Give Me Tomorrow

Most of the replacements had trained together, friends ²¹ who formed part of a weapons company at Pendleton. They dutifully followed the order, opening their rucksacks and placing rations, knives, canteens, mess kits, and other gear in front of them. Tillman then removed any duplicate items that the replacements possessed and gave them to the needy, battle-worn veterans of the First Platoon.

“Listen up, people, open up your mess kits and give me your knife and fork. Put your spoon in your trousers. Put the bottom part of your mess kit in your parka and give me the top half. I won’t have anybody making any extra noise,” barked the veteran Marine NCO. He knew what it took to survive combat.

After Tillman picked the newbies clean of any unnecessary gear, First Sergeant Zullo entered the church. His commanding presence and piercing voice quickly caught the attention of the rookies. Zullo was a mountain of a man, “whose voice you could hear over a mile away,” recalled Harrell Roberts, a member of the Second Replacement Draft.

Born and raised in Bainbridge, Georgia, Roberts later moved to Savannah when his father was transferred with the WPA. The tall southerner joined a USMC reserve unit in 1949 after a year of college and reported to Camp Pendleton in August. Like many of George Company’s members, he had never gone to boot camp.

After their brief encounter with Zullo, the new recruits were given assignments within the platoon. Several joined the machine gun section, whose ranks had been sorely depleted. Machine gunner Corporal Harbula looked over the replacements and reflected on the chilling fact that he was the only member of his machine gun squad still left from Inchon. The majority had been killed in action or wounded.

“I was still in a state of shock from what happened at Majon-ni. Most replacements did not have all that much training, and one of the biggest problems was that the men with the least amount of training would always bunch up. Many of these guys never saw a machine gun,” commented Harbula. Although the men had learned in boot camp not to bunch up, they forgot their disciplined training and became complacent in their inexperience.

At this point, 70 percent of George Company consisted of men from the replacement drafts, replacing officers and NCOs alike. Some of the men, Marine reservists, had received the threadbare thirty days of training required.These Marines were as green as it got. These men don’t know shit from Shinola, thought Harbula.

In order to augment the machine gun squad with veterans, Joe Rice, a quiet man who was Harbula’s best friend, was transferred into the unit. Rice, approaching his mid-twenties, was considered an old man in the unit. Always dependable and someone Harbula could count on, the two best friends did their best to train the new Marines.

Besides being a bivouac area, when a rabbi showed up, the Catholic church also served as a house of worship. Sergeant Clark Henry of the forward observer team remembers Smokey Somers coming up to him.

“Sarge, this guy came all the way from division to give us a service,” said Somers. “What do you want to do? I think I am the only Jewish guy in George Company.” “Go to the services. We will all go to the service,” responded Henry.

The all-Christian scout sniper section filtered in for service, removing their hats as they had been taught to do when entering a church. The combat rabbi turned to Smokey with a whimsical look: “Are you sure these guys are all Jewish?” “Yes, they are, Rabbi,” Smokey shot back.With a smile, he responded, “Well, tell them to put their hats on.”

Shortly after the service, Henry received another surprise when Private Jesus “Bob” Camarillo walked into camp. The two men had met in California before the war.²²

For the next several days, George Company enjoyed light duty. The men continued to guard X Corps headquarters, located near the church ruins.As the Fifth and Seventh Marines pushed north, the First Marines remained behind in the Hungnam-Chigyong area. The First Marines faced the serious challenge of a lack of transportation. There simply were not enough trucks to move the men of George Company north. This recurring complication would lead to some ironic consequences that would have a profound impact on the war.

After several days of guard duty, the men’s ticket north arrived in the form of a narrow-gauge train. In a scene ripped from the pages of a Western novel, the entire company rode atop the flat cars and gondola, along with fifty-five-gallon drums filled with aviation fuel. They stood ready to deal swiftly with any would-be fuel bandits.The riflemen and machine gun teams were distributed down both sides of the train in case any guerillas attacked, knowing that small arms fire or a direct mortar hit would ignite the train into a barreling flame. “We were very nervous sitting on gasoline barrels all day,” recalled PFC Bruce Farr.

