Froze\uDBFF\uDC00n Chosin (North Korea, 1950)

Frozen Chosin (North Korea, 1950)

Ironically, the Marines’ greatest battle occurred during one of the nation’s most bitter military defeats, the routing of American and Allied forces in upper North Korea by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Red China.

For the United States, top-level arrogance and an abysmal disregard of strategic intelligence very nearly led to the annihilation of the 1st Marine Division. China’s abrupt entry into the war placed the Old Breed Marines in desperate straits – seventy-eight miles from their sea base, surrounded by seven PLA divisions, and burdened with thousands of wounded and frost-bitten casualties at the onset of the coldest winter ever recorded along the Manchurian border. Many officials in Washington considered the Marines a lost cause – trapped, isolated, doomed.

Instead, there ensued a tactical masterpiece, an unlikely epic fighting withdrawal of the stuff of legends, two weeks of extraordinary hardship and valor. No Marines ever had to fight under worse sustained conditions.

At first it seemed so easy. MacArthur, having succeeded famously with his celebrated “lefthook” landing at Inchon, decided to use his Marines again for a “righthook” landing at Wonsan, on the east coast of North Korea, creating another hammer-and-anvil scenario against the still-retreating NKPA forces.

These were heady days for the United Nations Command. Suggestive phrases like “the race to the Yalu” and “home by Christmas” captured the fancy of correspondents and raised false optimism among some of the troops.

Smith suffered none of these delusions. The eastern sector of the Taebaek Mountains was nothing less than forbidding. Winter was coming, there were undeniable signs that Red Chinese “volunteers” were crossing the Yalu in force, and there remained sizable NKPA units in the area to engage and defeat. While any redblooded Marine would take pride in being the first to reach the Yalu River, Smith would not permit any unwise “race” north.

While Chesty Puller’s [1st Marines] kept the last NKPA fighting units at bay, General Smith sent the main body of the division north along the mountain track that twisted and turned for seventy-eight miles from the port of Hungnam to the western shoreline of the Chosin Reservoir, site of a valuable hydroelectric facility.

The one-lane gravel road that wound north among the towering Taebaeks led first through the villages of Sudong-ni and Chinhungni, then threaded through tortuous Funchilin Pass to Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri, the latter on the southern shore of the reservoir. Smith didn’t like anything about this route. While his infantry could, with difficulty, cover the mountainous ridges on both sides, his tanks, artillery, and supply trucks were hopelessly roadbound for most of the way.

Enemy destruction of any one of many bridges over otherwise impassable chasms would bottle up the Marine convoy dangerously. Evacuating casualties from that rugged country so far from the sea would be chancy at best.

Colonel Homer Litzenberg’s 7th Marines led the way north and almost immediately engaged a Chinese Communist division in a five-day battle around Sudong-ni.

Once again Marine Corsairs, these flown by the smart-mouth pilots of MAG-12 out of Wonsan, came slicing out of the clouds to chew up PLA formations with rockets, napalm, and machine guns.

On the Road to Hagaru, Korea, December 1950, Col. Charles H. Waterhouse, USMCR (Ret.), ca. 1990, acrylic on masonite, depicts the fight to sweep the Chinese off the hills above the Main Supply Route, keeping it open for the Marine column to get through.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

On November 7 the Chinese broke contact and simply disappeared.

The Marines would not encounter another organized PLA unit for nearly three weeks, when they would abruptly discover themselves surrounded by an entire PLA army group.

Almond continued to press Smith to get into gear, to truly “race for the Yalu.” Smith demurred, more worried than ever. He brought Puller’s 1st Marines up to guard the MSR (main supply route, a euphemism for the single-lane goat-track of a road), began staging extra supplies of ammo, rations, and fuel along the route, and directed his engineers to build emergency airstrips at the mountain villages of Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri. “What for?” asked Almond. “To evacuate my casualties,” replied Smith. “What casualties?” the corps commander inquired, still not getting it.

Almond urged Smith to press on past Hagaru-ri to Yudam-ni in preparation for a major cross-country jaunt to link up with the Eighth Army, eighty mountainous miles away.

