END OF A NIGHTMARE
Ships almost literally rubbed gunwales in the Hungnam harbor—a vast fleet gathered from every corner of the Orient to carry out the forces from North Korea. Marines were first to begin loading.
Puller wrote his wife on December 13, a date which he circled as their anniversary:
Darling:
With the help of the Almighty and no other unit or person, my Regiment is on the beach at Hungnam and will be aboard ship before the day is over. I am thankful to the good God for all his blessings.
Love to all. Kiss our dear children for me. God bless you all.
Reporters found him. “Remember,” the Colonel told them, “whatever you write, this was no retreat. All that happened was that we found more Chinese behind us than in front of us, so we about-faced and attacked.”
The press at home depicted the Reservoir campaign as one of the great military actions of history. Time magazine said: “The running fight … 40 miles by air but 60 miles over the icy, twisting, mountainous road was a battle unparalleled in U. S. military history. It had some of the aspects of Bataan, some of Anzio, some of Dunkirk, some of Valley Forge, some of the ‘Retreat of the 10,000’ as described in Xenophon’s Anabasis.… It was defeat—the worst defeat the United States ever suffered.”
Returning Marines were astonished to find this spirit in the air. Puller pointed out that they could spend the winter under the big guns and planes of the fleet if they wished. He also grumbled to his officers: “We should be ashamed of the leadership that forced us to pull out. We never should have undertaken that campaign in winter in the first place—but now that we’re here we should stick. There’s nothing to hinder us.”
Marine casualties for the campaign, from October 26 to December 15, were 718 dead, 3508 wounded, 192 missing. Communist losses, their accuracy supported by captured documents: 25,000 dead, 12,500 wounded.
Morale among Marines in the perimeter was as high as if they were fresh from triumph. Father Kevin Keaney, a Division chaplain, sketched them:
You cannot exaggerate about the Marines. They are convinced to the point of arrogance, that they are the most ferocious fighters on earth—and the amusing thing about it is that they are.… You should see the group that is about me as I write—dirty, bearded, their clothing food-spattered and filthy—they look like the castoffs of creation, yet they have a sense of loyalty, generosity, even piety greater than any men I have ever known.
These rugged men have the simple piety of children. You can’t help loving them, in spite of their language and their loose sense of private property. Don’t ever feel sorry for a priest in the Marines. The last eight weeks have been the happiest and most contented of my life.
General Oliver Smith wrote of Puller’s role in the saga: “During the Reservoir operation I was never concerned about the security of Koto-ri. When he was told to hold Koto-ri, Lewie never questioned whether or not he had enough men to hold it; he simply made up his mind to hold it. His very presence reassured men; and he circulated constantly. The men knew Colonel Puller’s reputation, that he had emerged with credit from many critical situations, and here he was in the flesh exuding confidence.”
There was a funeral in a hastily made cemetery at Hungnam for men who had died on the way down from the Reservoir or had been carried on the vehicles from Koto-ri. At the end of the ceremony Puller left a group of officers and walked down the line of Marines who had formed the firing squad to thank them for their services. He was the one officer who remembered that this was voluntary duty—and to feel that the men should have some credit for their performance.
Loading was difficult despite the shipping which crowded the harbor; there were more than 100,000 men to be carried away, including U. S. Army and ROK troops. In addition there were more than 100,000 Korean refugees, four times the number expected. One freighter designed for twelve passengers and her crew took on 14,000 Koreans; five babies were born aboard on the short trip to the south of the peninsula.
On December 14 Puller was aboard his transport, the General Collins. He got ten hours sleep and had all the fresh beef, eggs and milk that he could eat. He had a shave and haircut and two showers and, as he wrote his wife “I am now normal again, that is physically. Not even a cold.” He found several of his wife’s letters waiting at the beach, and read them over and over.
Reeves noted that the Colonel played poker all night with officers and men and that the game lasted so long that the skipper complained to Puller at dawn: “Colonel, you’ll have to let my officers get to bed. They can’t stand their watches, they’re so sleepy.” It was less than forty-eight hours after Puller had returned from the Reservoir campaign.
The ship was thronged like all others in the harbor, with four men for each bunk. Marines lay on every gangway and corridor and took turns in the bunks. Lieutenant Stiles remembered: “The Colonel wouldn’t allow them to be disturbed while they slept, and things were mighty quiet on that ship.” Puller also declined to use a bunk until men of his staff had taken their turns at sleeping.
The Marines had gone south by the time of the big explosion of supplies at Hungnam, “the black blossom” that lived in so many memories: Two cruisers, seven destroyers, three rocket-firing ships and the battleship Missouri blasted the Korean hills behind the perimeter as the last men boarded the ships, cutting off any possible enemy sortie. More than 34,000 shells and 12,800 rockets were fired, in addition to the Missouri’s 16-inch shells, a barrage much greater than that of the landings at Inchon. The mountains of supplies on the beach were detonated at last—and to add to the explosion were 400 tons of frozen dynamite and 500 thousand-pound bombs. The blowup literally shook the earth and sea.
