OneManGang
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I dedicate this review to SAPPER 5, who turned me onto the story of Fox/2/7.
The Last Stand of Fox Company
Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. 353 pp. Maps, Illustrations, Index. $25.00
Those of us living in Knoxville, TN on January 21, 1985 remember it as the coldest day in the history of the city. The mercury plummeted to a -24[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]°[/FONT] Fahrenheit low that night. This writer, a native southerner, recalls going outside that night just to experience what that level of cold was really like.
It felt cold as space.
In November, 1950, the 1st Marine Division was strung out along the road to a man-made reservoir in the mountains of North Korea near the Chinese border. According to their maps, the reservoir was named the Chosin.
As the 1st Marine Division on the west shore of the reservoir and the rest of X Corps on the east moved north toward the Sino-Korea border marked by the Yalu River, the Chinese communist leadership issued public warnings that they would resist any movements further toward the border. General Douglas MacArthur, in his comfortable headquarters in far-away Tokyo, belittled these warnings and made noises about carrying on the attack into China proper and putting an end to the communist threat in Asia. His staff ignored intelligence reports that hundreds of thousands of Chinese regulars had crossed the Yalu and were ready to attack the strung-out American columns.
The tip of the spear was the 7th Marine Regiment under the hard-charging Colonel Homer "Blitzen Litzen" Litzenberger. The 7th Marines and elements of the 5th Marines were on the west side of the Chosin Reservoir around the flyblown village of Yudam-ni. Their main supply dump and a forward air strip were at Hagaru-ri about ten miles to the south.
It was here that those tens of thousands of Chinese troops MacArthur insisted were figments of over-active imaginations made their appearance. Over 100,000 of those troops were detailed to send the 18,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division to hell.
A single road snaked from Hagaru-ri and Yudam-ni through the mountains. About halfway between lies the Toktong Pass. On November 27, 1950, Litzenberger detailed Fox Company of his 2nd Battalion to hold the pass.
Fox Company had a relatively new Commanding officer, Captain William Barber. Barber deployed his three rifle platoons in a rough circle around the top of a hill to the east of the pass from which he could cover the road and keep the Chinese from cutting the road.
Thus began a six day battle in temperatures so cold that the daily highs rarely moved above the -24 degrees discussed earlier. Fox Company's 246 Marines stood off attacks by six one-thousand man Chinese battalions - virtually the entire 59th Division of the Chinese Army - with no food, no replacements and using a hodgepodge of American and captured Chinese weapons. By day six, the Fox Company corpsmen treating the wounded were reduced to using scotch tape to cover bullet holes in their patients. It was on this day that the Marines of the First Battlion, 7th Marines fought their way through and relieved the gaunt, frozen survivors of Fox Company.
Drury and Clavin tell the story of Fox Company's stand on that godforsaken hill with a you-are-there immediacy that will have the reader curling up in a blanket on the hottest summer day. They rely on the Marines themselves to tell the story both through official reports and veterans' reminiscences. All in all, this book has joined this writer's list of military history stories that need to be read or heard by every American.
As the sixty-odd men of Fox Company still able to walk stumbled into the lines at Hagaru-ri singing or humming the Marine Corps Hymn on December 4, 1950, a Navy corpsman watching the scene remarked, "Will you look at those magnificent bastards!"
Indeed.
On August 20, 1952, President Harry Truman hung a ribbon around Captain William Barber's neck. Attached to it was the Congressional Medal of Honor.
At the end of the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri novelist James Michener asks, through a fictional admiral musing on his young pilots, Where do we get such men?
Im not sure I know either.
But I thank God every day that we do.
© 2014
Pat Gang
Keeping Your Stories Alive
The Last Stand of Fox Company
Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. 353 pp. Maps, Illustrations, Index. $25.00
Those of us living in Knoxville, TN on January 21, 1985 remember it as the coldest day in the history of the city. The mercury plummeted to a -24[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]°[/FONT] Fahrenheit low that night. This writer, a native southerner, recalls going outside that night just to experience what that level of cold was really like.
It felt cold as space.
In November, 1950, the 1st Marine Division was strung out along the road to a man-made reservoir in the mountains of North Korea near the Chinese border. According to their maps, the reservoir was named the Chosin.
As the 1st Marine Division on the west shore of the reservoir and the rest of X Corps on the east moved north toward the Sino-Korea border marked by the Yalu River, the Chinese communist leadership issued public warnings that they would resist any movements further toward the border. General Douglas MacArthur, in his comfortable headquarters in far-away Tokyo, belittled these warnings and made noises about carrying on the attack into China proper and putting an end to the communist threat in Asia. His staff ignored intelligence reports that hundreds of thousands of Chinese regulars had crossed the Yalu and were ready to attack the strung-out American columns.
The tip of the spear was the 7th Marine Regiment under the hard-charging Colonel Homer "Blitzen Litzen" Litzenberger. The 7th Marines and elements of the 5th Marines were on the west side of the Chosin Reservoir around the flyblown village of Yudam-ni. Their main supply dump and a forward air strip were at Hagaru-ri about ten miles to the south.
It was here that those tens of thousands of Chinese troops MacArthur insisted were figments of over-active imaginations made their appearance. Over 100,000 of those troops were detailed to send the 18,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division to hell.
A single road snaked from Hagaru-ri and Yudam-ni through the mountains. About halfway between lies the Toktong Pass. On November 27, 1950, Litzenberger detailed Fox Company of his 2nd Battalion to hold the pass.
Fox Company had a relatively new Commanding officer, Captain William Barber. Barber deployed his three rifle platoons in a rough circle around the top of a hill to the east of the pass from which he could cover the road and keep the Chinese from cutting the road.
Thus began a six day battle in temperatures so cold that the daily highs rarely moved above the -24 degrees discussed earlier. Fox Company's 246 Marines stood off attacks by six one-thousand man Chinese battalions - virtually the entire 59th Division of the Chinese Army - with no food, no replacements and using a hodgepodge of American and captured Chinese weapons. By day six, the Fox Company corpsmen treating the wounded were reduced to using scotch tape to cover bullet holes in their patients. It was on this day that the Marines of the First Battlion, 7th Marines fought their way through and relieved the gaunt, frozen survivors of Fox Company.
Drury and Clavin tell the story of Fox Company's stand on that godforsaken hill with a you-are-there immediacy that will have the reader curling up in a blanket on the hottest summer day. They rely on the Marines themselves to tell the story both through official reports and veterans' reminiscences. All in all, this book has joined this writer's list of military history stories that need to be read or heard by every American.
As the sixty-odd men of Fox Company still able to walk stumbled into the lines at Hagaru-ri singing or humming the Marine Corps Hymn on December 4, 1950, a Navy corpsman watching the scene remarked, "Will you look at those magnificent bastards!"
Indeed.
On August 20, 1952, President Harry Truman hung a ribbon around Captain William Barber's neck. Attached to it was the Congressional Medal of Honor.
At the end of the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri novelist James Michener asks, through a fictional admiral musing on his young pilots, Where do we get such men?
Im not sure I know either.
But I thank God every day that we do.
© 2014
Pat Gang
Keeping Your Stories Alive
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