Then, two hours past midnight, Chinese blew bugles and whistles and ran forward toward the lines of the French battalion.
The French nation, already heavily engaged in war with the Communists in Vietnam, had supplied only one battalion of infantry to the Korean effort. But throughout the conflict the battalion was a good one. Professionals all, the unit contained many half-wild Algerians, to whom no war was complete unless a little fun could be had out of it, too.
As the first platoon of Chinese rushed them, a Frenchman cranked a hand siren, setting up an ungodly screech. A single squad fixed bayonets, grabbed up hand grenades, and when the enemy was twenty yards away, came out of their holes and charged.
Four times their number of CCF stopped, turned, and into the night. The Frenchmen went back to smoking and telling jokes.
But in another part of the line, Heath's George Company was hit four times. With some difficulty, the company held till dawn.
With light, the Chinese withdrew to the circling hills, and the defenders had a breathing spell. The Air Force came over to search the hills with rockets and napalm, and cargo planes made two-dozen ammunition drops. Other than this, nothing occurred on 14 February.
But after nightfall, flares soared high all around the southern rim of Chipyong-ni, and the brassy noise of bugles beat on the defender's ears. Chinese began to infiltrate over the low hills, carrying pole and satchel charges. They poured into George Company, killing many men by dropping explosives in the foxholes. McGee's 3rd Platoon was riddled, and in bad shape by midnight. He asked the company commander, Heath, for help. B Battery offered men to plug the infantry line.
Heath assembled fifteen men from the supporting artillery, and sent them forward. These men were not trained as infantrymen, and when they drew mortar fire they ran back down the hill, without making contact with the hard-hit 3rd Platoon.
As they ran, the enemy poured across the 3rd Platoon area, and the hill was alight with grenade blasts and pinpricks of rifle fire.
Lieutenant Heath himself stopped the artillerymen at the base of the hill, screaming and raging at them. He re-formed them, and led them toward the blazing fire fight up above. Again the group came apart when fired on, and the men ran away.
Still on the hill, furious, Heath grabbed men by the collar and tried to make them go forward. When they refused, he came back off the hill with them. By now Chinese flares were throwing weird light over the hill and its rear slope, and the air was filled with reddish tracer. The artillerymen tried to hide themselves in the ground, and Heath ran back and forth, urging them to get up and fight.
An artillery liaison, Captain Elledge, heard Heath's yelling. Elledge was the rare breed who loved a fight. He went back to the firing positions, grabbed about a dozen men, and forced these up to the platoons' defense line. Elledge himself carried up a .30-caliber machine gun. He heard the Chinese whistling and hooting to one another in the dark, and he went forward over the hard snow to investigate. He met Chinese face to face. He killed two with his carbine in a hand-to-hand fight, before a grenade blast numbed his left arm and he retired.
Now, while the entire perimeter of Chipyong-ni was under pressure, the main CCF blow fell against weakened George Company. George was piling up the dead by the hundreds, but too many of the enemy were getting in close with explosives and hand grenades. The artillery fired star shells and HE alternately, riddling the Chinese, but still they came on.
The CCF washed up on the low ridge again and again, fighting a determined battle for each foxhole. Little by little, against violent resistance, they were chipping the ground away from the American defenders.
Heath, behind the hill, went to the 503rd's battery commander for more men. He was determined to counterattack and thrust the Chinese out of his position. He yelled over and over, 'We're going up that goddamned hill or bust!'
Again the artillery C.O. gave him all men not needed on the guns. But neither officer could force these men onto the hill.
The 2nd Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Edwards, sent a squad from Fox Company to help fill the gaping holes in George's line. Heath sent these men into the hottest part of the fight, the saddle between 1st and 2nd platoons. Within minutes, every man of this squad was killed or hurt. Still, G Company held its precarious perch on the ridge.
The 2nd Platoon's platoon sergeant, Bill Kluttz, yelled at Lieutenant McGee, 'Lieutenant, we've got to stop them!'
The Chinese kept pressing in. They did not try to overwhelm G with one vast rush, but continued to creep through the night, knocking out hole after hole. The 1st Platoon, near three o'clock in the morning, was pushed back out of position. Now without the support on his flank, McGee was down to a few able-bodied men.
And the fires of his spirit ran low, too. He said to Kluttz, over the field phone, 'Looks like they've got us —'
On another portion of the hill, Kluttz snapped back grimly, his voice carried by its own power over the wires, 'Let's kill as many of these sons of bitches as we can before they get us!'
Meanwhile, to the rear, George's 4th Platoon leader commanding the company mortars, discovered a group of artillerymen huddling together inside one of the battery's canvas tents. Fire from the hills was beginning to spray over into the valley now, and mortarmen and gunners were being hurt.
'Hell!' this officer barked at them. 'A squad tent won't stop bullets!'
Despite this officer's urging, none of these men would go up on the hill to give the riflemen a hand. Faced with being overrun, they seemed to feel that because their primary military occupational specialty did not include handling a rifle, no one had the right to make them use one.
A few minutes later, McGee's last machine gun jammed. The 1st Platoon, under its surviving sergeant, was coming off the hill; McGee and Kluttz realized they could gain nothing now by dying in place, for even their ammunition was low.
McGee, Kluttz, and four other men backed off the hill. They were all who were left.
The 23rd's perimeter was broken. The Chinese had a pathway into the vitals of the regiment. All they had to do was to exploit it.
And now, at Chipyong-ni on the night of 14 February 1951, the battle took in miniature the form it would have for the next few months: The Chinese by prodigally throwing men against fire and steel had wiped out a defending unit. Any ground commander, given men and willing to spend them, can break any ground defense, in time, at any chosen place.
The CCF had punched through George Company, on the south, but that in itself availed them nothing. Everywhere else they were still battling a solid line that could not be flanked.
And the heartbreaking effort to spring George Company had left the Chinese spent, too. Their ammunitions was low, and their supply center far behind. Their communications—horns and bugles—could not pass the word fast enough, coherently enough, that the bung had been started and that the Chinese wave might now flow through into the hollow of Chipyong-ni.
The Chinese now demonstrated what would be proved again and again upon the Korean Field of battle: they could crack a line, but a force lacking mechanization, air power, and rapid communications could not exploit against a force possessing all three.
Lieutenant Heath was on the phone to Colonel Edwards, telling him George was through. Edwards, alarmed, promised help. But all Edwards had available as reserve was one platoon of Fox Company, already minus the squad previously committed.
Edwards called Freeman—but Freeman was also scraping bottom. The 3rd Battalion was under heavy pressure, and Freeman was afraid to commit his entire reserve—one Ranger company. He granted Edwards one platoon of the Rangers and one tank.
Edwards ordered the Fox platoon and the Ranger to the G Company zone. He placed a staff officer, Lieutenant Curtis, over the two-platoon force. But at first the Ranger C.O. made trouble; he refused to take orders from anyone but Freeman. Hearing this, Edwards sent down a captain from his staff, Rams- burg, to take control and get the Rangers straightened out.
As the new force arrived in George's sector, Heath's line was only a group of men stretched thinly along a
