History Pgs.102-141
10/9/06
5:46 PM
Page 120
THE MARINES
the snow at the road from Koto-ri and surprised them painfully. The Chinese recognized the hill was their last best chance to stop and slaughter the 1st Marine Division, and they counterattacked furiously throughout a long, stormy, confusing night. The storm cleared enough for the Corsairs to return to action. Never had any Marines been better served by their “airdale” brothers. Even the most earthbound rifleman knew how great a risk these pilots ran every time they swirled in low to deliver their ordnance right on the nose. Chinese machine gunners were proficient against both two-legged and low-flying targets. In such extreme cold a parachute was little comfort to a stricken pilot. Hypothermic death would be swift, whether the chute came down in the mountains or drifted out to sea.
The Chinese could not hold Funchilin Pass. The 1st Marine Division poured through, pausing to swap goodnatured insults with the 1st Marines who had swept away the final Chinese strong point on Hill 1081. The division, reunited at last, seemed absolutely invincible. The Chinese began to melt away, leaving the Marines a clear path back to the port at Hungnam. Their oncepromising campaign against the single American division had become an unmitigated disaster. The PLA 9th Army Group sustained some 37,000 casualties, including 25,000 deaths to battle and extreme cold. Most of the seven divisions that attacked the Marines were so shotup they simply disappeared from the rolls of the PLA. The Marines suffered 4,400 casualties of their own in the Chosin campaign, including 730 killed, plus thousands and thousands of frostbite cases. But, God, what a sight the survivors made striding into Hungnam on December 12!
The Seesaw War (Korea, 1951-1953)
Marine on the ground calling for help from his buddies in the Wing lapsed overnight from an average of fifteen minutes to eighty minutes – a virtual lifetime in close combat. Many times there was no response at all. The “JOC” was after bigger, more strategic targets. This came as an unpleasant shock as the Marines returned to action. Operation Killer began on February 21, 1951. The 1st Marine Division jumped off from Wonju. Advancing through rocky heights and narrow valleys, the Marines entered Hoengsong after three days of hard fighting. Operation Ripper, aimed at the recapture of Seoul and restoring the 38th parallel, began on March 7. The Marines, spared from another urban brawl in gutted Seoul, battled across broken country well east of the capital, their advance slowed as much by drenching spring rains as by enemy fire. After a week, UN forces captured Seoul for the second time in six months. Two weeks later the Eighth Army recrossed the 38th Parallel in force. Seesaw war … Another North Korean reservoir, the Hwachon, loomed ahead for the Marines. Beyond it, the Chinese were busily fortifying a mountain-flanked region that protected the heart of their supply and communications network. The Marines called it “The Iron Triangle.” Oliver Smith knew the Chinese would not abandon this territory. When he recognized signs that the Chinese were trying to lure him into another trap, he deliberately
The stirring records achieved by the Marines in Korea the first five months of that miserable war – the mobile “Fire Brigade” in the Pusan Perimeter, Inchon’s bold landing, the forcible seizure of Seoul, the fighting breakout from the Reservoir – represented the Corps at its high-maneuver, unrestricted best. Then the war changed, grew conservative. The Marines shouldered into line with the other land divisions, shackled and bound like Gulliver, engaging in pointless but deadly skirmishes against the North Koreans and Chinese. Public opinions polls after the ignominious rout of most of the United Nations forces by the border-crossing Chinese revealed that Americans had turned sharply against the joint intervention. Two thirds of those polled said that the nation’s military should get out of Korea. The 1st Marine Division returned to Pusan following the Chosin breakout to recuperate, treat its collective frostbite, and absorb replacements. When President Truman subsequently sacked General Douglas MacArthur for blatant disobedience, the Marines also lost their strongest (if late-blooming) advocate in the Far East. With MacArthur’s departure went his unofficial, long-ago promise to General Lemuel Shepherd that he would never separate his Marines from the “flying artillery” of their vaunted close air support, provided in Korea by the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. Now the Fifth Air Force consolidated all air assets in Korea. All requests for air support had to go through the snooty Joint Operations Center. Response time for the
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