patrols went to workwith rounds in the chamber and

Combat-ready division replacements disembark from a U.S. Navy landing ship.In the movement of Marines the Corps functioned as a single great unit, eventhough an ocean separated the vanguard in Korea from rear echelons in theUnited States.


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engaged guerrillas along the reararea roads. Marines worked withKorean security forces and laborersconstructing additional defensivepositions to protect both I Corpsflanks.

Although only Thomas and hisimmediate staff knew about thecontinuing exchanges betweenRidgway and Van Fleet over futureoperations, the focus and pace ofthe 1st Marine Division trainingprogram suggested that the divi-sion might provide the spearheadof a new Eighth Army offensive.Van Fleet urged OperationOverwhelming upon Ridgway, butonly if Eighth Army receivedAmerican reinforcements. The newRidgway, a paragon of caution, didnot embrace the plan. Thomas andKrulak anticipated a landing untilthey received a clear signal thatthere would be no Inchon in theirfuture when Van Fleet on 3 Augustruled that the 1st AmphibianTractor Battalion and 1st ArmoredAmphibian Battalion would not bereturned to the division’s opera-tional control.

The disappointment did notchange the urgency of bringing the1st Marine Division to a new peakof strength in numbers and effec-tiveness. Two new replacementdrafts (the 11th and 12th) wouldarrive in August and earlySeptember with more than 4,000officers and men, more thanreplacing casualties and a smallrotation draft. By mid-August thedivision had the responsibility ofcaring for 32,000 American andKorean personnel, making thedivision almost a small Armycorps. The division’s combatpower—enhanced by its ability touse close air support as available—made it difficult for Van Fleet tomove it from the eastern part ofthe front where the only otherAmerican division was the hard-used 2d Infantry Division.

From General Byers’ perspectiveX Corps and the neighboring ROKI Corps occupied a vulnerable partof the Kansas Line, more vulnera-ble than the western sectors andthe “Iron Triangle” where U.S. Iand IX Corps faced the bulk of therecovering Chinese expeditionaryforce. Byers’ G-2 made a specialstudy of the activities of the NorthKorean III Corps (three divisions of8,500 each) and concluded that theNorth Koreans had the capabilityto mount a serious offensive onany X Corps division sector alongthe Kansas Line. Well ahead of theChinese rearmament programs, IIICorps had accepted a full set ofnew Soviet weapons and showedevery intention of using themagain in the attack. Over the latterpart of August the intelligence ana-lysts saw the usual omens of anattack: increased patrolling andcounter-patrolling ambushes, in-creased desertions, a reduced flowof refugees, tank sightings, themass distribution of ammunitionand rations, a decline in vehiclemovement, and the imposition ofradio silence. In the meantime, atVan Fleet’s insistence, Byers hadordered the 2d Infantry Divisioninto action west of the Punchbowl,and the division had exhausteditself again fighting the NorthKoreans and the rain over terrainonly too familiar to the Marines.Only the names of the hills(“Bloody Ridge” and “J Ridge”) andthe Service of the bodies changed.To the west Major General PaikSun Yup’s ROK I Corps made nosignificant progress against threeNKPA divisions, all entrenched andvery combative in the hills east ofthe Punchbowl. The campaignwrecked the North Korean IICorps, but III Corps remained readyto enter the fray, perhaps in amajor counteroffensive. The onlyfresh force in the eastern sectorwas the 1st Marine Division.

Once More into the Breach

With neither a ceasefire norgreat offensive in prospect,General Van Fleet ordered hiscorps commanders to plan opera-tions that would improve theircontrol of the critical terrain intheir sectors. They should prepareeither for some later offensive(should the truce talks remain inrecess) or to defend South Koreafor the indefinite future. With thedefenses of the Kansas Line largelycompleted, Van Fleet on 30 Julydecided to convert the combat out-post line (the Wyoming Line) intoan advanced main line of resis-tance where the terrain allowed.The distance between Kansas Lineand the Wyoming Line variedbetween two miles and 10 miles.In X Corps’ sector Van Fleetthought that the trace of the frontin July did not allow Byers to dom-inate the Punchbowl and theSochon and Soyang River valleys.Van Fleet wanted X Corps to shiftthe focus of its attacks to the highground (including Taeu-san) westof the Punchbowl, but the heavyrains of early August made itimpossible for Byers to begin theattacks of the U.S. 2d InfantryDivision and the 7th ROK Division(Brigadier General Kim Yong Bae).The 8th ROK Division (BrigadierGeneral Choi Yong Hee) wouldattack the dominant hills east ofthe Punchbowl.

Having designated an intermedi-ate phase line (Hays) between theKansas and Wyoming Lines, Byersquickly learned that the terrain, theweather, and the North Koreanswould prevent any easy victories.The battles west of the Punchbowlproduced such disappointing re-sults and bad blood between theAmerican and Korean commandersthat Byers narrowed the divisionsectors and committed the 5thROK Division (Brigadier General

Min Ki Shik) west of the 2dInfantry Division, which meant thatX Corps had three committed divi-sions west of the Punchbowl andonly the 8th ROK Division in theSoyang River valley and the domi-nant hills on either side of the val-ley. On 23 August, Byers warnedVan Fleet that he might have torelieve the 2d Infantry Divisionwith the 1st Marine Division,which was “very anxious to takeaction,” but Van Fleet still had anamphibious role in mind for theMarines, and he vetoed the idea.Van Fleet thus spared the 1stMarine Division the mission ofcapturing “Heartbreak Ridge.”Only the 8th ROK Division haddone better than anticipated, cap-turing some of the high groundeast of the Punchbowl, but the

South Korean divisions on its east-ern flank had not kept pace, thusgiving Byers some concern abouthis corps boundary.

Meeting on both 25 and 26August, Van Fleet and Byers con-cluded that they could no longerhold the 1st Marine Division inreserve since all the rest of X Corpsdivisions had bogged down, andthe corps could not change the tac-tical balance with artillery andclose air support alone. Ammuni-tion shortages, caused principallyby transportation problems, hadalready affected operations. Troopmovements, for example, on 28-30August prevented the stockpilingof 1,800 tons of munitions. TheFifth Air Force, anticipating a breakin the weather that would allow asurge in the interdiction bombing

campaign, announced on the 23dthat the Eighth Army would haveto manage with less close air sup-port through the end of the month.On 26 August, Byers calledGeneral Thomas and told him tomove at least part of his division tothe front east of the Punchbowlwhere the Marines would take upthe missions of the 8th ROKDivision. Thomas had four dayswarning since Byers alerted him toa possible move on 23 August.With the plans already in place,Thomas ordered the 7th Marines tostart for the front that night, fol-lowed by the 1st KMC Regiment.The 5th Marines would move last,and the 1st Marines not at all sincethe regiment would be the onlycorps reserve.

Thomas knew that the division

38

Rain and mud fail to halt the mortarmen of the 5thMarines’ 4.2 Inch Mortar Company as they fire their heavy

mortars at enemy-held positions.


would receive an offensive mis-sion: capture a ridgeline, an east-ern extension of the hill mass thatformed the northern rim of thePunchbowl. A corps objective des-ignated Yoke, the ridge had fourdominant west-to-east peaks (Hills930, 1026, 924, and 702) andanother north-south extension thatbegan at Hill 702 and ran souththrough Hills 680, 755, and 793,thus forming a large L just west ofthe Soyang River. The river itselfcurled westwards, bounding YokeRidge on the north. Since theNorth Koreans showed no sign ofreduced morale and fighting tenac-ity—they, in fact, had mountedmany aggressive counterattackswest of the Punchbowl—theassignment had nothing easy aboutit. The rains and planning changesmade 27-31 August some of themost discouraging days Thomasand his Marines had faced togeth-er.

From the division commander’sperspective, the mudslides andfloods that slowed his truck con-voys were bad enough, but theoperational confusion within XCorps, fed by tactical errors andbad blood between the 2d InfantryDivision and 8th ROK Division,made the changes of orders reachepidemic proportions. Before itcould displace, the 5th Marinesdetached a battalion to the opera-tional control of the 2d InfantryDivision to defend the Kansas Linewhile the 23d Infantry slipped tothe west. The 1st KMC Regimentalso picked up part of the KansasLine defense, which meant thatonly the 7th Marines, struggling tocross the swollen Soyang River bywading or by a shuttle of DUKWs(amphibian trucks) could man thesketchy positions on the edge ofYoke Ridge held by dispirited sol-diers of the 8th ROK Division.Confusion reigned, and the rainfell. Warning orders flooded the

airwaves, and commanders andstaff officers scurried by helicopterand jeep from headquarters toheadquarters. General Byers, forexample, made 12 commands callsin one week (25-31 August) andreceived General Van Fleet threetimes. General Thomas and hisstaff made the best of a bad situa-tion, pushing the 7th Marines and1st KMC Regiment into their for-

ward positions. He tried to preventthe diversion of the 5th Marines tothe 2d Infantry Division and keptthe 1st Marines ready for suchtime, as Byers would release theregiment from corps control. In themeantime, the 11th Marines firedmissions all along the corps front,scattered about the valleys in adesperate attempt to stay close toits ammunition supply and to

39

Courtesy of the Naval Institute Press

avoid having its fires masked bythe hills to its front.

During a Van Fleet-Byers confer-ence on 29 August, the army andcorps commanders agreed thatthey could not wait for more suc-cess west of the Punchbowl beforeordering the 1st Marine Divisioninto action. Byers passed the news

to Thomas the next day: attackYoke Ridge on 31 August. Two fac-tors related to the enemy situationhelped shape Thomas’ plan.Patrols by the division’s Recon-naissance Company and the 5thMarines discovered enemy patrolsactive on either side of the KansasLine, but no more than a nuisance.

On the other hand, North Koreanprisoners taken by the 8th ROKDivision and the Marines reportedlarge troop movements to thenorth and much talk about anotherCommunist offensive while theweather limited United NationsCommand air support. Visual sight-ings and other intelligence sources

40

Jack Davis, an old man at 19, found a new home inService Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines. His prin-cipal responsibility was driving a dump truck and

working as a laborer on the battalion’s gun positions andother construction projects. As the weather cooled in thefall of 1951, the 1st Marine Division resumed its attackson the high ridges northeast of the Punchbowl. Its oppo-nents were troops of the re-born Korean People’s Army2d Division. Another enemy was a monsoon season thatlasted through the entire month of August, washingaway roads and bridges and making life generally mis-erable for all hands. Jack Davis found his dump truck inhigh demand. In addition to the usual construction mate-

rials, Jack hauled cut wood for the battalion’s stoves. Hebecame an expert at fitting out bunkers with furnituremade 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 couldwithstand a direct shell hit. Jack estimated that theymade seven-foot thick ceilings to provide overhead pro-tection.

Even if the pace of the combat froze along with theweather and Panmunjom peace talks, danger still waitedfor the unwary and unlucky. Employing their newRussian field artillery, the Chinese and North Koreansstarted to fire short counterbattery barrages late every

Corporal Jack Davis: Truck Driver and Short Timer

confirmed that fresh enemy troopswere going into position on YokeRidge. The 1st Marine Divisionattack of 31 August was designedto squeeze out the Koreans on theeastern part of Yoke Ridge and toprevent the objective area frombeing reinforced from the northwhile the battle raged. TwoKorean Marine battalions advanc-ing in column from their positionon Hill 755 would attack north totake Hills 1026 and 924 while twobattalions on the 7th Marineswould attack westwards from theSoyang River valley with two bat-talions abreast. They would seizethe ground east and north throughHill 702 to Hill 602, another lowerridge that ended at the river as itchanged its direction from east-west to north-south. Catching the

North Korean 2d Division in theprocess of moving into thebunkers of the North Korean 1stDivision on the morning of 31August, the initial Korean Marineand 7th Marines attacks still facedextensive minefields and mortarbarrages as the troops workedtheir way uphill. Marine artilleryfire damped some of the enemyfire. The two 7th Marines battalionstook their objectives, but the 1stKMC Regiment advanced no far-ther than the base of Hill 924, themost heavily-defended positionencountered on eastern YokeRidge. Almost all the division’scasualties for August (three killedand 57 wounded) fell on the firstday of the Battle for Yoke Ridge.

