East of Chosin

by Roy Edgar Appleman

  As Bigger and Haynes climbed the hill and approached A Company, they were suddenly challenged by a dark figure dressed in a parka, lying on the road and facing away from them. They did not understand the challenge, but this would not be uncommon if it came from a South Korean. It sounded to Bigger like "Eeeya, eeya." Thinking that the prone figure was a South Korean, they replied with the countersign. The figure began to turn, and Bigger told him that they were American soldiers, but the figure began to raise a rifle. Bigger alerted Haynes, and they dived for the ditch as the unknown person fired. Bigger heard the wind go out of Haynes and heard him groan as he fell into the ditch.

  Bigger moved to his side to learn how badly he was wounded. As he reached him, he saw that the man who had fired the shot was coming toward him. He tried to work the bolt of his carbine, but it was frozen. He got to his feet to escape, but before he could move, two grenades exploded near him, one partly deafening him. Fortunately, they were weak concussion grenades and did no other damage. Bigger now saw three other Chinese on the road embankment coming toward him. He dashed into the brush alongside the road and escaped to the battalion CP, where he reported the incident.12 This encounter occurred near the 6o-mm mortar position which the Chinese had just overrun.

  After Bigger's report to Faith there was no longer any doubt that Chinese troops were behind A Company's front. A mess sergeant named Casey overheard Bigger reporting to Faith. A little later, entirely on his own initiative, he gathered together a few men from the headquarters area and started up the road to rescue Haynes. More confusion resulted when members of Casey's party returned to the CP and reported that Casey had been killed, that Chinese were on the road, and that they had been unable to reach Haynes.

  Bigger confirms that a mess sergeant, apparently Casey, did go up the road in an effort to reach Haynes but that he was not killed because he talked with him the next day, and the sergeant told him that they had not been able to bring Haynes into the CP until after daylight. Haynes was then barely alive. He had been shot through the stomach and also had bayonet wounds. Captain Raymond Vaudreaux, battalion S-4, a former candidate for priesthood in the Roman Catholic church, performed last rites for Haynes in the CP just before he died from his wounds and exposure.13

  Comprehension of what was happening seemed to come slowly to Faith's CP on the night of November 27-28. The report that the Chinese were behind A Company's front line and the encounter of Bigger and Haynes with some of them on the road did not bring them to an understanding of the situation. Bigger commented: `After I returned to the Bn CP we were still trying to piece together what was happening. As I remember, Col. Faith was still planning an attack of sorts the next morning. We couldn't understand why we could not get the artillery support we needed-we had not yet, as far as I know-been informed that the 31St was under attack. One minute we were planning an attack-the next, we were fighting for our lives in a situation where we knew little of what had hit us."14

  When enemy action started in A Company's position, 1st Lt. Hugh R. May, the battalion transportation officer in Headquarters Company, was in the ravine below the road, about ioo yards from the battalion CP. He reported to Faith, who asked him to stand by. A little later Faith instructed him to check CP security. He and 1st Lt. Henry Moore, the Pioneer and Ammunition (P&A) Platoon, Headquarters Company, established internal security and placed machine guns on both sides of the road, one gun controlling the road north, and other south. After doing this, they and their men helped drive out the Chinese who had penetrated down the road behind A Company.15 May remained in command of internal security until late in the afternoon of November 28.

  While the attack against A Company was in progress, the enemy attacks spread to the rest of the battalion line. One of the first of these tried to penetrate between A and C companies by driving straight up the road between them with a tank and a self-propelled gun. Both the tank and the gun were of North Korean origin, having come northward from the coast, and now were pressed into use by the Chinese. It is the only instance known to me of the use of an enemy tank in the Chosin operation.

  First Lt. Raymond Vaudreaux, in Pusan, October, igso. Photograph courtesy of Maj. Edward P. Stamford.

