by Adam Makos
The man’s face twisted. “Somethin’ like that.”
The helicopter settled down and snow pelted Coderre’s face. In a crouch, the stretcher bearers carried him to the craft. Beneath whirling rotor blades, they slid him feet-first through the helicopter’s narrow fuselage until his blanket-wrapped ankles jutted out the window on the opposite side.
With his lower legs beneath the rotors and a metal bulkhead above his face, Coderre didn’t thrash or gripe. He was lucky, and he knew it. In a valley where more than nine thousand Marines were facing annihilation, about a hundred would be evacuated, and he was one of them.
From upside down, Coderre caught a glimpse of the stretcher bearers sprinting away, hats in hand. Other stretcher bearers approached carrying the second wounded Marine; the underpowered helicopter could only accommodate two casualties.
Coderre felt like a rider from the Alamo, only he wasn’t leaving to summon help. The Marines in Yudam-ni had radios—the world knew that the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was raging—yet there would be no relief force, not when every friendly unit in North Korea was fighting for its life.
In this frozen land, surrounded by one hundred thousand troops of the Chinese 20th and 27th armies, the Marines were on their own. To escape the Chosin Reservoir, it would take courage and more.
They would need a miracle.
* * *
*1 How Company veterans agree that they never lost the battle for 1403. Sgt. Jack Coleman was in a reserve platoon that rushed up the left side of the hill and fought for hours after the defenses had collapsed on the crest. He insists, “We were not pushed off by the Chinese; our unit command used poor judgment in ordering us off prematurely.”
*2 The Communists put former Nationalists through months of brainwashing called “thought reform” and field trips to study punishment against “reactionaries” or enemies of the Communist revolution. According to Marine historian Patrick Roe, “A former Nationalist officer described one of these in which the class attended a ‘people’s court’ trial of an old peasant woman—a rich peasant, and therefore a reactionary—and her subsequent stoning to death.” However, the brainwashing didn’t always set with the older soldiers.
*3 To this day, Ed Coderre regrets that he never recorded the names of the army soldiers who rescued him. If any of them should read this book, Ed requests that they please get in touch with him or with the author.
*4 Another Marine evacuated that day was Sgt. Jack Allen, a wireman attached to How Company. He remembers seeing wounded Marines littering the hallways of the hospital in Japan. They held their fingers outstretched and Jack was told to steer clear of them—they had severe frostbite and if someone were to brush up against them, their fingers could snap off.
CHAPTER 35
THE LOST LEGION
Five days later, December 3, 1950
Aboard the USS Leyte
THE SKIPPER SPREAD A MAP on a table and the squadron crowded closer.
Tom, Jesse, and others clutched notepads and wore leather jackets and green pants. It was 7 A.M. On the other side of the canvas partition, breakfast was being served, and the smells of coffee and pancakes spilled into the ready room. The pilots of Fighting 32, however, had bigger concerns than their empty stomachs.
Tom’s eyes drifted to the map, to a body of water shaped like an inkblot and the words “Chosin Reservoir.” The Marines there had been surrounded for six nights and the papers back home were now comparing the fighting to the Battle of the Bulge in WWII.
“Well, gents,” the skipper said, his voice buoyant, “I’ve got good news—the Marines made it through the night.” Tom, Jesse, and the others smiled with relief.
“They’re still hanging by their fingernails,” the skipper added. “That’s all we know.”
The pilots nodded.
“Word or no word,” the skipper continued, “we’re not going to sit around and wait.”
Tom’s eyes leapt with hope. Everyone wanted to defend the Marines at Chosin, and today was ’32’s turn, and he was on the roster. The Leyte would be putting up twenty-four planes for the biggest mission since the Yalu raids—if the weather didn’t spoil it. According to the morning teletype, a massive snowstorm was blanketing eastern Korea. Conditions were so bad that the four Corsairs of ’32’s dawn flight had already diverted to strike the west side of North Korea, far from the Chosin.
“Cevoli.” The skipper turned to his second-in-command. “Your six-ship will launch for the Chosin as planned, at 0840.”
Cevoli nodded with relief.
