Appendix A
AFTER CHOSIN
FOLLOWING the Chosin Reservoir campaign, George Company fought through the remainder of the Korean War and made several more epic stands. Although the war became increasingly unpopular with the American public, George Company’s battle record throughout the balance of the war deserved recognition then and now. From 1951 to 1953, George Company fought in important battles with heroic tenacity, yet their story is more untold and unsung than their prior battles chronicled in this book. These stories deserve a separate treatment in their own volume. Nevertheless, this appendix attempts briefly to chronicle these heroic actions.
From Hungnam, George Company along with the First Marine Division sailed back to the port of Pusan. George Company and 3/1 headed to the strategic town of Masan for refitting, with orders to hold the town in the event of a Chinese breakthrough. The breakthrough never materialized, and George Company was sent north.
In January 1951, the Chinese launched their Third Phase Offensive, also known as the Chinese Winter Offensive. Overwhelmingly successful, the operation forced the Eighth Army to withdraw south. Seoul once again fell into North Korean hands.
During the fighting, Walton Walker, Commanding General of the Eighth Army, was killed in an automobile accident on December 23, 1950. The Army assigned airborne legend Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgeway to replace Walker, and Ridgeway’s presence had an immediate, positive effect on the esprit de corps of the Eighth Army, stiffening their resolve.
The Chinese and North Korean offensive petered out near the strategic South Korean town of Wonju.The armies had overrun their supply lines, which stretched all the way back to the Manchurian border. After holding at the centrally located town of Wonju, Ridgeway counterattacked in a series of operations and also halted another Chinese offensive.
After initially hunting guerrillas for the first two months of 1951, George Company took part in Ridgeway’s counteroffensive, including Operation Killer. The company traveled by truck to Wonju. Tom Powers recalled the arduous journey:
On February 21, 1951, we jumped off on Operation Killer. It was raining very hard, so hard that many of the trucks and tanks that would be used in the assault were bogged down in the mud. In the tradition of the Corps, the troops were served steak and eggs before jumping off. It was raining so hard my steak and eggs were floating around in my mess kit.
The men of George Company fought on several hills, including Hill 303, and suffered numerous casualties.The First Marine Division pushed north toward the 38th Parallel. Operation Killer reoccupied territory south of the Han River and also the strategic town of Hoengseong.The living conditions for the men of George Company were miserable, as Powers explained:
Operation Killer ended in March, but from February to March, it was wet and cold—bone-chilling wet and cold. One night when George Company was in reserve, we holed up in a barn.Well, the roof leaked, and I was right under one of those leaks. During the night, the leak got so bad I was in water up to my waist, my teeth were chattering, and it was so miserable, I started to cry. The next day, not one man in the area who heard me said a word to embarrass me. I know they all knew how I felt that night. We all knew what the next guy’s misery was because it was ours.
On March 7, the Eighth Army attacked in Operation Ripper, clearing Seoul for the fourth time.
On April 11, 1951, President Truman relieved General MacArthur as the Supreme Commander in Korea for a variety of reasons. MacArthur’s dismissal became the subject of Congressional hearings, generating a political firestorm at home.
With 700,000 troops, the Chinese once again counterattacked in April 1951 with the Fifth Phase Offensive (also known as the Chinese Spring Offensive).Their goal was to drive UN forces into the sea. Initially in a reserve position, the First Marines rushed forward to plug holes in the front lines.
With the Chinese offensive in full swing, the Sixth ROK Division collapsed on the left flank of the Marines around midnight on April 22. George Company received orders to take and hold Hill 902, which guarded the approaches to the strategic Mojin Bridge. Machine gunner Bob Harbula recalled how elements of the South Korean Army retreated in chaos: “We had a rough time getting through the ROK Army as they were hightailing it, trying to get away from the Chinese that attacked their positions.This left the First Division’s left flank wide open.We threatened to shoot them if they didn’t get out of our way.”
The hill had to be held at all costs to block the offensive and allow friendly forces, including the Fifth and Seventh Marines, to withdraw across the bridge. George Company was involved in a footrace to beat the Chinese to the top of the strategically important Hill 902. Harbula remembered:
The climb to the top of 902 was a steep several miles, and we were loaded down with extra ammo. It was a grueling climb. Most of the men had emptied their canteens on the way up. Officers and NCOs prodded their men to keep moving. Many had started to fall out. We were told that resupply of ammo and water would be a big problem.