  These two formidable weapons clanked up the road from the north about 2:00 A.M. on November 28. C Company, on the east side of the pass, had the best view of the road, since it was cut into the ridge slope on the west side of the drainage it followed. Corporal James H. Godfrey, of D Company, had a 75-mm recoilless rifle, and his squad was on a high point east of the pass and had a commanding view of the road from the north. From this vantage point, when he judged the distance right, Godfrey opened fire on the enemy vehicles, destroying them both.

  Immediately a force of about ioo Chinese soldiers, who had crawled unseen to within 50 yards of the 75-mm recoilless rifle, rushed from cover and tried to overrun the American squad. Godfrey at once turned the gun on them, killing and wounding many and scattering the others. The survivors fell back in disorder. This successful action was of tremendous value to A Company and helped it reform its lines and hold the left end of the battalion perimeter that night.

  Later in the night Godfrey destroyed an enemy mortar with his recoilless rifle and with its firepower helped repel five more enemy attacks on the left side of C Company's line. Captain Bigger, Godfrey's Weapons Company commander, said of him: "He could do more with the 75 RR than anyone I have ever seen. He loved the weapon. Corp. Godfrey actually deserved the CMH. No telling how many Chinese he accounted for."16

  Another officer of the Heavy Weapons Company made a trip to the same part of C Company's line that night to check on a section of machine guns from his platoon attached to C Company. Lieutenant Campbell, platoon leader of the Heavy Machine Gun Platoon of D Company, went up to Mortrude's 3rd Platoon position on the east side of the pass. He described the position of the heavy weapons there in dominating the road and related approaches from the north: "... from a platoon leader's viewpoint, I can still see the position of the forward foxholes on the north side of the military crest positioned logically where you could both look and fire down the noses and draws that were the approaches to the company's defensive position (also the approach down the ridgeline from the east was the most dangerous to us and quite apparently the most advantageous to the CCE)"II

  Other parts of the C Company line east of the pass were not defended as successfully against the Chinese. A strong enemy assault hit the middle of C Company's line. Another 75-mm recoilless rifle and its crew positioned there did not repeat Godfrey's success. The crew fired one shot, disclosing its location, and an assault team of Chinese immediately overran it and dragged the weapon away.

  First Lt. (later Maj.) Hugh R. May, spring, 1952. Photograph courtesy of Major May.

  On C Company's right flank Chinese drove away the right-hand squad and seized the highest ground of the perimeter at the boundary of C and B companies. This key point was never regained; the Chinese held it against every counterattack and mortar barrage and several subsequent air strikes. But the Chinese were never able to exploit this success. Nearby, Cpl. Robert L. Armentrout, gunner of a heavy machine gun from D Company attached to C Company for the night, held a position almost by himself. A group of Chinese started up a steep slope toward his gun. He could not depress it enough to bring its fire trajectory on them, but he was strong enough to pick up the gun, hold it in his arms, and fire it directly into the Chinese. He decimated them with this fire. Captain Bigger said that Armentrout was "another of those soldiers that are a credit to the United States Army.""

  The greatest damage to the battalion perimeter during the night came at its center when the enemy captured the high ground at C Company's east boundary. Captain Dale L. Seever's C Company CP, set up in a Korean hut, came under mortar fire, and he had to displace to a sheltered spot just behind the line. His weapons platoon likewise had to displace to a defiladed position nearby. From there Seever directed his defense, though he had already suffered leg wound
s. "Captain Seever," said Col. Wesley J. Curtis, "was the quiet one. He never protested an order or instruction." Seever had been the battalion S-2 earlier, but in the battle for Seoul in September, Faith had become dissatisfied with the officer who had succeeded Jones in command of it, and he moved Seever to command the company.

  Bigger's 81-mm mortars continued to give good support to the C Company front, but there was no artillery from the howitzers emplaced at the inlet. Wire communication between the ist Battalion and the artillery was cut at the beginning of the enemy attack. It was only when radio communication was established about 1:00 A.M. on November 28 that Faith learned that the 57th Field Artillery and the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, were also under heavy attack. The artillerymen were having a desperate time trying to defend their guns; it was out of the question for them to provide support for the 1st Battalion.

