There was little to fear on the right or west flank, since the edge of the reservoir nearby gave natural protection, allowing only a limited place for enemy action. This protection, however, was not complete until the road turned south at the junction of the inlet with the reservoir about half a mile west of the perimeter. Then the right-hand flank protection continued for about two miles until the road circled the high hill that came down steeply from the east to the edge of the reservoir and reached a valley tributary to the reservoir.
The breakout plan called for Lieutenant Mortrude to form the point with his 3rd Platoon of C Company with an Miq dual-4o AAA full-track vehicle in the lead. The rest of C Company would follow as the breakthrough rifle unit on the road. Because of Mortrude's injured knee, it was decided that he would ride the dual-4o and command his platoon from it. Behind the Miq was a jeep mounting a .3o-caliber machine gun. Then came the truck column, with troops on either side of it on the road.
The command group was behind Mortrude's platoon. Captain Stamford, with VHF radio and his TACP, took his station about 20 yards behind the point. He was to control air strikes and direct the Corsairs on Faith's orders. Faith was in the same approximate position as Stamford in the column. Captain McClymont, commander of the other AAA vehicles, was a short distance behind the lead Mtg. Major Miller, as commander of the ist Battalion, was also just behind the point.
Captain Stamford has left a precise description of the western end of the perimeter. On a 1:5o,ooo-scale map of the inlet area the location of the breakout spot and the western limit of the perimeter can be identified (see map 10). The inlet, Hills 1306 and 1250 south of the inlet, and a prominent draw or drainage from the east side of Hill 1250 to the inlet locate the place. The draw running down from Hill 1250 crossed the railroad and the vehicular road at a right angle before dropping off to the inlet. A culvert carried it under the railroad and the road. A large, blunt spur ridge just west of the draw ended short of the reservoir, and the road and rail track passed around its terminal nose. The task force's roadblock at the perimeter's western end was about loo feet east of the point where the draw passed under the road. Beyond the draw, west of it, was enemy territory. Chinese were in the draw in strength and on the high ground that rimmed the reservoir westward, south (or left) of the road. This high ground overlooked both the railroad and the road. For half a mile the fight initially was along the shore of the inlet east to west and the high ground south of it.
The overriding mission of Task Force Faith in the breakout was to protect and escort the truck convoy with its hundreds of wounded. Stamford moved up the road to take his place near the point. Eight or nine dead Chinese lay in a row in the roadside ditch within the perimeter, so neatly in order that he thought that they had been caught in a burst of enfilading machine-gun fire. Mortrude took his platoon forward past the forming truck column to the Mig waiting at the point. He got on the Miq, and his platoon formed on either side of it.
The Corsairs came on station. The artillery and the mortars within the perimeter now began firing rapidly to expend the last of their ammunition. Some were still firing after the point started forward.26
The time was just before 1:oo P.M. Two entries in the ist Marine Division G-3 Journal fix the time. An entry at 12:05 P.M. reported the ist Battalion ready to move out. A later report, at 12:50 P.M., read, "1/31 Moving out at 1245 is making some progress" (there was no 1/31 in the force-the message had to refer to the 1/32).27
When the Corsairs first appeared, Stamford instructed the pilots to make a dummy run or two on the enemy positions just ahead of the panels marking the American perimeter. They did so, diving with guns silent. This kept the Chinese down in their holes.
On Faith's order Mortrude's 3rd Platoon started forward with the Mig and passed through A Company's roadblock. About 20 yards beyond the roadblock Chinese machine-gun and small-arms fire hit the point. Men began to drop from the fire.
