The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat (41 page)

Farther down the MSR, at 6:30 a.m. Lieutenant Colonel Davis's four outlying companies sent out reinforced details to sweep the surrounding hills of any Chinese blocking the road south. Fifteen minutes later the main column of Americans at Sinhung-ni moved out. Hot on its trail were at least twelve enemy divisions-more than 100,000 Chinese troops.

Davis's patrols flushed the last remaining battalion of the CCF's Fifty-ninth Division. The enemy retreated northwest, pulling heavy machine guns on two-wheeled carts-directly into Litzenberg's and Murray's main column coming down the road. The Chinese were sandwiched in the southern valley almost directly below Fox Hill, and the haggard Marines of Fox Company were content to sit back and watch the ensuing bloodbath.

When the Chinese realized their predicament, they halted and turned confusedly in all directions. But they were trapped. Finally their officers formed them up to stand and fight. Captain Barber decided that fighting would not be necessary-at least for the Marines-and ordered Lieutenant Campbell to call in an artillery barrage from Hagaru-ri. The Chinese were cut down by the howitzers.

When the artillery bombardment ceased, the Corsairs appeared overhead. Any enemy soldiers still standing were annihilated. Between six days of fighting on Fox Hill and this final engagement, the CCF's Fifty-ninth Division had been wiped out. It would not effectively re-form for the remainder of the Korean War.

Warren McClure stood beside Ernest Gonzalez and watched the bombardment from a high, rocky fold near the med tents. The two Marines, like the rest of the company, had been ordered to gear up for what would prove to be a daylong evacuation. When the slaughter was over neither said a word. After so much deprivation, neither felt a need to gloat. Vae victis-woe to the conquered. It was 8 a.m.

Fox Company's Headquarters Unit would be the first to leave, folding into the forward companies of Davis's First Battalion as it led the breakout column south to Hagaru-ri. As the Marines of the Headquarters Unit began to assemble on the MSR, McClure briefly considered trying to get back to his old foxhole for his kit. But he just could not find the strength to go up that slope.

Ernest Gonzalez, who had come down from his position on the hilltop, already had his rucksack slung over his shoulders-he had abandoned all his souvenirs except the bayonet and the camera. He couldn't find his foxhole buddy Freddy Gonzales: he had lost Freddy in the excitement when the Ridgerunners entered camp. As Ernest was checking the med tents-he knew Freddy's feet had been frostbitten badly, but he did not know that Freddy's cousin Roger had died-he was handed a field phone by Sergeant Audas and was told he was the Third Platoon's new communications specialist. Audas reminded him to remain within eyesight of Captain Barber for the entire evacuation of the hill. "Or else," the sergeant said.

Barber, his stretcher propped up against a rock between the med tents, was only a few yards away, talking with Lieutenant Colonel Davis and several other officers and corpsmen. McClure and Gonzalez saw the new doc, Lieutenant Arioli, appear from under one of the tent flaps and walk toward the little group. Just as Arioli opened his mouth to say something, he was shot through the head by a sniper. He fell, dead, at their feet.

For the first time on the hill, Bill Barber felt like weeping. He turned his head for a moment and pretended to blow his nose. Then he stiffened, swiveled, and directed a corpsman to add Dr. Peter Arioli's body to the frozen heap of American dead. The sniper was never located.

McClure and Gonzalez watched Arioli's body being carried off. They were struck by foreboding. No one wanted to be the last Marine to die on Fox Hill.

At 12:30 p.m., a helicopter from Hagaru-ri, piloted by a single Marine officer, landed on the hilltop and began unloading medical supplies. The chopper, peppered by small-arms fire from the enemy's last enclave on the West Hill, rose away the moment it had emptied its hold. It hovered for a moment, then spasmed and sputtered. To some Marines it appeared as if the pilot were doing aerobatics. They started to laugh: Showoff.

Then the helicopter spun out of control, flipped upside down, and crashed on the east slope, narrowly missing one of the First Platoon's light machine-gun emplacements. No one on the machine-gun crew was injured, but the chopper pilot, Lieutenant Robert Longstaff, was crushed to death on impact. Walt Klein and the mortarman Richard Kline helped carry his body back into the perimeter. They laid him next to Dr. Arioli.