George Company’s Third Platoon was in the eye of the storm. Gunnery Sergeant Harold “Speedy” Wilson held his platoon together through the massive oncoming Chinese assault. His actions helped blunt the Chinese attack on the hill.
For his stand on Hill 902, Harold “Speedy” Wilson was awarded the Medal of Honor (see appendix C).
Harbula reflected on the flow of the battle:
I wasn’t on the top when the Chinese first attacked. All the action was on the crest and a saddle that connected it to another hill to the north. I pulled one of my machine gun squads from a quiet area and reinforced the crest where the action was. When I got to the top, it was a madhouse of activity. Corpsmen were helping the wounded, and riflemen from other quiet areas were being fed into position. We knew the Chinese would be back. When the Chinese attacked again, I was amazed at the firepower we hit them with. Four machine guns, mortars, and artillery were really pouring it on. Dead Chinese were all over the hill. We stopped them cold in the saddle.After the second attack, we were told to break off action and get back across the river with the rest of the division. We were all dying of thirst, and seeing the river down below only made us thirstier.
Withdrawing from the hill became almost as difficult as fighting on top of it. As Powers remembered:
We saw three [U.S.] Corsairs coming right at us. They shot their 20 mm cannon. The man in front of me was killed. Smoke was coming out of his chest from the round.The planes began to then turn. Everyone shouted “Napalm!” We knew what was next—they were going to spray us with napalm.We shouted for the guy in front of us to pull out his marker panels from one of the back-packs. He did just in the nick of time as the planes began making their napalm run.
By the end of May, the Chinese had suffered a decisive defeat in their Spring Offensive.With their offensive in ruins and North Korea once again in jeopardy, on June 23, 1951, the Soviet Union proposed peace talks. It was largely a ruse to buy time for the badly mauled Communist forces to consolidate their position. Nevertheless, the Chinese also used the peace talks as a propaganda victory.
Sometime around September 1951, after the peace talks had stalled and the Communist forces had strengthened their lines, PFC (who was in fact an acting corporal and fire team leader) Richard Williams recalls seizing a long-forgotten objective known as Hill 751.
We had just taken the objective. My fire team was the lookout. We were up front making sure they wouldn’t surprise us with a counterattack. Some Marines as they passed by us yelled, ‘Lieutenant wants to see you.’ So I took my fire team and moved toward the lieutenant. As he started talking to me, I was watching the scout. All of the sudden, they opened up with machine guns and rifle fire. As I was getting back to our positions for cover, we were moving up a 75 mm recoilless rifle. Mortars screamed in and destroyed the 75. There were a lot of us bunched up in one spot. As the lieutenant walked over, I remember looking up at him. I think he was about to say, ‘You’re all bunched up.’ Another mortar came down. As I came to, he was dead, along with another man. I was knocked silly, and my head was ringing. I was crawling on my hands and knees and found other wounded men. Me and several of the other men brought the wounded back down the hill. We made two or three trips.
The Eighth Army once again launched a counterattack, driving deeper north.They pushed past the 38th Parallel and established Line Kansas.Along this line, George Company would man strategic outposts along with other UN forces. Little territory would be exchanged in a stalemate that would last until 1953.The line was known as the MLR or “Main Line of Resistance.”
Rifleman Peter A. Beauchamp recalled a raid along the MLR during a period known as the “Outpost War”:
One evening, the squad I was in was told to go out to no-man’s-land in front of the lines, to meet up and support another platoon to carry out a raid on a North Korean position. Prior to reaching the platoon, we decided to leave our parkas in a pass in no-man’s-land, although the snow was about knee deep, because the parkas were cumbersome. We would pick them up on our way back to our positions after the raid.
When we reached the platoon we were to support, the Platoon Leader was on the radio, asking permission to abort the mission, as they had gone up the wrong hill, and now the North Koreans were on the alert. Permission was denied, and we were to carry out the mission. Our squad was at the rear of the column as we proceeded up the hill. As we advanced, the North Koreans opened up with machine guns, mortars, and grenades.The word came down to return to our own lines. I don’t know if there were any casualties. The mission was aborted.
When our squad reached the pass where we had left our parkas, North Koreans opened up with burp gun fire. Since we couldn’t see where they were firing from, we couldn’t return fire. We decided to leave the parkas where they lay, and return to our lines.A head count was made as we went through the gate in the barbed wire fence. Behind us were some North Korean soldiers spraying our lines with burp gun fire. Luckily no one was hit.
They retrieved the parkas without incident the next day.
