The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat (23 page)

The corpsmen were perhaps even more frustrated by the weather. Warming morphine syrettes in their mouths was the least of their problems. Plasma, frozen in its feeding tubes, was worthless, and their numb fingers fumbled to change dressings. Moreover, if a medic tried to cut off a man's clothing to get a closer look at his wounds, he was probably condemning the man to gangrene and a slow death by freezing. The corpsmen did, however, discover one unexpected boon-because of the low temperatures, bullet and shrapnel wounds were closing almost immediately, blood flow was congealing, and men were staying alive instead of bleeding to death before help could reach them.

There was one other advantage to fighting in such cold: the growing piles of corpses did not smell.

Five minutes after the friendly-fire incident, an enemy machinegun crew wielding an ancient, Japanese-made Nambu opened up from the road, just to the east of the two huts. Marines saw the green tracers fly up the small gulley and into the rear of the reformed Third Platoon lines. Here was proof that enemy reinforcements had arrived: there had been no Chinese machine guns firing the previous night. As if to drive the point home two more machine guns immediately began raking the Third Platoon's forward positions from the rocky knoll and the rocky ridgeline leading to Toktong-san.

The Marines would soon learn that General Sung Shih-lun had ordered another Chinese battalion-five more companies-into the fight for Fox Hill.

Down near the MSR, Jack Page swung his barrel, aimed for the source of the tracers, and fired a burst from his heavy machine gun. Page and his crew had removed the red tracers from their own gun earlier in the day. Either he knocked out the Chinese gun or its crew cut and ran. In either case, there was no more machine-gun fire from the middle of the road. But now the Marines of the Second Platoon, up and down the west slope, reported that firing by rifles and automatic weapons from the West Hill was picking up, as if the company were being probed for weak spots. A wise-ass hollered something about Santa Ana and the Alamo. Nobody laughed. The wounded Lieutenant Elmo Peterson hobbled up and down behind the line, telling his men, "Hold fire 'til they come."

Up on the saddle, they were coming. The bursts from the machine guns on the knoll were followed by a rain of mortar shellsanother new development. When had they brought in mortar tubes? Following the bombardment, the usual bugles, whistles, and cries of "Marine, you die!" echoed across the hill. To Bob Ezell, peering out from behind the two tall rocks, it looked as if the snow had come to life. In the moonlight, ghostly, white-clad soldiers, perhaps two hundred of them, were streaming across the land bridge. An illumination shell lit up the saddle, and the enemy's white quilted uniforms seemed to glisten. Ezell could hear one Chinese voice above all the others: "Son of a bitch Marine, we kill! Son of a bitch Marine, you die!"

Ezell watched, rapt, as O'Leary's 60-mm mortars tore up the point squads, breaking the Chinese ranks. But still they charged, even in disarray. The forward artillery observer Lieutenant Campbell called in a howitzer barrage from Hagaru-ri. As the boom of the heavy field pieces echoed off the rocky knoll and the rocky ridge, Ezell felt a sensation like an electric current pass through his body. The enemy machine guns quit. The infantry did not.

Clawing over the barbed-wire fence, they hit the Americans once more between the flanks of the Second and Third Platoons. Corporal Dytkiewicz's light machine-gun emplacement was the focushe had failed to purge the tracers from his belts-and he was wounded immediately, his left shoulder torn up by submachine-gun fire. His hole mate, Private First Class Gleason, took the unconscious corporal on his back and made for the med tents. Up at the rocks Ezell and Jerry Triggs did not see Dytkiewicz and Gleason fall back, and soon they were virtually surrounded, much like Cafferata and Benson twenty-four hours earlier. They tossed their last four grenades, momentarily slowing the advance, and-their backs to one of the two tall rocks-shouldered their M Is.

Ezell emptied a clip on semiautomatic, but when he reloaded his rifle seized up-it would fire only one round at a time. The return lever was frozen and would catch on the next cartridge when he squeezed the trigger. With each shot he had to push the lever manually to force the round into the firing chamber. This was nearly impossible with frozen hands and bulky gloves.

Ezell and Triggs could only guess why Dytkiewicz's gun had gone silent. But the BARs and M I s of the forward firing teams of the Third Platoon, as well as Dick Bonelli's light machine gun, kept the Chinese off for a few seconds. The Chinese were so close that Ezell could hear them grunt and gag as they were hit. Lieutenant McCarthy's platoon, however, was stretched to the breaking point. It was only a matter of time.

