East of Chosin Read online

  Awakened after daylight ... to find weather somewhat moderated with some sunshine. Conducted brief investigation of night security failure, censured and counseled NCOS, and imposed latrine excavation duty on key enlisted offenders (those failing to awaken reliefs).

  Company call to hot breakfast. Platoon Sergeant organized mess call. When I reached mess tent all other officers clustered around extra burner. Informed Company Commander of disciplinary action being taken in my platoon and reasons therefore [sic]. Commander assented but another platoon leader precipitated a confrontation with me by remarking on the absence of any such problem in his platoon. Captain Seever eventually restored order and discussed night security after I had adamantly expressed my opinion of our past night's vulnerability. 18

  Mortrude was born in Seattle, Washington, on February Iq, 1922. He had three years of enlisted service in the infantry in World War II in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. At the University of Washington he received an ROTC commission as a second lieutenant, and later, at the end of 1949, he entered the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, completing the course on June 16, 195o. In early August he arrived in Japan, where he was assigned as a platoon leader in C Company, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, 7th Infantry Division. In the fighting for Seoul he won the Distinguished Service Cross for leadership and heroism. Twenty-eight years old at Chosin, Mortrude by his experience as an enlisted man and his demonstrated judgment and leadership under fire was one of the most valuable platoon leaders in the battalion.19

  Lt. (later Lt. Col.) James 0. Mortrude about November, 1950. Photograph courtesy of Colonel Mortrude.

  Another platoon leader, 2nd Lt. James G. Campbell, of D Company, also has recollections of that first day at the reservoir and the bitter cold of Funchilin Pass. D Company (Weapons Company) set up its tents at the southeast base of Hill 1221. His machine-gun platoon dug a few hasty foxholes, which did not constitute a defense position. Campbell, like Mortrude, had received his first commission as ROTC second lieutenant when he graduated from the University of California. He had entered the Regular Army on October 15, 1949. Seasoned senior officers of the battalion judged him to be one of its best platoon leaders.20

  The 1st Battalion was in poor shape for a winter campaign in a cold climate. Most of the men, however, had received shoepacs, long underwear, pile liners, and parka shells. Lieutenant Colonel Faith did not like shoepacs and favored wearing combat boots with rubber overshoes. Many followed his example. This practice later reduced the incidence of frostbite and frozen feet in the battalion. But the battalion was short of winter gloves and many other items needed for cold weather. Vehicles lacked tire chains and tarpaulin covers. Each company had only a kitchen fly for tentage.

  Brigadier General Henry I. Hodes, assistant 7th Division commander, arrived at the battalion CP at Hill 1221 about half an hour before noon on November 26. Many officers and men of the division considered him its driving force. In World War II, Hodes had commanded the 112th Infantry Regiment in Europe. General Barr had sent Hodes to the reservoir as his agent in directing the operations of Col. Allan D. MacLean's 31st RCT after it had assembled.

  Hodes brought much news to Faith. He said that the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, and the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, less its C Battery (attached to the 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry), were on their way to join his battalion. He said that Colonel MacLean, commander of the 31st Infantry Regiment, and his staff; the 31st Intelligence and Reconnaissance (I&R) Platoon; a medi cal detachment; and a communications detachment would arrive soon. Upon his arrival MacLean would assume command of the composite force. This meant, in effect, that the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, would no longer be attached to the 1st Marine Division. That became a reality the next day when the battalion relieved the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, in its forward position. Hodes added that the 31st Tank Company had started on its way from Hungnam but that because of road conditions and traffic congestion the time of its arrival was uncertain.

  Col. (formerly Lt.) James G. Campbell about 1978. Photograph courtesy of Colonel Campbell.

  While eating lunch with Faith and his staff, Hodes told the group that the situation at Eighth Army front was unclear. In this conversation Faith told Hodes that if the Marine Division could give him a tank platoon and some artillery support he could attack north before the arrival of other 7th Division elements. Hodes disapproved this suggestion, left the 1st Battalion about 1:0o F.M., and went back southward on the road to Hudong-m.11

  Faith, Curtis, Powell, and all company commanders and platoon leaders drove north the 6 miles to Taplett's 3rd Marine Battalion perimeter. There they made a detailed reconnaissance of the forward position, learning that several Marine foot patrols sent out during the day had made no enemy contacts. Faith and his party returned to their own CP at dark.