Second Lieutenant Frederick F.Brower moved into his first big

fight at the head of the 1st Platoon,Company H, 3d Battalion, 7thMarines. Occupying Hill 680 on 30August, the company had endureda heavy mortar barrage andlearned that North Korean regularshad replaced the scattered Chinesethe company had chased north ofthe Punchbowl. The next day thecompany attacked Hill 702, YokeRidge, against “light resistance.”Brower had commanded his pla-toon for three months, but he andhis Marines had not yet closed withthe enemy since they alwaysseemed to be patrolling the divi-sion’s western-most flank, keepingan eye on the neighboring SouthKorean division. As the skirmishline approached Hill 702, theNorth Koreans greeted it with abarrage of mortar fire. Only min-

41

second or third afternoon. Even the bunkers to whichthe Marines fled to avoid the shelling could be deathtraps of their own; weakened by the rains and shellingsand too heavy for their supporting walls, bunker roofshabitually collapsed. One such roof fell on top of Jack,bruising his body and pride and burning parts of hisbody when a stove overturned and ignited the bunker’sinterior. Jack took his third trip to sickbay with crackedribs.

There were few diversions north of the Soyang River.Jack grew his third mustache, not as long and menacingas his “infantry mustache” of the summer. One day hereceived a call to report to battery headquarters, only tolearn that the battery commander and first sergeant hadarranged a little ceremony to award Jack his first and sec-ond Purple Hearts (a medal with gold star affixed). Jackhad no idea what to do with the medal and presentationbox until the first sergeant suggested he send it home.The final package featured paper torn from boxes in themess tent, secured with communications wire. The Davisfamily received the box and properly concluded thatJack had not been entirely honest in his summer letters.

Although his anxiety about dying eased some, Jack’sfears about living grew as his tour in Korea shortened.Under the rotation policy adopted in 1951, he couldexpect to rotate home sometime in early 1952, and theMarine Corps, having little need for short-timer reservistsat the end of a two-year contract, promised to releasehim go to college short of his two-year obligation. Jackthought about getting his personal life in some order.He wrote a “Dear Jane” letter to a girl friend whose reli-giosity and immaturity now struck Jack as intolerable.

He warned Vince that no one in Tennessee should dis-cuss his love life. Jack also continued to send moneyhome for his college savings account. His sense of dutyreceived a jump-start with his promotion to corporal inNovember. His greatest leadership accomplishment todate was organizing the theft of an Army jeep that thebattery sorely needed. He did his work, and he stayedout of trouble as he watched veterans of earlier replace-ment drafts turn in their equipment and head for pro-cessing for a flight or transport berth back to California.

By Thanksgiving the 3d Battalion had endured twosnowfalls, general freezing, and the news that it was noton the itinerary for Bob Hope’s Christmas show. Jackbought a contraband bottle of Canadian Club to hoarduntil Christmas. He liked the brand new thermal bootsissued to the battalion—until he had to change hissweat-soaked socks in the cold. After a muted celebra-tion of Christmas, Jack started watching the organizationof each rotation group. He wrote Vince that he nowstood 29th on the list and that 37 men had started homein December. Jack reported that he was “kinda nervousabout coming home. I’m still not doing much work perusual.” He worried about his future relations with hisparents, whom he remembered as full of sermons aboutall the things he should not do and think. “If they start abunch of harping and bullshit, I ship into the regularMarines because I really like this outfit.” He admitted toVince, however, the he would really have to be aggra-vated with civilian life to re-up for a second tour. He cer-tainly was not going to miss his ride back to the UnitedStates. On 18 February 1952, Jack Davis left Korea forhome.

utes into the battle, Brower crum-pled with multiple wounds in hisleft leg, and he looked with dismayat his bloody and misshapen leftknee. Pistol marksman, modelMarine platoon commander, dedi-cated to a career in the MarineCorps, Brower ended his first bat-tle on a stretcher carried by ner-vous Korean “chiggy bearers.”Although he eventually served hisfull Korean tour as a semi-cripple,his career in a rifle company endedon 31 August 1951, and his dam-aged knee forced him into disabil-ity retirement in 1955. It had beena short but final war for SecondLieutenant Brower.

The fight gave few hints of theordeals ahead. On 1 September,General Shepherd visited GeneralThomas and found no cause foralarm. Thomas felt confident thatthe attacks that day would takecare of the Yoke Ridge problem.After seeing Byers, they agreedthat X Corps had problems west ofthe Punchbowl where the 2dInfantry Division still had notsecured all of “Bloody Ridge”despite the loss of 2,772 Americanand attached Korean soldiers since18 August. For the Marines, how-ever, the attacks of 2 Septembertook only Hill 924 (but not Hill1026) and consolidated the 7thMarines defenses on Hill 602.Throughout the day and the next,the North Koreans bombardedYoke Ridge and mounted counter-attacks of up to battalion-size. The1st Marine Division’s modest suc-cesses came in no small part fromthe artillery fire from two 11thMarines battalions and three Armycorps artillery battalions, whichfired 8,400 rounds on 1-2September, an amount of fire thatexceeded the “Van Fleet Day ofFire” for the five battalions (6,000rounds). The battle drew in theremaining battalions of the 1stKMC Regiment and the 7th

Marines. With American Marinesholding the northern edge of YokeRidge, the South Korean Marinesfinally took Hills 924 and 1026,which completed the mission. Itdid not end enemy counterattacksand shelling, but the two regimentsheld the objective. The 7th Marinessuffered five dead and 75 wound-ed, the Korean Marines 70 deadand missing and 274 wounded.The North Koreans left behindalmost 600 bodies to be countedand 40 prisoners. None of theallies thought the victory had beeneasy.

The capture of Yoke Ridgemight have been less costly if theMarines had received more effec-tive close air support. GeneralShepherd made it one of the high-est priority issues when he visitedthe war zone from 27 August to 12

September. The CommandingGeneral, Fleet Marine Force,Pacific (and likely Commandant)met with the Major GeneralChristian F. Schilt, commander, andBrigadier General William O.Brice, deputy commander of the1st Marine Aircraft Wing. “A dis-cussion of the close air supportproblem revealed that unsatisfacto-ry conditions still prevail in regardto close air support for the 1stMarine Division.” Shepherd thencomplained about the poor airsupport to Van Fleet and Everesteven before he consulted withByers and Thomas on 1September. Shepherd recruitedVice Admiral C. Turner Joy,Commander, Naval Forces, FarEast, to join a coalition of seniorofficers who would force the issuewith Ridgway.

42

During his Korean inspection trip, LtGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., CommandingGeneral, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, left, discussed not only close air support, butalso the performance of the Sikorsky HRS-1 helicopter. Pictured to his left areMajGen Christian F. Schilt, Commanding General, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing,LtCol George W. Herring, commander officer of Marine Helicopter TransportSquadron 161, and newly-promoted MajGen William O. Brice, the wing’s deputycommander.

Department of Defense (Photo) A131870

The battle of Yoke Ridge pro-vided ample evidence that the FifthAir Force would not modify therequest system and that the realpurpose of the Joint OperationsCenter was to prevent the diver-sion of fighter-bombers fromOperation Strangle, the campaignagainst the Communist lines ofcommunication. The 1st MarineDivision had requested 26 aircraftto support the attack of 1September. Despite the fact thatthe requests had been made 40hours before the mission, only 12aircraft were assigned. Requestsmade by the forward and other aircontrollers in the heat of combattook more than an hour to pro-duce aircraft on station. One 7thMarines request for air strikesagainst a heavy North Koreancounterattack had been canceledby X Corps’ G-2 because he didnot believe the counterattack wasreal. Despite the mounting evi-dence—and much of it came fromthe 2d Infantry Division’s ordealsto the west—the Fifth Air Forcemade no concessions. The 1st

Marine Division’s fire supportcoordinator made the point in hisbriefing for Shepherd: “Close airsupport furnished by the Fifth AirForce JOC was inadequate andoften not opportune.”

Shell shortages, complex plan-ning by both Eighth Army and XCorps headquarters, and the deter-mination of the North Koreansbrought a pause of six days to 1stMarine Division operations. Thelikely artillery shell expenditures ofany future offensive—combinedwith road conditions betweenHongchon and the front—wouldmake an immediate offensivebeyond Yoke Ridge difficult. Thedivision goal was to stockpile 10days of fire in artillery shells (“VanFleet days”) at ammunition supplypost-60B, the ammunition dumpand distribution point run by XCorps and division ordnance menlocated 48 miles from Hongchonand five miles from the gun line.Until the roads dried and engineersrepaired the washouts andstrengthened the roadbed, theround trip to ASP-60B took 25

hours. Some trucks still had to bediverted to lift troops to and fromthe front. In fact, the estimates forshells fell short of the actualexpenditures, 24,000 tons (874,000rounds) for X Corps in September1951.

Intelligence officers believedthat X Corps would need everyshell it could find. The combataround the Punchbowl revealed asystem of defensive fortificationsthat had been built before 1951and strengthened since April.Much of the NKPA I Corps hadbeen withdrawn, but its replace-ment—the NKPA III Corps—wasone of the largest (30,000 soldiers)and best-trained in the NorthKorean army. Unlike the Chinese,the North Koreans had plenty ofartillery, too, out-numberingMarine artillery pieces in thePunchbowl sector. In the Marinedivision’s zone of action the NKPA1st Division appeared to beassigned the bunker defense rolewhile the NKPA 45th Divisionmounted counterattacks.

General Van Fleet did not winapproval of his amphibious hooknorth to Tongchon, but his plan-ners produced some more modestvariants that might have put all orpart of the 1st Marine Divisionwithin the ROK I Corps area andcloser to the air and naval gunfiresupport that Task Force 77 couldprovide. An offensive westwardfrom the coast might bring theMarines and the ROK I Corps inbehind the fortified belt so well-manned by the North Koreans. Foralmost 10 days, Van Fleet andByers examined their contingencyplans and ruled them out as toorisky and subject at any moment toanother Ridgway veto. The resultof the operational paralysis wasthat General Thomas learned on 8-9 September that he would repos-sess the 1st Marines from corpsreserve, which would release the

43

The body of a Communist soldier lies atop a bunker captured by elements of the7th Marines during the assault against Hill 673.


44

They could be found trudging along after everyMarine rifle company in Korea’s mountains in thesummer of 1951. Small men, powered by muscu-

lar but thin legs, bent under the loads of their A-framesor chigae, struggling along with ammunition, rations,and water, they were the “chiggy bearers.” The 1stMarine Division depended upon them to close the gapbetween the supply points served by trucks and theMarine companies engaged in battle. The “chiggy bear-ers” made it possible for the Marines to search out anddestroy the enemy.

Organized by the U. S. Eighth Army in 1950 and orig-inally called the Civil Transportation Corps, this army ofKorean laborers provided the United Nations forces withconstruction workers and pack bearers. For carryingsupplies, the Koreans relied upon their traditionalwooden A-frame packboard or chigae. Althoughrenamed the Korean Service Corps (KSC) in 1951, thebearer corps remained the chigaebudae (A-Frame Army)or “chiggy bearers” to the Marines.

