General Smith was much more modest. The main reason Chosin had succeeded, he maintained, was that “there was a plan, and that plan was carried out.” Smith said, “I knew what we had to do, and I never for a moment doubted we would do it.” It was also true, he had to admit, that his division was extraordinary—“I have never commanded a finer body of officers and men,” he said. But something else, something ineffable and transcendent, had taken place at Chosin, Smith felt. “Some said our successful breakout was a miracle,” he would later reflect. “Some attributed the result to the individual bravery and determination of the officers and men. But more than that was required. One of my regimental commanders summed it up in this fashion: He stated that he was not a religious man, but he felt that we had walked in the hand of God.”
Military historians would place much of Chosin’s success squarely on the shoulders of one man: Oliver Smith himself. S. L. A. Marshall, a noted Army combat historian, would come to regard Smith as one of American history’s most underappreciated generals. “The Chosin Reservoir campaign is perhaps the most brilliant divisional feat of arms in the national history,” Marshall wrote. “Smith made it so, through his dauntless calm. In battle, this great Marine had more the manner of a college professor than a plunging fighter. But our services have known few leaders who could look so deeply into the human heart. His greatest campaign is a classic which will inspire more nearly perfect leadership by all who read and understand that out of great faith can come a miracle.”
* * *
General Oliver Smith came down the mountain on December 10. At a temporary headquarters in Hungnam, he was forwarded a sheaf of letters from his wife, Esther—letters that first conveyed worry, then genuine alarm, then overwhelming relief and elation. “To say that I am proud of you is putting it mildly,” she wrote in a later note. “Your march is being called many things—‘an attack in reverse’—‘a fighting march to the sea,’ etc. But the description I like best is that it is a ‘splendid moral victory.’ I think it was just that and I am very grateful.” In another letter, Esther wrote, “My admiration for your calmness and self-containment grows over the years.”
Smith had lost a fair bit of weight, and several weeks of sleep deprivation wore on his face. But upon reaching the coast, he looked in fine fettle. The adversities of war seemed to agree with him. “I never felt better in my life than during the period I spent in the mountains,” he later insisted. “Oftentimes when you are busy enough you forget about your health.”
Conspicuously, Douglas MacArthur was not on hand to greet Smith or his battle-worn Marines when they reached the sea. It seemed not to register with the supreme commander that the nightmare the Marines had just passed through bore any relationship to him, or decisions he had made. The best MacArthur could muster was a perfunctory photo op, on December 11, at Yonpo Airfield, where he pronounced the evacuation a success, then flew straight back to Japan. By now, Smith had learned that MacArthur had decided to pull everything out of Hamhung, to regroup in the South at a place near Pusan, and to fight another day. This was not Smith’s wish—he believed, like Almond, that Hamhung-Hungnam could be held indefinitely, or at least until the spring. It was odd for Smith to find himself, for once, in full agreement with the X Corps commander. In fact, during the past week, he and Almond had had, if not a rapprochement, then at least a cooling of tempers. Almond, to his credit, had impressively shifted gears, helping to execute the withdrawal with the same eager resourcefulness he had invested in his ill-advised race for the Yalu. At the least, his energy and enthusiasm were infectious. “Although Almond and I did not always see eye to eye,” Smith wrote, “I will say this for him: when we had come out of the Chosin Reservoir, he was still full of fight.”
Almond had nothing but praise for the Marines and the way they had acquitted themselves at Chosin. With surprising effusiveness, Almond said this of Smith’s division: “No more gallant men ever fought the battles of our country in any of its wars.”
But despite Smith’s and Almond’s preferences, the fact was, X Corps in its entirety was pulling out of North Korea—and the First Marine Division was leaving almost immediately. Soon after the Marines reached Hungnam, they were told to prepare to board ships. Almond had decided that, given the tribulations they had suffered at the reservoir, the Marines should evacuate first. They had earned that right.
Over the past few days, the beachhead at Hungnam Harbor had become an immense depot of military supplies—Inchon in reverse. Along the piers, the mountains of ammunition and fuel, vehicles and medicines, grew by the hour. Waiting to accept the many tons of freight, as well as the ninety thousand troops of Almond’s X Corps, a hundred vessels sat at anchor in the harbor approaches: Navy ships, merchant ships, tank landing ships, transports, and sundry other craft. Assembling this diverse rescue fleet had been a herculean logistical effort—the result of desperate scrounging, at enormous expense, under brutal deadlines.
Around Hamhung-Hungnam, units of the Third and Seventh Infantry Divisions had established a twenty-mile security perimeter, which was designed to contract as the evacuation proceeded; when the last ships departed the harbor, later in the month, the tightening perimeter would vanish altogether. The Chinese made immediate attempts to probe and harass the lines—in one instance, disguised in American uniforms taken from the dead. But with batteries of Army howitzers pounding the hills to the west and the north, the Chinese generally kept their distance while the sealift continued.