Throughout this period of countless raids, men and officers shipped in and out of George Company. One such officer was Second Lieutenant Bing Bingham, who would later rise to the rank of colonel. When asked his most vivid memory of the time, Bingham said, “I was a green second lieutenant, brand new, and placed in command of a rifle platoon. Men who had survived Hill 902 and other operations accepted me.” Bingham successfully led his platoon through several months of combat on the MLR.
The war dragged on in stalemated positions for over a year and a half. Men continued to die on both sides. By June 1953, the Chinese were once again ready to accept the terms of an armistice proposed by the UN. Nevertheless, they were determined to gain several key strategic positions that would give them greater negotiating power at the peace table and further provide easy access across the Imjin River and a thoroughfare to Seoul. Known as Boulder City, this key terrain became the focus of the Chinese Army and would be the last battle on the last day of the Korean War. Once again, George Company would be vastly outnumbered, perhaps ten to one, and once again would make an epic, unsung stand.
For weeks there had been talk of an armistice. Unlike during World War I, when the German army gave ground days before the armistice and even the day of the armistice, the Marines of First Division and George Company wouldn’t yield. On the night of July 24, the Chinese hit Boulder City and Hill 111 with one of the largest artillery bombardments of the war.Tens of thousands of shells hit George Company, and thousands of Chinese soldiers assaulted the company, as Corporal Harvey Dethloff, who was manning a .50 caliber machine gun in the apex of the attack, remembered:
The big stuff came in. A rocket round hit the corner of my .50, bending it and making it useless. They started coming over the wall from all directions. There’s quite a difference between a company and a regiment, like 20 to 1 odds. They came right in under their own artillery fire.As we scrambled out of the bunker, I remember there was a flamethrower left there from a previous outfit. I picked it up. I couldn’t get the striker to work. I aimed the flamethrower down the trench, and the whole trench lit up. The trench was loaded with concertina wire, and the Chinese were climbing through it. As I was about to fire another jet of flame, a concussion grenade exploded, rendering my right arm useless and blowing the hose off the flamethrower tank. Luckily, the flamethrower didn’t explode on my back.
It was completely dark as I scrambled down the trench. There were boxes of grenades embedded in the trench wall. After groping around for a few minutes, my hand found a box. As I was stumbling backwards down the trench, I was throwing grenades with my left arm and pulling the pin out with my teeth. Your teeth aren’t meant to pull grenade pins out; they’re not made that way. I later lost all my teeth after the war because they became so loosened. As I stumbled down the trench, I kept throwing grenades at the Chinese with my left arm as they fired at me. I emptied the entire box and somehow found a second box. I heard a mortar come flying in right over my head. It detonated on top of me and blew me backward down the trench line. I don’t know how I survived, but it broke my leg. I was dragging one leg and crawling down the trench on one elbow.
After throwing more grenades at targets and over the side of the cliff, all I had left was a .45 with five rounds of ammunition. There was a left turn or intersection in the trench line. I crawled down it. I found a first aid bunker that had two rooms filled. I couldn’t get into the back room because it was so filled with dying men. The corpsmen were so busy tending to the wounded that I didn’t bother them. I could hear the Chinese climbing over the top of the bunker, but for some reason they never threw in grenades, which they normally did. I used a belt and my bayonet as a tourniquet, and I kept my .45 at the ready in the event the Chinese hit the bunker.
On July 27, 1953, the armistice was signed, and Corporal Dethloff would be transported to the United States, on his back, all the way to Great Lakes Naval Training Center. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions.
George Company had made the last great stand in the last battle of the Korean War. If the Korean War is a forgotten war, Boulder City is its forgotten battle. When the war ended on July 27, 1953, only 25 percent of George Company would make the muster call.That day marked the single greatest loss of life of any battle for the company. Twenty-four men, roughly every ninth man in the company, were killed.Thousands of Chinese bodies covered the ground around Boulder City and 3/1’s position.
During the Korean War George Company took on the brunt of elements of an enemy regiment (Seoul,Task Force Drysdale, East Hill, Hill 902, and Boulder City). They stood tall on each occasion. The North Koreans and their allies would never have come to the peace table if it had not been for the forgotten stands of men from George Company and thousands of other Americans and Koreans.
The war consumed over a million North Koreans and their Chinese allies and left over 36,000 Americans dead. The war would end not with a peace treaty but with an armistice. On March 27, 2009, North Korea officially withdrew from the armistice and continues to pose a threat to the world.