The “chiggy bearers” had either been drafted intotheir country’s service or had volunteered. Members ofthe KSC had to be medically unfit for duty in the SouthKorean army or be over age 38. Marines often charac-terized the “chiggy bearers” as “elderly,” but, in fact, theKSC included men and boys who had convinced some-one that they were unfit for frontline service in the SouthKorean army. The South Korean government had almostabsolute power to commandeer people and things forthe war effort, but in reality the KSC competed withother American-financed Korean service agencies forpersonnel and could count only on unskilled workers(often displaced farmers and farm laborers) for the bulkof its manpower.

In many ways the lot of the average “chiggy bearer”was not a happy one, however essential. His contractsaid that he would carry up to a 50-pound load for asmany as 10 miles each day, but the bearers often carriedheavier loads for longer distances, especially if mea-sured from valley floor to hilltop. The lines of bearers,shepherded by Korean soldiers assigned as KSCcadremen, 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 forsix months, and the living and medical conditions forthe bearers were no better than most refugee camps.

the end of the war an estimated 300,000 Koreans hadserved a tour as a “chiggy bear,” and at the height of thefluid war of 1951 the South Korean governmentimpressed an average of 3,000 men and boys a weekinto the KSC. A postwar accounting of KSC personnellisted 2,064 porters killed in action, 2,448 missing inaction, and 4,282 wounded in action.

If a KSC “regiment”—with one assigned to eachAmerican division—had efficient and honest officers,the KSC bearer did not fare badly—provided he lived tocollect his pay. Clothing and food were not a problem,which could not be said for his countrymen; the “chig-gy bearer” ration was supposed to provide 3,500 calo-ries a day and included a ration of 10 cigarettes. Aftersome strident protests in 1951, KSC pay scales movedfrom those set for the South Korean army toward thosepaid other Koreans working as civilians for the UnitedNations Command.

One American army logistician calculated that anAmerican infantry company required just about as manybearers as its own strength, around 150-200. If so, the1st Marine Division had a “chiggy bearer” shortage sinceit had only 1,922 KSC members in support in May 1951.The bearer “gap,” however, applied to all of UnitedNations Command. By war’s end the KSC had a paperstrength of 133,000, but its “A-frame strength” was about100,000 or roughly one bearer for every six Americanand allied soldiers in Korea. Like everyone else on theUnited Nations side of the war, the “chiggy bearers” car-ried more than their prescribed load.


The “Chiggy Bearers”

5th Marines from the Kansas Linefor additional offensive operationseast of the Punchbowl. Except forthe 8th ROK Division on Thomas’right flank, the rest of X Corpswould seize another hill mass sooncalled “Heartbreak Ridge.” Byersexpected the Marines to resumethe attack on 11 September.

With only 48 hours to mount anattack, Thomas had little alterna-tive but to look again to the 7thMarines to lead the advance onKanmubong Ridge, the hill massdirectly north of Yoke Ridge andthe division’s next objective. Theconcept of the operation envi-sioned a two-phase operation thatwould begin with the 7th Marinesseizing the two most dominantpeaks at the eastern edge of theridge, Hills 673 and 749. To elimi-nate a transverse ridge spur (Hill680), a secondary attack wouldstrike directly north from the HaysLine on Yoke Ridge. This missionwent to 3d Battalion, 7th Marines,commanded by Lieutenant ColonelBernard T. Kelly, with the mainattack to 1st Battalion, 7th Marines,under Lieutenant Colonel James G.Kelly, relatively untouched by thefight for Yoke Ridge. When the 7thMarines had secured the Hill 673-Hill 749 area, the 1st Marineswould come forward and continuethe attack up Kanmubong’s longaxis, “ridge-running,” to capture aseries of peaks designated (east towest) Hills 812, 980, 1052, and1030. The scheme of maneuverwould allow tanks to fire acrossthe front of the advancing troopsand artillery fire (even naval gun-fire) to converge in concentrationsfrom the firing positions to thesouth and southeast. The advanceshad to be supported by hundredsof “chiggy bearers” since therewere no roads of any kind to bringthe ammunition, food, and waterforward in any other way.

Fighting from cleverly-con-

cealed and strongly-built bunkersand trench systems, the NorthKoreans made the 7th Marines (allthree battalions) pay dearly inthree days of fighting, 34 dead and321 wounded. The assault compa-nies that crossed the line of depar-ture in the morning fog of 11September did not expect a walk-over. Despite the hour of intenseartillery preparation, the NorthKorean defenders fought withunflagging tenacity until killed.Each bunker system came ringedwith mines and booby-traps, andKorean mortar shells and grenadesshowered crippling fragmentsacross every contested position.Long-range heavy machine gunfire from higher up KanmubongRidge took its toll among theMarine assault units that struggledforward with flamethrowers andsatchel charges.

Once again dark memories ofIwo Jima and Okinawa came to theveterans. More heirs of theJapanese military tradition than theSoviet, the North Koreans showedno hesitation in launching counter-attacks large and small and atunexpected times and from unex-pected directions. Although theenemy did not overrun any Marinepositions, only quick shooting andquick thinking broke the backs ofthe attacks with bullets andartillery shells. Although the 3dBattalion took its objective with noassistance, Colonel Nickerson hadto commit his 2d Battalion to aidthe 1st Battalion on 12 September.Only a converging two-battalionattack—the companies in col-umn—finally seized Hill 673, andthe subsequent 2d Battalion attackon Hill 749 fought itself out farshort of the crest. In all the fightingtank fire proved decisive when thebunkers could be identified andfired upon, line-of-sight. Manybunkers, however, could havebeen reached by close air support,

conspicuously absent. The keyground maneuver came from acompany of the 1st Battalion thatmade an undetected night marchto reach a poorly-defended entrantto Hill 673, then assaulting througha breach in the North Koreandefenses. Nevertheless, the 2dBattalion’s attack on Hill 749stalled with the three rifle compa-nies reduced, scattered, and bat-tling back small counterattacks inthe dark before a battalion of the1st Marines replaced them on 13September. So hard-pressed andscattered were the Marines of 2dBattalion, 7th Marines, that the bat-talion misreported its location andgave Nickerson the impression thathis regiment had taken Hill 749,which it had not. Moreover, theapproaches to the hill were stillheld by some very combativeNorth Koreans. Assuming opera-tional control of the 2d Battalion,the 1st Marines, under ColonelThomas A. Wornham, picked upthe responsibility for occupyingHill 749. Only a helicopter recon-naissance proved that Hill 749would have to be taken first.

The logistical burden of sup-porting five committed infantrybattalions (the situation on 13September) proved too much forthe “chiggy bearers” of the KoreanService Corps 103d Division, butthe Marines now had an alternativefor the emergency resupply ofammunition and medical goodsand the evacuation of the serious-ly-wounded: the Marine Corpshelicopter. Although the light heli-copters of Marine ObservationSquadron 6 (VMO-6) had been afixture in operations since August1950, the battle for KanmubongRidge opened a new era in MarineCorps history, the combat employ-ment of helicopters as an integralpart of Marine air-ground opera-tions. General Thomas andColonel Krulak had both played

45

key roles in developing the con-cept of vertical envelopment andfighting for funds to procure andtest helicopters in HMX-1, theexperimental helicopter squadroncreated at Marine Corps Air Station,Quantico, Virginia. HMX-1 gavebirth in January 1951 to MarineTransport Helicopter Squadron 161(HMR-161), commanded by a heli-copter pioneer, Lieutenant ColonelGeorge W. Herring. Herringbrought HMR-161 to Korea inAugust 1951 ready to make itscombat debut under the sharp eyeof Krulak, who had made verticalenvelopment his latest magnificentobsession. Herring’s squadron of

300 Marines and 15 Sikorsky HRS-1 transport helicopters arrived atthe airstrip (X-83) near the divisioncommand post at Sohwa-ri andmoved in with VMO-6. Anticipat-ing some employment in theweeks ahead, Krulak and Herringprepared the squadron for opera-tions in combat landing zones anddeclared it ready for commitmenton 12 September. Thomas toldHMR-161 to carry supplies to theembattled Marines near Hill 793.

Operation Windmill I on 13September lasted only about threehours, but its impact stretched intothe future by years. In the shortterm it made sure that 2d Battalion,

1st Marines, commanded byLieutenant Colonel Franklin B.Nihart, faced another day’s battlewith plenty of ammunition, water,and rations and without the bur-den of casualties. The first liftbrought in a helicopter supportteam from the 2d Battalion to runthe landing zone, and the remain-ing 27 flights delivered nine tons ofcargo and evacuated 74 casualties.Not one helicopter was lost toground fire or accident. A similarresupply mission would haverequired almost 400 Korean bear-ers and a full day to accomplish.Unlike an earlier parachute resup-ply mission to the Korean Marines,

46

Born in 1927 at Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, heenlisted in the Navy in 1944. After the war, heentered Bucknell University, from which he grad-

uated in 1950 with a degree in Political Science andHistory. While attending Bucknell, he enrolled in theMarine Corps Reserve Platoon Leader’s program andwas commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserve. Hetaught high school civics and history in Lewisburg,Pennsylvania, before being called to active duty inJanuary 1951 at his own request.

As a platoon leader with Company I, 3d Battalion, 7thMarines, in Korea, his bravery in covering the with-drawal of his platoon on Kanmubong Ridge on 12September 1951 was recognized by the posthumousaward of the Medal of Honor. His citation reads, in part:

Second Lieutenant Ramer fearlessly led his men upthe steep slopes and, although he and the majori-ty of his unit were wounded during the ascent,boldly continued to spearhead the assault. . . . hestaunchly carried the attack to the top, personallyannihilated one enemy bunker with grenade andcarbine fire and captured the objective with hisremaining eight men. Unable to hold the position against an immediate,overwhelming hostile counterattack, he orderedhis group to withdraw and single-handedly foughtthe enemy to furnish cover for his men and for theevacuation of three fatally wounded Marines.Severely wounded a second time, SecondLieutenant Ramer . . . courageously manned hispost until the hostile troops overran his positionand he fell mortally wounded.

In 1963, a facility for physical conditioning at MarineCorps Base Quantico, Virginia, was named in his mem-ory.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)

Second Lieutenant George H. Ramer


47

When Marine Transport Helicopter Squadron(HMR) 161 deployed to Korea, the squadrontook with it an aircraft that pushed the techni-

cal state-of-the-art in helicopter design into a new fron-tier. Designated the HRS-1, the Sikorsky-designed andbuilt helicopter had endured the inevitable ups anddowns that characterized the introduction of any pio-neering aircraft. Without government contracts, theSikorsky Aircraft Division of the Vought-SikorskyCorporation, Stratford, Connecticut, produced an aircraftdesignated the S-55, first flown in 1949. Initially market-ing the aircraft as a commercial utility helicopter, IgorSikorsky hoped the S-55 could compete with the PiaseckiH-21 (or PD-22), which had been adopted by the U.S. AirForce for its air rescue service. The Navy, however, wasin the hunt for a general-purpose helicopter that could beadopted for shipboard use. Naval aviators liked the S-55because of its economical design, modest size, and ser-viceability.

Redesignated the HO4S-1 in its naval model, the S-55represented at least two major engineering advances: theaddition of a tail rotor for greater stability in flight and afront-mounted Pratt & Whitney R-1340-57 engine thatcould generate a respectable 600 horsepower. The engineplacement helped solve a nagging problem of weight-dis-tribution and flight characteristics. Prior helicopter mod-els placed the engine directly under the rotor-blades, adesign that gravely limited any so-designed helicopter to

very light loads and insured flight instability. The front-mounted engine dramatically increased the helicopter’scarrying capacity and simplified maintenance since theHRS-1 had clam-shaped nose doors that provided easyaccess to the engine for the ground crew mechanics. Thenew design also improved vertical flight stability.

