The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat (37 page)

Chew-Een Lee attended an elementary school in Sacramento consisting primarily of immigrant children-predominantly Chinese- and Japanese-Americans, with a few Mexicans, blacks, and whites. He was aware of Americans' attitudes toward the Chinese-these attitudes had led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1886, then still in effect-but he rarely encountered overt racial prejudice. He did have some fights with Japanese boys whose girlfriends swooned over his strong, handsome facial features, particularly his high cheekbones. And once, during a family outing, the Lees' car overheated in a white suburb of Sacramento, and young Lee watched as a white man humiliated his father by spraying him with a garden hose after being asked for water to refill the car's radiator. From that day on, Lee recalled, his father had drilled into the four boys a determination never to wash anybody's shirts.

Lee was a good student and an avid reader of history. His dream was to become a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, so he joined his high school's ROTC program. But when he was drafted in 1944, Army doctors told him that he lacked the depth perception necessary to fly a plane. Although he put himself through a rigorous program of eye exercises, he still could not pass the flight test by the time he was shipped to an Army depot in San Francisco later that year. He had never heard of the Marines Corps, but while he was in the depot awaiting an assignment, a recruiting officer wearing a uniform with red-bordered chevrons asked for volunteers. Lee liked the uniform, and he also heard the Army draftees saying that the leathernecks were "the first in combat and the first to die." This suited Lee fine and he immediately signed up for the Marines. He thought the highest honor he could achieve was to be killed in a just war.

At first the Marine recruiting officer eyed Lee's scrawny frame with skepticism. "Are you sure you can carry a pack?" he said.

Lee may have been small but he was all sinew, and to prove it he hefted two rucksacks off the floor, threw them over his shoulders, and marched back and forth across the depot. He became a Marine that day.

At boot camp he listed his three service goals in order of preference: the Para-Marines, the Tank Corps, and scout-sniper school. To his dismay he was instead assigned to a six-month Japaneselanguage school. He was the only regular Marine of Asian descent among the mostly reservist Caucasian scholars in his class, and when he was promoted to buck sergeant-the first regular AsianAmerican NCO in the Corps' history-he took his three stripes seriously. He prided himself on being the most ornery NCO the Marines had ever produced, and his attitude offended subordinates as well as fellow officers. Lee had no friends.

At the language academy he realized, to his chagrin, that he would miss the fighting in World War II. But he was cheered to recall from his studies of history that, on average, the United States had engaged in combat somewhere in the world, in declared or undeclared wars, every five years. He enrolled in officer candidate school and, as the youngest in his class, began smoking a pipe in the hope that this habit might compensate for his youth, and for his small physical stature.

His fellow Marines continued to be leery of him. Superior officers often tried to counsel him about the chip on his shoulder. He ignored them. Openly and vociferously, he challenged even captains and colonels whose lax standards did not rise to what he considered the right level for the Marine Corps.

Following his postwar deployments to China and Guam to debrief Japanese prisoners, he had been summoned back to Camp Pendleton, where in early 1950 Colonel Homer Litzenberg had been ordered to reconstitute the Seventh Regiment. Lee, now a lieutenant -this rank was another milestone for a regular Asian-American in the Corps-was the first platoon leader selected for the First Battalion's Baker Company. Lee had reservations about Litzenberg and was offended when Litzenberg's eyes teared up during his briefing to the assembled regiment prior to shipping out for Japan: such emotion seemed more appropriate for a grandfather than for a soldier. But Lee's wary respect for the battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Davis grew as he studied Davis in action. Davis's ability in battle was like his bearing, Lee thought; it radiated confidence.

After the landings at Inchon Lee ran into a younger brother, Chew-Mon "Buck" Lee, in Seoul, the South Korean capital. ChewMon Lee was a lieutenant in the Army's Second Infantry Division and had just returned to the front lines from Japan, having been wounded during the North Korean invasion two and a half months earlier. (Another brother, Chew-Fan Lee, the second oldest, was a pacifist, but he served with the Army Medical Service as a pharmacist and would be awarded the Bronze Star after the Chosin campaign.) Lee complained to Chew-Mon that in Japan, before Inchon, Division authorities had tried to make him a staff officer, a move he resisted bitterly.

