Leatherneck Article Topic: History

On Nov. 27, 1950, the 5th and 7th Regiments of the 1st Marine Division were in Yudam-ni, a mountain hamlet on the western side of the Chosin Reservoir, positioned for a thrust west across the upper reaches of the Taebaek Mountains and a link-up with the American 8th Army. The Marine offensive would be part of the “Home by Christmas” offensive, the grand design of the U.S. Commander in Chief, Far East, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, to end the Korean War. As proposed in his double envelopment strategy, found in Roy E. Appleman’s “South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu,” the X Corps, which included 1stMarDiv, and 8th Army would act as giant pincers, ensnaring and destroying the remnants of the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) that were fleeing north after the breakout of the 8th Army from the Pusan Perimeter and the successful amphibious landings of 1stMarDiv at Inchon in September. 

In developing this stratagem, MacArthur’s war planners seemingly disregarded reports that Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) were amassing in southern Manchuria, and that perhaps tens of thousands of them had already crossed into North Korea by the middle of October, writes Appleman. 

The 5th and 7th Marines began moving west and were shortly engaged, not by the disorganized units of the NKPA but by the hardened troops of the 79th and 89th Divisions of the CCF’s IX Army Group, 3rd Field Army. A third division, the 59th, struck to the rear at the Toktong Pass to interdict the main supply route (MSR). After four days of violent combat, the 5th and 7th Marines began a fighting withdrawal to Hagaru-ri, the division’s forward operating base some 14 miles south. They brought with them all their wounded and dead; and they did so during one of the coldest winters seen in northeast Korea—blustery, snowy Siberian winds dropped the temperatures into the minus 30s, causing weapons, artillery and vehicles to malfunction. Moreover, though they had been issued cold-weather gear, an alarming number of cold-weather casualties began to appear—hypothermia, chilblains, trench foot and frostbite of the face, hands and feet.

Meanwhile, more divisions of the IX Army Group struck south at Hagaru-ri, Koto-ri and Chinhung-ni and cut the MSR in several places. The hardest hit was Hagaru-ri. There, on the night of Nov. 28—“Hagaru’s Night of Fire,” according to Lynn Montross and Nicholas Canzona’s “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign”—the 58th Division attacked the southwest defensive perimeter and threatened to overrun a medical battalion hospital and the partially completed airstrip, which Lieutenant Colonel John H. Partridge’s 1st Engineer Battalion had been working on since the division arrived in Haragu-ri on Nov. 15. Fortunately, with the help of a detachment of engineers who left their heavy equipment and took up arms, the attack was thwarted. 

As the fighting in the southwest wound down, another CCF division attacked East Hill, the largest of the hills surrounding Hagaru-ri. During the ensuing seesaw battle, the Chinese Communists took the hill and resisted several attempts to dislodge them. By the morning of Nov. 29, the only force preventing a CCF breakthrough at East Hill was a ragtag group of defenders—administrative and supply personnel, and bits and pieces of infantry units—bolstered by several tanks and machine-gun emplacements.

Though seriously outnumbered, the doughty defenders of Hagaru-ri had held the line, and further CCF attempts to breach the defensive perimeter would fail.

During the early morning of Dec. 1, General Oliver P. Smith met with his division surgeon, Captain Eugene R. Hering Jr., at the division command post at Hagaru-ri. Smith recorded the reason for the meeting in his aide-mémoire (war journal) entry for that day: “The casualties in his installations were piling up and he was concerned over his ability to provide suitable medical care. At that time he had about 600 casualties at Hagaru-ri awaiting evacuation.” Hering expected “400 additional casualties” to arrive from the east side of the Chosin Reservoir, where the 7th Infantry Division’s 31st Regimental Combat Team had been decimated by several CCF divisions, and many, many more from the 5th and 7th Marines, who were fighting their way back to Hagaru-ri. “The only solution to our casualty problem,” wrote Smith, “was the completion of the C-47 strip.” However, he noted that “the Engineers considered the strip to be only 40% completed”; nonetheless, “it was decided to bring in a C-47 on a trial run.” 

At about the time of their meeting, General William H. Tunner, commander of the Combat Cargo Command of the U.S. Far East Air Force, received a message from Colonel Hoyt Prindle, his liaison officer with X Corps—a composite of 1stMarDiv and the 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions, commanded by Army General Edward M. Almond. In the message, Prindle related the important details of recent staff meetings at the Corps headquarters in Hungnam, which can be found in Tunner’s book “Over the Hump”: “I am in General Almond’s outer office and waiting to get in to see him. I attended briefings both last night and this morning … The situation at and near the Chosin Reservoir is critical. We must exert every possible effort to airdrop supplies and ammunition into that area in order to get the 1st Marine Division out or we will be lost. There are already between 900 and 1,000 casualties that urgently need air evacuation now. If we don’t get them out, they won’t get out.”