In the earliest stage of evaluation, 1948-1949, Navy andMarine Corps officers, encouraged by Sikorsky, saw capa-bilities the helicopter did not yet have, even under opti-mum weather and altitude conditions. The originalrequirement the naval aviators placed on the helicopterwas a 10-man load (225 pounds per Marine) to be carried150 miles. The requirements shrank, as it became moreand more obvious that the HRS-1 was not going to be atwo-ton-plus lifter. All the helicopter’s other characteris-tics, however, made it the aircraft of choice for theBureau of Aeronautics, and the Marine Corps joined theprogram in August 1950, with an initial order of 40 air-craft.

The HRS-1s that went to Korea came into service witha gross weight rating (7,000 pounds at sea level) about1,000 pounds slighter than originally designed with apayload reduced to 1,420 pounds under optimal flightconditions. 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 disap-pointment, but promise.

Whirlybirds


none of the cargo drifted off toplaces and users unknown. Theuse of externally-slung, quick-release loads in cargo nets madeeasy. For the corpsmen andwounded Marines, helicopter evac-uation meant that a hard-hit casu-alty could be transported to a med-ical clearing station (“battalionmed”) in 30 minutes, not doomedto a day-long stretcher ride. Evenwithout accumulated statistics,medical personnel could alreadytell that medical evacuation heli-copters would save lives and boostmorale.

The plan for the 1st Marines toattack up Kanmubong Ridge con-tinued to unravel despite the heli-copter resupply and the commit-ment of two battalions, the 2dBattalion to take Hill 749 and the

3d Battalion to seize the ridgelineacross the Soyang on Nihart’s rightflank. Nihart’s battalion finallycleared Hill 749 after sharp fightingone company at a time with only aplatoon in battle by the evening of14 September. Before Nihart couldmount another attack the next day,the North Koreans deluged hisMarines with heavy artillery andmortar fire, pinning them to theirHill 749 positions. The NorthKorean regiment with accompany-ing artillery tried to throw the 2dBattalion off Hill 749 for four hoursduring the night of 15-16September and left almost 200bodies and many blood trailsbehind when it withdrew, but thebattle cost the 2d Battalion almost200 casualties and limited it as anoffensive threat. Two Korean

deserters reported that their regi-ment had 1,200 casualties.

Wornham now had to commithis reserve 1st Battalion to ensurethat the complete Hill 673-Hill 749complex was secure, leavingThomas only one unbloodied regi-ment (the 5th Marines) to assaultthe heights of Kanmubong Ridge.At the cost of more than 800 casu-alties in the 7th and 1st Marines,the 1st Marine Division had onlyseized the ground identified fivedays before as the departure pointfor the more demanding advanceup the spine of the ridge. Now itwas the turn of Colonel Richard G.Weede’s 5th Marines to continuethe attack.

The battle of Kanmubong Ridgecontinued for four more days (16-20 September) and ended with the5th Marines reduced by some 250casualties and only Hill 812 secure-ly under Marine control. The com-manders of Weede’s two assaultbattalions believed they could alsohave taken Hill 980, but it wouldhave been difficult to hold with thepeak (Hill 1052) still under NorthKorean control. The problems ofCommunist enfilade fire from thenorth simply got worse as theMarines worked their way to thewest along the ridge. TheLieutenant Colonel Donald R.Kennedy’s 3d Battalion in the leftzone of action had its flank pro-tected by Yoke Ridge and by tankfire, but the 2d Battalion workingalong the opposite slope enjoyedno advantages in cover and friend-ly fire, except close air support—which did not arrive. Staggered byits mounting casualties, the 2dBattalion stormed Hill 812 on theevening of 17 September. Withoutphysical contact, the two battalionswent into perimeter defenses,expecting North Korean counterat-tacks from the heights to their frontor, in the case of the 2d Battalion,from the broken ground to the

48

A wounded squad leader of the 5th Marines ensures that a North Koreanemplacement no longer threatens the advance along Kanmubong Ridge. TheSeptember attacks into the ridge mass north of the Punchbowl produced the mostintense combat since the Chinese Fifth Offensive of April and May.


north and east. Acutely aware ofhis danger and reduced supply cir-cumstances, the 2d Battalion com-mander, Lieutenant ColonelHouston “Tex” Stiff, asked for heli-copter resupply. In Windmill II, thehelicopters of HMR-161 deliveredsix tons of scarce ammunition andengineering supplies in less thanan hour on the afternoon of 19September.

Just to hold his line across theridge line, Colonel Weede had tobring up his uncommitted 1stBattalion, which fell in on Stiff’sright and rear and allowed the

hard-pressed 2d Battalion to con-solidate its hold on Hill 812 and tofind the 3d Battalion on its left.Even with the 5th Marines’ linesmore or less connected, the NorthKoreans made life miserable forthe troops by sniping with long-range, high velocity antitankartillery guns and by attacking anypatrols or outposts pushed forwardof the main line of resistance. Twocompanies of the 2d Battalionbecame embattled for two daysover control of “The Rock,” a gran-ite knob about 700 yards west ofHill 812. In a close-quarters melee

of almost 24 hours, the Marinesfinally chased off the last of theKorean raiders. The Marine victorsfound 60 dead North Koreans scat-tered among the shattered rocks,but the victory cost the 5th Marinesfive dead and almost 50 wounded.Major Gerald P. Averill, the battal-ion operations officer, watchedMarines shoot fleeing Koreansfrom the off-hand position whileone Marine took photographs ofthe Korean corpses.

The battle for “The Rock”seemed almost symbolic since ithad been a no-quarters fight for apiece of ground of little tactical sig-nificance. It also was the last partof the battle for Kanmubong Ridge,for General Van Fleet on 20September ordered Byers to stopthe offensive. The simultaneousbattle of Heartbreak Ridge to thewest of the Punchbowl had pro-duced few results except soaringcasualties in the 2d InfantryDivision, and Van Fleet wanted allof X Corps fire support committedto that struggle. In addition, heapproved of Byers’ plan to shift the8th ROK Division since the divi-sion—one of the better units in theSouth Korean army—had taken itsobjectives east of the Soyang River,though at prohibitive cost. Only indisgruntled retrospect did theMarines realize that they hadfought in their last division offen-sive in Korea. The relief of the 8thROK Division simply meant thatthe South Koreans would shiftfrom the eastern to the westernflank of X Corps.

The change meant that the 1stMarine Division assumed aboutfive miles more of front in a sectoralready 15 miles in length. Withthe 1st KMC Regiment still holdingthe northern lip of the Punchbowland the 5th Marines defending partof Kanmubong Ridge and theSoyang River valley, the 1stMarines assumed the mission of

49

Sergeant Frederick W. Mausert III

Born in 1930 in Cambridge,New York, he enlisted inthe Marine Corps in 1948.

Following recruit training at ParrisIsland, South Carolina, he was sta-tioned at Cherry Point and CampLejeune, North Carolina, beforegoing to Korea, where he partici-pated in campaigns in South andCentral Korea. Serving as a squadleader with Company B, 1stBattalion, 7th Marines, he waswounded on 10 September 1951.Two days later at Songnap-yong(Punchbowl), he was killed in acourageous action for which hewas awarded the Meal of Honor.His citation reads, in part:

Sergeant Mausert unhesitatinglyleft his covered position and ranthrough a heavily mined andfire-swept area to bring backtwo 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 literal-ly impregnable series of bunkers. Stunned and knocked to theground when another bullet struck his helmet, he regained his feetand resumed his drive, personally silencing the machine-gun andleading his men in elimination several other emplacements in thearea. Promptly reorganizing his unit for a renewed fight to the finalobjective on top of the ridge, Sergeant Mausert . . . still refused aidand continued spearheading the assault to the topmost machine-gunnest and bunkers, the last bulwark of the fanatic aggressors. Leapinginto the wall of fire, he destroyed another machine-gun withgrenades before he was mortally wounded by bursting grenades andmachine-gun fire.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)


occupying the sector east of theriver since the 7th Marines werethe corps reserve. To take posses-sion of its sector the 1st Marineshad to control Hill 854 and Hill884. Lieutenant Colonel Foster C.LaHue’s 3d Battalion found to itsdismay that the 21st ROK Regimentoccupied the summit of Hill 854,but that the North Koreans stillheld almost all the northern face.For two days the battalion attackedand ran the survivors off, but theMarines lost 11 men to unchartedSouth Korean minefields and 50more casualties in the fighting.

LaHue’s requests for essential airstrikes were answered too late ornot at all, again bringing the closeair support issue to a boiling pointwith Thomas and Krulak.

Marine helicopters, however,provided one of the bright spots inthe sector extension. To buy sometime for another 1st Marines battal-ion to move to Hill 884 and toexplore the possible routes to thehill—and any enemy ambushes orfriendly minefields—Thomas or-dered the division’s Reconnais-sance Company to move by heli-copter to the summit of Hill 884

and to establish a patrol base thereas well as replace the SouthKoreans. On 21 September, HMR-161 carried the first fully opera-tional combat unit into a potentialbattle. Despite poor landing sitesand marginal weather, the heli-copters delivered 224 Marines andalmost nine tons on supplies andequipment in four hours. Thetroops disembarked by “hot rope,”a rappelling technique that doesnot require a snap-ring hook-up;the Marines and accompanyingload slung from each aircraft couldbe delivered in 90 seconds after aneight minute flight from X-83, 15miles away. General Thomas andColonel Krulak complimented allhands with glowing messages. VanFleet and Byers sent their owncongratulations, fully realizing thepotential of helicopter operations.The next operations, Blackbird on27 September and Bumblebee on11 October, produced mixedresults, but Blackbird proved thatHMR-161 could do limited night-work, and Bumblebee demonstrat-ed that HMR-161 could move anentire battalion into a non-hostilelanding zone. A helicopter-mobilebriefing became a standard stop,dictated by Van Fleet, for VIPs,which included the Chairman ofthe Joint Chiefs of Staff, GeneralOmar N. Bradley, USA. After his 1October briefing, Bradley, no fanof the Marine Corps, admitted tohis staff and accompanying jour-nalists that the Marines might havediscovered an operational tech-nique that might change the con-duct of land warfare. The Septem-ber fighting that might not havebeen Iwo Jima II for the 1st MarineDivision, but Bradley’s faint praisegave a little more meaning to thebattle for Yoke Ridge andKanmubong Ridge. The survivingMarines felt that strange mixture ofgrief, guilt, relief, and satisfactionof veterans. They had upheld the

50


A rifleman of the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, disembarks from a Sikorsky HRS-1helicopter of Marine Helicopter Transport Squadron 161 during OperationBumblebee. The operation allowed two Marine infantry battalions to exchangepositions on Hill 702 by airlift, not overland march.

reputation of the 1st MarineDivision and X Corps for nevershirking the most dangerous andonerous missions.

With the 1st Marine Division inplace in its part of the Hays-KansasLine, the division could assess itslatest month of Korean combat.First, the North Korean army hadproved more skilled and deter-mined than the Chinese, but notimmortal. The division intelligencesection estimated that the Marineshad inflicted about 10,000 casual-ties on the enemy. The number ofenemy bodies actually countednumbered 2,799, and the Marineshad taken 557 prisoners. Measuredagainst its most taxing battles inWorld War II, Peleliu andOkinawa, the 1st Marine Divisionlosses, compared with the casual-ties inflicted, appeared acceptable:227 killed in action, and 2,125wounded in action for a total of2,452 casualties. Almost all thecasualties occurred in the fourinfantry regiments and their attach-ments. The single most costly 24-hour period (39 killed and 463wounded) was 13-14 September inthe first phase of the attack onKanmubong Ridge, which in-volved two battalions each of boththe 1st and 7th Marines.

