Major Jones said to me that we are "sitting ducks" in this cut if they catch us in it. However, there were flares still in the air, which would clearly outline us if we moved from our present position. Major Jones and I discussed our situation and decided to make a run for the darkness in the low land along the river [the Paegamni-gang]. At this time we could hear quite a lot of firing to our left rear and came to the conclusion that the convoy was again under attack. We also could hear quite a few Chinese on the high ground to our left, so Major Jones gave the order to move out. As we crossed the ice on the river, we were fired upon by the Chinese, whom we had heard on the high ground. Upon a later check we found no casualties from this action.
We moved across the valley in the general direction of the reservoir. Upon getting to the ice, we followed a route generally along the RR after coming back onto it short of the town of Sa-Su. Where the RR entered the town; I cut off to the right, by-passed the town and followed directly along the edge of the reservoir until the RR line followed the contour of the terrain back to the reservoir edge.
We followed the RR for a short distance and picked up the P&A Platoon Ldr from the 3rd Bn, 31st Inf, and a few of the wounded EM who then joined our column. The column continued along the RR for a short distance until the RR followed the terrain contour inland. At this point we came upon several civilians composed of women and children and some old men. After checking them for weapons, we let them join our column. At this point we had a clear view of the North boundary of the Marine perimeter. We called a halt to let our wounded rest and to check their condition, as a cook from our Hq Company had collapsed. We did not know he had been wounded until this time.14
When Jones left the side of Hill 1221 and started for Hagaru-ri, one of the groups that joined him was led by Major Robbins. Robbins's recollections of what the foot column met in going forward indicate that he and a group of about 30 men soon became separated from Jones's larger main group. Robbins wrote:
Crossing another bridge which had been severely damaged but not quite impassable we ran smack into an enemy outpost which immediately opened fire. Our troops dived off the road but kept on going forward. I was toward the tail of the column having dropped farther and farther back as my leg began to stiffen and retard my speed. I had become separated from Lt. Curtis by that time but Captain Goss stayed with me which I sure appreciated. Being left behind was no rosy prospect as far as I was concerned. When the group hit the sides of the road after being fired upon they broke in two units, one going on down a small-gauge railroad paralleling the dirt road and the other unit cut sharply to the right and hugged the frozen lake shore path. I was with the latter group. We had become about thirty in number and actually had a better chance to move undetected through the Communists' positions. We passed through a small logging village [Sasu] expecting any minute to be ambushed but got away to the other side without incident.'S
Thus the remaining infantry and miscellaneous foot troops of Task Force Faith who had moved on ahead of the stalled motor column were now about three road miles south of the convoy temporarily halted at Twiggae. No word of the enemy fire block at the ridgetop overlooking the road and railroad just north of Hudong-ni had been sent back to the vehicular column.
When Stamford reconnoitered the bridge on the road just south of Twiggae, he found the bridge so damaged that vehicles could not cross it, but foot soldiers could. At the bridge Stamford was told by an American soldier coming back north that there was an enemy machine gun there. Stamford searched the vicinity of the bridge but did not find the gun. He crossed the bridge and went to the railroad, where he found the short trestle intact. Back near Twiggae was a trail leading from the railroad to the road over which Stamford thought the vehicles could move.
