by Robin Hutton
Battle of the Nevada Cities Outpost Vegas Thursday, March 26, 1953
The day started out normally enough for Reckless and her platoon mates. No fire missions were scheduled for her that day. For a month, she’d been working the line around the Nevada Cities. The bitter winter cold was gone, replaced by mild, cool spring conditions in the Korean hills. Except for the occasional shower, the seasonal change was a pleasant one.
Reckless loved this weather. Grass was finally starting to grow in her pasture, so there was plenty to eat. All was good in her world. That would soon change. Before she knew it, Reckless would be smack in the middle of a defining battle of the Korean War.
The day began, “like all the other days while on the line, with a pre-dawn 100-percent alert,” wrote Sergeant William H. Janzen, a platoon guide in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, who was stationed at Outpost Reno. “It was a routine and uneventful day . . . cold weather gear had all been turned in and it felt good to only need a sweater or field jacket.
“There was something ominous in the air, though.” How else, the sergeant wrote, to interpret three straight days of Chinese artillery and mortar fire, “across the front of our outposts, the known trails through the mine fields to the outposts, the Main Line of Resistance and beyond to our main supply routes and known or suspected battalion and company command posts.
“Yet, beyond maintaining our normal state of readiness, there was nothing that would alert us to what was about to befall [us] during the coming night and the next five days.”3
Sergeant George Johannes from Willingboro, New Jersey, was a forward observer (who directs artillery fire) attached to How Company. Johannes and two buddies were about to make the trek up to Outpost Vegas to relieve the forward observer there when they spotted Reckless. “I’m standing there petting her before heading up the line,” Johannes recalled, “and one of the guys with me said jokingly, ‘Hey, Johannes, that’s quite a cow you got there!’ and laughed. I said, ‘Ollie, you’re a farm boy—you should know better.’ We got a good laugh out of it, and the three of us headed on up the line.”4
Marine demolitionist Sergeant Harold Wadley, working with Corporal Allen Kelley and Lieutenant Milton Drummond, set off explosive charges that blew holes in the hillsides of Reno and Vegas. The blasts helped the Marines carve out caves that would be turned into shelters for the wounded. All hell was about to break loose at Outpost Vegas.
Sixty years later, Wadley’s memories of the day remained vivid. “I left to get supplies. Actually, when the (reinforcement squad) came up to the outpost, they forgot half the mail and the best part of our C-rations––these candy bars of pressed jellies of red and black licorice.
“I said, ‘Dad gummit, you guys left all the good stuff.’ Since I wasn’t designated to a specific position, I asked Lieutenant Ken Taft, our [officer in charge] if I could go get them. He agreed and called the [Command Post] on the Main Line of Resistance [saying] that one Marine would be coming in. That’s how I missed it. I told Lieutenant Taft that I would be back as soon as I got loaded.” Wadley had made the run many times, but that night it seemed different. “As I made my way down the trail into the dry creek bed, I could hear low, muffled coughing on both sides of the trail.” Taft had told him no Marine patrols were out that night, which was meant to reassure him that he would not be mistaken for the enemy. But who, then, was coughing?