Then something strange occurred. While Ezell and Triggs ducked to reload behind the forward rock, scores of Chinese rushed past on either side, paying no attention to them. For a moment there was an odd silence, broken only by the sound of canvas sneakers cracking the snow crust. Ezell heard rustling on the other side of the rock. He clicked his bayonet onto the barrel of his empty MI. Like all Marines, he had been instructed, during basic, in the classic Biddle bayonet offensive, but this technique was the last thing on his mind-he just wanted to stick someone. He leaped and lunged just as a hand grenade exploded between him and Triggs. Ezell was thrown through the air. He did not feel himself land.

For Ezell the next several moments were a kaleidoscopic chiaroscuro of moon, sky, snow, and stars, like a black-and-white movie broken only by the orange flashes flaming around him. He could not move, but he could see and hear the enemy swarm Triggs. There was much jabbering and whistle blowing and ragged blats of the bugles. There were grenade explosions, and now flares in the sky, and still the incessant blare of the damn bugles. He forced his eyes closed as a Chinese soldier, breathing hard, squatted down next to him, ripped off his gloves, and checked each wrist for a watch. A bugler-very close, Ezell thought-ceased blowing in the middle of a note. Ezell's mind drifted to the scene from Gunga Din in which Sam Jaffe is shot off the spire.

The Chinese moved on, leaving Ezell and Triggs for dead. Ezell tried to get to his feet. He could not.

7

The forward foxholes of the Third Platoon took the brunt of the attack.

From their two-man hole Ernest Gonzalez swept the hill to the left while Freddy Gonzales fired to the right. Ernest realized he did not need the waning moon to spot the advancing enemy-a nearly constant barrage of grenades and flares lit up the sky. He sighted in on a bugler standing up by the two tall rocks blowing a Chinese charge and shot him through the head.

At Pendleton, Ernest had turned out to be a crack shot, and from the first his M 1 had felt like a natural extension of his body. The rifle rarely left his hands during his eleven-day passage from San Diego to Yokohama, Japan, despite the fact that he spent nearly the entire voyage in the head throwing up. Two things, he was certain, had saved him from dying on that troopship. The first was the expectation of firing this beautiful weapon in a real battle. The other was his daily readings from the Roman Catholic missal his mother had given him as a going-away gift. He could sure use the missal now, but the gun would have to do.

He was sighting in again when a potato masher exploded to his right. The concussion ripped his helmet and glasses off his head. He fell to his knees. Freddy turned. "Ernie, you all right?"

"I can't see."

Despite his wounds from the friendly fire, Corporal Ashdale manned the light machine gun in the center of the Third Platoon's line. He was overrun almost immediately and was nearly blinded by an exploding grenade. Still, he managed to wrestle with an enemy soldier who was trying to take the gun until another Chinese slammed the butt of a rifle into the back of his skull. Ashdale went out, and the two Chinese escaped with the machine gun.

One of Ashdale's assistant gunners staggered down the west slope toward the Second Platoon's right flank. He stumbled into a foxhole occupied by two privates first class: Don Childs and Norman Jackson, both firing at a frantic pace. They challenged him, and when he answered with the password they pulled him down into the hole. He was dazed, he was in his stocking feet, and his M 1 had been shattered by a grenade. "Load," Childs said, and tossed him their spare rifles. Over the previous twenty-four hours they had each scrounged five Chinese Mausers.

All hell was breaking loose around Dick Bonelli and Homer Penn. Bonelli was just getting the hang of firing the light machine gun, and of sighting on the enemy's tracers, when an American voice from somewhere behind him shouted, "Let's go."

Penn made a move to stand. Bonelli clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Go? Go where, for Chrissake? No bus ride outta here."

Penn brushed Bonelli's hand away and bolted from the foxhole. He stumbled several feet and was shot in both shoulders. He fell, bleeding, into a hole occupied by Walt Klein and Private First Class Frank Valtierra. Together they picked him up and carried him down the hill.

Bonelli was still surrounded, and now alone.

Down at the command post Lieutenant Campbell again radioed How Company's howitzer unit to ask them to "box" the crest of Fox Hill with incoming. There was a subsequent curtain of explosions. They fell so close to the Third Platoon's forward squads that any Marine still standing was blown off his feet by the concussive winds. They were too close for Dick Bonelli's liking. He dived for the bottom of his hole to wait out the bombardment.