* * *
By December 12, all three of Smith’s regiments had streamed down to the docks. First came Litzenberg’s Seventh, then Murray’s Fifth, then Puller’s First. By the next day, the entire division—22,215 Marines in all—were safely aboard their vessels and settling in for the voyage. On some of the ships, they peeled away their filthy, encrusted clothes and awarded themselves the extravagant luxury of a hot shower. They were told they could use all the water they wanted. They stood under the spigots until their skin turned red, until they’d drawn the chill from their bones. Some men would recall that this was the first time they had been able to weep without shame, their tears mixing discreetly with the water and swirling down the drains.
One of the Marines, Private First Class Jack Wright, recalled, “When I dried off, someone brought me a hot cup of coffee. I dressed in my new clothes, and they asked me what I wanted done with my old ones. I said, ‘Like all dead things, bury them.’ ”
Navy doctors boarded the ships and inspected the men. Hunting for signs of gangrene, they separated out the worst cases. “They cut our boots off,” remembered Sergeant Sherman Richter. “A doctor walked down the line looking at frostbitten toes, saying: ‘Treatment. Treatment. Amputate. Treatment. Amputate. Treatment. Treatment.’ ”
Before reporting to his own ship, General Smith led a memorial service at the Hungnam cemetery, where scores of Marines lay buried in newly dug graves. He wore a heavy winter parka that disguised how much weight he’d lost during the battle. After the chaplains had made their remarks—“May hate cease and wars be forever ended,” said one—Smith stepped forward to speak. He had removed his helmet, and his white hair was luminous against the fresh mounds of red clay.
“On an occasion like this,” Smith said, “words are inadequate to express our feelings. These men who lie here fought and died far from home in support of a principle. The memory of what they did here will remain with us always.” Smith tarried by the long rows of crosses while a bugler played taps, drawing out the last plangent notes until they were overtaken by the sound of the surf.
Then Smith boarded the USS Bayfield, an attack transport, and prepared to set sail for the south. On the far snow-sugared ridgelines, the Chinese armies were massing. The Bayfield weighed anchor on December 15 and slipped out of the harbor to join the convoy of other Marine transports. Soon the ships were cruising through the Sea of Japan, and the hills of North Korea slipped away. In his quarters,
Smith began to compose a Christmas message to his men. “We do not know what the future holds,” he wrote, “but we know that we can face it with the confidence Marines always have in the future. We have much to be thankful for. We have emerged from a supreme test with our spirit unbroken.”
EPILOGUE
IN THE PANTHEON
After the ninety thousand men of X Corps were loaded onto ships and evacuated, the American commanders made a momentous decision: They would turn their attention to rescuing as many North Korean civilians as could possibly be crammed into the remaining vessels in the harbor. The vast humanitarian effort was approved by General Edward Almond, whose officers directed nearly one hundred thousand refugees to be squeezed into the ships—the merchant marine freighter SS Meredith Victory alone held more than fourteen thousand. These civilians would be carried to a new life in the South.
Then, in the last week of December, demolitions experts set explosives all along the port. Naval guns were also trained on the city. In a gargantuan display of pyrotechnics, the harbor was destroyed, to prevent anything of use from falling into the hands of Chinese and North Korean troops, as they descended upon the city.
The last Americans left Hungnam on Christmas Eve. “They have gone,” said General Song. “We could not stop them.”
* * *
For his valor at Fox Hill, Private Hector Cafferata Jr. was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman. (His close buddy Private Kenneth Benson received the Silver Star.) When Cafferata learned he’d won the Medal of Honor, he asked if they could just send it to him in the mail—but the Marine Corps prevailed upon him to attend the White House ceremony. “I’m not a hero,” he later insisted. “I hate heroes. And I hate medals. There’s plenty guys who did more than me. They didn’t get recognized. All they got was dead.” Having recovered from his battle injuries, Cafferata returned home to New Jersey, where he sold hunting equipment, worked for the state fish and wildlife division, and operated a tavern. He died in Venice, Florida, in 2016, at the age of eighty-six.
* * *
—
As part of the historic Hungnam Evacuation, Lee Bae-suk’s entire family was safely settled in South Korea. Lee served with United Nations forces until the war’s end, when he resumed his medical studies in Seoul. He became a radiologist and, after emigrating to the United States, enjoyed a prominent medical career in Ohio. Dr. Lee and his wife, Mi-yong, who was rescued from Hungnam with her own family aboard the SS Meredith Victory, live in Cincinnati. Today, more than a million South Koreans trace their lineage back to survivors rescued during the Hungnam Evacuation.
* * *
—
Ensign Jesse Brown’s body and plane were never recovered. A few days after the crash, a Navy pilot struck it with a canister of napalm and the wreck went up in flames—an aviator’s funeral pyre. In recognition of his attempt to save Brown, Thomas Hudner was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. As President Truman presented the award in Washington, Daisy Brown, Jesse’s widow, looked on in tears. Hudner, who served in the Navy until 1973, traveled to North Korea and negotiated unsuccessfully with the government in Pyongyang to have Brown’s remains located and returned. Hudner died in Concord, Massachusetts, in 2017, at the age of ninety-three, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. A Navy destroyer, the USS Thomas Hudner, is named in his honor.
