MACARTHUR’S TRIUMPH
By 5:30 in the afternoon, when the first waves of Marines reached shore, the men of the fleet could no longer see Inchon. Hundreds of boats milled in the outer harbor, in their turn crossing the embarkation line and moving toward land, where they disappeared into a bank of smoke and dust. The guns of the ships had ceased. Firing came most hotly from the north, in the heart of the city, where Murray’s Fifth Marines were landing on Red Beach.
Puller went in to his objective at Blue Beach with the third wave, in a twilight hastened by the smoke pall, and climbed a fifteen-foot sea wall on one of the scaling ladders improvised on the ship en route. It occurred to him that the Corps had not used ladders since Chapultepec.
He sat on the wall, briefly watching the enemy in his front; there was scattered fire on the landscape, a region of boggy lowlands with few buildings. Marines were blasting some machine gun nests in the area, but Puller saw few North Korean troops. Major James Treadwell, who had fifty-two amphibious tractors in Puller’s command, passed along the beach below the Colonel and drew artillery fire. A few of the armored vehicles halted. Treadwell looked upward and saw the Old Man: “If he can, we can,” he yelled to his men; they chugged ahead. When they were in position Treadwell returned to the sea wall.
“It won’t amount to much tonight,” Puller said. “We took ’em by surprise. Might as well move the CP.” There were only two or three men near him, and Treadwell assumed that this was the entire command staff of the regiment at the moment. Puller leapt for the ground below and tumbled on something unexpectedly soft. He felt the body of a dead North Korean soldier, who had been killed in the naval bombardment.
A light rain began in the early darkness and when he felt in his pack Puller was surprised to find both his raincoat and a poncho there, packed by Jones and Bodey, on Jones’s theory that the Old Man would not notice the extra weight. The new command post was soon open in a ditch, beneath the poncho.
Reports from the battalions were good, but there was some confusion. Naval guns had blocked the only exit from Blue Beach and engineers had had to dynamite a path; hundreds of men had swarmed over the sea wall on nets before the breach was made. The assault had been made by Stutter’s Second and Ridge’s Third Battalions, which were now going into position on a line which could be defended for the night. It was 2 A.M. before all troops found their outfits and there was much stumbling, clawing, falling and cursing as men moved out in patrols toward the enemy. Puller’s casualties had been light and the Division’s total for the day was only 20 killed and 170 wounded.
Puller was relieved; he had expected confusion from his unpracticed troops and feared heavy casualties as they crossed the sea wall and the open ground beyond. Puller walked his lines before he slept. He found Hawkins and most of his First Battalion along a railroad about half a mile inland; Sutter’s Second held the nearest road intersection and outposts had fanned onto hills commanding the road. Sutter reported one dead and nineteen wounded, and estimated he had killed fifty North Koreans and had captured fifteen. Ridge’s battalion had driven deeper, about a mile inland, to take a prominent hill, where one platoon of How Company drove the enemy from their holes, killing and wounding thirty without loss to themselves.
Sergeant Jones was one of the last men ashore. He had loaded the Old Man’s jeep on an amphibious tractor which was handled by a green crew. Shells dropped near them in the harbor and the skipper of the amtrack hung back until Jones drew his pistol and spoke quietly in the boy’s ear: “You can run all you like when your time comes. But you take me in to that beach or I’ll let some daylight into you.” He was landed without delay. Jones left the jeep at the base of the sea wall and began his search for Puller.
He went stealthily over the sand, whistling “Dixie,” hoping that sentries would recognize him as a Marine. He was halted by the familiar voice of a gunnery sergeant, gave the password, and went forward. He found Puller crouched in his gully under the poncho.
The Colonel peered out at Jones: “Old man, how the hell did you know it was going to rain?” A few days later when an officer proposed that Puller set up a weather information service Jones heard the Old Man growl: “Hell fire! Whenever I want to know about the weather, I’ll just ask Jones.”
Puller came upon Jan Bodey on one of his rounds; the bodyguard was digging furiously on a hillside. “What the devil you doing, Bo?”
“Fixing the Colonel’s hole, sir.”
“Oh hell, Bo. Just knock off the rocks. Don’t bother about me. This isn’t the first time I’ve soldiered.”
He handed a folded American flag to Bodey: “You keep this, old man, and take good care of it, or else. We’re going to fly it over Seoul.”
Puller passed the night on this ridge, an eminence covered with young pines planted by Japanese in a reforestation project.
Major Treadwell had a night call from one of his outposts, Warrant Officer Harold Sobel, an old Navy pilot who had joined the Marine amtracks. Sobel called by radio:
“Major, I’m being gassed.”
“You can’t be. There’s no gas around.”
“Oh, I am! I know what I’m smelling.” After a few desperate exchanges Sobel went off the air, and returned later in great relief: “Major, it’s okay. It’s not gas. It’s garlic. I backed over a patch coming in to this old house. Smells like hell, but I’m okay.”
Puller was awake at 3:30 A.M., calling the battalion commanders and making plans for attack at dawn. Orville Jones appeared with a miraculous breakfast: poached eggs on toast served on the lid of a cartridge case, the eggs liberated from villagers and the bread filched from the Navy. Puller grinned: “My God, old man, how’d you turn up this stuff out here?”
“Colonel, we’re just sorry there’s no Virginia ham and grits.”
The jeep began its combat career before daylight. Jones drove the Colonel down the ridges to a road on the front where a gap lay between the First and Fifth Marines. The first unit to reach the crucial road junction was a fire team from Company A, First Battalion, led by Corporal John R. Petree, a North Carolinian. This party approached the roadway warily, expecting the enemy—but when they emerged from the brush Petree saw a jeep: Puller was studying the gray mist with his field glasses (the old survivors from Haiti). Jones and Bodey sat in the front seat; Bodey was surrounded by a small arsenal, a shotgun, an M-1, a BAR and a .45. The country was unbelievably dusty, but somehow, though he was never seen to shine them, Bodey’s weapons gleamed.
Contact was made with the Fifth at 6:30 A.M. when a company from Murray’s command came to the junction. The trap was now closed on North Koreans in the Inchon pocket. The mopping-up was already under way when Puller left this spot; a regiment of South Korean Marines was working through the city, house by house, flushing the enemy.
Not long after 7:30 the assistant division commander, General Eddie Craig, an old friend from Nicaragua, found Puller near the front. Craig had checked the link between the regiments, then sought Lewie: “He was having a cup of coffee and things at his CP looked very calm and collected for the first morning after a landing.”
By 9 A.M. Puller had driven 4000 yards inland against machine gun and mortar fire. To the north, beyond their view, there was more serious fighting; a sortie of six Russian-made tanks into the outskirts of Inchon had brought down Marine Corsairs with napalm and bombs to scatter the supporting infantry and finish off the tanks.
Puller’s swift drive hurried adjoining forces in an effort to keep pace. Captain Ray Stiles of Ridge’s Battalion saw that the secret was not only in Puller’s incisive orders: “He gave us pride in some way I can’t describe. All of us had heard hundreds of stories about him, and today, though we couldn’t actually see him doing great things, he kept building up our morale higher and higher, just by being there.
