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Author: Department of Defense (DoD) Publisher: ISBN: 9781973287551 Category : Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
The race to the Yalu was on. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's strategic triumph at Inchon and the subsequent breakout of the U.S. Eighth Army from the Pusan Perimeter and the recapture of Seoul had changed the direction of the war. Only the finishing touches needed to be done to complete the destruction of the North Korean People's Army. Moving up the east coast was the independent X Corps, commanded by Major General Edward M. Almond, USA. The 1st Marine Division, under Major General Oliver P. Smith, was part of X Corps and had been so since the 15 September 1950 landing at Inchon.After Seoul the 1st Marine Division had reloaded into its amphibious ships and had swung around the Korean peninsula to land at Wonsan on the east coast. The landing on 26 October 1950 met no opposition; the port had been taken from the land side by the resurgent South Korean army. The date was General Smith's 57th birthday, but he let it pass unnoticed. Two days later he ordered Colonel Homer L. Litzenberg, Jr., 47, to move his 7th Marine Regimental Combat Team north from Wonsan to Hamhung. Smith was then to prepare for an advance to the Manchurian border, 135 miles distant. And so began one of the Marine Corps' greatest battles--or, as the Corps would call it, the "Chosin Reservoir Campaign." The Marines called it the "Chosin" Reservoir because that is what their Japanese-based maps called it. The South Koreans, nationalistic sensibilities disturbed, preferred--and, indeed, would come to insist--that it be called the "Changjin" Reservoir.General Smith, commander of the Marines--a quiet man and inveterate pipe-smoker (his favorite brand of tobacco was Sir Walter Raleigh)--was not the sort of personality to attract a nickname. His contemporaries sometimes referred to him as "the Professor" but, for the most part, to distinguish him from two more senior and better known General Smiths in the World War II Marine Corps-- Holland M. "Howlin' Mad" Smith of famous temper and mild-mannered Julian C. Smith of Tarawa-- he was known by his initials "O. P."Across the Taebaek (Nangnim) Mountains, the Eighth Army, under Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, was advancing up the west coast of the Korean peninsula. Walker, a short, stubby man, was "Johnnie" to his friends, "Bulldog" to the press. In World War II he had commanded XX Corps in General George S. Patton's Third Army and had been a Patton favorite. But these credentials held little weight with General Douglas MacArthur. He had come close to relieving Walker in August during the worst of the situation in the Pusan Perimeter. Relations between Almond and Walker were cool at best.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781549718441 Category : Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about an important aspect of the Korean War. Some of the subjects included in this history: Major General Field Harris, Colonel Lewis B. Chesty Puller, Major General Oliver P. Smith, 1st Marine Division, General Douglas MacArthur, President Truman, USS Mount McKinley, Wolmi-Do, the drive to Kimpo, amphibious assault, and DUKWs. Here is an excerpt: Just three weeks away and there was still no approval from Washington for the Marines to land at Inchon on 15 September 1950. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, determined to beat down the opposition to the landing, called a conference for late in the day, 23 August, at his headquarters in the Dai Ichi building in Tokyo. As Commander in Chief, Far East (CinCFE), MacArthur considered himself empowered to conduct military operations more-or-less as he saw fit. But for an operation of the magnitude of Inchon and the resources it would require he needed approval from the highest level. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), doubtful of the landing's chances of success, had sent out the Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton Collins, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, to review the situation directly with MacArthur. Now he would have to overcome their skeptical resistance. Collins was the JCS executive agent for the Far East Command and nominally higher in the chain-of-command than MacArthur-but only nominally. In World War I MacArthur was already a brigadier general when Collins was barely a captain. Now MacArthur had five stars and Collins four. On this afternoon, First Lieutenant Alexander M. Haig's task was to lay out the pads of paper, pencils, and water glasses on the table of the sixth floor conference room. This done, he took his post seated in a straight-backed chair just outside the door. Haig, then the junior aide-de-camp to MacArthur's chief of staff, was destined to become, many years later, the Secretary of State. The Marine Corps would have no voice at the meeting. The Corps had neither membership nor representation on the JCS. Admiral Sherman, not a strong champion of Marine Corps interests, was the service chief most directly concerned with the amphibious phase of the still tentative operation.