Returning to the head of the column on the road, Stamford talked there with some of the men. They went into a small building, where he lit a cigarette and thought he saw an officer with the silver leaves of a lieutenant colonel, believing him to be an artilleryman. In addition to this officer, he said, many others were present. Not one of them, according to Stamford, made any attempt to take command of the truck convoy and the men with it. Stamford became impatient with them. Something had to be done. He wrote:
In my annoyance I walked out of the shack and up to Col. Faith in the lead truck and asked him if he wanted me to try to continue on to Hagaru-ri tonight and he gave me a very weak "yes." He could barely talk, and seemed to be in extreme pain and on the verge of losing consciousness. I proceeded to carry out this ... order. I placed myself in the point because there seemed no other way to get them moving and keep them moving. I do not know what the other officers did after this because I did not see them again.... I could only find a very few men who were unhurt in the vicinity of the lead vehicle. I led the convoy over the railroad and found a place to cut off back onto the road south of the bridge. Once on the road I stayed about 200 yards in front of the lead vehicle in the point with a few men.16
Behind Jones, May, and Stamford another officer of the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, Major Curtis, moved with the motor convoy after night fell. Curtis had been absent from the motor convoy for something more than an hour in the late afternoon when he had made the reconnaissance of the railroad as a possible route of travel. By the time he returned, the convoy had begun moving forward, and he caught up with it near the saddle. Curtis gives his account of events he experienced thereafter:
As we went up the road the trucks were inching forward gradually. I remember hearing wounded men asking that they not be left behind, and I tried to assure them that we were trying to move to Hagaru-ri.
Though there were some gaps in the column, the column was not split or fragmented. I walked around the Hairpin Curve, noting the Chinese corpse with wire in his hand, and down to the trestle where several soldiers were assisting the passage of the trucks over the trestle. This was a time-consuming and tedious operation. I was there for some time. There were no other officers there. I went up to the nearby hootch to smoke a cigarette. I saw no officers there. There were 3 or 4 soldiers smoking, but not talking."
Curtis estimated that it was about 7:00 P.M. when he arrived at Twiggae. According to his statement, some of the lead trucks were already trying to get onto the rail track to cross the trestle over the stream.18
In moving around the second blown bridge to the rail track near Twiggae, the convoy had little infantry protection. There were only the guard force that Major Jones had left with it at the tank block and some walking wounded. The convoy was vulnerable if it encountered an enemy attack on the road or another enemy fire block. By this time the convoy was more heavily loaded than ever with many newly wounded. Some of the less severely wounded clung to anything they could grasp on the outside of the trucks. For the wounded men in the vehicles it was another ordeal to endure the jolting and bouncing of this second passage around a blown bridge. There were 15 to 20 trucks left in the convoy by this time.19
Stamford stayed with the trucks at the rail track only long enough to show the drivers and guards where to get on and off the track and back to the road. After seeing the first two safely across the trestle, he cut across to the road, leaving to the guards and others the task of guiding the rest across. Arriving at the road, Stamford started south on it to scout the route to see whether it was clear of enemy and roadblocks. From this time on, Stamford assumed that Lieutenant Colonel Faith was in the cab of the lead truck. There is conflicting evidence on this.
After leaving the railroad trestle, Stamford with three or four soldiers took the point and moved about half a mile down the road. He came abreast of the high ridge nose that descended to the road just north of the schoolhouse, the former CP of the 31st Infantry Rear and Drake's 31st Tank Company at Hudong-ni. Suddenly a number of shadows emerged from the roadside. Stamford and his companions were surrounded. A group of Chinese took them prisoner before they could react. Stamford relates what happened afterward:
The soldier guarding me wanted me to
[lie] down on the side of the road. Evidently I didn't move fast enough or he was scared too, and discharged his rifle in my face. We had a guard behind us and one across the road with automatic weapons. The enemy sent one man out to reconnoiter and a mortar fired a couple of rounds from a position alongside the road about 300 yards farther on. There was enemy on the high ground east of the road also. Someone fired several bursts with a weapon from the convoy and it passed over our heads as two of us lay on the roadside. The position of the enemy automatic rifleman was under fire so he moved farther down the road to the south. Soon after this the lead truck ran the blockade and seemed to draw little fire. The man beside me said he was going to try to escape at the first opportunity and I told him I'd try too. The guard behind us moved off firing at someone coming at him and I took this opportunity to leave telling the man beside me to go. I crossed the road and railroad and ran about 300 yards west, cutting south into a line of scrub for concealment. I then started moving south to the next town [Sasu-ri] and found it dead. I continued on south and as I started over a saddle on a path I saw someone coming. I changed direction and he pursued me so I went into some scrub pine and over the roughest terrain I could find. I came down the other side of the saddle and injured my ankle. I then worked my way toward Hagaru-ri being careful to stay off the road as it showed signs of being heavily travelled by foot troops. I infiltrated the Marine outguards at Hagaru and was picked up on the perimeter by the rocket battery under Capt. [Benjamin] Read at 0225 on 2 December.20
Stamford was captured at the foot of Hill 1239, the first high ground near the road north of the Paegamni-gang. He said that when he crested Hill 1203 after crossing the Paegamni-gang, Hagaru-ri "looked like New York City but the lights were mostly moving."
