Three-War Marine Hero [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

03-03-03, 06:31 PM

MH: What was Cape Gloucester like?

Davis: There were a lot of knobs of ground off the beach for us to set up our AA guns, but we only had three airstrikes. After that, I was moved to the 1st Marine Regiment as the 1st Battalion commander, serving under Puller from the end of December 1943 to January 16, 1944. The 1st Division was then pulled back to Pavuvu, in the Solomons, to prepare to go to the Palau Islands.

MH: The Palaus--meaning Peleliu Island?

Davis: Yes. I landed at H-plus-1 hour--September 16, 1944--in the regimental reserve, transferring from boats to amphibious tractors. We lost a lot of tractors because the Japanese were shelling the beach and the water. I jumped off my tractor on the beach and got a mortar sliver through my left knee. It wasn't serious--I just put tape over it and got to work.

MH: What had to be done?

Davis: The lead battalion had been badly hit. Our mission the next morning was to pass through it to seize the regimental objective--some coral ridges. There was also a giant building--I was told that it was an engine repair shop--which had walls 3 feet thick and had not been touched by our naval bombardment. I took 25 casualties, including three dead, trying to take that objective, then I called the battleship Mississippi to put a few holes in it with her 14-inch guns. We then went in to take the ridges, but found ourselves being shot at from three directions. We found one enemy machine gun in a cave, 40 feet behind us, firing. Overall, the division was losing about 1,000 men a day for the first six days. I lost all my platoon leaders, and our casualties amounted to about 70 percent in 10 days. We went forward about 400 yards and held the ground we gained, with the help of naval and air support, until we were relieved by another battalion. We were then given another mission--to sweep the east side of the island, in order to protect the flank of our forces on the ridgeline. It was low ground, and there were few enemy soldiers there.

MH: Apparently the Japanese had selected only the best places to concentrate their defenses on Peleliu.

Davis: Yes, they did a good job of preparing for us. We found five levels of caves in that ridge--heavy in-depth defenses that we had not heard about. In retrospect, we could have saved a lot of lives by not trying to take the whole island. After we secured the airfield, we should have pulled back, got into a siege stage, got our guns up and just pounded the place.

MH: How long were you on Peleliu?

Davis: After less than 20 days, they shipped the remnants of my battalion to Pavuvu. Of 900 Marines, 72 percent were casualties. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, I came home after that and went directly to Quantico, where I served in the Marine Corps School and as an infantry instructor in the Marine Air Infantry School, consolidating ground and air forces for lieutenants and captains.

MH: Where were you when the war ended?

Davis: I was at Quantico from 1944 to 1947, when I went to Guam with the 1st Marine Brigade--until a typhoon blew the camp away. I went to Washington in 1948, then to Chicago to train the 9th Infantry Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. In 1950, I got orders to go to the West Coast, form a new battalion in four days, then take a ship to Inchon, Korea. The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, was 60 percent reservists. They practiced marksmanship by firing their weapons off the fantail at boxes the Navy men threw overboard.

MH: What was your first mission in Korea?

Davis: After we landed at Inchon on September 21, 1950, the 7th Regiment's mission was to go to the northern part of Seoul to protect our forces there from attack from the north. We guarded the Seoul*Pyongyang road, then moved north to Uijonbu. The NKPA [North Korean People's Army] was on the run--there were just enough skirmishes there to get my men well-trained. After Seoul was liberated, we were pulled out, loaded onto ships and sent to the east coast--only to find our objective, Wonsan, mined. It took five days to clear Wonsan Harbor--Bob Hope arrived there before we did!

MH: Where did you go after that?

Davis: In October, we went to Hamhung, where we moved into the mountains. We were to relieve an ROK [Republic of Korea] battalion near the Changjin hydroelectric plant in the mountains northeast of Chosin. When we got there, I took a jeep on a reconnaissance mission, with an ROK lieutenant as an interpreter and adviser. He kept telling me of the Chinese presence and even showed us 20 Chinese prisoners his men had captured.

MH: Was anyone concerned about the Chinese presence in Korea?

