East of Chosin

by Roy Edgar Appleman

  This X Corps order led General Barr to discuss the matter with General Smith at Hagaru-ri on November 3o and to tell him that he would recall Hodes from the Chosin area to avoid any possible embarrassment for all concerned. It was also probably one of the reasons General Barr flew by helicopter that morning to Faith's CP at the inlet. Although we do not know any details of that conversation, we can speculate that Barr told Faith of the change in command that might affect him.2

  Colonel Bowser, the ist Marine Division G-3, told S. L. A. Marshall in an interview that X Corps sent the order recalling Hodes to the coast but did not state when it occurred-or at least it is not recorded in Marshall's transcript of the interview, nor is it recorded in any of the official records I have seen. Major William R. Lynch, Hodes's G-3 aide at Hagaruri, took Hodes to the airstrip on the morning of December i to meet an L-5 plane that General Barr had sent to pick him up. But Hodes returned to Hagaru-ri shortly after daylight on December 2. According to Lynch, Hodes returned to Hamhung again sometime after noon the same day.

  Copies of all orders from the 1st Marine Division during the night of December 1-2 relating to a relief force for Task Force Faith were sent to Lt. Col. Berry K. Anderson, the senior army officer at Hagaru-ri from the 31st RCT and de facto unit commander of all 31st Infantry troops that had arrived at Hagaru-ri. As Marshall states in his interview notes, Colonel Bowser gave him the impression that "an attempt was made, however, by a 7th Div CP `Task Force' under Lt. Col. Anderson to feel out the situation on to the north and was promptly met by CCF fire. Accordingly, Hodes was advised that 7th Div's elements would have to get out as best they could and he wrote the order so instructing them. The order was written by Hodes, but issued by Gen. Smith."3 Either Bowser was wrong or Marshall misunderstood what Bowser said about "a 7th Div CP `Task Force' under Lt. Col. Anderson" being sent out. The order referred to by Bowser as having been written by Hodes but issued by General Smith was the order that Task Force Faith received about 3:00 P.M. on December I after the task force had already been in its breakout movement for two hours.

  There are two kinds of evidence bearing on the question of whether a rescue attempt was made from Hagaru-ri on the morning of December 2: (1) documentary evidence and (2) testimony of persons who would have been participants. Let us examine the documentary evidence first. A ist Marine Division handwritten order, listed in the G-3 Journal as Serial No. 18, December i, issued at noon to Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, reads:

  For reasons unknown, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson wanted only two platoons of infantry-type troops to accompany the tanks, rather than the company-size force that the Ist Marine Division thought necessary. Since there was a difference of opinion on this point, the order said that a decision on it, and also on other arrangements, would be made the next day, December 2. I could find no further action by the ist Marine Division on this tentative order on December I or 2 and must conclude that it was never completed in final form.

  The next relevant message in the ist Marine Division G-3 Journal is one dated December 1, 2115 (9:15 P.M.), Serial No. 37. It is a memorandum from Major Lynch reporting a telephone conversation with General Hodes, who was at the chief of staff's office, X Corps, at Hamhung. Lynch delivered this message to Lt. Col. J. L. Winecoff, assistant G-3, 1st Marine Division. This handwritten message reads in its entirety:

  012115

  Notes for G-3

  The following information was given to Gen. Hodes in the C/S Office at X Corps.

  i. Details of arrival of two groups from 7th Div under your comd.

  2. That every arrangement possible is being made to Hosp - Feed - House this group.

  3. That lookout is being maintained for the remainder of the 31st RCT including motor column.

  4. That a complete issue of clothing and bed-sacks should reach here on 1st C-47 to re-equip this group. (Total Soo estimate) Gen H will arrange.

  Gen. Hodes requested that you consider sending out an Armored-Inf Force at Day-light 2 Dec to intercept this Motor Clm of the 31st Inf. (Use our TKs) First locate the column by air.

  Lynch

  Maj. USAS

  [initialed by three sets of illegible signatures, Marine personnel]

  In the ist Marine Division G-3 Journal and Message files for the period 4:00 A.M., December 2, only one entry, Serial No. 21, at 12:50 P.M., December 2, relates clearly to Task Force Faith. It states: "11th Marine Report of en positions firing on Army trps coming from north." Serial No. 34, at 16io (4:10 P.M.), December 2, reads: "iith Mar-air strike just led [word seems inappropriate] in vic Army convoy to the North."6 A truck driver in the convoy said that after the Chinese left the looted convoy Marine Corsairs strafed it.'

