East of Chosin

  Entrapment and Breakout in Korea, 1950 by Roy E. Appleman, Lt. Col., AUS, Ret.

  List of Illustrations vii

  List of Maps

  Preface xi

  CHAPTER

  1 The War in Korea, November, 1950 3

  2 Army Troops Assemble at Chosin Reservoir 12

  3 The Army Occupies the Marines' Forward Position 44

  4 The Enemy at Chosin: What Was KnownThe Unknown 50

  The First Night, November 27-28 57

  6 The Next Day, November 28 99

  7 The Second Night, November 28-29 123

  8 The 31st Regimental Combat Team Consolidates at the Inlet 133

  9 Captain Drake's Second Tank Attack, November 29 157

  io The 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry, Fails to Arrive 16o

  11 MacArthur Calls a Conference, November 28 168

  12 The Third Night-Task Force Faith at the Inlet 172

  13 Withdrawal from Hudong-ni to Hagaru-ri 183

  14 The Fourth Night at the Inlet, November 3o-December 1 188

  i5 Breakout from the Inlet Perimeter, December 1 195

  16 The First Blown Bridge 225

  17 The Chinese Block at Hill 1221 233

  18 The Chinese Destroy the Convoy 257

  19 Those Who Escaped to Hagaru-ri 278

  20 The Question of a Relief Force 293

  21 American and Enemy Losses 300

  22 Could Task Force Faith Have Been Saved? 305

  23 Epilogue 330

  APPENDIXES

  A Contrasts in Factors Affecting the 1st Marine Division and the Army 31st RCT at Chosin 336

  B 31st RCT Organization Chart, November 27, 1950 341

  C 31st RCT, Estimated Strength, November 27, 1950 342

  D Strength of 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, Hagaru-ri, December 4, 1950 344

  E Number of Enlisted Men for Duty, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, November-December, 1950 344

  F Command and Staff, 31st RCT, at Chosin 345

  NOW 347

  Bibliographical Note 391

  Index 395

  Hagaru-ri, at the South End of Chosin Reservoir

  Typical Terrain: Dirt Road, Rice Paddies, Mountains

  The Treacherous Road Up Funchilin Pass

  Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr., on Maneuvers in Japan

  Capt. Robert F. Haynes and Maj. Wesley J. Curtis

  Lt. James O. Mortrude

  Col. James G. Campbell in 1978

  Col. Allan D. MacLean and Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr.

  Principal Staff Officers, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry

  Officers, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, 7th Division

  Looking North over the North End of Chosin Reservoir

  Col. Crosby P. Miller in 1966

  Looking North over Pungnyuri-gang Inlet

  Capt. Robert E. Jones

  Capt. Edward P. Stamford

  Stamford's TACP Members

  First Lt. Raymond Vaudreaux

  First Lt. Hugh R. May

  View within the Inlet Perimeter from an Artillery Position

  Capt. James R. McClymont

  Capt. James R. McClymont and D Battery Members

  Mi9 Full-track (Dual-4o)

  M16 Half-track (Quad-So)

  View toward Chosin Reservoir from 3rd Battalion Perimeter

  View Looking Northwest across the Inlet Perimeter

  View Southeast from B Battery Position

  Lt. Col. Ivan H. Long about 1965

  Capt. Drake, Maj. Gen. Almond, and Maj. Gen. Barr

  Maj. Gen. Henry I. Hodes

  View of Inlet Perimeter Area Attacked by Chinese

  Eastern Inlet Perimeter after the Attack

  Panorama of Eastern Inlet Perimeter

  Airdrop over the Inlet Perimeter

  ist Battalion Crossing the Inlet to the 3rd Battalion

  Maj. William R. Lynch and Maj. (Chaplain) Martin C. Hoehn

  Aerial View of All Battle Sites near Chosin Reservoir

  Capt. Earle H. Jordan, Jr.

