XVII

THE HORDES OF CHINA

Korea had become a martial race track. After the Marine stroke from Inchon to Seoul, the Eighth Army had popped out of its little perimeter at Pusan in the southeast and begun the chase of fleeing North Koreans. While the conquerors of Inchon-Seoul were at sea, circling the peninsula to fall upon the port of Wonsan, there was heavy northbound traffic on land.

Gossip swept the ships almost as spectacularly as the attacks of dysentery which laid low thousands of men. No one could foretell the next move in this strangest of wars: There were rumors that the Division would sail for home now that the war had ended—and others that it would invade China. General MacArthur’s visit to newly fallen Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, lent weight to his prediction of an early peace; President Truman appeared in Toyko. All was optimism.

Puller behaved as if the war might never end. Before they left Inchon he had spoken with General Almond: “You’d better see to it that we get winter clothing before long, General. I’ve lived with that northern climate. We’ll freeze.”

“Oh, it’ll be there. We will see that you’re properly clad.”

“Make sure the supply people don’t delay. It’s impossible for a stranger to understand. One day it’s summer, and the next that Arctic wind hits you, and like turning over your hand you have ice, and temperatures start dropping toward zero.”

“When the time comes, Puller, we’ll take care of it.”

Lieutenant Lew Devine saw the Colonel on deck one day after Puller had come from the barber with a shaven skull. Devine laughed, and the Colonel laughed too.

“It’s the only time I ever got away with laughing at a superior officer,” Devine said. “He had dignity and common sense enough to realize he looked funny, and he didn’t chew me out, as any other officer would have.”

Devine did not realize that Puller was following one of his strict orders—that all troops should keep scalps cut short to avoid the menace of lice. Sergeant Jones overheard the Colonel upbraiding a company commander who ordered that there would be no more shaven heads.

When an Army health team visited his troops to lecture on the threat of disease from lice and other pests, Puller introduced them: “I want you to pay close attention and do as they say. I know how to write your parents and tell ’em you’ve been killed in battle for your country—but damned if I can write and say you were done in by a buggering louse.”

The troops howled with laughter.

There was not quite unanimous appreciation for Puller on the trip. Captain Bill Hopkins, of Roanoke, Virginia, had just come from the States to command headquarters company of Jack Hawkins’s First Battalion, and what he first heard about their commander from Hawkins was not reassuring: “Why, when we had our big attack across the river outside Seoul, and I asked Puller which way to go, he just told me, ‘Straight ahead, dammit, Hawkins!’ How do you like that?”

Hopkins was receptive to such tales, for he had been so chilled by Puller legends before leaving home that he told his wife on parting: “I’ve landed in Puller’s outfit, and I might as well throw in the sponge.”

The young Virginian enjoyed Hawkins’s stories of his own World War II experiences, when he escaped from a Japanese prison camp after capture at Corregidor, but he noted that Hawkins was “nervous.” Hopkins looked forward to a meeting with Puller.

The Division thought it would never go ashore. Dysentery spread until it affected almost every man on the foul ships. When the convoy reached Wonsan it was found that some 2000 mines had been sown in the harbor and the ships turned south—setting off fresh rumors of a return home. For almost ten days they steamed back and forth off the coast until, on October 25, the harbor was cleared and they entered Wonsan. Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell and an entertainment troupe had landed ahead of them—for the ROK army had taken the city some days before, and busy air traffic moved overhead. The Marines debarked with relief from the voyage they called Operation Yo-Yo.

Puller went ashore in one of Major Treadwell’s landing craft to be met by a broadly grinning Oliver Smith: “Congratulations, Lewie! You’ve made it. Your board has selected you for Brigadier.”

Puller wagged his head. “By God, if it hadn’t been for this war, I’d never have got that star.” There was a mild celebration ashore that night for the new general-to-be.

Back in the States, Mrs. Puller had the news before her husband, for Corps Headquarters had called from Washington. She had immediately driven the six miles to the nearby school in Urbanna, Virginia, where Virginia Mac was in the sixth grade and excitedly called her daughter outside to impart the news that her father was to become a general.

The child’s manner was disappointingly calm: “Well, Mother, I’m really not too surprised. Didn’t we always know he would?”

On October 26 the Division was split into small segments by the high command. Oliver Smith was dismayed; he sensed danger in the planned drive through North Korea to the Yalu River, despite the “Home By Christmas” spirit in the streets of Wonsan. His protests were in vain: Litzenberg’s Seventh was sent northward by way of Hamhung toward Chosin Reservoir and the Yalu; Murray’s Fifth would follow; Puller’s First would remain behind, itself divided into isolated battalions. Hawkins was sent to Kojo, a small town on the coast thirty-nine miles below Wonsan; Ridge was sent inland into hilly country at Majon-ni, twenty-nine miles away. Puller remained in Wonsan with Sutter’s battalion.

The Division would soon be spread over an unfamiliar territory of three hundred miles from north to south and sixty miles east to west.

Litzenberg was one who took little stock in General MacArthur’s announcement: “The war is very definitely coming to an end shortly.” On his way north the regimental commander told his officers: “If there is anyone here who expects an easy walk to the Yalu, erase it from your mind now. We’re going to have to fight. It’s most important that we win our first one when we meet the Chinese.”

Puller agreed, though he made no pronouncements; he probably had more knowledge of the Chinese troops than anyone in the command. Just now he was concerned with defending the Division’s rear.

Captain Hopkins got his first glimpse of Puller in action during the day: “He called in Hawkins and his Quartermaster officer and went over every single item with Hawkins, equipment, ammunition, geography, transport. He had more concern for supply than any officer I’d known. I’ll never forget his final words to Hawkins:

“He said, There’s not a damned thing down there at Kojo. Besides, if they do hit you, you’re strong enough to knock hell out of ’em.’”

When the battalion was on its train, rattling along behind an antique engine, with the riflemen in gondola cars, Hawkins told his staff: “How about that? Puller says there’s nothing down there, and in the next breath says if they do hit you, you can knock ’em. We’ve got to watch our step.”

The train passed through several tunnels where the enemy might have trapped them but all was peaceful on the route to Kojo, which they found to be a beautiful, unspoiled resort town overlooking white beaches and a bay. The battalion passed a quiet night in a perimeter near the village, relieved a ROK unit the next morning, and watched its allies pull out on a tram, overcrowded with women, children, pigs and chickens. The First Battalion was now alone except for some ships in the bay—even the supply dump it was ordered to guard had gone, consumed by the ROK’s and their families.

