The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 71
Davis' men passed through the remains of the Chinese attackers as they approached Fox Heights.A clumsy sergeant named Shaffer called out, "Colonel, come here quickly, and I'll show you something." Davis said, "The sergeant bent down and dragged a large chunk out of a hole. It turned out to be a Chinese soldier. I asked, "Is he dead?" The sergeant said, "He's still alive, and his eyes are still moving.' Only the eyes are still moving." It was found that 6 Chinese people who were about to freeze to death died later.

After arriving at Fox Heights, Barber and Davis immediately counted the casualties. F Company had 22 seriously wounded and had to be carried to waiting trucks below the hillside.Two soldiers suffered nervous breakdowns and had to be restrained in improvised straitjackets, but both died before evacuation.

Before evacuating Fox Heights, Captain Barber counted the cost of five days and nights of fighting: 26 killed, 89 wounded, including 7 of the 6 officers, and 3 missing.Would the survivors of Barber's company be willing to go down to the main force?

No, Barber said, they were to stay with Davis' battalion on Forks Heights and help hold Dedong Pass until the last truck of the 1st Marine Division passed through to safety.

Just when Lieutenant Colonel Ray Davis went to rescue Company F, Lizenberg's other troops were preparing to withdraw from Yudam-ri and move south.After two days of fierce fighting, the fighting waned.The Chinese apparently maintained a two-day fight, rest, and fight schedule, the way their poor supply system necessitated.The CCP army was not supported by airdrops of food and ammunition in field battles, and if a soldier ran out of his belongings, whether he ran out of bullets or food, he had to withdraw from the battle. "A Chinese who is wounded is condemned to death," General Smith pointed out. "He will be left to freeze to death. The Marines can hear the cries of the Chinese wounded, and as they freeze to death, the shouts It faded away. On the other hand, despite the freezing weather, the wounded Marines were cared for." Colonel Alpha Bowser of the 1st Marine Division's Operations Branch later argued that if the Chinese had adequate logistical support and communications equipment, it would be impossible for the Marines to escape the Changjin Reservoir. "The 1st Marine Division was just a fluke," he said.

One of the medical techniques Smith spoke of was medics thawing frozen syringes of morphine with their mouths, a method used at the hospital at Yoo Tam Ri led by Regimental Physician Lieutenant Commander Chester Laysenden.Working conditions in Leisendon were extremely unfavorable.Stray bullets from rifles tore through his tent, and so many wounded had to be placed outside on straw mats covered with tarpaulins.

After the battle at Chosin Reservoir, Dr. Lysendon described his problems to Keith Beach of the Chicago Daily News:
Everything froze, the plasma froze, the vials froze.We couldn't use plasma because it couldn't be turned into a liquid, and the syringes were clogged with particles.We couldn't change dressings for the wounded because we had to work with gloves to keep our hands from freezing.

We cannot cut open the clothes of a wounded man in order to treat a wound, or he will freeze to death.In fact, he is often better off if we leave him alone.You've never tried stuffing a wounded person into a sleeping bag, have you?
Some of the wounded lay in the snow for 72 hours straight before being pulled out and strapped to the radiator of the truck. "When we got to Hagaru-ri," said Captain Eugene Herring, a medic with the 1st Marine Division, "the only way to tell if a wounded man was dead or alive was to see if his eyes moved. They were all frozen as hard as boards. "

On the afternoon of November 11th, the 30st Marine Division received an order to evacuate Liutan-ri. On this day, the Chinese stepped up their pressure on the defensive circle.The troops gradually withdrew to the villages, maintaining positions only on important high ground.After a night of planning and discussion, it was decided to divide the combat operation into two parts: one was to go to the rescue of Company F and hold on to Dedong Ridge Pass; the other was to withdraw other troops and equipment of the regiment southward to Xiajieyu-ri via the main supply line.Despite the strong objections of General Almond, General Smith declared that he would never give up his equipment.Smith said: "He wanted me to burn or destroy equipment and supplies, saying that I could resupply by airdrop when I retreated. I said to him that my speed of movement would depend on my ability to evacuate the wounded, and that I had to and Fight and retreat, so I can't abandon the equipment, so I plan to take most of my equipment." Almond didn't argue anymore.

The task of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Tapulet's battalion was to seize and hold the commanding heights on both sides of the main supply line from Yudam-ri to the south, so that the main force could go south from here.Colonel Lizenberg orchestrated the sequence of marches.The team was led by the only tank of the Marine Corps at Liutan-ri, followed by an artillery battery, which stopped every few thousand yards to occupy temporary firing positions and provide cover fire for the rearguard.The artillery units in the defensive circle had to fire most of the 155mm shells before retreating, and the excess artillery units were converted into infantry and organized into platoons.The same goes for the wounded who can walk, carry rifles and fight.Only the seriously wounded were allowed in the trucks, which formed the central part of the marching columns.Lizenberg made a grim decision: the Marines would suffer more casualties in the breakout, and he had to bring in survivors from Company F, so the Marines buried 85 of their dead in Willow Pond , because the truck space is limited, there is no room to transport them out.