“If Cevoli gets through to the Chosin,” the skipper continued, “then Fowler’s four-ship will follow in the afternoon sortie.”
Dad Fowler nodded begrudgingly.
“Dang it!” Wilkie muttered, and Fowler’s other pilots grumbled. Their flight was scheduled to launch at 2 P.M. and everyone knew the weather could worsen by then.
The skipper rattled off map coordinates, call signs, radio channels. He reviewed the changes to the roster. “Hudner, you’re with Brown today,” the skipper said. Jesse glanced at Tom and gave a nod. Tom smiled. Jesse’s usual wingman, Koenig, had flown a recon mission the day before and had the day off.
The skipper glanced at his notes, his brow furrowed. He had no target photos to review, no strike pattern to choreograph. The Leyte was sending planes to the Chosin on blind faith; the fighting had gotten that desperate. Three days earlier, a reporter had asked President Truman if he would consider using the atomic bomb to seal off the border between China and Korea. “There has always been active consideration of its use,” Truman answered.
The skipper turned to Dad: “Anything to add?”
Dad glanced around the table. “You can’t attack ground troops without having a lot of crap flung at you, so I’d suggest we all review the escape and evasion brief.”
The pilots nodded. Escape and evasion procedures were to be followed if a pilot was shot down, and everyone knew that the odds of that were mounting. Several days earlier, the Leyte had lost her second pilot of the war, a photo recon pilot named William Wagner.
“Okay, you have your mission,” the skipper said. He tapped the map of the Chosin.
“Get there!”
—
Dressed to fly, Tom set aside his helmet and sat to review the list of escape and evasion procedures. Behind him, others checked their pistols and gear.
The skipper and Dad had refreshed the procedures in November after the Leyte lost a Skyraider pilot named Roland Batson. Batson had been shot down during a bridge strike and had belly-landed in a cornfield behind enemy lines. Dad’s flight had seen the downed pilot waving up at them but couldn’t communicate with him. They couldn’t tell Batson that a rescue helicopter wasn’t coming, that it was already too late in the day. They couldn’t coordinate where he should hide for the night.
No one had given up on Batson, however. For days, the Leyte sent search planes. The skipper even took off with two spare fuel tanks and circled Batson’s crash site for six hours. When he saw flashes from a signal mirror he called for a helicopter, but by the time the chopper reached the area, the mirror had stopped flashing. Batson was never seen again.
Tom slid his finger down the list that explained how to signal a downed pilot:
• Pilot has been seen: Fly low over pilot, rocking wings.
• Proceed in direction indicated: Drop wheels and fly in direction in which pilot should move.
• Use the right hand orbit to indicate that a rescue will be attempted…a left hand orbit to indicate that no rescue attempt is possible.
Tom’s eyes devoured the list, although he knew it by heart. He hadn’t forgotten the skipper’s reaction to Batson’s loss, either. After the failed searches, a young pilot had asked the skipper, “Why didn’t someone just land and pick Batson up the first time? It was just a cornfield!”*1
A hush fell over the ready room. “If tomorrow or the next day you see Batson,” the skipper had replied, “even if he’s waving up from a fiel
d of clover—you leave him there! It’s bad enough to lose one pilot. We can’t lose two. And if any of you try to land and pick someone up, I’ll court-martial your ass.” Tom had heard the skipper’s warning and so had Jesse: A downed pilot was to be left where he was.
Tom set the clipboard aside and reached for his helmet. A man could prepare only so much for the unthinkable.
Meanwhile, at the Chosin Reservoir
Flurries drifted onto the snowy hillside at the southern entrance to Yudam-ni Valley. The snowflakes settled onto the piles of rocks across the slope. They settled onto the low bunkers scattered between the rock piles. They settled onto the corpses of the dead.
A plume of breath rose from a rock pile near the center of the line. Mittens clawed up from the snowy crust, then arms pried outward, then a helmeted head popped through. With a delirious swipe, Red Parkinson brushed the snow from his helmet cover and hood. In the dim light, his face was pale and dirty. His eyes were heavy with sleep. Patchy red stubble marked his face, and his nostrils and mustache were encrusted with mucus.
