Meanwhile, Lieutenant May stayed at his task of getting the last of the trucks across the bypass around the bridge. He and his helpers were now fully exposed to enemy fire from the hill to their rear and from the valley. May summed up his view of the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, role as rear guard: "During the time I was at the bridge by-pass, the Bn that had the mission of rear guard security completely deserted the rear of the convoy. The net result was an extremely high casualty rate among personnel involved in the vehicle crossing and many riding wounded were KIA."1;
Captain McClymont had returned to the head of the column by the time it neared the bridge site and was present when it came to a halt at the blown bridge. He said of the stream crossing, "My Mig crossed again and again, pulling the trucks through the water and to the other side." While this was going on, he and two of his sergeants crossed to the other side of the stream, where he saw Chinese up the valley on the northeast, a marching formation. He organized a group of men nearby and began firing at the Chinese with M-i rifles. The range was too great, however, and the Chinese showed no reaction to their fire.14 In the events that followed as this force drew closer, Major Miller, who was watching from the road slanting up Hill 1221, agreed with May that the rear guard abandoned its mission at the first blown bridge and Hill 1221 !S
With the high ground northeast of the road and the valley below the road now unprotected, the Chinese moved across the valley and began climbing the slope to the road, where the convoy of wounded, fully exposed, was stalled. Captain Stamford saw this threat and was able to bring in an air strike on them before they got to the road. The strike was successful. It scattered the Chinese, who fled back to the valley and thereafter were ineffective. 16 Major Miller, now lying badly wounded in the roadside ditch, saw this strike. He wrote: "Chinese troops tried to close on the column along the hillside by moving up from the valley toward the road. Just before they overran us an A-26 aircraft [an F4U Corsair, according to Stamford] came out of nowhere and strafed twice just below the road effectively driving back the enemy.""7
By now there was enemy mortar fire as well as machine-gun and smallarms fire on the stalled truck column. There was no effective response. Casualties mounted by the minute.
After receiving his leg wound at Hill 1221, Major Curtis hobbled up the road to the point where the truck column was collecting. There he sat in the roadside ditch for a time and noted that the column was stalled. It occurred to him that it might be useful to make a reconnaissance of the railroad bed as a route of travel if the enemy continued to block passage of the road. He found a few men to accompany him, including a wounded first lieutenant chaplain from the 3rd Battalion and three or four enlisted men whom he did not know.
They moved slowly westward on the narrow-gauge track that curved around the west side of Hill 1221 in a cut just above the edge of the reservoir. They reached and passed the point where the track rounded the northwestern edge of the hill and turned south along the reservoir. About 300 to 400 yards down this stretch an enemy mortar round landed near them. With this Curtis knew the Chinese had the railroad under surveillance and covered with fire, which meant that the convoy could not use the railbed.
Curtis and his group turned back, knowing that the road up and over the east side of Hill 1221 offered the only chance to move south. When he got back to the blown bridge after an hour, it was dark. When he caught up with the column, the trucks were moving forward on the north side of Hill 1221.18
he Chinese positions on Hill 1221 and the high ground immediately east of the hairpin turn in the saddle of Hill 1221 were for the most part the same positions that elements of Lt. Col. Raymond Murray's 5th Marine Regiment had occupied about io days earlier when that regiment first arrived east of the reservoir. Major Curtis called Hill 1221 and its environs the best defensive position on the road east of Chosin Reservoir.
When the 5th Marines first prepared this area for defense, the positions faced north and northeast. It is not known just how much the Chinese improved or extended them after they seized the area on the night of November 27. They did blow the bridge across the stream at the north side of the hill and constructed a roadblock of logs on the road at the south end of the hairpin turn in the saddle where the road crossed Hill 1221 and started the southern descent. The orientation of the old Marine positions fitted perfectly the needs of the Chinese when they made it the centerpiece of their defensive positions of fire blocks and roadblocks behind the cutoff 31st RCT. They did not occupy the southern face of the hill but could defend it as long as they held the crest and its immediate reverse slope.