Hawkins laid his positions with care, since defense of the low-lying spot was difficult. Captain Wes Noren’s B Company blocked the approach from the south, the men strung along a series of rice paddies. To the west there were other companies—C under Captain Bob Wray, and A under Captain Bob Barrow. As the men dug their holes, Hawkins looked with some concern at columns of refugees passing nearby; he herded them into an area on the northeast of the village for the night North Korean soldiers in civilian dress, or their spies, took note of the Marine foxholes on the ridges and waited for darkness.

The night was cold and quite dark and there was a fifty per cent watch, with half the men alert and others zipped Into their sleeping bags. Without warning a shower of grenades struck the first platoon of B Company in the south, followed by a charge. A fury of firing did not stop the unseen enemy; many Marines were bayoneted in their sleeping bags. The attack struck both ends of the B Company line.

Lieutenant George Chambers of B Company, who had an adjoining position with his platoon, got a warning by radio: “We’ve been overrun, and the rest of us are pulling back to battalion area.” The command post was almost three miles away.

Before 1 A.M. Captain Noren called Chambers from his southern line: “They’re about to push me out, and I’ve got Hawkins’s okay to pull back. When I get to the road, I’ll signal you, and you bring up the rear.”

“Okay. Will do.”

As Chambers took his men across the railroad in this movement he was literally doused with fire from rifles, machine guns and grenades. Chambers thought for a time they were also under mortar fire, but things happened too fast for analysis:

“They gave us a banzai rush and it was hand-to-hand there in places. We fought ’em off, but the rearguard was scattered. We spent the night in the rice paddy there, and the water froze over on us. We called in ship’s gunfire on the village because we figured the Red troops were in there.”

Fighting was sporadic through the night. Hawkins had put in early calls for help to Puller in Wonsan. Captain Hopkins thought these calls “a little excited,” and Puller thought he detected the danger of panic.

The Colonel remembered the night: “Hawkins was burning up the air with calls for support, and of course Almond got them at Corps, and then Smith at Division, so Almond jumped Smith and Smith jumped me. I got my spare battalion ready to move.”

By daylight at Kojo, Hawkins was taking all precautions. He had reports from each company by now; the bodies of the Marines in sleeping bags had been found. Hawkins felt that they had been hit by a very strong North Korean force. Later in the day he ordered artillery to fire on a small boat in the bay and some ROK troops were hit. Captain Hopkins, who had a machine gun outfit in position, retained a vivid memory of the morning: “There were refugees coming from Kojo, and I was ordered to get them with the guns, since there might be Red troops among them. I told my men to fire over their heads. We did hit a couple, and they called for doctors. We sent some medics. That shooting has never gone out of my mind.”

Hopkins also remembered his battalion commander’s urgent orders, given often that morning: “All right, now. We’ve got to hold to the death. Don’t give up a foot of ground, whatever happens.” Officers around headquarters became increasingly tense as the morning wore on, though the enemy was not now within view.

In Wonsan, Puller put his men aboard two trains. As they left he told his officers and senior noncoms: “Keep it from the men, but we may have trouble getting down there. This damned line is so rickety that it may not hold up the train; we’ve got some bridges to cross and some tunnels where they could hit us. We’ll hope for the best.”

Sergeant Major Ferrigno held his breath on the ride: “We went, barely creeping, over the trestle which trembled under us. It was the deepest ravine I can remember in my life, but the men were as unconcerned as if they were at home. They didn’t know a thing.”

Corporal Harvey Owens of Fox Company, a Minnesota Sioux who had won a Silver Star at Yongdong-po, needed no officer to explain the peril to him: “It was the tunnels that worried me; we dragged through those long, dark holes on open flat cars, and I knew damned well the Reds could blow us to hell any minute they wanted to. They just didn’t think of it.”

Puller found it all quiet in Kojo; he prowled around the position with little comment, but morale soared from the moment of his appearance. Hopkins overheard him talking with the men of a mortar platoon: “Can you boys shoot those things?”

“Colonel, you know it.”

“Got enough ammo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, by God, tonight we’re going to make some Communist fannies roll. You be ready.”

He climbed the hill to the inaccessible CP of Hawkins, puffing a bit. Captain Hopkins was impressed by the resulting change in the atmosphere:

“Puller was relaxed as he could be. He had no orders about holding to the death. All he said was, ‘Well, if they come back tonight, we’ll get our share.’ Neither Hawkins nor any of the rest of us got nervous while Puller was there. He settled us down.”

There was no doubt that there had been trouble, for there were twenty-three bodies, forty-seven wounded and thirty missing, though all but four of the latter turned up. Puller concluded that a northbound enemy outfit had found Hawkins’s battalion in its path and brushed against it in retreat.

The Colonel spent two or three days in Kojo. He supplemented his field rations with the aid of Jones and Bodey, who found the cellars of burned Kojo filled with a harvested crop of Irish potatoes—most of them roasted to a turn. Bodey also boiled a liberated chicken in his helmet and despite the dire warnings of staff officers that Korean pork was unfit for consumption the two foragers roasted a pig. Bodey scoffed at critics: “Whaddya mean, it’s no good? Five minutes ago he was running down the road. A good, healthy pig.”

The two battalions returned to Wonsan by sea and camped around the airfield for a few days. Hawkins was ordered back to the States and was succeeded by Lieutenant Colonel Donald M. Schmuck. The regiment prepared to join the movement to the Yalu.

General Lemuel H. Shepherd, Jr., now commander of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, visited the front and made a trip to see Puller.

“Congratulations, Lewie,” he said. “I know you’ll make a fine general officer.”

The Colonel became involved in a minor matter of discipline. One of his Marines, alone on the roadside, tried to hitch a ride with an Army MP who passed in a jeep and when the soldier increased his speed without stopping, showering him with mud, the Marine fired a shot over the MP’s head. The boy was arrested by an officer and three MP’s from Corps Headquarters, sentenced to sixty days’ restriction, and his papers came to Puller. The Colonel scratched on the document: “This man can’t be guilty. In the opinion of the undersigned, if he’d fired at the MP, he’d have hit him.” General Smith advised against this endorsement: “You can’t do that, Lewie.”

Puller’s reply: “Hell I can’t. I signed it, didn’t I?”

Puller wrote home daily. He sent Virginia Mac a five-dollar check for her good school marks, adding some parental admonitions:

I am very proud of my family and I expect you to do well, plus, in everything you undertake. The difference between success and failure in this life of ours is mostly hard work, so you must constantly work to try to improve yourself.

To his wife:

I am tops physically. I passed both my physical examination for promotion and the annual one. I am sorry you seem to have gotten the idea that things were not going to my liking. I will be more careful how I write you. I know that higher echelon decisions are none of my business and I only mention them to you.

He sent her some native carvings and enclosed the old sweater he had worn from Inchon to Seoul, saying that it had shrunk after a washing, and might now fit their daughter.

