Major Miller returned to his CP and called his company commanders together. His improvised staff consisted of Major Jones, Captain Bigger, Captain Bauer, and Warrant Officer Wester. He ordered his company commanders to destroy all jeeps and trailers and unload the remaining vehicles and destroy the contents. The wounded were to be made ready for loading on the trucks. All available blankets and sleeping bags were to be used for them. When the air strikes started, signaling the breakout, C Company would lead off down the road as point, followed by B, D, and A companies. The truck column was to follow C Company. Miller's plan was for C Company to overcome initial enemy resistance and allow the truck column to move out of the perimeter and then to fall back as reserve. The next rifle company behind C would then take the lead, and this process would be repeated by successive companies if the lead company became bogged down or suffered heavy casualties. Miller ordered all ammunition to be picked up from the dead or wounded for use by able-bodied men.'
Presumably Major Tolly informed his artillery headquarters staff, the A and B Battery commanders, and others of their duties and places in the march order. It is assumed that Major Storms did likewise with the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, outlining their duties as task force rear guard.
Captain Jordan, commanding M Company of the 3rd Battalion, however, said that he learned of the projected withdrawal on a visit to the 3rd Battalion CP and thereafter prepared for movement. He expected to receive further details later but never received additional information and only by watching the 3rd Battalion CP move out was he able to get his company into the column. Had he gone to sleep, he said, presumably he and his company would have been left behind.'
Apparently there were not enough operable 2'h-ton trucks to carry all the wounded, and some 3/4-ton trucks were used. Each of the trucks was loaded with 15 to 20 wounded-more would have meant uncomfortable overcrowding. But Jordan's M Company had only one truck for about 50 wounded who could not walk, according to Cpl. Helmuth Bertram, the company's acting reconnaissance sergeant. Bertram said that Jordan built three decks in the truck and placed the wounded in the truck in three layers. This was probably the heaviest-loaded truck that left the perimeter.'
During the morning of December i, Lieutenant Mortrude was exhausted. So were many others. When Captain Seever summoned him to the company CP for the breakout order, Mortrude had difficulty finding the CP. Of his condition then he wrote:
I hardly remember receiving the withdrawal order now, and perhaps barely focused on it then. I do remember discussion about my impaired mobility which terminated in a decision that I was to command my platoon from an automatic weapons tracked vehicle. I also remember experiencing a moment of panic in not being sure I could find my way back to my platoon area from the company CP. I do not recall my order to my platoon but it must have been, at best, a brief fragmentary one, perhaps as I led them out of our positions to the head of the column forming for the breakout. I also vaguely recall the confused situation of trucks being lined up under occa sional mortar fire. I specifically noticed our Battalion Surgeon [Vincent Navarre] supervising the loading of the wounded.9
Capt. (later Lt. Col.) Earle H. Jordan, Jr., in Korea, early igsi. Photograph courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Jordan.
Not even all the officers knew that a breakout had been ordered. Capt. John Swenty of the ist Battalion wrote: "I first noticed men from the 31st and artillery were burning clothing. Men were changing tires on 21/2-ton trucks and destroying motors and burning 3/4-ton and '/4-ton trucks. While this was going on we were still drawing enemy mortar fire. I made contact with Maj. Curtis, ist Bn S-3, and he told me we were getting ready to pull out about noon."'O
The breakout orders and preparations for it by subordinate units of the task force were hurriedly made and, as in many other matters relating to battle and war, imperfectly executed. It is not known precisely how many vehicles there were in the column. Major Curtis estimates 25 or more 2'/2-ton trucks, but about 30 vehicles is closer to the mark, as it turned out. There was only one MIq dual-4o in the column, for the other one that was still mobile and operable could not be started when the column left the perimeter. When the column was forming on the road, this MIq, intended to be the last vehicle in the column and to cover it with its firepower, had to be jump-started. After idling the motor a while as the column waited, the driver shut off the motor to save fuel. Later, when the column started, the MIq would not start because of a dead battery, and the crew had to abandon it. Lieutenant May saw it and asked the crew about it. Captain McClymont, at the head of the column, did not know that the Miq had been left behind until midafternoon. There had gone half of the Miq firepower and the ammunition. It was a disaster.