What gave the battles for YokeRidge and Kanmubong Ridge aspecial quality was the discourag-ing impact of the geography. Ifone stands along the DemilitarizedZone today—as the author did in1994 and 1998—in the sectors inwhich the Marines fought aroundthe Punchbowl, the mountainranges stretch off without visibleend into North Korea. It is difficultnot to feel that there must be a bet-ter way to conduct war than tomount one attack after anotheragainst those forbidding (and stillfortified) mountains. Surely thesame thoughts came to the Marinesof 1951 as they felt the first chill

winds of winter on the Hays-Kansas Line.

A Long Winter and a Longer War

While battles still raged to thewestern zones of I and IX Corpsand most of X Corps focused onthe capture of Heartbreak Ridge,the 1st Marine Division secured itsown portion of the new Minnesota

Line. For the Marines the frontbecame the Kansas Line bent,twisted, and renamed to includethe terrain captured on the Yokeand Kanmubong Ridges. The signsof approaching winter were many.The distribution of cold weatherclothing and equipment went onthroughout the division, and theMarines’ bunkers started to includestoves and makeshift furniture

51

Private First Class Edward Gomez

Born in 1932 in Omaha,Nebraska, he attendedOmaha High School before

enlisting in the Marine CorpsReserve in 1949. In Korea, he par-ticipated in three operations andwas wounded in June 1951. Witha strong premonition of death, hewrote his mother in September: “Iam writing this on the possibilitythat I may die in this next assault. . . . I am not sorry I died,because I died fighting for mycountry and that’s the NumberOne thing in everyone’s life, tokeep his home and country frombeing won over by such things ascommunism . . . .Tell Dad I diedlike the man he wanted me tobe.”

On 14 September, he was killedon Kanmubong Ridge, while serving as an ammunition bearer withCompany E, 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, and saving the lives of four of hissquad members. His Medal of Honor citation reads, in part:

Boldly advancing with his squad in support of a group of riflemenassaulting a series of strongly fortified and bitterly defended hostilepositions on Hill 749. Private First Class Gomez consistently exposedhimself to the withering barrage to keep his machine-gun suppliedwith ammunition during the drive forward to seize the objective. Ashis squad deployed to meet an imminent counterattack, he voluntar-ily moved down an abandoned trench to search for a new locationfor the gun and, when a hostile grenade landed between himself andhis weapon, shouted a warning to those around him as he graspedthe activated charge in his hand. Determined to save his comrades,he unhesitatingly chose to sacrifice himself and, diving into the ditchwith the deadly missile, absorbed the shattering violence of theexplosion in his own body.

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

—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)


52

Corporal JosephVittori

Born in Beverly, Mass-achusetts, in 1929, he attend-ed high school and worked

on his father’s farm before enlistingfor three years in the Marine Corpsin 1946. After being discharged, hejoined the Marine Corps Reserve in1950 for an indefinite tour of activeduty. He trained at Camp Lejeune,North Carolina, until January 1951,when he joined Company F, 2dBattalion, 1st Marines, in Korea.Having been wounded in June nearYanggu, he was killed in the fightfor Hill 749 in the Punchbowl on 15September 1951 and became thesecond Marine of 2d Battalion, 1stMarines, within a 48-hour period toreceive the Medal of Honor. Hiscitation reads, in part:

Corporal Vittori boldlyrushed through the with-drawing troops with twoother volunteers from hisreserve platoon andplunged directly into themidst of the enemy.Overwhelming them in afierce hand-to-hand strug-

gle, he enabled his compa-ny to consolidate its posi-tions . . . he assumed posi-tion under the devastatingbarrage and, fighting a sin-gle-hand battle, leaped fromone flank to the other, cov-ering each foxhole in turnas casualties continued tomount, manning a machine-gun when the gunner wasstruck down . . . With thesituation becoming ex-tremely critical . . . and fox-holes left practically void bydead and wounded for adistance of 100 yards,Corporal Vittori continuedhis valiant stand, refusing togive ground as the enemypenetrated to within feet ofhis position. . . . Mortallywounded by enemy ma-chine-gun and rifle bulletswhile persisting in his mag-nificent defense of the sec-tor, where approximately200 enemy dead werefound the following morn-ing, Corporal Vittori . . .undoubtedly prevented theentire battalion positionfrom collapsing.

In 1986 there was a parade andmemorial service in his honor, witha park named after him in his home-town of Beverly, Massachusetts.

Corporal Jack A.Davenport

An ardent athlete and aGolden Gloves champion, hewas born in 1931 in Kansas

City, Missouri, and enlisted in theMarine Corps in July 1950. Sent toKorea that December, he took partin four successive operations. Then,as a squad leader with Company G,3d Battalion, 5th Marines, he died ina valorous action at the Punchbowlon 21 September 1951. His citation for the

Medal of Honor read, in part:

While expertly directing thedefense of his position dur-ing a probing attack by hos-tile forces attempting toinfiltrate the area, CorporalDavenport, acting quicklywhen an enemy grenadefell into the foxhole whichhe was occupying withanother Marine, skillfullylocated the deadly projectilein the dark and, undeterredby the personal riskinvolved, heroically threwhimself over the live missile,thereby saving his compan-ion from serious injury orpossible death. His cool andresourceful leadership werecontributing factors in thesuccessful repulse of theenemy attack.

The man in that same foxholewas Private First Class Walter L.Barfoot, and, due to Davenport’sheroic self-sacrifice, he survived thewar. Later, a gymnasium at CampPendleton, California, was named inhonor of Corporal Davenport.—Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR(Ret)



made from ammunition and equip-ment boxes. American fightingmen make their lives as comfort-able as possible; the Marines hadno desire for a Valley Forge in theTaebaek Mountains. They also fol-lowed their instructions to makethe Minnesota Line defensiblewithout unnecessary casualties orthe commitment of reserve forces.For the first time division staff offi-cers reported how many sandbagsthe troops filled and placed andhow many yards of barbed wirethey strung in front of their posi-tions.

Even without some progress inthe armistice negotiations—andthe plenary sessions did notresume until 25 October at a vil-lage along the Kaesong-Masanroad called Panmunjom—the onsetof winter alone would have givenurgency to the 1st Marine

Division’s energetic developmentof its defensive area, some 14 milesacross and 30 miles deep. The divi-sion could hardly afford to take itsdefensive mission lightly. On itsleft the 11th ROK Division showedsome reluctance to either man theboundary or patrol it very careful-ly, which concerned the divisionstaff. The U.S. 7th Infantry Divisionin the ridges west of thePunchbowl did better. The onlyadvantage to the west was that theterrain and corridors offered lessopportunity for the North Koreans.The division had few troops tospare since Byers decreed that oneof the American Marine regimentswould be the corps reserve andoccupy positions 17 miles to therear, but at least the reserve (ini-tially the 7th Marines) could con-duct rear area security patrols.After trying several combinations,

Thomas committed six battalionson the main line of resistance andheld three battalions in either regi-mental and/or division reserve.The division reserve battalion hadthe mission of patrolling theKansas Line and protecting themain supply routes.

The principal objective of theoperations along the MinnesotaLine was to drive the NorthKoreans away from their observa-tion posts, combat outposts, andforward slope bunker defenses,and the Marines made majoradvances in this terrain cleansingin October and November 1951.The 11th Marines, occasionallyreinforced by corps artillery, pro-vided the umbrella of counterbat-tery fire that kept the Communistartillery in its caves. Their fire sup-port burden eased with the arrivalin January 1952 of an artillery bat-talion (four firing batteries) ofKorean Marines; the U.S. Marineartillery advisors who had trainedthe battalion accompanied it to thefront. The war on the bunkers,however, required much morethan saturation shelling, given thestrength of the Korean positions.The Marines went after thebunkers with 90mm tank guns,75mm recoilless rifles, rocketlaunchers, and flamethrowers, sup-plemented by snipers with .50-cal-iber machine guns and scopedrifles. Some of the operations didnot require close combat, but inother cases only heavy combatpatrols, sometimes with tanks,would suffice. Such actions—nightor day— cost some American lives.The Marines killed many moreKoreans.

Some of the raids took theMarines time and again back to ter-rain they had learned to hate inSeptember. Hill 1052 onKanmubong (a North Koreanstrong point and observation post)became a favorite target, and “The

53

MajGen Gerald C. Thomas talks with MajGen Clovis E. Byers, USA, X Corps com-mander, center, and Gen Omar N. Bradley, USA, during the Chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff’s visit to Marine frontlines. Among the tactics and problemsdiscussed, Gen Bradley made note of the Marines’ unique use of the helicopter inbattle.


54

Rock” received a new name thatsuggested the permanency of itsfinal residents, “Luke the Gook’sCastle.” Marine patrols prowled theunoccupied terrain at night to dis-courage infiltrating Koreans. Thefrontline battalions had no monop-oly on armed nighttime strolls. Therear areas of the 1st MarineDivision (like those throughoutKorea) were not safe from guerril-las, who preyed on road transport.The greater threat was teams of

Communist artillery observers whoinfiltrated the 11th Marines posi-tions and called in counterbatteryfire of considerable accuracy, if notheavy weight of shell. Marine gunbatteries lost both men and fieldpieces in such shoots. The reararea patrols used one capability toadvantage: helicopter transporta-tion. With every mission, the workof HMR-161 became more routine,and only the lift of entire battalionsto and from the main line of resis-

tance now justified codenames andspecial publicity. The squadronalso received an aggressive newcommander, Colonel Keith B. Mc-Cutcheon, whose work in aerialinnovation had made him a leg-endary figure in the Corps.

None of the virtuoso campaignagainst the North Korean bunkersystem could reach the growingCommunist in-depth system of for-tifications, all duly observed andphotographed by aerial observers.

In the autumn of 1951, the 1st Marine Divisionreceived a new piece of cold weather clothing: theboot, combat, rubber, insulated or Insulated Rubber

Boot. No one called it anything else but “Mickey MouseBoots” since their outsized shape and black color gavethe wearer some podiatric similarity to Hollywood’sfamous rodent. Other names for the boots were lesscomplimentary, but compared with the “shoe-pacs” theyreplaced, the Mickey Mouse boots quickly proved theirvalue in preventing frozen feet.

The U.S. Army had conducted experiments with acold weather boot during and after World War II, but by1949 it had abandoned the effort since all the experi-mental prototypes did not meet Army standards forlong-distance marching. Less concerned about themarching requirement, the Navy and Marine Corps con-ducted their own boot tests, 1948-1951, and concludedthat one boot had merit. The field tests included wearin all sorts of cold weather and terrain conditions, andthe Marines hiked in the boot and found it at leastacceptable as winter footwear since no one marchedvery fast or far in inclimate conditions anyway. TheMickey Mouse boots arrived in Korea in August 1951.

The design of the insulated rubber boot was basedon the concept that body-heat from the feet could bestored as a vapor barrier between two layers of felt-lined rubber. The airtight boot allowed the wearer tokeep his feet warm with captive air, created by thewearer’s own movement. The vapor barrier principleand the boot’s all-rubber construction meant that coldand moisture from outside the boot would be defeatedbefore they reached a Marine’s precious feet. Only aboot puncture by shrapnel or some sharp object couldruin the boot’s airtight integrity, and the boot, like earlyautomobile tires, came with a patching kit.

Mickey Mouse boots, however, could turn theunwary 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 mois-ture—with its ability to transfer heat four times morerapidly than dry air—accumulated, too. If a Marine didnot stay on the move, the feet cooled, and the moresweat-soaked one’s socks, the faster one’s feet froze.One hour of inactivity could bring on an attack of frost-bite. The standing operating procedure, therefore, forMickey Mouse bootwear included a provision that eachMarine had to dry his feet and change to dry socks atleast once a day and preferably more often.