He added:

There are constant rumors about the return of this Division, but I will believe it when I see the order. If I am promoted soon that may result in my being ordered home.…

On November 8, when he heard from her that she was worried over gloomy newspaper accounts, he wrote:

Damn this and all wars.… I hope and pray that now the elections are over, President Truman will call out the National Guard. The first Roosevelt said it was a good policy to speak softly and carry a big stick. Since the last war we have only had a big mouth and no stick.…

On November 10, the Marine Corps’s birthday, Puller used a captured North Korean sword to slice a 100-pound cake prepared by his bakers, an enormous confection trimmed with radishes and jelly in lieu of candles. He also delivered a brief speech. He read an article from the manual as required by regulations, thrust it into his pocket and shouted to his troops:

“Now that’s complied with, and I want to tell you something straight. Just do one thing for me—write your people back home and tell ’em there’s one hell of a damned war on out here, and that the raggedy-tailed North Koreans have been whipping a lot of so-called good American troops, and may do it again. Tell ’em there’s no secret weapon for our country but to get hard, to get in there and fight.

“I want you to make ’em understand: Our country won’t go on forever, if we stay as soft as we are now. There won’t be any America—because some foreign soldiery will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race.”

He wrote his wife afterward:

Today is the Corps’ birthday—175 years of age. How I wish you and I could celebrate 175 years of married life and have our precious children and their children and grandchildren with us.…

The situation has improved in the last several days, but as I have often told you, only a terrible defeat will change our present system, which is leading us to disaster.… An Army Division commander sent twelve of his officers over to my place with a request that I conduct an evening school for them. By the time they left it was midnight and I was quite sleepy.…

A new test of Puller’s men was at hand. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Ridge had led his battalion along the hairpin turns of a mountain road to Majon-ni on October 28, his mission to block the road junction against Red troops moving north. They found the place an insignificant village perched among hills so rugged that the scene might have been the Swiss Alps. Majon-ni was twenty-nine miles from Wonsan. It now became the western outpost of a territory of 15,000 square miles under Division control. For some days the battalion screened refugees passing the town, put some North Korean soldiers into a prison stockade, and prepared defenses. Puller sent a couple of road convoys with supplies, but these were ambushed and several men were killed and wounded in each.

There were frequent attacks on the perimeter and in one long night fight the line was broken; it was restored the next morning. Sergeant Major Ferrigno, when he went out on a relief party with Easy Company, found things hot: “In fifteen seconds we had about forty casualties, a number of them dead. We made a quick recovery and really cleaned house, but of course the dead don’t come back. My boys came to me with five rascals in full uniform under their white robes and two of these were North Korean sergeants who had left two of my sergeants dead on the road. So a little decision was made.” The captives were shot.

The battalion ended its defense of the place with 1400 prisoners taken, 525 enemy dead, and an unknown number wounded. Ridge’s losses were 20 dead and 45 wounded.

The arrival of Army support now made possible a Marine concentration to the north; some of the 7th Infantry Division came ashore under Major General David G. Barr, with the 3rd Army Division just behind. The push to the Yalu began in earnest. Headquarters in Tokyo scoffed, but Marines reported Chinese prisoners in stockades as early as November 1, and ROK troops reported the Chinese armies had crossed the Yalu on October 16.

General Smith had left Puller behind in Wonsan, at Corps Headquarters: “I want you to attend the briefings and let me know what goes on. I must know the state of their minds.” Smith went to join Litzenberg and Murray in their exposed positions around the Chosin Reservoir, amid some of the most rugged country in the Orient. Freezing weather had arrived as he left.

Puller retained a colorful memory of his adventure as a Marine spy in X Corps Headquarters:

“One morning before Thanksgiving I went to a briefing. General Almond gave us the word for the day, then said he had a plane waiting for him, that he hoped to get back in the early afternoon—but that if he did not, he wanted the staff to care for some visitors from Tokyo, General C. A. Willoughby and some of his people.

“I knew Willoughby was MacArthur’s intelligence chief, so the next morning I asked General Clark Ruffner, our Corps Chief of Staff, what had happened.

“Ruffner told me: ‘Well, when Willoughby asked Almond how things were, and Almond told him about the Seventh Regiment fighting Chinese Reds, and said that both sides had casualties, Willoughby said: ‘That’s another goddam Marine Corps lie.’

“So Almond led him out to the prisoner of war stockade and showed him about eighty Chinese sent down by the Seventh. Willoughby left us without so much as a word, and got back on his plane.”

Every night, at midnight, the Korean “situation map” was sent out from Tokyo, with detailed positions of the forces. The night before, Puller noted, the map showed only UN and North Korean forces—and no Chinese. But this night, abruptly, it was revealed that “about half a million Chinese troops” were scattered over the map, some of them as far as 100 miles south of the Yalu.

Puller told his staff: “Now that’s the fastest damned troop movement in the history of the world, gentlemen. You’ll never see another such. And don’t forget this lesson: Tokyo wouldn’t admit we had Chinese fighting us even after the Eighth Army was in flight, because some damned staff officers hundreds of miles away willed it to be so. You can’t will anything in war.”

After the Marines had taken Seoul, the Eighth Army of the United Nations forces had driven through the capital, moving rapidly northward along the Korean west coast. To meet them, Chinese Communist armies had marched 1800 miles northward since mid-August. The Chinese strategist, Chu Teh, at first concentrated against the Eighth Army position in the northwestern hills, but when the Marines landed, he hurriedly switched much of his power to meet and overwhelm them in the Chosin Reservoir region. The Chinese drove between the Marines and the Eighth Army, and maneuvered into a position from which they could attack each force at will.

Litzenberg’s Seventh Marines had been first of Smith’s Division to meet the Chinese—and destroyed the 124th CCF Division. That was only the beginning, for ten Chinese divisions, more than a hundred thousand men, were moving to meet the Marine thrust.

Puller was in Hungnam when the survivors of a tragedy of Army unpreparedness swarmed back from the interior: “An all-Negro artillery battalion, sent to the front, was delivered by a Negro transport battalion to its place in the front lines. On the way back, by night, the transport men were ambushed by six North Koreans, and the four hundred truckers ran without a fight, leaving the vehicles standing with lights burning and motors on. The Reds burned the trucks and hiked up the road into the rear of the artillery battalion, which they sprayed with fire and scattered. The Reds took all guns. I saw many of the broken men who came back. It was a terrible day for our arms.”

The Colonel made a personal check of supplies before they took the road northward. Lieutenant Joe Fisher of Item Company reported his men short two parkas and within a few hours a runner brought two of the heavy jackets. One of these bore the name, “L. B. Puller,” and the other that of Rickert, his exec.

Major Don Ezeil, walking through the regimental area, saw another young Marine with a parka bearing Puller’s name. Ezell stopped him:

“What’re you doing with that parka, son?”