At 2:30 a.m., while the battle raged on the heights, several Chinese platoons slipped down from the rocky ridge and made their way around the reverse slope of Fox Hill. They skirted the saddle and flanked the Marines around the bramble thicket on the northeast crest. Corporal Belmarez, on the First Platoon's line at the top of the eastern slope, never saw them coming. He was blown out of his foxhole, six feet straight into the air, by a concussion grenade.

Wounded in both legs, he crawled down the hill, leaving a bloody trail in the snow. When he couldn't go any farther he asked the Lord to save him.

Twenty yards below Belmarez, Private First Class Allen Thompson, a twenty-one-year-old reservist, swung his light machine gun toward the sound of the explosion. He aimed at the white figures darting down the hill and squeezed the trigger. The gun jammed; its head space where the firing pin connected was frozen solid. Fuck. Thompson was a rifleman by training who had been assigned to the machine gun after the First Platoon reached Fox Hill. He'd joked to his assistant gunner, Private First Class Roger Davis, that his entire knowledge of machine guns consisted of bullets going in one end and coming out the other. Still, he had test-fired the damn thing just two hours ago.

The Chinese came hard and fast. Thompson and Davis emptied their rifles and sidearms and dropped back to the cover of the trees. While Thompson reloaded, Davis was gutted by automatic weapons fire. The last straw. Thompson's emotions slipped their brake.

All alone, and impelled by God's own anger, he charged the nearest group of enemy soldiers, screaming at the top of his lungs, firing like a madman. He took out a squad. The Chinese were stunned. At the same time, Jack Page swung his heavy machine gun up the east slope and raked the charging enemy. At Page's burst more Marines from the First Platoon joined the fight. The Chinese fled in all directions. Thompson fell to his knees in the snow, trembling and panting.

The surviving Chinese who had attacked down the east slope were now scattered on the hill, within the American lines. In his foxhole near the tree line the bazooka man Harry Burke heard pine boughs cracking to his right. He whirled and shot two men with his M I. In the next hole the cooks Phil Bavaro and John Bledsoe were about to charge up the hill when Bavaro saw movement down on the road. They each emptied a clip from their M I s. Up? Down? Which way to fight? "Best to stay here," Bavaro said.

It was a smart decision. Yet another platoon of Chinese had crept down from the South Hill three hundred yards across the road, had crossed the level ground, and were now forming up on the MSR. In the foxhole below Bavaro and Bledsoe, on the lower southeast corner of the hill, Corporal Robert Gaines jabbed Private First Class Rollin Hutchinson hard in the ribs with the butt of his M1: "See 'em?" Hutchinson nodded.

The two had laid out spare rifles, ammo, and grenades on the parapet of their hole. They had bayonets fixed. They watched in silence as a squad broke off from the platoon on the road and loped toward the larger hut. Gaines and Hutchinson lit them up. One Chinese soldier with a Thompson submachine gun was particularly persistent. He darted from the hut to the trees and back again, spraying Gaines's and Hutchinson's position. Bullets flicked across the lip of their hole, knocking off the carefully stacked weapons. Gaines concentrated on following his muzzle flashes. From a corner of the hut the Thompson opened up again. Gaines stood and emptied a rifle clip at the flashes. The firing stopped.

Below them someone was crashing through the trees. They saw a crouching figure. "Don't shoot," a voice yelled in English. "I'm a Marine."

"What's the password?"

"Uh, uh ... I don't know. Please. I'm a Marine. I swear to God."

Gaines looked at Hutchinson. They had both been brought up on World War II movies. Would the Hollywood technique come through? "Who won the World Series last month?" Gaines shouted.

"Yankees," the voice shot back instantly. "Four straight over the Phillies."

"Get your ass up here."

A platoon-size group of Chinese, perhaps forty men, were dispersed about the east slope. They crashed through the trees and penetrated deep into Fox's perimeter. Now they gathered in a small open vale just above the med tents, bunched up and milling around, chatter ing confusedly. Some of the wounded, including Warren McClure, heard the noises, the alien voices, and sat up and felt around for weapons. But there had been none to spare for the med tents, and the armed corpsmen were all out on the flanks.