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781973467199 Category : Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about an important aspect of the Korean War. Subjects covered in this history include: the Pershing Medium Tank, the North Korean medium Tank, Vought F4 Corsair, General Gates, Sikorsky Helicopter, rifles, and mortars. Here is an excerpt: "The Marines have landed." How familiar the phrase, how extraordinary the circumstances on 2 August 1950. Instead of a beach saturated with enemy fire, the scene was a dock in the port of Pusan in the far southeast corner of Korea. The landing force was the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade; the situation it would soon face was one of desperate crisis. The men arriving on board the transport ships that day knew they were going into battle, and their brigade commander, Brigadier General Edward A. Craig, had made his combat standards very clear in a meeting with his officers before the ships had sailed from San Diego: "It has been necessary for troops now fighting in Korea to pull back at times, but I am stating now that no unit of this brigade will retreat except on orders from an authority higher than the 1st Marine Brigade. You will never receive an order to retreat from me. All I ask is that you fight as Marines have always fought." At sea, no one knew where the brigade would be committed to action, and the men knew nothing about the forthcoming enemy except it was called the North Korean People's Army (NKPA). On board their ships they had seen the situation maps which daily showed the steadily retreating line of defense, as the enemy drove irresistibly farther and farther into South Korea. The regular physical fitness drills and weapons target practice took on an urgent new sense of purpose for the Marines.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781549979125 Category : Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about important aspects of the Korean War, with material on the 1st Marine Division, Lt. General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, Truman fires MacArthur, medical helicopter evacuation, and the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing 1951. Here is an excerpt: At Hungnam, the 1st Marine Division, following the withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir, embarked all of its equipment and personnel in record time and sailed for Pusan. The trip south for the half-starved, half-frozen Marines was uneventful except for the never-closed chow lines, salt-water showers, a complete change of clothes, and a widespread outbreak of colds or mild cases of pneumonia. "For the first time in weeks we felt clean," wrote one Marine, "and our lice were gone forever-washed down a drain-hole into the cold Sea of Japan." In addition to a scrub down and new dungarees, there was a good deal of conjecture and discussion on the possible employment of the division; many hoped that instead of landing at Pusan, the convoy would proceed directly to Japan or the United States and relief by the 2d Marine Division. Both officers and enlisted men alike held that it was impossible to visualize the employment of the division in the near future and that rest, reorganization, and rehabilitation was an absolute necessity. Then, too, there were those who had fought around the Pusan Perimeter and were "not too happy or not too eager to see the dreadful country they had fought over." Regardless of the speculation, the convoy steamed on, and on 16 December arrived at Pusan. Although several tank landing ships sailed past Pusan and put in at Masan, a majority of the division's Marines traveled by rail and road from Pusan 40 miles west to their new area outside the small seaport untouched by war. In an area previously occupied by the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, a tent city quickly sprang up-pyramidal tents for all members of the command and squad tents for each battalion. Hospital tents and mess halls were erected and with the help of Korean laborers mess tables and other improvements soon began to appear. A large barracks in the outskirts of Masan served as the administrative headquarters for the regiments, while the division's service and support units occupied areas near the docks and south of town. The men observed the division's first Christmas in Korea with a memorable display of holiday spirit despite a chilling drizzle. A choir from the 5th Marines serenaded the division headquarters with carols, many attended a series of shows put on by troupes of U.S. Army and Korean entertainers, and the U.S. Navy sent Christmas trees and decorations. It was not only a time to be thankful, but also a period of rapid recuperation from fatigue and nervous tension.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781980686286 Category : Languages : en Pages : 98
Book Description