  Now let us examine the personal testimony of those who would have been participants in a rescue effort. We know that Hodes left Hagaru-ri sometime during the morning of December i and was at Hamhung at 9:15 P.M. that night. After Lynch's report to him from Hagaru-ri by radio telephone at the X Corps Headquarters on the great number of 31st RCT soldiers arriving at Hagaru-ri in the early part of the night and their condition, Hodes must have thought that he should return as soon as possible to help the victims of the developing catastrophe. Most of the men would have to be reequipped to help fight the rest of the way to the coast. He was at Hagaru-ri shortly after daylight on December 2, according to the testimony of several reliable witnesses. Major Lynch confirms that Hodes was there on the morning of December 2. Lynch believes that Hodes took off from Hamhung in a light plane as soon as it was light enough to fly on the morning of December 2 and was at Hagaru-ri soon after daylight.

  Lynch remarks on visiting, with General Hodes, the next morning, December 2, the men who had come in overnight: "The morning after I met the officers and men straggling across the ice from units east of Chosin, General Hodes, Anderson and I walked through the area where tents were being erected, officers and men were being counted and assembled in their respective companies, fed, and lost equipment noted."8

  I sent an inquiry to Col. Thomas L. Ridge, USMC, Ret., who in 195o was commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and designated Hagaru-ri defense commander, asking for his knowledge and recollection of whether a relief force left Hagaru-ri on the morning of December 2 to reach Task Force Faith. Ridge replied: "I do not recall that an attack was attempted. There was some discussion which, as I recall, I favored within bounds."'

  According to Lynch, after Hodes arrived back at Hagaru-ri: "I was with Gen H [on] and off for the next two (+) hours, at the end of which time I took him to the airstrip for the last time. He talked with the men as he moved about.... On reflection, Gen H's main interest at that time was simply that this group had a fight ahead of them and they should get organized, weapons ready and be prepared for what then seemed a rough exodus for both Army and Marines."10

  Evidence of Hodes's presence at Hagaru-ri on the morning of December 2 is confirmed by Major Curtis's statement that he and Captain Bigger saw General Hodes at the Hagaru-ri airstrip that morning when they were waiting for a C-47 plane to carry them to a hospital in Japan. Curtis said that Bigger went over to Hodes and spoke to him briefly. Captain Bigger in his own statement on this incident said: "General Hodes was in the perimeter on i Dec [Dec 2] as I met and talked with him prior to my departure 2 Dec by C-47. Hodes was sorely distressed and frustrated.""

  In an interview with General Lynch, I asked him bluntly whether a relief force left Hagaru-ri on the morning of December 2. He answered simply, `No, there was no rescue force from Hagaru-ri that morning."12

  Captain Robert E. Drake, commander of the 31st Tank Company, is another witness. His tanks would have been the ones used in such a rescue force. Drake says that he did not participate, nor did his tanks, in any relief force on December 2.13

  It is evident that General Hodes consulted with General Smith and other members of the ist Marine Division staff during the morning of December 2 on whether a rescue force, made up of Marine infantry and Drake's 31st Tank Company, could or
should attempt to reach the stalled convoy at Hudong-ni. Factors that had to be considered included knowledge that, while Drake's tank company would be used for the armored element, there was no Army infantry to supply the infantry element. The only foot troops that Lieutenant Colonel Anderson had brought with him from Hudong-ni on the afternoon of November 30 were about ioo men from the 57th Field Artillery Service Battery and 34 men from the 31st Infantry Headquarters and Headquarters Company and Service troops (there were 176 officers and men in the 31st Tank Company), according to a count made on December 3. Lynch's note to the 1st Marine Division G-3 Section relaying General Hodes's telephone request on the evening of December 1 implied that the 31st RCT could not supply infantry and that the infantry element of a rescue force would have to be provided by the 1st Marine Division.

  Another factor that entered into the consideration of a rescue mission was the report by night heckler aircraft that Task Force Faith's trucks were burning on the road. After daylight aircraft pilots were able to report the location of the looted and silent convoy.