“Colonel Puller gave it to me.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure did. He took it right off when he passed me, and said by God I needed it more than he did. He wouldn’t have it no other way.”

“Okay, Marine.”

“Yeah, and you know what he said? He said that if he got cold, he could go to the warming tent.”

When officers asked him how he would guard against the cold the Colonel said, his pipe chattering in his teeth: “Hell, I can always find something, old man.”

He found a great deal, in the end, for when the regiment got into trucks for the trip to the Chosin Reservoir Puller wore: A suit of cotton underwear, woolen underwear over that, then a wool sweater, and shirt. A pair of green wool trousers, one pair of windbreaker trousers, a fleecy woolen vest, and over all, fleece-lined trousers and coat. “How the hell I’m going to walk is a mystery,” he told Jones, “but by God, I won’t freeze.”

Puller got into the jeep with Jones, Bodey and a radio operator. They were in close contact with elements of the long column as it crept up the snowy passes. When they went over the first crest Puller shivered anew: “Holy smoke! That damned wind came right out of the heart of Manchuria. I believe Genghis Khan was right—nobody can win a winter campaign in the land of the Mongols.”

They passed through Schmuck’s battalion, which was dug in at the foot of the highest hill on the road. Near the pass at this peak they saw the bodies of Chinese soldiers, victims of a fight with the Seventh Marines. Puller climbed from the jeep to inspect them and pointed to their packs. Jones held up a square of dirty white cloth and a straw mat.

“They’re a hell of a lot smarter than we are in the field,” Puller said. “They cover themselves with that cloth when there’s snow, and a plane comes over. They can hide a whole damned division from us, right along this road. They use the straw on open ground. It’s too sensible an idea for American forces—and too cheap, so we’ll never have advantage of it.”

The jeep made it up the final slopes in style, and they arrived in the rugged little plateau at Koto-ri at 2 P.M., just as it began to snow. Puller stepped out into the raw wind, shaking, and Jones fished under the hood to remove a can of C-ration beans he had wired to the manifold. He handed it to the Colonel, smoking hot. Puller was incredulous: “Old man, how the hell did you keep hot chow, the way we came?”

Puller shook so violently from the cold that he ate no more than a bean or two at each spoonful. Jones and Bodey worked fast to erect the Colonel’s blackout tent. They laid canvas on the frozen ground, placed logs around the sides and poured water at the edges, instantly sealing the canvas to the ground and making the tent airtight. They installed a potbellied, oil-burning stove, which was soon red-hot. Puller and Rickert lived alone in this tent, with Jones and Bodey sleeping some ten feet away. Several times each night Jones or Bodey crept out to see that there was still oil in the Colonel’s tank.

The camp was noisy all night, for the motors of the vehicles had to be run twenty minutes of each hour to prevent freezing. Jones had thoughtfully put diesel oil into the crank-case of the jeep, so that he had to warm the motor only every other hour.

There were many days of twenty-five below zero on this plateau; the Marines at first suffered shock from the cold, and for a few days many men were handicapped by a low rate of respiration. Canteens must be carried inside clothing and every man was ordered to keep a spare pair of socks inside his uniform, next to his skin. Only dry rations could be used, since the frozen wet portions caused intestinal distress. Within ten days most riflemen in the mountains lost fifteen to twenty pounds, though they were already hardened by weeks of hard fighting. Gunners used hair oil on their weapons and wiped them lightly; artillery fired more slowly in the extreme cold and ranges were shortened. Complaints about the Shoe-Pac boot were numerous; frostbite became common. A new Navy boot, using the principle of the vapor barrier, was hurried from the States; it prevented frozen feet, but Puller said wryly: “It’s fine, except for one thing. You can’t march in it.”

The warming tents were filled with men seeking relief from the cold on the lines; it was estimated that a man lost two percent of his efficiency for every degree the thermometer fell below zero.

By November 27, after long delay, the Division pulled more closely together. Ridge’s battalion of Puller’s regiment defended Hagaru-ri, some four miles north of Puller’s at Koto-ri. Murray and Litzenberg held Yudam-ni, about six miles northwest of Hagaru. Puller was left in Koto-ri with only Allan Sutter’s battalion. Schmuck was down the hill at the foot of the pass, defending the rear at Chinhung-ni.

On his second day at Koto-ri Puller saw his first live Chinese enemy—an officer who stood 800 to 1000 yards away on one of the towering hills over the perimeter. The Red was studying the Marine position through glasses. Puller called Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Adelman of the 11th Artillery.

“You see that bird? I want you to blow his head off.”

Adelman went to a 105, bore-sighted the weapon and fired. To the astonishment of the little group he made a direct hit on a tree near the Chinese officer; the tree and the man disappeared. Chinese troops moved in on them in force during the afternoon and night, from every side, but one outfit did not make it. Puller discovered an enemy column on pack mules moving through a gorge, an artillery train. When the animals descended into the pass he called in Marine planes; the Corsairs burned the enemy train with napalm, and no survivors emerged from the gorge.

The Chinese broke through the perimeter briefly that night in a penetration along the unfinished railroad track which ran through the area. Puller’s tent was torn by a few bullets.

Sergeant Major Ferrigno had seen the last relay of his troops finish chow just before nightfall: “Hurry and clear the area, men,” he said. “It’ll be dark in five minutes, and I want you to be ready.” The railroad tracks in this area were raised five or six feet above ground level; when Ferrigno’s Easy Company men crossed the tracks they were caught in volleys of rifle fire. A platoon of white-robed Chinese had come over the snow undetected into the heart of the company area. Ferrigno remembered it: “They all died in the same spot as though they’d been stacked like cordwood. Except for seven or eight they were all in one pile. They hung on to one another and just rushed madly at us. We had three dead and six wounded, mostly by bayonets. Half of these Commies were armed with beautiful Thompson submachine guns. I never knew why they didn’t push the attack, with the hills so full of Commies, but I guess they saw what happened to that platoon and hung back.”

Puller’s tent was some 800 yards away, but he soon appeared to inspect the scene and returned early the next morning. “Fine work, boys,” he said, as he inspected the enemy dead. Many of the Chinese were found to have frozen hands and feet, already turning black. Morphine was found on some of the bodies and the story spread that all enemy troops were doped. Suicidal attacks could be expected.

A prisoner told Marines the enemy had lost 400 men in this night attack. Before the fighting was over Puller had word that a truck convoy had been ambushed on the road from the south, just three miles away; rescue was impossible. From hills on every side of the perimeter, Chinese fire was heavy during the day. The enemy blew a tunnel and bridge on the railroad below the Koto-ri position, cutting the line to Hamhung and the Marine base on the sea. For two days Puller called in heavy air strikes upon concentrations of Chinese in the surrounding hills.