Little that had been left behind belonged to the Marines—and literally nothing to the First Regiment. Puller wrote his wife:
I am aboard ship with 5000 enlisted men, nearly 500 officers, my guns, rolling stock, arms and tentage, and sailing south, thanks to the good God. I left nothing for the enemy except planted land mines that will damage him and slow his progress. I brought out all my wounded and most of my dead. We were ordered to retreat and did so. This regiment was the rear-guard of our Division.…
My prayer now is that our leaders, knowing that we have no war machine, will evacuate Korea completely, have a thorough house-cleaning, and then build a real war machine before becoming involved in another war. May God give us wisdom and common sense!
Today I heard about the cold weather on our East Coast. If you and our precious children haven’t warm clothing, please purchase it immediately. I trust that the oil stove has been installed in your room and I am distressed that I didn’t get one for you, Sweetheart, last fall.
The Division settled in Masan in South Korea, out of the combat zone, but it appeared that it would soon be back in the fight, since the Eighth Army was retreating in the northwest. In late December, with the coming of General Matthew B. Ridgway to command, the Marines took heart. The new chief had the look of a fighter and his first orders promised better days: The U.N. forces would cease their retreat at the 37th Parallel, digging in to prepare for a future offensive.
Puller had his first glimpse of Ridgway when the new commander summoned his field officers for a briefing, and took an instant liking to the former paratrooper: “Lord, I wish they’d left him there long enough to do the job. I have a feeling we wouldn’t have taken a licking in Korea with Ridgway to lead us.”
Ridgway also liked Puller:
“I had, of course, known of his reputation for intrepid battlefield leadership and indomitable spirit, and, as I first saw that rugged face and looked him in the eyes, I knew that here was another one of ‘The Old Breed’ on whom a commander could utterly depend.”
Puller remembered their first brief talk:
“General Ridgway asked me about the quality of the Chinese troops.
“I told him they were damned good. He looked as if he didn’t believe me, and I told him, ‘Up there in those hills are the Chinese. They’re commanded by an officer who’s been fighting since 1911, almost without a break. Who’ve we got with that kind of experience? We spent just those five months of World War I in action—and in the last war very few of our officers were in more than two big fights.’
“‘But they have no staff school, or war college,’ Ridgway said. I told him that was just the point, that warfare couldn’t be learned in schools alone, the way we’re trying to do it in America, and that the Chinese approach might be far superior—especially since they had the help of combat-trained Russian officers.”
Ridgway seemed to enjoy Puller and his Marines. Sergeant Jones was sent in the jeep to bring the commander to Puller’s headquarters on visits.
“The first time I went,” Jones said, “I took our beat-up old jeep beside some slick Army staff cars, all attended by colonels and majors, also waiting. Ridgway passed them all and came to me. He asked me if I were Sergeant Jones and hopped in and we took off. The Army stared after us.
“When he came the next time Ridgway recognized me at first glance, called me by name and walked out with me.”
Jones also witnessed Ridgway in an act which struck him as “just like Colonel Puller”:
Ridgway and Puller were at a roadside one day as troops went toward the front. A heavily laden radioman, a private, struggled by and became stuck fast in the muck. His bootlaces came loose and he shouted for help. Ridgway stepped toward him.
“Thanks, pal,” the youngster said, as the general stooped to tie the lace, then gasped as he saw the stars on his shoulders. He looked back, open-mouthed, until he had passed from sight.
There were frequent Army visitors while the Division was in the South. Jones noticed that the Army officers who came to see Puller were always on their best behavior:
“When they were around the Old Man, even the Army guys who were seniors—generals and all—would stand at attention and hold it. They were scared to death of him. Bodey and I thought it was funny as hell, but we could understand how he made them feel.”
There were miracles at Puller’s headquarters on Christmas Eve. A Virginia ham came for the Colonel from Henry Heming, his companion of World War II. The same mail produced a fruit cake, sent by “Nick the Greek,” a restaurateur in Quantico who had been a friend for thirty years. An aviator who dropped by the First Regiment left two bottles of whisky with Puller. The Colonel had a dozen loaves of bread and a carving knife brought from the mess; the staff of seven or or eight officers feasted.
A ten-foot fir stood in front of Puller’s tent, decorated by the men with a star and some ornaments sent over from Japan. Toy birds perched in its branches. Puller went to Episcopal service and Communion on Christmas Day and joined the Division’s senior officers for an eggnog party at General Smith’s quarters in the afternoon.
The Navy shipped in a feast for the Division: Turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, fruit cake, apples, nuts and beer.
Puller did not forget the men. He wrote his wife:
I have just returned to my tent after visiting my three battalions, headquarters company, heavy weapons company and attached units. The officers and men are putting up a good front with what we have and their spirit is fine considering that this is Christmas and what they have been through. The American people should be proud of, at least, their Marines.
The units had organized choruses and sang carols for the Colonel and his staff—some of them in Latin. They made Puller homesick.
A letter from Mrs. Puller arrived a day or two after Christmas. He replied:
I hate to think of all the worry that I have caused you, Sweetheart. Maybe I would not have permitted you to have married me, if I had known all this was coming on! I would have at least hesitated. I meant to give you only happiness and believed that I could. Never fear. This too will pass, and with the help of God I will come home for you and our precious children before too long. That will be a glorious day and I will never want to have you or them out of my sight again. I must have known (I did know) that this separation was ahead of us and that accounts for my reluctance to ever leave our home even to go to see a moving-picture or out to dinner.…
How thankful I am to have your true, fine and great love, Dear, and I value it more than life. It is right for people to love deeply, as that is the only way for lasting love.