This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about important aspects of the Korean War, with material on the 1st Marine Division, Imjin River, Kimpo Peninsula, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, Medal of Honor Winners, and General Selden. Here is an excerpt:The 1st Marine Division-- including the Kimpo Provisional Regiment, the amphibian tractor battalion, the Korean Marines, and the two Marine regiments on line --defended some 60,000 yards, two to four times that normally assigned to a similarly reinforced division. Within the division, a battalion, one third of the infantry strength of a regiment, held a frontage of from 3,500 to 5,000 yards, while a rifle company, one-third the infantry strength of a battalion, could man a sector as wide as 1,700 yards. A line of outposts of varying strength located on hills as far as 2,500 yards in front of the main line of resistance, improved the security of the Jamestown positions, but forced the Marines to spread themselves even thinner along the front. To defend the division's broad segment of the Jamestown Line, General Selden commanded a total of 1,364 Marine officers, 24,846 enlisted Marines, 1,100 naval officers and sailors-- mostly doctors, dentists, and medical corpsmen--and 4,400 Korean Marines.The Imjin River, flowing southwest from the division's right flank, lay behind the main line of resistance until the defenses crossed the river west of Munsan-ni. Since only three bridges--all of them vulnerable to damage from floods --spanned the Imjin, the stream, when in flood, posed a formidable obstacle to the movement of supplies and reinforcements. A single rail line to Munsan-ni served the region and the existing road net required extensive improvement to support military traffic. The terrain varied from mountainous, with sharp-backed ridges delineating narrow valleys, to rice paddies and mud flats along the major rivers. West-central Korea promised to be a difficult place for the reinforced but widely spread 1st Marine Division to conduct sustained military operations.General Selden's Marines took over their portion of the Jamestown Line from South Korean soldiers manning an area that had become something of a backwater, perhaps because of its proximity to Kaesong, where truce talks had begun, and Panmunjom where they were continuing. "It was quite apparent," Seldon noted, "that the relieved ROK [Republic of Korea] Division had not been conducting an aggressive defense." As a result, the Marines inherited bunkers built to protect more against the elements than against enemy mortars and artillery. Korean noncombatants, taking advantage of the lull, had resumed farming in the area, moving about and creating concealment for possible Chinese infiltration.
Author: Joseph H. Alexander Publisher: Marine Corps ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 76
Book Description
Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series. Chronicles the part played by United States Marines in the retaking of Seoul, the capital of the Republic of South Korea, during the Korean War.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781549713538 Category : Languages : en Pages : 101
Book Description
This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about an important aspect of the Korean War. Subjects covered in this history include: the 1st Marine Division; Major General Oliver P. Smith; Seoul/Wonsan campaign; aerial medical evacuation; close air support in the recapture of Seoul; marine combat vehicles; Bushmaster; 1950 street fighting. Here is an excerpt: Late on the afternoon of 24 September 1950, Captain Robert H. Barrow's Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, secured the military crest of Hill 79 in the southwest corner of Seoul, the enemy-occupied capital of the Republic of South Korea. This momentous day for Barrow and his men began with a nerve-wracking crossing of the Han River in open-hatched DUKWs, the ubiquitous amphibious trucks of World War II. Debarkation on the north shore had been followed by an unorthodox passage of lines "on the fly" of the regiment's lead battalion and the subsequent high-tempo attack on Hill 79. Now the rifle company assumed defensive positions on the objective, the men gazing in awe at the capital city arrayed to their north and east, sprawling virtually to the horizon. Thousands of North Korean Peoples' Army (NKPA) troops lay waiting for them behind barricades or among countless courtyards and rooftops. Tens of thousands of civilians still clung to life in the battered city. The Marines were a very long way from the barren beaches of Tarawa or Peleliu. Even smoking Inchon, their amphibious objective 10 days earlier seemed far distant. Seoul would represent the largest objective the Marines ever assailed. Earlier that day Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, commanding the 1st Marines, issued a folded American flag to be raised on the regiment's first objective within the city limits. Barrow's battalion commander gave him the honor as the point company in the assault. The time was right. Barrow's men attached the national colors to a pole and raised them proudly on a rooftop on Hill 79. Life magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan, himself a Marine combat veteran, captured the moment on film. The photograph proved unremarkable-Hill 79 was no Mount Suribachi-but it reflected an indelible moment in Marine Corps history. Seven weeks earlier the 1st Marine Division was a division in name only. This afternoon a rifle company from that hastily reconstituted division had seized the first hill within occupied Seoul while all three regiments converged inexorably on the capital's rambling perimeter.