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thedrifter
01-24-09, 07:49 AM
Courage In Korea
January 24, 2009 12:36 am


ON THE bitterly cold evening of Nov. 27, 1950, a couple of hundred United States Marines scrambled through howling frigid winds up an ice-covered hill near the Chosin Reservoir, not far south of North Korea's border with China. A few hours later, the Chinese communists entered the war in earnest with a mammoth attack across a broad front.

For six days Fox Company of the 7th Marines clung to their icy outpost under a succession of assaults by waves of Chinese infantry. Their frozen hilltop overlooked Toktong Pass, a bottleneck through which thousands of their comrades eventually would be obliged to pass en route to safety. Night after frigid night, in temperatures far below zero, fresh enemy battalions swarmed up the hill, sometimes reaching the crest and having to be thrown out at daylight.


Air-dropped supplies often missed the narrow crest, and snowstorms retarded tactical air support. Company commander William E. Barber went down badly hurt, but limped around his perimeter until prostrated by his wounds; then he made his rounds being carried on a stretcher.

The story unfolds in riveting detail in "The Last Stand of Fox Company," based on extensive interviews with veterans of the event. In an earlier best-selling book, "Halsey's Typhoon," authors Drury and Clavin perfected the art of interviewing survivors and knitting together their story. They seem not to have strong grounding in Marine Corps history--for instance they identify Iwo Jima as an atoll. Most of this narrative, however, resonates strongly because virtually every vignette either quotes the veterans or is based directly upon their testimony.


Fox Company's ordeal played an important role in a much larger drama--the near-entrapment of an entire Marine division, and a forlorn U. S. Army detachment on other duty nearby. In one of the most embarrassing failures in all of American military history, Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrogantly insisted that things were as he hoped they would be, and suffered a disaster of epic proportions.

MacArthur's companion in embarrassment was a Virginian, Gen. Edward M. Almond, perhaps the VMI graduate least representative of that Institute's high attainments.


The stand on Fox Hill finally ended when a battalion from the Marine force deeper in the mountains, for whom Fox Company had been holding open the pass, made an epic night march across miles of wintry precipices to join them. It was hard to tell who was rescuing whom when the two frozen units hooked up on the critical hill.


The new National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico memorializes the stand by Fox Company with a major "immersion gallery," in which visitors stand amid the figures, brushed by a cool breeze in faint simulacrum of the arctic original, amid the sounds of a full-fledged Chinese attack the second night of the battle. It is one of only three such galleries in the museum; a fourth, on Belleau Wood, is in production.

Among the salient virtues of "The Last Stand of Fox Company" is its vivid characterizations of some of the principal actors in the drama. The colorful cast included a strapping New Jersey teenager, Hector Cafferata, who single-handedly held the nose of the hill for a time. Frozen limbs permanently crippled Hector to some degree; he received the Medal of Honor in the aftermath, as did two other defenders.

Chew Een-Lee, a Chinese-American Marine lieutenant who was stern to the point of truculence, and determined to die bravely, fought on despite dreadful wounds. Lee wore a bright pink cape so that his men could see him easily, indifferent to the fact that the enemy could do the same.

Dick Bonelli, a brash, skinny 19-year-old, roamed the hill and annoyed his comrades. "Don't know who that guy is," Hector Cafferata said, "but he's damn lucky we need every man we got."

Twenty-seven photographs illustrate "The Last Stand," and 15 maps supply essential background. Nine of the maps focus on the little hilltop to which Fox Company clung so desperately. One shows the precise location of the foxholes of 43 individual Marines. Military history always requires good maps for reference. This detailed story of men facing death would lose most of its impact without the superb maps that provide context.

The book's title might be a bit askew. "Last Stand" conjures up Isandlwana, Thermopylae, Dade, Custer, Grattan and Fetterman. Driven to the brink though they were, some of Fox's men survived to limp raggedly into Hagaru-ri singing the Marine Hymn.

Its hyperbolic title notwithstanding, "The Last Stand of Fox Company" is the best book about 20th-century combat at the individual level that I have seen in the last decade.

A related aside: Although John Schneider arrived in Korea only a full year after Fox Company's desperate venture, his newly published USMC memoir warrants mention here as a corollary from the same latitudes. "Purple Hearts-Battle Scars: Memories from the Forgotten War" (301 pages), is readily available from Amazon and elsewhere. It deserves attention as a gripping and vivid narrative about dramatic events, written by a perceptive eyewitness.

Robert K. Krick of Fredericksburg was chief historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park for 30 years. He is the author of 15 books. His latest work, "Civil War Weather in Virginia," was published by the University of Alabama Press. E-mail him in care of gwoolf@free lancestar.com.




THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY: A TRUE STORY OF U.S. MARINES IN COMBAT

By Bob Drury and Tom Clavin (Atlantic Monthly Press, 353 pages, $25)

'TOUCH BOX' PROGRAM: Washington's Ferry Farm, 268 Kings Highway (State Route 3 east), Stafford. This new program enables the blind and visually impaired to explore the history of Washington's boyhood home. Braille and large-print maps also available. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; adults, $5; ages 6-17, $3; under age 6, free. 540/370-0732; ferryfarm .org.

Ellie

DocGreek
01-25-09, 11:06 PM
Ellie....ever heard some of the very early comedy, of Bill Cosby? He was a Corpsman, with The Marines, in Korea, and did a "stand-up" routine, about his experiences.....VERY FUNNY!!.....Doc Greek

Petz
01-26-09, 02:12 AM
I read this in the last (or the one before last) leatherneck... though it wasn't talking about a book... it was their story of this hill defense.

the humper
01-30-09, 09:40 AM
Ellie....ever heard some of the very early comedy, of Bill Cosby? He was a Corpsman, with The Marines, in Korea, and did a "stand-up" routine, about his experiences.....VERY FUNNY!!.....Doc Greek


served in the states and in Newfoundland, and did a whale of a job. But didn't have the opportunity to make it too K.
Sf
NC