The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

by David Halberstam

  Well, he had done it all by himself. He had chosen this place, had volunteered to go to Korea, and worse had pushed to be with the frontline troops, thereby violating the most basic law of the Army, which was never to volunteer for anything. Truth be told, he had not merely volunteered, but had systematically pressured the Army to give him his own rifle platoon. He had forced the Army to pluck him from the job it greatly preferred for him—as an instructor back at Fort Benning, Georgia, training other young men to go to Korea—and to send him all the way here instead. Now, ten days after that first jarring view of the carnage of battle at Twin Tunnels, he was at Chipyongni, waiting patiently in his foxhole on the south side of the perimeter, guarding the sector that would turn out to be the most vulnerable part of Paul Freeman’s regimental defense.

  McGee was a country boy from rural North Carolina, and he had wanted to serve his country for a long time. After the Marines turned him down, he had joined the Army and waited patiently in England to cross the Channel for his chance at battle. He was not in on D-day or anything else that mattered in the subsequent weeks. He envied those who, to his way of thinking, were luckier. Instead his unit, the Sixty-sixth, or Black Panther Division, was held in reserve. Then, during the Battle of the Bulge, it had been chosen to go in with the Third Army and reinforce the embattled troops near Bastogne, and McGee had been pleased. But during the Channel crossing, a German U-boat hit a transport carrying one of the division’s other regiments, and 802 men went down with the ship. Because of that, they had pulled McGee’s division and regiment back and finally sent it to another area, near St. Nazarre, where its job was to keep German units guarding sub bases bottled up. That had seemed more like police work than combat, and when the war was over, McGee wondered if he would ever get his chance. He was too young to realize that, for those eager enough, there was always going to be enough war to go around.

  McGee had returned to North Carolina, and stayed out of the service for about a year and a half before joining the reserves. He and his older brother Tom, with whom he was very close, were running a small grocery store and filling station in the Belmont area, and there was one Army recruiting sergeant whom they liked and who had them marked down as possible enlistees. The McGee filling station and store was not a stunning financial success. People were moving from the country to the city and suburbs, and the store was already beginning to run on credit. So the sergeant kept coming by and selling them the virtues of the Army in a time of peace—the chance to see the world, without the likelihood of ever having to fight for their country. Finally the McGee brothers, Paul and Tom, agreed to re-up if they could choose their area, pick their unit, and serve together. The sergeant said that would be just fine. They picked the Far East because they had already been to Europe, and Asia sounded much more exotic. They got what they wanted—Japan and the Seventh Infantry Division, Paul in Able Company, Tom in Baker Company of the Seventeenth Regiment. Paul McGee was surprised by how much he liked the Japanese people, who were friendly, and Japanese women, who were even friendlier in those days, because when he had been fighting in Europe he had not hated the Germans, but for some reason he did not understand at the time he had hated the Japanese.

  Japan had turned out to be good duty. The only thing that had bothered McGee was the terrible shape the Army was in. He remembered one cold, rainy day when he was giving a training lesson on how to set up a combat outpost. General Walton Walker came by, complimented him on the job he was doing, and told the assembled GIs to pay attention to this fine young soldier who knew something about warfare, because sooner or later they were going to be in a war. Then Walker asked McGee if he wanted to be an officer. That was an interesting question because McGee was already an officer in the Army reserve, but as an active soldier he was only a sergeant with two rockers. He had been wary of becoming a regular Army officer because in his mind they were mostly West Point men, or college graduates anyway, and he did not think that a country boy with a shaky tenth-grade education would stack up well against them. Then Walker asked if McGee would be interested in Officer Candidate School (OCS), and that seemed like a better idea. He said yes, but only if his brother Tom could come along. Walker thought it could be done. So both McGees filled out their papers, but it turned out you had to be at least a sergeant for OCS, and Tom McGee was a mere corporal. So only Paul McGee ended up at OCS after all.

