The Last Stand of Fox Company

The Last Stand of Fox Company

By Allan Millett Contributor

At the dawn of the Korean War, with its corps facing encirclement by a Chinese army, one Marine company was tasked with controlling a key mountain road out of North Korea. Their stand at Fox Hill against an entire division of Chinese troops has become legendary.

The 233 enlisted men of Fox Company viewed their new mission with considerable irritation. After digging in to defend the new base of Hagaru-ri, their company commander, Capt. William E. Barber, announced they were moving to a different position. On the morning of Nov. 27, 1950, Barber’s commander, Lt. Col. Randolph S.D. Lockwood, told Barber he had a new job for Fox Company. It would follow the rest of the regiment to the town of Yudam-ni—14 uphill miles into the mountains of North Korea. Military brass knew the Chinese Army had moved divisions into the hills west of the Changjin reservoir (mistakenly named Chosin reservoir by the Americans), the area’s dominant terrain feature. Fox Company was to ensure that no Chinese infiltrators would ambush the convoys bound for Yudam-ni with ammunition and supplies.

That afternoon, Fox Company began to move to its new position at Toktong Pass. Caught behind the tractor-drawn howitzers of 4th Battalion, the men took three hours to advance seven miles. Once the Marines arrived, however, their job wasn’t done. In the fading daylight, the CO told his executive officer, Lt. Clark B. Wright, that the company could have C rations, small fires and a warming tent after the men had dug their foxholes. Having joined the regiment only four days earlier, Barber (pictured below) was new to the war, but not to combat. Born in Dehart, Kentucky, he had been a Marine since 1940 and an officer since 1943. He’d commanded a rifle platoon and an infantry company on Iwo Jima, and he wore a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his service. Now, just a few days shy of his 31st birthday, he was commanding a company of Marines.

Sgt. Charles C. “Top” Dana regarded Barber as a cold professional with technical knowledge but limited leadership skills. He watched Barber set in each squad, establish machine-gun positions, plot mortar barrages, establish listening posts, and direct the laying of wire to the EE8 sound-power phones in every platoon sector. Sgt. John Page, a squad leader of one of the two machine guns attached from Weapons Company, agreed that Barber knew tactics, but other soldiers such as Lt. Joe Brady, a platoon commander and former Dartmouth football standout, wished the warming tents had been a higher priority.

Lt. Donald H. Campbell, the forward observer from How Battery, plotted coordinates for the defensive fires from his battery’s six 105mm howitzers. However, Capt. Benjamin S. Read, the battery commander, would not allow actual registration fires, the normal procedure. The cold and altitude, Read told Campbell, might bring shells down on the trucks still grinding their way up the pass. But the weather and climate conditions would be the least of their concerns as later that night Campbell learned that How Battery might be low on shells.

The cold would prove to be a serious concern for other soldiers. For Sgt. John Henry, a strapping 25-year-old who had been an Army Air Forces turret gunner in World War II, the issue was whether or not his water-cooled Browning .30-caliber machine gun would function in the cold. The cylindrical reservoir around the barrel held antifreeze, which burned off rapidly. The two big Brownings from Weapons Company anchored the defenses on the Yudam-ni road. But if the Brownings proved to fail because of the extreme cold, then Henry hoped the Marines had their M-1s close by. He wished they had mines, barbed wire and more grenades.

After dark, when the men finally finished “digging in,” Barber allowed fires to be stoked and coffee to be made. Knowing that the cold was a major problem, Henry took the opportunity to put hot water into the jacket around his machine gun’s barrel to keep it thawed.

***

The men of Company F, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, found themselves at the Toktong Pass for a single reason— it was a chokepoint on the only mountain road that ran between Hagaru-ri and Yudam-ni (see map below). The Marines had come to northern Korea because the army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had invaded the Republic of Korea in June 1950. By mid-October, a U.N. authorized force—which included six divisions of the U.S. Army and the 1st Marine Division—had driven the North Koreans to the Chinese border.

