What are those blinking white lights sparkling on the ground?
LIEUTENANT ROD MIDDLETON, 2PPCLI, to U.S. helicopter pilot above Hill 677, 8:00 am, re. Chinese anti-aircraft fire1
It was the most beautiful sight I can ever remember seeing.
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER, 2PPCLI, re. 10:30 AM supply drop2
If the 118th CPV division renewed its vigorous attacks on Hill 677 in the hours after dawn, then the chances of survival for the Patricias would be lower than they had been after midnight. “By that time our Mortar Platoon was almost completely out of mortar bombs,” Private Mike Czuboka remembered. “The rifle companies were also down to a few rounds of ammunition. Our food and water was almost gone.”3 Some of the badly wounded, to be sure, could now be evacuated by two American helicopters, but ground fire from the Chinese as the machines flew in was a reminder that the enemy still surrounded the battalion and could close in again.4 After a night of sometimes quite vicious hand-to-hand fighting one or two soldiers found they were unable to switch off their bloodlust. Decades later PPCLI veterans could claim that they had felt no hatred for the enemy, but early Wednesday morning after the fighting had died down two Patricias, discovering a pair of wounded Chinese forward of their position, first rummaged through their possessions and then deliberately picked them up and threw them to their deaths down a steep slope.5 Other soldiers maintained a remarkable sang-froid in the face of imminent danger. “I responded to the desperate situation as soldiers are wont to do when they can’t do anything about it,” Corporal John Bishop of 2 Platoon later wrote. “I got my head down and fell into a comfortable doze.”6 But there was no doubt in the mind of the CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone, that if the enemy kept pushing, “in all probability the 2 PPCLI would have been annihilated.”7 Or as an unidentified Patricia reflected a quarter century later, “what happened to the Gloucesters could easily have happened to us.”8 That it did not was due to the actions of both friends and enemies.
The situation of those atop Hill 677 improved considerably after 10:30 AM when the airdrop of supplies Stone had requested six hours earlier occurred. A flight of C-119 Flying Boxcars from Japan roared in low overhead and unloaded multiple parachute-retarded pallets on which food, water, and ammunition were stored. Luckily nobody below was hit—the pallets came down “really fast” recalled Harry Welsh, who was only three feet from where one bounced on impact9—and only four landed too far outside the perimeter to be retrieved. The small-arms ammunition delivered was all .30 or .50 caliber and the mortar bombs all 81-mm in size, but as the vehicles and weapons of the mortar platoon were American—as were the carbines and submachine-guns many men had unofficially acquired—this was still, as a member of the platoon put it, a “big help” to the battalion. “A minor miracle” had taken place, one of his buddies argued more feelingly. U.S. grenades presented no problems, and enough .303 ammunition was redistributed to keep the exhausted rifle companies going. Bishop, rudely awoken from his catnap by the cargo planes thundering in, immediately saw that “the battalion would be able to hold on.”10
What the enemy was up to was initially not entirely clear. Lieutenant Peter McKenzie, the 2PPCLI Intelligence Officer who had suggested the air drop to Stone, worried that the Chinese were pausing only long enough to mass enough forces for a really big push.11 Yet at about 9 AM, a platoon from C Company was able to retrieve one of the Vickers guns belonging to D Company that had been brought over the night before against minimal opposition.12 Throughout the morning the men of C and D companies, particularly those in 10 Platoon, came under occasional grenade and rifle fire, and while some jeeps ran the gauntlet and successfully evacuated more wounded through the enemy cordon to the south the effort was not without cost in the form of further casualties.13 But neither in the northwest nor anywhere else around Hill 677 did a Chinese assault develop.14
No soldier likes to be in a state of ignorance concerning the enemy, and even before the air drop a certain amount of patrolling was taking place. Unfortunately, and without enemy intervention, the first patrol sent out by B Company suffered a tragedy. Before the Chinese attack began on Tuesday night, the Pioneer Platoon had laid grenade booby traps to help protect the company’s position. Shortly after 8 AM a platoon sergeant leading the patrol moved away from the safe path and into a booby-trapped area. A soldier tripped a grenade in a tin with the pin removed and it went off, killing him and seriously wounding another man. Guessing what had happened, Sergeant Red Pennel and Lance-Corporal Smiley Douglas of the Pioneer Platoon raced to the scene, only to witness another booby trap being tripped. Yelling to the rest of the patrol to lie down, Douglas dove in to try to throw the grenade in the seconds before the detonator worked, but the grenade exploded and blew off his hand.15
This incident was doubly tragic, as patrols later in the day revealed that the enemy was apparently withdrawing. “If there are Chinese in the area they must be asleep,” a member of a D Company patrol remembered thinking.16 By 2 PM it appeared from B Company reports that the road route to the rear was open, and Stone seized the opportunity to order up further supplies “in anticipation,” as the battalion war diarist put it, “of continued Chinese attack.”17