Smoke and soot spewed from the locomotive engine as the rolling gas bomb headed down the narrow-gauge rails. Men looked around, alert for threats, as they nervously chatted with one another on the ride. After an hour of uneventful travel through the drab North Korean countryside, the train pulled into a marshaling yard. First Platoon and the gunners noticed a group of combat engineers repairing the track. Standing upright against a box car were two dozen brand-new M1 Garands glistening in the rays of the early afternoon sun. Tillman saw an opportunity and asked his men, “Do you want to survey your weapons?” which means “swap out” in Marine lingo.

Several men nodded and looked at their Marine-issued M1s, their stocks pitted and worn from months of combat. Accustomed to receiving low-grade and cheap equipment, the Marines jumped at an opportunity to upgrade at the expense of their Army brethren. “Everything that came from the Army was much better, if you could snatch it or commandeer it!” recalled Roberts.

Tillman responded in a matter-of-fact tone, “If you do, take off your leather sling, and go over there and remove their canvas slings and replace your weapons with theirs.”

Without hesitation, the men leaped off the train and descended on the new Garands “like starving locusts” and quickly made the exchange without the Army men even noticing.

The enlisted men in First Platoon and in the machine gun section were not the only ones “liberating” items from other units. Richard J. Jewel of the scout section clambered onto the train car carrying gear for most of his comrades. His outstretched arms were loaded down with cold-weather gear and parkas. “Jewel was an expert scrounger, and a real piece of work,” recalled Henry. “Apparently, Jewel being the piece he was, found the gear in a parked boxcar in the rail yard.”

With his tail between his legs, Jewel returned the gear to the boxcar where he had found it. However, two recipients of Jewel’s handiwork managed to hold on to their new duds: First Sergeant Zullo and Captain Sitter emerged from the boxcar next to the train sporting brand-new trench coats.

The train rumbled north, leaving the Army minus a few Garands and trench coats. Farr and his best friend Bobby Hallawell of the machine gun section soon heard the all-too-familiar clicking discharge of machine gun fire.

Fred Hems and his assistant gunner also leaped from the train, setting up the machine gun on the right side of the tracks and firing several rounds. Farr, GoodEagle, Harbula, and Hallawell quickly joined them and took up defensive positions. Captain Sitter, who literally tumbled out of the train, tore a ligament in his knee but stoically refused evacuation. “All the old souls from Inchon and Seoul bailed off the train in a heartbeat,” recalled Roberts.

Many of the green replacements were stunned as the train stopped in the midst of “the attack.” Roberts remembers aiming his M1 blindly into the distance. Several men began to fire as if being shot at. About a hundred yards down the road, several civilians were seen diving for cover. “Nobody quite knew what they were firing at. I was not sure if we hit the civilians,” remembered Roberts.

The firing stopped.They soon located the source of the “attack”: someone had decided to test-fire a captured enemy weapon. After everything was sorted out, Zullo ordered the men back on the train. Bitching and moaning, the men boarded as the engine steamed up and resumed its course north.

The train pulled into a forgotten North Korean village on the afternoon of November 17, and the regiment assigned the company several unmemorable days of guard duty.

During downtime, George Company assembled into formation. Several men in the unit received medals for their heroic actions at Inchon and Seoul. Colonel Chesty Puller himself decorated the men. When he came up to Lieutenant Carey, he smiled, and as he pinned the award on his chest, he said, “Lieutenant, what are you doing here?” Puller was known for always favoring the enlisted men over officers.