There is only a fragmentary record of Lieutenant Colonel Faith's movements and actions in the early part of the attack on Hill 1221. Enlisted men on the road saw him near the head of the column. It is probable that he led and directed the first attack against the enemy positions in the saddle at the hairpin turn. When that attack took place, Faith had few if any of his staff with him. He was with those troops who had moved around the blown bridge and climbed up the slanting hillside road toward the turn in the saddle. They knew little of what they would find there, except that a heavy volume of automatic and small-arms fire was being directed down the road from that vicinity and the hill on the right. At the time of the first attack most of the officers were still arriving at the scene or were scattered about at the blown bridge and on the lower reaches of the road trying to organize the hundreds of troops who crowded the right-hand side of the road between the trucks and the embankment cut into the side of Hill 1221. There they had some protection from heavy enemy fire directed at them from the surrounding high ground. No one seems to know what happened at the enemy fire block in that first effort to reduce it-only that the troops who reached it seemed for a moment to have succeeded but were then driven back.
The only available report of a participant in that first attack is that of ist Lt. Thomas J. Patton, of A Battery, 57th Field Artillery. When he left the inlet perimeter, he was in charge of 15 men, who formed part of the left-hand guard for the convoy. By the time he reached the blown bridge, he had only three men left with him; several had been killed, the others wounded and placed in trucks. At the bridge an infantry captain ordered Patton to go to the far left up the valley to the north side of Hill 1221 and then climb the slope toward the saddle and attack the enemy fire block at the road from the flank. Patton was told to collect what men he could for the effort. Said Patton:
There was no organization to be seen as the men were mostly on their own. I was able to get about if men to go with me, most of them from the 57th FA Bn.
A Marine Corsair strafed my group once by mistake wounding Sgt. Poor in the left leg. He was bandaged and continued with us for some 25 yards when he was shot in the right leg. Sgt. Compos was wounded in the eye and five others received body wounds. There were about 30 men in the ditch at the log road block. We were receiving fire from the front of the road block, the top of the hill above the road block, the high ground to our rear, the left side of the valley and the east end of the valley. We were unable to round the bend of the road at the road block because of the heavy automatic fire. Then ten men and I went up the hill above the road block. A Sgt. from the 32nd Infantry Regiment knocked out a machine gun nest with a hand grenade enabling us to reach the top. We then received rifle fire from both sides forcing us to take cover in holes on the far side of the hill. Some stragglers were coming up to join us from the road block. The firing eased up on us and we found that we were very low on ammunition, each man having only a few rounds left. We went down to the road on the far side of the hill where there were several knocked out vehicles and tanks which had tried to reach us several days before.
We attempted to work our way up to the rear of the road block and began receiving heavy fire causing several casualties. We were forced back to the knocked out trucks [from the ambush of the medical company on the night of November 27-28] and it was decided to try to reach friendly forces to our south to get reinforcements. Only four of
us had ammunition left, about 25 rounds, both M-i and carbine.
We started down toward the valley, with stragglers running to join us from the hill. Six CCF's ran from our right front down to our front to cut us off. They were all killed. We received fire from our right, left and rear, causing us to head toward the frozen reservoir. We started out on the ice angling to the southwest. We were about Soo yards out on the lake when CCF's began coming out after us. They didn't fire, several didn't even have weapons. I saw a C-47 circling in the distance approaching us and I stamped off in the snow "WHICH WAY." The C-47 circled and flew south circling a town in the distance. The C-47 then came back and dropped a canteen containing a note which stated "Keep to the center of the reservoir-UN troops holding Hagaru-ri-Have requested air cover-Good luck fellows."
The CCF's had caught up with the end of the column and had bayoneted one ROK. At this time two F-5is arrived and the CCFs broke and ran. The is began strafing them and killed them all. We continued on toward the town of Hagaru-ri where we were met by the Marines at approximately 18oo hours.