Things were even worse in the two positions to the north of Puller. At least six Chinese divisions had been identified in the area where Murray and Litzenberg fought; on November 26 these two posts lost 95 dead and 543 wounded in night-long attacks. Hagaru was preparing to fight for its life. An offensive launched by the Fifth Marines was called off after the day’s grim news from the west: The Eighth Army had collapsed, one wing of it was torn to pieces and the Chinese were slashing deep into the lines. The Marines must now defend themselves against an enemy free to approach from any direction through the frozen mountains.

The night of November 27 tested the men at Yudam-ni, when three Chinese divisions fell upon two Marine regiments. The enemy cut the road to Hagaru and sent their assault battalions in quilted uniforms and sneakers into the Marine lines with disregard for casualties. The first waves were driven off with great losses, but others were thrown in through that night and the next. To the dismay of the Chinese commanders, not even envelopment of Marine command posts slowed the tempo of the fighting and the Americans staged vicious counterattacks even when many platoons had been reduced to the size of squads. There were not enough tents for Marine wounded and the less seriously hurt were piled outside, close together for warmth, covered with straw and tarpaulins, as doctors worked over the more than five hundred casualties.

Lieutenant Colonel Ridge was short one company at Hagaru on November 29 when the Chinese made their major effort to exterminate the force in his four-mile perimeter. The valley was crowded like a circus village with a variety of small units and Korean troops mixed with the battalion, but there were too few riflemen to hold the line; one sector was almost unmanned when the enemy struck just after dark. A blaring of bugles, the fiery flowers of trip flares and land mines and the flowing threads of tracers opened the night—and the roar did not cease until dawn.

General Smith was a guest for the night, and at the height of things, when Communist soldiers were prowling through the perimeter, looting instead of pressing home attacks, bullets rattled through his quarters. In the end the understrength battalion, aided by two artillery battalions, beat off a full Red division; one of the attacking regiments had ninety per cent losses.

By morning the defeat of the Reds was clear from the snow-covered piles of dead before Item Company (Captain Joe Fisher) and How Company (Captain Clarence Corley). Puller’s favorite, the giant Fisher, had helped assure victory by using shaped charges to blow up the deep-frozen earth, so that men could build sandbagged positions from which their heavy weapons slaughtered the Chinese.

As it was, the battalion barely escaped and only a hand-to-hand fight in pre-dawn darkness had cleared the center of the camp. One artillery battalion fired 1200 rounds in the night; two mortar companies shot more than 3200 rounds between them; machine guns had fired almost incessantly. By daylight, planes came in with napalm to help restore the line and save the position.

It now became clear that the three Marine positions in the Chosin area were surrounded, and during the day Smith learned that Ridge’s missing company could not get through from Koto-ri to Hagaru-ri. He ordered Puller to open the way.

Puller’s reaction to the dread news was given to newspaper men who flew in to Koto-ri: “We’ve been looking for the enemy for several days now. We’ve finally found them. We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.”

To Schmuck, southward down the road, he announced in a radio conversation: “We have contact on all four sides.”

The newspapers in the States were black with headlines. The Division was “Trapped.” Families of Marines besieged Washington headquarters. In Saluda, Virginia, Lewis Puller, Jr., who was now five, heard a radio commentator speak of the entrapment. His prayers that night betrayed his misunderstanding: “And dear God, please let my Father out of that rabbit trap.”

Dr. Douglas Freeman, who learned of the incident, repeated it in a Richmond broadcast, and the Pullers had word of it for weeks.

In the midst of the ominous situation Puller wrote his wife:

I did not get an opportunity to write you yesterday until quite late, and by then my gasoline lamp wasn’t working so well and I put your letter off.… You were never out of my mind during the entire day.

The only thing I want for Christmas is your continued love, Virginia, and that for ever and ever. Please do not send me anything. If you insist, send me a cheap pipe but get it as near the size I have drawn on this page as possible. Please don’t get a longer one than this rough drawing, as the stem will either break off or I will lose it as it falls from my pocket.

On December 1 Puller wrote again from his cold tent:

I understand that the news back home is to the effect that the First Marine Division is cut off, surrounded by the Chinese. This is not so, although the situation has not been good since the Chinese crossed the border. I am terribly sorry that this news has been published on account of the worry it has caused you and the families of other Marines here, but perhaps in the long run it may accomplish the awakening of our people as to the state of affairs and our lack of a military machine.

I want the people of the United States to wake up but I surely do hate for this to mean more worry and anxiety for you.… I just hate our leaders who got us into this mess and the far worse mess that may be the consequence of the first decision. The whole affair seems to have developed due to gross ignorance and I pray that God will intervene to straighten it out before it is too late. Now don’t worry and don’t believe all the stories you read in the newspapers.…

On the same day an army truck convoy into Koto-ri had been shot to pieces in a Chinese ambush. Survivors who reached the perimeter told Puller that some vehicles had been burned on the road. The Colonel sent a patrol to check for wounded; from this patrol a sergeant brought Puller a letter from his wife: “Colonel, I found this on top of a pile of thousands, thrown out in the snow, lots of ’em burned.”

Puller prepared to open the road to Hagaru with “Task Force Drysdale,” a British Commando unit of Royal Marines under Lieutenant Douglas Drysdale, accompanied by Captain Carl Sitter’s company of Ridge’s battalion, and a company from the 31st Army Regiment, which had come in. The road had been blocked in several places, two bridges were out, and the Chinese swarmed on heights overlooking the route.

Drysdale went out jauntily, planning to work the hills with his Royal Marines and Sitter’s company in leapfrogging style, while the Army company kept to the road. Orville Jones listened as Puller talked with the column by radio in the first moments of its trek: “I see your men charging up the crests after those birds. Keep ’em down. You’ll find all the Reds you want before you’re through. Push on.”

The party met bitter opposition and within a few minutes had fourteen casualties; in three hours and a half they moved only two miles, with eight more to go. Puller sent tanks as support and men came down from the hills to walk with them. They fought through roadblocks and around a blown bridge, but at dusk, in a narrow defile, met an ambush and took serious casualties. By radio, Puller, Oliver Smith and Drysdale agreed that the unit must push on to Hagaru, whatever the cost. The Royal Marines finally reached the Hagaru perimeter at 1:30 A.M., with 90 of its 255 men casualties; Sitter had 63; only 70 of the 210 Army men made it. A truck column sent behind this ill-fated party was virtually destroyed after a night-long fight and parley with the Chinese, who captured all the trucks and most of the men.

The survivors of this party were crucial to the defense of Hagaru; their added firepower helped turn back another massive Chinese attack. The companies of Sitter and Joe Fisher killed the enemy in droves and by the next dawn their lines, though bent, still held.