Davis: The South Koreans were. Our commander in chief, General Douglas MacArthur, was not. Meanwhile, during the last week in October, we got orders to seize the village of Sudong. As we prepared to jump off, we had our first fight with a Chinese regiment. We were well-positioned on high ground and beat them off. Then a Chinese battalion came down a railroad tunnel and attacked us. That night, a North Korean tank, with sandbags on its turret, rolled into my command post, turned on its lights and started shooting. My recoilless rifle crews fired back, and although we failed to knock it out, it withdrew and headed back north. We fought off the infantry assault with grenades and recoilless rifles, aided from the air by Marine [Vought F4U] Corsairs. In the morning, the enemy came in range of our heavy machine guns, and we mowed them down. We killed about 600 of them. Later, we also found four more abandoned, camouflaged NKPA tanks near their lines.

MH: Wasn't that enough to catch MacArthur's attention?

Davis: MacArthur sent some of his staff over, but he still couldn't believe that it was more than a few "volunteer units."

MH: When did the "Chinese Phase" of the war begin in earnest?

Davis: Well, on November 10, we celebrated the Marine Corps' birthday by swimming in the river near the hydroelectric plant. It was that warm. But then, on November 16, the Siberian wind shifted. The temperature dropped to 16 degrees below zero in one night. On November 25, during Thanksgiving dinner, we were fired at, but it was inaccurate. Then, on November 26 and 27, our patrols reported that they were finding increasing resistance--and then the Chinese offensive began.

MH: What was your situation amid the general chaos?

Davis: Two rifle companies of the 7th Marines--Dog and Easy companies--were hit very hard. All I could do was tell them over the radio that I would send my S-3 [operations officer] with a jeep load of ammunition to them--there were no reinforcements. They held; the regiment finally sent another com-pany to reinforce them, and that worked out. But it was a very heavy assault on the two positions, and they had taken heavy casualties. The Chinese came in waves and the Marines slaughtered them. I had artillery firing just in front of the defenders. At the same time, Baker Company had sent out a long-range patrol that got ambushed. The company commander was hit in the face. I took Able and Charlie companies down the road to Turkey Hill--the place where we had had Thanksgiving dinner just days before--got B Company's casualties on trucks and sent them down the road to Hagaru-ri. The regiment told me to leave a company there, because there was a block in the road. I left C Company, but soon after I went back to our perimeter with A and B companies, C Company came under attack. We got artillery support to them. I was considering going back in the dark, but C Company's commander said his men could hold, so I waited until morning. They took at least 30 casualties--they had been hit hard, since a reinforced rifle company had 200 troops.

MH: It sounds like the situation was becoming untenable.

Davis: We had to fight our way back--the Chinese were starting to press us from all sides. The 5th and 7th Marines had orders to withdraw eastward to rejoin the division at Hagaru-ri. It was very foggy at that time, so I mounted a boulder about 3 feet high and started directing traffic from three directions. I later learned that while I was doing that, a truck driver named Louis Tragas turned on his lights, saw me in the fog and asked a sergeant, "Who's that man?" The sergeant replied, "That's Colonel Davis," and Tragas exclaimed to him, "Look, he's got a halo--we're all going to get out of here!"

MH: Another legend born of the fog of war! But didn't one of your rear-guard companies still need to be extricated?

Davis: Yes. About that time, the 7th Marines' headquarters had moved back to Hagaru-ri. Colonel Homer L. Litzenberg, the regimental commander, described the situation. Fox Company, which had served as our rear guard, had been cut off. Three or four attempts to reach them had failed, but they were holding. Litzenberg told me, "Be back in 20 minutes with a plan." The plan I came up with was to go around the mountains to the north--about an eight-mile trek--then go in and rescue them. The unit I led was streamlined by leaving half the heavy machine guns, heavy mortars, all vehicles and all casualties behind with the regimental train. However, we doubled up on ammunition--extra mortar rounds, rocket rounds, machine-gun belts--as well as three days' rations, so the troops were still overloaded.

MH: What was the mission's progress?

Davis: On November 30, we fought our way out of the perimeter just as darkness was falling. Up where we had driven off the Chinese, I plotted a course through the mountains. It was too cold to think--our artillery reported that it was 24 degrees below zero in the valley and an estimated 75 degrees below zero wind chill in the mountains--so I went in with the S-3 to get an azimuth. I simply said, "Toward that star," and everyone thought that the star picked to guide us doubled in brightness. We headed out single file. There was no security ahead or in the flanks.
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