History Pgs.102-141
10/9/06
5:43 PM
Page 108
THE MARINES
On August 15, with the hole at Chindong-ni plugged, General Craig consolidated his brigade and quickly packed them aboard troop trains for the haul up to Miryang. On the morning of August 17, the Leathernecks went into action against “the Naktong Bulge,” fighting alongside the 9th Infantry, their old comrades-in-arms from Samar and the Boxer Rebellion. Forcibly squeezing the 4th NKPA Division out of the Naktong Bulge … cost the Marine Brigade 350 casualties, but the tide had decidedly turned. The Marine Brigade inflicted 4,000 casualties on the 4th NKPA Division and captured thirty-four major artillery pieces. The threat to Pusan, for now, eased. Back in Washington, General Cates struggled to fulfill Lemuel Shepherd’s optimistic promise of a full Marine division to MacArthur by September. President Truman, a fast learner, helped all the services in their struggles to expand for the crisis by calling up the reserves. Cates gutted Camp Lejeune to get the last of the current Fleet Marine Force into the 1st Marine Division. In Camp Lejeune, Colonel Homer Litzenberg attempted to patch together the 7th Marines. The raw and rambunctious 1st Marines sailed under Chesty Puller on August 15, the same day the Marine Brigade began its hasty redeployment north to the Naktong Bulge.
In the first week of September, the NKPA launched a 98,000-man offensive against the Pusan Perimeter in a final effort to close the port to Allied reinforcements. Back to the Bulge came the “Fire Brigade,” this time operating under the 2d Infantry Division, their old World War I outfit. Operating in a driving rain to zero the American air power, the T-34s took the measure of a couple of Marine Pershings before the combination of antitank infantry weapons and tank guns blew them apart. The Marines suffered 250 casualties in the fighting of September 3-5, but the NKPA offensive sputtered to a halt. Pusan enjoyed a final reprieve. In exactly one month of fighting, the Marine Brigade had launched four major counterattacks, sustained 900 casualties, and inflicted more than 10,000 casualties on the enemy. Not a single Marine had been captured. Marine aviators had flown nearly a thousand close air support missions, mostly controlled by Tactical Air Control Parties deployed with the infantry. Colonel Ray Murray’s 5th Marines caught up with Puller’s regiment to form the nucleus of the bare-bones 1st Marine Division just in time for MacArthur’s master stroke at Inchon. The Marines were going back into the amphibious assault business.
The Great End Run (Inchon, 1950) Oddly, the landing at Inchon was so risky
time to train and rehearse for the complicated landing. And it meant that the 5th Marines, fully engaged in urgent combat in the Pusan Perimeter, would have precious little time to catch their breath before leaping into even more desperate fighting. “We’ll be ready,” Smith promised MacArthur. First was the island of Wolmi-do, jutting out into the harbor of Inchon as an ideal combat outpost for NKPA defenders. No landing could be undertaken against Inchon without first overwhelming Wolmi-do, and because of the drastic tides, this meant a unique and risky division of forces. Smith recognized that Inchon had no beaches per se, just miles of seawalls along an industrial waterfront. Scaling ladders would help get the troops ashore from their assault craft, but Smith knew the bigger problem would be the convergence of two of the most difficult military operations in the book – an opposed amphibious assault, immediately followed by heavy street fighting in a major city. Preliminary bombardment of Inchon began a healthy five days before the landing. The Marines did what they should have done at first on Peleliu’s deadly Umurbrogol Mountain: They employed Marine Corsairs to drop
that only General Douglas MacArthur and the Marines believed it would work – mere voices in the wilderness against the institutional wisdom of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other naysayers. The approach to Inchon from the Yellow Sea was bad enough, requiring a dozen miles of precision navigation through the narrow Flying Fish Channel. Vast mudflats ruled the shoals and shallows of the port itself. But it was Inchon’s tides that proved so daunting to the U.S. Marine landing force. Both port and channel were wildly affected by spectacular tidal ranges, up to thirty-two feet in height, among the highest in the world. Indeed, deep-draft warships could expect to attempt that passage only during three days in any month. Because of the narrow tidal window, D-Day at Inchon had to go on September 15. MacArthur would not wait another month, and [Major General Oliver] Smith [Commander of the 1st Marine Division] fully agreed. But this meant that one of Smith’s three regimental combat teams, the brand-new 7th Marines, would not arrive in time. It also meant that Colonel Chesty Puller’s newly formed and freshly arrived 1st Marines would have no
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