Prindle also briefed Tunner on the status of the landing strip at Hagaru-ri: “A 3,200-foot strip being hacked out of the frozen earth will be ready by 4 p.m. this afternoon. It may or may not be under enemy fire. We will have to take that chance. If usable it will help the air evacuation situation and also re-supply the unit that is near the strip. The support of others must be handled by air drop.”

He further expressed the need for immediate action, stating that “roughly ten Chinese Red divisions” were “closing in” on Hagaru-ri and that waiting a “few more days” was not an option. He wrote, “The roads to this area are cut in a number of places and everyone will have to fight his way out.”

Later that same morning, Prindle again messaged Tunner: “I just came out of Almond’s office and he asked me to express to you in the strongest terms the urgency of the situation in the Chosin Reservoir area. Re-supply of those units will have priority over all other requests.” Prindle emphasized in his closing remarks that “the drop situation and the relief of the 1st Marine Division is most urgent,” and recommended a course of action: “It is a C-47 operation entirely from the way I look at it … if we are able to air land into the strip which is located one mile south of the southern end of the reservoir.” C-47s and their Marine Corps variant, the R4D, were large, multi-engine transports that could carry up to 6,000 pounds of cargo, 28 troops or walking wounded, or 18 stretcher cases—and more often than not carried far more.

Tunner, who had directed the 1948 Berlin Airlift, agreed with Prindle. After receiving the approval of his superior, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, commander of the U.S. Far East Air Force, he recalled telling Pringle, “I am going to move every C-47 I’ve got up there.” He also committed to using “two squadrons of C-119’s … to do air drops of ammunition, clothes, and anything else” the Marines needed.

According to Paul C. Fritz’s article “The Kyushu Gypsy Squadron in Korea” in Air Power History, word was soon passed to the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS)—the “Kyushu Gypsies”—at Itazuke Air Base in Japan to dispatch 11 C-47s to Yonpo Airfield, the aviation facility closest to the port city of Hungnam, the southern anchor of 1stMarDiv’s MSR.

The first Gypsy C-47 touched down at Hagaru-ri on the afternoon of Dec. 1, but, according to “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign,” the landing and subsequent takeoff were anything but uneventful: “It was a tense moment, at 1430 that afternoon, when the knots of parka-clad Marine spectators watched the wheels of the first FEAF C-47 hit the frozen, snow-covered strip. 

The big two-motored aircraft bounced and lurched its way over the rough surface, but the landing was a success. An even more nerve-racking test ensued half an hour later when the pilot took off with 24 casualties. It seemed for a breath-snatching instant that the run wouldn’t be long enough for the machine to become airborne, but at last the tail lifted and the wings got enough ‘bite’ to clear the hills to the south.” 

In fact, the Air Force considered the flights to be so dangerous that it prohibited flight nurses of the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron based at Yonpo from participating in them; only aeromedical technicians of the squadron provided in-flight care. 

When casualties from Hagaru-ri arrived at Yonpo Airfield, they were triaged by X Corps medical clearing teams to one of the three fully staffed and equipped hospitals in the Hungnam area; to the hospital ship, USS Consolation (AH-15), moored in Hungnam Harbor; or flown to a military hospital in Japan. 

The evening of Dec. 1, survivors of the embattled 31st Regimental Combat Team began arriving at Hagaru-ri. About 1,050 of those making it to safety required evacuation.

On Dec. 2, “an all-out effort was made to evacuate the casualties on hand by both C-47 and liaison plane,” Smith wrote in his aide-mémoire. Nine hundred and sixty casualties were flown to Yonpo that day. According to Gail B. Shisler’s book “For Country and Corps: The Life of General Oliver P. Smith,” things were so busy at the airfield, that it reminded Smith of LaGuardia Airport.

At about this time, Fritz, the assistant squadron officer of the 21st TCS, flew into Hagaru-ri, and later wrote of the experience: “Hagaru-ri lay in a bowl formed by mountains in all directions, except on the north side, which opened to the reservoir, a long narrow lake extended northward. The hamlet and our newly hacked airstrip area were protected from excess water by a long east-west dike about twenty-five high. The airstrip was oriented north-northwest to south-southeast, with the north end pushing right up to the dike. These features dictated landings north, with a guarantee of no over-shooting, and takeoffs south.”

