became men, running at Marine lines.
The Chinese did not scream or shout, like North Koreans. They did not come in one overwhelming mass. They came in squads, yards apart, firing, hurling grenades, flailing at the thin line across the hill, probing for a weak spot across which they could pour down into the valley beyond.
Again and again they were stopped; again and again Chinese bugles plaintively noised the recall. The icy slopes were now littered with sprawled figures in long white snow capes.
Again and again, while the Marines' guns grew hot, they came back to flail at the hill. Looking down into the shadowy valley, John Yancey could see hundreds of orange pinpoints of light, as the enemy sprayed his hill with lead.
The night seemed endless. A grenade exploded close to Yancey, driving metal fragments through his face to lodge behind his nose. Many of his men were hit. Those who could stand continued fighting; those badly hurt were dragged some twenty yards behind the company position, where a hospital corpsman worked over them in the snow.
There was no shouting or crying. Now and then a man gasped, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm hit!' or, 'Mother of God!' and fell down.
The attacks whipped the hill. By the early hours of morning, most of Easy's men had frozen noses or frozen feet in addition to their combat wounds. Yancey's blood froze to his moustache, dried across his stubbled face. Snorting for breath through his damaged nose, he had trouble breathing.
Slowly, painfully, day began to spread over the bleak hills. Now, Yancey thought, surely it must get better, with daylight.
Instead, things grew worse.
A fresh wave of Chinese, in company strength, charged the hill. Yancey's men fired everything they had— rifles, carbines, machine guns. The Chinese fell in rows, but some came on. At his line of holes, John Yancey met them with as many of his men as he could muster, including many of his wounded. Somehow, he threw them back.
The platoon, all Easy Company was in desperate straits. Captain Phillips, who had carried ammunition to Yancey's platoon during the night, and who had said again and again, 'You're doing okay, men; you're doing okay!' took a bayoneted rifle, and ran out to the front of Yancey's line.
'This is Easy Company!' Walt Phillips said. 'Easy Company holds here!' He thrust the bayonet deep into the snowy ground; the rifle butt swayed back and forth in the cold wind, a marker of defiance, a flag to stand by.
The wounded lay helplessly behind Easy Company; there was no way to get them out. And Easy Company was not going to leave its own.
The Chinese came again. Now they stumbled over their own dead, scattered like cordwood a hundred yards down the slope. And on the hill, Americans also fell over their own dead, moving to plug the leaks in the line. Small leathery-skinned men in quilted jackets leaped into the perimeter, and over-ran the command post.
For over an hour, close-in fighting raged all over the hill. The Chinese wave was smashed, but Chinese dropped behind rocks, in holes, and fired at the Marines surrounding them.
John Yancey realized that some sort of counteraction had to be taken to push them out. He ran back of the hill, found half a dozen able men coming up as replacements. 'Come with me!'
With the new men, he charged the breach in Easy's line. His own carbine would fire only one shot at a time; the weapons of two of the replacements froze. The other four dropped with bullets in their heads—the Chinese aimed high.
Beside the CP, Lieutenant Ball, the exec, sat cross-legged in the snow, firing a rifle. Several Chinese rushed him. Ball died.
Now Yancey could find only seven men in his platoon. Reeling from exhaustion and shock, he tried to form a countercharge. As he led the survivors against the broken line, a forty-five caliber Thompson machine-gun slug tore his mouth and lodged in the back of his skull. Metal sliced his right cheek, as a hand grenade knocked him down.
On his hands and knees, he found he was blind.
He heard Walt Phillips shouting, 'Yancey! Yancey!'
Somebody he never saw helped Yancey off the hill, led him back down the rear slope. He collapsed, and woke up later in the sick bay at Yudam-ni, where his sight returned.
Behind him, on 1282, Captain Walt Phillips stood beside his standard until he died. Late in the afternoon, a new company relieved Easy; of its 180 men only twenty-three came off.
But they held the hill.
Everywhere it had been the same. Dog Company was driven from its hill three times, and three times it charged back. Captain Hull, Dog's skipper, had fourteen men left, and he himself had as many wounds.
To the east, above the pass, Barber's Fox Company was in like shape. Barber was down, but still directing the defense.
Reality had caught up with the Marines, as with all men, but they had faced it well. Everywhere, the Marines had held.
The shock of tactical defeat struck the Marines as hard as it had the Army—for tactical defeat it was, despite all the noises that went up later. Three Chinese divisions had enveloped Yudam-ni. The road to Hagaru, except where Barber's Fox Company held fast, was cut. Hagaru was surrounded, its supporting artillery firing to the four winds until paint peeled from the guns. The main body of Puller's 1st Regiment was unable to push forward from Kot'o-ri. Everywhere the road was cut; everywhere the Marines were surrounded.
Lieutenant Colonel Ray Murray, of the 5th, summed it up: 'I personally felt in a state of shock, the kind of shock one gets from some great personal tragedy, the sudden loss of someone close.… My first fight was within myself. I had to rebuild that emptiness of spirit.'
For the Marines at Yudam-ni were now ordered to retreat. It would be called an attack to the south—and attack it would be, all the way—but the field had to be left to the enemy.
There was great toughness, however, in the Marine commanders, and no sense of panic. Homer Litzenberg, of the 7th, a senior colonel already posted for brigadier, and the younger Ray Murray, a junior lieutenant colonel, men who on paper held equal commands, conferred. Together, the two men worked very well.
First, their perimeter was consolidate. Their thousand wounded were brought down from the bitter hills for care. Then they discussed getting out.
Litzenberg felt Fox Company must be relieved; it was the key to Toktong Pass. But he knew the road across the sullen cliffs was infested by Chinese. He wanted to send one battalion attacking across the hills themselves, above the road.
'I don't think the Chinese will expect us to move overland. They think we're roadbound. They think we'll have to stay with our vehicles; furthermore, they think we won't attack at night. I want to prepare to move out tomorrow—'
To which Ray Murray replied, 'Make it so.'
With the temperature standing at twenty-four degrees below zero, Ray Davis' 1/7 Marines moved out into the horrible mountains. Each man was given rations for four meals—mostly canned fruit and biscuit, which could be thawed by body heat—and each man, in addition to his weapons, ammunition, and sleeping bag, was ordered to carry one 81mm mortar shell.
As one Marine said, 'If the Chinks can run the goddam ridges, so can we.'
Tired, frozen, weakened from poor diet and shot through with raging dysentery, the battalion went over the hills, while a second, the 3/5 attacked along the MSR itself. All day the battered men fought, to clear one hill after another.
When night came, Colonel Davis knew his men, tired, sweaty, listless after a day of hard combat, might never get up again if he allowed them to bed down.
For most of the night, Davis marched his men through the hills. At dawn, they attacked again, and broke through to Barber's beleaguered company, carrying their twenty-two wounded with them. When contact was made, neither Davis nor Barber could talk coherently.
Barber still held, after five days of fighting, but he had only one officer, and he had suffered 26 killed, 89 wounded, and 3 missing. All his survivors had either frostbite or dysentery.
Behind them, and on their flank, Taplett's 3/5 Marines carried the pass in heavy fighting. With Davis' men