The weather was still bitter in the new camp, and only after persuasion by Rickert and other staff officers, abetted by Jones and Bodey, did Puller agree to try the new field shower.
Jones drove the officers to the tents on the bank of a frozen river. Pipes had been thrust through the ice to draw water from the river and a gasoline burner produced piping hot water for the shower. The operating crew was a group of Negro Marines.
Jones and Bodey showered first, without incident. Puller and Rickert stepped under the shower heads and soaped themselves in streams of hot water. Jones never forgot the sight:
“They were so soapy you couldn’t tell which was which, and the Old Man was ready to enjoy himself. He’d quit shaking for the first time since we went up to the Reservoir, I believe.
“Those colored boys were so anxious to do everything just right, and please the Old Man, that something was bound to go wrong. One of them picked up what he thought was a can of gasoline and dumped it into the heater—it turned out to be cold water and the heater went out like a light. Ice water came down on Rickert and the Old Man.
“I never thought men could turn blue so fast. They yelled bloody murder and the Old Man was hollering for ’em to turn hot air in the tent. It was some ruckus, I mean. The Old Man chewed Rickert and told him not to propose another shower as long as they were in Korea. Rickert rushed outside and began eating up the Marines and told them by God he’d send them up to the front lines—to get shot the next day—but of course he never did it. It was quite a time.”
For many weeks after the return from the north Puller was besieged by transport officers of the 7th Army Division who tried to reclaim trucks he had brought down the mountain road. He refused: “Sure I’ve got your trucks. And you know how I got ’em. You ran away and left ’em. If you want to get them back, just write General Ridgway and explain to him how I got them.”
Bodey and Jones had an adventure with fellow Marines while the regiment was in this camp. The adjoining headquarters of a Marine colonel, in contrast to Puller’s lightly defended area, was aglow with searchlights, a fortress behind concertinas of barbed wire, with many guards, tanks and dug-in guns. The jeep was sent there on an errand one night, after taking an Army colonel to his quarters.
A sentry halted them, peering at Bodey and his lapful of weapons: “Are them guns loaded?”
“Certainly. What the hell you think?”
“Then you must unload them before entering the area. Colonel’s order.”
“Okay, fella,” Bodey said. He emptied his M-1 skyward. The sentry scurried for cover. Jones whirled the jeep and they fled.
An officer soon trailed Jones. “Did you shoot up our area tonight, by chance?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lieutenant.”
“You went downtown tonight, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir. Took the Colonel down.…”
The officer stiffened. “You had the Colonel with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant retreated. Jones muttered to Bodey: “No need to tell ’em which Colonel. Bo, you ever see anybody could scare ’em like our Old Man?”
Puller was impatient to be at the enemy. From January 15 onward he flew with pilots in a tiny observation plane, buzzing over the hills around Andong, Pohang and Yongchon, spying out the Chinese. They were often fired on, but Puller’s battle luck held, and there were no hits. His missions were to daring and talked of so breathlessly by returning pilots that he was awarded an Air Medal for the daily flights in the last half of the month—and soon after he won two gold stars for the Air Medal, for more of the low hops over the heads of the enemy.
Oliver Smith told Headquarters in Puller’s fitness reports: “This officer can always be depended upon in combat. He gives his best without question and without stint. He should be given a different type of duty in the Fleet Marine Force.… A vigorous, aggressive officer who pursues his objective without deviation. A splendid leader of men who inspires complete confidence on the part of his subordinates … he participated in hazardous low altitude flights over enemy-held territory in an unarmed aircraft. As a result of his flights he obtained tactical information which was valuable to the Division and contributed materially to its success.”
Smith recommended Puller for a Navy Cross for his work in the Reservoir campaign—his fifth, and a Marine Corps record.
Puller’s letters to his wife revealed his usual concern for his family in the midst of campaigning:
Please tell Lewis that I will finally come home and teach him how to shoot and many other things that boys and men must know.… Tell him to be patient and the swords and a helmet I sent him will arrive.… Tell him to change his bait in the rabbit trap every few days—a piece of apple, lettuce, carrot, celery, and turnip, and that he must not go near the trap or touch it except to change bait or when the door is sprung; also he must keep the dog away from it.…
The mail service has been excellent out here, and in my opinion this is all that the Air Force has accomplished during the war.…
I haven’t minded the hardships here but the killing and crippling of the young men is awful. Due to the weather our wounded die; blood plasma freezes before it can be administered.…
I realize that this war is far harder on you than it has been on me and I am sorry to have caused you all the worry and pain.…
I will never be able to understand the difference between our enlisted men and young officers and those of the Army. There appears to be no example of leadership in the latter organization. No pride and nothing to look up to. The truth is unknown.
… I wish the world was different, especially our country, but I’m afraid that I cannot do anything about changing the world or our country. I can only pray and trust that God will give us leaders who are wise.
