The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 70
As Barbour feared, the Chinese crossed the long saddle in their first charge, their white uniforms making them difficult to spot in the snow.The purpose of the Chinese first shock wave was to drive a wedge between the 2nd and 3rd rows.But the three marines stood firm at the junction and never gave up.One of them was a tall, 21-year-old Private Hector Carfred. He stood up and took a steady aim at the oncoming Chinese.Another private, Kenneth Benson -- the reservist now fighting a regular battle -- crouched in a pit beneath Carfred, pulling his Browning rifle as he froze broken bolt.Benson couldn't believe his ears. Every time Carver fired his rifle, he could hear Carfred muttering a number: "9... 10... 11... 12." At this time, Carver Red's rifle jammed.He roared, ran forward a few steps, and threw his disabled M-1 rifle at the Chinese.He grabbed Benson by the shoulder and said, "Let's go, Benson, up there."

They stumbled to a bunker on the hill.People there were either dead or wounded. "Give me a rifle," cried Carfred, "somebody give me a gun! Mine's broken!"

A wounded soldier tossed an M-1 rifle to Carfred and said, "You shoot and I'll press the bullets for you." He began scavenging for guns in the bunker, loading the magazines on the clips.Cafred stood up again, exposing himself to the work, and fired one rifle after another at the Chinese, pausing only for a moment as he changed from empty to loaded.

The Chinese offered grenades again.According to Marine Corps historian Philip Pierce, some soldiers in the bunker grabbed digging tools and swung them like softball bats to deflect grenades.But some of the grenades were not blocked, and two fell to Cafred's feet, and he kicked them away both times.A grenade went over him and fell among the wounded.Cafred slammed across the cover, grabbed the grenade, jumped to his feet, and threw it out.The grenade exploded before it could leave his fingers completely, and shrapnel chipped his palm, sending a severed finger flying to the ground.

Today, Marines fight with digging tools, bayonets, rifle butts, and fists.Soldiers from both sides tangled and fought in the snow, choking each other's necks and competing to goug their eyes, which was extremely cruel.Those who do not win will perish.

The Marines won.When the first rays of morning light appeared in the sky, the Chinese blew the shrieking call to retreat, and the attackers broke away from contact and hastily retreated into the mountains. At 6:30, the Fox Heights was as calm as ever.

They cleaned up the bodies of the Marines who had died, and arranged them in rows of 10 in two rows.It's like the Marines to line up the dead, thought Guard Jim Morrissey as he checked the ID tags of the dead.He paused, letting the haunting sound of the funerary bugle play through his head.

However, F Company's bad luck had just begun.

The Chinese army continues to attack
From morning to night on November 11th, there were sounds of light weapons around the F company's position, but the Chinese never launched a new attack. Company F had 28 wounded in addition to 20 killed, and was about to run out of ammunition.To this end, Captain William Barber reorganized the defenses and scoured the battlefield for guns and ammunition.They found some Chinese carrying American Thompson submachine guns and 54 Springfield rifles, apparently trophies from the defeated Chiang Kai-shek.

The news that Barber learned from the radio station that day was that the surrounding area of ​​Liutanli was still in chaos, and Xiajieyuli was also attacked by the Communist army.Barber did not intend to hide from his junior officers the plight of F Company: the 5th and 7th Regiments had been cut off and suffered heavy casualties; they had to fight their way out through the roads defended by F Company.

"It's the only way out for all their vehicles," Barber said. "If we can't hold this high ground, they're going to have nowhere to go."

He looked at the tired and dirty faces of the soldiers in the command post.Several people had snow-stained faces, bruises all over their bodies, and blood-soaked bandages.Barber sighed: "That's the way it is, gentlemen, get ready."

Now it's just a matter of improvisation.The Marines equipped themselves with whatever weapons they could find on the fallen Chinese. (The severe cold was able to preserve the bodies of the dead Chinese. That morning, there were more than 450 dead Chinese in front of F Company's position. The Marines even dragged some up the hill and piled them around the bunkers to block bullets.)
Private Ken Benson, still reeling from a Chinese grenade exploding near him, is desperate for a new pair of gloves today.He walked down the plateau to the bunker where he and Carfred had survived the fighting the night before, and the sight of it filled him with rage.Not only could he not find his clothes, but his sleeping bag was riddled with bullet holes by the Chinese and he was stabbed many times with bayonets.The Chinese apparently thought the Marines were inside.

Suddenly he had a plan, took the sleeping bags of the dead, filled them with snow, and arranged them in a circle or lined up.The Chinese may think there is someone inside, when they come to do it...

Ken Benson spent the rest of the afternoon collecting sleeping bags, filling them with snow, and setting up his own ambush.

