wounded, 103, 152, 162, 173,
183, 200
wounded soldiers and, 292-93
phosphorus shells. See "Willie
Peter"
Pickett, Wayne A., 287-89
background, 16-17, 50-51, 98
"Big Indian" and, 156
and the Chinese, 98-99
family, 50, 98
at Fox Company reunion, 316
injury, 288
personality, 311
as POW, 84-85, 97-99, 136-37,
310-11
warnings, 16-17
Williford and, 40, 49-51, 84-85,
97-99, 136
Yeskow and, 97-99, 136, 137
Pitts, Clyde T., 71, 72, 107, 231,
232,303,307-8
playing dead, 114
Pourers, Harrison, 87
background, 87
Barber and, 217
Cafferata and, 94, 106, 218
Gerald Smith and, 87
regained consciousness, 94
shootings, 105, 115
wounded, 87-88, 179-80, 21718
prayer, 169-70, 279
prisoners of war (POWs)
American, 116, 125, 137, 14041, 212, 287-88. See also
Pickett; Williford
Chinese, 124-25, 140-41, 289
Puller, Lewis B. "Chesty," 208, 236,
237
Pyongyang, 14
radiation strips, 57
radio communication, 36-37, 47,
74, 78, 83, 187-88, 231,
263. See also communication
systems
Rapp, Robert, 77, 80, 138
Read, Benjamin, 74,138,188, 231, 298
refugees, 27
Reitz, George W., 100, 101, 142,
197-98
Republic of Korea (ROK), 3
Ridgerunners, 260-61, 269, 274,
277, 280, 284, 285, 293, 311
arrival on Fox Hill Dec. 2, 276
route from Yudam-ni to Fox Hill,
261
Rivera, Charlie, 91
Robicheau, Sergeant, 213-14
rocky knoll, 158
rocky ridge, 196, 197, 220, 226,
273-75
American firing on, 38
Chinese soldiers in, 186, 235
clearing path up to, 271
Hagaru-ri battery shelling, 197
How Company bombardment of,
158
howitzer bombardments on, 220
incoming fire from, 114, 219
sniping from, 154, 179, 220. See
also snipers
Royal Australian Air Force, 142. See
under Australian Mustangs
Schmidt, Robert H., 100, 101, 160,
161, 193
Schmitt, Lawrence, 79, 169
Barber and, 36, 37, 78, 83, 136
letter to wife, 289
Litzenberg and, 78
radio communications and, 36,
37, 78, 83
weapons and, 160, 161
wounded, 149, 289
Scott, John L., 118-20, 248-50
Scully, Robert P., 169, 233
Scuttlebutt, 19
Second Battalion, 9, 22, 26. See also
How Company; Second
Howitzer Battalion
heavy weapons section, 34
Second Howitzer Battalion, 91-92
Second Rifle Platoon, 82-84, 94,
162, 179, 198, 213, 265,
296, 317. See also Seventh
Regiment; specific topics
ammunition shortage, 123
Barber and, 226
Chew-Een Lee and, 267
commanding officers (COs), 61
dig-ins, 37-38, 74
McClure and, 105
roster, 323-30
in Vietnam, 311
Seils, David, 320, 328
Senzig, John F., 217
Seventh Regiment, 9, 14, 19, 26,
67, 146, 171, 203, 237, 241,
242, 296, 303, 317. See also
How Company; Second
Rifle Platoon
Barber and, 188
casualties, 189, 265
Chew-Een Lee and, 245, 256
disengagement from Yudam-ni, 258
first encounter with Chinese, 13
Litzenberg and, 121, 256
Ray Davis and, 311
roster, 323-30
in Vietnam, 311
Shih-lun, Sung, 162, 204, 225
"Siberian Express," 21
Sinhung-ni, 284
Slapinskas, Daniel, 118, 119, 247-
48,250,251
sleeping soldiers, bayoneted, 2, 84,
99, 117
Smith, David, 81, 112, 149
Smith, Gerald J., 87, 88, 105, 106,
180
Smith, Oliver Prince, 14, 16, 205,
241, 307
Smith, Walter Bedell, 208, 236,
298
"sniper ridges" of Toktang-san, 114,
158
snipers, 93, 138, 149, 152, 219-22,
280, 291, 302. See also under
South Hill
American soldiers shot by, 110,
124, 131, 138, 139, 144,
163,192,239-40,252,270,
286
"deep dip" and, 141
Fox Hill as providing cover from,
227
helicopter shot by, 151
killed, 233
in ridgeline of West Hill, 147,