As the rejuvenated Marines of Fox Company hustled to secure the hill Private First Class McClure's quest for his gear had become almost tragicomic. At 2:40 p.m., fortified once again by a strong cup of joe, he began his trek up and across the slope. Midway there he saw the barrel of a Pershing tank emerging from behind the West Hill as it rounded the bend on the MSR. The tank was followed by a motley column of American vehicles filled with the wounded and dead.

McClure turned and stumbled down the hill as fast as his whistling lung would allow. Midway to the road he paused to catch his breath, not realizing he was standing next to the stack of American dead. One of the green ponchos laid over the bodies had blown away, and he saw a frozen arm sticking straight up out of the pile. The dead American's hand was open, as if waving for help. McClure shuddered and moved on.

After another fifty yards he had reached the road-or at least the ten-foot sheer cut bank. He took a chance and jumped. He landed with a thud and rolled; it felt as if a glass bottle had broken inside his chest. He crossed the MSR behind the tank and in front of a train of slow-moving bulldozers, trucks, and Jeeps. He dropped to his knees and made a feeble hitchhiking gesture with his good left hand. A Jeep carrying four Marines pulled to the side. A sergeant in the front passenger seat helped McClure climb in and wedged him between two wounded NCOs in the backseat.

The position was painful; McClure didn't care. He was off the hill. He wanted to turn to take one last look. Instead, he passed out.

Wayne Pickett had never been to Yudam-ni, but even in the pale moonlight he recognized the black ice of the "Frozen Chosin." Pickett was part of a small band of American prisoners who picked their way through the scattered detritus of battle, including the bodies of hundreds of Chinese who had frozen where they had fallen. It had taken three days for Pickett's group of POWs to walk to this site from the corral where he and Troy Williford had been held. He had no idea whether Daniel Yesko, the wounded Marine who had been carted away in the North Korean ambulance, was still alive.

The Americans in Pickett's group, perhaps three dozen by now, were marched to a hut near the shore of the reservoir and herded into a lean-to behind it. They were handed a ball of rice-the same food their captors ate, they noticed-and were only loosely guarded. The Chinese, intent on starting a warming fire, did not fear any escape into this frozen wilderness.

That morning a Corsair had machine-gunned their ragged little group as it descended from a ridge onto a spur path of the MSR, and Pickett had banged his knee hard on a rock when he dived for cover. His knee soon swelled to the size of a pumpkin, and as he lagged farther and farther behind the column of captives, his fear of being shot increased. Instead-to his surprise-his Chinese guards seemed to understand his predicament, and two of them slowed down and dawdled with him until he arrived at Yudam-ni three hours behind the rest. He was glad they were not North Koreans.

Inside the lean-to, a Chinese political commissar demanded that the Americans sign a prepared statement, written in English, attesting that they were being treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Pickett hesitated until he saw two captured Marine officers put their names to the paper. He signed when his turn came.

Among the POWs were a few old China hands who spoke a little of the language, and news spread among the Americans that their final destination was a camp far to the northwest, near the border with China. The Marines had also come to understand that most of their guards were conscripts into the CCF who had fought against Mao during the Chinese civil war and were deemed too untrustworthy for the front lines. These soldiers appeared to hold no particular animus toward the United States and surreptitiously passed along snatches of intelligence when they could.

They told their prisoners that the other Americans were in disarray, running for the safety of Hagaru-ri. They did not seem to take any great joy in sharing this information-it was just another turn in the war. When Wayne Pickett asked after the fate of Fox Company on Toktong Pass, no one could answer him.

Sergeant Audas made the Chinese prisoners carry the Fox wounded down the hill. The Americans, swaddled in the blue, yellow, and red silk of the supply-drop parachutes, resembled bulky, oddly wrapped Christmas presents. A Marine from the Fifth Regiment slogged past Howard Koone's stretcher and recognized him from back home in Michigan. He stopped to light a cigarette for Koone and handed him a stick of gum.