“When we were moving up, two companies from the adjoining battalions marched abreast and got a little mixed. One of the kids yelled: ‘What outfit you with, Mac?’ ‘The Fifth Marines. How about you?’ ‘I got it better. I’m in Puller’s.’
“The troops in the First thought of the Old Man before they thought of the regimental number.”
The attack moved toward Kimpo airport on the road to Seoul, the captive South Korean capital, and resistance grew as the afternoon wore on. The enemy used the ridge country to advantage, forcing. Puller to press all the harder. Major Treadwell reported about 3:30 P.M.
“Colonel, I’ll have to take the amtracks back for servicing.”
“Can’t be done. We’ll fight until dark.”
“We can’t go on like this, sir. They’re falling out for fuel and repairs. They’ll have to go back sooner or later. I don’t want to work on ’em after dark.”
“Nothing doing. No tanks or tractors attached to me ever go to the rear.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get your service men up here and start to work.”
“I never heard of that before, Colonel.”
“A little something I thought up on the spur of the moment, Major. Just for this war.”
It did not strike Puller as absurd that a Marine hailed him at the roadside late in the day with a copy of the Reader’s Digest fresh from the States, indicating an article by Alexander de Seversky on the future of air power. “Shove it down my pack for me, old man,” Puller asked. The Colonel read the article in the night, a prediction that even aircraft carriers were doomed, that sea power was outmoded, and that only long-range bombing could defend America.
“I wish that bird could be out here tonight,” Puller told Rickert. “I’d like to see him check the air power we had overhead today—every damned bit of it off the carrier decks out there in the pond. This is going to be a great war for the experts.”
By the end of September 16 the assault phase of the landing was over and the two regiments had reached the Force Beachhead Line marked so vividly on command maps. Puller had gone far beyond in some areas, for his outposts were three miles inland. The drive for Seoul would open in the morning. The capital was seventeen miles away.
The Colonel had an introduction to one of Bodey’s myriad talents during the afternoon. They were speeding along the highway when a tire blew out, caused by a shell fragment. Puller stepped to the roadside for a look across the valley and before he turned back the tire had been changed. The giant Bodey simply held up a corner of the jeep while Jones slipped on the spare wheel.
By September 17, D Plus Two, General MacArthur was impatient to go ashore from the command ship, Mount McKinley. He saw that his blow to cut Korea in two had taken the enemy by surprise and that chances of ending the war were good. The commander had an intimation that this might be known to history as the most dazzlingly successful of all amphibious strikes, the crowning achievement of his career. He had been in that mood from the early moments of D-day when he radioed Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble, the task force commander, after the first good news from shore:
The Navy and Marines have never shone more brightly than this morning.
MacArthur.
By now, as he knew, planes were dropping his leaflets some two hundred miles to the southeast, among Red troops at the Pusan perimeter:
UNITED NATIONS FORCES HAVE LANDED AT INCHON
Officers and men of North Korea, powerful UN forces have landed at Inchon and are advancing rapidly. You can see from this map how hopeless your situation has become. Your supply lines cannot reach you, nor can you withdraw to the north. The odds against you are tremendous. Fifty-three of the fifty-nine countries in the UN are opposing you. You are outnumbered in equipment, manpower and firepower. Surrender or die. Come over to the UN side and you will get good food and prompt medical care.
Planes buzzed shoreward on their regular schedule over the harbor: Eight F4U’s went in from the carriers every ninety minutes, giving close air support to the Marines. And every ninety minutes other flights of eight more Corsairs and four AD’s went over, giving deep support by bombing oncoming enemy troops, highways and railroads.
Major General E. K. Wright of MacArthur’s staff noticed the commander’s interest when messages came from Puller’s First Marines, for the Colonel was one of his favorite field officers of World War II. MacArthur gave orders to take him ashore.
“Nothing would do,” Wright said, “but that he immediately visit Chesty Puller.”
A message that General MacArthur was on his way went to Puller; the commander wanted to give Chesty a Silver Star. The Colonel sent his reply while enemy fire was bursting on his ridge:
“Signal them that we’re fighting our way for every foot of ground. I can’t leave here. If he wants to decorate, he’ll have to come up here.”
After the entourage made other stops, General Wright led MacArthur to a ruined house at a roadside. Wires led in and out, but Puller was not there. Marines pointed ahead, toward the fighting.
It was the adjutant, Major Reeves, who first saw the distinguished visitors. He looked down from the hill to see a long string of jeeps, six or eight of them, and shouted to Puller: “General MacArthur’s coming.”
“How do you know?”
“Who the hell else in Korea could have enough jeeps for a funeral, and have a light-colonel dog-trotting out in front?”
Puller was atop a cruelly high ridge, but the seventy-year-old commander made it, puffing a bit, trailed by most of his staff and some reporters. He shook hands with Puller and studied the terrain. Puller had his hands in the pockets of wrinkled fatigues; he sucked at a pipe. A folded map in a hip pocket seemed to be his entire paraphernalia of command.
“We thought we’d find you back in the CP,” someone said.
Puller patted his map. “This is my CP,” he said.
MacArthur turned abruptly to Puller: “Colonel, your regiment is performing splendidly and I am gratified to present you with the Silver Star.” He fished in his pocket for the medal, but found he had none. “Make a note of that,” MacArthur told reporters. Puller turned back to the east, pointing.
“Thanks very much for the Star, General. Now if you want to know where those sons of bitches are, they’re right over the next ridge.”
Percy Wood of the Chicago Tribune, who was taking notes, reflected that he had never seen such a cool customer as the disheveled Marine colonel.
MacArthur and his staff watched shells burst on the town of Yongdong-po two or three miles away; Seoul lay beyond.
“How long do you think you’ll need to get into Seoul, Colonel?” MacArthur asked.
“No more than three or four days, General.”
“How are you so sure, Puller?”
“Every prisoner we take says there’s only cadets left down there. Well roll ’em up.”
“Don’t forget what the cadets of Virginia Military Institute did at the battle of New Market.”
“General, these aren’t V.M.I. cadets—and those V.M.I. boys weren’t fighting Marines, either.”
MacArthur laughed. “The Marine conspiracy is complete. But I wish they would come out and fight. It would make things easier for you.”
“We’ll make it. If they’re dug in, we can use napalm and have no trouble. It’s nothing to what I hit at Peleliu. There I lost sixty-two per cent of my men and seventy-four per cent of the officers.”
“I landed at Moratai the day you got to Peleliu,” the commander said. “I picked the Moratai date for that reason, to go in under your wing. That got us a six-hundred-and-fifty-mile jump in the war. I believe I was the first Army man to give all my ground forces to the Navy to handle. I trusted them to land me, cover and guard me for a month. They did. The Navy never failed me.”
Puller guided the party for a couple of hours as they wound toward the front lines. At one stop MacArthur turned to him as if he had forgotten: “Colonel, I want your regiment to have an Army Presidential Unit Citation, a symbol of my respect for these troops with you. They’re magnificent.”
The procession passed the scene of the day’s big fight, an encounter with half a dozen enemy tanks which were now smoking wrecks, some of them still blazing inside.