There were only two M16 quad-5os interspersed in the column. McClymont states that two of the M16s would not start when the column was forming and had to be left behind. All the antiaircraft weapons in the column ran out of ammunition and fuel before they got past Hill 1221. At the time of the breakout the point Miq had only a little ammunition, perhaps enough for a few targets of opportunity."
Concerning destruction of what was left behind, Captain Stamford wrote two months after the event: `Not all equipment was destroyed. Much clothing and nearly all baggage was left intact. I burned all my confidential publications, but I believe much was left by the units.... Time did not permit its destruction."" Lieutenant May confirmed this about the rear units.
The enemy, watching from the high ground around the perimeter as the vehicles formed on the road and the wounded were loaded, could readily surmise that the men in the perimeter were getting ready for an attempted breakout. At 11:00 A.M., Sergeant Luna, of B Company, holding a temporary position on the railroad track, could see Chinese soldiers half a mile in front of him coming off the hills to go into position along the road and the breakout route.13
MAP io. The situation at the beginning of Task Force Faith's breakout attempt.
Seldom critical of anyone, Captain Jordan, of M Company, 31st Infantry, said: "The breakout effort was, and I am not happy to say, poorly organized, if at all, as regards rear guard. My unit was a part of the 3rd Bn. and I received no instructions or mission whatever. As a matter of fact we would have been left in position if we had not observed the people between us and the lake pulling out. I then ordered my people to follow."14
As Stamford recalled it, the troops were ready to move at 11:00 A.M., with the truck column on the road and artillerymen, mortarmen, and the walking wounded Headquarters men lined up as foot soldiers on either side of the trucks. It was now a matter of awaiting the arrival of air cover. Very few machine guns were mounted on vehicles, Stamford said, because .5ocaliber ammunition for them was almost nonexistent. The shortage of .5o-caliber ammunition for heavy machine guns, including the guns of the M16 quad-5os, and the 40-mm shells for the MIq dual-40s, was a serious matter-gravely threatening the prospects for a successful breakthrough to Hagaru-ri.
Seeing the preparations for the breakout attempt, the Chinese increased their mortar fire into the perimeter, and this caused many late casualties. Ten minutes after Robbins received word from Faith that the breakout attempt would be made, and while he was walking to the 57th Field Artillery CP, he was hit in the arm and legs by fragments from a mortar shell that landed only a few feet from him. He could reach the edge of its crater from where he lay on the ground. He saw his assistant, Lieutenant McNally, hopping around on one leg, wounded by the same mortar round. The blast had knocked Robbins's carbine from his hand and rendered it useless as shells in the clip exploded and damaged the slide. Sergeant Major John A. Lynch, Jr., of the 31st Infantry, got Robbins into a slit trench, bound his wounds, and then placed him in one of the slat-sided trucks being loaded with wounded.
