On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

by Hampton Sides

As abruptly as it had started, the battle stopped, and an eerie silence fell over Pennsylvania Avenue. It was the largest gunfight in the history of the Secret Service. Two men lay dead or dying, and three others were wounded. Twenty-seven shots had been fired in less than two minutes.

If the North Koreans had vanished into the hills, then bring on the Chinese. How disconcerting it would be to come all this way and never see an enemy.

Not until the 1980s would the United States Air Force acknowledge that this was a case of a lost nuclear bomb—there would be several during the Cold War—an incident category known in military parlance as a “broken arrow.”

Marine Corps was established on November 10, 1775, in a tavern in Philadelphia—Tun Tavern, it was called. The details are sketchy, but that was when and where the first recruits of the Continental Marines were said to have formally enlisted during the Revolutionary War.

Marines believed they were imbued with special traits, a special mystique. They were the first to fight, and they were always faithful: Semper fi.

It was Marines serving in China during World War II who took a local industrial expression and popularized it, creating what became the definitive adjective capturing the special quality Marines were supposed to have: gung-ho. Its Chinese characters literally meant “work together.”

Though formally attached to the Navy, they weren’t sailors. One could think of them as infantry, but they were emphatically not of the Army.

No one can save us but ourselves.

“If I’d known what the temperature was,” said a truck driver from North Carolina, “I probably would have died.”

Almond, pointing them out to Mrs. Rhee, gave Haig the credit for having located such beautiful objets d’art in a war-ravaged city. Wrote Haig, “Mrs. Rhee, a brusque and outspoken woman, fixed the general with a disdainful stare. ‘Then your aide should know for future reference,’ she said, ‘that in Korea vases of this kind are used as chamber pots.’

Smith’s own tastes tended toward the Spartan—he was “as spare as the Marine Corps itself,” wrote one Marine historian. He felt a bit queasy about eating such a meal, with such splendid appointments, knowing that his regiments were freezing out in the field, and in harm’s way. The extravagance of the feast felt unseemly. Once again, he thought, Almond was tone-deaf to the true battlefront situation. To Smith, this Thanksgiving dinner had taken on the quality of a fete that anticipated the war’s end.

“The Great Appalachian Storm of 1950,” as it would officially become known, was the costliest and most destructive storm then recorded in U.S. history—a wintry vortex that few saw coming, and few understood even after it had arrived.

The men of Fox Company didn’t know anything about Barber’s intrepid performance on Iwo Jima—how he’d come ashore as a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant and, within a few short weeks, had found himself leading not just a platoon but a rifle company, in some of the most horrendous fighting the Marines had ever faced. He was shot in the hand, then suffered a nearly catastrophic concussion, blood pouring from both ears. He was evacuated, but he recovered and returned to the battle, where he endangered his life crawling through enemy cross fire to rescue a couple of wounded men. Barber fought to the bitter end.

He was what the Marines call a “mustang.” Mustangs are officers who began their careers as enlisted men and earned their commissions by working their way through the ranks and proving themselves in combat. They’re officers who, as a result of their grunt pedigree, often seem to have a comprehensive perspective that gives them a special confidence in the field.

“Luck in combat is fickle,” Barber once said. “But I’ve noticed through the years that those who make the best preparations enjoy the best luck.”

In olden days, when it got this cold, warriors laid down their arms and said, “See you in the spring.” A gentleman’s agreement.

“Hey, Robinson—back inside!” Robinson glowered. “Get the fuck outta my way.”

If it is true that a fish rots from the head down, then MacArthur did not know it. His organization in Tokyo, which had put so many American troops in harm’s way, was a nearly perfect reflection of himself. Yet the man was incapable of accepting blame, or assuming responsibility, for the mistakes that had been made. Already he was beginning to cover his tracks, to write his own posterity papers.

He seemed to find solace in the making of concrete plans.

Said Acheson: “We can’t beat China in Korea. They can put in more than we can. Our one imperative step is to find a line that we can hold, and hold it.”

“I should have relieved General MacArthur then and there,” Truman wrote.

No mainland Chinese emissary would appear at the United Nations for more than twenty years.

In Koto-ri, that very week, upon learning that a big airdrop of supplies, packed in Tokyo, contained condoms, Puller had been heard to growl, “What the hell do they think we’re doing to these Chinese?”