Please rest assured that I am not volunteering for any assignment that will separate us or keep us separated. I want to return to you.…
The Pentagon is largely responsible for this mess out here—they were given the money to provide and train an Army. When I entered the service, the regulations stated that the object of all military training is “success in battle.” This short sentence has been rewritten on three pages and I defy anyone to read it over three or more times and then explain what the object of military training is. Even the Pentagon has not the slightest idea why they are commanding the forces of the United States. In fact, out here, we wonder if we are a part of the United States.…
I will not influence my son as to choosing a profession. It will be up to him. I will not even recommend the service. I have had to stand with my mouth closed on too many occasions and then carry out orders from too many halfwits.…
I am greatly distressed to hear that Martha Leigh’s tonsils are acting up and that she is in bed. We must get them out in May and we will. God willing, I will be home to help you.…
Puller was finally promoted to Brigadier General on January 24, the rank to date from the first of the year. He was called to Division Headquarters to get his stars, but flew back to his regiment, where Master Sergeant Joe Guiliano, his old gunnery sergeant, directed a surprise ceremony for the new general. Guiliano had made an enormous star of cardboard and aluminum foil to pin on Puller’s shoulder. A photographer was standing by. Guiliano had found the regiment’s smallest man, a tiny musician, and had Puller stand on a stone so that the Marine had to tiptoe to reach his shoulder. Puller appeared as a giant in the photograph.
The attached artillery battery fired an eleven-gun salute. Puller growled happily: “What the hell do you want to waste ammunition on me for?”
But when, a few minutes after the firing, a return salvo came from the enemy he grinned: “Maybe you didn’t waste it, after all.”
An honor guard was drawn up and Puller left a cluster of officers to speak to old friends among the enlisted men. Corporal Bob Pratt was surprised when the General slapped him on the back and roared: “How’re things, old man? Your chow good enough these days?”
The General made a brief speech: “All the credit for this star belongs to the noncoms, junior officers, and enlisted men,” he said. “You all know that. I’ve tried to do my duty, but we’d never get anywhere except for you fellows in the ranks. This is a great regiment, and it’s going to hurt me to have to leave you. I’ll never forget you.”
To these men of Task Force Puller he also issued a formal memorandum:
In compliance with orders I am, today, leaving this command for assignment as Assistant Division Commander. It is not without misgivings and a certain reluctance that I carry out these orders. All of you, officers and men alike, realize, I am sure, what the 1st Marine Regiment has meant to me.…
I ask one thing more of you—give my successor the same full measure of cooperation and willingness you have always given me, and the 1st Marines will be worthy of the name it has already won.
I first commanded you on New Britain, later on the bloody hills of Peleliu, and it has been my honor to command you in Korea where, by your deeds, you captured the city of Seoul and successfully covered the withdrawal of our Division from the Chosin Reservoir area.
I shall look to your future movements and shall expect to hear and see still greater deeds and higher reputation won on the field of battle.
Colonel Sutter took over the regiment when Puller left to become assistant commander of the Division under Oliver Smith. It was not hard for Smith to see where Puller’s heart lay: “He at first found the atmosphere somewhat rarefied. He had always before been in direct command of troops and now all he could do was visit the units and observe. For a while he took every opportunity to observe his old regiment. He soon adjusted himself to his new duties and became a very effective Assistant Division Commander.”
Puller and Smith worked well together. Smith’s detached, but relentless, methods of making war combined with Puller’s drive to make the Division highly effective. Smith understood Puller and only occasionally tried to restrain him.
Once the staff of the Division dined with the X Corps staff after a Chinese attack which had driven U. S. Army and ROK units from their fronts, leaving the Marines with both flanks exposed. A Corps staff officer spoke to Puller: “Didn’t you fellows know that all units were ordered to withdraw in face of strong enemy pressure?”
“I knew of no such order,” Puller said. “It took this Division fourteen hundred casualties and eleven days of hard fighting to reach that position. If I’d known we were going to withdraw the first time the Chinese turned and yelled ‘Boo’ at us I’d never have moved an inch. If I were commanding I wouldn’t be looking for units to pull back—I’d be forcing those people who pulled back to fight their way into position.”
In the silence which fell around the table Smith gave Puller a warning boot on the shin and the exchange was ended.
One day General Craig flew into Puller’s area by helicopter and complained: “Lewie, you’d better have that electric cable taken down from your airfield—we damned near hit it coming in. Somebody’s going to wreck on it.”
Puller nodded agreement, but the wire remained in place. A few days later Puller was flying into the field himself, with Captain Harold McCray as pilot of his helicopter, when they struck the cable. They hung for a moment, swinging like a pendulum until the wire snapped and the ship fluttered almost twenty feet to the ground; there was a rending crash. Troops ran to the spot.
Puller was flung forward, smashing through the plexiglas nose. He got to his feet, brushing at himself. Orville Jones plucked a jagged piece of plexiglas from the General’s neck and said in awe: “My God, look! He never even bled!”
The ’copter was standing on its nose, a wreck; the engine had spilled out, sheared in two. The pilot was still up in the ship, frozen tightly to the stick. Puller peered up at him: “Turn loose, old man, and fall down here with me!”
Jones gathered hundreds of shotgun shells the General had been carrying, now scattered over the field. Puller and McCray left the wreck without injury.