Puller’s perimeter was under almost constant Red fire, but for several days the Chinese did not press heavy attacks upon him; they were held at bay by superior firepower and the skill of Marine artillerymen.

A new airstrip was opened at Koto-ri, since the old one exposed helicopter pilots, the wounded and incoming commanders to enemy rifle fire. Newspaper correspondents turned up frequently despite Puller’s effort to ban nonessential visitors. One reporter appeared without a parka:

“Colonel, I’m freezing. Can you help me? My paper will gladly pay you for a jacket.”

Puller got the man a parka from the sick bay, a worn one marked with bloodstains. “I hope you didn’t take it from one of your men, sir,” the reporter said.

“You’re damned right I didn’t. I don’t give a damn if you freeze, if it means keeping them going. The boy that had that parka will never need it again.”

The reporter paled; Puller thought the man was going to retch.

Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune appeared from a helicopter, after having been chased from Hagaru. Puller frowned. “Get her out of here,” he told officers. “Never know what will hit us next—and I won’t have a pretty American girl around with all these men about, anyway.”

Puller was hospitable, and invited her to a warming tent and a drink, but soon sent her to the safety of the rear. Jones took her to the airfield in the jeep:

“I couldn’t use the road, because it was full of troops moving. I drove her down the railroad tracks. I passed a big four-holer at the track-side, with lots of men sitting in there, exposed, but I didn’t see anything embarrassing. Miss Higgins never said a word, but General Smith’s aide chewed me out, and told me I should have known better than to drive her by a latrine. I just told him that was the only way to get her out, if he wanted her out.”

The perimeter at Koto-ri was supplied by air after the enemy closed in. The first air drop came without warning from low clouds and the chutes tumbled cases and cartons across the mountains for three or four miles. Heavy shell boxes landed in the tent area and several Marines were killed or injured.

Puller was quickly on the radio, barking his anger at the Air Force pilot who circled somewhere above.

“We can’t help it,” the aviator’s voice said. “We’re tired of flying through these mountains in this cold, getting shot up, can’t see where we’re going. It’s the best we can do.”

“You’re under arrest,” Puller said. “Fly back to your commanding officer and report. My letter will follow.”

The next drop was on target within a two-block area and thereafter the fliers worked heroically to keep alive the Division.

A battered and half-frozen Army outfit came to safety in the perimeter at the height of Communist attacks; Puller assigned it a position for camp and ordered its men fed. The commander of the newcomers said that all his survivors had come with him and Marine roadblocks were ordered to fire on anything moving in the snowy weather. Lieutenant Worster soon got a call from an outpost:

“Sir, we’ve got movement in front, and I don’t think it’s Chinese.”

“Can’t be ours. All the Army is in.”

“Okay, but something funny is going on. I’ll watch ’em.”

Through the night and the next day the Army stragglers came in, frostbitten, wounded and exhausted; Worster was incensed that their officers did not get outside the barrier to guide them in: “They stayed in the warming tents, drinking coffee and talking about the big fight they’d had. I couldn’t get ’em out to help. Puller finally ran ’em out to bring in their men.”

Puller sent a rescue party to get the stalled survivors off the road; most of them had been held back by sniper fire from Chinese on ridges but made it to the perimeter under Marine direction.

It was one of these Army men whose encounter with Puller furnished the Corps a new legend. When the Army commander was shown his position he asked the direction of the line of retreat. Puller called his artillerymen, gave them the exact Army position and the quiet order: “If they start to pull back from that line, even one foot, I want you to open fire on them.”

Puller turned to the Army officer: “Does that answer your question? We’re here to fight, and nothing else.”

The high command now ordered the Division to pull back from the Reservoir country to the sea; it was to fight its way by stages to Hungnam, where it would board ships for South Korea. The first task was to bring the northernmost units into Puller’s area at Koto-ri. On December 1 the trek began and for four days the men of Murray and Litzenberg fought against the greatest odds the Corps had faced, blasting their way over the frozen road into Hagaru-ri. They brought with them 1500 casualties, a third of them frostbitten and frozen; the rear units had been 79 hours in covering the 14 miles, under almost constant attack. Fleets of planes evacuated more than 4000 casualties from Hagaru. More than five hundred replacements were flown in and ammunition, fuel and food were dropped. The Air Force offered to evacuate every man from Hagaru and was stunned when General Smith replied: “We’re going to break out over the road. We’ll need every able-bodied man for the fight. We intend to leave behind no equipment we can salvage.”

As Smith prepared the men for the southward march, intelligence reported that two new Communist divisions had come to cut them off—a total of nine in the area. General Almond flew in from X Corps headquarters on December 4 and decorated several officers, including Army Distinguished Service Crosses for Smith, Litzenberg and Murray.

The movement south from Hagaru began on December 6.

General Almond turned up in Koto-ri and went straight to Puller’s tent: “God, Colonel! What weather you keep. Haven’t you got a drink?”

Puller produced a half-filled bottle and the Corps commander took a drink. They joked about Puller’s warning about the Arctic weather, in the days at Inchon. Almond shouted: “What about this stab in the back by Red China, Puller?”

“I think it’s the luckiest thing that could have happened.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“If they hadn’t hit us here, we’d be all the hell the way up there on the Yalu, lots colder than this. You’d have no supply dumps built up. With the fool equipment, food and clothing we’ve got, your Corps would literally have frozen to death. As it is, all we’ve got to do is run downhill to the sea, get under the ships’ guns and hold there all winter. When spring comes, we can get reinforcement and strike back up here as far as we want to.”

Almond had come to decorate Puller’s men, too. There was a shortage of medals and when he pinned an Army Distinguished Service Cross on Puller he snatched it off, pinned it to the blouse of an Army officer with the same words of congratulation and then snatched it back. “Yours will be sent up on the next flight,” he told the Army officer. He returned the medal to Puller.

There were three Silver Stars for enlistened men and three for officers. Puller told Almond that Rickert, his exec, deserved a Star and Almond borrowed one for him from one of the men, promising delivery of a substitute.

Puller’s officers thronged about Almond’s aide, burdening him with letters to be carried out—and many gave him money and other valuables. They did not expect to survive the battle down the hill to the sea.

Puller’s letters to his wife in these hectic days reflected neither peril nor hardship:

December 2: “The situation shows a marked improvement.… Do not pay too much attention to the news.… Please write me that you have hired a cook. Yes, I am getting plenty of food and have good warm clothing. Good night and kiss our children for me.”

December 3: “When I think of all the worry I am causing you, and of the times that I haven’t been as nice to you as I should have been, I am more than disgusted with myself.… I will send a check for $100. Please go to Richmond and buy yourself a Christmas present. I wish it was enough for a mink coat.”