  Marine Corsair, F4U, in Flight

  Task Force Faith in Breakout Attempt

  Task Force Faith Survivors on the Reservoir Ice

  I Korea

  2 U.S. Lines as of November 24, 1g5o, and MacArthur's Plan of Attack

  3 Chosin Reservoir

  4 X Corps Movements to Chosin Reservoir and Plan of Attack

  5 Chinese Troop Movement before November 27

  6 31st Regimental Combat Team, Evening of November 27

  7 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, 7th Division Forward Perimeter

  8 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, and Batteries A and B, 57th Field Artillery Battalion

  q Task Force Faith's Inlet Perimeter

  io Situation at the Beginning of the Breakout Attempt

  11 The Breakout Attempt

  he men of the United States Army who fell on the east side of Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir in the winter of 1950 have no white-marble markers at their final resting places as do thousands of others memorialized in Arlington National Cemetery, in other national cemeteries, and in other lands. They have no markers of any kind-only the fragile link of memory that endures from generation to generation in the recollection of their countrymen who know our nation's history. To preserve this link of memory, there must be recorded a history of the events.

  This book tells the neglected story of American soldiers from the US Army's 7th Infantry Division who fought on the east side of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. It concerns an Army force of about 3,000 men, of near-regimental size, hastily assembled to protect the east flank of the ist Marine Division at Chosin. They fought a battle that lasted four days and five nights in late November and early December, ig5o. The place was a io-mile stretch of frozen, snow-covered dirt road on the east side of Chosin Reservoir, the adjacent bleak hills and ridges that rose precipitously from the water's edge, and the frozen marshy inlet valleys that drained westward from the eastern mountains through these ridges to the reservoir.

  Chosin Reservoir fills an irregular trough of the Changjin River valley at an elevation of 3,870 feet in the mountainous plateau south of Manchuria. The weather in winter is Siberian, with night temperatures that reach - 350 F. In winter darkness comes early to this land, in late November and early December at about 4:30 P.m. Daybreak comes late, at 7:30 to 8:00 A.M.

  The Army's battle story at Chosin contains as many "if's" as Kipling's poem. Its hallmarks were misery, soul-crushing cold, privation, exhaustion, heroism, sacrifice, leadership of high merit at times, but, finally, unit and individual disaster. For many it was a lonely death in a distant land. It would be hard to find a more nearly hopeless or more tragic story in American military history. Lieutenant Colonel Don C. Faith, Jr., the final commander of the force, received the Congressional Medal of Honor, Posthumously.

  The background of East of Chosin, like a dramatic overture setting the theme for stage action, was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's plan to drive the Communist forces beyond the Yalu River, unify the peninsula, and end the Korean War. He set in motion a last major offensive to accomplish this on November 24, 1950, in the Eighth Army zone of operations, in the west of Korea, and on November 27 in the X Corps zone of operations, in northeast Korea.

  Then a mass of soldiers out of China, dressed in quilted, padded uniforms, wearing fur caps, and laden with grenades and automatic burp guns, suddenly appeared before the unsuspecting soldiers in the darkness of night. That was the beginning.

  When I began to research what happened east of Chosin, I had in mind only a chapter in a book on the X Corps operations in northeast Korea in the fall and winter of 195o -the X Corps's part in MacArthur's effort to end the war. But in the records in the National Archives, at the Federal Records Center, in Suitl
and, Maryland, I found no operational journals, no unit histories of those who fought east of Chosin. There was a 7th Infantry Division Special Report on Chosin Reservoir, undated but signed by Maj. Gen. Claude B. Ferenbaugh, who had assumed command of the division on January 26,1951. The report had been prepared by unnamed persons some months after the events related and was fragmentary and unreliable. There was one other document, a 7th Division Action Report, which was nearly barren regarding the units east of Chosin. But attached to this report were a few memorandums and affidavits by Army survivors at Chosin who had reached Hagaru-ri, at the south end of the reservoir, written there a day or two after their escape. The most important of these documents was a four-page typed report by Maj. Robert E. Jones giving a summary of what he knew, addressed to the G-3 Section (operations section) of the 7th Infantry Division, represented at Hagaru-ri by Maj. William R. Lynch, Jr., and a one-page report by Capt. Robert E. Drake covering his 31st Tank Company.