On a spring night in 1951 Puller led his men northward into Central Korea in a drive against the Communists the Corps called Operation Puller. The General rode at the head of his convoy in the jeep, Jones driving and Bodey riding shotgun. For many miles they left a great column of dust behind them.
It was an impressive sight to Jones: “We looked like a tribe of gypsies instead of Marines. We were supposed to have everything snugged down under taut canvas, but almost every vehicle was piled with chairs or tables, or wooden panels from Korean huts or native A-frames, for carrying packs. The men wanted to make themselves comfortable in camp.
“It was against regulations but lots of the men wore big straw Papa-san hats. God knows what the people thought of us. We were barreling along like that when we came up behind an Army convoy.”
The Marines were slowed to a crawl. The Army vehicles moved up a few miles, then halted. There was half an hour’s wait and the process was repeated. Puller growled his impatience but for a time endured the delay; regulations forbade the passage of another convoy in attack.
“They’re pussyfooting!” the General said. “They’re sending out scouts to be sure the way’s clear, then going on, then stopping everything again. Dammitall, Jones, pull around ’em!”
“Yessir!” Jones lurched the jeep around the Army trucks on the narrow road, and behind them, somehow squeezing by, came the whole column of Marine vehicles. An Army jeep bore down on them from the front, headlights burning.
An Army colonel yelled: “What the hell you doing, passing a convoy? Don’t you know regulations?”
Puller stood up: “Next time you open your mouth, open your eyes, and see who you’re talking to.”
Jones saw the officer’s face sag as he recognized Puller.
“Yes, sir,” the Army colonel said.
“And now, get outta my way, We’re coming through,” Puller said.
The colonel turned his jeep sharply off the road, plunging it over a six-foot embankment to escape the Marine’s wrath. Jones gunned the jeep ahead into open country. The outfit pushed on without a halt, near full speed.
“With any luck,” Puller said happily, “we’ll run into a Red roadblock.” He hefted the new Thompson submachine gun an Army admirer had given him.
They sped along the narrow road. The Old Man fell asleep and Jones, as usual, reached behind him with his left arm to catch the dozing General on left-hand turns. He slept all the way into Andong, where some Army units were already camped; many officers made headquarters in old buildings on a knoll, but Puller led Jones and Bodey outside. They pitched his tent on a hillside.
Oliver Smith left the Division on February 24, temporarily assigned to command the IX Corps, whose chief, General Bryant E. Moore, had died of a heart attack. Puller became commander of the First Marine Division. He was grieved by the death of Moore, his old companion of Guadalcanal; Moore had incessantly told the story in Korea: “Puller’s the man who gave me my baptism of fire, there when we fought for Henderson Field, and I’ve been grateful to him ever since.”
As he took over the Division Puller said only: “It’s the greatest honor to command the greatest division.” He had one opportunity to fight it in battle, and he made the most of it.
Weeks before, Puller had been in Corps Headquarters when an order came from Tokyo, directing that the body of the commander of the Dutch Brigade be recovered from the town of Hoengsang. The village was a road junction from which the 2nd Army Division had been driven by the enemy.
Now, when he was ordered to retake Hoengsang with his Marines, Puller determined to make his attack as nearly perfect as possible. He put two infantry regiments abreast, to advance through the rolling country toward the town, and called for air attacks the next morning. He told his staff: “I don’t believe there’s more than a handful of Communists in there. They can’t hold us.”
His Division was at 80 per cent strength, about 15,000 men—but at first he did not plan to throw all of it into action. He rose long before dawn on March 1, having slept little, and went to a galley where cooks worked in a school building. He put a frying pan on the edge of a stove, cooked six frozen eggs, gulped them and took off in a helicopter.
He told his regimental officers: “I don’t give a damn what orders I gave last night. I won’t let half the Division sit here. Get the other infantry regiment and the tanks going in a sweep to the right. Start fast.”
The planes and artillery hit the town—but it was not enough for Puller. “Look at that,” he growled. “We ought to have twice as many planes in here. The trouble is, not even a five-star general of any other service can give an order to an Air Force corporal out here.”
All the same, the attack moved without a hitch. The infantrymen in the center poured along the road the four or five miles into Hoengsang; the Communist troops, when they saw the tanks and infantrymen on the flank, bolted from their positions and fled. The Division used only half a day in driving forward and occupying the place. Puller divided his time between the jeep in the central road, with Jones, and the helicopter.
Victory was complete and casualties were light, but Puller was not content: “If the country hadn’t been so open, they’d never have seen the flank attack, and we’d have cut ’em off and annihilated ’em.”
On the route he saw a sickening landscape:
“We passed an American battalion of artillery—105’s ambushed and cut to bits by the Reds. They’d shot up the first and last vehicle and made mincemeat of the rest. About a third of those dead boys—and I counted 530-odd—were white Americans, a third Negro Americans, and a third South Korean. Most of the dead were on the guns, or vehicles, or very near them, cut down without a chance. They had fought hardly at all; the Reds had worked so fast that few shots were fired from our weapons. The interior vehicles and guns were so jammed on the narrow road, with rice paddies on either side, that they could not be turned around.