Another mortar shell made a direct hit on the 1st Battalion aid station. Two more mortar shells hit the ist Battalion CP, just after Faith's meeting ended and the officers were dispersing. Lieutenant May, Captain Bigger, Capt. Jack Thompson, Captain Vaudreaux, Lieutenant Campbel
l, and an unidentified truck driver from B Company were standing in a group outside the CP when one of the mortar shells hit in the center of their circle. May was the only one who was not hurt by the explosion. The B Company driver was the most seriously injured. Both of Thompson's legs were broken. Campbell received mortar fragments in his left leg, his left shoulder, and the left side of his face. Bigger had mortar-fragment cuts on his face, one eye was blown from its socket, and he had serious leg and back wounds. A medic put the eye back in place and fastened a patch over it. Bigger afterward hobbled around with two canes he had used as mortar aiming stakes. All the wounded men were placed in trucks. At least one of them, Thompson, did not survive Chosin. May said that he saw his body later in the day.'s
Another mortar shell landed about io feet from where Major Curtis and Captain Seever were sitting on the edge of a foxhole, but neither was injured. Only two weeks earlier Seever had learned that his wife had given him a first son. Already wounded in a leg at the forward perimeter, Seever had remained in command of C Company in the days that followed. Now, escaping further injury from the mortar shell, Seever said to Curtis, "I feel like I am a thousand years old." Did he feel that his luck had run out? By 3:00 P.M. that afternoon he was dead.16
As the morning wore on, the Chinese began pressing on the perimeter, and Faith began to fear that they might break in and wreak havoc before the expected air support arrived. Because of this threat Faith went to the ist Battalion aid station and appealed for all the wounded who were able to do so to get weapons and go back on the defense line. A few made the effort. One of them, Lieutenant Campbell, recently wounded, describes that moment:
I recall feeling as though I had been hit with a log and falling like a sack of rocks. Someone, I believe Cpt May dragged me under a nearby 21/2-ton truck. I was later carried to the railroad or road cut outside the Aide Station where I was given the morphine surette from my aide pouch and the aid kit bandage compress applied to my head. My shoulder and leg were checked to ensure that the bleeding had stopped. There appeared to be no other dressings available. I was taken then to rest in the makeshift tent in the cut which was even then filled with wounded. I recall being on my back looking at the hole in the tent roof where apparently a mortar round had entered. Later I remember LTC Faith coming to the tent entrance and en couraging all that could move to help out. Several of us made our way out. I found a carbine in a pile of discarded weapons near the tent entrance. I crawled to a firing position in a ditch about 20 yards away. I was groggy and my leg had stiffened and would not support my weight. That was as far as I could go. Later I was policed up and put on a truck with the other wounded from the area of the aid station. In retrospect it is amazing and a credit to the unsung heroes in the medics that the care of the wounded continued right up to the time they were loaded on the trucks for the
The trucks with their wounded from the 57th Field Artillery Battalion were placed in line behind those of the 31st Heavy Mortar Company. As in all other units, all spare blankets and sleeping bags were put on the trucks with the wounded to keep them as warm as possible.
During the preparations Curtis kept up his practice of visiting the artilleryfire direction center and some of the howitzer crews. He said that the 57th Field Artillery Battalion CP "was always a scene of confusion when I was there.... From my rather limited close observation, I got the impression that most of the firing was being directed by Section Sergeants.... There was a lot of firing and empty shell cases and ammo boxes were used to build parapets and shelters."
The morale of the artillerymen was as good as, if not better than, that of the average infantryman on the day of the breakout, if Curtis's experience was typical:
I remember one Section Sergeant in particular on the morning of i Dec. I walked by his position-he handed me his binoculars and pointed out his target to me, a large group of Chinese on the mountain side to the NE-in plain view, but at long range. He was adjusting his own fire at them and he was making them scatter. He said he was starting to run low on ammunition. I asked him if he knew how to destroy the block of his howitzer if we had to pull out and leave it behind. His answer was quite emphatic: (paraphrase) "I'm not leaving this piece. If they (the Chinese) get it, they're going to have to take me with it." For all I know he may have stayed with his piece. I never saw him again.18
Sergeant Major Lynch, of the 31st Infantry, said: "By the 4th day of the battle so many officers and noncoms had been killed or wounded that I could not get an accurate check on our casualties and fighting strength. The day we started our retreat south I personally counted 20o dead Chinamen inside our perimeter. And they were stacked four or five deep for four to five hundred yards around the perimeter.""
As preparations for the breakout ended, drivers of vehicles on the road began draining gasoline from inoperable vehicles to fill their own tanks. Gasoline was at a premium, and not all the drivers could fill their vehicles' tanks. Small-arms ammunition was distributed to the men, but there was not much of it; some men had only one clip each.