  When the Korean War started, Paul, back in the States, could not wait to get over there. He immediately volunteered to go, but the Army, ever the contrarian force, held him at Fort Benning, while his brother, with the Seventh Division, was cut off near the Chosin Reservoir in late November. That made him want to go more than ever; he was sure Tom needed him, even after he was one of the lucky ones who made it back from the Chosin. In time the Army decided that it did need Paul in Korea, and that he was an officer, not an enlisted man, and since platoon leaders were in great demand, they shipped him out. He was assigned to the Second Division and managed to con people into putting him in the Twenty-third Regiment because it was closest to Tom’s Seventeenth Regiment in the Seventh Division, which was also part of Tenth Corps. He had gotten up to the Twenty-third Regiment in January and was immediately sent to the Second Battalion. The people at Battalion were so happy to see him that they offered him the heavy-weapons platoon, filled as it was with mortars and machine guns. Instead he asked for a rifle platoon in George Company because that was the unit nearest to his brother’s regiment.

  The people at the Second Battalion headquarters thought he was a lunatic. “McGee, you’re crazier than hell,” one of the officers said. “We’re losing platoon leaders in our rifle companies every day. But the heavy weapons platoon—that’s another thing. That’s the best deal we’ve got. You’re surrounded by all that firepower, and they’re about three or four hundred feet back from the front line where the other troops are.” No, McGee replied, he knew all that, but he wanted to be up on the line, wanted to command nothing but men who really wanted to fight under him, and he wanted to be as close as he could to the Seventeenth Regiment. That first night he got word to his brother, and Tom drove right over in a jeep to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?” Tom McGee asked. “I came out here to get you out of this goddamn place,” Paul McGee said. “Boy,” answered Tom, “you’re really going to be sorry. People are getting killed here every day—you should have stayed back home.” So it was that Paul McGee had taken command of the Third Platoon of George Company, whose perimeter at Chipyongni was approximately five hundred yards long—the equivalent of five football fields.

  Waiting up there on the line, he knew the time was coming close when the Chinese were going to hit. He had been on several patrols, and enemy activity had increased dramatically every day, while the range of the patrols had shortened accordingly. He had also heard through the rumor mill that any attempt to withdraw from the village had been rejected. That guaranteed that they were going to stay and fight. He was finally going to get his chance. On February 13, the word was that the Chinese were likely to come that night.

  George Company’s position was hardly ideal. It jutted farther out than the rest of the defensive positions and lacked the elevation of most of the other UN defensive points. It faced Hill 397, and they knew there were Chinese there. In fact, it was as if there were a ridge that emerged from the George Company position and virtually connected it with Hill 397, almost, as Ken Hamburger noted, like a finger extending from their position to the Chinese position. That gave the Chinese a natural approach to McGee’s platoon. As he waited for the battle to start, Paul McGee had no idea that his sector would prove to be the most bitterly contested in the entire battle, or that his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Edwards, would in his after-action reports name this small part of the larger perimeter McGee Hill.

  McGee had a total of forty-six men in his platoon. They seemed like good men, but he had no way of really knowing, because he had never fought with them before. He had made sure their foxho
les were adequately deep—four feet at least. His own was just fine, four feet wide, six feet long, and about six feet deep, with a firing step that allowed him to duck when he wanted to, and fire back when he was ready. But, regrettably he thought, theirs was an oddly barren hill. There was no way to create any kind of cover around their foxholes—no logs, no debris of any sort. That made it possible for attacking troops to lob grenades in. Worse yet, although a good deal of barbed wire had gone up around the greater Twenty-third perimeter, they had run out of it before reaching George Company. There had been just enough to place a double apron in front of George’s First Platoon, but none in front of McGee’s position. At that moment, whatever Division and Corps could spare, whether it was airpower or barbed wire, went to Wonju.