“I allowed no reporters or photographers to see that place. It was a disgrace to American arms. And this was not the only such incident. If I saw one shot-up American battalion in Korea I saw fifty, and I mean fifty. All were Army units.”
Sergeant Jones left the jeep and walked over the scene: “I found dead boys in hiding everywhere. They had crawled into haystacks, under bridges, or into bushes and the Reds found them and shot them in the back of the head. It was pathetic. There had been a paymaster with them, with a full chest. That valley was covered with ten- and twenty-dollar bills and when the Marines came along, boy, there were some rich men that night.”
After three weeks at Hoengsang, the First Marine Division was ordered to pull back. “Another damned retrograde movement,” Puller called it, “caused by the withdrawal of Army troops hit by the Reds—they broke and ran, so instead of making them claw their way back, they pulled us back another ten or fifteen miles.
“We began to take prisoners who told us that the order was out among the Communist troops: ‘Do not attack the First Marine Division. Leave the Yellowlegs alone. Strike the American Army.’”
Marines were soon ordered to discard their distinctive khaki leggings.
Not long afterward Marines sang a ribald song about the defeat of the 2nd Army Division, which they called “Bugout Boogie,” and Puller once overheard them. Jones feared an explosion, but the General’s expression did not change. Jones thought he must have been distracted and did not hear it at all.
A few days later, out of a clear sky, Puller barked at Bodey: “Bo, sing me a chorus of that ‘Bugout Boogie’”—and laughed with the enlisted men at the irreverent ditty.
During Puller’s brief command of the Division he had a run-in with Headquarters over the touchy matter of close air support for Marine infantrymen. Puller carried a memory of it:
“One day General Richard C. Partridge, the senior air officer in Korea, came in to our little field. He got out of his plane and his first words to me were, ‘I came up to see what all this damned bellyaching from the Marines was about. How about this close air support?’
“I asked him into my office and told our tactical air people to get General Partridge’s headquarters by radio—they were back at Taegu. The men tried for fifteen minutes and couldn’t raise an answer. Then I asked them to try by telephone. No answer.
“General Partridge was losing his temper. He said, ‘What the hell you trying to pull on me, Puller?’ I told him this was what we went through every day, when we wanted air support. I asked him to look over some of our log books and note the elapsed time between our calls for air and the arrival of planes. He found that they took from one to five days to get there.
“Then I tried to explain about air power from the viewpoint of a fighting man on the ground, and that air targets were usually targets of opportunity, so far as we were concerned, and that if they weren’t hit within a short time, these targets disappeared.
“Partridge went out of there without saying goodbye, though he had been drinking Marine coffee and smoking Marine cigarettes. I guess we just didn’t see eye to eye.”
Puller’s life as division commander in Korea was cut short after ten days. Oliver Smith came back from the Corps command when a replacement was hurried from the States. Puller agreed with other veterans: “You can bet the Army wasn’t about to leave a Marine in command of anything as big as a corps. Not on your life.”
Puller’s health had been poor for some days, but he declined to take note of his fever and weariness, as if he would rout this enemy by will power alone. Jones and Bodey saw that he was dragging and pleaded with him to see Commander Johnson, the Division Surgeon. They were surprised when the General submitted to examination. The doctor was quick: “You’ve got pneumonia, man. You’ll have to go to bed.”
“Out of the question,” Puller said. “I’ve got work to do here.”
They compromised. Puller stayed on his feet but had to submit to penicillin shots three times daily for at least four days. Jones was assigned to shadow him and when the hour for the shot arrived, was to bring in the doctor, much as if directing artillery fire. When he was finally caught, Puller docilely bared his buttocks to the needle, then went on with his work.
The tactical situation in Korea was changing, but hardly for the better. The Eighth Army had moved up toward the 38th Parallel, with the aid of a Marine drive, but despite the lack of Communist air power, progress was slow and the long line across the peninsula was often broken. There were many routs of individual units.
One day a retreat streamed past Puller’s flank along a river bank in the trail of an Army unit which had pulled back under Chinese attack. The movement was led by a battalion of self-propelled guns under a young Army colonel. Jones witnessed his meeting with Puller:
“The Old Man told him to turn and fight and he could stop the Reds, who now came across the river. The colonel said he had tried, but couldn’t stop ’em. The Old Man said, ‘It’s just because they haven’t shown you how to use the guns. They’re fine guns. They’ll stop anything.’
“He asked the colonel if he didn’t have muzzle blast shells, and found that he did. He told him to load it, and turn his guns on that attack. The Army crews began firing and made mincemeat of those Chinese. The Old Man had lined up the guns for him.
“That colonel couldn’t get over it. He kept saying, ‘General, I didn’t lose a gun. I never saw such shooting, and we blew the Reds to pieces.’ The Old Man just said, ‘Colonel, you stay with me and you’ll never lose a gun.’ He nodded to me and Bodey. ‘At least you’ll never lose one as long as I’ve got my fire team here with me.’
“He never put on airs, that Old Man of ours, but he taught more people to fight in Korea than any school that ever was.”
Before dawn one morning a runner woke Puller with word that the Chinese had broken the front of a ROK division on his flank. Puller went to his field phone and called the command post of a front-line Korea battalion.
“How many Chinese in the attack?” he asked.
“Oh, many, many, many.”