The next worse thing to having frozen feet, howev-er, was preventing frozen feet. Changing socks and dry-ing feet in the open air of a Korean winter tested thestaunchest Marines. Units tried to establish a warmingtent of some sort where the machocistic ritual could beperformed with a hint of comfort and adequate time.Fortunately, the static winter war of 1951-1952 allowedsuch luxuries and cases of frozen feet in the 1st MarineDivision dropped dramatically. The Mickey Mouseboots had come to stay.


The Year of the Boot

55

Naval gunfire—8- and 16-inchshells from cruisers and the battle-ship New Jersey (BB 62)—con-tributed to the bunker-busting, butnot enough. The missing ingredi-ent was close air support. TwoMarine aircraft groups operatedfighter-bombers within an hour’sflight from the front, but they sel-dom came when called, and theirAir Force and Navy comradesseemed even less available as theyflew off to bomb railroads, tunnels,and roads off a target list dictatedby Fifth Air Force.

General Thomas had grownever unhappier with the lack ofclose air support. When he learnedthat Van Fleet had told Byers on 28September that X Corps requestedtoo much air, he ordered his staffto do a study on the lack of closeair support in the September bat-tles. His anger grew with his divi-sion’s casualties. As a veteran ofWorld War I, Thomas had his hearthardened early, but he never mea-sured success by counting his ownlosses. He knew that the fights for

Yoke Ridge and Kanmubong Ridgewould have been much easier withMarine air on call. His own angerwas fueled by deaths that touchedhim personally. One was the lossof his G-1, Colonel Wesley M.“Cutie” Platt, on 27 September. Themost senior Marine officer to die inKorea, Platt had earned a specialplace in the Corps’ history as oneof the heroes of the defense ofWake Island. Now a shell ended adistinguished career and a specialperson. Thomas also knew that hisdivision included as many as 20sons of Marine generals andcolonels, all eager to prove theirown mettle. He wrote his wife thathe worried about these “juniors”constantly, but could hardly ruintheir careers and lives by protect-ing them. When one of the“juniors,” First Lieutenant John C.Breckinridge died in combat,Thomas immediately pulled FirstLieutenant James Breckinridge outof his infantry battalion and did sowithout regret since he wanted thefamily line of Major General James

C. Breckinridge to survive Korea.The September battles had alsoturned Thomas into a critic of theTruman Administration, and hewrote his brother that the conceptof “limited war” was ridiculous.China should be ruined as aCommunist revolutionary power,and it would be easier to do itnow, not later. The administration’sconcept of limited war offendedhim because “the wounds andworse acquired by Americans herehad a real one hundred percentappearance . . . our guys are offbase in D.C. and plenty.”

Against this emotional back-ground, Thomas again challengedthe U.S. Air Force. Thomas firedthe first shot in the new war with aletter asserting that his Septembercasualties could have been re-duced with timely close air sup-port. He forwarded a study doneby his staff that showed how muchair he had requested and how littlehe had received. The 1st MarineDivision had made 271 requestsand had only 187 granted. More

Marine foot patrols ranged farther into enemy territory dur-ing October, while tank-infantry raids in company strength,

supported by air and artillery, were launched at everyopportunity.


serious to operations, only 32 hadarrived within 30 minutes, theMarine Corps standard. During var-ious conferences in October,Thomas had an opportunity to dis-cuss the issues with General J.Lawton Collins, USA, the ArmyChief of Staff, and GeneralRidgway. Although Byers appreci-ated his aggressiveness, Van Fleet

and Everest did not. Thomasthought Collins and Ridgway likedhis letter, “a stick to beat the AirForce with.” Ridgway said hewanted Van Fleet and Everest tolook at the Joint Operations Centersystem and see if it could beadjusted, at least to give the 1stMarine Division 40 sorties a day.Van Fleet, however, argued that X

Corps got too much air supportalready. Thomas and Byers decid-ed to push the issue; Byers’ out-rage was fueled by another prob-lem, the unwillingness of the Armyto send its best officers and non-commissioned officers to combatassignments in Korea. Byers alsobridled at Van Fleet’s suggestionthat his faltering generalship

56

After an ocean voyage to California, three or fourdays of out-processing, and an air flight toTennessee, Corporal Jack Davis, U.S. Marine

Corps Reserve, returned to Nashville in March 1952. Hehad been gone almost two years, and he was not quite20 years old. In his well-tailored green service uniform,bearing ribbons for his two Purple Hearts, a PresidentialUnit Citation, and a row of Korean service ribbons, Jackmarched across the tarmac towards his waiting parentsand older brother. They did not recognize him. He hadbeen the only Marine in uniform on the plane. He alsohad lost 30 pounds and still sported “a Joe Stalin” mus-tache. Jack walked past his mother and father, thenturned back to them: “You don’t know your own son?”As Jack recalled, “mild bedlam ensued for a fewmoments.”

After three or four days at home, however, Jack real-ized that he was having serious difficulty adjusting to lifeoutside a combat zone. His brother went off to classesat Vanderbilt, and his parents both had full-time jobs.He even felt strange driving a new Nash Rambler aftermonths of driving a Marine truck on Korean countryroads. After about a week, he went out and found a jobdriving a big truck for a local construction company,and for the first time he felt mildly comfortable, earning75 cents an hour, and enjoying the company of hardmen doing hard work. He did not miss being shelled.His parents found his job puzzling and worried abouthis sanity, but his new job started Jack on the road tonormalcy. “The Marine Corps does a marvelous jobmaking civilians into warriors, but then to turn thosepersons back to civilian life approximately thirty daysafter leaving a combat zone, with no decompressionperiod stateside, acclimatizing back to a quasi-politeenvironment, leaves a bit to be desired.”

With his usual enthusiasm, Vince Davis tried to helphis brother reenter Nashville—actually Vanderbilt—social life, but the well-intentioned effort on Jack’sbehalf did not go well. Jack found little in common withVince’s friends in Vanderbilt’s senior class, and he con-cluded they would find his service stories meaningless.Besides, Jack hardly trusted his ability to carry on a

social conversation without lapsing into standard Marinelanguage, which would have set all of Davidson Countyon fire. “I was so unsure of my polite verbal utterancesthat I was barely better than a mute. And for a while Ipreferred not to go out in polite society until I had re-acquired some social skills.”

In the autumn of 1952, Jack Davis entered VanderbiltUniversity, his education partially funded by a disabilitypension and the GI Bill. When he graduated with adegree in geology in 1956, he also had a new wife, JoanFortune of Lafayette, Georgia. Even with a Master’s ofScience in geology (1959) Jack found the life of a petro-leum geologist too uncertain for a family man (twosons), and he shifted into sales management in the oiland pharmaceutical industries until his semi-retirementand return to Tennessee in 1971. A small advertisingbusiness he and some local friends created keep himbusy enough—along with church and civic activities inhis new hometown of Winchester, Tennessee—until thepartners sold the business to a larger Texas-based com-pany in 1998. Jack and Joan now have more time toenjoy their hobbies and extended family.

Jack has never returned to Korea, but he is proud tohave been the teenage rifleman of 1951 who found him-self in Korea with “Bloody George” Company, 3dBattalion, 1st Marines.

Corporal Jack Davis: Veteran

explained the losses of the 2dInfantry Division on HeartbreakRidge. Byers put his staff to workon studies like those underway inthe 1st Marine Division. Byers andThomas also raised the relatedissue of dictated artillery shellexpenditures, which they claimedproduced predictable shortageswhen real fighting occurred. VanFleet was not happy with the twosenior generals of X Corps.

Byers and Thomas musteredmore evidence in November thatthe Joint Operations Center hadwillfully prevented X Corps fromreceiving effective close air sup-port. The 1st Marine Divisionclaimed that it had made 188requests for air support andreceived only 53 strikes in re-sponse. In the case of 86 requests,

Fifth Air Force said it had no air-craft available, and poor weatherhad affected most of the otherrequests. The 1st Marine Division’sstatistics provided an even moredamning picture. During the 30days of November, the divisionhad requested air support on 26days and received no response atall on 12 of those days. On thedays that the Joint OperationsCenter responded, it approvedonly 52 of 125 close air supportrequests. In terms of aircraft andordnance, only four missions wereflown as requested, and only onearrived in less than an hour fromthe original request. The only mis-sion that went as planned occurredon 10 November when 89 aircraftfrom the 1st Marine Aircraft Wingcelebrated the Marine Corps’

Birthday with a heavy strike northof Kanmubong Ridge. The X Corpsstudy, directed by LieutenantColonel Ellis W. Williamson, a pio-neer in Army aviation and airmobility operations, produced sim-ilar results. For 1-20 November, theentire corps had made 224requests and had 145 requestsfilled in some way. Forty-sixrequests took more than two hoursto fill, and Williamson, X Corps G-3, judged that 42 of these strikescame too late to have the antici-pated results.

The X Corps’ analyses, like stud-ies submitted earlier in the year byGeneral Almond, changed nothing.Van Fleet and Ridgway saw noimmediate advantage in pressingthe issue, whatever their personalviews. The major influence ontheir commitment to the JointOperations Center-status quo wasthe news from Panmunjom. Thenegotiators had accepted theUnited Nations position that thearmistice line should be the line oftroops when the armistice wassigned, not the 38th Parallel. Eachbelligerent coalition would with-draw four kilometers from thepoint of contact and thus establisha neutral zone between the armies.Van Fleet had anticipated theagreement on 14 November andordered that no operations by abattalion or larger formation couldbe mounted without the approvalof the corps commander. When thenegotiators signed an agreementon 25 November on the line-of-contact solution, Eighth Armyinterpreted the agreement as anomen of an early ceasefire. Theword went forth throughout thefront to hold down casualties, con-serve ammunition, defend the cur-rent positions, and even to limitpatrols to those areas where earli-er patrols had made contact withthe enemy. These rules of engage-ment would be in effect for at least

57


Gen Matthew B. Ridgway, left to right, Gen J. Lawton Collins, U.S. Army Chief ofStaff, Gen James A. Van Fleet, U.S. Eighth Army commander, and MajGen ClovisE. Byers, commanding general of U.S. X Corps, study the situation map duringGen 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 theMarine position on close air support.

30 days. The instructions had “aconsiderably inhibitory effect onthe operations of the division.”They also meant that a change inthe system of air support had beenovertaken by events.

An examination of the fightingby the 1st Marine Division inOctober and November 1951 sug-gests how large an opportunitycost the ground forces paid for theAir Force interdiction campaign.The aggressive ground operationsand use of artillery and naval gun-fire demonstrated that even with-out close air support, the 1stMarine Division (and probablymost of the U.S. Army divisions inKorea) could still inflict substantialcasualties on the enemy. TheChinese might have unlimitedmanpower to throw into the battle,but the North Koreans did not. Intwo months of operations that canonly be characterized as “defen-sive,” the 1st Marine Division killed1,117 North Koreans and captured575 more at a cost of 87 dead ormissing Marines (both American

and South Korean) and 573wounded. The 1st Marine Divisionorder-of-battle analysts estimatedthat the division and air strikes hadcaused as many as 12,000 morecasualties in the three NorthKorean divisions that faced theMarines. Even if wildly optimistic,the estimates were probably notcompletely illusory. If, for exam-ple, the Marines had killed orwounded only one-third of theenemy estimated, they still wouldhave accounted for more than6,000 enemy casualties at a cost of660 losses of their own. Anexchange ratio of 10:1—given therules of engagement—is an opera-tional achievement in any war, butthe Eighth Army missed the lesson.

As the pace of the war con-gealed with the coming of winterand the hope of an armistice, the1st Marine Division passed throughanother set of organizational mile-stones. It celebrated the MarineCorps’ 176th birthday with the tra-ditional ceremonies of readingJohn A. Lejeune’s birthday message

and cake-cutting; General Thomasadded a special wrinkle, a one-round salute at noon 10 Novemberfrom every weapon in position,which the commanding generalfound “very satisfying.” Thomasthen hosted Byers and X Corpsstaff for lunch.