  At the 1st Battalion CP at Hill 1221 the assistant intelligence officer had interrogated many Korean civilians trudging south past him on the road. They had revealed that there were Chinese soldiers in the vicinity who had said that they intended to recapture the reservoir area within three to five days. These stories were largely discounted because there had been no enemy activity. Major Powell, the S-2, meanwhile, had gathered information from the Marines that they had encountered only rearguard Chinese actions since arriving at the reservoir and that their patrols had seen Chinese patrols only at long range.

  A few hours after Faith returned from his reconnaissance of the Marine position, Lieutenant Colonel Murray sent a jeep messenger to him with a copy of his 5th Marines regimental order issued that day, November 26. It directed the 5th Marines to move from the east side of the reservoir to the west side early the next morning to join the 7th Marine Regiment at Yudam-ni. This order meant that at some time during the next day the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, would be the only American troops east of Chosin until other units of the 7th Division arrived.

  During this changeover Faith had no orders on what his mission would be-presumably he was to stay where he was. He telephoned and asked for instructions, but Murray said that he had no information or instructions and suggested that he proceed no farther north without orders from the 7th Division.22

  About an hour later Col. Allan D. MacLean, commander of the 31st Infantry RCT, arrived at Faith's CP. With him were Lt. Col. Berry K. Anderson, his S-3, and two or three other staff officers. Colonel MacLean told Faith that he intended to attack north just as soon as his task force had closed on the area. He said that the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, would arrive the next day. He also told Faith that his own battalion was now attached to the 31st Infantry Regiment. Faith asked permission to move to the forward Marine position the next morning after the Marines had vacated it. MacLean approved the request.23

  Faith, in making this proposal, did not follow the Marines' caution in assembling regimental strength before moving farther into the unknown. His proposal for the battalion and regimental approval of it on the evening of November 26 were probably the first important mistake and command failure affecting the fate of the 31st RCT at Chosin.

  The tempo of events began to pick up. An hour and a half after MacLean's arrival Lt. Col. Ray 0. Embree, commanding officer of the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, arrived. He confirmed that his battalion was on the road and should arrive before dark the next day.

  MacLean went to establish his CP in a schoolhouse about a mile south of Hill 1221.24 The schoolhouse, in good condition, stood on the site of a former village called Hudong-ni. There was no village there now-only a number of foundations outlining former structures. The name Hudong-ni in orders, dispatches, communications, and the subsequently compiled Army and Marine reports concerning the action east of Chosin derives from the copy of the old Japanese map the troops carried, but in 1950 it referred to the schoolhouse on the north side of the Paegamni-gang, opposite the village of Sasu-ri, on the south side of the same stream.2S

  With MacLean now present, Faith could feel some relief from the pressure of being the s
enior troop commander on the east side of the reservoir. The Chosin mission had also come to MacLean as a surprise. He first learned of it in a telephone conversation with General Barr on the evening of November 24. MacLean had been in command of the 31st Regiment only about two months, succeeding to the command during the fight for Seoul, after the Inchon Landing. During the summer he had been a senior staff officer in the G-3 Section of Eighth Army. Before that he had been commander of the 32nd Infantry for about a year during its organization in Japan. Accordingly, he was well acquainted with Faith and with all the officers of the ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, who were with it at the time.

  Col. Allan D. MacLean (left) and Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr., Japan, spring, 1950. Photograph courtesy of Col. Erwin B. Bigger.

  Lt. Col. Faith and his principal staff officers, ist Battalion, 32nd Infantry, Japan, early ig5o. Front row: Capt. (later Col.) Robert E. Jones; Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr.; Capt. Banyon Patterson. Back row: Capt. Erwin B. Bigger, Capt. Ed Scullion, Capt. Wayne E. Powell, Captain Warren. Photograph courtesy of Colonel Jones.

  MacLean was born in Delaware in 1907. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in the class of 1930 and was commissioned in the infantry. In World War II he served in the European Theater. MacLean was aggressive by nature. His officers and men in the 31st Infantry had discovered in the action near the Fusen Reservoir in October that he liked to be up front when action threatened or was in progress. This big, robust man was 43 years old when he arrived at Chosin Reservoir.