Puller then turned and pinned a Silver Star on Sergeant Tillman. “I would have followed that man anywhere,” recalled Jim Byrne, a reservist from San Rafael, California, who had arrived with the second reserve draft. After the ceremony,Tillman beamed with pride and later told the men, “Next, the Congresh.” The men who knew him certainly thought it was possible for Tillman to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Shortly after the ceremony, Lieutenant Carey was moved up to battalion headquarters and assumed command of the S-2 (Intelligence Section) shop, a role normally reserved for a major. Major Edwin Simmons said, “Dick, you’ve seen enough.” Carey protested the promotion, but followed orders and became 3/1’s S-2. The sole surviving platoon commander from Inchon, Carey was the only person alive who had witnessed Lieutenant Beeler’s prediction.

Thanksgiving brought the first snowflakes. The men received turkey for the holiday, but within minutes, the bitter cold froze the trimmings to the metal trays. As the company filed toward the service area, Zullo detoured across a rice paddy dike. The fresh snow “made everything slimy.” The whole company watched as Zullo’s right leg slid knee-deep in the mud and excrement of the rice paddy. Harbula recalls a couple of men beginning to snicker. Ominously, the first sergeant looked over and shot the entire company an icy stare.

“He turned and looked at us, and you could have heard a pin drop. It was an ominous look,” recalled Roberts.“That ominous look was all that anyone needed. We were more afraid of Zullo than the enemy!” recalled Powers. “That man ruled the roost, even our officers were afraid of him.”

No one else snickered, and everyone acted like nothing had happened. Farr and the other members of George Company wolfed down their quickly freezing Thanksgiving dinner, as the snow flurries melted on their faces.

As a twenty-two-year-old, he was older than many of the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old men in the machine gun section. “I knew it was possible that we might make it to Japan by Christmas, but I knew we would not be home. I just did not believe the rumors that we’d be home by Christmas,” said Farr.

As is so often the case in American military history, the rumors that the “boys will be home for Christmas” once again proved false. Chinese troops launched a massive series of attacks. On November 28, General Douglas MacArthur issued an alarming communiqué to President Harry Truman: “We face an entirely new war.”

Despite the Chinese attacks, executing according to MacArthur’s original plan, X Corps continued to push further north toward the Yalu River. Once again, lack of transport would keep George Company in the rear as most of 3/1 moved north. Over the next several days, the Marines marched from one village to another. Remarkably, and reminiscent of WWII scenes, North Korean civilians raised flags and greeted George Company as they marched through the villages.

“Quite often they waved flags, or handkerchiefs. There weren’t that many afraid of us. It has to be a traumatic thing to see a foreign force marching through their homeland. But they were happy to see us,” recalled Farr.

George Company marched across the barren North Korean countryside, which was peppered with small huts and an occasional brick building. When First Platoon came across an abandoned schoolhouse, they set up camp. During one night in the building, four members of First Platoon played a game of Hearts. At the center of the room, several men sat around a wooden desk, with a C-Ration can filled with sand and gasoline to illuminate the room. The night wore on. The blue haze of cigarette smoke filled the tiny room. Roberts decided to call it an evening, and his place was taken by PFC Clayton Sepulveda. Meanwhile, the glow of the C-Ration can grew fainter and fainter. Eventually, the light died out. “I will get us some more gas,” volunteered one of the men at the table.

The man returned with a jerry can filled with gasoline. “Don’t bring that in here,” barked Roberts. The man then returned with a small can of gas and began pouring the flammable liquid into the glowing red sand of the C-Ration can. Flames shot from the can and turned Sepulveda into a flaming torch, screaming in agony.²³ The men rushed to his aid and put out the fire. Unfortunately, portions of his face were burned. Evacuated to the rear, he returned to active duty several months later.²⁴

On the morning of November 28, 1950, the men of George Company slowly emerged from the sleeping bags. As usual, the temperature had plummeted during the night, and the bitter cold assaulted them as they emerged from the warmth of their bags. The men lined up in formation by platoon and were ordered to begin boarding trucks. With no idea where they were headed, some men passed on the lingering rumor that they were going home.