December 4: “Conditions have improved today, and with the help of God, my outfit will be back on the beach about day after tomorrow. The leadership, especially that of the higher command during this operation, has not been of top grade, especially in determining an estimate of the situation and the capabilities of the enemy. In spite of all this our Division will hold, with the help of the Almighty, and I will return home safely.…

“What do our people think? What are they doing? Do they realize what they have been led into? What do they intend to do in order to get out of this mess?… Kiss our children for me and tell them that I will come home as soon as we put the bad people in the brig.”

On the night of December 7, the bulk of the Division was in Puller’s perimeter after the 38-hour battle from Hagaru. The cost: 103 dead, 506 wounded, 7 missing. But now the force of 10,000 and its 1000 vehicles was at Koto-ri. The perimeter could hardly contain them all.

Puller was ready for them, despite the burdens of handling the 4000 men already on the site, and he had hot food and warming tents ready as the men came in from the north. Planning was almost complete for the march south the next morning. Eight sections of a steel bridge, each weighing 2500 pounds, were dropped by the Air Force during the day and huge trucks were ready to move them into place below Funichilin Pass, where a concrete bridge over an abyss had been blown. The bridge must be repaired before the column could clear for the south.

There was Chinese fire from the surrounding hills day and night, but no more of the suicidal attacks, for the massed mortars, recoilless rifles and a battery of the 11th Artillery rained death on every enemy concentration as it formed.

The Colonel had no contempt for the enemy. One of his reports was a tacit warning that the Chinese should not be underestimated: “CCF troops are well-trained and led, get as close as possible for grenade use, covered by automatic fire. Infiltration is excellent. Under fire they crawl from one position to another, displaying no reluctance to engage in close hand-to-hand combat.”

His men were not awed by the enemy, however. One tank was painted with the legend: “14 More Shooting Days Until Christmas.”

Puller wrote his wife:

Tonight the entire Division is together.… This concentration means that we are now in better shape than we have been since launching on the East Coast. Our losses from battle, and from frozen feet, face and hands have been heavy.… I hear that our commander has recommended to Mr. Truman that all U. N. forces be withdrawn from this country. I pray that it will be approved. No thought should be given to saving face, as our country has already lost its head, and as a consequence has no face left to save.

Today has been a success not only in getting our Division concentrated, but also in getting your dear letters of seven days in November. How thankful I have been today.

After supper the Colonel disappeared. Only Sergeant Jones knew where he was: “The Old Man would sneak off with Bodey and go up into the lines, climbing right up those damned straight-up hills, all ice and rock, going from hole to hole for half the night. He would go to every man he could find in a foxhole and say ‘How you doing, old man? Where’s your field of fire? Who’s on your flank? Getting enough chow?’ On the way back he would check the warming tents to see if there had been casualties, and how the men were doing.”

On one of these subzero nights Puller found Sergeant Bob Cornely, a veteran who had been with him on Guadalcanal. In the privacy of a snow bank the Colonel produced a miracle—a drink of Old Grand-Dad. Cornely said: “It was like something from heaven, not just a drink of tangle-foot. You can’t know what that did for a freezing man who’d been up there for six hours without relief, watching, watching. I never saw the Old Man drink, but he knew when a little nip would save a fellow from going mad or becoming a casualty.”

Sergeant Jones and Bodey found a moment of relief even in these days. A pompous colonel of the command who spent much time issuing imperious commands in the spit-and-polish tradition was a burden to Jones and Bodey, who scorned his directive that every man must carry a weapon every waking moment, even to the best-protected privies.

One day they saw this colonel walking below them on a trail, hands in pockets, without his helmet. Jones bawled from the tent: “All right there, Marine! Hands out of the pockets! Assume correct posture. And don’t let me catch you without battle gear on your head again!”

The colonel marched off like a mechanical man. Jones savored the moment: “Lookit him! He wants to turn around so bad he can taste it, because he suspects it might be us—but he’s scared to, because it might be the Old Man yelling at him.”

There was furious work on the runway of the Koto-ri air strip, but it could not yet receive large planes; airmen came in dangerously, flying old torpedo bombers to which they were unaccustomed. On December 7 they took out eighty casualties, six or eight at a time. The planes were brought to the ground by signal flags. On the next day a snowstorm broke, just as the column wound southward and a Marine transport hovered overhead, waiting its chance. There was literally no visibility, but during a brief lull in the storm the plane dropped down and took out nineteen more casualties. It left in the howling snowstorm, the last plane to leave for twenty-four hours. By now only two hundred casualties were left in Puller’s perimeter for evacuation.

Early on December 8 the Marines began clearing the ridges on either side of the road south but the going was slow and the trucks bearing the bridge sections made little progress. A funeral service for 117 Marines in a common grave brought the day to an end in the perimeter. It was a scene that lived in Puller’s memory—the burial of frozen bodies by a tank battalion which crushed them under the frozen ground.

A Marine photographer took movies of this burial. Puller said, “How I wish our people could have seen the sight—to see just what happened to us in Korea!” He later heard that Army censorship in Washington kept the film from the public.

The southern march was preceded by an attack from the lower end of the road. General Smith organized Task Force Dog, led by Puller’s old schoolmate from Fort Benning, Brigadier General Armistead D. Mead, assistant commander of the 3rd Army Division. This force fought through Red roadblocks from Hamhung north to Chinhung-ni, where Lieutenant Colonel Donald Schmuck had Puller’s First Battalion. The Army took Schmuck’s post and the First went north toward Koto-ri, to clear the way for the Division.

Schmuck’s men left at 3:30 A.M. in a snowstorm, Bob Wray’s C Company in advance; the way was over almost impassable crags, to reach the rear of a hill which dominated the escape road. Chinese were dug in on the face of this towering hill, covering the road with fire for well over half a mile—but Schmuck had found that they were all facing north, waiting for the escape.

Wray remembered it: “It was rough work, just getting there. We had nothing but some old Jap maps to guide us, and I overran my first objective in the storm. To then, not a shot had been fired. Others, especially Bob Barrow’s company, had to fight like hell all day, but it was 3:30 in the afternoon before we opened.”

In the end the Chinese were cleaned off the hill, with Barrow’s men closing in a hand-to-hand attack which demoralized the enemy. Grenades finished the action the following morning. Within two or three hours after the hillside was taken, the head of the Division column appeared.

It was a near thing at the blasted bridge below the pass, for the enemy had been dynamiting even the ruins. In two hours and a half the engineers had the new bridge sections in place and traffic moving—but one of the first vehicles, an earth-moving machine, wrecked it, and the sections had to be stretched out. There were only two and a half inches to spare for big trucks, but these scraped through and the advance wound down the mountain.