“So the Chinese are to our east. They’re to our west. They’re to our north. And to our south. Well, that simplifies things. They can’t get away from us now!”

The story of Task Force Drysdale would turn out to be a story of thirds. The front of the column, about four hundred men in all, would reach its destination—mauled, but still ready to fight.

Chew-Een Lee had loved his father’s collection of ancient Chinese history books. He was especially fond of the turbulent period known as the Three Kingdoms.

The stratagem worked: The enemy returned fire. Lee, now knowing where the Chinese bunker was hidden, crawled right to it. When he drew within a few yards and realized he’d been detected, he blurted out, in Mandarin, “Don’t shoot—I’m not the enemy!” The distraction bought him enough time to hurl his last two grenades. Then he opened up with his carbine, at full automatic, spraying the Chinese. In a few moments, it was over. Single-handedly, First Lieutenant Lee had captured the enemy outpost and secured the hill. He was a one-man army. For this action he would win the Navy Cross.

The day before he was to fly to Japan, Lee and another convalescing Marine hatched a plan to escape from the Hamhung hospital and return to the front lines.

Now they were attacking, a martial mindset that Marines tend to find much more to their liking.

“We were stunned,” said one of his squad mates. “We carried him over to where the dead were, and put him at the end of the row. I think the poor son of a bitch was literally frightened to death.”

On one occasion, a half-crazed Marine rushed in, straight from the battlefield, holding a live grenade. It turned out the Marine had accidentally pulled the grenade’s pin, and he was now nervously clutching its “spoon”—the only thing preventing it from exploding. The Marine had come into the busy operating room thinking that a bit of well-placed medical tape would finally enable him to loosen his grip on the deadly thing. A coolheaded orderly steered the Marine outside and convinced him to toss the grenade into a barren field, where it safely detonated.

“Death was all around us,” said Bob Harbula, a George Company Marine from the Pennsylvania steel country. “It was like a shooting gallery up there. Killing all those people—I felt like a mass murderer. Often we didn’t have time to reload, so we wielded our rifles as clubs. Other times, we used our entrenching tools, even our helmets, as weapons.”

Many Marines would insist that Tootsie Rolls had sustained them through their darkest hours—and

Just when it seemed as if Smith might lose the battle for East Hill, the incoming planes paid off again: They began to bring in hundreds and hundreds of Marines from the coast.

“Look at those bastards, those magnificent bastards.”

Private First Class Ralph Milton, a nineteen-year-old farm boy from Wyoming, was Beall’s driver. For the past three days, at General Smith’s instruction, they’d been pulling men off the reservoir. Beall’s crews of rescuers, who had become known as the “Ice Marines,” had saved more than three hundred men.

The Frozen Chosin, they started to call themselves. The Chosin Few. This fraternal spirit welled up in the form of a war chant that rippled down the line of men:

The Marines wept tears of joy. They had a soft spot for the sea—it was their natural habitat.

The Marines had inflicted astonishing casualties: Song’s forces had suffered an estimated 30,000 killed in action and more than 12,500 wounded. The Marines, on the other hand, had lost 750 dead, with 3,000 wounded and just under 200 missing. Though Mao could technically claim a victory in the Chosin engagement—and he loudly did—it was a Pyrrhic one at best. Mao, said one account, had “committed the unforgivable sin, of defeating an enemy army while failing to destroy it.”

Oliver Smith himself. S. L. A. Marshall, a noted Army combat historian, would come to regard Smith as one of American history’s most underappreciated generals.

For his valor at Fox Hill, Private Hector Cafferata Jr. was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman. (His close buddy Private Kenneth Benson received the Silver Star.)

Today, more than a million South Koreans trace their lineage back to survivors rescued during the Hungnam Evacuation.

The Korean War carried on until July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The conflict had ended in a virtual stalemate: The boundary between North and South Korea stood essentially where it had when the hostilities began. A “demilitarized zone” was established not far from the thirty-eighth parallel. According to the Pentagon, 33,651 Americans had died fighting in the war, as did 180,000 Chinese. An estimated 2.5 million Korean civilians lost their lives. Technically, the war is still not over. The armistice provided for “no final peaceful settlement.” The two Korean nations have been poised on the brink of war ever since.