Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series

OVER THE SEAWALLU.S. Marines

at Inchonby Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons

U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

SourcesThe official history, The

Inchon-Seoul Operation by LynnMontross and Capt Nicholas A.Canzona, Volume II in the series,U.S. Marine Operations in Korea,1950-1953 (Washington, D.C.:Historical Branch, G-3 Division,HQMC, 1955), provided a center-line for this account.

Other official histories of greatuse were Roy E. Appleman, Southto the Naktong, North to the Yalu(Washington, D.C.: Office of theChief of Military History, Depart-ment of the Army, 1961); James A.Field, Jr., History of United StatesNaval Operations: Korea (Wash-ington, D.C.: Government PrintingOffice, 1962); and James F.Schnabel, Policy and Direction:The First Year (Washington: Officeof the Chief of Military History,Department of the Army, 1972).

Victory at High Tide (Philadel-phia: Lippincott, 1968) by ColRobert D. Heinl, Jr., remains thebest single-volume account ofInchon.

Among the other useful sec-ondary sources were AlexanderHaig, Jr., Inner Circles (New York:Warner Books, 1992); Clay Blair,The Forgotten War: America inKorea, 1950-1953 (New York:Times Books, 1987); Gen DouglasMacArthur, Reminiscences (NewYork: McGraw Hill, 1964); GenOmar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, AGeneral’s Life: An Autobiography(New York: Simon and Schuster,1983); Donald Knox, The KoreanWar: Pusan to Chosin (San Diego:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985);Marguerite Higgins, War in Korea:The Report of a Women CombatCorrespondent (Garden City:Doubleday & Company, 1951);Gen J. Lawton Collins, LightningJoe: An Autobiography (BatonRouge: Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1979); and Cdr Malcolm W.Cagle and Cdr Frank A. Manson,The Sea War in Korea (Annapolis:U.S. Naval Institute, 1957).

Valuable insights were provid-ed by an Inchon war game devel-oped at the Marine CorpsHistorical Center (MCHC) in 1987,

which examined the operationfrom the viewpoint of its principalcommanders, using their reports,writings, and memoirs. Among theprimary sources used, the mostimportant were the unit files andrecords held by MCHC of the 1stMarine Division and its subordi-nate regiments and battalions.Also important were the biograph-ic files held by Reference Section.

Other primary sources of greatuse were the oral histories,diaries, and memoirs of many ofthe participants. The most impor-tant of these were those ofGenerals Stratemeyer, Almond,Cates, Shepherd, O. P. Smith,Craig, V. H. Krulak, and Bowser,and Admirals Burke and Doyle. Afully annotated draft of the text ison file at the Marine CorpsHistorical Center. As is their tradi-tion, the members of the staff atthe Center were fully supportivein the production of this anniver-sary pamphlet. Photographs byFrank Noel are used with the per-mission of Associated Press/WorldWide Photos.

About the Author

Edwin Howard Simmons, aretired Marine brigadier gen-

eral, was, as a major, the com-manding officer of WeaponsCompany, 3d Battalion, 1stMarines, in the landing acrossBlue Beach Two at Inchon. Hisactive service spanned 30years—1942 to 1972—andincluded combat in World War IIand Vietnam as well as Korea. Awriter and historian all his adultlife, he was the Director of Marine Corps History andMuseums from 1972 until 1996 and is now the DirectorEmeritus.

He was born in Billingsport, New Jersey, the site of abattle along the Delaware River in the AmericanRevolution, and received his commission in the MarineCorps through the Army ROTC at Lehigh University. Healso has a master’s degree from Ohio State Universityand is a graduate of the National War College. A one-time managing editor of the Marine Corps Gazette, hehas been published widely, including more than 300 arti-cles and essays. His most recent books are The UnitedStates Marines: A History (1998), The Marines (1998), andDog Company Six (2000).

He is married, has four grown children, and lives withhis wife, Frances, at their residence, “Dunmarchin,” twomiles up the Potomac from Mount Vernon.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines inthe Korean War era, is published for the education and training ofMarines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. MarineCorps, Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defenseobservance of the 50th anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have beendefrayed in part by contributions from members of the Marine CorpsHeritage Foundation.

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS

Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC (RET)

GENERAL EDITOR,

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Charles R. Smith

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION

Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor

W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist

Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician

Marine Corps Historical CenterBuilding 58, Washington Navy Yard

Washington, D.C. 20374-50402000

PCN 190 00315 100

ust three weeksaway and there wasstill no approvalfrom Washington forthe Marines to land

at Inchon on 15 September 1950.General of the Army DouglasMacArthur, determined to beatdown the opposition to the land-ing, called a conference for late inthe day, 23 August, at his head-quarters in the Dai Ichi building inTokyo.