* * *
—
In recognition of his leadership on Fox Hill, Captain William Barber was also awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After healing his shattered hip at a military hospital in Japan, he returned to a career in the Marines, serving in Vietnam and retiring in 1970. He died in 2002 in Irvine, California, aged eighty-two.
* * *
—
For his exploits in the battles of Sudong and Chosin, Chew-Een Lee won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts. Subsequent efforts by comrades, friends, and family to award him the Medal of Honor have so far been unsuccessful. Lee retired from the Marines as a major in 1968. He died in 2014 in Washington, D.C., at the age of eighty-eight.
* * *
—
Following a long stint in military hospitals, recovering from serious facial wounds and undergoing elaborate dental reconstruction, Lieutenant John Yancey, having won the Navy Cross and a Silver Star, returned to his home state of Arkansas to run his liquor store and raise a family. He later made an unsuccessful bid for the state senate, opposing segregationist Governor Orval Faubus’s machine. During the Vietnam War, Yancey tried to reenlist in the Marines, but he failed his medical test; the examiners noted that he did not have the number of teeth required to play a combat role. He wrote in reply, “I wasn’t planning on biting the sons of bitches.” Yancey spent much of his later life in Mexico and died at sixty-eight, in 1986.
* * *
—
Private First Class Jack Chapman spent thirty-three months as a prisoner of war in North Korea—all of them with the bullet that had nearly killed him still lodged in his skull. (He finally had it removed in 1960; he still keeps it as a relic.) Chapman was released in 1953 and returned to the United States, pursuing a career in the Air Force, then serving as the chief of police at a college campus. Retired, he lives with his wife in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
* * *
—
After being airlifted from his ordeal on the east side of Chosin, Army private Ed Reeves spent years in and out of military hospitals. Due to the severe frostbite he suffered, both of his feet and all of his fingers were amputated. He married shortly after his Korean service, had six children, became a computer programmer, and spent many years as a missionary in South America. He died in 2010 at age seventy-eight, in Prescott, Arizona.
* * *
—
In the months after China’s intervention in the Korean War, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur made increasingly strident calls for dropping atomic bombs on Beijing and other Chinese cities and even suggested sowing a permanent radioactive zone, a kind of nuclear fence, along the Manchurian border. In April of 1951, he was relieved of his command by President Truman. “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was,” Truman later said. “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president.” MacArthur died in 1964. Truman served out his term and died in 1972 in Kansas City. He is buried on the grounds of the Truman Presidential Library and Museum, in Independence, Missouri.
* * *
—
General Edward Almond continued to lead the X Corps in Korea, participating in the resounding defeat of several Chinese offensives. He left Korea in 1951 to serve as president of the U.S. Army War College. After retiring from the Army two years later, he became an insurance executive in Alabama. He died in 1979, aged eighty-six, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
* * *
—
The Korean War carried on until July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The conflict had ended in a virtual stalemate: The boundary between North and South Korea stood essentially where it had when the hostilities began. A “demilitarized zone” was established not far from the thirty-eighth parallel. According to the Pentagon, 33,651 Americans had died fighting in the war, as did 180,000 Chinese. An estimated 2.5 million Korean civilians lost their lives. Technically, the war is still not over. The armistice provided for “no final peaceful settlement.” The two Korean nations have been poised on the brink of war ever since.
* * *
—
Presiding over the First Marine Division in Korea until May of 1951, Oliver Prince Smith was appointed commander of the Marine base at Camp Pendleton, California. He retired in 1955 with the rank of four-star general and died in his sleep on Christmas Day 1977, at his home in Los Altos, California, surrounded by his rose gardens and the fruit trees he tended each day. A widower of thirteen years, Smith was eighty-four.
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br /> A Chosin survivor, Captain William Hopkins, had this to say about Smith: “I am forever grateful that Oliver P. Smith commanded…at Chosin. He embodied all of the features required by Sun-tzu: ‘Wisdom, sincerity, humanity, courage, and strictness.’ ” Said Benis Frank, chief historian of the Marine Corps: “I am certain that somewhere there is a pantheon for Marine heroes where General Oliver Prince Smith holds an honored place.”
Smith’s granddaughter, Gail Shisler, observed that at the time of his death, behind an old green leather chair in his book-lined study, was a hand-painted map of the Chosin Reservoir, “showing the route of his division’s epic battle to the sea.” She also noted this detail: “His gardening boots, the same boots that he had worn coming out of the reservoir, stood under a bench by the back door.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Certainly the most profound and rewarding part of researching this book was spending time with scores of veterans of the Chosin battle. “The Chosin Few” are an exceedingly stoic and often irascible group of men who know the deepest meanings of suffering. I met many in their homes and many at reunions—traveling, in the end, to more than twenty states. Most of these men had served under General Smith in the First Marine Division, although many were Army, Navy, or Air Force veterans, and a few were civilians who had gotten caught in the fray. Their stories are the lifeblood of this book. I can’t thank them enough—for their good spirit, for their candor, and for their willingness to revisit memories that, in many cases, they would rather leave undisturbed. I simply cannot imagine what they endured all those years ago in that icy crucible in the mountains of North Korea.
On Desperate Ground Page 34