  If McGee was unhappy about this critical shortfall, he accepted it as well. That was the deal and soldiers were meant to accept the deal. If it had been a perfect battle in a perfect world, they would have had enough of everything, not just barbed wire, but logs to protect the foxholes, and enough mines, and a hell of a lot better communications. But it was not a perfect battle in a perfect world—it was going to be a difficult battle in a godforsaken place—most battles were. Some of the regiment’s engineers came and helped create two fougasse bombs, taking fifty-five-gallon drums, filling them with a mixture of napalm and oil, in addition to what they hoped was a reliable ignition system, all in a lethal homemade mine, which they then buried. It was a potentially devastating weapon; each fougasse might take a lot of Chinese with it, but as a one-time weapon it was no substitute for barbed wire. As it happened, neither fougasse went off—perhaps the engineers had not done the ignition system right, McGee thought. They also created some other homemade mines, taking some hand grenades, pulling their pins, but keeping the ignition suppressed inside a ration can and running lines to them so that when the lines were jerked, the grenades would explode.

  The Chinese hit first, as expected, on the night of the thirteenth. McGee heard the bugles around 10 P.M. Then they started coming—and just kept coming and coming. Some people had said they would come in human waves, but that was not quite right, unless you thought of a very small wave, and then a slightly bigger one each time, as if the attack was first a squad, then a platoon, then a company. They were clearly looking for the American positions and marking them, wasting if need be a good many lives in the process. The first night, McGee thought, went quite well. He had ordered his men not to fire on sound, but only when they actually saw the enemy, in order to conserve ammunition. When dawn came, there were stacks of Chinese bodies sprawled around the position, but no one had penetrated it, and McGee had lost no men.

  22. BATTLE OF CHIPYONGNI, FEBRUARY 13–14, 1951

  The Chinese had, however, discovered a blind or dead spot right in the center of his position. It was a dry creek bed, about four feet deep, almost like a giant ditch, that seemed to come directly from Hill 397 and empty out right on top of the George Company position. It was quite literally a natural channel into the George Company sector and allowed the Chinese very good cover right up to the foot of McGee’s small hill. The Chinese could hardly have done better, if months earlier, knowing that there might be a battle here, they had carved the channel out themselves. McGee knew it was a dangerous avenue into his position, but there was not much he could do about it. With dawn just arriving on the morning of the fourteenth, he noticed some Chinese soldiers near the mouth of the creek bed, and told Bill Kluttz, his platoon sergeant, to fire his rocket launcher at the spot. Kluttz hit a tree, which gave him an air burst illuminating about forty Chinese soldiers, who rose up out of the cover of the trees and started running back across the flat land right in front of the American position; the Americans opened up with their machine guns and caught most of them in the open field. Now they knew for sure that the Chinese were going to keep on using the creek bed for protection.

  COLONEL PAUL FREEMAN thought the first night of the battle had gone reasonably well. All positions had held and his casualties were surprisingly low. He knew he did not entirely control the course of the battle—the Chinese would do that, depending on how many men they were willing to feed into the fight. He worried, though, about his supply of ammunition. There were so many attackers that, no matter how much his men had, it probably was not going to be enough. The Air Force was trying to air-drop more, but most of it was falling outside the perimeter. Still, morale was high, which was a critically important factor in any siege. It was almost as if his men were eager to be here, and anxious to be given a chance to make up for Kunuri.

  Freeman kept busy during the night moving around the perimeter, checking in with his different subordinate commanders. If there was a place of vulnerability, it was to the south and southwest, where George Company and the French battalion were potential targets. But he had already spoken to Jim Edwards, the commander of the Second Battalion, which included George Company, about moving reserve units up to reinforce those positions. Then, at daybreak of the fourteenth, a Chinese 120mm mortar round landed right next to Freeman’s tent. The regiment’s intelligence officer, Major Harold Shoemaker, was grievously wounded and died a few hours later; several other officers, including Freeman, were wounded less severely. He took a small slice of shrapnel in his left calf, which did not seem serious: Freeman had been lying down on his cot when it happened, and had just reversed his position so that his feet were where his head had been. He and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Meszar, his good friend and the regimental executive officer, later joked about what might have happened if he had not reversed his position on the cot. It was, they decided, the kind of luck you needed in battle. While the wound itself did not seem that bad, there might have been a break in the lower leg that would have to be dealt with later. Captain Robert Hall, the regimental surgeon, quickly dressed the wound, gave Freeman two aspirin, and told him to get in touch if he had any problems.