Bob Ezell was laid on the road next to the semiconscious Lieutenant Lawrence Schmitt, the officer whose leg had been broken by sniper fire as he recovered supplies from the first airdrop. Ten days earlier, late on Thanksgiving night, Schmitt had written a letter to his wife: "We sang the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' 'America,' and 'My Country 'Tis of Thee.' The Chaplain said a prayer, and the Colonel gave a talk. Me, I have a lot to be thankful for: my wonderful wife and boy, our house, our health, and our faith. May the Good Lord continue to be generous to us. All my love, Larry."

Now Schmitt lay on a litter at the side of the road, his skin gray and his eyes yellow. A Marine from Yudam-ni passed by and saw Schmitt's Fox Company insignia. The man doubled back. "I hear you guys took out thirty-five hundred gooks," he said. "Great job. Saved our asses keeping the pass open."

Schmitt did not answer. The Marine looked at Ezell, who also said nothing.

Ezell watched as Eleazar Belmarez's stretcher was strapped to the hood of a Jeep and his wounded legs wrapped in dirty blankets. Next, Edward Gonzales-the Marine who was buried alive in the mysterious explosion during Fox's third day on the hill-was placed in a six-by-six. Gonzales had not yet regained consciousness (and wouldn't come to until the next day). Just as Ezell began to wonder when his turn would come, his litter was abruptly lifted from the road and tied onto the front passenger seat of a Jeep. He still could not move his legs. He asked for a weapon. Someone handed him a carbine. Damn carbine, he thought. Aim for the head.

Wounded men were still being loaded into every possible open space on every possible vehicle-some were even strapped to the barrels of howitzers. The bodies from Fox Hill, stiff as icicles, were piled in the lee of the larger hut. Toward the center of the Yudam-ni column were three heavy trucks packed with equipment. Captain Barber hailed them and ordered the dead piled on top of the gear. But there was not enough room. Eight bodies remained.

Barber, with Private First Class Bob Kirchner and Sergeant Kenneth Kipp supporting him under each arm, directed the eight corpses to be carried to a shallow gulley on the north side of the MSR, between the huts and the spring. He assembled what the official Marine Manual calls a "hasty burial detail." Spades and shovels chipped into the frozen ground. Someone found a chaplain from the Fifth Regiment and escorted him to the site. He opened his Bible and read a few words as a bonfire incinerating all of Fox Company's excess equipment and captured ordnance blazed not far away. In the shadows cast by the flames, several Marines of Fox Company vowed to return for their friends' bodies.

Phil Bavaro, the company cook, turned from the shallow graves and searched for a lift. Fox Company had been designated the main column's rear guard, and most of the vehicles were already well down the road. What Jeeps and trucks remained were crammed to overflowing with men wounded far worse than Bavaro. His feet swollen and painful, Bavaro grabbed hold of the tailgate of a truck inching down the MSR and resigned himself to the seven-mile hike to Hagaru-ri; he was afraid that he would fall asleep on his feet if he didn't hold on. Walt Hiskett, his arm in a sling, fell in next to Bavaro. Hiskett was guiding the blinded Amos Fixico.

It was 3:35 p.m. when Captain Barber, having ensured that every living man on his company roster left Fox Hill, was lifted into the passenger seat of a Jeep. Three dead Marines were strapped across its bumpers and hood. From the passenger seat, Barber turned over command of Fox Company to the most senior lieutenant on the scene, Lieutenant Ralph Abell of the Ridgerunners.

There was some emotion involved in this handover: Abell had commanded Fox Company's First Platoon before being transferred to Lieutenant Colonel Davis's staff, and now he was being given command of a battered company less than the size of that platoon. Of the seven officers who had formed Fox Company at Camp Pendleton in July, only he and Lieutenant Dunne still stood.

Barber's Jeep rolled down the road, and Ralph Abell noted that the captain did not look back.

Snow began falling again as the column of Marines moved south during the afternoon, through dusk and into the night. Occasional ten-minute breaks were passed up the line to allow stragglers to catch up. During one break a warming fire was lit, and word was passed to be on the lookout for lone Chinese soldiers attempting to infiltrate the American lines. This spooked some Marines. One approached his gunnery sergeant and said that "an armed gook" had indeed sneaked into the column.