In the meantime, Lieutenant Mortrude and his point men arrived at the blown bridge about an hour after the breakout started. It was another hour before the convoy began arriving there. Mortrude remembered the blown bridge as being a short, single concrete span about 20 feet across, broken in the middle and collapsed into the gully below with the ends still tilted skyward on their abutments. He and his men found shelter in the ruins of a house beyond it, near the junction of two trails, one from the east in the valley, the other slanting down from the side of Hill 1221. The latter was the main road.
Soon after Mortrude and his men stopped there, Lt. Herbert E. Marshburn, Jr., a platoon leader of A Company, arrived with a group of his men and joined Mortrude. While they discussed which route to follow, a Marine Corsair came over and strafed the house but caused no casualties. The Corsair strafing, however, reactivated the two lieutenants, and they led their groups outside and began moving ahead on a course east of the blown bridge. Mortrude describes what followed:
From this new vantage point, our direction was determined by the sight of many Chinese advancing toward us from a considerable distance up the valley [to the east]. We, of course, decided to continue across the valley, on what we now realized was the main road, to the opposite high ground which we had once before occupied [Hill 1221]. At this point, I was struck heavily in the left temple by a sniper's bullet which I imagined I felt passing through my head (actually only a glancing blow). When I regained consciousness, Lt. Marshburn said that my wound was bleeding and needed attention. He suggested he take all the people available and keep moving and that I catch up when I could. I agreed and staggered back to the vicinity of the ruined house where our platoon medic, Cpl Camoesas, cleaned and bandaged my wound suggesting I wait there for the trucks. After a brief rest I regained my mobility but apparently lost or abandoned my weapon and stumbled after the lead troops moving south across the valley.61
It would appear from this episode that Marshburn was the first officer with a body of troops from the 3rd Platoon, C Company, and his group from A Company to reach Hill 1221. Although he did not know it at first, the Chinese held Hill 1221 in force, and he was moving into a hornet's nest. Marshburn was mortally wounded at Hill 1221.
On his way across the valley toward the opposite hillside Mortrude passed some American dead and wounded. At the time he did not know what had happened. On the south side of the valley he caught up with a large number of troops huddled in the roadside ditch where the road slanted up the north side of Hill 1221. The men there were receiving fire from the enemy on the hill just above them and from others on the northeast in and across the valley they had just crossed. The latter were the Chinese that Mortrude had seen earlier at a distance.
Mortrude had regained consciousness about 3:00 P.M., soon after the head of Task Force Faith reached the blown bridge. There the vehicles piled up on the north side while most of the foot troops moved around the bridge and started up the road at Hill 1221, toward the saddle. Captain Swenty arrived at the scene after the advance units and the front of the truck column reached the bridge:
The advance guard was receiving small arms fire from the hill directly in front of the bridge. I moved to the bridge and observed our companies moving approximately 300 yards to the left of the bridge along the railroad track and on the reverse slope of the hill to our front. There they were receiving fire from the bend in the road and it seemed their advance was stopped.
The motor column was stopped approximately i5o yards short of the blown bridge. The terrain to the left of the bridge was a frozen swamp and could be used as a bypass.62
Now began a critical period for the task force. A pressing need was to get the convoy of trucks around the blown bridge and across the frozen stream and marshland east and south of it.63 Darkness and the end of air cover were only an hour or two away.
he head of Task Force Faith's motor column arrived at the blown bridge about 3:00 P.m. The rear end of the column had closed on the rest in r5 minutes or so, certainly by 3:30 P.M. The Mi9 in front had crossed the steep banks of the small stream and the partly frozen clumps of marsh grass and frozen earth and had climbed to the road again on the other side with no difficulty. But behind it the first truck trying to cross became stuck at the stream when its wheels broke through the crust of ice.
Major Curtis said that it was a surprise to all the task-force staff that the bridge was blown. He knew of no previous planning or reconnaissance to find out whether the bridges south of the inlet up to the Paegamni-gang were intact. It would seem that a simple request over Stamford's radio to the pilots that were overhead daily could have received a report from them that would have disclosed the situation. Apparently neither Faith nor his staff thought of obtaining such intelligence.'