“When I left the dry wash below the gun gate, I began yelling, ‘Marine coming in!’ The Marines on the A4 [Able Gate] were expecting me. I ran to the [Command Post] to report what I had heard along the trail. There was an air of excited apprehension in the bunker. They already knew––the listening post had reported the same thing. I looked back at Vegas to see it suddenly light up like a Christmas tree! Vegas was covered with smoke from Willie Peter [white phosphorus] rounds and a mosaic of red and white hot shrapnel, mixed with Chinese white and green tracers crisscrossing and striking our red tracers.”5
Sergeant Johannes was helping carry a wounded Marine down from the outpost when things really got hairy. “I had to shoot my way down,” said Johannes. “Halfway down the hill, a gook with a burp gun appeared in the trench about twenty feet in front of me. Five or six rounds of my carbine dropped him very quickly.” Yet sniper fire continued as they made their way down. When he looked back at Vegas, his description echoed that of Wadley. Vegas looked “lit up like a Christmas tree.”6
At 7:00 p.m., simultaneous, surprise attacks began on Vegas, Carson, and Reno. The enemy’s barrage was crashing into the Marines’ lines at an astonishing rate—180 rounds of artillery and mortar shells a minute. The Marines intercepted an enemy radio message: “We are standing by for the signal.”7 Ten minutes later, masses of Communist Chinese soldiers came swarming down from Unggok, Arrowhead, and Hills 25A and 190, hitting all three Marine outposts at once. As one historian described the opening of the battle, “Choreographed with artillery, mortars and machine guns, two full battalions of Chinese troops [3,500 men] attacked a handful of Marines defending three outposts.”8
There were only forty to fifty Marines on each outpost at any given time. The overwhelming numbers confronting them meant that each outpost had to focus on defending itself as opposed to supporting the others. The enemy conducted diversionary attacks against seven other outposts along the five-and-a-half mile front covered by the 1st Division, including Old Baldy, Bunker, Dagmar, Hedy, and Esther just west of the Nevada Cities, and Berlin and East Berlin to the east.
Geer wrote later that “for a period of seventy-two hours,” the battle “reached a bloody crescendo seldom matched in warfare.”9
The Battle of Outpost Vegas
A barrage of fourteen thousand artillery shells assaulted the crest of Vegas. When the shelling began, Latham ran to check on Reckless in her pasture. He found she had taken refuge in her bunker, where she was nervous and sweating. But she was glad to see Latham and rubbed up against him when he checked her over. When darkness fell, flares lit up the sky. Latham had left Reckless grain and water—which she ignored, given the heat of the battle—before he went to get his orders.
Forty minutes into the attack, the Marines at Vegas thought their only hope to hold the position was to use an artillery round fused with “variable time” (VT). When an outpost was overrun, the Marines rushed for cover in caves and trenches and called for VT, which meant artillery shells with proximity fuzes that would explode over the position—a step just short of suicide, but usually effective. The Marines moved into a large cave on the reverse slope of the outpost and waited.
All Communication Lost on Vegas
By this time, ground-based communication with Vegas had been lost because enemy artillery fire destroyed ground telephone wires connecting the outpost to the battalion Command Post. Command tried switching to radio—but had no luck reaching anyone on Vegas. Because of the communications breakdown, it wasn’t clear if the outpost had fallen into enemy hands.
At 10:05 p.m., Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, sent a platoon of forty-two men to find out what was happening on the outpost. But as they approached Reno Block, the troops were hit with mortar fire and looked up to see the enemy atop Vegas.
Even with an extra platoon from Easy Company, the Americans could not advance and had to retreat to the Main Line of Resistance—not knowing the fate of those back on the outpost.
But by midnight, the horrible truth seemed clear enough: all the Marines at Outpost Vegas were likely dead or captured. The first round of the battle had gone to the enemy.
Friday, March 27, 1953
At 2:00 a.m. Colonel Walt regrouped his men, summoning all his battalion commanders, as well as many staff officers, and Lieutenant Pedersen representing his Recoilless Rifle Platoon. He planned a coordinated attack to retake both Reno and Vegas in daylight. The rest of the night was spent evacuating the wounded and dead and supporting the stubborn defense at Outpost Carson.
Through the night, Sergeant Latham and the rest of the RR
platoon listened to the radio for updates. Occasionally, Latham and Coleman broke away to look in on Reckless, who seemed on edge but otherwise all right.
Returning from Command in the early morning hours, Pedersen briefed his men on plans for the counterattack. It was set for 0930 that morning.
Captain John B. Melvin of Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, led his men into the attack. “We had been just pulled back (in reserve) not more than two or three days when the Chinese struck and I had to turn around and come back up,” Melvin recalled, “and when I saw Vegas, I didn’t even recognize her.”10 Reinforcements from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, were brought in to help with the counterattack on Reno and Vegas.
Reckless’s Work Begins before Dawn
Before daylight, Coleman made his way to Reckless’s pasture. Enemy shelling had ceased temporarily—the Chinese were saving ammunition for the pushback they knew was coming—and Reckless had calmed down a bit.