Captain Seever had started the main body of C Company moving up behind the point platoon. As C Company reached the A Company roadblock, some A Company men close to the road on its east side joined it in an enthusiastic rush. The Chinese on their side did not hesitate but came right out on the road and moved in. The Americans were no more than 5o yards out of the perimeter when they were in the midst of a violent fire fight at close quarters, closing with the Chinese in a fan-shaped formation with assault fire. The two American units became interspersed near the draw and the forward Chinese line. Faith called on Stamford to bring in an air strike on the Chinese.28 Mortrude, riding on the M1q, had a view from the very tip of the point. When Faith gave the order to move out, here is what he experienced:
A Marine Corsair, F4U, in flight, responding to a call for infantry ground support, Korea, 1950. US Marine Corps photograph A 133540•
As we lurched off down the road to the southwest, the troops of my platoon were deployed on either side of my mobile command post. At this time the supporting US Marine Corps aircraft began flying directly over us from the rear to strike the enemy positions on the road ahead of us.
We had proceeded only a short way beyond the perimeter when a furious burst of enemy automatic weapons fire drove me and the gunner down behind the shield of our open turret and the vehicle stalled. While I was exhoning the driver to restart the vehicle and the gunner to return fire, I hopefully watched a Marine aircraft making a low level run toward us from the rear. As the aircraft approached us, however, I saw his napalm tank fall away. Realizing it was a premature release, I crouched against the rear of the turret. A sheet of flame burned overhead momentarily with a sensation of heat and then dissipated. With the vehicle stalled, its weapons inoperable, and my own mobility remotivated, I tumbled over the rear of the turret to the ground. Some small fires were still burning. Lt. Foster [2nd Lt. George E. Foster, platoon leader, 2nd Platoon, C Company] of our company was standing nearby with face and clothing blackened [and charred] and in a seeming dazed condition. Also some of my platoon members were writhing on the ground. I dashed down over the (north) shoulder of the road followed by several of my platoon.29
Lieutenant Foster undoubtedly was the man mentioned in stories circulated later of an officer who, burned black behind the Mig, walked up to a soldier, asked for a cigarette, and walked away, never to be seen again.30 Both Foster and 2nd Lt. Herbert E. Marshburn, Jr., a platoon leader in A Company, who was killed a few hours later at Hill 1221, were graduates of the ig5o class at West Point. They had been sent straight to Korea, missing the usual infantry course at Fort Benning.31
No two observers near the point saw everything the same way. Some saw and remembered certain details. Others noticed and remembered other things. But all the survivors of the group near the point will never forget the first air strike Stamford called in that afternoon. A flight of four Corsairs came roaring down the valley of the Pungnyuri-gang to the head of the inlet and on down above the road to the point where the breakout fight had been joined; their flight was from east to west. Stamford was calling the strike and was in a good position to see the action. His description follows:
At the start of the breakout from the perimeter at the Inlet I was about 20 yards behind the point and ran a napalm drop which landed short causing some casualties among our own personnel on the left side of the road. The main part of this burst, because of the speed (in excess of 33 K) of the corsair (F4U) splashed onto the target of intention. The part that hit our people was of lesser duration and volume [but] is just as hot as any other part of the burst.
There is no explosive device in the napalm tank other than an incendiary device as part of the tank cap to ignite the napalm on impact. When the major portion hit the Chinese, it caused terrific casualties. I saw many on the higher ground to our front come up out of their holes as flaming torches and die immediately. A ROK soldier who dove in the drainage on my left as I bellowed "Stay on your feet," caught the full force of the backwash of the napalm ignition, came up out of the drainage, took three faltering step
s toward me and collapsed and died on the road. He had inhaled the heat blast as it traveled down the drainage.
At this time I called the pilots to bring their 20 mm fire to bear on the Chinese evacuating their position to our left front. Later they told me that had been the first time they had actually seen the enemy they were shooting at since they had been in Korea.
As I moved forward, Capt. Seever turned to me and told me to get those Chinese about 20 yards to the front of him in the drainage that crossed the railroad and road via a culvert. I looked back and picked an F7F (twin engine fighter) just rolling into his strafing run and told him I wanted a rocket and to start strafing the road right in front of our troops. I never told him his target. He was goo yards long and as I kept telling him to shorten up he obeyed me as if I had strings on him. As his tracers started hitting in the drainage I quickly told him that's the spot-give me a rocket. By this time he was very close and all I heard was a sound as if someone had torn a long piece of canvas followed by a sharp bang. The Chinese who had been in the drainage throwing grenades among us were no more.