  All night long survivors of Task Force Faith arrived with their accounts of the 31st RCT dissolution as a fighting force. Their wounds and frozen and frostbitten feet and hands supported their stories. After midnight many of them came from the convoy's final encounter with the last enemy fire block at the site of the convoy's destruction. It must have seemed increasingly clear that a rescue effort, even if it reached the site, could do no more than pick up a few stragglers who had succeeded in hiding from the Chinese and wounded who had been left by the Chinese to die, and possibly to gain further knowledge of the end of the task force and of the dead in the trucks. The evidence available at the Marine Division CP at Hagaru-ri after daylight on December 2 must have convinced the commander that it was too late to rescue the motor convoy. But for many the frustrations ran deep.

  In a review of the evidence, both documentary and personal, only one conclusion is possible: There was no tank-infantry force, or any other kind of rescue force, that left Hagaru-ri to go to the aid of Task Force Faith's motor convoy on December 2 or any subsequent date. Such a force had been considered on December i and that night, but the preliminary Marine order issued at noon on December I to Lieutenant Colonel Anderson of the 31st Infantry was never issued in final form or implemented. What role General Hodes played in the discussions with General Smith and his ist Marine Division staff on the morning of December 2 is unknown. Possibly General Smith and his G-3 staff had already made the decision before Hodes arrived back at Hagaru-ri that the ist Marine Division could not supply an infantry company from its own defense force and, further, that it was too late to rescue the convoy and that in trying to reach the convoy north of Hudong-ni the rescue force might be cut off or be severely mauled by Chinese now known to control high ground on the road from a mile north of the Hagaru-ri defense perimeter. The men who could clarify details of the final decision -General Hodes, General Barr, General Smith, and Colonel Anderson-have been dead for several years.14

  On the morning of December 2, as he flew away from the Chosin Reservoir for the last time, General Hodes must have felt a deep sense of failure and heartache about his efforts to serve his 7th Infantry Division troops and comrades east of Chosin.

  All the equipment and vehicles of two infantry battalions, the 57th Field Artillery Battalion and D Battery (-), 15th AAA AW Battalion, and the forward part of the 31st Regimental Headquarters and Headquarters Company were lost in the actions east of Chosin in the period November 27 to December 2, 1950. Not a single vehicle, artillery piece, mortar, or machine gun of these units was saved; only some small arms carried by individual escaping soldiers were brought out. Sixteen tanks of the 31st Tank Company and the vehicles of the 31st Rear that did not go farther north than Hudong-ni were withdrawn with accompanying troops to Hagaru-ri on November 30.

  The number of troops in the 31st RCT east of Chosin on November 27, 1950, is not known precisely, but estimates range from 2,500 to 3,155. The 1st Marine Division and Major Curtis made the lower estimate. Several officers of the RCT estimated its number at Chosin to be from 2,850 to 3,000 men, while Major Lynch thought that the count was about 3,000.1 I think that the number may have been marginally higher than 3,000.

  Personnel losses in the 31st RCT were heavy in killed, wounded, injured, frozen and frostbitten hands and feet, and captured. All the combat units of the RCT except the 31st Tank Company were combat-ineffective by December i. No attempt has been made to give American or enemy casualties day by day or for any particular phase of the fighting. They simply are not known. Losses for the enemy at any given time would be little more than guesses. One can be sure that Marine fighter planes killed and wounded hundreds and perhaps thousands of the CCF 8oth Division, and ground fire of the RCT elements engaged also produced hundreds of casualties, but no exact numbers can be given.

  Although the CCF Both Division destroyed the 31st RCT as a combateffective force, it itself became virtually combat-ineffective after winning control of the east side of the reservoir. Some parts of the division probably took part in the attacks on Hagaru-ri from the night of November 28 through December 6, and soldiers from it were identified later near Hamhung during the evacuation of X Corps from northeast Korea. On the basis of evidence known, it is my conclusion that the CCF Both Division was the only enemy formation engaged against the 31st RCT.

  Fortunately for the American wounded, the incomplete airstrip at Hagaruri became operational for C-47 aircraft on December I. Thus hundreds of Task Force Faith survivors were flown out on December 2 and every day thereafter through December 5. Evacuation of wounded had become so critical that on December I General Smith authorized a trial landing of a C-47 transport plane on the new airstrip, which was only 40 percent complete. The strip was 5o feet wide and 2,000 feet long, with a 2 percent grade to the north. Earlier, from November 27 to December I, the only wounded who could be evacuated from the Chosin Reservoir area were the critically wounded, who were taken out by helicopters and small planes. These earlier air evacuees numbered 152, mostly Marines from Yudam-ni.