Puller called the ROK division headquarters, asked the same question, and got the same answer. In disgust, he called the Marine officer with the ROK’s: “How many Chinese you got, Lieutenant?”
“A whole goddam peapot full, Colonel.”
“Thank God somebody up there can count,” Puller said.
Puller witnessed some bad moments for the First Cavalry while he was on the line: “One night they were overrun by Chinese horse cavalry. They had dug in tanks to use as guns, and after dark the Chinese came in, galloping fast, and overran them. The First Cavalry broke, and the Chinese sabered them, hundreds of them, from horseback. My God, how could commentators tell people back home that the Eighth Army is the greatest army in American history?”
On one of his forays from headquarters Puller made a deep reconnaissance to the rear of the Division by jeep; he had already probed the country in their front. Just after dawn, when he was ten miles from the front, he and Jones met an Army general, also in a jeep.
“What are you doing out here?” the Army man asked.
“Hell. I’m reconning the rear. Afraid you guys will bug out again.”
“Come on with me. We’ll see the commander of the Turkish Brigade. He’s a riot and he’ll be full of the fight they had the other night. We’ll wait until he’s had a few drinks under his belt, and then he’ll warm up.”
They were welcomed at headquarters of the Turks and had a drink or two with their general, who described his defeat of the Chinese:
“Ahh. I can see the Chinese, he advances in formation. What you call it? Approach marching. He has on the uniforms white, for the ground with snow. I say to my children, who see them as they coming, ‘Wait, my children.’
“The Chinese he is 1700 meters away, and now 1600 meters, and now 1500, and still I caution my children, ‘Lie there in the snow, and fix bayonets. Do not move.’ Then the Chinese he is 1200 meters away, and 900, 600, 300—100 meters. Then I say to my children: ‘Allah is about to bless us, rise up and slay.’ And the bayonets of my children ran red with the blood of the infidels.”
Puller and the Army general laughed their appreciation, but Puller rose: “We’d better get on, General. He’s had about five drinks now, and he’s soon going to realize that we’re infidels, too.”
On his next visit to the Turkish general, Puller saw three Koreans crucified on poles before headquarters, one hanging head down. The Turk explained: “My children are poor, my country is poor, and supplies they are always stolen. When we catch thieves, we put them to death. It is the only way we can halt the thieves. It is most effective. I commend it to you.”
Puller admired the brave Turks: “The best troops in Korea, by all odds—except for our Marines. They fought like demons. I wish our people had more of their spirit.”
The General also defended his South Korean allies: “Now they’re beginning to say the ROK’s are no good, and that they always run. But they can be good. We’ve proved that. Don’t forget those 3000 South Korean soldiers—just ordinary soldiers—that the Fifth Marines trained aboard ship on the way to Inchon. They made them into South Korean Marines.
“The way they handled them in combat made all the difference. U. S. Marine officers and noncommissioned officers assigned to each unit lived with the troops, up on the front line. When they got into fights these officers used weapons to help stand off the enemy. So the South Korean Marines never broke.
“But the ROK’s who’ve broken so often are Army-trained. It’s not because the Army is evil or cowardly—they get the same kinds of American boys we get, by and large. The difference is in their attitude and training. Army officers assigned to ROK units didn’t live with the troops up front, but stayed in the rear in some kind of staff headquarters. When attacks came there was nobody around to steady the ROK’s—and the officers in the rear headquarters were usually the first to run. Who could expect anything but a retreat?”
Puller then and afterward stood by his scathing denunciation of U. S. Army training: “There was not a U. S. Army or a ROK division in Korea, in my time, whose officers did not go to the rear and report that they were driven, and had to be re-equipped. Now, I consider that a scandal and absolute proof that we have been wasting money on our military machine—and that we haven’t one to this day, in 1962. What we are lacking, despite all our talk about fancy weapons systems, is the fundamental spirit that alone can produce great armed services.”
Puller was still a lure to men and officers. Sergeant Jones noticed that in a lull a crowd gathered about the General, men trying to get him started on his battle tales. The sergeant said: “The Old Man was too smart for that. He wouldn’t let ’em bunch up enough to start drawing fire. He would always walk away, leave the officers and talk to enlisted men down the line. Good for morale, too.”
Puller’s reputation grew among the men, but Sergeant Jones noted that the Old Man was regarded as a man-eater:
“They would ask Bodey and me over and over how the hell we kept our stripes. They thought he chewed on people all the time, and when there was a fight, recklessly exposed his people—and of course we knew better. It was hard to convince guys who had heard so much about him, but really didn’t know him. When you got close to him you found he had a heart as big as all outdoors.”
Puller, Jones and Bodey worked together as a team even now that the Old Man had become a general and assistant division commander; Bodey had gone off briefly to join a front-line unit but soon reappeared as the shotgun.
Many passers-by brought gifts of whisky to the Old Man and Bodey and Jones kept a close watch upon it. Some went under Puller’s cot where he could make sure of its fate, but when there was a large stock, brought by an unusual traffic of aviators, reporters and staff people from rear areas, some of the bottles were entrusted to Jones and Bodey for safekeeping. They learned that he never forgot a bottle, despite the fact that he was forever sending presents of whisky to men on the front, wherever it was needed.