With a heavy heart, Smith dispatched the 7th and 5th Marines west of Chosin. An Army regimental combat team worked its way up the reservoir’s east coast toward the Manchurian border, terribly exposed. The freakish Siberian winter then hit with a fury. Temperatures plummeted. Smith issued the division’s cold weather clothing, but there were not enough of the heavy parkas and gloves to go around. Smith demanded that his infantry troops get first priority.

The 7th Marines crossed 4,000 foot Toktong Pass on November 24, leaving Fox Company behind to defend it, and descended into Yudam-ni.

The next day came terrible news that the Eighth Army on the west coast had been overrun and routed by Chinese forces.

General Smith nervously slowed the 7th Marines’ advance, allowing the 5th Marines to link up with them in the hills around Yudam-ni.

The Chinese hiding in the eastern Taebaek Mountains waited until the night of November 27 – twenty below zero, blinding snow – to spring their trap. General Sung Shih-lun, commanding 120,000 troops of the PLA Ninth Army Group, saw his mission as that of annihilating the crack Marine division, so temptingly strung out along forty miles of bad road. At his signal, tens of thousands of quilted soldiers came screaming out of the storm to the blare of bugles and glare of green pyrotechnics, firing their snubnosed “Burp Guns” in disciplined bursts.

Scattered Marine outposts in the high ground above Yudam-ni were engulfed by these inhuman waves, but the Chinese attacks were not totally unexpected, and the Marines rallied and held. Toktong Pass, the crucial link between the forward regiments and the advance base at Hagaru-ri, came under heavy attack. Captain William E. Barber’s Fox Company settled in for a desperate defensive struggle to hold the pass. But no Fox Marines could then imagine they would have to man this post by themselves for the next five days.

Marine F9F Panthers of VMF-311 are refueled and rearmed at a forward airfield in Korea.

National Archives photo by MSgt. C.D. Prindle, USMC

The Chinese threatened Hagaru-ri, cut the MSR in a dozen critical places, and came close to destroying completely the isolated Army regiment northeast of Chosin. Gray dawn brought enough light for the fearless Corsairs, and slowly the odds began to even.

General Smith assessed the crisis. He … had to reopen the MSR at least as far south as Puller’s outpost at Kotori. But he worried most about his two regiments at Yudam-ni, fourteen miles west of Chosin, whose escape route was jeopardized by the Chinese attacks on Fox Company at Toktong Pass.

The 5th and 7th Marines would have to fight their way back to Hagaru-ri along the mountains on both sides of the narrow road.

Unlike many other embattled United Nations forces, the Marines were coming out with their wounded and their dead.

Chesty Puller meanwhile tried to send a relief force north from Koto-ri to Hagaru-ri, despite the Chinese presence in strength at several critical stretches of the MSR. He formed “Task Force Drysdale,” named after [Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Drysdale] the commander of the Royal Marine Commando, reinforced with U.S. Marine tanks, trucks, and assorted troops, less than a thousand in all.

The enemy contested Drysdale’s hodgepodge force at each passage and every narrow gorge, and the odyssey lasted all night. In the end, Drysdale, most of the tanks, many of the Royal Marines, and a company of United States Marines made it through to Smith’s endangered base at Hagaru-ri. But a full half of Task Force Drysdale came to grief en route.

The 5th and 7th Marines, bloodied but intact, were having a hell of a time blasting their way clear of the trap that surrounded them at Yudam-ni. And for all the importance of fighting for the immediate high ground to get their road-bound convoy moving, the whole force would be in deadly peril unless a relief column could be sent to the aid of Captain Barber’s survivors, still holding Toktong Pass by sheer guts and world-class supporting arms.

Colonel Litzenberg tried four times to reach Fox Company; each failed. Finally he called for Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Davis, commanding the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. “Nothing works. You’ve got to get to them. Come back in twenty minutes with a plan.”

Davis realized that any attempt to reach the pass by road would be doomed. So would any daytime maneuver. He proposed to Litzenberg that his shot-up battalion strip to the essentials and take off cross-country, over the ridges, at night, approaching the encircled Fox Company lines from the north. “Go!” said Litzenberg.

Davis and his 500 Marines lurched painfully through the snow, making noise in spite of every effort. But the shrieking wind masked their movements. And the Chinese never expected a Marine battalion to leave their foxholes at night and mush cross-country behind their lines.

