thing to legions the nation had. They would follow their colors from the shores of home to the seacoast of Bohemia, and fight well either place.
General Church, to whose 24th Division the Provisional Marine Brigade was attached, considered both Cloverleaf, where the 9th Infantry was engaged, and Obong-ni Ridge parts of the same enemy hill mass; however, Colonel Murray asked for permission for the Marines to reduce Obong-ni before a general assault was made upon the Bulge. Murray felt the Ridge could be quickly and easily reduced, and, secured, it could be used as a line of departure for a general attack. In this he was wrong, but General Church agreed to the proposal.
The Marine order of attack was organized. Lieutenant Colonel Harold S. Roise's 2nd Battalion would lead, followed by 1/5 and 3/5 in that order. A little after midnight 17 August, 2/5 moved into an assembly area in front of Obong-ni Ridge.
D and E companies of 2nd Battalion had been selected to lead the assault. They moved forward in the freshness of early morning, and by 0700 were in position to see their objective, a long, unprepossessing ridge, covered by shale and scrub pine, with six riblike spurs running down from it into the sodden rice paddies. Between the spurs and the low hills behind which the Marines gathered lay a long expanse of open rice fields.
The maps issued to the Marine Brigade, as all the maps used by the United Nations in 1950, were based on old Japanese surveys, and inaccurate. The Marines did not know exactly where they were. Conferring with Captain Sweeney of Easy Company, Captain Zimmer of Dog called the ridge 'Red Slash Hill.' From the Marine attack position a fresh, gaping landslide scar could be plainly seen in the reddish earth near the center of the ridge.
Andy Zimmer told Sweeney, 'I'll take the area right of that red slash.' Sweeney agreed. Each company would attack with two platoons forward at 0800, after the air and artillery preparation.
There were only 120 riflemen available to send forward in the first assault wave.
Now, far out in the Sea of Japan, the Navy carriers
For ten minutes, artillery of the 24th Division burst on the rear approaches to Obong-ni Ridge, and along the reverse slopes of the ridge itself. Then, when the artillery pounding ceased, the Marine air swarmed over the hill, blasting Obong-ni's spine. Dirt, dust, and flame spurted up in great gouts all along the ridge. To General Church, watching, it seemed as if the ridge were floating away in smoke.
Then, their bomb load exhausted, the Corsairs roared away. At 0800, the four thin platoons of Marines went forward, across the valley and toward the ridge, one thousand yards beyond.
Several war correspondents, watching from the attack positions, asked officers the name of the objective. None seemed to know, and one correspondent wrote 'No Name Ridge' on his release.
The Marines splashed across three rice paddies and skirted a cotton field, and they drew fire, not from the ridge, but from automatic weapons on their flanks. The fire grew heavier, and now gaps opened between the attacking platoons.
In spite of the fire, the platoons reached the slopes of Obong-ni. Here mortar shells crashed down on them. And here the ground steepened sharply,forcing the Marines to climb slowly and painfully toward the crest.
Only one platoon, 2nd Lieutenant Michael J. Shinka's 3rd of Dog Company, made the top. Just to the right of the big red slash Shinka found a small rain gulley leading upward, and through this his men crawled, bent over, panting, to the crest. Shinka reached the top of Obong-ni with only two-thirds of his original thirty men—while the other platoons, faced with steep ground and heavy fire, stalled halfway up the slope.
The twenty men atop Obong-ni had no protection to either flank. They found a line of empty foxholes dug by the NKPA, and poured into them, just as a hail of machine-gun fire whipped at them from enemy positions to their right. And then hand grenades soared through the air from enemy holes down on the reverse slope.
The Marines could handle the resistance below them on the slope, but they couldn't stop the enfilading machine-gun fire from their right. Any man who came out of a hole was hit. Within minutes, Mike Shinka had five men down.
There were no Marines supporting him, either to left or right. He realized the ridge was too hot. He shouted to his platoon sergeant, Reese, to get the wounded down, and ordered 3rd Platoon back down the hill.