Coleman tried to persuade Reckless to have some barley, but she only nibbled at it. She then tried to return to her bunker but didn’t get the chance. Coleman tied a sack of grain to her pack, along with C-rations for himself, and headed away; Reckless hung back for a moment, but understood it was time to work, and slowly followed Coleman into the darkness.
The trail to the ammunition supply point was not an easy one. Coleman could feel himself sweating under his flak jacket. They had to cross a steep hill, and at the top of the ridge, before they made the descent down the other side, they stopped for a moment, giving Coleman the chance to better secure the lead rope to Reckless’s pack. But it was Coleman who had trouble going downhill. As he started, the PFC slipped and skidded his way down, tearing his pants and cutting his knee on a rock. Getting up, he could hear Reckless sliding down the hill in front of him, braking on all four legs until she safely reached the bottom. They found Sergeant Latham waiting for them.
Latham laced the eight canisters to Reckless’s pack to see how she would handle the load. “She packed three each side, and two on top,” recalled Wadley. “That’s 192 pounds she would have to carry up and down the steep terrain.”11
Latham gave Reckless a slap on her backside for encouragement, then sent her out. Reckless charged the hill, Latham and Coleman following close behind. The load was heavy, but she didn’t falter.
“I took her up near the guns,” Latham said, “checked the pack-straps to make sure the ammo would ride securely and pointed her in the direction of the gun. From then on she worked like a charm.”12
Able to make better time on her four legs, she did not wait for Latham and Coleman, but walked ahead on her own, bound for Lisenby’s firing sites on Hill 120. But that hill was a steep, challenging climb, especially for a horse laden with such a heavy payload.
Reckless instantly knew what she had to do. She took off in a trot, then broke into a gallop. As she tackled the hill, the canisters bounced perilously; with all that extra weight strapped to her pack, Latham feared the bindings would give way. Reckless clambered up the abrupt forty-five-degree incline, struggling to maintain her balance and fight gravity, but she made it to the top of the ridge and then navigated her way along 250 feet of twisting trail to get to the gun sites. Nothing was going to stop her.
“To know she ran up the steep slope fully loaded, with the load and saddle bouncing on her back,” Wadley said, his air of wonder undimmed by the six intervening decades, “that’s the biggest no-no there is in packing. It’s a wonder that horse didn’t have a galled back or worse. Reckless had to be one of the smartest, most trusting horses on the planet.”13 (A horse’s “galled back” is soreness from rubbing or severe chafing.)
The Main Line of Resistance was located directly below Lisenby’s guns atop Hill 120. On the far side of the line: 1,200 feet of deadly mine fields in the rice paddies leading to the enemy hills. The line was extremely curvy, and Vegas and Reno were southeast of the guns. Lisenby’s guns could fire into enemy positions on Hills 190, 150 (25A), and 153.
The Firing Begins
Daylight approached, still without signs of enemy activity atop Vegas as Pedersen squinted through binoculars, searching for targets. The tanks moved into position behind the ridgeline and began firing. Pedersen waited for orders to cover the advancing Marines with smoke. He received them in the form of friendly fire—144 rockets sailing overhead, bound for enemy-controlled Hill 190. “At the sound of them, Marines all along the line looked northward. On the forward slopes of Hill 190, there was the clustered twinkle of dozens of orange lights—and then the lights were lost in the Bikini blossom of yellow smoke and dust. Long seconds later came the roar of thunder.”14
At long last, the battle had begun.
Just as the guns began firing, Reckless delivered her load of ammunition. At first, the gunners had a small stash of ammunition to get the attack started. Five rounds were fired from one site, with the gun quickly picked up and moved to another position before enemy incoming could target them.
Reckless’s travels varied that day. The farthest hike to a firing site was 700 yards; the nearest run was 550 yards from the ammunition supply point. She was covering a round-trip to the farthest site in twenty minutes; the closer location was a twelve-minute trip. Some of the men were also hauling rounds—three shells each—and the terrain quickly took its toll on them. Reckless, meantime, was making two trips for every one of theirs, carrying eight rounds at a time.