Major Miller was among the first of the officers, after Mortrude and Marshburn, to arrive at the blown bridge. He took in the scene:
When I reached the first major stream crossing the road (5379), I could see that the bridge was blown and could see our troops moving up the valley below and to the left of the road which ran diagonally up the hill (1221) on the far (south) side of the valley where the road disappeared over the hill through a small saddle (5478). Fire was coming from this hill. As soldiers were working up the lower slopes of the hill, I was hopeful that, by the time the truck column could be gotten across the stream, the hill would be cleared. The dual 40 mm SP easily crossed the stream, but the trucks, rocking bumping over hard hummocks of swamp grass and dirt, were unable to cross the stream. It was deep and very narrow and effectively trapped their front wheels. I immediately turned the SP back to throw a cable on each truck and tow them through. All this time scattered fire was striking the hill to our front (south). I moved forward to a small house on the far side of the valley where I found Major Wesley Curtis, Bn S-3, now Executive Officer, with a small group of men preparing to move directly up the hill.2
Captain Swenty arrived at the blown bridge soon after Miller and saw the trucks in the process of crossing the swampy stream:
The trucks carrying wounded started through the frozen swamp, full of clumps of what looked like Johnson grass and each clump was about two feet high. All the time we were still receiving small arms and mortar fire. As the trucks were running the bypass you could hear the screams of wounded men within the trucks. Many had broken bones and I am sure several died from the shock of crossing the swamp. Progress was slow as the trucks would have to be backed up to the bank to get back on the main road. It seemed as [though] breakthrough was stalemated until we could get the motor column through the swamp. When a truck did get on the road the driver would take the truck up the road about 250 yards and halt it and wait. When a driver would get hit trying to run the pass, the truck was a pigeon for the enemy. Time was lost getting another to take his place.... Somewhere along the route of withdrawal we had picked up about a hundred refugees, mostly women and children and they were staying close to the trucks.... The delay in crossing the swamp afforded the enemy time to move from our abandoned positions to a new position directly to our left. The positions they now occupied were on the military crest of a hill paralleling our halted trucks that had crossed the swamp.3
Lieutenant May arrived at the blown bridge with the rear of the column, took charge of the bypass operation, and fearlessly exposed himself in directing the crossing of each vehicle. He was at this task for about two hours. Meanwhile, the troops with the column had crossed the valley and were bunching up on the road, dug into the slope of Hill 1221. Nearly all the officers were there also, preparing to attack the hill.
Major Miller started up the road ahead of Curtis and his group. In Curtis's group there were casualties almost at once. About 3:30 P.m., Curtis received a rifle slug in the right leg near the knee. Major Bob Jones was with Curtis at the time. He put a pressure bandage on the wound and found a broken tree limb for Curtis to use for a crutch. With this stick Curtis could hobble along, and he proceeded painfully up the road. Jones soon outdista
nced him as he hurried on ahead to help with the fight that had already broken out farther up the hill.4 Faith, in his jeep with sirens blaring, passed Curtis on the road.
Meanwhile, May was acting as a traffic cop at the blown bridge.5 From his vantage point, Curtis said, he could see May in the middle of the road, ignoring the small-arms fire that had now begun hitting the bridge site, directing the movement of the trucks across the stream. May, who is the main witness to what occurred at the bridge bypass, had this to say:
... we attempted to ford the small stream. Being a marshy area, the trucks broke through the layer of frozen crust. Almost every vehicle had to be winched through this stream. During this time I was met by Lt. Col. Faith. He had come to the bridge to see what our situation was. When he left, it was the last time I saw him.