Tapulet's pioneer battalion left Yudam-ri and set foot on the snow-covered road to attack the high ground on both sides of the main supply line.Behind them are the trucks moving cautiously and the wounded who can walk.One survivor recalled: "Every three or four yards I would jump behind the rocks on the side of the road and shoot some chinks so they wouldn't hit me. I got knocked on my knees from jumping on rocks and ice all the time. It was so bad that it hurt for months." The weather was so cold that the soldiers' feet froze to the soles of their boots, and the skin peeled off when they took off their socks.Casualties who would have bled to death also survived as their blood clotted and stopped flowing. "It's incredible to see blood freeze before it coagulates," Major Laysenden, the regiment's surgeon, later told Keith Beach. "Coagulated blood is dark brown, and this thing is pink."

As the night march continued, the Chinese intensified their counterattacks—General Song Shilun seemed to realize that prey was escaping his snares.That night, a few more warriors appeared in the Marine Corps, and the Chinese suffered a severe blow.Staff Sergeant William Wendrich led a squad away from a forward position in an effort to prevent the Chinese from opening a breach.Within minutes, seven of the 12 people were wounded, including Wendrich, who was shot in the head.But he still insisted on fighting, and then ran back to the company command post for help to evacuate other soldiers.At this time, the bullet hit his leg again, but he refused to bandage again, and said to the guards: "There is no time, it is just a small hole." He ran around in the team for another hour, and finally lost blood. Many die.

For the next three days, the Marines and the Chinese scuffled each other, fighting for every high ground and every ridge, with fierce counterattacks at night.On the first night, the Chinese commanders effectively commanded the troops. Their troops took full advantage of the advantages of the rear triangle formation and attacked the center and flanks of the American positions in squads at the same time, advancing within the distance of the grenade.The Marines fought with all their might, they stepped back, regrouped, and fought again.More than once individual riflemen and machine gunners held on to positions on the brink of loss, effectively covering the retreat of their fellow Marines with their lives.Years later Private Barry Lester doesn't even know the name of the sergeant who saved his life.Their company suffered heavy casualties and merged with another company.Although the soldiers shared thick and thin in the same trenches, they were never introduced to each other beyond Pat or Charlie.Lester said:
"The night before, maybe the night after, I don't remember exactly, it all got mixed up. Five of us were spread out on a steep slope about 5 yards long on a rise on the flank. We were in the middle of three or four hours. shot at each other back and forth with the Chinese. They rushed up, tried their best to get into the grenade throwing distance, and then backed down. We beat the shit out of them. I took a shot in the calf, it hurt like hell, and the blood was all over the floor , but finally stopped, because it froze - or so the guards told me later, anyway.

"The Chinese were getting closer and closer. We were running out of ammunition. We knew we had to move. The sergeant I met that afternoon was badly wounded in the abdomen and must have been injured. hurt his spine because he said he couldn't move his legs.

"'Throw me your magazines, all your magazines, and get back down to the main supply line,' he shouted, 'and I'll stay here to cover you.' We complied. I'm sorry because I know He couldn't get off that hill. But I also knew we couldn't carry him down the mountain alive, and if the Chinese knew we were evacuating, they would come after us."

Lester and three other Marines took all the magazines from the pouches to the sergeant and slipped off into the night.They heard shooting from the hill for maybe 10 minutes and then there was silence.

There have also been some serious accidents.A bridge was crushed by a truck and more than 20 wounded were thrown over a frozen creek.They were lying on a bed made of parachutes and fuses in the truck, with four of them tangled under the truck.Despite the icy water, Lieutenant Morton Silver and an assistant, Paul Swain, jumped into the river, cut the ropes, and rescued the trapped men.When another truck transporting the wounded was approaching Xiajieyu-ri, a bullet pierced through the water tank and was immobilized.Silver organized a group of soldiers and managed to push the truck up a hill, then stood there watching in silence as the truck rolled down to Hagaru-ri and to safety.Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Stewart Beech, executive officer of the 5th Marine Regiment, said: "How much sacrifice has been made to keep the wounded from dying!"

During the march, Murray spotted Tapulet at his command post, temporarily set up in a Korean thatched hut.The wounded huddled together in a room for warmth.In another room, tired and glazed-eyed, Tapulet sat beside a smoking fire, taking off his boots and digging the ice between his toes.