It was at this time that Mao Zedong decided that Korea should be “liberated.” The Chinese army in Korea, commanded by Peng Dehuai, embraced the mission of defeating Western imperialism. Peng feared, however, that American air and ground firepower made a more lethal foe than the Chinese Nationalist and Japanese armies. By late November, the Chinese People’s Volunteers Army (CPVA) knew it would not have Soviet air cover, so success would depend on the rapid movement of Chinese infantry at night to avoid airstrikes. Besides using the concealment of darkness, the CPVA ultimately had to abandon artillery and mortars unless mules or ponies could carry them. The heaviest weapons the Chinese would carry were light mortars, howitzers and machine guns; they would largely depend on grenades, rifles and submachine guns. The strategy was to deploy quickly without noise or visibility to launch surprise assaults against infantry and vehicle columns. (Senior Marine officers knew the Chinese would be challenging foes because many of them had served in China. For example, Capt. Robert H. Barrow, CO of Able Company, 1st Marines and a future commandant, had spent a year leading Chinese guerrillas against the Japanese.) With this in mind, Mao instructed Peng to surround and “annihilate” the elite 1st Marine Division, dispatching the 9th Army Group and its 12 divisions (10,000 strong each) to Korea for this purpose.

***

When Fox Company arrived at Toktong Pass, it had completed its part of a redeployment that put two Marine regiments west of the Changjin reservoir with the 1st Marines guarding the single road south to the sea. Maj. Gen. Oliver Prince Smith (pictured below), who had issued the orders, accepted the new mission with grave doubts about its success. Well-informed about Chinese movements by his intelligence, Smith knew he risked entrapment by a much larger Chinese force. He was especially concerned about the security of his base at Hagaru-ri where he had built an airfield. He could spare no troops from Hagaru-ri for security missions to the north, so the 7th Marines would guard the road to Yudam-ni while the 5th Marines attacked to the west.

Col. Homer Litzenberg shared Smith’s fears of a Chinese ambush. He recognized the importanceof the Toktong Pass, a narrow defile halfway between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri. Fox Company could not count on the Hagaru-ri garrison for help since it had only part of an infantry battalion and two artillery batteries to man a wide perimeter. The Hagaru-ri garrison could provide just six 105 mm howitzers of How Battery to support Fox Company.

Before Fox Company reached the Toktong Pass, Barber chose to defend a ridge that ended as a steep cut where it reached the road. Barber had to concede some high ground to the Chinese, who would use the highest part of the ridge for mortar and machine-gun positions that could put observed fire down on Fox Hill. The advantages of the hill were the open areas on either side of the ridge. If an enemy attack did not overrun the knob, the Chinese would expose themselves to enfilade fire. The road cut would make it difficult for the Chinese to climb the ridge from the road. The knob-saddle position, however, had to be held or the Chinese would split the company (see map of the battle below, courtesy of the U.S. Army: blue lines represent U.S. positions, red arrows represent Chinese attacks, blue arrows represent route of withdrawal).

Fox Company had other advantages. Its officers knew tactics, and it had numbers and weapons. The unit had eight officers and 233 enlisted Marines and Navy corpsmen. The company deployed with eight .30-caliber machine guns, two 81 mm mortars, three 60 mm mortars, and two 3.5-inch anti-tank rocket launchers. The 81 mm mortars and 60 mm mortars could fire illumination rounds as well as high explosive shells, a welcome capability in night combat.

Barber placed his three rifle platoons, each with a machine-gun section, in a U-shaped perimeter with the open end on the road. At the head of the U knob-saddle position, Barber deployed his 3rd Platoon with two squads. Two machine-guns dug in on the forward slope, and one squad was placed in reserve. The other two platoons had to put all three squads on line to defend the long sides of the perimeter.

Barber knew his crew-served weapons would make a critical difference. He placed all five mortars along the road. His two attached machine guns and two rocket launcher teams covered it in both directions. The positions offered security to the two small shacks that served as company headquarters, supply point, aid station and warming shelters.

By midnight, Fox Company had done all it could. Officers and NCOs walked the lines to ensure at least 50 percent alert. The night was frigid (minus 20 degrees), clear and illuminated by a full moon.