Fritz also noted that runway was “about 2,500 feet” and that there was a “parking area for three C-47s.” Between the hamlet and airfield to the west was a “drop zone for C-119s,” above which “Marine Corps and Navy fighter aircraft droned in lazy circles.” But what he found most memorable was what he saw in and around the makeshift terminal: “After parking, I learned that people can overcome unbelievable difficulties. To an ex-Minnesotan and ex-infantryman/officer, this was a composite of a disaster and catastrophe. Severe cold greeted us, with a horrible stench—a pungent combination of vehicle exhausts, fired gunpowder, smoke from bonfires, and men’s bloody clothing over unwashed bodies.” Those ambulatory casualties who were waiting to be evacuated were “huddled speechless in knots, their eyes vacant from witnessing untold horrors, unshaven for days, and wearing blankets draped over their shoulders.” Everyone was disabled in one way or another: “Many hobbled about with walking poles or canes fashioned from tree limbs. Some were barefoot with bright-red or gangrene-blackened feet. One man who boarded my C-47 flipped away all of his toes like rotten apples before getting aboard. Not a word was spoken—a brief flicker in their eyes was their thanks for our ‘magic-carpet’ that would whisk them away to safety and medical attention.”

Some 464 casualties were evacuated to Yonpo on Dec. 3. At dusk, when air operations ceased, most of the casualties remaining at Hagaru-ri were those unable to be transported out and those among the survivors of the 31st Regimental Combat Team trickling in.

Sometime that day, Capt Hering went to the division command post to see Gen Smith. In his oral history transcript in the Marine Corps University Archives, Smith would remember that Hering was “fit to be tied” because he realized that some men with minor wounds or mild frostbite were gaming the system. Apparently, medical malingerers “would go down to the strip and get a blanket and a stretcher and then groan a bit,” and try to talk their way onto a flight. “It was our fault probably,” Smith admitted, “because the Air Force had sent up what they called an Evacuation Officer, and the doctor [Hering] assumed that the Evacuation Officer would see that the proper people got aboard the planes, but that was not his function at all; he was just thinking in terms of planes, not on what was flown on the planes.” As a stopgap measure, Hering promptly introduced a stationed at the loading area of every outgoing plane. “Nobody after that got on any plane without a [doctor-issued] ticket that showed that he was due to get out,” said Smith.

Hering also issued strict, multilevel triaging procedures for frostbite casualties, documented in a 1stMarDiv special action report dated Oct. 8-Dec. 15, 1950: “All frostbite [cases] were screened three times, once by their own unit surgeons, again by the medical companies and finally by a team consisting of the Division and Regimental surgeons and a senior line officer from each regiment. As a working criterion, those with large blisters or large discolored areas [Grade 3 frostbite] were considered candidates for evacuation.” 

Borderline cases were referred to Hering, who later explained the simple but austere standard—the “Lessenden Rule”—that he used to decide for or against evacuation in his article, “Combat Medical Practice”: “This sorting of frost-bite added greatly to our medical burden and was … almost brutally done, as we needed every man capable of bearing a rifle … I personally passed on all controversial cases, using as my criteria the feet of the 5th Regimental Surgeon [LCDR Chet Lessenden]. He refused to be evacuated although he could not walk without great pain, but insisted on riding in an ambulance with his medical section. Those worse than we evacuated, those less fought their way back.”

Just after 7 p.m. on Dec. 3, the lead element of the column from Yudam-ni entered the Hagaru-ri defensive perimeter, and about twenty hours later, the rear guard arrived. As noted in one account of the heroic withdrawal from Yudam-ni in “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign,” “The four-day operation passed into history. Some 1,500 casualties were brought to Hagaru, a third of them being in the non-battle category, chiefly frostbite cases. It had taken the head of the column about 59 hours to cover the 14 miles, and the rear units 79 hours.” 

The medical needs of the arriving casualties overwhelmed the medical facilities and personnel at Hagaru-ri. Yet, as Capt Hering later recalled, “Somehow they were sorted, those in need given resuscitation and definitive care, sheltered, warmed, and fed.” The critically wounded were shunted to the two medical battalion hospitals, Charlie and Easy Med, which were near the airstrip. 

The commanding officer of Easy Med, Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles K. Holloway Jr., a veteran of the Second World War and one of the most experienced surgeons in the division, vividly remembered the challenges he faced on Dec. 4, as recounted in his unpublished manuscript “Escape From Hell: A Navy Surgeon Remembers Pusan, Inchon, and Chosin”: “We had so many patients lying, sitting, and standing that we could hardly see the floor. The 300 triple-deck bunks of our expanded capacity were simple wooden frames that held the patients’ own litters. I stacked patients like sardines in the commandeered pyramidal tents, 25 casualties in a circle around the center stove.

Those whose surgery could be delayed “were evacuated by air to get needed surgical treatment later at the First Marine Division Hospital in Hamhung.” Those “who had made the supreme sacrifice for their buddies” were placed in a “morgue tent” erected in front of the hospital.