Later, talking to the pilot in Japan I was told, "if you had not kept talking to me and I had a split second to think I would not have fired that rocket." When I asked why he said, "You know as well as I, an HOAR is not that accurate. I could see your helmet on my 20 mil ring on my sight, but I was excited and when you said give me a rocket I automatically pressed the trigger. I knew I had killed you."
I bought him a drink and commented that I didn't think that I would be any deader if he or the Chinese killed me but if he hadn't fired on my command I didn't think I would have been around to buy him a drink for saving my life (and how many more?).
As C Company surged forward Don Faith grabbed me by the arm and ordered me into the low ground to the right of the road along with my radio man PFC Myron J. Smith, USMC, and Faith's radio man. He said he didn't want me on the road getting myself killed. We moved parallel to the road about 1-15 feet below its surface through a grassy and bushy area about 20 yards apart, in order me, Smith, the CO's radio man. It was uneventful until I approached a log ramp slanting toward the shoreline from the road. About 20 yards from it where the logs' ends slanted onto the ground I saw a gun barrel pointing at me and the lower legs and feet of someone crouched close to the gun. I walked without varying my pace, climbed up on the ramp right beside the gun, and then waved to Smith and pointed between my feet at the gun. He waited until he was no more than S to io yards from me and fired a burst from his burp gun and successfully secured the position. We pulled the gun out (it looked like a Bren gun) and threw the charging handle away. At the time I was carrying my radio and armed with a .45 but thought it the better part of valor to get the radio by the gun. Then we proceeded around the curve and I climbed up onto the road. Again Faith ordered me off the road and I refused. I told him I was unable to keep up with the TF stumbling through the brush over frozen ground.32
Stamford says that he saw only one soldier, the ROK, killed among the Americans in the napalm burst, that he does not know how many American soldiers were killed or died of burn injuries, but that he saw 8 to io men who had been burned in the napalm put into a truck. He was busy directing more strikes and had no time to assess the damage.33
When the breakout started, Major Robbins was riding with other wounded in a truck at the head of the column behind the Mig and the jeep with the machine-gun mount. He was lying on his stomach, peering out between the slats on the side of the truck. This is what he saw:
Our troops on either side of the road moved forward but were dropping from withering fire laid down by the Chinese as we moved into their surrounding ring.
Then came one of the most horrible sights and incidents I ever hope to witness. A Marine Corsair diving towards the enemy line just ahead of our troops loosed a tank of napalm which slammed into our staggered front line of advancing GI's through his error in aim. A wall of flame and heat rushed out in all directions, enveloping about fifteen of our soldiers in its deadly blanket. As I peered out at this spectacle the heat and flash caused me to duck momentarily. Looking back up I could see the terrible sight of men ablaze from head to foot, staggering back or rolling on the ground screaming for someone to help them. This, coupled with the steady whack of enemy bullets into our ranks, stopped our advance. I am quite sure now that I recognized the helpless and blazing figure of Sgt. Dave Smith, my assistant sergeant major, and one of the finest men I have ever known. He wasn't more than ten yards off the side of the road on my side of the truck and I was powerless to do a thing for him. I had to turn my head. Officers and noncommissioned officers through superhuman efforts rallied their men and soon our line of GI's began to move forward again, filling the blackened gap which had been blasted open minutes before. 34
Many other witnesses of the napalm drop have left accounts of what they saw, including Lt. Cecil Smith, A Company commander, who said that 5 men burned to death; ist Sgt. Richard S. Luna, of B Company, who said of the napalmed soldiers, "You could see them running all around just ripping their clothes off, just keep on running"; Dr. Lee Yong Kak, assistant battalion surgeon, ist Battalion, who saw the burst hit Lieutenant Moore, of Headquarters Company, and 9 or io other men.3S Lieutenant May said that he did not recognize Moore after the napalm burst until Moore spoke to him and that Moore "was burnt about the upper torso. His hair was gone, eye glasses gone, and most of his clothes burnt off from his waist up. He was parched a dark brown, & in places black and open burns."36
First Lieutenant Henry Moore, A&P Platoon leader of Headquarters Company, ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, was one of the leaders of the breakout effort. That he continued on foot in the fight after being burned in the napalm incident is in itself a remarkable testimony to his courage and leadership. His reputation as one of the ablest and most courageous young officers of the task force stands high among the survivors of Chosin. There is contradictory evidence about his One account has him killed on Hill 1221; another holds that he was killed early in the breakout (an account possibly based on his being burned by the napalm). He did not survive Chosin, but was carried as missing in action. He assuredly was one of the many heroes east of Chosin.