That night, Company F entered roughly the same defensive position as the night before, but the company's strength was greatly reduced.Still, Barber felt confident that the soldiers had withstood the best—or worst—of the Chinese and could hold the high ground again.

Chinese mortar shells sprinted in to signal the start of a new attack.The detonation of each shell shook the frozen ground, and the shriek of high-explosive shell thumps and flying shrapnel ripped through the air.

The Chinese rushed to the position in squads of eight or nine men at a time, shouting and shooting at the same time, and then retreated, apparently looking for gaps or weak links.The Marines now knew what to expect - a Chinese mass offensive.Wave after wave of Chinese ran into the incredibly precise barrage of U.S. rifles, mortars, and hand grenades, with subsequent waves bypassing the shattered bodies of the previous dead.The Marines dissipated one blaster, only to be followed by another a few seconds later.Two hours later, the third platoon could no longer hold on.The Chinese attacked like a torrent without stopping. They tore through the defenses and chased the 3rd Platoon down the hill.Barber and Lieutenant McCarthy hurriedly organized troops to plug the gap.A burst of machine-gun fire cut through the night, shattering bones in both legs, and they fell to the ground.

The Chinese had broken through the U.S. line of defense at this time, but they seemed to have no idea how to act.About 50 people walked aimlessly through the area behind the second row, seemingly waiting for an officer to appear.They shouted and talked loudly, and blew their trumpets loudly, and stood close together.

Lieutenant Elmer Peterson quickly took stock of the situation and turned his two machine guns.In just a few seconds of violent shooting, these Chinese were beaten to death, and none of them survived.

But the retreating Chinese outside the perimeter did see an opportunity to whack the Americans—there were some Marine sleeping bags arranged in a semicircle, as if for the wounded evacuated from their positions.The Chinese rushed towards the sleeping targets, shouting and shooting and bayoneting the sleeping bags.

Private Ken Benson sat a few yards away watching with his Browning automatic.He aimed carefully and fired. After 6 gunshots, 6 Chinese fell down.He picked up his Browning rifle and headed back up the hill.

At dawn on November 11, the Chinese disengaged again and disappeared into the mountains.Barber's forces suffered significantly fewer casualties—five Americans killed and 29 wounded.Although less than half of the members of Company F were capable of fighting, Barber knew that he would have to hold on to Fox Heights for a few more days.An airdrop at 5:29 a.m. provided Company F with a sufficient supply of food and ammunition, and the company dug in for three consecutive nights.

The Chinese kept their distance that night.Sometimes they blew their horns as if to signal an attack, and sometimes they fired cold shots, but most irritatingly they shouted through their amplifiers: "F Company, you are surrounded. I am a lieutenant of the 11th Marine Battalion. The Chinese will give you warm clothes and good treatment, surrender now!"

A rifleman from Company F couldn't take it anymore and shouted, "Fire a flare, and I'm going to talk to that bastard." A flare pierced the night, and the rifleman shouted all the bullets in his M-1 rifle. in the general direction.After that, the call was never heard again.

Still, Company F remained on a lonely hill surrounded by thousands of Chinese, while the rest of the 1st Marine Division passed below them and turned to safety.

ray davis mission

However, Company F was not forgotten. On November 11, Colonel Litzenberger was looking for the best candidate in Yudam-ri's unit to lead a rescue mission.He was ready to start moving the main force of the Marine Corps along the road, a move the Chinese expected.However, sending an elite force across the mountains would not only save Company F, but would also catch the Chinese off guard.Lizenberg decided to send Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Davis, the most outstanding and tenacious young battalion commander in the division.Lizenberg stated his intentions to Davis: "Obviously, we cannot force our way (to Company F) along the road, and I don't think the Chinese would have expected us to go overland. (Company F) must After being rescued, Dedongling Pass must be defended. Prepare for action tomorrow morning."

Davis immediately set to work.He sorted out the sick and the wounded who were able to walk, had them line up the battalion's vehicles on the road, and set about reorganizing the assault force.Each soldier carried four meals, water from a marching canteen, and extra ammunition.His concern was what kind of food to bring, and now soldiers knew best what to chew in the cold.Most picked out canned bread and fruit, which wouldn't freeze if tucked into their military jackets against their bellies.Davis doubled his mortar force to share these heavy loads.Each soldier in the unit carried an additional 81mm mortar shell, 120 pounds per fully loaded Marine, which was a pack horse's load even on flat ground and sunny weather.Davis' men had spent three weeks in minus 20 to [-] degrees Fahrenheit, eating little but hard-frozen field food.All had swollen and sore hands from digging foxholes in the frozen ground.Thanks to the physical training of the Marines, the soldiers who first came to North Korea were lean and agile, but now they have lost an average of [-] pounds each.When Ray Davis observed his troops, he saw faces gaunt with fatigue and hunger, with occasional white marks of frostbite.