Puller explained that these tanks had been killed with the 3.5-inch bazooka, which the Army claimed it could not do. “It’s just a matter of having the kind of men who can get in there close enough to knock out these caviar cans. One of my finest boys was killed here today—got two tanks and was after a third.”
MacArthur expressed his sorrow and looked at the tanks with interest. He joked of the Army-Marine rivalry. “I know the Marines are good,” he said, “but just how you got the enemy to fake a fire fight just so the commander could see this, I don’t know.”
The Corps seemed to be winning an ally.
In the next days when MacArthur’s staff officers and correspondents came for jeep rides on the front Puller took Jones aside and whispered: “Take ’em up and get ’em shot at. Let ’em see what this is all about.”
Jones tried valiantly, but at the first sign of firing, his guests shouted for him to halt. Jones had a load of reporters in the jeep one morning when bullets kicked up a dust at the roadside. There was a chorus: “Stop!”
“Nothing but spent bullets,” Jones said. “Couldn’t do more than sting you.”
“Ain’t you afraid, Jones?”
“Nah. All you guys sitting on that side are shielding me. They’d never drill me.”
The reporters leapt for the ditch.
The afternoon of September 18 was busy for Puller—and for Oliver Smith, whose division headquarters were now ashore. On the trail of MacArthur came Major General Frank Lowe, a hardy Maine man on a top-secret mission as “personal spy” for President Truman. The Marines were impressed at first glance: Lowe arrived with a “Task Force”—an Army jeep with a 50-caliber machine gun mounted between its seats, complete with a driver and gunner. Lowe and Puller got on well from the start, for the sixty-six-year-old National Guard veteran of two wars did not stand in awe of the Army and observed combat with a knowing eye. Oliver Smith had warned Puller of his coming: “The President has sent Lowe for a personal report. Be careful, but show him all the interesting sights you can.”
Within a day or two Lowe was telling correspondents: “When things get rough I feel safe only when I’m with the Marines. Greatest fighting men I’ve ever seen, anywhere.”
He was regarded with suspicion for some days, however, since President Truman had attacked the Corps shortly before the Inchon landing and had branded it as “nothing but a police force.” In response, many of the Division’s vehicles were painted crudely: “Truman’s Police,” and tanks bore the legend “MP.”
There was another call late in the day from General Smith: “Brigadier General James Gavin has come with a team from Washington to observe close air support. He’s on his way up.”
“Fine,” Puller said. “He couldn’t come at a better time. We’ll start hitting hard in the morning as soon as the mist is off the valleys. He’ll see a show.”
Although Gavin does not recall it, this is Puller’s memory of the incident:
“General Gavin came to our CP, on the reverse side of a ridge from the enemy, and with the staff and our tactical air man I briefed him on the situation. The Reds were dug in on a parallel ridge about fifteen hundred yards away, and in the valley between. At dawn Marine planes came in, close behind the infantry, bombing and strafing the enemy while two artillery battalions fired support.
“The planes came in so low that they were blown upwards fifty feet or more by bomb blasts. General Gavin said, ‘Can I believe my eyes?’ We called off the air, lifted the artillery to the opposite ridge and the infantry went ahead. We took the positions with light casualties.
“General Gavin told me, ‘This close support of yours must be given first priority. I never dreamed air could be used like this. When I get to Washington I’ll see that your Marine system is adopted. But there’s one thing I’m afraid I can’t put over—having these air people on the ground with your troops.’
“I explained that this was the secret of the whole business, that the Corps had proved after years of work that the only way to make the system effective was to have air liaison on the ground radioing to the fliers, men who understood the language of fliers, and men they trusted. When General Gavin left us he was most enthusiastic. He said he would do his best to see to it that our ideas were adopted, but I heard no more about it.”
General Lowe, who spent the night near Puller, explained his mission to the Colonel: “The President wants me to tell him what I see, honestly and without pulling punches. He doesn’t want long documents, just the real dope. I’m going to do my best. I don’t want any publicity, either, because he wants me to work anonymously.”
He showed a small card mounted in plastic, announcing him as the President’s personal emissary and asking the cooperation of all hands. Lowe handed Puller a letter.
“Here’s a report to the President. I’d like you to look it over.”
“I shouldn’t be reading a dispatch like that, not to the President.”
“It’s all right. The President and I understand each other. I want to get your ideas.”
Puller read the letter—a paean of praise for the Marines as the finest troops in the world, who had saved the war on almost every occasion they had fought. There was plentiful credit for the First Regiment and a report to Mr. Truman of what captured North Korean officers had said: “We cannot make our men stand and fight those men who wear canvas leggings, even if we threaten to shoot them.”
Puller said he could add nothing to such a report, but made an offer: “You don’t want to send it like that to the White House—penciled on ruled paper. Why not try to have it typed at the rear?”
“No. The President knows me well. He’s a good scout, and he doesn’t stand on ceremony.”
After sundown on September 18, after a day of rapid advance by his men, Puller rode toward the front in the jeep, which Jones drove in the dark with the other vehicles on the road. There was still heavy firing to the north, the aftermath of a day’s hard work by Murray’s Fifth Marines, who had seized Kimpo Airfield, the finest in the Orient.
As they hurried by a line of infantry they passed a truck with its lights on. Puller stopped Jones, jumped out and charged the offending driver. “What the devil are those lights about, old man?” He did not wait for action, but knocked out the headlamps with the butt of his .45.
Heavy mortar fire fell in Sutter’s Second Battalion position along the road to Seoul at night, killing two and wounding three men. At about 6 A.M. Puller, now solely responsible for the highway, attacked, since Murray had detoured around the airfield. By 9 o’clock Ridge’s battalion had passed the small town of Sosa, after a lively tank fight which broke a stubborn North Korean stand. Ridge held his objective on a commanding hill by 11:30. Sutter had hard going; the road was heavily mined and some tanks lost their treads.
The dangers did not keep Puller from the roads. In the afternoon as Jones and Bodey sped along the highway, with the Old Man snoozing in the back seat from lack of sleep the night before, Jones spotted the deadly finger of a buried mine in the rut ahead. He wrenched the wheel sharply. Puller jerked awake: “Damn, Jones, you trying to kill me?” Jones stopped. Some excited Korean women came to the roadside, pointing to the mine, and gestured, signaling an explosion. Puller grinned. “Must have missed it at least an inch, Jones.”
Jones and Bodey had already settled into a routine. They stayed in the command post area when Puller worked or slept there and even at night their communication system worked perfectly. Puller gave a shrill whistle and Jones or Bodey replied with a curious “Whooooooeeee” reminiscent of the Rebel Yell. Marines who heard it for the first time were awed: “My God, that ain’t no way to talk to a colonel!” But understanding between the three was complete.
In the push toward Seoul, when Puller was driving the swifter phase of the attack, Jones saw a man the troops never knew:
“The Colonel was always far away in his mind. He’d look at you and tell you what to do that day and you could tell he was thinking out something else. His whole eye wasn’t with you. It would come out now and then as we rode along, from little things he would say to us. He’d been putting himself in the enemy’s shoes, figuring out what he’d do if he were a Korean commander. He knew just where every gun emplacement ought to be, too, I mean. He would talk about that.