Planning

As Commander in Chief, FarEast (CinCFE), MacArthur consid-ered himself empowered to con-duct military operations more-or-less as he saw fit. But for an oper-ation of the magnitude of Inchonand the resources it would requirehe needed approval from the high-est level.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS),doubtful of the landing’s chancesof success, had sent out the ArmyChief of Staff, General J. LawtonCollins, and the Chief of NavalOperations, Admiral Forrest P.Sherman, to review the situationdirectly with MacArthur. Now hewould have to overcome theirskeptical resistance. Collins was

the JCS executive agent for the FarEast Command and nominallyhigher in the chain-of-commandthan MacArthur—but only nomi-nally. In World War I MacArthurwas already a brigadier generalwhen Collins was barely a captain.Now MacArthur had five stars andCollins four.

On this afternoon, First Lieuten-ant Alexander M. Haig’s task wasto lay out the pads of paper, pen-cils, and water glasses on the tableof the sixth floor conference room.This done, he took his post seatedin a straight-backed chair just out-side the door. Haig, then the junioraide-de-camp to MacArthur’s chiefof staff, was destined to become,many years later, the Secretary ofState.

The Marine Corps would haveno voice at the meeting. The Corpshad neither membership nor repre-sentation on the JCS. AdmiralSherman, not a strong champion ofMarine Corps interests, was theservice chief most directly con-cerned with the amphibious phaseof the still tentative operation.

Opening Moves

Only two months before themeeting of MacArthur with Collinsand Sherman, in the pre-dawnhours of 25 June, 25-year-oldLieutenant Haig, as duty officer atMacArthur’s headquarters inTokyo, received a phone call fromthe American ambassador in Seoul,John J. Muccio, that large forma-tions of North Korean infantry hadcrossed the 38th Parallel. Haig

informed his boss, Major GeneralEdward M. “Ned” Almond, chief ofstaff of the Far East Command,who awakened MacArthur with thenews. The United States was goingto war.

Four days later, and a day afterthe fall of Seoul, MacArthur flew toKorea in the Bataan, to make apersonal reconnaissance, takingwith him Major General Almond.Korea stretched beneath them likea giant relief map. To the east ofthe Korean peninsula lay the Seaof Japan; to the west the YellowSea. The vulnerability of these twowatery sides of the peninsula to adominant naval power was not loston a master strategist such asMacArthur. The Bataan landed atSuwon, 20 miles south of Seoul.MacArthur commandeered a jeepand headed north through, in hiswords, “the dreadful backwash ofa defeated and dispersed army.”

“Seoul was already in enemyhands,” he wrote in hisReminiscences some years later.“The scene along the Han wasenough to convince me that thedefensive potential of South Koreahad already been exhausted. Theanswer I had come to seek wasthere. I would throw occupationtroops into this breach. I wouldrely upon strategic maneuver toovercome the great odds againstme.”

MacArthur returned to what heliked to call his “GHQ” in Tokyo,convinced that to regain the initia-tive the United States must use itsamphibious capability and landbehind the advancing North

1

OVER THE SEAWALLU.S. Marines at Inchon

by Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)

On the Cover: Using scaling lad-ders, Marines storm over the seawallat Inchon. Department of DefensePhoto (USMC) A3191At left: The mop-up at Inchonturned up a group of young NorthKoreans, left as harassing forces.Photo courtesy of LeatherneckMagazine

Koreans. He put his staff to workon a broad operational plan: twoU.S. divisions would be throwninto the battle to slow the onrushof the North Korean People’s Army(NKPA). A third division wouldland behind the NKPA and in aflanking attack liberate Seoul, thelost capital.

Unready Eighth Army

MacArthur had at his disposal inJapan the Eighth Army consistingof four divisions—the 7th, 24th,25th, and the 1st Cavalry—all fourat half-strength and under-trained.He began to move pieces of the24th Division, rated at 65 percent

combat-ready, to South Korea. Hisaim, he later said, was to tradespace for time until a base couldbe developed at Pusan at thesouthern tip of the peninsula as aspringboard for future operations.

Approval came from PresidentHarry S. Truman for the impositionof a naval blockade and limited airoperations. “The Air Force wasunder Lieutenant General GeorgeE. Stratemeyer, and the Navy underVice Admiral C. Turner Joy, bothable and efficient veterans of thewar,” wrote MacArthur.