The rear guard troops passed us and left the rear of the column exposed. I collected a few men and put them in the RR cut to fire on the Chinese on the hill to our rear. I then returned to trying to get the last two (2) trucks across the stream. After getting them across, one was knocked out by small arms fire and the driver of the other truck was killed. I unloaded the wounded who could walk, and sent them on ahead. With some help from the half-track crew, we transferred the remaining wounded to another 21/2-ton nearby. One of the crew members from the half track drove the truck out. By this time it was nearly dark and the Chinese riflemen were not able to place accurately aimed fire on us. This relieved the situation somewhat and allowed me to close up the remaining vehicles into our column, which was halted on the winding, uphill road.'
May subsequently amplified his comments about the difficulties at the bypass crossing and the failure of the rear guard to do its duty:
There was so much happening at this time, and I was trying to do a little bit of everything at the rear of the column. Trying to maintain some control and to keep things from getting completely out of hand....
The 3rd Bn., 31st Inf. was assigned as the rear guard unit. At the time we were attempting to cross the last few vehicles at the blown bridge we started to get an awful lot of enemy small arms fire, from our rear and the high ground to our northeast.
At this time I found the 3rd Bn., 31st Inf. were deserting their mission and were streaming past our position. There were some junior officers strung out among the troops and completely ignored my plea to stop and start firing on the CCE
I did manage to get some troopers and Sgt. stopped and into a railroad cut and to build up a base of fire on CCF to our rear and on hill to our east. However as soon as I returned to the job of getting the last vehicles over the bog and stream these troops pulled out, up and over Hill 1221. [Elsewhere May says that they went "up southwest over hill 1221." This would be not up the road but over or near a trail that climbed Hill 1221 from a point almost directly south of the blown bridge. All 1:50,ooo-scale maps of the Hill 1221 area show this trail.]?
During the stream crossing, Sgt. Charles Garrigus, assistant motor sergeant, ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, was responsible for driving two trucks across the stream. He had already distinguished himself several times as he moved two abandoned ammunition and ration trucks across the bridge at the inlet on the 29th, and earlier on this day (December i) he was the machine gunner who had turned back one of the Chinese assaults on the A Company roadblock at the western end of the perimeter. A few hours later the valorous sergeant was killed in another attempt to run the final enemy roadblock.8
Major Jones called the crossing at the blown bridge "a very rough and difficult by-pass." He confirms May's and Curtis's statements that it took until dark to get all the trucks across.9 This means that the task force spent its last two hours of daylight getting the vehicles with the wounded on the road south of the blown bridge and ready to continue the run toward Hagaru-ri. It should be recalled that at that time of year darkness came between 4:3o and 5:00 P.M.
To show what a painful experience this was for the wounded riding in the trucks, perhaps nothing could be more compelling than the words of one of them, Major Robbins:
... we came to a bridge which had been destroyed and our motor column turned off the road and into a wide river bed to bypass the obstacle. Great mounds of frozen earth covered with a tough grass carpeted the river bed over which we now bounced. For about 10o yards we bounced and crashed up and down over those hummocks with the wounded screaming in anguish as they were jostled and slammed into one another on the truck bed. I luckily still had on my steel helmet and thus was able to protect my head from a banging against the front and sides of the truck bed which might have knocked me out otherwise. At that I had a bruised head for days afterwards. We came to a final jolting crash and stopped. Our front wheels were down through a crust of ice in a small creek and no amount of effort on the part of our driver could move that truck. Other vehicles began to come abreast of us and with more caution ford the creek and go on for ward. Again I began to sweat-was this going to be the end of the road?