148
in ridges and folds of West Hill,
129
on rocky knoll, 139, 142, 148,
154
on rocky ridges, 139, 142, 148,
154
shot, 147, 149-50, 224, 233, 240
from West Hill, 198
snow, 39-40, 134, 247, 260
socks, changing, 60
South Hill, 67, 138, 149, 150, 168,
214, 215, 224, 232, 247,
278, 280
snipers close around, 259
snipers in, 186
snipers in woods at base of, 223,
239-40, 272
snipers on far, 202
South Korea, international support
for, 42. See also United
Nations
Soviet Union, 52
Chinese relations with, 52
Stalin, Joseph, 52
Stanley, Glen J., 96
Steen, Clifford, 316
Stein, Richard J., 86
Stiller, Daniel J., 86
Stillwell, Charles R., 86
Stritch, John T., 88
Strommen, Ronald D., 96
Sudong Gorge, 234
battles at, 1-5, 13-16, 20, 29, 45,
200, 252, 265, 304, 311
lesson learned from, 45-47
entrance to, I
hillside overlooking, 99
Sun-tzu, 33
Sun Yat-sen, 254
supply planes/supply drops, 195-
96,201-2,226
Svicarovich, George, 329
Taebaek mountain range, 20-21
Tallbull, Clarence, 139-40
telecommunications. See
communication systems;
radio communication
Thanksgiving, 18, 21, 49, 60, 84,
110, 289
Third Rifle Platoon, 2, 3, 38, 71,
86, 88, 94, 103-4, 114, 118,
151, 162, 164-66. See also
How Company; specific
topics
Audas and, 175, 286
Barber and, 114
Bowser and, 145
casualties, 96, 114, 136, 308
command post (CP), 71
Ernest Gonzalez and, 118, 286,
308
Lockwood and, 149
McCarthy and, 90, 114, 155, 175
McClure and, 143
Wilson and, 118
Thompson, Allen S., 167, 168, 185,
199, 203, 211
Thornton, Donald R., 186, 187
Tilhoff, Peter, 86
Toktong Pass, 48, 49, 51, 66-67,
226, 284. See also Toktongsan; specific topics
Barber and, 29, 33, 37, 209, 235,
313, 314
Barber and Lockwood's trip to,
22, 26-28
bombing, 43
Bonelli and, 44
Chew-Een Lee and, 257
Chinese desire for, 235
as chokepoint, 190
Fox Company heading for, 19,
31,33,36,97
Gilling and, 260
Henry and, 222
holding, 204
keeping open, 188-90
Litzenberg and, 188, 209
maps of, 17, 26-27
Raymond Davis and, 209, 242
strategies for defending, 29
visiting, 312
weather/climate, 36, 59, 161,
185, 205, 225, 293
Toktong-san, 186, 235, 245, 271.
See also rocky ridge; snipers;
Toktong Pass; specific topics
Bonelli and, 225
physical characteristics, 19, 20,
26-28,64,225,243
"sniper ridges," 114, 158
Toktong-san, Battle for, 225. See
also Toktong-san; specific
topics
tracer bullets, 77, 81-83, 86, 97,
137, 162, 163, 207, 231,
238
trenches. See dig-ins; dugouts
Triggs, Jerry D., 140, 154, 163,
164, 180
Troxell, Paul T., 86
Truman, Harry S., 15, 51, 56, 92,
204
atomic bombs and, 236
awards from, 311-13
MacArthur and, 43
Turkey Hill, 49
battles of, 135, 146, 191, 209,
242-44,257-62
Chew-Een Lee and, 261, 262
lighting cooking fires on, 259
Owen and, 244
Raymond Davis and, 191, 209,
242,243,257-60
Uijongbu campaign, 32, 66, 279
Umpleby, James P., 86
United Nations, 42-43, 52, 146
United Nations forces, 171
United States, 16, 56
Chinese views of, 47
overoptimism, 15-16. See also
Christmas, expectation of
being home by; MacArthur
support for its intervention in
Korea, 42
Valek, Raymond L., 139
Valtierra, Frank, 166, 210, 224,
275
Vey, Arnold R., 88
Vietnam War, 311
Wallace, H. Lew, 314
Watson, Bob "Red," 264, 316
weapons, 31, 196. See also specific
topics
weather, 21, 53. See also climate;
cold-weather warfare; snow
West Hill, 48, 100, 110, 111, 121,
143,144,158,162,200-
202,206,219,220,286-87.