  The records of X Corps gave the corps orders affecting the Chosin Reser voir operations, but no details of what happened. The ist Marine Division records are complete, or nearly so, but their G-3 Journal and Message files contain only limited information on Army action.

  Three published works touched on the Army units at Chosin. Lynn Montross and Nicholas A. Canzona's The Chosin Campaign, vol. 3 in US. Marine Operations in Korea, 19So-I9S3 (4 vols., 1962), the Marine Corps's official history of its part in the Korean War, covers very well the action of the 1st Marine Division at Chosin but touches only briefly on Army units there. Capt. Russell A. Gugeler, in his Combat Actions in Korea (1954), published by the Association of the US Army, gives a partial account of some aspects of the Army action based on limited interviews with some survivors and examination of available records. Andrew Geer's The New Breed: The Story of the US. Marines in Korea (New York: Harper and Row, 1952) contains details based on personal interviews.

  It became apparent that the information needed to relate the events east of Chosin in any coherent and comprehensible form could come only from survivors, if a substantial number of them could be found, 25 years after the event. One man's recollections must be compared with other men's recall, and use of all preserved contemporary notes would be necessary to find consensus where possible and to establish a weight of evidence on alleged or questionable facts. From the start I ruled out the use of hearsay evidence.

  Gradually I became engulfed by the mystery of the Chosin Reservoir tragedy. I put aside most other work on the Korean War in which I was engaged. The survivor of Chosin who helped me get started was Col. Wesley J. Curtis, then S-3 (operations section of battalions and regiments) of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, now retired from the Army. Additional survivors were found, and their number increased over passing months; only two of them refused to share their knowledge. I could not have foreseen when I began this work that it would continue for seven years.

  That I have been able to write this story is due to those survivors of events east of Chosin whom I finally found and who gave their help gladly. A few of them had made notes in Japanese hospitals while they were recuperating from wounds, recording events and episodes while memory was fresh. In several instances these notes were compiled into narratives, which must now be considered contemporary documentary sources. Among the personal narratives are those of then Majors Curtis, Crosby P. Miller, and Hugh W. Robbins and Capt. Edward P. Stamford.

  For information on the role of higher headquarters in the action east of Chosin, I had the help of the late Lt. Gen. Edward M. Almond, X Corps commander in northeast Korea in 195o, and Lt. Col. William J. McCaffrey, Almond's trusted deputy chief of staff (now Lt. Gen., USA, ret.).

  The ranks of the officers and men are those they held at the time of action. An effort has been made to give the full name and rank of each the first time used. Afterward I often use only the last name to avoid a tedious repetition and overuse of military terminology. Occasionally I have been unable to establish the full name of a person. There were no rosters in the official records of the units in action with which to check full names or establish correct spelling.

  Most of the persons mentioned as sources or quoted in the narrative read the manuscript and concurred in, disagreed with, or amended passages that involved their statements of facts or views to ensure that their information and opinions were correctly stated.

  In these pages are many quotations from the survivors of Chosin. I thought it important to let these men tell significant parts of what they remembered in their own way, and not in a rewrite that I might attempt. What I have quoted is just as they wrote it to me or as they expressed it in early notes or narratives. When I felt that identification of a place or of a person or clarification of an ambiguity was necessary in a quotation, I supplied such information in brackets.

  The place-names used in the book are those found on the early maps issued to the troops when they moved to the Chosin Reservoir area in November,195o. The names they became familiar with and used in their notes, reports, and statements to me were the names used in the official military records of the day and are the names on the first maps issued to them. These were copies of older Japanese maps, which used 1916 topographical data. Where possible I have added the modern place-name in parentheses after the first mention.

  There were no sketch maps of perimeters, situations, military movements, or terrain overlays in the records. I have prepared all the maps in this book after an exhaustive study of 1:50,ooo-scale military maps of the area involved, correlated with the terrain features and actions described in the narrative.