At 11:00 a.m. the decision was made to abort the retaking of Reno, at least for the time being, so all efforts could be focused on Vegas. Within twenty minutes, Vegas and the surrounding areas were blanketed with smoke as Captain Melvin’s Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, launched an attack on Vegas. Within an hour, the first platoon of forty-two had been reduced to just nine Marines. Yet they worked their way valiantly toward Vegas.
Pedersen kept looking for enemy gun and mortar positions where he could direct his guns. (Recoilless rifles and tanks were the only weapons whose gunners could actually see their targets without relying on forward observers to direct them, unlike the artillery and heavy mortars. Pedersen could line up his guns and fire directly in front of the troops.) The targets were plentiful and when the backlog of RR rounds dwindled, the gun crew simply began loading the shells right off Reckless’s pack. Pedersen moved the gun sites forward to help the advancing Marines, which meant a longer haul for Reckless. These positions also exposed Reckless and the two-legged shell carriers to the enemy, who could fire on them from outposts Detroit and Frisco.
At one point, Pedersen faced a massive Chinese charge that didn’t give him time to fire and move. He had to keep the gun at the site even though they were now easily targeted by the enemy. But by holding his ground and his unit’s quick and precise firing, he helped prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching Vegas.
Reckless maintained her charging starts up the hill, pausing only briefly at the ridgeline to catch her breath before moving on again. She was kept in near constant motion to keep the men supplied with shells. “It’s difficult to describe the elation and the boost in morale that little white-faced mare gave Marines as she outfoxed the enemy bringing vitally needed ammunition up the mountain,” said Sergeant Major James E. Bobbitt.15
On Reckless’s twenty-first ammo delivery, the team was unloading her pack in a shallow bunker when three enemy mortars blasted around them. The mortars’ burning white phosphorous engulfed Reckless and the men as they all dived for cover. Latham yanked off his flak jacket and threw it over her eyes, then stroked her neck to help settle her and make sure she didn’t bolt away. Soon Reckless was fine, and when he gave her a slap on the backside, she ran out of the shallow trench.16
During the battle, “as we were catching all kinds of hell,” Sergeant Chuck Batherson periodically tracked Reckless through his binoculars. “She was getting hailed all over the place and she was jumping all around,” he remembered.17 She never flagged in keeping up her deliveries.
“Incoming fire,” describe
d Lieutenant J. C. McCamic, “was like a tremendous rain storm with each drop of rain being a shell.”18
“The battle was indescribable,” Harold Wadley noted. “It was horrific. I still don’t know how that mare lived through it.”19
“The Image of That Small Struggling Horse Was Unbelievable”
At one point, on the way back to the ASP, Latham found a protected area, pulled off Reckless’s packsaddle, and gave her food and water. As she ate, Latham gave her a thorough rubdown, paying special attention to her legs and hooves. After a thirty-minute rest, he strapped the packsaddle on her back, and she returned to the fight without a fuss.
Reckless continued the heroic eight-round ammo deliveries all day, seemingly undaunted by the deafening noise and blinding smoke of battle. “The roar and crack of the 90 mm tank rounds hammering Reno and Vegas was numbing,” recalled Wadley. “The rush of air that our 4.5-inch rocket ripples made passing overhead sounded like wild birds of vengeance. . . . I looked through the flickering light at the hillside beyond and could hardly believe my eyes. In all that intense fire, in the middle of that chaos, the image of that small, struggling horse—putting everything she had into it, struggling up that ridge loaded with 75 mm rounds . . . —it was unbelievable.”20
Sometimes Reckless made the trip with Coleman, sometimes with other Marines, but she was so intuitive that most of the time she went solo; they would just load her up and send her on her way, knowing she’d make it on her own. “How in the world she managed to climb that slope,” Wadley continued, “with all the incoming turning the earth to powder all around her, is beyond me.
“I was raised on horseback, working cattle and horses in Oklahoma, and know that the best of our horses could not, or would not, attempt to do what this little mare was doing. And by herself! I thought surely there was a Marine leading her, but in the flare light all I could see was her alone. She struggled along with her head and neck stretched out to help balance her load of 75 mm rounds like she knew where she was going. Indeed she knew.”21