At 2 a.m., in complete silence, a battalion of the CPVA 59th Division came, rising like ghosts out of the darkness. The leading Chinese company threw grenades at the Marines and charged the two forward squads at the nose of the U perimeter. The 100 or so Chinese quickly overwhelmed the two Marine squads. Only eight of the 35 Marines in the forward holes fought their way out unwounded. Lt. Bob McCarthy, a 28-year-old platoon commander and Sooner who had attended Oklahoma A&M before joining the Marines after his sophomore year, watched a fallen machine gunner shoot six Chinese with his .45 before bleeding to death. McCarthy evacuated the wounded, and he and the remaining squad held the reserve position, which was soon surrounded by about 100 dead Chinese. By the time the attack was exhausted, 15 Marines were dead.

Another pair of Chinese companies assaulted the lower edge of the road, advancing toward the mortars and showering grenades. Despite two killed and four wounded, the mortar squads displaced up the hill by echelon and kept firing. The rocket launcher sections, headquarters Marines and two heavy machine guns stopped the Chinese below the cut. One group of Chinese broke from the road and climbed the draw in front of the 2nd Platoon, which broke up this group in a blaze of fire. A squad of the 1st Platoon joined the defense of the road until all the Chinese were dead or in retreat. Lt. Wright and “Top” Dana moved the company headquarters, supply points and aid station (now two tents) uphill into a forest of stunted pines.

Barber and McCarthy directed the defense at the crest of the hill. The left flank held because of the determined defense by a handful of Marines from two hard-pressed fire teams. Almost all of them became casualties. One near breakthrough collapsed under the BAR and rifle fire of Pvt. Hector A. Cafferata and Pfc. Kenneth R. Benson, a pair of young men from New Jersey who had enlisted together. As Cafferata blazed away, his blinded partner, Benson, loaded weapons. Caught with his wet boots off, Cafferata fought five hours crippled by frostbite. Before the battle ended, he’d lost one arm to a grenade and the use of his other arm to a bullet.

The fighting ebbed at dawn. Fox Company still held its hill at a cost of 20 dead, 54 wounded and three missing. It had used up most of its ammo, especially grenades and mortar shells. Patrols counted 450 Chinese bodies around the perimeter. The Marines killed the remaining Chinese wounded, but took three prisoners.

Offered an ill-advised chance to withdraw by his battalion commander, Barber decided to hold his position since he could not move his wounded to Hagaru-ri, which was also under attack. Instead he brought the full fury of Marine airpower. Strikes by Australian F-51s and Marine Corsairs blanketed the ridges north and west of Fox Hill with rockets and bombs (pictured below, courtesy of the United States Marine Corps). Corsairs made several attacks at low altitudes, guided by radio direction.

Expecting another attack that night, Barber used the daylight hours of Nov. 28 to reorganize his rifleman and machine gunners while Campbell directed artillery fire onto suspected Chinese positions. How Battery could now fire barrages without adjustment fires. To cover the entrants to his lines caused by gullies and transverse ridges, Barber ordered his 81 mm and 60 mm mortars to plan the final protective fires that would land on the Chinese just in front of the foxholes. During the day the mortar teams put harassing fire on the ridges around Fox Hill. With the mortar officer and NCOs wounded, Pfc. Lloyd O’Leary took charge of the sections.

The six Navy corpsmen worked throughout the day to keep the seriously wounded Marines warm inside tents tucked away in a wooded draw. Newly issued winter sleeping bags helped stop shock, but the corpsmen had to keep blood plasma and morphine liquid enough to flow by storing the plasma bags inside their parkas and the morphine syrettes inside their mouths.

The principal tactical problem during daylight was to mount anti-sniper patrols along the road and lower ridgelines. When working parties retrieved the first parachute bundles of ammo and supplies dropped by Marine transports, Chinese snipers wounded two sergeants and a lieutenant leading the operation. Lt. John M. Dunne, commander of 1st Platoon, tracked and drove off the snipers with help from a fire team, allowing the much-needed bundles to be dragged back to the perimeter.