After what seemed hours but was actually but a short time, the tracked vehicle backed up to our truck, hooked on a tow rope and pulled us up through the creek and onto firm ground again. Our driver returned to take over and once more we moved slowly forward. We reached the road again and after a halt to allow other following vehicles to cross the difficult bypass, we got under way. The hills were now on the right side of the road and on our left the ground fell sharply away to form a valley paralleling our course along the road south. Heavy small arms fire was coming down at the column from the high ground on our right and the continual smack of slugs slapping the truck was unnerving to me as I expected any minute to be hit by the next one.... Again our truck came to a halt. This time the word came back that another road block which was heavily defended by the Chinese was holding up the column.10
Lieutenant May has told how he had no protection at his rear while he was trying to get the truck column across the stream. At the same time, the trucks that had crossed to the south side of the stream and started up the road with the walking soldiers began receiving an ever-increasing volume of machine-gun and small-arms fire from the north side of the valley east of the bridge. The stream there flowed generally west from its source southeast of Hill 1456, a two-mile-wide mountain separating this valley from the inlet area on its north side. Increasing numbers of Chinese appeared on the high ridges north and northeast of the valley and in the upper reaches of the valley itself. They fired into the truck convoy on the south side with increasing effectiveness. Some of them appeared to be forming for a direct attack from the valley up the slope to the road. They apparently came from the main force that had been attacking the perimeter during the past several nights.
What was the rear guard of the task force doing? The situation in the valley and on the ridges east of the blown bridge and north of the road was getting serious. Faith had designated the 3rd Battalion as the rear guard -in effect, the infantry remnants of the battalion now combined into K Company. They had no great trouble reaching the blown bridge and were not engaged in any important action between the perimeter and the blown bridge, though there was continuing harassing fire when they were east of the road.
When they reached the blown bridge, they were ordered to move up the valley to the east and protect the column and the bypass area from the large numbers of Chinese who could be seen approaching from that direction. At the same time the 57th field artillerymen, on foot behind the truck column, moved off to the ridgeline north of the valley and northeast of the blown bridge for the same purpose. Most of these troops were ineffective, which resulted in dire consequences for the task force.
Just about all of the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry (A, B, and C companies), were on the road leading to the saddle of Hill 1221 or attacking in groups up the slope of the hill. From his position south of the bridge at the foot of Hill 1221, Stamford was running air strikes on the surrounding ridges where Chinese had shown themselves. He gives his version of the initial attack of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, on the roadblock at the
saddle, Hill 1221, and the movement of the rear guard up the valley to help in this effort by reaching the enemy's right flank at the roadblock. As he saw it:
The troops of 1/32 moved up the road toward the road block and the troops of 3/31 moved up the valley below the road to force the roadblock. The attack was moving along, but 3/31 was under heavy fire from the other side of the valley and from enemy troops to their northeast. I saw at least 30o enemy to the northeast of 3/31. 1/32 succeeded in forcing the road block and it seemed they would go on but they evidently ran into resistance and fell back. It looked as if they had lost their leaders. The retirement looked like a rout. The enemy again occupied the road block and inflicted heavy casualties on 1/32 with rifle and machine gun fire and was then able to do the same to 3/31 on the slopes below the road causing them to withdraw. The troops of 1/57 had gained the high ground over the road to the north in an attempt to silence machine guns firing from that area, but were unable to do so because of the danger of being cut off by the several hundred enemy to the northeast of us, in and at the foot of the hills.' 1
From the road ascending Hill 1221, Major Miller saw the same troop movements that Stamford described, but with certain differences. He too, without knowing the facts, had to draw some inferences about why the 3rd Battalion troops abandoned their positions. One of the big problems here, as almost everywhere else during the breakout, was the lack of communication between parts of the task force with each other and between the task force commander and the several parts, except those he could personally reach. Efforts could not be coordinated and mutually supported. Miller tells what he saw after he went up the road about 3:30 P.m.:
I moved up the road to find out what was going on there. By this time several trucks had gotten across the stream and joined me on the road sheltered from fire from the hill crest by the steep bank to the right (south) of the road. I noticed, at this point, that friendly troops (3rd Bn, 31st Inf) on the high ground across the valley (north side) were leaving the hill (5479) and moving down to the road. I assumed that Colonel Faith, whom I had last seen at the blown bridge in the valley, had ordered them forward to assist in clearing the hill from the right flank. These troops, however, were promptly replaced by Chinese who opened up with long range fire across the valley into the exposed left flank of the truck column. Captain Stamford, FAC, was able to get an air strike in on the Chinese across the valley that helped.12
East of Chosin Page 25