"They are fools; they see slanted eyes and immediately want to make you an interpreter or some other such nonsense," he told Chew-Mon. "I'm no language officer, and I'm nobody's interpreter. I'm a regular Marine rifle platoon leader. I will lead troops in battle, and if I have to fight American staff officers in order to fight communists, you know I will do it."

During their brief reunion Chew-Mon gave his brother two new Army-issue banana clips that held thirty carbine rounds, twice as many as the Marines' clips carried. Chew-Een then noticed his brother's Army-issue web suspenders. It dawned on him that they would be superb for carrying hand grenades. He asked Chew-Mon for them. He was the dai-go, the respected older brother. ChewMon complied.

At heart Lee was a fatalist, and his primary goal in life was to honor his family by dying in combat-and give them the added benefit of his $10,000 National Service Life Insurance policy. When he'd enlisted he had not expected to survive World War II, and he considered not being given a chance to fight a blot on his honor. Now the Korean War had given him a second opportunity to fulfill his destiny-to die for his family, his country, his principles. He fully, and happily, expected precisely that to occur on the march to Toktong Pass.

4

When the time came for Lieutenant Colonel Davis's First Battalion to jump off the road south of Yudam-ni, their route was immediately stymied by the Chinese occupying Turkey Hill.

Since Davis's rescue of Charlie Company four nights earlier, numerous enemy machine-gun nests, flanked by mini-mortar emplacements and infantrymen in force, had dug in deep along the hill's four finger ridges. Even repeated air strikes had not been able to root them out. The Third Battalion's How Company (a Seventh Regiment rifle company, not to be confused with the artillery company of the same designation in Hagaru-ri) had been ordered by Colonel Litzenberg to clear the hill prior to Davis's advance. But How's numbers had been seriously depleted by three days of nearly continuous battle west of Yudam-ni. How was outnumbered two to one, and the men were in no shape to take on an enemy in such strength. This became evident when their initial thrust into the Chinese machine guns was repulsed. Twelve more Marines of How Company were killed and another twenty-seven wounded.

Marine Corps officers prided themselves on their synchronized maneuvers. The Seventh Regiment's disengagement from Yudam-ni while elements from the Fifth Regiment covered them from the surrounding heights was a striking example of a well-conceived battle plan. But Turkey Hill was different. There, Davis's First Battalion was now placed in the position of reinforcing How Company -in essence, Davis led his men into a firefight in order to secure their own line of departure. But there was no way to avoid this. A bloody struggle ensued across the flanks of Turkey Hill, with Able Company joining the few remaining Marines of How Company and slithering into the worst of the enemy fire.

The fight lasted throughout the afternoon; it was dusk before the Americans cleared the Chinese from the summit in hand-to-hand fighting. Davis fretted as he surveyed the battlefield. Too many men had been wounded, and there had been a dreadful loss of ammunition that the column would surely need later. As he reorganized his rifle companies he called for his radioman. He had to speak to Litzenberg. He needed more ammo, and he needed more men.

At 6:30 p.m. on Fox Hill, Captain Barber conducted his perimeter inspection from a stretcher. It was his one concession to his pain. He was amused to find the company cooks Bavaro and Bledsoeafter five days-still scratching their foxhole out of the frozen earth. The foxhole was now chest-high, the deepest by far on the hill, although not quite as wide as Bavaro and Bledsoe would have liked. They flashed the captain a thumbs-up sign as he was carried past, and then flipped a coin for the first watch. Bledsoe won and settled uncomfortably into the bottom of the pit, his body nearly crushing Bavaro's legs and feet. He hadn't slept for two days and he went out like a light.