In my detailed interviews with Stamford in late September and early October, 1979, he added details that were not included in his report. He said that while he and his three companions were captives at the roadside the head of the truck column crossed the railroad trestle and regained the road south of the partly blown second bridge. One truck made a sudden dash ahead and passed Stamford lying at the side of the road. As it passed, one of the American prisoners jumped to his feet, ran after the truck, grabbed the tailboard, and got away. This sudden move caught the enemy fire-block soldiers by surprise, and there was not much fire on the escaping truck. A few seconds later a second truck tried the same dash ahead. It passed the fire block where Stamford still lay on the ground. About 75 yards farther down the road a Chinese rocket fired from the south hit the truck head on and stopped it. The other trucks waited on the road as word passed down the line that there was an enemy roadblock ahead. During this period there was exchange of fire between men at the front of the truck column and the Chinese who held Stamford.
While Stamford still lay at the side of the road, he saw the truck that had run the enemy block continue on to the flat area just north of Sasu-ri and stop. Stamford thought that the driver expected the rest of the convoy to run the block as he had done and join him. Assuming that it was the lead truck of the convoy, Stamford also assumed that Faith was in it.
After Stamford escaped from his captors, he began working his way south toward the truck. But it started up again, crossed the stream over the bypass, and continued through Sasu-ri and on up the road to a turn at the saddle. He did not see it again.
When Stamford went through Sasu-ri, there were no enemy soldiers there, though they were on high ground both north and south of it. He commented: "Sasu-ri. It was just south of the ford across the mouth of the Paegamni-gang. I know this place well. I sneaked back to the road trying to find the vehicle that Col. Faith was in that made it through the road block where I had been captured. I sneaked through the village and propelled myself about 25 or 30 feet on my stomach across the icy surface of the Paegamni-gang, a shallow but wide river for this area.""
Stamford is speaking here not of the main branch of the Paegamni-gang but of a smaller branch running close to the base of Hill 1167. Sasu-ri stood between the two branches of the stream. Stamford crawled across the small southern branch after he had passed through Sasu-ri. He was still intent on reaching the truck, for he thought Faith was in it. He was working his way south when he ran into a Chinese soldier. Stamford's Chinese captors had taken his pistol, and now he was unarmed. He jumped off the trail and, as he reported, in his dash for safety badly sprained an ankle.22
Major Curtis has provided the most detailed account of the ordeal of getting the vehicles across the rail trestle south of Twiggae. He found the process slow and tedious. The men had little trouble getting the vehicles onto the rail track and headed for the trestle. They put only one vehicle on the track at a time, and only when it had moved across and out onto the adjacent rice paddy did they move the next one onto the track.