The short supply of small-arms ammunition was due in part to a mishap in the airdrop the previous evening. In a brewing snowstorm Stamford lost radio contact with planes coming in after dark, and the drops from the plane loaded with rifle and carbine ammunition fell to the Chinese outside the perimeter.20
Several persons later asked, "Why did not X Corps, the ist Marine Division, or the 7th Division rescue the stranded troops east of Chosin by using the frozen surface of the reservoir, or why did not Task Force Faith itself take its convoy of vehicles over the ice from the inlet?" The question of using the ice was discussed at several command levels but was always rejected as impracticable. The Chosin Reservoir was not frozen solid to a great depth, as most persons have assumed. There was considerable open water at the reservoir, and much of the ice close to the shoreline was treacherous. X Corps at one time made a proposal to use seaplanes, landing on open water to rescue the men, but nothing came of it. The ist Marine Division Headquarters considered the possibility of using the reservoir surface but could not find a workable plan.21
Faith also considered the ice-crossing option. He rejected it because he was not willing to trust 21/2-ton trucks loaded with wounded to the uncertain reservoir ice.22 Major Curtis was also much opposed to the idea of using the ice of the reservoir as a passageway to Hagaru-ri. He pointed out that the trucks did not have chains, and he considered it highly irresponsible to try to get the trucks out on solid ice and then hope that it would sustain them the 7 to 8 miles to Hagaru-ri. These fears were well founded. We know that when Captain Kitz with K Company went out on the ice at one point it broke in a few places, men fell in the water, and some of them drowned.23
Breakout
Everything depended on the Corsairs from the USS Leyte getting into the air, having good enough weather to reach the inlet, and once there having visibility to give close ground support to Task Force Faith. They found the inlet, arriving there just before 1:0o P.M. Visibility was improving, just as forecast. The stage was now set for the breakout.24
The ist Marine Division Special Action Report (SAR) for the day states in part:
At iioo on 1 December, RCT-31(-) USA, having passed to operational control of the ist Marine Division the previous day, was ordered to make every effort to secure necessary exits from its position east of the Reservoir, and move south to Hagaru-ri at the earliest. In view of the critical requirements for holding Hagaru-ri, CO, RCT-3i was notified that no actual troop assistance could be furnished, although maximum air support would be immediately available. RCT-31 initiated movement to the south at noon with an air cover of 20 VF.25
This passage would make it appear that Task Force Faith was acting on Marine orders when it made ready to start fighting south shortly after noon on December i. That was not the case, however, for, as stated earlier, Faith ordered the breakout on his own initiative. Major Curtis stated that General Smith's order was not received until about 3:00 P.M., two hours after the b
reakout had begun and when the column was approaching the first bridge south of the inlet. More will be said later about the manner in which this order was received. At 11:00 A.M. the 1st Marine Division decided to order Faith to break out but, because it lacked adequate communications, was unable to get the order to Faith then or while his force was still within the perimeter.
To visualize events associated with the breakout, one should remember that A Company, 32nd Infantry, manned the perimeter defense line on the south side from the east across the railroad and vehicular road to the edge of the inlet. Meeting it there, on an east-west line along the inlet, was the western boundary of C Company. These two companies would necessarily be involved in the initial fighting to break out of the perimeter. After breakout the task force would follow the road west for half a mile along the inlet and then turn south along the reservoir toward Hagaru-ri. C Company was to be the lead breakout unit down the road. Because no enemy line was facing it along the inlet, that company could most easily be withdrawn from its defense line for the effort. A Company held the defensive roadblock on the road. About ioo feet farther west Chinese foxholes on the rising ground promised immediate resistance once the breakout started. A Company was to advance on the high ground just east of the road as C Company cleared the road itself. Behind A Company and farther uphill, B Company was to join in clearing the high ground east of the road as the attack progressed and thus enable the column to move southward.
East of Chosin Page 22