Dec. 5 was 1stMarDiv’s last full day at Hagaru-ri, and the rush was on to evacuate the remaining casualties. That day, according to Air Force historian William M. Leary’s book “Anything, Anywhere, Any Time: Combat Cargo in the Korean War,” the 21st TCS “flew 44 missions into the perimeter … the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing flew 10, and a detachment of C-47s from the Royal Hellenic Air Force flew 8.” Together they “brought in 254,851 pounds of freight and 81 replacement Marines” and evacuated “1,561 casualties.” Regretfully, wrote Leary, “there was neither the time nor the space on the airplanes to bring out all the bodies of the dead.”

While the busiest day of the airlift unfolded, correspondents scrambled to file their last-minute reports from Hagaru-ri. All civilians and nonessential personnel were directed to leave by the end of the day, as Gen Smith had ordered 1stMarDiv to begin the breakout from Hagaru-ri the following morning.

Their dramatic stories, accompanied by maps, filled the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Their common theme: The oldest and most venerated division in the Marine Corps, the finest group of fighting men in the world, was in mortal danger of being annihilated by an overwhelming force of Chinese Communists. An estimated nine divisions had taken up positions along the MSR with the avowed intent of exterminating the 1st Marine Division. When a reporter asked Gen Smith whether he was retreating or withdrawing from the Chosin Reservoir, he replied that he had done neither. There is no retreating or withdrawing when you’re surrounded, he was purported to say, you can only attack. His response was quickly transmuted by the press into perhaps the most memorable phrase of the war: “Retreat, Hell! We are just attacking in a different direction.” Smith had refused General Tunner’s earlier offer to fly out the entire division—“It just didn’t occur to us that we wouldn’t be able to fight our way out,” he later said, according to the Marine Corps University Archives transcript.

During the snowy, sub-freezing morning of Dec. 6, the 7th Marines passed through the Hagaru-ri defensive perimeter and proceeded along the MSR toward Koto-ri, some 11 miles to the south; the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir had begun. “Twenty miles of icy, winding, mountain road barred by a 6,000-foot pass with enemy spread on both sides, stand between the Marines and the open road to the ocean,” wrote war correspondent Keyes Beech that day.

Colonel Forman who flew the last transport out … was notified by radio jeep that there was one more wounded man desperately in need of expert medical attention. For one hour Forman waited while the enemy closed in on the field. Eventually a jeep drove up with the last casualty who was taken aboard.” 

As the plane lifted off through a swirling snowstorm and hail of enemy gunfire, countless Chinese Communist foot soldiers swarmed over the abandoned airfield. 

The following day, General Stratemeyer sent a redline message to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, General Hoyt Vandenberg, reporting that 4,369 wounded Marines and soldiers had been evacuated by the Combat Cargo Command during the six-day Hagaru-ri airlift, as documented in “The Three Wars of Lt. Gen. George E Stratemeyer: His Korean War Diary.” By any standards, it was a historic achievement—a “very outstanding performance,” commented Stratemeyer in a dispatch to General Tunner. Time magazine was so impressed with the airlift that it featured Tunner on its Dec. 18 cover, calling him the “Airlifter.”

Gen Smith was unsparing in his praise of the Hagaru-ri airlift. “I believe the story of this evacuation is without parallel,” he wrote in his aide-memoir. “Credit must go to the troop commanders whose determination and self-sacrifice made it possible to get the wounded out, to the medical personnel whose devotion to duty and untiring efforts saved many lives, and to the Marine and Air Force (including Greek) pilots who accomplished this difficult task without a fatal accident in spite of the hazards of the weather and the rudimentary landing strip.” 

The “fabulous” airlift ushered in a new era in combat medicine, Hering said in a press conference after 1stMarDiv reached the safe environs of Hungnam, prompting one exuberant Kansas City Star reporter to label aeromedical evacuation as the “great medical weapon” of the war. Later, Hering would clarify its role in military medical operations in the article he wrote for The Military Surgeon journal: “Air evacuation is only a link in the chain of casualty care. It is a strong member of the team, but it is not the whole answer. Every other member of the team must be utilized under most conditions, from the company aid men all the way through to the evacuation hospital, the naval hospital ship, and the base hospitals in the zone of the interior. It is a wonderful adjunct, our greatest advance in the evacuation of casualties, but still an adjunct.”

Featured Image (Top): Casualties are loaded onto a C-47 at Hagaru-ri for evacuation during the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950. Over six days, more than 4,300 casualties were flown out under constant threat of enemy fire.

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Authors:

Dr. Eugene Ginchereau is a military historian and retired Navy physician. 

André B. Sobocinski serves as the historian at the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.