“Sometimes he would be in his seat, nodding, like asleep and then stir and tell me and Bodey: ‘Never underestimate the enemy, boys. If you don’t figure him to have as much sense as you’ve got you’ll have trouble.’ Sometimes he would talk about his wife and children; he never forgot ’em.”
In Jones’s eyes Puller was unerring in dealing with enlisted men or administering justice.
On one of the fiery days of the drive toward Seoul a popular chaplain, Father Keating, captured five North Korean soldiers and herded them along as prisoners. He hailed a passing Marine jeep driven by a Private Wolff: “Son, take these prisoners off my hands. Get them to the rear before they’re hurt.”
“I can’t, Father. I’m running ammo into the edge of town, and they’re getting low. I can’t stop to do it.”
“Private, this is an order. Take them over.”
Wolff looked rearward at the burning city. “You mean they’re mine now? Under my responsibility?”
“Yes.”
Wolff pulled up a light machine gun and sprayed the group, killing all five. The outraged Keating went to Puller and demanded action. The Colonel listened carefully, ordered Wolff arrested, and the priest went away content that he had done his duty.
Ten minutes later Puller asked an aide: “What outfit was it that lost all those boys last night?”
“Barrow’s company, sir.”
“All right. Give that boy Wolff a BAR and send him up there.”
Jones took the story to his cronies as an example of military justice at its best; it spread through the outfit to become part of the Puller legend.
The First Marines ran into harder fighting on September 19, on a day when one battalion—Hawkins’s—made an eleven-mile trip by truck in a realignment. (The Fifth Marines had already crossed the deep Han River.) It was after dark before Puller’s advance company got to Hill 118, a dominant ridge near the river, but at last Captain Bob Barrow’s men dug in on the slopes, ready to meet the expected enemy reaction. At daylight, a counterattack which hit Barrow’s lines was driven off and the enemy retreated to nearby hills, which were then taken by Marines in bloody frontal attacks.
At the same time Sutter’s men beat off their second tank attack in two days, with grenades, rockets and bayonets. The day passed with Puller seizing, bit by bit, the commanding high ground for the final assault on Yongdong-po. The Seventh Marines landed in support at Inchon that day and the First Division was complete. General Smith sent Litzenberg with the Seventh to the north, on the upper flank of the Fifth. The plan was now for Murray to strike down the far side of the Han River, open a crossing for Puller at Yongdong-po, and join a twin assault on Seoul itself.
Sutter’s battalion first probed into the industrial suburb and lost many men in a confusing jumble of dikes, warehouses and dwellings. Aided by planes and artillery and a bold charge of Bob Barrow’s company, they broke the enemy. Barrow was cut off during the night but halted several fierce counterattacks and when dawn came Yongdong-po was taken.
By nightfall of September 23, Puller was ready to cross the Han and join Murray, who was fighting bitterly in the hills northeast of Seoul. Ahead of the First, just beyond the river, was a maze of pillboxes whose guns had been carefully set with overlapping fire zones. The terrain was perfect for defense, an old training camp built by the Japanese before World War II. The North Koreans were dug in for their last stand. Marine Headquarters knew that the winning of the city would be costly, but the newly formed X Corps, commanded by General Edward M. Almond, was optimistic, and predicted that the enemy would flee.
In the seven days since D-day there had been 1148 Marine casualties, 145 of these killed; 20 more died of wounds and 5 were missing.
Puller’s regiment crossed the Han at a spot where he was not expected and the enemy was unprepared. Palisades towered over the stream; on the far side was a narrow beach which could accommodate no more than two landing craft at once. It was an unpromising crossing, but it worked like a charm for Puller.
By 7:45 A.M. Sutter’s men were crossing; they drove rapidly 400 yards beyond the river under sniper fire from pillboxes. A few rounds of artillery burst near the CP which Reeves had set up for Puller on a slope; two men were wounded. Puller behaved as if the crossing had been planned a year earlier. He disregarded a squabble between Jim Treadwell and headquarters as to whether LVT’s or DUKW’s should be used, turned his lead battalion over to Treadwell and watched the ferrying.
Major Reeves approached Puller with a Silver Star sent by MacArthur. Puller turned back to the river. “Send it to my son for me, old man.” He did not mention the medal again.
By now, across the river, Sutter had turned east toward Seoul, approaching ridges which guarded the city. Puller crossed and found Jack Hawkins on the far shore with his men at rest.
“What the hell are you doing, Hawkins?”
“I’m in reserve, sir.”
“Well you won’t be in it long. Get in the attack.”
“Sir, we can’t pass Sutter. He’s moving fast. Are you going to stop him so I can get out front?”
“Hell, no. I had trouble enough getting ’em started.”
“By the book they should halt and then we pass through them.”
“We’re using no book here today, Hawkins. I’ll give ’em the word to cease fire when you pass. We can’t give the enemy time to catch his breath. Take up double time.”
Hawkins’s men trotted out to obey the unprecedented order, through the ranks of the lead battalion. When Bob Barrow’s company came onto the heels of Easy Company of Sutter’s battalion, Captain Carter ran back: “What the hell’s going on?”
“This constitutes a passage of lines, friend, Puller style.”
“My God, I don’t even get time to get ’em out of the way?”
“Not today. On to Seoul.”
The first such passage of lines in military history was soon complete; to observers it seemed a mad race for the commanding hills ahead, where the enemy waited in confusion. The advance pushed so rapidly that Barrow’s company literally ran to the top of Hill 79 and raised a U.S. flag over a schoolhouse—though they were not yet in the city proper.
Captain Bob Wray, of Hawkins’s C Company, was amused by the sight of this flag-raising, for, as he saw it, the school-house ground had been taken by his second platoon and the conquerors lay on their hill, watching, as Barrow’s men put up their flag and had their photograph made.
When Wray reflected upon the pell-mell charge he was surprised to discover the lesson Puller had taught: “We thought that Puller just wanted to impress General Lowe with the fast drive. The passage of lines was not really formal, just knots of men driving across the landscape so fast that the enemy didn’t have a chance to get organized before our lines were whipping through them.
“This scared the company commanders at first, when we were told to just take over and bang in there. But Puller knew the value of that shock to the enemy and that all the niggling around with flanks and keeping fancy formations would have cost him lives. We barreled on, and it worked to perfection.”
Puller was not content with the quick thrust by his infantry to the screening hills. He had been promised tanks which were still held by Murray. A runner from the Fifth Marines had reached Puller at the riverside with a message from Murray that he was heavily engaged and could not spare the tanks.
“I’m busy right this minute, old man,” Puller said. “But don’t you move a muscle. As soon as I can leave these troops you’re going to guide me to your CP and we’ll find out something about those tanks.”
A few minutes later the young Marine led Puller to Murray’s sector, and after a brief, heated exchange the Colonel had made clear his claim to the tanks.
“I can’t advance,” Murray said.
“Have you tried the bayonet?”
“No. We’re deep in the hills, fighting like hell.”
“Then use it, and follow the First Marines into Seoul.”
The tanks soon joined the First and the push picked up speed. There was rivalry between the two regiments which would continue until Seoul had fallen.