He lined up his men in battalion formation and told them what they had to do: hike over some treacherous hills at night, getting supplies only from what they carried, rescue Company F, then hold the main supply line to save two marine regiment.People mumbled their approval.The 1st Battalion entered the mountains from Liutanli, and their first target was a small hill called 1 Heights about 000 yards east of the road.The CCP troops who dug in and defended have resisted the aircraft, artillery and frontal attacks, and have tenaciously held on for three days.Throughout the day, the soldiers climbed the slippery mountain, often on their hands and knees in the snow and ice, and were constantly under heavy fire from the Chinese Communist Army.In one pitched battle, a platoon led by Lieutenant Leslie Williams engaged the Chinese hand-to-hand and crushed the resistance.

It was already 7 o'clock in the evening, and I couldn't see my fingers.Davis looked at the thermometer and was struck by how cold it was: minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit.A day of running around made his soldiers exhausted, and sweat drenched in their heavy military uniforms.Davis took a few minutes to look at the map, thought for a moment, and then made a decision: If you spend the night here in this severe cold wearing such soaked underwear, you will be unable to move tomorrow.Doing so is asking for death, and the best course of action is to move on.

Davis ordered B Company, led by Lieutenant Joseph Kukeba, to lead the way ahead, with the battalion headquarters following behind to reinforce command.Davis put on his overcoat and squatted down, carefully looked at the compass, determined the direction of march, and the troops immediately entered the vast night.The vanguard used a bright star in the south as a supplementary means of determining its bearing.Ray Davis said years later:
It was freezing cold at night.There are some old fortifications dug by the Chinese along the way.In order to ensure the exact direction of march, I often go down into these fortifications... and use the compass to determine the bearing.

Twice I put my army overcoat over my head, then lay on my stomach, and by the light of my flashlight, I calibrated my map to check the direction of march.I pointed my head at a directional object, then turned off the flashlight, opened my coat, and walked out of the fortification to determine the direction, but I often couldn't remember what I did under the coat, but stood there in a daze.Two or three people around will say a few words, and then I forget what I'm doing.

I had to step off the fortifications and start all over again.All the people have to come to you over and over to find out what to do.The freezing cold completely numbs us.

The more Marines who walked the path, the slipperier it became. "The place we slid down was rocky," Davis said. "There were no roots, and the slope was hard ice. It was like riding a slide, and you hit the bottom with a whoosh."

The low temperature and high altitude make it impossible to melt snow and drink water, and even lighting a fire is useless.The soldiers had to eat snow to quench their thirst.They put dry socks and waist pads on their stomachs (the latter to keep the straps from chafing) and think about changing them every few hours.Davis ate dry biscuits. "Other than that, all the food is frozen hard and cannot be thawed and eaten."

Sometime that night, as the troops climbed a series of ridges through deep snow, Davis tried to send a message to the vanguard to pause their advance.He feared that they were heading straight for the main body of the enemy. "But every time I passed two or three people and someone said, 'Shut up,' it was the end of it, so I had to do my best to get to the front of the line. At this point, I was out of breath, But I stopped them and diverted them to the right path."

At 2:30 AM, the troops reached the crest of the main ridge leading to Company F.In the last few yards of travel, "we had to use our hands and feet to hold on to the branches and grass roots to prevent sliding back to the ice and snow trail below."

Davies decided to stop there instead of trying to make contact with F Company in the dark. F Company had no communications equipment, and Davis did not want his rescue team to be mistaken for Chinese and killed in the dark.

But he's also worried about Marines falling asleep:

When I ordered the troops off the hilltop, they scattered like flies.They were shaky on their feet, and I couldn't help but worry deeply about the extreme fatigue of the troops.I ordered each company to form a team of three non-commissioned officers to get the troops into position and to walk up and down in the hours before dawn to keep someone in the troops on alert.

Chinese snipers fired sporadically at the battalion from afar during these hours, and a cold shot nearly hit Davis.At that time, he had just climbed between two stones and pulled up the hood of the sleeping bag, when he suddenly felt an impact and a sting on his head. scalp".

At dawn the next morning—F Company's sixth day on the bullet-scarred hill—Davis' battalion moved across the saddle to the main position.Barbour saw them from a distance, and at a glance he knew the hooded men were Marines.He could see, a few hundred feet below the main supply line, trucks winding their way south toward Hagaru-ri along the winding mountain road.

(End of this chapter)