Thomas also drew satisfactionfrom an extensive study done by XCorps for the Department ofDefense. Sensitive to Army carpingabout Marine tactics and casualties,Thomas could point to irrefutablestatistics: in both raw number andpercentages the 1st MarineDivision in 1951 had one of thethree lowest loss rates in theEighth Army. Within X Corps itslosses in combat were half those ofthe U.S. 2d Infantry Division inpercentage terms and 50 percentlower in raw numbers. Between 1June and 15 October, the Armydivision suffered 6,247 casualties,the Marine division, less the 1stKMC Regiment, 4,241. During thefirst 10 months of 1951, the 1stMarine Division had rotated 11,637Marines out of Korea and received13,097 replacements, which didnot quite cover the losses from allsources. In the autumn of 1951there were still almost 5,000Marines in the division who hadjoined the division in 1950, but byChristmas these veterans (the vastmajority technical specialists) hadall gone home. By the end ofDecember, one-third of the divi-sion’s Marines had come to Koreasince early September, but the divi-sion showed no signed of reducedeffectiveness. The 14th Replace-ment Draft (2,756 officers andmen) closed the gap, but the 11th(“Home for Christmas”) RotationDraft opened it again.

From the perspective ofHeadquarters Marine Corps andthe Commanding General, FleetMarine Forces, Pacific, the 1stMarine Division had done a splen-

58

A rifle platoon celebrates the traditional Marine Corps Birthday, 10 November,with a no-frills cake cutting on the reverse slope of battle-scared KanmubongRidge.


59

did job in 1951 as a fighting orga-nization and as a source of favor-able publicity. Both Generals Catesand Shepherd visited Thomas inthe last two months of 1951 andcongratulated him on his success-ful command. By November,Shepherd knew that he wouldreplace Cates as Commandant andhe told Thomas and Krulak that hewanted both of them back inWashington to run the staff ofHeadquarters Marine Corps.Thomas’ successor pleased theincumbent division commander:Major General John Taylor Selden,an accomplished officer who hadcommanded the 5th Marines onCape Gloucester and served as thedivision chief of staff on Peleliu. AVirginian of “First Family” roots aswell as another “mustang” of theWorld War I era, Selden had adeserved reputation for gettingalong well with the Army withoutcompromising Marine Corps inter-ests.

The change of command for XCorps showed none of the goodfeeling that accompanied Thomas’departure in early January 1952.On his latest visit to Korea inNovember, J. Lawton Collins askedVan Fleet how Byers was doing asa corps commander and whetherhe met the World War II standardsof the Army in Europe. Van Fleetresponded that Byers did notmatch the best corps commandersof Eisenhower’s army, whichmeant that Byers was not Collins,Ridgway, or Van Fleet. Withoutwarning, Byers learned from VanFleet on 24 November at a cere-mony presenting a PresidentialUnit Citation to the 2d InfantryDivision that Byers would be reas-signed as commanding general,XVI Corps, the theater reserveforce just constituted in Japan.Without ceremony or any chanceto visit his subordinate comman-ders, Byers flew to Japan as

ordered four days later, his distin-guished career in eclipse. Hisreplacement, Major GeneralWilliston B. Palmer, was aEuropeanist and a Collins intimate.General Thomas remained con-vinced that Byers had been toofriendly with the Marines forCollins’ and Ridgway’s taste andtoo assertive in demandingchanges in the close air supportsystem.

The best way to deal with theother armed forces, whether thebattlefield was in Washington orthe entire Pacific theater, hadalways been obvious to Cates,Shepherd, Thomas, and Shep-herd’s successor in Hawaii,Lieutenant General Franklin A.Hart. The answer was to attack andwithdraw at the same time. Hart’smission was to support the 1st

Marine Division and 1st MarineAircraft Wing, but he had a secondresponsibility, which was to pre-pare a new 3d Marine Brigade andsupporting aviation elements forpossible use (including amphibi-ous operations) in the Pacific.Pending legislation in Congresssuggested that in 1952 the MarineCorps would add a third divisionand aircraft wing to the FleetMarine Force. The Marine Corpsalso was investigating arming itselfwith tactical nuclear weapons.With Colonels Wornham, Hay-ward, and Nickerson on Hart’sstaff, the interests of the 1st MarineDivision would not be ignored, butas a Service the Marine Corps wasnot inclined to pursue the close airsupport issue when the interser-vice relations landscape lookedgood for the moment and the


With a resumption of the armistice talks, a lull set in along the 1st MarineDivision’s front in December. While patrols were sent out to maintain pressureon the enemy, work continued on winterizing bunkers and improving defensiveinstallations, such as this machine gun position.

future of operations in Korea souncertain. Another factor was sim-ply that Fleet Marine Force, Pacific,and its Navy superiors, includingAdmiral Arthur H. Radford,Commander in Chief, Pacific, pro-posed that the 1st Marine Divisionand 1st Marine Aircraft Wing bewithdrawn from Korea and placedin strategic reserve. When GeneralHart made his first command tourof Korea and Japan, he found thesenior commanders in Korea andJapan convinced that Eighth Army

would waste its Marines. The divi-sion and aircraft wing should beplaced in Japan and brought to apeak state of readiness for battlesthat mattered.

Nothing that occurred inDecember 1951 along the Minne-sota Line gave any clues that thewar would either end or be foughtwith any rational purpose, as seenfrom the 1st Marine Division. Thedivision’s defensive posture facedno serious menace from the NorthKoreans, although the Communist

troops became progressively moreaggressive with their patrolling anduse of artillery fire. A summary ofone day’s operations (8 December1951) catches the winter war alongthe Minnesota Line. A 5th Marinespatrol exchanged gunfire with aKorean patrol without knownresults; the regiment called in 117rounds of naval gunfire on abunker system and did acceptabledamage to seven bunkers. The 7thMarines sent out a patrol toretrieve the body of a dead Marineand engaged in a firefight with anenemy patrol. The Korean Marinessent out two patrols, which werefired upon by machine guns inhidden bunkers, but took no casu-alties. The 11th Marines fired 14observed missions on bunkers orin patrol-support. The followingdays were no different. OnChristmas Day, the North Koreanstried to disrupt the division’s hotholiday meal and a visit byCardinal Francis J. Spellman butonly drew smothering artillery andnaval gunfire on the NKPA combatpatrols. The next day a heavysnow slowed the action evenmore, and on 27 December EighthArmy announced that even thoughno truce agreement had beensigned, the restrictive rules ofengagement remained in effect.

The dawn of a new year did notchange the pattern of warfare forthe 1st Marine Division. Such nov-elties as psychological warfareunits—the masters of the surrenderleaflet and the insinuating broad-cast—became regular fixtures atthe front, first a source of amuse-ment and later an object of con-tempt. Army searchlight batteriesadded little light to the operations.An epidemic of boredom and care-lessness spread throughout EighthArmy. To give at least a hint of bat-tle, Van Fleet’s staff dreamed upOperation Clam-Up, 9-15 February1952, as a way to draw the Chinese

60

Cpl Kevin J. Griffin receives a blessing from Cardinal Francis Spellman duringthe cardinal’s Christmas visit to the 1st Marine Division.


and North Koreans into an above-ground killing zone throughdeception. The basic concept wasthat the frontline battalions wouldeither go underground or appearto withdraw from the front; alliedartillery would reduce their firingto almost nothing; and the usualpatrols would not go out.Presumably, the collective impres-sion would be that the UnitedNations forces had fallen back tothe Kansas Line. Van Fleet’s granddeception did not fool theCommunists—at least not much. Inthe 1st Marine Division sector—especially on Yoke andKanmubong Ridges—the NorthKoreans sent out only patrols,which set off a series of small bat-tles. The North Koreans also del-uged the main line of resistancewith artillery fire, a sure sign thatthey had not been fooled. For allthe sound and fury the casualtiesshowed how insignificant Clam-Uphad been. For February theMarines lost 23 killed and 102missing; they killed by count 174Koreans and took 63 prisoners.Whether they had actually inflictedan additional estimated 1,000 morecasualties was guess work.

In other aspects of the division’soperations, the order-of-the-daybecame doing less with less. Thehelicopters of HMR-161 developedstress fractures in their tail assem-blies, so Colonel McCutcheongrounded his squadron until thedefects could be corrected. Thelack of helicopters slowed themodest counter-guerrilla campaignin the rear areas. Certainly theNorth Korean lines had becomeimpenetrable. The G-2 estimatedthat 21 infantry battalions and nineartillery battalions, all embedded inthe ridges to the north of the mainline of resistance, faced the divi-sion. Although the Marines did notyet know what great plans EighthArmy held for them, their cam-

paign in east-central Korean wasending not with a bang, but ashrug.

In Retrospect

From its initiation in battle aspart of the U.S. Eighth Army inJanuary 1951 until its eventualmovement to an entirely new zoneof action in western Korea in early1952, the 1st Marine Divisionfought with as much distinction asits 1950 edition, the division thatlanded at Inchon, liberated Seoul,chased the North Korean armyaway from Korea’s northeast coast,and blunted the first appearance ofthe Chinese army in the battle ofSudong. The advance to the

Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir and“the attack in another direction” toHungnam added more honors tothe 1st Marine Division and creat-ed a tradition of valor and profes-sionalism that shares pride of placein the memory of Marines withTarawa and Iwo Jima.

Yet the 1st Marine Division in1951 added a new and equallyuseful tradition of valor: that aMarine division in war of diminish-ing rewards, fought under unpleas-ant physical conditions anduneven Army leadership, couldmaintain the Corps’ highest stan-dards even without the constantstroking of admiring reporters andcamera crews. To be sure, the divi-sion suffered more casualties in all

61


Oblivious to the wet snow and North Korean harassing fires, Marines line up fora Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

62

categories per month of combat in1950 (1,557) than it did in 1951(747) or 1952 (712), but there is noconvincing evidence that the divi-sion inflicted more casualties uponthe enemy in 1950 (per month ofcombat) than it did in 1951, onlythat its battles had been more dra-matic and photogenic.

In an official sense, the 1stMarine Division in 1951 receivedthe same recognition as its 1950-predecessor, the award of aPresidential Unit Citation “forextraordinary heroism in actionagainst enemy aggressor forces inKorea.” There are, however, nobattles in the citation, no identifiedgeographic locations like Hill 902or Taeu-san and Taeam-san

Mountains or Yoke Ridge orKanmubong Ridge. The only geo-graphic location mentioned is thePunchbowl and some vague ter-rain “north of the HwachonReservoir.” The citation gives onlythree sets of dates: 21-26 April, 16May-30 June, and 11-25 September1951. There is no book likeAndrew Geer’s The New Breed tohonor the 1951 Marines, no collec-tion of memorable photographs byDavid Douglas Duncan to freezethe fatigue and horror of war onthe faces of young men turned oldin a matter of days in December1950. The same faces could havebeen found on Hill 924 or Hill 812if anyone had looked.

In addition to adding to the her-

itage of heroism in the second yearof the Korean War, the 1st MarineDivision and the 1st Marine AircraftWing made history for its introduc-tion of the transport helicopter toAmerican ground operations. InJanuary 1951, the Landing ForceTactics and Techniques Board,Marine Landing Force Develop-ment Center, approved the firstdoctrinal study of vertical envelop-ment in Employment of AssaultTransport Helicopters. When thefirst operational squadron, HMR-161, was formed, its original namewas “Marine Assault HelicopterSquadron 161” until Marine avia-tion bureaucrats protested thatthey and the Navy thought themore comprehensive designator of

Marine TSgt John Pierce gives some North Korean soldiershiding in a bunker a warm reception as he throws a white

phosphorus grenade into the bunker’s entrance.National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A159018

“transport” was more appropriate.The name mattered less than themission. When the squadronbegan operations with Windmill I(13 September 1951) until the tailsection fractures grounded thehelicopters on 28 February 1952,HMR-161 conducted six majoroperations and many hundreds ofother less dramatic flights withtroops, weapons, and supplies. Aconcept developed for amphibiousassaults received its first test

among the mountains of Korea, anirony that bothered no one amongthe community of Marine heli-copter pioneers. The future arrivedto the sound of flailing rotors andstorms of ground-effect dirt on abit of ground on the lower slopesof Hill 749, Kanmubong Ridge.Today the site is somewhere with-in the Demilitarized Zone.