The forward elements were pushed so fast from Puller’s roving headquarters that communications men in the front lines began defending themselves against the driving Colonel. Puller laughed when news of their device came to him: Infantrymen held rifle barrels against their walkie-talkie radios and scraped them to garble the Colonel’s rasping voice as he called commands. He could grin in memory of his own trials at Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester, when he had told his communications sergeants: “Cut off that damned radio. We know what we’re doing, and those headquarters birds will never figure it out.”
On the morning of September 25, Puller’s line of attack lay directly into the heart of Seoul, through its main streets. At sunrise he got two platoons of Pershing tanks to help him—though the big vehicles fell into a fight just after crossing the Han and were in trouble until a flame thrower came up to demoralize the enemy. The count: 15 enemy dead and 131 prisoners, all in twenty minutes.
On this day General MacArthur announced that the city of Seoul had been secured—an announcement which later brought a wry rejoinder from Oliver Smith: “The following day we had 185 battle casualties; the next day, 183. It wasn’t secure for us.”
The Marines still faced their major battle for the capital of South Korea, and the hottest of it fell to Puller’s First.
When Captain Bruce F. Williams, the tank commander, reported to Puller with an effusive story of his victory by the river, the Colonel spoke without removing the pipe from his mouth: “I’m not interested in your sea stories, young man. You’re forty-five minutes late. Get your unit into position. We’ve got fish to fry.”
The day of September 25 netted Puller only 2000 yards into the city’s edge, even with the aid of air strikes and artillery. Along a rail embankment and from rooftops and houses the enemy fought fanatically.
Puller watched from a hillside as artillery shells burst among the houses. He had a sad note in his voice as he muttered to Reeves: “They’ll remember us for a thousand years for this, and hate our guts.”
A reporter, H. D. Quigg of United Press, found Puller in this spot:
“The colonel was sitting in a turnip and onion patch atop a high hill. Swallows fluttered and dipped over thatched and corrugated tin roofs of a shabby collection of huts on the side of the hill below us. A little boy exercised on crude parallel bars. A little girl in a red skirt and white blouse watched him. The roar of artillery and bombing and strafing planes was all about.
“‘The North Koreans,’ Puller said in his deep drawling voice, ‘are defending the city in such a way as to force us to destroy it. There’s a billion dollars’ worth of publicity in it for them.’
“Puller picked a blade of grass and nodded toward a plastered, stone-walled house with a sewer-pipe chimney and an adjoining stable from which came the neighing of a horse.
“‘I hate to see people in a shack like that get hurt,’ he said. ‘The same family probably has been living for generations in that same dump.’”
A few minutes later, Quigg met a young Marine officer who talked about Puller: “I’ve never seen a guy like him. I’d follow him to hell—and it looks like I’m going to have to.”
As much as Puller regretted the destruction of Seoul, there was no other way.
General Almond’s staff urged a bypassing of the city, but General Smith realized that the determined enemy would defend Seoul house by house, yard by yard, and insisted that the drive be pressed to destroy the defenders. X Corps clung to its story that North Koreans were fleeing Seoul, a report originated by an airman who had seen civilian refugees on the roads. At the end of the day Almond ordered the Marines to press on to catch the “retreating” enemy. Even then advance Marine elements were under flank fire and commanders realized that a night attack through a strange city, against well-prepared enemy positions, could be suicidal. There was no revision of orders. The attack was on.
Smith warned Puller and Murray personally: “Move deliberately and concentrate on streets you can identify in the dark. I’ll get you a fifteen-minute artillery barrage.”
Lieutenant Colonel Ridge was in Puller’s front, holding a roadblock in a street when the attack order came. His line consisted of two rifle squads, a heavy machine gun section, a rocket squad and a few men from a platoon of 75 millimeter recoilless guns. The command post for the block was in the cellar of a nearby house. In the darkness Ridge sent an eight-man patrol through mine fields, with three native guides, to make contact with the nearest Fifth Marine post.
Corporal Charles Collins led this patrol, which ran into an enemy battalion gathering for a counter-attack down the street, a force so strong that it seemed certain to wipe out the roadblock. Collins sent his men back under fire, covered them with his M-1, hid in a house, and reappeared the next morning in Korean dress.
The battle boiled past him. At 1:45, when Puller was supposed to jump off, there was a fresh Marine artillery barrage, since the first had not satisfied Colonel Puller. Just as this second barrage fell the North Korean battalion charged the roadblock—supported by Russian-made tanks. The tanks caused numerous Marine casualties, but the new salvos of shells tore the enemy attack with perfect timing. When the big guns had been roaring for almost two hours the roadblock commander was told that they could fire no more; the tubes were on the point of burning out. The North Koreans returned to the attack just at that moment.
Three tanks and some infantry appeared around a curve and blasted the outpost at short range; a few rounds from 155’s scattered them, but within a few minutes the sally was repeated. This fighting continued through the night and losses were high on both sides. At 5:30 the Marine rifle companies were running out of shells, and jeeps and trailers crowded the streets, carrying in ammunition.
The fire of artillery and mortars had set a record for the Korean war; the four battalions of artillery had fired all shells at hand and had depleted a nearby Army dump. The 4.2 mortars had fired 326 rounds, and the big 81’s, 650 rounds. The .50-caliber machine guns had used 120 boxes, or 30,000 rounds.
In the first light the wreckage before Puller’s lines was spectacular. That section of Seoul was blasted to rubble, including ruins of three of the big T-34 Russian tanks and one T-70, several anti-tank guns, and the bodies of 250 enemy troops. Ridge’s men were pulled back from the scene to repair their weapons, for most of the barrels were burned out.
Reporters found Puller at his command post in early morning and questioned him about the “fleeing enemy.”
“All I know about a fleeing enemy is that there’s two or three hundred lying out there that won’t be fleeing anywhere. They’re dead. Some fleeing they were doing last night, too.”
The night’s battle had put Lieutenant Joe Fisher’s Item Company to the test. The burly veteran who had been a sergeant and platoon leader on Iwo Jima was one of Puller’s favorites, of whom he often said: “One of the best company commanders who ever lived. Equal to any assignment. As long as I’m around he’ll lead Item Company.”
Fisher dug in for the night on an isolated hill in the city’s factory district, overlooking the roadblock, which was on his left flank. From midnight to dawn he beat off waves of attacks.
Fisher called for artillery at the same time other frontline commanders asked for help, but between barrages the North Koreans swept up Fisher’s hill in banzai charges, urged by a shrill-voiced commander in their rear. Item Company’s weapons, including machine guns, fired at top speed and bodies piled up below them. Toward the end, when attacks weakened, the fight turned into a turkey shoot and Fisher’s men slaughtered the enemy. They were glad to see the sun rise. Fisher never forgot that daybreak:
“I looked down the hill behind me and saw a man hurrying up toward our position. I could see that he wasn’t lugging ammunition and thought it must be an important message too hot for radio. Then I saw that it was Colonel Puller’s runner—and he had brought us a bottle of Black and White Scotch. My God, were we glad to see that! We passed it down to the platoon with the most casualties and they rationed it out to those who needed it most. We knew then that the Old Man was thinking of us—and in fact never forgot us.”