Red slid from his snow-covered sleeping bag, careful not to wake the young Marine who dozed beside him. The Marine was seventeen-year-old Jack Danaher, a bazooka gunner and one of about forty survivors remaining in the detachment. His back was turned to Red, his helmet draped in six inches of fresh snow. On this sixth day of the enemy’s siege, every minute of sleep was precious.
Red looked up and squinted against the flurries. Stormy gray clouds stretched in every direction, so low that they swallowed some hilltops. The air smelled lifeless and acidic. Red’s face sank. Forget any air support, he thought. He peeked above the rocks and gazed up the slope, past a clump of White Jacket corpses. The Marine battle lines lay halfway up the hill. Two hundred and fifty yards higher stood the hill’s crest, a dark curvy line against the ominous clouds.
Red’s eyes scanned for movement above. A Chinese regiment—more than two thousand men—had been up there the night before. But no Chinese stirred. Red’s eyes lifted with hope: Maybe they’re gone? Two days earlier, he and a tired force of three hundred Marines had attacked this hill—named 1542—but had failed to win the crest. Instead, they had been forced to hunker in here, to maintain a toehold.
Red rolled over and glanced downhill. At the base, an endless column of Marines and vehicles filled a road. The column originated to the left in Yudam-ni Valley and inched through a string of small valleys before disappearing around a bend. The column was bound for the ramshackle American base at Hagaru, fourteen miles away. Red watched the column with longing eyes. He wished he were down there; riding or walking, it didn’t matter.
The column was attempting a breakout. After six days under Chinese siege, the Marines had surrendered only Hill 1403 to the enemy, but the brass had ordered them out of the valley. More Chinese armies were approaching, and the situation could only worsen.
Now towers of black smoke rose from Yudam-ni. Around the valley, Marines were descending from the hills and burning their excess food, ponchos, even their souvenir Stalin posters, before joining the column. Red eyed the smoke and scowled. Might as well ring a dinner bell for the Chinese, he thought.
In an attempt to deny the Chinese any leftover supplies, some officer had put everyone on 1542 in danger. The Chinese would see the smoke. They’d know the Marines were bugging out and they’d attack. On 1542, Red and the tired three hundred weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They were the gatekeepers, with orders to hold the hill and shield the column until the nine thousand surviving Marines had passed.
Red grabbed his rifle and slid out from behind his fighting position. He crawled to the right and remained behind the line. Burst cans littered the snow and frozen food oozed from open lids. Beef stew. Ham and lima beans. Fruit cocktail. The air force had kept the Marines supplied, but the cold had ruptured any canned goods. Red and his buddies were now reduced to eating crackers, frozen grape jelly, and Tootsie Rolls.
Red stopped at a pile of rocks behind the others. “Gunny?” he whispered. “Don’t shoot—it’s Red.”
“Yeah?” came a muffled voice.
Red leaned over the rocks. Gunny Sawyer lay on his back in his bag, his helmet tipped over his face as he savored every second of sleep.
“Is it okay if I go look for Charlie?” Red asked. Charlie Kline hadn’t been seen since the creek bed.
“You’re wastin’ your time, son,” the gunny muttered. “He’s dead in a ditch or being marched to a camp in Manchuria.”
Red bit his lip. During every lull in the action, Red had searched for Charlie at any aid station. “God as my witness, I’ll come back,” Red promised.*2
The gunny raised the lip of his helmet and studied Red’s face. Others had snuck from 1542 and vanished into the column. The temptation to desert was higher than ever—rumor had it that the American base was airlifting men to Japan. The gunny lowered his helmet. “Okay, Red, I believe ya.”
Red slung his rifle and crawled away.
—
Red ambled toward the snow-packed road at the base of 1542. On the Marines’ maps, the road was labeled as the “MSR”—Main Supply Route—although supplies weren’t flowing these days due to Chinese roadblocks. With every step Red’s pants crinkled, and he winced. Ice lined the inside of his pant legs and chafed his skin. Like many Marines, during the depths of night, Red had taken to urinating inside his pants. It had been too frigid for anything else.