  Most of the ground-level photographs were taken at the inlet perimeter. The first prints I saw were small snapshots provided to me by Col. Ray O. Embree and Lt. Col. Ivan H. Long, all apparently taken by the same un identified photographer. Three small snapshots were provided to me by Colonel Miller, now retired, the photographer also unidentified. Long received his snapshots while he was in a hospital in Japan recuperating from wounds. Colonel Embree, who was in the same hospital, does not remember how he obtained the snapshots, but probably in the same way Long received his. None of these unique photographs of the area east of Chosin have been previously published. The prints were rephotographed and enlarged for use in this book.

  All the oblique aerial views of Chosin Reservoir and the terrain on its east side were taken by the US Army Signal Corps, apparently just before the reservoir froze over in most places, and therefore they do not show the ice and snow that covered the reservoir during the battle period at the end of November and in early December. Taken together, they show clearly the terrain features and defense perimeter areas and the course of the road and the narrow-gauge railroad through the combat area. Only one of these pictures has been published before, that of the northern end of the reservoir, which was outside the combat area.

  In writing military history, one would like to approximate the standards Julius Caesar established in his Commentaries, in which he recorded his military campaigns between 58 and 50 B.C. His Roman contemporary Marcus Tullius Cicero in 46 B.C. described the Commentaries as "bare, straight and handsome, stripped of rhetorical ornament like an athlete of his clothes.... There is nothing in a history more attractive than clean and lucid brevity." Marguerite Yourcenar, in her Memoirs of Hadrian, expressed a precept which I applaud and have striven to approximate: "Keep one's own shadow out of the picture; leave the mirror clean of the mist of one's own breath."

  One must be modest, and indeed humble, in assessing his own work and be forever critical of it, remembering that "he who seeks for truth, or at least for accuracy, is frequently the one best able to perceive ... that truth is not absolute or pure." One must do the best one can, then do it over again, and improve parts bit by bit, even if ever so slightly.

  In this work on the events east of Chosin I believe a substantial segment of our history that was on the verge of being lost forever has been salvaged in a credible way.

  My wife, Irene, who was as interested as
I in getting the story told, served throughout as a discriminating reader and critic to help me as I tried to write it.

  If I were to dedicate this work to anyone, it would have to be to those who survived and helped with their recollections and documents, because all these taken together made the book possible, and, finally, to their onetime comrades-American soldiers-unnamed, for the most part, who left their mortal remains in that far corner of the world for eternity.

  is the story of a near-regimental combat team of approximately 3,000 soldiers of the United States Army's 7th Infantry Division and the events on the east side of Chosin (Chang)'in) Reservoir, in northeast Korea, in late November and early December, 1950. It took place during five nights and four days of subzero Manchuria-type weather, snow, and bitter winds. There is no other story of the Korean War to compare with it. The complete story has never before been told.

  Before the narrative can unfold, it is necessary to frame the picture-to provide the background for what came to pass. At the time of the Chosin campaign, the Korean War was five months old, dating from the attack on South Korea by the North Koreans on June 25, 1950. After the victorious Inchon Landing by United Nations forces, the recapture of Seoul, the crossing of the 38th parallel, and subsequent rapid advance toward the Yalu River and the Manchurian border, the North Korean Army had disintegrated and largely disappeared from the scene as a fighting force.

  In late October, however, a new enemy, the "Chinese Volunteer Forces," suddenly appeared below the border in the northwestern part of Korea. In surprise attacks they routed or destroyed two South Korean infantry divisions and an American regiment of Gen. Walton H. Walker's Eighth Army. Following quickly on these successes, Chinese in unknown numbers pushed the American Eighth Army back to the Chongchon River, 7o air miles south of the border. Then the Chinese phantom force suddenly melted back northward into the hills.

  While this Chinese force in the west checked the Eighth Army's approach to the Yalu River and the border, another, smaller force of Chinese "Volunteers" approached Hamhung and Hungnam, on the east coast, where the X Corps had landed to deploy troops for the occupation of northeast Korea. The Chinese came down the road from the Chosin Reservoir, 45 air miles and 7o road miles from Hungnam. Moving northward on the same road at the same time was the 26th Regiment of the ROK (Republic of Korea) 3rd Division. On October 25, about 30 miles inland from Hamhung, it captured a prisoner, the first Chinese soldier captured in the X Corps area in northeast Korea.