At 9 A.M. on September 26 the First and Fifth Marines began the slow, hard drive into the heart of the city. In the Fifth’s sector Murray’s vanguard entered Seoul from a rugged spur where it had fought in the night. Puller’s route was down the streets, the chief of them a main thoroughfare where streetcar tracks were laid. The enemy fought at every intersection, from roadblocks of sand-filled rice bags, most of these defended by anti-tank guns. Snipers worked from houses, high and low. Captain Bob Wray of C Company said: “Our kids were green at the start, because they’d never had street fighting, but by the end of the first block they were veterans. They learned to cover each other and watch the windows and doors of houses and to handle the intersections.” This company, supported by tanks, drove to the railroad station in Seoul, where there was a fierce fight.
Puller’s orders went out to the company commanders: “Keep the men moving. All the buildings and rooftops are full of Reds. Leave the snipers if they’re beyond your reach. Let the Korean Marines mop up behind you. Circle to the side streets when you have trouble at the barricades. The important thing is to keep moving.”
Just behind the front rank of infantry during the hours of storming the city, Puller walked with Jan Bodey. Orville Jones had the jeep a few yards to their rear. Jones weaved back and forth in the column; Puller was beside the lead tank.
Jones watched a grenade fly from a house; it landed eight or ten yards behind Puller, but the Old Man did not so much as turn around when it exploded. Jones got a flying fragment in a tire and halted to fix the flat. He was some time in catching up with the Old Man and Bodey.
Puller was astounded by Korean civilians in the street, hundreds who stood on the walks with calm disregard of flying bullets and bursting shells, among them children five or six years old who played soldier with wooden guns.
Bob Wray watched David Duncan, the news photographer, squatting in the street, casually taking pictures. An old man came to the door of his home, held the door ajar and swept the threshold and walk without taking notice of the battle.
Puller had a sudden thought: “These Oriental civilians are tougher than our people. What it will be like when America is invaded, God knows.”
An International News Service reporter was near Puller when bullets kicked up dust at the Colonel’s feet and wounded an enlisted man a few yards away. “The damned snipers,” Puller said. “They’re a nuisance, but that’s about all. We can’t waste time sending patrols after them, or we’d stop the advance. It would cost us more. I’ve told ’em to drive on and let the ROK’s mop it up. They’ll do it better anyway. They’re the only ones who can tell the cowboys from the Indians.”
Puller came upon Marines dug in around a barricade, taking cover from fire down the street. He walked among them with the pipe stub in his mouth: “Get up, boys. Get up and go. That’s the quickest way to get it over. If you’re going to get it, you can get it in the holes, too.” The line moved on.
Joe Fisher saw Puller in the street: “He was going along where the fire was heaviest, just like he was back in Pendleton and as if he didn’t know there was a fight within miles. I couldn’t express how much good it did me and my troops to see him steady like that, just puffing that pipe. It made us feel like we could do no less than he did. If there has ever been another one like him in the Marine Corps I never saw him in my day.”
Corporal John Blazer saw Puller several times in the day’s fighting: “Whenever he saw a Marine walking away from the front, whether for ammo or to an aid station or whatnot, Puller would frown at him with a hard, unfriendly stare. When he saw one of us going toward the front, for any reason, he’d wave and smile and call, ‘How you doin’, old man?’”
Lieutenant Lew Devine of Fox Company met Puller at midday, when they were near Kung Hua Noon Circle, where North Korean resistance pinned down two companies and stalled the advance. The area was a litter of stones, fallen and burned timbers, bricks, enemy dead and ruined anti-tank gun mounts. Black smoke boiled in the streets and cut visibility. A chaplain, Otto Sporrer, went by with a team he had organized, carrying wounded on metal shutters ripped from buildings.
Devine had been slightly wounded two days earlier and corpsmen had slit his jacket; he now wore the blouse of a dead sergeant. Puller watched Devine and his rifle platoon take a barricade and swarm over enemy bodies to the front. The Colonel caught up with them.
Devine treasured a memory of it: “Puller put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Great work, Sergeant.’ But Rickert, his exec, had come up by then and told him I was a lieutenant, not a sergeant. Puller’s face changed, and he spat and said, ‘Lieutenant!’ and went off. I believed, as most of the second lieutenants did, that Puller preferred sergeants to us, but the junior officers were strong for him, just the same.”
Bill Ferrigno, the veteran who was field sergeant major, had a glimpse of the Colonel: “It was like going through hell, passing down that Seoul street. And who should we pass in the middle of it but Chesty? It was so hot that I thought the grenades and ammunition we carried would explode. The flames almost met over our heads from the burning houses, but the Colonel didn’t seem in the least concerned. It gave us an extra push.”
X Corps headquarters announced that most of the city was under control, but there was even harder fighting ahead. After a short night’s rest Puller’s advance drove on, using lessons of the previous day with telling effect.
Barricades grew larger as they advanced and the infantry worked out a pattern with the engineers: Riflemen crawled to windows and rooftops and alleyways and drove defenders behind the barricade; engineers ran into the streets, located mines and shouted, “Fire in the hole!” Troops took cover as explosions rocked the street. Then tanks came in. The enemy broke from the roadblock to flee wildly down the street—only to fall before the machine guns and heavier tank weapons. The troops spent about forty-five minutes on each barricade in the process. Enemy fire was so heavy that the tanks were swept clean; all radio antennae, phone boxes and periscope heads were shot away. In front of this fiery assault the Corsairs worked, coming down just over the rooftops to sear the enemy with napalm and bombs. In the end the North Koreans were terrorized and the advance picked up speed.
Before 11 A.M. Sutter’s battalion raised an American flag over the French consulate and at 3:37 P.M. one fluttered over the U. S. consulate. Murray’s men fought their way toward Changdok Palace in these hours and the flag-raising race was on in earnest. Credit for the official victory went to Puller’s men, led by Bill Ferrigno, who put up a flag over Ambassador Muccio’s residence.
Ferrigno and Easy Company of the Second Battalion were first at the American Embassy, tramping through tons of official papers which Red looters had tossed to the floors. A jeep arrived from regiment with a flag and orders that the oldest man should raise it. Ferrigno was the senior, at forty-four, but gave the job to Platoon Sergeant Fichter, who had been in the midst of the fighting, and Old Glory soon fluttered over the damaged residence. A few Korean onlookers cheered; the troops moved ahead.
There were complaints from X Corps headquarters, as well as from Murray’s Fifth Marines. An officer from Almond’s headquarters growled: “Ever since that flag-raising picture at Iwo Jima, I’m convinced that a Marine had rather carry a flag than a weapon.”
“Not a bad idea,” Puller said. “A man with a flag in his pack and the desire to put it on an enemy strongpoint isn’t likely to bug out.”
Puller made headquarters for the night in Duk Soo Palace, which was battered but usable. Some of the staff urged the Colonel to move to the nearby Banto Hotel; he went to inspect it. Puller walked the empty corridors with Major Reeves and halted at the sound of voices, flung open a door and saw two of his Marine privates drinking beer. American beer.
“Where the devil did you get that?”
One of the young men tugged at a bell pull. “Rang for it, Colonel. First-chop service. We’ll fetch you some.”
Officers found the hotel cellar intact, stocked with fine British and American whiskies. The amiable Korean clerk on duty grinningly accepted any chits which the Marines would sign and the potables were lugged out by the case.