What make the fighting qualitiesof the 1st Marine Division, aidedwithout stint by VMO-6 and HMR-

161, even more remarkable was thegrowing difficulty in obtaining closeair support and the suspicion afterJuly 1951 that there would be a sub-stitute for victory. As the 1st MarineDivision proved in September 1951,the young riflemen and platooncommanders might not be ready tokill and die for a stalemate, but theywere more than willing to kill anddie for each other, and that waswhat was important to them then.And it still is.

63

An alert Marine rifleman, framed in the doorway, providescover while another Marine searches through an aban-doned Korean farmhouse. Guerrilla and infiltrator attacks

forced all Marine units to mount security patrols and todefend their positions.


64

Essay on Sources

The archival sources on the 1st MarineDivision, X Corps, and the U.S. EighthArmy for the campaign of 1951-1952 arevoluminous, but the place to start is themonthly organizational historical reports,usually containing annexes of otherreports and studies, submitted to the ser-vice headquarters for permanent reten-tion and reference use. For the 1stMarine Division, I used the monthly his-torical reports for April 1951 throughFebruary 1952, supplemented by similarmonthly historical reports made byHeadquarters, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific(FMFPac), for the same period. Both 1stMarine Division and FMFPac reportsincluded invaluable appendices. Of spe-cial use for this study were two Type CSpecial Reports:“Employment of AssaultHelicopters,” 4 October and 15 Novem-ber 1951; and “1st KMC Regiment and ItsRelationship to the 1st Marine Division,September 1950-May 1952,” 13 June1952. The FMFPac historical reportsinclude memoranda for the record of theweekly staff conferences and the travelreports for Generals Lemuel C. Shepherd,Jr., and Franklin H. Hart for their visits toKorea and Japan. The original reports arein the Records of Marine Corps FieldCommands, Record Group 127, in theNational Archives, but copies may oftenbe found at the Marine Corps HistoricalCenter, Washington, D.C., and the MarineCorps Research Center, Quantico,Virginia.

The X Corps Command Reports forApril 1951- February 1952 may be foundin 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 isschedule and commentary as maintainedby his aides—can also be found in dupli-cate form in key Army educational andresearch repositories like the U.S. ArmyCenter of Military History, Ft. Leslie J.McNair, Washington, D.C. and the U.S.Army Military History Institute, CarlisleBarracks, Pennsylvania. Like their MarineCorps counterparts, the monthly “Com-mand Reports” include special studies,which for X Corps included analyses ofclose air support and personnel matters.

The senior Army and Marine com-manders in Korea, 1951-1952, maintainedextensive personal files that are open to

researchers, and I used these invaluablesources extensively. General Matthew B.Ridgway, Commander, United NationsCommand, and Commanding General,Far East Command during this study,kept extensive correspondence andmemoranda files, Matthew B. RidgwayPapers, U.S. Army Military HistoryInstitute (MHI). His successor asCommanding General, U.S. Eighth Army,General James A. Van Fleet, maintained apersonal journal and conducted anextensive correspondence with his mili-tary and civilian contemporaries, all pre-served in the James A. Van Fleet Papers,George C. Marshall Library, Lexington,Virginia. Van Fleet, like Ridgway, keptessential data, studies, maps, memorandaof staff meetings, and orders/instructions,but unlike Ridgway, he never wrote abook about the war. His papers are espe-cially important on interservice and inter-coalition command relations.

Lieutenant Generals Edward M.Almond and Clovis E. Byers saved exten-sive files for their periods of command ofthe U.S. X Corps, which included all buttwo months of the period covered in thisstudy. Especially important is Headquar-ters, X Corps, “Battle of the SoyangRiver,” June 1951, a special report withextensive intelligence studies and firesupport studies. Almond’s papers areessential sources on the conduct of theKorean War. Almond did an especiallygood job at creating subject files, two ofthe most important containing materialon close air support and artillery employ-ment. Like Van Fleet, Almond kept exten-sive personal notes. After his retirementAlmond became a subject of extensiveinterviewing, the most exhaustive byLieutenant Colonel Thomas Ferguson,USA (Almond’s son-in-law), Professor D.Clayton James, and John Toland, andthese transcripts are attached to theAlmond Papers and the DouglasMacArthur Papers, the General DouglasMacArthur Library and Memorial,Norfolk, Virginia. Throughout his retire-ment Almond continued to collect docu-ments and add them to his collection. Acomplementary view of X Corps may befound in the oral memoir of GeneralFrank T. Mildren, the corps G-3 in 1951,Senior Officers Oral History Project,1980, MHI. The Clovis E. Byers Papersare held at the library of the HooverInstitution on War, Revolution and Peace,Stanford, California, and include his

copies of the corps reports and studiesand his “Commander’s Diary.” Byers alsocorresponded with many of his Armycontemporaries and friends in other ser-vices. He kept a personal diary thatincludes the touching story of his “reas-signment.” Byers’ comments on theSouth Korean divisions in his corps areimportant in giving a full picture of corpsoperations.

General Gerald C. Thomas did notmaintain the vast correspondence files orintimate diaries of his Army contempo-raries, but he wrote his wife, his brother,and his oldest son and son-in-law, bothMarine officers and both 1952 membersof the 1st Marine Division. The Thomasfamily allowed me to read this corre-spondence while I did research on InMany a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomasand the U.S. Marine Corps, 1917-1956(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993).General Thomas also left multiple, exten-sive oral histories, 1966-1979, and assort-ed files, now part of the Oral HistoryCollection and Personal PapersCollection at the Historical Center andResearch Center. Other personal collec-tions and oral histories from importantsources are the late General Lemuel C.Shepherd, Jr., USMC; Lieutenant GeneralHerman Nickerson, USMC (Ret);Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak,USMC (Ret); the late General Keith B.McCutcheon, USMC; the late MajorGeneral Wilburt S. Brown, USMC; andthe late Major General Thomas A.Wornham. During my research onGeneral Thomas, Generals Krulak andNickerson furnished me with personalpapers and did so again on this project.A more extensive discussion of MarineCorps sources may be found in theThomas biography and my SemperFidelis: The History of the United StatesMarine Corps, rev. ed. (New York: TheFree Press, 1991).

The official documents and perspec-tives of the senior officers of the X Corpsand 1st Marine Division do not provide acomplete picture of the campaign of1951 in human terms. With his completecooperation, I used the story of CorporalClarence Jackson Davis, USMCR, as away to see the fighting from the per-spective of the enlisted combat Marine. Ifocused on the experiences of a specialgroup of Marine officers, the 7th BasicClass, those Marine lieutenants commis-sioned in the spring of 1950 who became

About the Author

The Raymond E. Mason, Jr.,Professor of Military History,

Ohio State University, Allan R.Millett is a specialist in the historyof American military policy andinstitutions. He is the author offour books: The Politics ofInterven-tion: The MilitaryOccupation of Cuba, 1906-1909(1968); The General: Robert L.Bullard and Officership in theUnited States Army, 1881-1925(1975); Semper Fidelis: The History of the United StatesMarine Corps (1980, revised edition, 1991); and In Many aStrife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the U.S. Marine Corps,1917-1956 (1993). His most recent book, co-authored withWilliamson Murray, is A War to be Won: Fighting the SecondWorld War (2000). He also co-authored and co-edited sev-eral other works on military affairs and has contributed orig-inal essays to 25 books and numerous journals on Americanhistoriography, foreign and defense policy, and military his-tory. A noted lecturer and officeholder in many prestigiousmilitary history societies, Dr. Millett is now president of theU.S. Commission on Military History.

A graduate of DePauw University and Ohio StateUniversity, Dr. Millett served on both active and reserveduty, 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 inthe Korean War era, is published for the education and training ofMarines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. MarineCorps, Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defenseobservance of the 50th anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have beendefrayed in part by contributions from members of the Marine CorpsHeritage Foundation.


DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS

Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC (RET)

GENERAL EDITOR,


Charles R. Smith

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION

W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist

Catherine A. Kerns, Visual Information Specialist

U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center1254 Charles Morris Street SE

Washington Navy Yard DC 20374-50402001

PCN 190 00319 500

the platoon commanders of 1st MarineDivision in 1951. Their contributionbegan with an interview with CaptainFrederick F. Brower, USMC (Ret) in 1998and went on to access LieutenantGeneral Charles G. Cooper, USMC (Ret)“Blood and Tears,” an unpublishedmemoir; Mr. John E. Nolan, “KoreaComments,” 11 December 1999; andinterviews at the 50th Reunion of the 7thBasic Class (4-7 May 2000) with ColonelEarl T. Roth, USMC (Ret), Mr. HaroldArutinian, and Colonel David J. Hytrek,USMC (Ret).

For sardonic views of the campaignof 1951, see Paul N. McCloskey, Jr., TheTaking of Hill 610 (Woodside, CA:Eaglet Books, 1992); Lieutenant ColonelGerald P. Averill, USMC (Ret), Mustang:A Combat Marine (Novato, CA: PresidioPress, 1987); [Private First Class] BurtonF. Anderson, We Claim the Title (Aptos,CA: Tracy Publishing, 1994); and[Sergeant] A. Andy Andow, Letters to BigJim Regarding Narrul Purigo,Cashinum Iman (New York: Vantage,1994).

The official histories of the 1951 cam-paign for the Marine Corps and Armyare much used and often-cited, butshould not be used as scripture: LynnMontross, Major Hubard 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, G-3, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps,1962) and Billy C. Mossman, Ebb andFlow: November 1950-July 1951 in U.S.Army in the Korean War, five volumesto date (Washington, DC: Office of theChief of Military History, U.S. Army,1990) and Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tentand Fighting Front (1966), another vol-ume in the same series. The Air Forceofficial history is Robert F. Futrell, TheUnited States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953, rev. ed., (Washington, DC: Officeof Air Force History, 1983). The docu-mentation for the close air support con-troversy may be found collected inSubject File K239-04291-1, “Close AirSupport,” Research Archives, Air PowerHistorical Research Center, Air Force

University, Maxwell Air Force Base,Alabama. Allan R. Millett, “Korea, 1950-1953,” in Benjamin F. Cooling, ed., CaseStudies in the Development of Close AirSupport (Washington, DC: Office of AirForce History, 1990) covers the issuesand the source material in detail. LynnMontross, Cavalry of the Sky: The Storyof U.S. Marine Combat Helicopters (NewYork: Harper & Bros., 1954) is a popu-lar account of HMR-161’s Korean Warservice. A more conventional officialaccount is Lieutenant Colonel EugeneW. Rawlins, USMC, Marines andHelicopters, 1946-1962 (Washington,DC: History and Museums Division,HQMC, 1976).

I visited most of the battle sitesdescribed in this study in 1994 and 1998,and I have profited from the advice ofBrigadier General Edwin H. Simmons,USMC (Ret) and Colonel Franklin B.Nihart, USMC (Ret), both veterans of thecampaign in infantry battalions.Gunnery Sergeant Leo J. Daugherty III,USMCR, provided valuable researchassistance.

Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series


by Colonel Allan R. MillettU.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired

Documents

DRIVE NORTH, U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl€¦ · Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series DRIVE NORTH U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl by Colonel Allan R. Millett U.S. Marine