See also under snipers
whiskey, 147, 149, 200, 239
"Willie Peter," 130, 157-58, 263,
264
Williford, Troy A., 40, 49-51, 84-
85,97-99,136
Wilson, Lee D., 118-20, 223-24,
248-50
Wonsan, 13
Wright, Clark B., 149, 193
Barber and, 78, 133, 149, 188,
209-10
McClure and, 145, 193
orders, 133
recovery detail, 227
wounded, 250
X Corps, 13-14, 19, 20, 146, 171,
236
Yalu River, 1, 13, 14, 26, 51, 190
Americans warned to keep
distance from, 14
bridges, 52
crossing, 1, 15, 134, 140
grand/final push to, 16, 19, 32,
121,146,171,189-90,203
Yap, Paek Sun, 51
Yesko, Daniel D., 85, 288
Pickett and, 97-99, 136, 137
Yonpo, 142
York, Sergeant, 173-74
Yudam-ni, 19, 20, 34, 47, 78, 135,
145, 190, 226
contradictory orders flying into,
207
howitzer battery at, 243
map of, 122
order to evacuate, 236
Ridgerunners' route to Fox Hill
from, 261
Seventh Regiment's
disengagement from, 258
5th and 7th Marine Regiments at,
121, 122
Zorn, Elmer, 2-5, 22
Table of Contents
Prologue
The Hill
The Attack
The Siege
"We Will Hold"
The Ridgerunners
Epilogue
Afterword
Postscript 2008
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Selected Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents
Index
THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANYAlso by the authorsHalsey's Typhoon
THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANYA True Story of U.S. Marines in CombatBOB DRURYANDTOM CLAVINAtlantic Monthly Press New YorkCopyright © 2009 by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin Maps © 2009 by Matthew Ericson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of AmericaFIRST EDITION ISBN-10: 0-87113-993-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-87113-993-1Atlantic Monthly Press an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003 Distributed by Publishers Group West www.groveatlantic.com 09 10 11 12 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1To the United States Marines who fought and died on Fox HiU
CONTENTSPrologue I The Hill 7 The Attack 69 The Siege 127 "We Will Hold" 177 The Ridgerunners 229 Epilogue 297 Afterword 307 Postscript 2008 315 Acknowledgments 319 Appendix 323 Selected Bibliography 331 Index 335 "If we are marked to die, we are enough."-Henry V
PROLOGUENOVEMBER 2 TO 4, 1950Only the officers knew that the dark railway tunnel a few hundred yards up the road marked the official entrance to the Sudong Gorge. The enlisted men didn't carry maps, but they sensed it. Over the past several miles the broad rice paddies and vineyards, the neat rows of persimmon trees, and the tiny farmhouses with their empty oxcarts had disappeared and had been replaced by the stark granite hills of upper North Korea. "Injun Territory," one of the Marines said. A few others forced a grim laugh. To most of the Marines, hostile terrain had begun as soon as they'd crossed the 38th Parallel and started the long slog north. Still, that dark tunnel looked ominous.They were Fox Company, and just before they rounded the sharp bend in the road and humped into the tunnel they spotted Dog Company engaged in a firelight, maybe half a mile to the west, along the slopes of one of the broken-tooth mountains. They found this strange. By this point in the war-more than four months since Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea, and six weeks after the United States' successful counterattack at Inchon-the North Koreans could be counted on to cut and run at the first sign of Americans. But Dog Company seemed to be meeting serious opposition, and some of the Marines in Fox Company began to wonder if the regimental commander's warning hadn't been the usual shinola; perhaps the Chinese had indeed crossed the Yalu River and entered the war.In any event, that was Dog's problem, at least for the time being, and as Fox emerged from the north end of the tunnel and into the dusk, the sheer hills on either side of the company loomed high and tight.It was a good place to call a halt, and the outfit's enigmatic commander, Captain Elmer Zorn, decided to bed down the column for the night. One of the actions that had Zorn's men often glancing at him warily was calling in an air strike uncomfortably close to their own position. On another occasion he mistakenly radioed for artillery support on Fox Company's own coordinates. The sun was dipping over the stout, charcoal-colored western hills, and an eerie gray mist shrouded the forbidding taller mountains to the north. Fox was still four miles south of its objective, the tiny crossroads hamlet of Sudong, but Zorn's men had slept hardly at all for two days. The CO considered the odds: with the First Battalion out in front, and the Third Battalion following close behind, he expected no trouble. Before assigning night watches, however, Zorn did take one precaution. He ordered the leaders of his three rifle platoons to have each of their men take a good long look at four Marines from the First Battalion who had been bayoneted in their sleeping bags twenty-four hours earlier. Their cold bodies, laid in a small depression between a creek bed and the dirt road, were still wrapped in their bloody mummy bags. Sergeant Earl Peach of the Second Platoon spat. He'd seen worse, on Tarawa and Iwo. Still, he never got used to the sight.As darkness fell and the temperature dropped, Fox was strung out perhaps four hundred yards along the road, with sentries snaking up the overhanging ridgelines. All the scuttlebutt