  Captain Cody's 4.z-inch heavy-mortar fire, which at first had been reli able for C and B companies, had begun to miss the mark because the mortars' baseplates were breaking through the marsh crust and shifting. Cody hurriedly moved the mortars to firmer ground and was able to resume good support for both battalion perimeters.19

  Before the fighting began, Colonel MacLean arrived at Faith's forward perimeter with his driver. When he learned later that the 57th Field Artillery at the inlet was under attack, he was surprised.

  A crisis in B Company, which held the perimeter southeast of the battalion CP, came late in the night, about 4:30 A.m. By then the high ground at the boundary of C and B companies had been lost, and the Chinese occupied it in strength. Lieutenant Kemper, of B Company, was killed during the fighting there, and the situation turned bad so quickly that Captain Turner ordered ist Sgt. Richard S. Luna to rouse everyone in B Company, including Headquarters personnel, and send them forward to the line, holding behind "only a handful" of cooks and command post personnel. Luna did as ordered. He sat at the company CP with his "handful" until noon.20

  Before dawn the weather turned colder, and it began to snow. The attack tapered off with daylight. The night battle had been loud and bloody. Chinese horns and bugles had sounded frequently.

  After sunup on the 28th relief came as four Marine Corsairs roared in. This was just what Stamford and his TACP wanted. He directed them in a napalm attack on a ridge 300 yards from A Company where a body of Chinese soldiers had taken cover and also instructed the pilots to hit the reverse slope of the ridge where the Chinese had set up mortars and were lobbing shells into the ist Battalion positions. When the aircraft struck the ridge, many Chinese ran into the open to escape the napalm. American machine-gun and small-arms fire cut them down. The Corsairs followed up their napalm drops with 5-inch rocket and 20-mm strafing fire. This earlymorning air attack eased the situation for the ground troops at that part of the perimeter.

  In Jim Mortrude's 3rd Platoon, C Company position, daylight revealed a grotesque sight. In his foxhole at the left end of the platoon position, a ROK soldier sat minus his head. His weapon and ammunition were gone. The evidence indicated that a Chinese soldier had crawled close to the hole while the ROK apparently slept or dozed at the beginning of the attack, shoved a pole charge against his head, and set it off.21

  A count on the morning of November 28, after daylight and the conclusion of A Company's counterattacks, revealed that A Company had lost 8 men killed, including Captain Scullion, the company commander, and had 20 wounded, including Lieutenant Dentchfield, the 1st Platoon commander. The number of killed and wounded in the rest of the battalion in the night battle is not recorded, but by afternoon about ioo men had passed through the battalion aid station. Casualties were considered heavy. About noon Sergeant Luna went to the Battalion CP from B Company and saw the casualties. Many of the dead had been carried in frozen stiff.

  The Night of November 27-28: Inlet Perimeter

  It is clear that from the time the Chinese began their attack against the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, and the 57th Field Artillery at the inlet perimeter it was coordinated with the attack against Faith's forward perimeter. The Chinese attack against the inlet came from the east. As it happened, this was the only direction from which the inlet bivouac had any defense. But the Chinese had no trouble penetrating the eastern defenses, such as they were, and very quickly they overran the infantry line. They reached the 3rd Battalion CP and overran it and continued on into the artillery position of A Battery and the truck parking area. The attack at the inlet was far more successful than that at Faith's position-it all but overran the entire inlet position the first night.

  No contemporary overlay or sketch of the inlet position and the troop dispositions there for the first night, November 27-28, was ever made. The few verbal descriptions are partial and to a degree speculative. But from some specific information, especially that from Lt. Col. Earle H. Jordan, Jr., then captain and commander of M (Heavy Weapons) Company, 3rd Battalion, and from a contemporary affidavit of Capt. Robert J. Kitz, commanding officer of K Company, we know the general disposition of troop units on the east side of the battalion position. And we know where the two artillery firing batteries of the artillery were located.

  I have never been able to locate L Company, the third rifle company of the battalion, though it was heavily engaged during the night within the bivouac area. The company was either near the bridge and causeway across the inlet or farther west, near the artillery batteries. Little or nothing is known of the part the 3rd Battalion CP played in the action during the night, except that it was quickly overrun and almost everyone was either killed or wounded.