  On November 24, when MacLean first learned of the Chosin Reservoir mission, most of his regiment was assembled near the east side of Fusen Reservoir and out of contact with enemy forces. He informed the regiment that it was to prepare for immediate movement to the Chosin Reservoir and ordered a quartering party to be assembled at once and sent on in advance. Major Hugh W. Robbins, the 31st Infantry adjutant, assembled the party on the morning of November 25 and started over snow-covered trails for Pukchong, the 7th Division Rear CP, where he met MacLean. Robbins and his party stayed at Pukchong overnight. MacLean; Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, his S-3; and Maj. Carl G. Witte, his S-2, went on ahead toward Hagaru-ri. Lieutenant Colonel George E. Deshon, the 31st Infantry executive officer, stayed behind with the Regimental Rear at the Iwon beaches and never had an opportunity to join the 31st RCT at Chosin.

  Officers of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, 7th Division, June, 1950 (several of this group did not go to Korea). First row: Capt. Erwin B. Bigger; Capt. Ed Scullion; Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr.; Maj. J. O. Donahue; Capt. (later Col.) Robert E. Jones; Capt. Banyon Patterson; Captain Warren. Second row: Capt. Dale L. Seever, Lt. Harvey Hott, Lieutenant Jackson, Capt. Wayne E. Powell, Lt. Jack Tevis, Lt. James Houghton, Lt. Hugh May, Lt. Carlos Ortenzi. Third row: Lieutenant Hoddinott; Lieutenant Maher; Lt. Robert D. Wilson; Lt. Henry M. Moore; Lt. Everett F. Smalley, Jr. (top of head showing); Lt. Dixie Neighbors; Lt. E. E. Fitzgerald. Fourth row: Officer behind Lt. Dixie Neighbors unidentified. Photograph courtesy of Col. Robert E. Jones.

  On November 26 Robbins led his party to Hamhung, where he left guides for the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, which was following him. He then continued north toward the reservoir, reaching the Marine traffic-control checkpoint at Chinhung-ni by 9:30 that night. Robbins was able to reach MacLean at the reservoir by telephone, and the latter arranged with the 1st Marine Division to clear with traffic control authority for Robbins to continue on up Funchilin Pass that night. MacLean told Robbins that his CP was in a schoolhouse at Hudong-ni. Robbins and his party arrived there after midnight.26

  At 8:00 A.M. the next morning, MacLean, Anderson, Witte, Robbins, and McNally, the 31st Infantry communications officer, drove from Hudongni to Faith's CP. MacLean and his officers, accompanied by Faith, drove on to the positions the 5th Marines were vacating. MacLean made a reconnaissance of the position, noting the bodies of two Chinese soldiers who had been killed in front of a Marine outpost two nights earlier.

  MacLean then told Robbins to select a site for a small forward 31st RCT CP south of Faith's forward battalion position. He also said that when the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, arrived it would take up a position about two miles south of his forward CP on the south side of the Pungnyurigang Inlet of the reservoir. Robbins then sent Lieutenant McNally back to the Hudong-ni schoolhouse to bring up the quartering party of about 35 men he had left there. Robbins, meanwhile, selected a site for MacLean's forward CP on the east side of the road, not far from the reservoir.27

  McNally returned from Hudong-ni with his group about 2:00 P.M. They began digging in the frozen ground to establish the CP. Robbins had already put 15 Korean refugees to work on a foundation for an operations tent and had collected pieces of equipment left behind by the Marines. By dark tents had been erected, and the CP was ready to operate.

  Before leaving to drive south on the MSR after his reconnaissance of the forward battalion position, MacLean had told Robbins that he intended to stay that night at the Hudong-ni schoolhouse but would be at the forward CP the next morning. Later in the night Robbins learned that MacLean had changed his mind and had returned to his recently established forward CP during the night. He had then gone on to Faith's CP.

  On his way south to Hudong-ni, MacLean received a report that a Chi nese force of several hundred soldiers was in a village east of the inlet. During the afternoon he ordered ist Lt. Richard B. Coke, Jr., commanding the 31st I & R Platoon, to patrol up the valley of the Pungnyuri-gang northeastward toward the Fusen Reservoir to check on the report. They started up the narrow dirt road that followed the Pungnyuri-gang northeastward toward Fusen in jeeps mounting machine guns.