about the Red Chinese spooked the company, and scattered small arms fire and an occasional howitzer report punctuating the cold air from up ahead didn't help. At midnight a rumor started that a North Korean tank was prowling the area, and this put everyone's nerves on edge. But there were no incidents.Not long after sunrise, a few Marines spotted the column of soldiers exiting the tunnel, seventy-five yards south of their bivouac. These were definitely troopers, maybe 200 all told, marching in twos with a brisk, jaunty step-far too crisp for them to be the weary Marines of the Third Battalion's rear guard. And they were wearing unfamiliar uniforms. But Fox Company had been relieving numerous South Korean infantrymen all along the road north, and these were most likely more of the same. The Americans had taken to calling their allies ROKs, after South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.Corporal Alex "Bob" Mixon, a forward artillery observer attached to Fox from the Second Battalion's 81-mm mortar unit, was the first to see them-and the first to sense that something was not right. They were no more than forty or fifty yards away when he hollered, "Halt. Who goes there?"The answer was a fusillade of automatic weapons fire. Mixon dived behind a rock. When he emptied the clip of his carbine into the two columns, they broke to both sides of the road and assumed firing positions. Mixon was impressed by their discipline-a trait heretofore lacking among most of the Reds he'd encountered. Now Mixon could hear Captain Zorn running toward him, yelling, "Hold your fire! Friends! Friends!"But the bullets snapping over Bob Mixon's head were far from friendly, and as he shouldered his carbine and squeezed off another clip he watched Fox Company's civilian interpreter tackle the captain and pull him down into a ditch on the side of the road.By now the Chinese-as Mixon had concluded they were-had set up two heavy machine guns on either side of the tunnel entrance and were pouring fire into the company's mortar squad strung out along the creek bed. Half a dozen Marines fell instantly. Mixon was debating what to do when a helmet popped up beside him. It was Sergeant Peach, who had crawled through a culvert under the road."Gotta keep 'em off those mortar men," Peach said. He began picking off enemy soldiers with his m 1. Mixon reloaded and joined in with his carbine, aiming especially for the machine gunners. When they had both run out of ammunition they fell back to Captain Zorn's ditch. The captain was on the field phone, ordering several fire teams to take the high ground and secure the main ridgeline on the east side of the gorge. Simultaneously, a large unit of Chinese broke off from the gunfight in the valley and began scrabbling up the steep hills.A BAR man from the Second Platoon watched them: maybe a hundred or so soldiers no more than three hundred yards away, climbing a parallel peak. They were hopping along the ridgeline like jackrabbits, and he was so impressed with their agility and the sharp cut of their uniforms-hell, even their backpacks looked impossibly squared away-that he initially thought they might be some hotshot Marine outfit he didn't recognize.But when his squad reached the top of the ridge they were stopped in their tracks by the disconcerting sight of a lone Chinese officer standing atop a giant boulder and dragging casually on a cigarette. At the Americans' approach he flicked his butt in their direction, jumped from the rock, and disappeared over the reverse slope. The Marines had been too stunned by his presence to shoot him. When they reached the boulder they found field telephone wires running down the cleft in the ridgeline. A couple of men unsheathed K-bar knives to cut the wires, and someone said, "The bastard's been watching us the whole time."From the top of the hill the Marines of Fox Company could again see Dog Company, fighting for its life far to the west. Not a few men wondered what the hell was happening.Meanwhile, down in the creek bed, one of the wounded Marines cried for help. A Navy corpsman squatting next to Captain Zorn made a move to rise from the ditch, but the company's gunnery sergeant shouldered him back to the ground. Because of the Chinese machine-gun fire, any attempt at rescue seemed futile. But Sergeant Peach decided to chance it. He scooped up the corpsman's medical kit and took off. Zorn and the few Marines behind him opened up with covering fire. Peach made the creek bed. The Americans near Zorn whooped with admiration. Peach was unlashing the med kit from his shoulder when he was stitched across the face by machine-gun fire. The top of his skull seemed to lift off his head, as if pulled by invisible wires.Captain Zorn ordered a counterattack, and the remaining Chinese fled up the hill, leaving perhaps fifty of their dead strewn across the road. The rest of the day became a long, tense standoff as the Marines and Chinese regulars attempted to outflank each other on the ridgelines. Sniper fire and the occasional pop of small mortar rounds echoed off the hills. Zorn radioed Division and then ordered Fox Company to dig in for the night as he and his staff laid plans for a dawn attack.But by sunrise the Chinese had vanished, and the Marines of Fox were left to wonder if this disappearance was permanent, or if they had just taken part in the opening salvo of World War III.
