History Pgs.102-141
10/9/06
5:48 PM
Page 127
THE MARINES
In the end, Outpost Carson held, though only after a vicious round of close combat with knives and bayonets. Vegas, lost, regained, lost again, was finally and convincingly recaptured on the fourth day. But Reno, closest to the original Chinese and 1,600 yards from the MLR, was lost for good. A tattered American flag fluttered proudly over smoking, reeking Vegas, but Marines began to question the cost. The Marines, no dummies in tactical combat, then abolished their exorbitant system of fortified outposts. As the summer of 1953 bled on, the end of the damned war seemed almost palatably close at hand. Yet the Chinese unleashed a series of sharp attacks against the Jamestown Line in order to influence the final boundary. One of the bloodiest of these occurred against the Marines at terrain features along the MLR known as Boulder City and Hill 119. These were not mere outposts. Loss of these key positions would make the Eighth Army forfeit a huge chunk of territory and part of the Imjin River to the Communists. No Marine wanted to be the last man to die as the peace negotiators waited for the ink to dry on the armistice agreement that hot July, but the Chinese were attacking in enormous waves and the fighting was abruptly as desperate as ever.
The PLA forces suffered 72,000 casualties in carving out substantial pieces along the MLR, but they failed to budge the 1st Marine Division from Boulder City or Hill 119. The successful defense of the positions cost the Marines 1,611 men killed, wounded, or captured. The Korean War lasted three years, one month, two days. During that time fully 60 percent of the Marine Corps saw action, either with the division, the air wing, the offshore islands, or the ships of Task Force 77. Marines losses were substantial – 4,267 killed, 23,744 wounded – more than double the losses of the Marine Brigade in World War I. Forty-two Marines received the Medal of Honor; twenty-six posthumously. The Marines lost 436 aircraft in action. Their performance prompted President Truman to sign Public Law 416 in 1952, a landmark statute that defined the Corps as a separate service within the Department of the Navy, sized at a minimum three divisions and three air wings, and awarded primacy in amphibious warfare. The Marines, fully into jet aircraft, transport helicopters, and body armor, now had the legislative legitimacy they had lacked the first 177 years. It was a great Marine victory that does not appear on their battle flag.
Cold War Crusades (1953-1967) Sooner or later the U.S. Marines seemed
the sacrifices of its troops. Never was the abiding philosophy of Semper Fidelis more severely tested. Marines first deployed to Vietnam as organized units in 1962. A special radio detachment went to Pleiku, and Colonel Archie Clapp’s medium helicopter squadron began “Shu-fly” operations in support of ARVN forces at Soc Trang. Here immediately was the face of the war-tobe: massive use of electronic intelligence combined with tactical mobility provided by transport helicopters. The Shu-fly outfit soon moved north from Soc Trang to Da Nang. When things became hairier up there, the Marines flew an infantry platoon down from Okinawa to stiffen the ARVN defenders of the strategic airfield. And as conditions continued to degenerate, the Marines deployed a Hawk Missile battalion from Okinawa to 2,000-foot Monkey Mountain, overlooking the airfield and port. Escalation had arrived. Soon it became time to put up or shut up. By now Congress, with its contrived “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” had given President [Lyndon B.] Johnson a virtual carte blanche to have his way in opposing the Communist campaign to overrun South Vietnam. On March 8, 1965, Brigadier General Frederick Karch led ashore two battalions of his 9th Marine
destined to fight a protracted land war on the Indochinese Peninsula. The first U.S. Marines arrived in Vietnam less than six months after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Lieutenant Colonel Victor Croizat’s main responsibility was to train and inspire the nucleus of a Vietnamese Marine regiment, which would grow in proficiency and lethality into a very good infantry division. Now the principal focus for the Marines became Southeast Asia – especially Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, each threatened by Soviet-supported insurgencies. Counterinsurgency became in vogue as a political-military art form. Marines studied the recent counterguerrilla campaigns in Malaya and the Philippines, read Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy, conducted war games involving the landing of expeditionary forces at a place halfway down the Indochinese coast called Tourane (later: Da Nang), and vied for the coveted thirty-day “OJT” (On the Job Training) assignments as observers to the hard-pressed ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam). Marines in Vietnam would fight with highest valor and innovation, but the nation’s longest and most political war would yield few tangible benefits in exchange for
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