  23. MCGEE HILL, FEBRUARY 13–15, 1951

  Freeman continued to visit forward positions, often virtually alone, with a limp. But the wound was what Ned Almond had been waiting for, and using it as his excuse, he moved immediately to relieve Freeman of his command in the middle of a battle. He had wanted to put one of his own boys in charge of the Twenty-third for some time. A few days earlier, he had made his first try. Irritated because he thought Freeman was not forcing his men to use dry socks to prevent trench foot and frostbite, he sent Lieutenant Colonel John Chiles, his operations officer, to Ruffner to tell him to relieve Freeman. That was the last thing Ruffner wanted to do with a serious battle looming. He looked at Chiles and replied, “Do you know what? My radio just went out of whack. I have no way in the world of reaching Paul Freeman.” That provided only a brief stay of execution.

  The senior officers in the Twenty-third were furious that Almond would use a marginal wound as an excuse to change commanders in the middle of a battle that was going well, and was about to increase in intensity. To substitute for a much admired officer someone no one knew and who would always be considered part of a coup was appalling, they thought. Dr. Hall had received a call from Colonel Gerry Epley, division chief of staff, almost as soon as word of the wound had reached higher headquarters.

  “How serious is the wound?” Epley asked.

  “It’s not that serious,” Hall answered. “Maybe under normal conditions you might evacuate him for treatment. But these aren’t normal conditions.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, this is a tough place and this is a very tough battle and he’s the one man holding the regiment together. We’re surrounded, we’re going to be short of ammo. The men can see that some of the ammo drops are falling short, but they absolutely believe in Freeman, and they believe that he’ll get them out of here. The Twenty-third Regiment believes in itself because he’s led them before. Without him I think it’s a different regiment. Evacuating him would be unnecessary, unwanted, and undesirable.”

  Hall instantly knew he had been too candid. Epley’s
voice changed. He was furious, Hall realized: how dare a surgeon tell him what to do on a military matter. “Don’t you dare to presume to tell me about tactical matters! We don’t need any of that from you. I asked you for a medical judgment. I just want to know how deep the wound is. That’s all the answer I need from you.”

  But Hall thought he would give it one more shot. He was not, after all, a kid, and he had no time for the politics of Division or Corps headquarters now. He had been a combat surgeon in World War II, had fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and had gone into civilian practice for a time. When Korea began, he had asked to go back on active duty and volunteered specifically for the Second Division after it had been hit at Kunuri, because he had lost some close friends up there. In all of this he had been motivated by old-fashioned loyalties. Now, he felt, those same loyalties gave him the right to speak candidly. Besides, who knew more about the mood of the regiment than a doctor, whom soldiers often told things they would never tell other officers. This regiment, he insisted to Epley, more than most, believes in its commander, and takes much of its strength and identity from his presence and leadership. It would be extremely dangerous for regimental morale if he were pulled out. Epley signed off angrily, and Hall knew they were going to pull Freeman anyway.

  Freeman was enraged. This was his battle and his regiment, and he did not want to leave. There was nothing worse in terms of unofficial Army codes than to be relieved of command in the middle of a battle. “I brought them in,” he told headquarters during one call, “and I’ll bring them out.” He tried talking Ruffner out of it, but in a fight between Almond and Freeman, Ruffner was powerless. Freeman finally turned the matter over to George Stewart, the one man at Division whom he trusted. Freeman told Stewart he was not going to give up his command or be evacuated. Being relieved like this was the worst disgrace that could befall a commander, a career ender. Stewart, who knew Freeman was at least partially right, listened sympathetically. No one, he said, was going to question his performance. It was not going to damage his career, but if he did not leave as ordered there could be far more serious consequences. Finally, Freeman realized he had no choice. In the military, after all, you could not challenge orders.