There were approximately 85 men in the column, nearly 3/4's of which were wounded. They were taken to the hospital and the ones that were all right were put in marine tents. I requested aid for the column which was back on the road and was told that they didn't have sufficient forces to go out to help and still hold the perimeter.
Some of the ist Battalion troops whom Stamford saw attacking up the road to the hairpin turn in apparent success and then turned back in rout must have joined Patton's group; it was a large force when it arrived at Hagaru-ri.
After the first attack up the road was turned back, it was hard to get the troops to move from the partly protected area of the ditch on the righthand side of the uphill road. It appears that Faith either was far enough forward in this initial attack to see the enemy fire block and roadblock or had reports of it from soldiers who had been in the forefront of the attack.
In all this turmoil on the slope of Hill 1221 the men who were least protected from enemy fire were the wounded in the trucks. There the situation was rapidly turning into a long-range slaughter. More and more Chinese were taking up firing positions in and across the valley to the left of the road and firing directly into the stalled trucks. Captain Swenty wrote: "It was during this time I think we received our greatest portion of casualties. Air was called to strafe and napalm the houses and area from where this new fire was coming from. This was done immediately and with a few direct hits with napalm, broke up this new enemy position. In fact it was so good the enemy broke from their positions and ran. It was heartening to all men and they lay down a barrage of small arms fire on the enemy." 2 But this success did not last long. The Chinese were soon back in even greater numbers, and their fire from across the valley was greater than before.
This dreadful situation on the left of the road was caused by the failure of the rear guard to check the advance of the Chinese down the valley. The words of two members of the rear guard who participated in that action disclose its nature. Private First Class James R. Owens had been a member of a rocket-launcher team and a machine gunner during the battles of the inlet perimeter but in the breakout served as a rifleman in the rear guard. He said that when his unit reached the bridge "an officer told us to take a hill on the left side of the road. We took the hill and by the time we got to the top of the hill the Chinese were coming and they told us to retreat from the bill [italics added]. After we retreated off the hill we crossed an open field and were told to try to take another hill. I witnessed the overrun of the rearguard."3 Owens and many others of that unit soon got to the reservoir and made their way to Hagaru-ri.
Master Sergeant Ivan H. Long, intelligence sergeant of the 31st Infantry, appears to have been in the same unit of the rear guard as Private Owens. Their experiences in meeting the Chinese in the area across the valley from Hill 1221 seem to mesh. When the breakout from the perimeter started, Long attached himself to "the left flank company and moved forward with them." He was with the troops that went up the valley from the bridge to defend the task force rear and to help reduce the Hill 1221 roadblock from the left flank. He describes the situation in the late afternoon when the Chinese mounted what he termed a company-size counterattack against his unit in the area east and northeast of the blown bridge:
The outfit I was with took to their heels leaving me with only two men I could persuade to stay and face the attack. I am not sure, but I think they were headquarters [31st Infantry Headquarters] men having recognized me. We were exhausted from fighting but we fixed bayonets and took cover behind a wood pile in a farmyard. We got in a few good licks before my carbine jammed from snow and mud. We were all wounded and just overwhelmed by the onrushing Chinese.
We were relieved of our weapons and ammunition. One Red soldier took my mittens, but I refused his demands for my jacket even when he threatened me at gun point. We were assigned a guard detail of 3 or 4 men and marched up a mountain trail to a lookout post and forced to lie on the snow-covered ground. Climbing the trail was extremely difficult for me. One of my wounds was a chest wound and breathing presented a big problem. With help from the other men and determination on my part, we kept up with our captors.