Lieutenant Joseph Owen left a moving account of the journey. “The trail became icy, packed by the feet of those ahead. Men slipped to their knees, staggered up, and slipped again … Exhaustion was telling on us … Under the heavy parkas our bodies sweated with the strain, but our hands and feet were frozen numb. The wind-borne cold attacked with terrible fury. We shivered violently.”

Hours later the slogging column encountered the outer ring of Chinese attacking Fox Company at Toktong Pass. At first, the PLA forces thought the snowcovered troops were Chinese reinforcements and let them traverse unchallenged. Then the Marines unveiled bayoneted M-1 Garands and unmistakable BARs amid Chinese cries of surprise and delivered a pointblank volley. A vicious firefight ensued, but more Marines came up, now unmindful of the cold, ready to shoot. Very quickly the battalion cleared a wedge in the circle of attackers.

Ray Davis raised Captain Barber on the radio. Barber, badly wounded, offered to lead out a patrol of his survivors to guide Davis into the perimeter. This brought tears to Davis’ eyes. “Thanks, but we know where you are, and we’ll fight our way in at daybreak,” he replied

Both officers would receive the Medal of Honor for their respective roles at Toktong Pass.

Fox Company’s five-day defense of Toktong Pass rates among the greatest holding actions in Marine Corps history, one of the same magnitude as Wake Island, Quilali, or Edson’s Ridge. Captain Barber lost half his 240-man company in killed and wounded; another 40 could not walk due to severe frostbite. But Fox Company had dished out more pain than it had received.

Lieutenant Owen stared in astonishment at the battered perimeter at first light after the ordeal of getting there. Hundreds of Chinese bodies lay in crumpled heaps, dangerously close to the Marine lines. The Fox Marines had fought on borrowed time, fewer and fewer responding to each new charge. “We stood in wonder,” said Owen. “Men bowed their heads in prayer …Tears came to the eyes of the raggedy Marines who had endured bitter cold and savage battle to reach this place of suffering and courage.”

Extricating themselves in orderly fashion from the Yudam-ni trap and withdrawing the fourteen miles back to Hagaru-ri took the two regiments seventy-nine hours, an eerie equivalent in time to the Battle of Tarawa.

Almond, crestfallen and somber, ordered Smith to escape to the sea posthaste, leaving behind his heavy weapons and equipment. “No, sir,” replied Smith quietly. “We’ll fight our way out as Marines, bringing all our weapons and gear with us.”

The distance to Koto-ri was “only” eleven miles, but fighting their way along that route would take the troops a day and a half and cost another 600 casualties.

The route twisted past a surreal landscape of snow-covered, burnedout vehicles – the wreckage of Task Force Drysdale – and through a dozen Chinese strong points.

Tiny Koto-ri now bulged at the seams. Ten thousand troops and 1,000 vehicles poured in from Hagaru-ri, swamping Chesty Puller’s meager facilities, providing crowded targets for Chinese heavy mortars. General Smith knew the column had to continue its momentum south immediately ...

Chesty Puller was the last senior officer to leave Koto-ri, striding defiantly afoot, his command jeep loaded with wounded and dead Marines.

The last Marines included more engineers, methodically demolishing the bridges so carefully laid at the head of the long column.

Between Koto-ri and Chinhungni lay Funchilin Pass, now held in great strength by the Chinese.

General Field Harris pulled out all the stops, sending his Corsairs in at ridgetop level, strafing, bombing, and dropping napalm. But then the weather turned sour again. Smith ordered Puller to direct his southernmost battalion to attack north into the pass from Chinhung-ni to clear Hill 1081, yet another critical terrain mass dominating the road and several bridges.

The battle for the pass took place during a howling snowstorm; the temperature started at fourteen below zero, then dropped another ten degrees. Into this storm came Captain Robert Barrow’s Able Company of the 1st Marines, the force that had almost single-handedly captured urban Yongdong-po three months earlier.

The storm was terrible to endure but worked in Barrow’s favor, masking his movements up the sheer-reverse slope of Hill 1081. Able Company caught the Chinese peering through 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!