The real trouble came in getting the vehicles across the short, narrow trestle. The trestle was about 15 or 20 rail ties long, the ties spaced about 0/2 feet apart, and the entire span of the trestle was about 25 feet long, suspended between two abutments, one at each end. The entire passage of the trucks on the rail track from entrance to exit was only coo feet long. Once over the trestle there was little trouble getting the vehicles off the railbed and across the paddy to the road. But each vehicle had to be handguided across the trestle. Curtis watched the crossing of the trestle for at least an hour and saw only 21/2-ton trucks cross. By good fortune there was no enemy action against the convoy at this time. It was, however, very painful for the wounded in the trucks. Curtis said he could never forget their screams and moans as the trucks jolted across the trestle. Seeing that the trucks on the road were not moving, he decided to investigate the trouble. 23
When he reached the road, the rest of the convoy was lined up on it but not moving. Curtis started walking down the road and, he said, found Lieutenant Colonel Faith in the cab of one of the trucks and spoke with him briefly. He remembered the conversation: "Faith called me `Butch'-I don't know why, no one else did. I said, `Colonel, this is Butch, how are you doing?' He said, `Let's get
Farther down the column Curtis came on Major Miller lying on the hood of Stamford's jeep. He said, "Dick, you're going to have to walk if we get out of here." Miller replied, "I'm hurting too bad to walk."
Still farther along, Curtis talked with a sergeant of the 31st Infantry who had a body wound but seemed well oriented about where they were. He said he was hurt too badly to go himself but that someone should cut across the ice to Hagaru-ri and tell General Hodes to "bring up the tanks at daylight."
Curtis estimated that it was about 10:00 P.m. He said that he did not see any officers other than Faith and Miller. Before he reached the head of the column, Curtis decided to leave it, go onto the ice of the reservoir, and try to reach Hagaru-ri. By this time the enemy had begun to close on the rear of the truck column, back near the place where it had crossed the trestle. He heard firing there and saw white-phosphorus grenades exploding among the rear trucks.
Although wounded in the late afternoon at Hill 1221, Curtis had never ridden in any of the trucks. Now, nearing the head of the stalled column, just short of Hudong-ni, and on the point of heading for the reservoir, he saw the beginning of the end of Task Force Faith's motor column. It could be said that technically, as senior officer present, and still able to move about with the help of his tree-limb crutch, he was the commanding officer of the task force at that moment.
Once on the shoreline of the reservoir Curtis used his improvised walking stick to move out on the ice, avoiding the shoreline. He was tired and dehydrated and ate snow constantly. Once he became disoriented; he could not find his compass but finally located the North Star and guided himself south by it. After a short time he heard artillery fire and struggled on toward it. He entered the Marine perimeter at Captain Read's battery position. Stamford had arrived there just ahead of him.2S
Lack of reliable information clouds the fate of many of the most capable and dedicated officers of the task force. One of them was M
aj. Harvey H. Storms, designated by Lieutenant Colonel Faith as commander of the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, for the breakout. Officially Storms was carried as missing in action. Several officers of the 3rd Battalion told of his heroism on December I and believed that he deserved the highest awards for valor and dedication to duty. One of them said that Storms led an attack on the left flank of the vehicular column at the first blown bridge, was wounded, kept on going, and was wounded again. Reportedly he was also burned in the napalm drop. After his second wound, near the first blown bridge, Storms was put in a truck, but he dismounted and tried to help get the convoy moving and keep it going in the passage around Hill 1221. Captain William W. Etchemendy, L Company commander, 3rd Battalion, tells how Storms died at the last roadblock near Hudong-ni: "Although wounded several times, he insisted on walking & did a magnificent job. We finally got him to ride near the last road block after we rode along those railroad tracks. He & I rode in the first truck when we tried to make a run for it & there he was killed."26
Major Miller describes the circumstances under which the motor column made this last effort to pass the enemy roadblock near Hudong-ni. During the slow passage of the trucks over the trestle Miller had remained on the hood of Stamford's jeep. With one hand shot up, the other frozen, and three bullets in one leg, it is a wonder that he was able to cling to the jeep as it made the rough detour. He wrote: "The column ... moved slowly down the winding road ... and over a section of narrow gauge railway trestle to the road again. Jolting over the exposed ties, coupled with wounds and cold, left me, by this time, in pretty bad shape. The column stopped on the road (5377) and I heard someone say there was another road block ahead. During an interminable wait, I checked the five or six soldiers near me and found that those who had weapons (2) had only one or two rounds of ammunition left. No other ammunition was available."27
East of Chosin Page 30