  At 2:30 P.m. on December i the first Far East Air Force C-47 made a bouncing but successful landing on the uncompleted airstrip. Half an hour later its pilot took off with 24 casualties. Thus began the massive air evacuation of wounded from the Chosin Reservoir combat area. Three more C-47 planes came in during the afternoon and left with about 6o more casualties. The last plane in, a Marine 4RD, brought a heavy load of ammunition, collapsed its landing gear on the rough strip, and had to be destroyed. But the way was open for a continuing evacuation of wounded by Air Force C-47 and Marine 4RD planes in the days that followed.

  Only one four-engine plane ever landed at and took off from the Hagaruri airstrip. That was on December I, the first day of the strip's use by transport planes, through a mistake made at Yonpo Airfield, on the coast. A Navy pilot, B. J. Miller, had flown an RSD plane to Yonpo from Japan. He learned about the numerous critically wounded survivors at Hagaru-ri and offered to fly a plane there to help get them out. The operations officer, assuming that Miller had a two-engine plane, gave permission. Normally Miller's plane required a runway 4,000 to 5,000 feet long, but somehow Miller landed the plane at Hagaru-ri, to the astonishment of all. Then he loaded 39 wounded men on the plane and from the extreme end of the runway, and at full throttle, took off, clearing the first ridgeline by only 30 feet.2

  On December 2, 96o casualties were flown out of Hagaru-ri, many of them 31st RCT men. The next day 464 casualties were air-evacuated; on December 4, 1,077; on December 5, 1,580-a total of 4,o81 Marine and Army casualties in four days. The planes landed at Yonpo, and the wounded were delivered to X Corps clearing stations. Marine casualties went to the 1st Marine Division Hospital in Hungnam; Army soldiers went to the Army 121st Evacuation Hospital in Hamhung and to the hospital ship USS Consolation in Hungnam harbor. Wounded requiring 3o days' or more hospitalization were flown from Yonpo to Japan, but some more critically wounded were
evacuated directly from Hagaru-ri to Japan. Major Curtis and Captain Bigger were among the Task Force Faith officers evacuated on December 2, while Captain Stamford left on December 3. From December 2 to 5 more than 1,5oo wounded and frostbitten men of the 7th Division were flown from Hagaru-ri to hospitals in Japan.3

  There is evidence that in the evacuation of 31st RCT soldiers from Hagaruri on December 2 some men, in their exhausted mental and physical condition, feigned wounds, frostbite, injuries, and illnesses beyond their actual severity to obtain evacuation, when they could have continued on duty with their units. This seemed to have happened only during part of one day, December 2. Captain Eugene R. "Bud" Hering, USN, senior medical officer of the ist Marine Division, heard complaints that some men were being evacuated without sufficient reason. He began a close examination of men boarding the planes and weeded out those who were exaggerating their injuries, effectively stopping the practice.

  Captain Hering and his C and E companies of the Marine Medical Battalion had the almost impossible task of treating the hundreds of wounded that poured into Hagaru-ri. His performance and that of the units he commanded were admirable. Within one 48-hour period he treated, processed, and evacuated by air 1,500 Army and i,ooo Marine wounded.4

  After the evacuation of wounded from Hagaru-ri there remained 490 7th Division able-bodied soldiers, including 385 survivors from the 31st RCT. These men were organized into a provisional battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Berry K. Anderson and attached to the 7th Marine Regiment. To the Marines this unit was known as 31/7. It participated in the 1st Marine Division breakout from Hagaru-ri to the coast beginning on December 6.

  The 385 men from east of Chosin, now a part of Anderson's provisional battalion, constituted what was left of the approximately 3,000 men who had been in the RCT on November 27. Adding to the 385 men the 1,500 who were evacuated makes a total of just under 1,900 men, indicating about i,ooo soldiers killed, captured, or left for various reasons in enemy-held territory. It is not known how many men were left along the road or on the hills in the roadblock and fire-block areas who later died of wounds and exposure. Nor are there reliable figures on the large numbers captured by the Chinese or the number of those who died during captivity. In the weather conditions it was inevitable that many wounded soldiers, who also had parts of their bodies frozen or frostbitten, died trying to escape from the battlefield.