  Like everyone else, Lieutenant Colonel Reilly, the 3rd Battalion com mander, did not expect an enemy attack. His CP was only a few hundred feet south of the bridge and causeway and perhaps Soo yards west of K Company on the front line eastward. South of Kitz's K Company and higher on the spur ridge, Capt. Albert Marr's I Company held the front line in front of Captain Jordan's M Company. Except for the possibility that Capt. William Etchemendy's L Company may have been on the north of, or possibly behind, K Company near the bridge and causeway, there were no other defensive positions for the inlet bivouac that first night except the individual foxholes of the artillerymen near their howitzers-all of them about i,ooo yards west of the infantry line of K and I companies and the Weapons Company behind I Company. Jordan says that everyone called Captain Marr "Pop" because he seemed rather old for a rifle-company commander. But Pop handled his company that night as well as or better than any other rifle-company commander.

  MAP 8. The positions of the 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry, on the night of November 27-28, 1950.

  On his way back that evening from Hudong-ni to his own advance CP, and from there on to Faith's forward CP, Colonel MacLean stopped briefly to see Reilly at the inlet. It was then about 8:oo P.M., and no sign of the enemy had yet appeared. Reilly proposed to MacLean that he and his 3rd Battalion move out the next morning, pass through Faith's ist Battalion, and attack north. MacLean disapproved this proposal and told Reilly to remain in place. This incident shows Reilly's estimate of the situation only hours before he was left for dead in his CP.

  At Io:oo P.M., Captain Kitz received a flash alert from the battalion CP to alert K Company and double his guards. Captain Jordan says that he received no alert. It is not known whether the alert extended beyond K Company, nor is it known on what information the alert to K Company was made. The only outpost known to have existed beyond the riflecompany line east of the bivouac was a small roadblock up the valley of the Pungnyuri-gang from the bridge and causeway. After the early alert everything remained quiet for some hours.

  The Chinese attack began about 1:00 A.M. on November 28 against the K Company line, coming from the east. Kitz in his company CP first heard small-arms fire at his front line. At first it was light, but it gradually built up in volume. The K Company roadblock force farther east up the valley of the Pungnyuri-gang reported that it heard firing between it and the K Company line. Thus far it had not been disturbed-enemy forces apparently
bypassed it purposely. By 1:3o A.M., the Chinese attack had built up to one of heavy pressure against both K and I companies on their ridge line at the east side of the inlet perimeter. Within another half hour the Chinese were closing in on the K Company CP. At this point the ROK troops assigned to K Company broke and ran for the rear. Kitz intercepted and stopped them. But the Chinese had already broken through one platoon of K Company, and the entire company line quickly disintegrated.22

  As this fight rapidly approached the area of the inlet bivouac, A Battery, the artillery closest to the infantry, began direct fire against the enemy, and some of its shells began dropping in the K Company area. Kitz was able to have the howitzer fire lifted, but the Chinese had taken advantage of the developing chaos to press their close-in attack. Kitz had to abandon his position.

  Sergeant First Class John C. Sweatman, an assistant mess sergeant of K Company, has left an interesting comment about the enemy breakthrough that night:

  The first night our kitchen got burnt up. We were overrun by the Chinese about o13o, . . . so I grabbed my carbine and ammunition and went into an open field. In that field there were about 16 trucks. About four (4) of them were loaded with ammunition. We used the trucks as a shield and started shooting back at the Chinese. About that time I heard Capt. Kitz calling that anyone that ran would be shot. About that time a bullet landed about 3 inches over my head. I went up the road about So yards and went to a railroad track. I found a wounded man and took his M-i. I had 6 bandoliers of ammunition and I went up on the railroad track so I could see better and started shooting as the Chinese came over the bridge [italics added]. That lasted until about o8oo. Then the Chinese took off up into the mountains again. I then went around to see how many cooks I had left under me. I found all but one. I never could find him. I don't know whether he was killed or captured.23