Meanwhile, Captain Brownell had organized his reserve platoon for a counter attack to hurl the Chinese off the hill—many of them were already in some of the abandoned bunkers. They waited for artillery to fall in support —but commo was still spotty, and the artillery did not arrive.
'Hell with it,' one of Brownell's officers snapped. 'We can take the damned hill ourselves!'
Forming a long skirmish line, they advanced through the dark, firing rifles and carbines. They had many white phosphorous grenades, and they hurled these into bunkers and trenches as they passed. As each grenade exploded on the hill, advancing infantry stood out sharply in the ghastly light; then the men went blind again.
After sharp, close-in fighting, Brownell threw the scattered, disorganized Chinese off his hill. Sometime after midnight, the position was restored.
But numerous Chinese had flowed around King Company, and were heavily engaged with I in its rear. With daylight some two hundred of them burrowed into bunkers between K and I, and Colonel Hanes realized this force had to be reduced before nightfall 18 May, or his entire line might break.
Hanes personally led the counterattack under extremely heavy mortar fire from his supporting 4.2's. The Chinese broke and ran. Many were killed fleeing, while Hanes lost no one.
During the day, King Company strengthened its defense once more, while on its right the entire X Corps line was swinging southwest, to prevent a possible CCF envelopment.
Bunker Hill was becoming more exposed by the moment. With dark, Brownell and his men crawled deep into their strong holes. And with dark, they heard the sound of horns again.
Not like the British at Boston, marching arrogant and erect, but padding cat footed, hunched over, their buttocks near the earth, the horde of Chinese ran forward to Bunker Hill.
Brownell called for artillery. This time he had communication.
But the enemy walked in over his own dead, and reached King's bunkers. Brownell told his platoon leaders what he planned to do, then asked for variable-time shells directly on the hill.
The shells whooped in, bursting a few feet above ground, spraying the area with sizzling shards. It was recorded in the Division Operations Journal that 2,000 rounds of 105mm shell burst over Bunker Hill within eight minutes.
Gradually, it grew quiet. Then Chinese artillery began to probe the hill; the CCF was not yet ready to accede.
The Chinese, climbing over their dead, came again.
When they were firmly on his hill, Brownell called for every inch of 800 to be seared with fire. The 38th Field Artillery, that night, fired ten thousand rounds alone, and other artillery units supported, too.
Nothing above ground could live. Brownell and his men, who had built well, were untouched. At dawn, the CCF broke and streamed north, leaving only their dead behind.
King company was king on Bunker Hill.
It was not easy for Hanes and Brownell to give up, on 19 May, when orders from General Almond forced the 3/38 to move south out of what had become a dangerously exposed position, as part of a general consolidation of the corps lines.
By 21 May, Ned Almond realized that the massive CCF thrust against Ruffner's division had been contained. By swinging wide the door but holding the hinges, the X Corps had led the CCF into a bottomless pit; it rushed into the valleys, ran short of ammunition and supply, and died in windrows under the pounding of U.N. air, artillery, and armor.
It had no chance of cracking the whole line, or of exploiting. It had struck against a division very different from its old acquaintance of the Ch'ongch'on. Understanding that the CCF had been stopped and was faltering, Almond ordered X Corps to counterattack. He talked Van Fleet out of an additional division and the 187th Airborne RCT, and on 23 May, attached to the 2ndDivision, he sent the paratroopers north.
The first attack proved that the U.N. now held the initiative. Almond ordered the 187th, with the 72nd Tank Battalion, to form Task Force Gerhardt—named for the C.O. of the paratroopers—to advance to the Soyang, seizing the bridges there and killing as many Chinese as possible on the way.
While the Chinese still defended from roadblocks, and their men still wandered armed through the hills, the main body of the Chinese armies was in full retreat. As Task Force Gerhardt pursued them, the Chinese displacement became a rout.
U.S. tasks roared past abandoned supply, pack animals, ammunition. They went by burning villages and dead Chinese lying beside the roads, killed by tank fire or air strafing.
The CCF, which had come across the Soyang singing, fled back in disorder. On 28 May, Inje fell.
By launching a powerful counterattack almost before the end of what was to be the most spectacular defensive stand of the war, X Corps had suddenly, sharply, changed the course of war. The Chinese had now completely lost the initiative; worse, they had been hurt almost beyond recovery.
Against the 2nd Division had been committed at one time or another ten CCF divisions, and during the month of May an estimated 65,000 Chinese and North Koreans had died under its guns.
In one valley, alone, where the artillery had done its work, 5,000 corpses were counted.
At the end of the May Massacre, the Eighth Army again moved north.
When it stopped, it would not be stopped with guns, but with words.
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Part III
Blundering
29
Truce Talks
— General Matthew B. Ridgway.
ON 1 FEBRUARY 1951 the U.N. branded Red China as an aggressor, and at the same time passed a resolution in effect abandoning the objectives it had set forth on 7 October 1950, for it now stated such objectives should be accomplished through peaceful means.
Since action in the Security Council had been blocked by a Malik veto, the General Assembly voted 44-7, with 9 abstentions, that,
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