"How are you?" Murray asked him.

"My feet are freezing," replied Tapulet, grunting, "but we'll make it. Get the blood circulating and go on." He put on his boots and went outside to continue his march.

Air support also added to the heroics on the ground.Navy and Marine Corps pilots fly night missions, guided only by flares that flicker faintly on the frozen ground, pouring napalm and bombs into the darkness.Pilots bombed within 200 yards or less of Marine positions, and to avoid accidental bombing, their planes nearly skidded over mountains, to the point that some infantrymen cursed that their propellers chipped off tree branches.The close support aircraft inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese.In just one raid protecting a rear battalion of marines, Corsairs bombarded a ridge with petrol bombs and 500-pound bombs for a full 25 minutes, making it "one of the most useless pieces of land in the world."

The Chinese began to retreat under this pressure.An infantry unit mistakenly stopped attacking at dawn, attempting to flee within range of the Marines' machine guns.No one went out to tally Chinese casualties, but after the last burst of firing ceased, an officer with binoculars estimated that 300 Chinese had been killed.Heading south along the main supply line, Lieutenant Colonel Ray Davies pulled down from Forks Heights to join the march.By accident, his two companies surprised a large force of the Chinese.The Chinese were retreating southward along the road, completely unaware that a marine unit was heading north from Xiajieyuli to meet the team from Liutanli.Colonel Lizenberg heard the good news over the radio and turned to Lieutenant Colonel Ray Murray and said softly, "Ray, inform your 3rd Battalion Commander that the Chinese are retreating southwest and it's in his favor. "

3rd Battalion Commander Robert Tapulet initially attempted to get Hagaru-ri's artillery to fire, but the distance was too great to be effective.So he called for an air strike, despite cloudy skies over the area.The Marines got lucky again this time.When the Corsair flew over the target, the clouds just cleared up.The besieged Chinese were unable to flee the roads and were bombarded with petrol bombs and bombs from airplanes, as well as being flanked by mortars and machine guns from north to south.According to Tapulet's battle report, there were more than 700 people in this Chinese battalion and they were "completely wiped out".

Another violent skirmish ensued the following day when the vehicle at the end of the line ran out of fuel.However, at 12:3 pm on December 7, when the first batch of Marines appeared on the outskirts of Xiajieyuli, the most exciting moment since Liutanli broke out came.Someone ordered the procession to stop, and the Marines quieted down, solemnly (or because of pain), and stood in drill formation.Their helmets, greatcoats, and faces are all covered in silver.Some soldiers dragged their frozen feet and walked in pain. Every time their blue feet stepped on the frozen ground, they felt unbearable pain; some looked ahead blankly, as if they didn't know where they were. land, or why.But the Marine Corps still held their heads high and marched into Xiajieyu-ri in a line, even trampling the icy and snowy road.

The wounded who were able to walk followed behind. The wounded Marines supported each other. Some carried M-1 rifles on their shoulders, while others could not carry anything and could only rely on their companions for support.Captain Myron Wilcox, with his jaw pierced by a bullet and his head bandaged like a giant mummy, walked with his head held high, motivating himself and his companions with a strong will.

Then came the vehicles, many of which contained the unconscious wounded, strapped to the hoods on stretchers, some resting on metal plates, a total of 1, about a third of whom were frostbitten By.

“Many of them started out dazed and bewildered,” wrote Marine Corps historian Lynn Montrose. “Others wandered aimlessly with blank faces. But a few People are mentally stimulated, and that’s not something that a good night’s sleep and some hot food can heal.” The wounded were immediately sent to the medical tent, while the rest of the troops went to the dining tent for hot coffee.

Colonel Alpha Bowser was sitting in a medical tent with General Smith and other officers in Hagaru that night when they heard the singing of the Marines' song. "I looked at General Smith," Bowser said, "and I said, 'We're done, we're done.'"

The Marines gloated a little the next day when bits and pieces of stricken Chinese came out of the mountains to surrender.Some Chinese said they had been without food for four days, and many had no shoes.Keith Beach and a Marine Corps lieutenant were driving a jeep, and three Chinese climbed out of the snow onto the road, their bare feet bloodied and disfigured. "That's all I'd like to see them," said the lieutenant ruthlessly. "I wish those bastards would freeze to death."

During the trek from Ryudam-ri, Hajieyu-ri seems to give the illusion of a refuge where hardships and hardships will end.But in fact, it's not.The arrival of the Marines in Xiajieyuli was only the first step in the trek out of the mountains.They still have to continue to trek, first to Gutuli and then to the sea.But looking at the history of the Marine Corps, there is nothing more difficult than the hardships endured on the way out of Yudam-ri.

(End of this chapter)