  No I&R report ever reached MacLean. Coke's platoon seemed simply to vanish. In response to an inquiry to Col. Carl G. Witte, then major, the 31st RCT S-2 at Hudong-ni, Witte wrote to me: "We were all concerned by the time 24 hours had gone by and we had not heard from Coke. I asked Ray Embree to see what he could do with Arty Liaison AC. We also ferry-rigged a V4 wave antenna. We also went back to X Corps via Field phone on the basis that Coke may have gone to the west and contacted the right flank of Eighth Army. Nothing worked and by this time we were all well occupied. I heard rumors that some of the I&R had returned but even with a concerted effort I never met any of them."28

  In March or April, 1951, while Colonel McCaffrey commanded the 31st Infantry in central Korea as a part of Eighth Army, a glimmer of information about the fate of the I&R platoon came to light. His S-2 section frequently monitored Chinese English-language broadcasts. Some of these broadcasts released names of American POWs in China. McCaffrey recalled that on one or more of these broadcasts his S-2 section picked up the names of two members of the missing I&R platoon and that he wrote letters to next of kin after advising the Department of the Army.29

  All day on the 27th long columns of Lt. Col. William R. Reilly's 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, climbed from Hamhung northward toward the Chosin Reservoir. Behind them came Lieutenant Colonel Embree's 57th Field Artillery Battalion (minus C Battery). The 3rd Battalion arrived on the east side of the reservoir in the afternoon, closing there before dark. Reilly and MacLean stopped the battalion on the south side of the Pungnyuri-gang Inlet in a limited bivouac area, where it prepared to spend the night. The bivouac area was a poor defensive position, in low ground surrounded on three sides by ridges and high ground. On the fourth-north-side the inlet bordered it.

  A Battery, 57th Field Artillery Battalion, began arriving at the reservoir about 11:00 A.M. The remainder of the artillery closed there during the afternoon. During the morning of the 27th, MacLean and Embree reconnoitered the area to locate the artillery when it arrived. They decided to place A and B firing batteries, with the battalion fire-direction center, at the inlet along with the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry. The 57th Field Artillery HQ and Headquarters Battery would not go to the inlet but were to stop in a cove on the eastern side of the MSR about one road mile south of the inlet perimeter or bivouac, on the south side of Hill 1456
, which intervened between the two positions.30

  On November 26, D Battery, i5th AAA AW SP (minus the 2nd Platoon), was attached to the 57th. Captain James R. McClymont commanded the battery. When he came to the 57th Headquarters area in the cove half a mile south of the inlet, he pulled his battery off the road to join it at dusk. McClymont was not well acquainted with the 57th Field Artillery personnel. A Marine major, one of the last of the Sth Marines to leave the area east of the reservoir, was packing his things. In a brief exchange with McClymont the Marine officer said that he had sent out patrols for a distance of io miles, and none had seen any signs of the enemy.31

  McClymont's platoon of antiaircraft weapons was of the utmost importance to Colonel MacLean's forces east of Chosin. The platoon had eight weapons carriers: four Miq (dual-4o) full-track gun carriages, each mounting two 40-mm Bofors antiaircraft guns, and four Mi6 (quad-5o) half-tracks, each mounting four .5o-caliber machine guns, heavy barrels, M-2. On both the Migs and the M16s the guns were mounted on revolving turrets. The Mig fired a bursting shell, and on automatic resembled in killing and maiming power 240 fragmentation grenades dropping every minute on an enemy. The Miq 40-mm shell was also good for hard-hitting flat trajectory fire at specific enemy emplacements or weapons up to a distance of 2 or 3 miles. An M16, quad-5o, could fire its four machine guns on automatic at the rate of i,8oo rounds a minute. It could sweep a front like a scythe cutting grain.

  When McClymont arrived at Chosin, each vehicle pulled a fully loaded trailer packed with ammunition, C rations, gasoline, and bedrolls. The trailers carried two basic loads of ammunition that he had had the foresight to obtain, instead of the usual one.