Puller left the place ruefully: “We can’t have our CP here. The Army will be in here by tomorrow, and they’d run us out.” Twelve hours made him a prophet; the hotel became X Corps headquarters.
Puller returned to Duk Soo for the night. Jones and Bodey carried the blankets of the Colonel and General Lowe into a shrine, a portion of the palace, where Lowe slept on the floor and Puller on an old sofa which was too short for him. He curled up, but in the morning found that he had pushed both ends off the sofa.
There were official visitors in the morning. A helicopter brought Admiral Won Yil Sohn of the South Korean Navy, whom Puller had met before the war. Oliver Smith also arrived, and not long afterward General Clifton B. Cates, the Marine Corps Commandant, out on a tour of inspection.
Puller explained to Cates his plan to sell his new friend Lowe on an expansion of the Marine Corps to three divisions, but neither Smith nor Cates shared Puller’s enthusiasm. “It might be too big and unwieldy, Lewis,” Cates said. It would be little more than a year before Puller saw his dream of a bigger Corps come true—though without the proper shipping to move troops in an emergency.
Puller had come to trust Lowe completely and no longer regarded him as a spy; he tried to have “Task Force Lowe” decorated by the Corps, but Lowe protested that he must remain anonymous, and that an honor from the force he was praising so highly in his reports to President Truman might cause embarrassment.
One morning Lowe and Puller sat together in a cemetery as troops moved past them in a road.
“My Lord, Puller, look at those sergeants of yours!”
“Well, what’s wrong with ’em?”
“Nothing, man. They should all be lieutenants in the Eighth Army, right this minute.”
“Don’t start your proselyting around me, or I’ll take you behind the hill and have you knocked off, where the Army would never find you.”
Lowe laughed.
A few minutes later they overheard two of Puller’s runners gossiping:
“The first atomic bomb the Russians drop will hit the White House, and the next one will get the Pentagon.”
“Like hell they will! Them Russians know what’s causing all this confusion out here. They wouldn’t dare touch them places.”
Seoul was hardly secure, but on September 29 General MacArthur led President Syngman Rhee and a herd of newly arrived staff and flag officers from Tokyo to the Capitol for a ceremony restoring the city to the Republic of South Korea.
Original plans had been much grander, but General Smith had sternly rejected requests for bands and honor guards from his Marines on the ground that the men were still fighting and could not be spared. MacArthur reduced the honor guard and imported Army men from Tokyo for the purpose.
At 11:45 A.M. the historic occasion opened with a procession through rubbled streets to the assembly hall in the Capitol. Smoke still rose from the cellars of the building and from the skylight dome overhead slivers of broken glass fell now and then upon the celebrities.
Suddenly, about mid-morning, the streets had filled with big staff cars, all Army—spotless Buicks and Chevrolets brought in from Japan. These made Puller’s jeep seem more battle-worn than ever. Still, the Old Man was one of the four Marines summoned to the festivities, and Jones made ready. Puller had argued in vain with Oliver Smith that he should be excused from the ceremony, since his job was not restoring governments. He also grumbled over the order that he must wear his battle helmet, when he had come all through the fighting in his wrinkled cap.
Puller literally had to fight his way into the ceremony. Before they left Duk Soo Palace the Colonel came upon Bodey, who was sloshing suds over his head and chest from a helmet half full of water. “What’s going on, Bo? Don’t tell me you’ve taken to bathing.”
“Colonel, I’ve got to get ready for the shindig.”
“What shindig?”
“Yours. Ours. The MacArthur party, Colonel.”
“Knock it off, Bo. If you get cleaned up you can’t go with us. People will think we haven’t been working.”
Bodey lumbered across the Palace yard after them, grinning as he pulled on his jacket. Puller deliberately postponed his own sprucing up, though he had not shaved since the landing and his utilities were rumpled and dirty. They crawled into the jeep.
Bodey was in the rear seat, drinking from a quart of liberated Korean beer and nibbling from a bag of peanuts. They were halted at the gate of the Government House compound by a natty Army MP officer, a major. Puller looked mildly at the MP, inspecting his gleaming black boots and white shoe laces. His jaw tightened when he saw that the laces had been ripped from silk parachutes; he remembered the shortage of chutes in the drive on Seoul, when supplies had been needed.
“Sorry, Colonel,” the MP said. “Only staff cars allowed in the compound.”
Puller took the pipe from his mouth: “Major, I left my staff car in Japan a month ago, when they told us there was a war going on here.”
“I was told cars only, sir.”
“This is our real estate, Major. My boys took this damned place.”
“Orders, Colonel. I’m sorry. I can’t let you pass.”
Puller stood, clinging to the windshield. “I don’t give a damn what your orders are, old man. My orders are to go in there, and I’m going. Now get out of the way.”
“Not today, Colonel.”
“Listen, Major, if you wanted to throw your weight around you should have been here when you could get your nose bloody, while the First Marines were coming through these streets.”
“My orders, sir. You cannot enter here.”
“Run over him, Jones!”
Jones gunned the motor so abruptly that Puller was flung back into the seat and Bodey sloshed himself with suds and nuts. The MP major scampered out of their path, taking refuge on a patio. He shouted after them: “I’ll see you when you get out of there!”
Puller entered the Capitol. MacArthur and Rhee were already there, with some UN officials and Ambassador Muccio; most of those present were staff officers from Tokyo, all in fresh uniforms. There was only a little clutch of the Marines who had fought the campaign: Smith, Craig, Murray and Puller.
Around the walls was a ring of spit-and-polish Army MP’s, also from Tokyo—the honor guard. Eddie Craig muttered to Puller: “It looks like they’d have the decency to give some of the honor to men who captured the damned place.”
Puller retained vivid memories of the few minutes there:
“General MacArthur prayed and talked for half an hour, so fervently that you couldn’t tell one from the other. All the time, tears as big as buckshot came down his cheeks, evenly spaced, like soldiers at drill. He talked about our struggle there and the people of Korea, but the only promise he made that stuck in my mind was his promise to reunite North and South Korea.
“I watched Syngman Rhee closely and talked with him a little. A very tough old man, a fighter. He had fought the Japanese for thirty or forty years, trying to save his country. His fingers are ruined, all broken and gnarled where the Japs tortured him by putting his hands through clothes wringers. He fought the Communists just as hard, too—and why America, ten years after the Korean war, turned him out after a few yells from students, probably Communist-inspired, is more than I can see. Suppose he did gain a million dollars or so? How many millions did we waste in Korea? And how many Americans have been in rackets out there?”
When Puller emerged from the building the MP major was not in sight, and it was perhaps as well. The Colonel was fuming: “They never said a damned word about the Marine Corps. Not one. Can you imagine that? Who the hell do they think carried this whole fight?”
One of the most demanding operations in Marine history had ended—all but the first two days of it spent in a role that traditionally belonged to the Army. The Division had sustained 2430 casualties, 414 of them dead. Of this total, 1064 had been in the last five days, in the streets of Seoul and its outskirts. Murray’s Fifth Marines had the worst of it, with 1038 casualties, 177 dead. Puller had a total of 787, with 92 dead. Litzenberg: 368 total, 72 dead.