Major Miller certainly saw the whole thing and as commander of the breakout 1st Battalion was in a position to know the result of the napalm drop on the battalion. He wrote subsequently: "Eight or ten men in `C' Company were set on fire by the flaming gobs of jellied gasoline. Most of these men were seriously burned before they could be rolled in the snow and their burning clothing extinguished."38 Miller also appraised the effect on the Chinese of the napalm strike: "I was in command of the battalion at this time and feel that Capt. Stamford's cool control of our aircraft, in which he directed the dropping of napalm not more than forty yards to our front, started the Chinese on the run and allowed the First Battalion to inflict tremendous casualties on the enemy in our immediate follow-up."39
Captain Swenty saw the episode from some distance back in the column, but he appears to agree with Miller on the effect of the napalm drop on the Chinese. He wrote:
The napalm did the trick, as the advance guard began to move immediately. I could observe our men moving off the road and moving on the reverse slope toward the reservoir's edge. I was moving with HQ Co in the march column. When I approached the point where our troops were pinned down initially, I observed the results of the napalm. Our troops had been pinned down less than ten yards from the enemy. The napalm got at least forty of the enemy lying in the ditches but it had taken its toll on our own men. The motor column began to move slowly. You could hear firing from the advance guard but movement was being made. The enemy was firing from across the finger of the reservoir and we received fire from the hill to the left of the road. The rear guard was taking up the fight in our abandoned area. Our men began laying fire to the hills but they were moving and the motor column gained momentum.40
It seems true that the task force breakout brought forth perhaps the closest air suppo
rt in a moving column engaged with an enemy in the Korean War. A Marine report of a later study of the subject commented on the strikes called for by Stamford on December i. Stamford's radio code name was Boyhood 14. A Corsair pilot was quoted in the Marine report as saying, "Boyhood 14 kept calling for closer and closer support to less than 5o feet. The pilots could observe people practically clubbing the Reds off the trucks."41
When the napalm dropped, panic began among the American infantrymen at the head of the column. Officers and noncommissioned officers had a hard time bringing the troops back to their task. Foremost among them was Lieutenant Colonel Faith, who immediately undertook to rally his men. Stamford witnessed Faith's part in the action at this critical moment. He included the following in his report to the commandant, US Marine Corps, in February, 1951: "I saw him in one act that showed him as a true leader. On i December when the troops were on the verge of running away from the area where a napalm tank had landed and injured some troops, he moved out among the men and met the enemy with drawn pistol as they took advantage of this confusion to make a counter-attack. By this demonstration of courage he rallied the men and put the enemy to flight, thus averting disaster.42
Stamford said later that immediately after the napalm drop Faith saw some Chinese jump from their holes and start a counterattack against the American point troops, who had momentarily stopped. "Some of these men turned around and started back," Stamford said. "It was at this point that Faith rushed to the fore and drew his .45 pistol. He pointed it generally at the retreating men, but did not fire, and shouted for them to turn around and face the enemy. They did so."43
Captain Bigger also saw Faith turn the faltering troops around. He wrote of him: "He was all over the place, exhorting, ordering, threatening.... But the incident was very demoralizing to us. We had started a beautiful assault, with much enthusiasm. Our spirits had been raised by the appearance of the Corsairs. We were ready to get out of this situation."44
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