Truck engines rattled and jeeps puttered as the column crept along the MSR. On both sides of the vehicles, tired Marines slogged through grimy snow. They were the walking wounded, with arms in slings and bandages over frostbitten ears, yet each still carried a weapon. The able-bodied men were ahead of the column, fighting to clear the way.
Through the flurries, Red searched the haggard faces for Charlie’s. Beneath their helmets and hoods, the Marines looked old, even if they were young in years. Dark bags hung under their eyes. Their chins were tucked against the cold and their achy bodies were bent. They rubbed grimy mittens and chewed unlit cigarettes. Their icy parkas swished.
“Wake up, you lugs!” a sergeant shouted. “You can sleep when you’re dead!”
Red leaned from side to side for a better view, but the faces were caked in dirt and camouflaged by stubble. A few eyed Red’s bloodstained parka blankly. Red shook his head in frustration. He wouldn’t recognize Charlie if he were standing in front of him.
Trucks and jeeps rolled by, their exhaust smelling faintly in the cold. Snow lined the jeeps’ canvas roofs and Marines lay on their hoods, strapped to stretchers. Red watched their worried faces slide past. A perilous journey awaited them through frozen hills teeming with Chinese. Back home, Americans had heard of these Marines who were facing annihilation in northern Korea, and now the papers had given them a title: “The Lost Legion.”
Red caught a flash of crimson beneath a truck’s tailgate: an icicle of blood. He glanced into the truck’s bed and his eyes went wide. Wounded men lay in three levels, separated by wooden boards. Marine engineers had created the additional floors to haul nearly seventeen hundred casualties. Charlie could be in any of these trucks, Red thought.
Horns honked. Brakes squealed. The column stopped, then started. “Keep moving!” An officer waved the vehicles onward. “Keep moving!”
Trucks passed with stiff bundles lashed to their bumpers. Red’s eyes narrowed. The bundles were blankets wrapped around something. Boots with snowy soles stuck from a bundle. Then came another truck and more bundled boots. Then another.
Red’s jaw quivered. They’re dead Marines. He felt the urge to remove his helmet and thought of Devans. Red and the bazooka platoons had delivered their sergeant’s body to headquarters but had received no assurances where he’d be buried—or if.
The Marines had suffered more than four hundred men killed in Yudam-ni and were bringing out all they could.
Red backpedaled from the road—he had seen enough. Such horrors had become commonplace across Nor
th Korea. In the west, the army and forces of democracy were also withdrawing, but no one was calling it a “retreat”—they were simply fighting back the way they had come.
Red paused at the roadside as the parade of men and vehicles rolled along.
Gunny’s right, Red finally concluded. Charlie’s long gone.
—
Credit 35.1
Jack Danaher on the march to the Chosin
Red crawled back into his fighting position and found Jack awake and shivering. The youngster’s hair was dark, and his nose was short and pointy. Red’s chest heaved from the climb.
“Did you hear?” Jack’s voice was high, his eyes filled with alarm.
Red shook his head.
“The entire Chinese army’s comin’ for us!” Jack blurted.
Red’s face twisted. “Where’d you hear that crap?”
Jack said the fellows in the next hole had heard it from the men beside them. Red shook his head with a look of distaste. He expected such nonsense. Whittled by casualties, the detachment had taken on thirty shaky replacements—clerks, cooks, men from the 7th Marines band, even a handful of battered army soldiers who had escaped across the ice.
Red glanced down the line to trace the source of the rumor that had his young friend so riled. Several fighting positions over, on a rise, a Marine peered from a bunker with binoculars against his eyes. At his side another man worked a radio. They were glancing uphill. Red looked up, too.
Countless white hats now peppered the crest. Beneath each hat, a dark face glared down at the Marines. The White Jackets were awake.
The rumor bothered Red more than the sight of the enemy. He slapped Jack on the shoulder and slipped from their position.
—
Keeping low, Red darted to the bunker on the rise and ducked inside. The bunker, like the others on the hill, was made of dead White Jackets, stacked several high. Red was surprised to find the gunny there, crouched behind a Marine officer with binoculars. At the officer’s side, a radio man clutched a map.