There were signs that the enemy was suffering much more than the Marines. Prisoners were taken in greater numbers and some told stories of whole battalions being wiped out, frozen to death after having been run through the valleys parallel to the American route of escape.

Puller wrote his wife on December 9—a brief message sent down to a radio center:

With the help of the good God we are making it. I will come home for my precious wife and children. Love to all the family. Kiss our children. I love you, Virginia, I always have and will. May God keep you always.

On this day the rest of the Division was rapidly clearing Koto-ri, and on the next, Puller was left alone. He was now the rearguard. He was ordered to destroy equipment and vehicles and to abandon the rest. He fumed: “To hell with that! I’m going to take out everything I came in with, if it’ll still move. More—I’ll bring all this stuff the Army abandoned.” He gave orders to take out every removable vehicle and was astonished to find many at the roadsides with their keys in the switches, left there by the Army.

The press of civilians worried him most of all as he prepared to lead the First Marines down to the sea: “I had to fire over their heads almost every day for a week or more. There were a few times, I’m sorry to say, when I had to fire right into them, and killed a number. It was gruesome, but I knew what would happen if we let them in on us—it would be the end of our outfit. The Chinese troops had got among them in disguise, and were just waiting to knock us off.”

At the end, on December 10, the First abandoned Koto-ri, the rifle companies leapfrogging down the icy road to provide cover. The reconnaissance company was last to leave, and Puller was with them to the final few minutes. He watched the vast cloud of smoke ride from the plateau as the abandoned ammunition went off, glanced at the huddled mass of civilians at the barrier, and prepared for the road.

Orville Jones was ready with the jeep. Across the bumper lay the stiffened body of a tank commander, a recent casualty. Two other bodies were strapped on the rear and top. Three or four wounded huddled in the rear. Jones made a search for other bodies in the perimeter.

“Just make sure they’re Marine,” Puller said. “Take our own people.”

When the jeep was loaded Jones rolled off. Puller left at 3 P.M., walking. It was slow going to the pass, where he arrived at 5 o’clock. Reeves saw him there; the Colonel waited with others until the road was cleared of an obstruction.

Jones found Puller at this point and stripped the boots off his feet. “They were beginning to freeze,” the sergeant said. “The felt ripped like tearing cloth when I pulled ’em from him. He made no complaint then or later. I put him in the jeep, and the heater did a little to bring life back into him. He kept getting out of the jeep, despite all I could do. He walked most of the way down.”

Puller was issuing orders to the moment he left the pass. He was harshly insistent to his commander at the rear, where a tank column covered the tail of the division: “Whatever happens and whatever you think of it, don’t let the civilians come in on you from the perimeter. Keep ’em clear. If they get close, you’ll get hurt. Watch it.” He had the officer repeat the order to him.

From the start of the downward march there had been Korean refugees. Lieutenant Colonel John Partridge recalled: “There was artillery fire; there was the crunching of the many feet and vehicles on the crisp snow. There were many North Korean refugees on one side of the column and Marines walking on the other side. Every once in a while there would be a baby wailing. There were cattle on the road.… It was as eerie as anything I’ve ever experienced.”

But when Puller’s First went down there was the order: No civilians.

Lieutenant Worster had one last glimpse of Puller at the pass, before he went down for the last time: “I went downhill once and came back, and when I got up, there was Puller. There were several blazing fires, built in defiance of the Chinese who were strung all around, on the hills. It was freeze without a fire or take a chance on being shot by the Reds. They didn’t shoot. I think they were being frozen themselves, and they’d been kept out there in the hills by our planes, which literally shadowed that road all day.

“I huddled over a fire in a crowd on the pass and felt someone shove beside me—there were two Chinese soldiers, half dead with cold, their canvas shoes broken and the frozen flesh hanging out, trying to get warm and save themselves. We let ’em warm, and sent ’em down the hill as prisoners.”

Before the end of the column reached the pass, coming from Koto-ri, Puller had word of a tragedy: The tankmen at the rear had been attacked when the civilian press approached them, Chinese soldiers had tossed grenades under the treads of tanks, and three of the vehicles had been lost, with their crews.

The rear had been covered by twenty-eight men in the reconnaissance platoon of Lieutenant Ernest Hargett, a former All-Marine football star. He had ten tanks to cover; his chief concern was the press of the civilian refugees, who surged as close as they dared under the threatening weapons. The pace was a crawl, for tanks skidded on icy curves and labored with lights burning. At 1 A.M. the ninth tank from the rear had a brake freeze; the tail of the column was left behind, alone. They were 2000 yards from the repaired bridge.

The Korean civilians milled uncertainly. From the mass came five Chinese soldiers. “We want to surrender,” one of them said.

Hargett went to meet them for a parley, covered by Corporal George Amyotte with a BAR. The first Chinaman stepped aside and the four behind opened with hidden burp guns and grenades. Hargett cracked one skull with his carbine butt, but was felled by a grenade. Amyotte killed the rest and after a wild fight on the road the platoon retreated. The platoon hammered on a closed tank, trying to get the crew to open and aid them, but there was no answer. Chinese tossed grenades, one of which exploded on Amyotte’s back but left him unscathed, thanks to his body armor. The rearguard party found the next seven tanks abandoned, with hatches open. The wounded Hargett led his twenty-four survivors out with the aid of a corporal, C. P. Lett, who operated a tank for the first time in his life. The bridge was blown behind them and they were safe.

The Fifth and Seventh Marines had now passed through Puller’s ranks, and the First was the rearguard for the entire Division, responsible for covering the withdrawal down the frozen loops of the road. Puller started down, and hundreds of men saw him, for he thought that his job had only begun. He shouted to every passing unit to cheer the men, yelling until he was hoarse: “Don’t forget that you’re First Marines! Not all the Communists in hell can overrun you.”

He rode part of the way in the jeep, but walked with the troops for miles, and could not be persuaded to leave them until he was sure that they had escaped the trap the Chinese had attempted to close on the road.

At the southernmost Division outpost, Chinhung-ni, the column supposed that the danger zone ended, but the Chinese circled the Army unit there and cut the road leading south. Colonel Ed Snedeker had been sent by headquarters to make the road safe, but despite his efforts the enemy attacked a convoy at Sudong, firing on trucks with grenades and burp guns, killing and wounding twenty-one; ten vehicles were lost.

Sutter’s battalion walked the entire route from Koto-ri to Majon-dong, 22 miles, in 20 hours, despite enemy attacks, icy roads, and heavy uniforms and packs. At a bit after noon on December 11, the last of the Division climbed on trucks at Chinhung-ni, and rolled to the sea a Hungnam. By midnight the last of them were safe in the beach perimeter.

News photographers met them, shouting, with a thought for the people back home: “Wave and look happy!” The Marines obliged.