The second Chinese battalion attack began in the wee hours the next morning. It started with a sudden mortar barrage on the forward positions of a much smaller 3rd Platoon, killing two Marines. The Chinese attackers managed to find a gap between the 3rd and 2nd Platoons, and perhaps 40 Chinese actually entered the perimeter where they fell into confusion. The Marines of the 1st and 2nd Platoons simply did an about-face and wiped them out inside their lines. At the front of the counterattack, Barber took a crippling leg wound, his second. Lt. Elmo Peterson of the 2nd Platoon also suffered a second wound but fought on. The battle faded away as dawn broke. Fox Company had held the hill at a cost of five more dead and 29 wounded. The Marines counted 200 more Chinese dead or dying. A small team from 3rd Platoon led by John D. Audas, a platoon sergeant from Chicago who had tasted combat at Guadalcanal, finished off the nearby wounded. The cries of the Chinese beyond the perimeter slowly faded as they froze to death.

***

Despite having lost 28 men and seen another 83 wounded, Barber believed his company could hold, even though “effectives” included walking wounded, severe frostbite cases and “zombies” suffering from sleep deprivation. Dunne’s 1st Platoon, however, had taken few casualties so it became the company reaction force to chase off snipers and retrieve supplies. The mortars and rocket launcher teams remained off the road but covered it with an attached machine-gun section. The company had lost only two crew-served weapons—bad news for the Chinese—and airdrops had delivered mortar shells, ammo and cases of fresh radio batteries.

Limping badly, Barber walked the perimeter to find his men stacking the bodies of frozen Chinese onto parapets around their fighting holes. He and McCarthy concluded that the company could survive at least another night. McCarthy shortened his lines around the nose of the perimeter. As long as air strikes and artillery scattered the Chinese snipers and mortar crews, Fox Company could recover the precious airdrops. Barber did not expect relief for at least another day and told his Marines this news.

The Chinese made a third assault in the early hours of Nov. 30—Barber’s 31st birthday—with a fresh battalion. Fox Company destroyed three of four companies with mortar shells and machine-gun fire under the glare of parachute flares. Only one Marine was wounded, and no Chinese reached the perimeter. At daylight, Corsairs returned to strike the Chinese hill positions as Fox Company brought in more air-dropped supplies. Among the munitions were 81 mm mortar illumination rounds and six cases of hand grenades.

The next day, Fox Company policed its position, gathered the dead, tended its wounded and prepared for another night attack. By now, Barber knew that two Marine battalions had started down the road from Yudam-ni to Hagaru-ri. Airdrops and air strikes continued throughout the day. Barber sent a patrol north of Fox Hill, and it found the Chinese in force and combative. One Marine died in the firefight and four others were wounded. While the relief columns struggled through snow in an epic night march, Fox Company remained alert and endured long-range sniper fire. Near noon on Dec. 2, the lead elements of two American regiments from Yudam-ni reached the Toktong Pass.

Its objective completed, Fox Company marched for Hagaru-ri that night.

***

Fox Company’s defense of Toktong Pass remains a compelling example of how a single infantry company could defeat a force 10 times its size. Its heroic defense prevented the CPVA 59th Division from having three unmolested days in which to turn the pass into a death trap for the two Marine regiments returning to Hagaru-ri. Just how many troops the 59th Division lost remains uncertain, but the frozen bodies never cleared by the Chinese numbered more than a thousand. The cost to Fox Company was not trivial: 26 dead, 89 wounded and three missing.

The defense of Fox Hill, however, was only one of the many company actions by Marines that made the Changjin reservoir campaign a memorable demonstration of Marine Corps tactical superiority. Maj. Gen. Frank E. Lowe, President Harry S. Truman’s personal observer in Korea, and Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall, the celebrity author and tactical analyst, both called the 1st Marine Division the best American unit in the field.

The Chinese apparently agreed. After 1950, the CPVA avoided making the 1st Marine Division the object of any major offensive. The “last stand” of Fox Company contributed to that decision.

Allan R. Millett currently holds the Stephen E. Ambrose Professorship at the University of New Orleans and is the director of the university’s Eisenhower Center for American Studies.