By 7:30 p.m., Bavaro's frozen feet were excruciatingly painful. He decided he couldn't take it anymore. He tried to wake Bledsoe, first with whispered words, then by shaking him, and finally by yelling into his ear-a dangerous act with the snipers so close around the South Hill. Bledsoe did not stir.

Following the second battle for Turkey Hill, Lieutenant Colonel Davis helped carry his wounded Marines down to the MSR, where they were loaded onto six-by-sixes. He radioed to Colonel Litzenberg and asked to press on immediately. The plan had always been to travel by night, and he knew that if he didn't start his column moving now, the tired, sweaty men might freeze to death where they stood.

Litzenberg agreed, and added that in order to make up for his losses on Turkey Hill, Davis was free to augment his battalion with the approximately fifty-five Marines remaining from How Company. This gave Davis just over four hundred men. At one-sixth its original size, How was, in effect and in fact, no longer a Marine rifle company. When the news of Litzenberg's decision spread through the dilapidated outfit, one of the enlisted men-noting that the company had been more than halved in just the past weekmused that How's "fire-and-maneuver tactics now lacked the maneuver part."

Davis instructed his platoon leaders to light as many cooking fires as possible all over Turkey Hill, in the hope of fooling the Chinese watching from the heights. Maybe they'll think we're bedding down for the night. Then he ordered his battalion to their feet.

Baker Company, with Chew-Een Lee's platoon on point, took the lead. Able and Charlie followed, with How as the rear guard. The column stretched half a mile, and Davis stationed two sergeants on the shoulder of the road at the jump-off mark. The Marines were ordered to secure their gear against any clinking or rattling, and as each man climbed over the snowbank, the NCOs made him jog in place to test for sound.

A blizzard whipped through the mountains above him as Davis radioed to Yudam-ni for the final time. On his prearranged signal, the artillery units remaining in the village to cover the main column's movement south opened up on the surrounding heights. Davis hoped that this would keep the enemy's heads down as his column sneaked off. Lee's point squad began breaking trail at 9 p.m. Davis went up to the lieutenant and pointed to a particularly bright star just rising on the horizon. It appeared to be blinking on and off amid the swirling clouds. "That's our guide for as long as we can see it," he said.

The BAR man Richard Gilling, a nineteen-year-old private first class from How Company, was one of the last men to peel off the MSR. If there was a Marine in his depleted unit who felt cheered by the order to march on Toktong Pass, it was Dick Gilling. Gilling, who came from northern New Jersey, had enlisted in 1949 and had been at reservist summer camps and weekend meetings with Kenny Benson and Hector Cafferata. Unlike Cafferata, Gilling liked drinking and playing cards. Now, he missed that camaraderie.

When Gilling was posted to How, it was already a company of experienced regulars: it had been formed at Pendleton before the war broke out. As a greenhorn, he had felt ostracized ever since reaching Wonsan. Even his assistant BAR man resented being subordinate to a reservist who hadn't been through boot camp. This bothered Gilling.

When he and Hector had been split up a month earlier, they had vowed that if something should happen to either of them, the survivor would look after the other's family. That pledge was on Gilling's mind as he reached the shoulder of the MSR, climbed over the snowbank, and jogged in place for the sergeants. He paused for a moment to say good-bye to a buddy, another reservist, who had been wounded on Turkey Hill. As he bent over the stretcher to shake his friend's hand, he also handed the man his own last two boxes of C-rations. When Gilling left with the others, the wounded Marine turned to a man on an adjacent litter.

"There go the Ridgerunners," he said. "Wonder if we'll ever see them again." The name stuck-and it would earn a permanent place in Marine Corps lore.

Within moments there was no trace of Davis's battalion. The Ridgerunners were alone, in the dark, marching deep into enemy territory.

5

The moment Lieutenant Chew-Een Lee and his three-man scout team started down the reverse slope of Turkey Hill, their guiding star vanished behind a mountain. "Clouds would have covered it soon anyway," Lee said to a scout.