The enemy’s losses in fifteen days were 4792 prisoners and over 13,000 total casualties; vast stores of weapons and supplies had been captured, much of it U. S. Army issue.
In the afternoon of the day of liberation, Jones appeared at Duk Soo with the jeep piled so high with rice bags that it was like a rolling haystack.
“What you got there, old man?” Puller asked.
“Money, Colonel. Billions. We’re rich.”
“Son, don’t you know it ain’t worth a dime? That’s Korean. They declared it worthless, to start all over again.”
“Maybe some of ’em don’t know it yet.”
“Get rid of it, and let’s get a bath. Find us a bath house, and make sure they’ve got plenty of hot water and soap.”
The bath house was dominated by an enormous hollowed stone under which a fire blazed; the water steamed. They soaked and scrubbed for a long time, and when they dressed, Puller opened his wallet for the first time since leaving the ship at Inchon. He had only ten-dollar bills.
“I can’t give that bird this much money, Jones. You got money?”
Jones fished out a million-wan note.
“Hell, don’t you have something smaller?”
“What difference is it, Colonel? I saved a few of the biggest bills, anyway. I junked the rest, like you said.”
The Korean was beside himself with joy as he bowed them out, overcome by his new riches.
The Division rested for a few days after the capture of Seoul, but on September 30 General Smith was ordered to plan a landing on the opposite coast, at Wonsan, so that he could cut across country to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and effectively end all resistance. He was given no details as to the shipping, but was told that he would have only four days for loading and getting to sea. The target date for Wonsan was October 15.
There was more talk of being home for Christmas, or even Thanksgiving—though there were already disquieting rumors of Chinese troops moving along the borders of North Korea.
As the First Marines rested in camp near Seoul, Puller improved his acquaintance with Jan Bodey and Orville Jones.
Bodey, who was slow to anger, had been bedeviled by a young radio operator in Puller’s headquarters who had ambitions as a practical joker. The boy disregarded Bodey’s warnings and continued to pester him. One morning as Bodey lay asleep in the sun near Puller’s tent the young radioman crept up a slope toward him and reaching with a slender twig tickled Bodey’s ribs. Jones was watching idly.
Bodey struck like a rattlesnake. Jones could hardly believe his eyes: “He carried his .45 in a holster on his left chest, and he snapped it out of there with his right hand and in one motion pulled that thing into cock, sighted on the kid’s helmet and fired. I’ve never seen another man who could do that with one hand, give him half an hour.”
The bullet zinged off the kid’s helmet and the radioman dropped as if dead.
Puller came from his tent: “What in hell’s going on, Bo?”
“Your radio kid, Colonel. I shot him.”
“In God’s name! What for?”
“He aggravated me.”
Puller peered at the boy’s body, over which Jones was crouching, took a long look at Bodey, shook his head and disappeared into the tent. Within a few minutes Jones had the boy out of his faint, much sobered, and with a throbbing head.
Puller would not tolerate drunkenness, but he once came upon Bodey, lying prone in the CP area, looking suspiciously as if he’d had a few beers, at least. The California giant was blowing his mustaches in great snores. Jones expected the Colonel to explode, but he only said mildly: “Put a rock under his head, Jones, so he won’t strangle. We can’t afford to lose a good shotgun. Corps commanders are easier to find.”
On October 6 the Division was moved by trucks back to the west coast, near Inchon. Puller’s letters to his wife revealed the changing times, and his state of mind:
Everything is quiet and I now have little to do except get my reports prepared and submitted. I wish I had a flair for writing, as then I am certain this regiment would get the credit due them when the history of this operation is finally written. Now everyone knows, but in a few years what is written will govern. Rest assured that I will do a better job of getting the facts in my reports than I did in the past war. I will also claim everything due the regiment.
Many times I have regretted that my English education was cut short during the first war. Please do your best to impress on our children the necessity of taking advantage of every opportunity … in this hard old world of ours.
I am getting more homesick now for you and our children and pray that we will soon be reunited.
It appears that the Division will not be employed further unless the other crowd again bogs down. Then we will be shoved into it in a hurry. It is funny how so many persons have regained their courage since the 15th of September.…
When we will be reunited I do not know, but Russia and Red China appear to be keeping out of Korea and if this continues our Army should not have too much trouble in winding up the Korean war and releasing the First Marine Division.…
I was in excellent shape for the entire operation, even better than I thought I would be; as you know I had not been taking much physical exercise during the past four years. The answer is that you took good care of me, Virginia, you deserve all the credit.
On October 10 Puller went with Homer Litzenherg and Ray Murray to dine at the headquarters of General Almond at X Corps. Lewis was staggered by the display of luxury and wrote his wife in detail:
The Army staffs live better than ours. An excellent salad with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, celery, spring onions with good mayonnaise; soup; roast beef, mashed potatoes, biscuits, butter; apple pie, coffee. Drinks, of any kind, before the meal, which was served in courses.
He wrote of the fine china and linen and silver and white-uniformed soldiers who waited on the table. After dinner Puller fell into a conversation with the operations officer:
“How big is your staff, General?”
“Well over three thousand.”
Puller wrote of it to Virginia:
Imagine! Enough men to form an additional infantry regiment! If we become involved with Russia, our Army must change its ways and in a hurry, or else we will go down in defeat. This is not my way of fighting a battle, and if I had authority I would change such things in less than 24 hours. Our country and our leaders had better wake up, and that in a hurry. May God protect us if we do not!
Before this meal, for 26 days I had food out of a can, almost entirely. If you wanted it hot you had to build a fire under the can. I will always remember my dead and cripples and those of other units either buried or evacuated.…
From the time of the landing at Inchon the order had been that no dead Marines were to be buried; the bodies were lashed in ponchos and saved for the appropriate time and place. When they returned to Inchon, the First Division held a funeral for its dead at the outskirts of the city; loading of the ships was under way at the docks.
Puller took two of his battalions to the cemetery for the ceremony and was standing in front of them as the bugles pealed and a flag was raised. He heard men growling in the ranks behind him. He did not turn:
“You guys keep quiet.”
The sound subsided, but when it was over they besieged him, pointing: “Look there, Colonel. Look at that damned rag they’re flying up there—that United Nations thing. Hell, there’s hardly a man lying out here but what’s a Marine! How the hell they get that way, that United Nations crap?”
Puller went to General Smith:
“I can control my men, but tonight, after they get out in town and get some liquor, I can’t swear you won’t have trouble. I’m serious about this. They feel keenly about that damned United Nations flag over our cemetery.”
Smith took the problem to General Almond. Before sunset the UN flag had been replaced by the American flag, and the Marines were content.
On October 15, from aboard the USS Noble, ready to sail for a port unknown to him, Puller wrote his wife again:
A month ago today we landed and I am thankful that those days are past.…
He replied to an expression of concern in one of her letters over a newspaper story:
I assure you, Virginia, that I never in my life have ever made a statement that “I like to fight.” Rest assured that I do not now. I just want you.
He asked whether five-year-old Lewis had received the Silver Star, or a North Korean bugle he had sent by an officer.
The Division convoy left Inchon the next day, bound for the east coast—and a new war in North Korea.