The temperature was freezing and I could feel my sweat-soaked socks freezing in my boots. After soaking my underwear with blood, my wound clotted which slowed the bleeding. By now nightfall had arrived and the moon was shining brightly. Our captors did not bother us. One Chinese soldier having stopped one of my bullets, was in bad condition, but received no attention from the others.4
Back on the road at Hill 1221, when the rear guard abandoned its mission, Major Robbins, still in one of the trucks near the head of the column, described how the situation appeared to him at this juncture:
Looking out to our left I could see ragged lines of Chinese troops forming up in the valley below and this despite the continuous fire from our air cover of planes which dived time and again upon them. The Chinks were too far away for any effective rifle fire to get them but seeing them reforming for new attacks on our column was no comfort. On our right the slant eyes were in the commanding spots on the ridges and were having a field day firing into our column and its escorting guard of troops. Wounded in the trucks began to get additional wounds and set up a mournful racket for someone to help them or get them out. There was nothing could be done for them at that time. Officers began forming their groups to flank the road block up ahead but had the prospect of taking the menacing Chinese-held hillside [Hill 1221] overlooking our column. The men were reluctant to get going when they looked about and saw men on all sides of them being shot down from the fire from the Chinese above them. At first a few began to inch their way up the steep hill which began abruptly at the roadside, then others, noting that the few were still going, joined them. This action had a snow-balling effect and a platoon soon took the top of the ridge and went over the other side blasting away at the retreating Chinese. This at least cleared a part of the ridge but fire was still coming in from where none of our guys had yet reached.
Dozens of soldiers huddled and crouched around the trucks seeking their protection and not heeding the call of their officers to charge on over the hill to support the initial group of GI's which went over. The dull boom of enemy mortars began a new tale. Out to our left their bursts began to creep closer to our column of trucks. Included in this fire ]were] the deadly and much feared white phosphorus shells which can burn the flesh right off one's bones in a matter of seconds. About this time a wild-eyed ROK soldier jumped in the truck and flung himself down on top of the wounded guys causing them to yelp in new pain. He wasn't wounded-just out of his head, I guess. He wasn't so far out of his head that he failed to recognize what I wanted of him when I picked up a carbine and shoved the barrel in his face yelling at him to get the hell out of the truck. I was so mad at that s.o.b. for jumping in like that I would have gladly blown his head off. He got out pronto and lost himself in the crowd of others milling a
round the area.
As those mortars continued to come closer and closer I made up my mind right then and there to get the hell [out] of that truck despite my aching leg and try to get out somehow. We had been stalled too long now and it was growing darker by the minute as the late afternoon came on. No progress had been made in reducing the road block and the Chinese were still pouring in a deadly fire from their positions forward and above us. I pulled myself out between the other wounded in the truck and dropped to the ground behind the truck. I had in my hand the carbine I had come upon in the truck and checked it, finding I had a full clip of ammunition ready to shoot.f
During this period many officers were killed or wounded on the road near the truck column. Major Harvey M. Storms, commanding the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, was seriously wounded and placed in one of the trucks. Major Crosby P. Miller, commanding the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, was critically wounded, escaping death by an eyelash. In his words:
I moved up the road [after leaving Curtis and others at the foot of Hill 1221] to discover if the high ground covering the road had been cleared, spotted a heavy machine gun trained on me from just above the road, dove for cover, but was too slow. Just before I reached cover I was hit in the upper left leg (three bullets later removed from leg) and, at the same time the last three fingers of the left hand were neatly removed by a bullet which I believe came from across the valley. As my First Aid packet had been expended long ago, I removed the glove from my right hand and pulled it down over the wounded hand to stop the bleeding. The soaked glove soon froze and effectively cut off the flow. Nothing could be done about the leg, so I lay in the ditch taking stock of a very sorry situation. I sent a lieutenant lying in the ditch near me back to Colonel Faith to tell him I was hit and that the only way to clear up a desperate situation was to get troops up to clear the high ground above the road.... The ditch and road around me were dotted with dead and wounded with casualties increasing every minute. I tried to get men around the trucks to move directly up the hill and clear it, but each man who tried it became a casualty. Chinese troops tried to close on the column along the hillside by moving up from the valley toward the road. Just before they overran us an A-26 aircraft came out of nowhere and strafed twice just below the road, effectively driving back the enemy.6
East of Chosin Page 26