A high-ranking officer once sent him two bottles of I. W. Harper and after a decent interval—during which later arrivals had been called for by the General—Jones and Bodey thought it was safe to sample this fine stock. They drank one of the bottles of Harper.
Soon after Puller got his Brigadier General’s star he called for a bottle of the Harper. Jones took it in smiling—but when that was gone and Puller called for the second bottle, Jones mumbled: “That’s all there is, General.”
Puller genially cursed the sergeant.
“That other bottle must have got broken, General,” Jones said.
Puller was not deceived: “You bastards might at least have asked me.”
He never mentioned the incident again.
Once when Jones and Bodey wanted beer for a party among their friends, Jones told his gang: “I’m going up and ask the Old Man for some. He’s got a couple cases, and I bet he’ll give me one.”
Other sergeants were aghast: “Hell, man, you don’t go asking generals for a case of beer.”
Jones came back with his case, grinning over a broken Corps tradition.
Jones and Bodey still cared for Puller as in the days after Inchon. Jones said: “The Old Man could tell whether it was Bodey or me came into his tent to get him up in the mornings. He said I would stomp and kick the cot and say, ‘General, it’s almost noon.’ But Bodey would sneak in easy like a cat and shake him as if he were a baby. We tried to look after him and he looked after us.”
In mid-March Puller was told that the original officers of the Division would be sent home in late May. Puller was almost fifty-three. He had been in the forefront of one of the most strenuous campaigns of his career; he had walked much of the time over punishing terrain, temperatures ranging from 120 degrees in the streets of Seoul to 25 degrees below zero in the Reservoir region. His weight was almost unchanged, and he had become harder in the process of out-marching men half his age, many of whom had lost from thirty to forty pounds during the Reservoir campaign. He had decided notions about the reasons for that—and for almost every other phase of American failure in Korea:
“Our men lost weight on K-rations. We were better fed than in World War II, everyone says, but most of my boys lost too much weight. I think it’s because we had no beef. I believe that we got into trouble when the Midwest farm lobby put the services on pork in World War II—and let the British have the whole supply of Argentine corned beef.”
As to the handling of American troops:
“We can’t hope to win future wars—and we got the hell beat out of us in Korea—unless we have discipline. It is going to take some brutality to get it.
“I am alarmed to see that we’ve abandoned the Articles of War and the Articles for the Government of the Navy under which we grew great, and have only, this so-called Uniform Code of Military Justice. This is an abortion. It weakens our services at the bottom.”
Puller made no secret of his belief that the Communists had seriously defeated UN forces, or of his discontent with the state of affairs. He expressed himself freely to officers:
“It’s a good thing I’m leaving, the way things are going. They’d have me under arrest in a couple days. Can you imagine the things they’re doing now—it takes ten days to get-permission from Tokyo, by God, to send out a platoon-sized patrol! Tokyo finally was forced to get permission from Washington in order to move a battalion.
“Now what’s all this talk about wanting to extend the bomb line a thousand miles up into Manchuria, too? We haven’t scratched things here on the tiny land mass in Korea. They’ve got more miles of railroad running now than when our bombers began work, and more engines and cars on the tracks.”
He was equally positive in his criticism of United Nations ground strategy:
“They’re going to wear us out, trying to hold a rigid line from coast to coast. It can’t be done that way. We’ve got about 280,000 men of our own, and 10,000 British, and some 1000-man brigades of French, Dutch and Turks. Our whole trouble has been trying to hold that long line. If it had been mine to handle, I’d have formed them all up in column of divisions and marched for the heart of the enemy strength. We’d have wiped them out.
“Western armies, especially American, worry far too much about their flanks. The British retreated hundreds of miles on the Malay Peninsula in World War II, though they outnumbered the attacking Japanese, because they were too sensitive about their flanks. The Japs put a squad in the rear of a battalion of British, and forced them to retreat. It’s about what we’ve seen in Korea. No one should retreat automatically, when they have as many men as the enemy.
“If we have a conventional war with Russia we’ll find out that we have plenty to learn—and lots of courage to gain.”
In May, when his departure was near, Puller sent Jones south a few days early to catch a ship: “I’m going to command the Third Brigade, at Camp Pendleton, and I want you to drive for me there. I’m flying, and you’ll get in soon after I do. Good luck, old man. I’m sorry we couldn’t have had a better war together.”
His last days in Korea were frustrating to Puller, who found things suddenly different. He wrote his wife:
Now age has probably changed me, and the Corps has changed, too, due, I suppose, to man being what he is today. I never thought this change could or would happen. Maybe I have been wrong from the beginning.
If Puller was losing confidence in himself in the strange new times of American defeat he quickly recovered—but he was not misled by talk of a drawn battle against the Chinese Communists: “Stalemate, hell! We’ve lost the first war in our history, and it’s time someone told the American people the truth about it. The Reds whipped the devil out of us, pure and simple.”
Before he left Korea Puller was made aware of the Eighth Army order governing all officers and men going back to the States: There would be no criticism of the American role in Korea, of allies or other services. Returning veterans were expected to watch their words.
Puller determined to obey the order. Almost as soon as the plane took off he made a list in his notebook: “Topics I will not discuss with the press.”