That the enemy had not vanished became clear in the afternoon. Late on Wednesday morning the 5th Cavalry RCT had moved up in preparation for a counter-thrust up the Kapyong Valley. At 1 PM the Americans moved forward on a two-battalion front.18 At first things seemed to be going well. “They attacked a low hill across a rice paddy in extended lines,” Dan Johnson recalled of what he saw from atop the feature held by the Patricias. “One line dropped and gave covering fire to the line that followed behind,” he added. “‘Fire and Movement.’ I have never seen it demonstrated better. Hundreds of enemy soldiers erupted from the crest of the hill and began to retreat; the Americans followed.”19 After a mile or so, however, the advance was observed to be running into trouble. Sergeant Mike Melnechuk of C Company recalled watching mortar bombs bursting among them as they advanced in open order, the GIs hitting the dirt but then moving forward in what he could see was “a hard-fought battle.” The assistance of two tank platoons helped, but they eventually ran out of ammunition and had to withdraw. As the 3RAR war diarist noted, due to “determined resistance,” the two battalions “were unable to capture their objectives” by the end of the afternoon.20
The Chinese, however, though clearly able to fight an effective delaying action in daylight, were evidently no longer prepared to launch big night attacks. “By last light the situation on the Bde front was quiet,” the brigade war diarist recorded, “and reports of enemy [activity] had ceased.”21 This was just as well, given that the stalling of the 5th Cavalry RCT battalions left them in a highly vulnerable tactical position.22 The intention, as relayed to Colonel Stone in the early evening, was for elements from the 5th Cavalry to climb up at some point on Thursday to relieve 2PPCLI. On Hill 677 the night was uneventful, though the Patricias remained vigilant. “We still didn’t know if they’d be back to test our resolve again,” Bishop commented.23
At brigade headquarters, meanwhile, the situation now appeared stable enough to proceed with the planned change of command. In a special order of the day Brigadier Brian Burke formally announced the move and, in the words of the 2PPCLI war diarist, “commended the traditions of 27 Brigade and of those units of the Commonwealth Forces remaining with 28 Brigade in Korea.”24 With the Argylls having departed on Tuesday and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers now operational, 27th British Commonwealth Brigade officially gave way to 28th Commonwealth Brigade at midnight on Wednesday, Burke handing over command to Brigadier George “Fluff” Taylor. In a mark of his respect for the Australians, Burke had given his brigade flag to Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Ferguson earlier in the day.25
Anxious to make sure that all was well, the IX Corps and Eighth Army commanders flew in to visit Taylor around noon.26 They seemed to have been satisfied, but in fact the relief effort on Thursday did not go entirely as planned, the Chinese once more proving that they could be tenacious in defense even if they were no longer capable of attacking in this sector. Despite artillery support there was heavy to moderate resistance to the renewed advance, and by last light none of the initial objectives had been reached. Nevertheless, late in the day 2PPCLI was finally reached by the 1st Battalion of the 5th Cavalry Regiment, a sergeant informing Lieutenant Mike Levy that in the course of the day his platoon had lost an officer and half its men.27 “Our descent down Hill 677 was full of tension,” Mike Czuboka later wrote. “We did not know if the Chinese were still present.”28 Happily they were not. “When we went out, nobody fired,” another Canadian soldier recalled. “There was no firing at all as we left.”29
At the base of the hill the men climbed aboard trucks and were driven to a village, and then on Friday transported farther south as 28th Brigade became a rear guard covering the withdrawal of a badly hit RCT of the U.S. 24th Division.30 After bumping slowly down the road for thirteen miles in the lead vehicle through the early evening, Lieutenant Brian Munro of 2 Platoon suddenly saw, in the inky shadows ahead of the darkened trucks, a couple of figures, one of whom was motioning the column to stop. Munro ordered the driver to halt but, carbine in hand, was prepared to fight if the figures turned out to be part of a Chinese ambush. “I say, who are you?” a very clipped English voice asked. “Patricias,” Munro replied to an officer who turned out to be George Taylor, the commander of the newly created 28th Brigade, accompanied by a British redcap armed with a Sten gun. “Brigadier here!” The reason Taylor had stopped the column was that while they were on the move it had been impossible to contact them by radio and the Patricias were needed to form a new defensive position. “Would you mind climbing that hill over there and digging in?” the brigadier asked. “We will sort it all out in the morning.” Taylor then went down the halted column, sending the various companies onto the surrounding features. “As we dismounted and headed into the nearby hills, I had the impression of general confusion,” wrote John Bishop. “Companies and platoons were sited hurriedly in the dark, and we hastily started to dig.” It had begun to rain.31
Retreating and digging in under rotten weather conditions was dispiriting for the rest of the brigade as well, the absence of hard news about the state of affairs not improving morale at all. Yet the U.S.led withdrawal was—comparatively at least32—executed in an orderly manner, and it gradually became clear that by the time the brigade had moved twenty miles south of Kapyong the Chinese were not pursuing with any vigor. As a Middlesex soldier put it, “they did not disturb us.” Consequently the entire Commonwealth Brigade was sent back into IX Corps reserve at Yangpyong on 28 April.33