Pulling the wounded men on ponchos, the Marines slithered back down the gulley to a position halfway down the hill, where they had reasonable cover. Shinka raised his company CP by radio.
'We can reach the top and hold it,' he told Zimmer, 'if you can get that flanking fire off our backs.' Shinka, counting, saw he had fifteen men left out of thirty. 'Give me an air strike and more men, and we can make it.'
'I can't give you any more men,' Andy Zimmer said. 'But the air strike is on the way.'
All of the platoons of Dog and Easy had been stopped along the ridge, and Dog's reserve had had to be committed to assist the platoon on Shinka's flank. Waiting for the Marine Corsairs to return and plaster the hill, Shinka and the other platoon officers did their best to coordinate a fresh attack.
The Marine aircraft buzzed over Obong-ni once again, blasting the snaky spine with high explosives until the ground trembled underfoot. When they finished, American tanks moved out into the open valley east of the ridge line and hurled shells into the sides and crest of Obong-ni.
The decimated Marine platoons went up the hill again. Again the enemy fire blazed up, much of it coming from the Cloverleaf hill complex on the north. North Koreans rushed back into their holes along the top of the ridge, which they had abandoned under the air strike, and rolled hand grenades down the front slope.
Again Mike Shinka and platoon were the only Marines to make the crest. Shinka arrived this time with nine able-bodied men. They saw moving men on the ridge to their left. The platoon sergeant, still on his feet, called, 'Easy Company?'
A blast of automatic fire answered him.
'Son of a bitch!' Sergeant Reese yelled, and returned the fire with a BAR.
Again Shinka's platoon was in an untenable position, enemy fire chopping at it from left and right, and from the reverse slope of Obong-ni. Reese fell shot through the leg; another man took a bullet in the stomach.
On the crest a bullet shattered Mike Shinka's jaw. Choking on his own blood, he bent over and hawked to clear his throat. He was unable to use his radio. He motioned his men to get back down the ridge slope.
As he checked the ridge to make sure no wounded Marine had been left behind, a new bullet took Shinka in the arm. The impact knocked him rolling down the slope.
As Shinka and his bloody survivors crawled back to their covered gulley, a storm of fire shattered the entire Marine attack against Obong-ni. By 1500, of the entire 240 men who had been committed against the enemy, 23 were dead and 119 wounded in action.
They hadn't taken Obong-ni Ridge—but a lot of them had died trying.
At 1600, Colonel Newton's 1st Battalion relieved the battered remnants of 2/5 in front of the ridge.
In command of the l8th Regiment, NKPA, holding Obong-ni Ridge, Colonel Chang Ky Dok knew his situation was increasingly desperate. During the day he had suffered six hundred casualties, forcing the 16th Regiment, which defended Cloverleaf, to reinforce him with a battalion. His ammunition supply was dwindling at a frightening rate. He had no medical supplies, and his wounded were dying from lack of attention.
He knew he could not withstand another day of American air and artillery pounding and a fresh Marine assault up the ridge. Because he had a captured American SCR-300 radio, tuned in on Marine frequencies, he knew that the 1st Battalion had relieved 2/5 along the front of Obong-ni, and he knew approximately where the companies of 1/5 were located, for the Marines talked a great deal over the air.
At last Colonel Murray had realized that Cloverleaf had to be taken before his Marines could assault Obong-ni, and late in the afternoon the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, had pushed the l6th Regiment from that supporting position. The American 19th and 34th regiments were pushing attacks north of Cloverleaf against the right flank of the NKPA salient with some success.
About to be flanked, Chang Ky Dok requested permission to withdraw west of the Naktong. The request was denied.
Colonel Chang, as all senior commanders of the Inmun Gun, was a veteran of Soviet schooling and the North China wars. He knew his only hope was to shatter the American attack before it started on the 18th. He was short of men, short of food, and, worst of all, low on ammunition. But he could still place superior combat power against the thin Marine lines in front of him at places of his choosing.