But Vice Admiral Joy, asCommander Naval Forces, FarEast, commanded virtually noth-ing. Vice Admiral Arthur D. “Rip”Struble, commander of the SeventhFleet, a naval officer of consider-able amphibious experience,reported not to Joy but to AdmiralArthur W. Radford who was bothCommander in Chief, Pacific, andCommander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.

Lieutenant General George E.Stratemeyer commanded “FEAF” orFar East Air Forces. Subordinate tohim were the Fifth Air Force inJapan, the Twentieth Air Force onOkinawa, and the Thirteenth AirForce in the Philippines.

Cates Offers Marines

Back in Washington, D.C., dur-ing the first hectic days after theNorth Korean invasion, theCommandant of the Marine Corps,General Clifton B. Cates, was notinvited to attend the high-levelmeetings being held in thePentagon. After four days of wait-ing, Cates drove to the Pentagonand, in his words, “kind of forcedmy way in.”

“We were fighting for our exis-tence,” said General Lemuel C.Shepherd, Jr., who followed Catesas Commandant. “Sherman and therest of these fellows wanted tokeep us seagoing Marines, with a

2

battalion landing team being thebiggest unit we were supposed tohave . . . . Everybody was againstthe Marine Corps at that time.Secretary of Defense Louis A.Johnson, always nagging, Trumanhostile, and Cates carried that loadall by himself and did it well.”

Cates saw Admiral Sherman andtold him the Marines could imme-diately deploy to Korea a brigadeconsisting of a regimental combatteam and an aircraft group.

“How soon can you have themready?” Sherman asked dubiously.

“As quickly as the Navy gets theships,” shot back Cates.

Sherman, overwhelmed perhapsby higher priorities, dallied twodays before sending a back-chan-nel message to Admiral Joy, askinghim to suggest to MacArthur thathe request a Marine air-groundbrigade. MacArthur promptly madethe request and on 3 July the JCSapproved the deployment.

Cates did not wait for JCSapproval. Formation of the 1stProvisonal Marine Brigade hadalready begun with troops strippedout of the half-strength 1st MarineDivision. In four days’ time—on 6July—the brigade began to loadout at San Diego for the Far East.

Several months before thebreakout of war, MacArthur hadrequested amphibious training forhis occupation troops. TroopTraining Unit, AmphibiousTraining Command, Pacific Fleet,had been formed in 1943 for justsuch a purpose. Colonel EdwardH. Forney, with Mobile TrainingTeam Able and accompanied by anAir and Naval Gunfire LiaisonCompany (ANGLICO) trainingteam, arrived in April 1950. A regi-ment in each of MacArthur’s fourdivisions was to be amphibiouslytrained. Navy partner in the train-ing would be Amphibious GroupOne (PhibGruOne) under RearAdmiral James H. Doyle.

A few days before the outbreakof the war Brigadier GeneralWilliam S. Fellers, commandinggeneral of the Troop Training Unit,came out to Japan to inspect theprogress being made by Forneyand his team. Fellers and Forneywere at a Fourth of July partybeing given by the Americancolony in Tokyo when an urgentmessage required their immediatepresence at “GHQ.” They arrivedat the Dai Ichi—a tall building thathad escaped the World War IIbombing because the ImperialPalace was immediately across theway—to find a planning confer-ence in progress with Almond atthe helm. They learned thatMacArthur had advanced the con-cept of a landing at Inchon, to becalled Operation Bluehearts and tobe executed on 22 July by the 1stCavalry Division—and the 1stProvisional Marine Brigade, if thelatter could be gotten there in time.Next day Colonel Forney becamethe G-5 (Plans) of the 1st Cavalry,one of MacArthur’s favorite divi-sions.

Shepherd Meets with MacArthur

Three days after the interruptedFourth of July party, LemuelShepherd, just promoted to lieu-tenant general and installed asCommanding General, FleetMarine Force, Pacific, left Hawaiifor Tokyo, accompanied by hisoperations officer, Colonel VictorH. Krulak. Shepherd had beenurged to go to Tokyo by AdmiralRadford, a good friend of theMarines, “to see MacArthur andfind out what all this thing isabout.”

Shepherd saw his mission asbeing first to ensure that the 1stProvisional Marine Brigade wasused as an integrated air-groundteam and, second, to exploreprospects for the use of additional

Marine Corps forces. “Having been with the 4th

Brigade in France, I had learnedthat a Marine unit in an Army divi-sion is not good for the Corps,”said Shepherd years later. Enrouteto Tokyo he made up his mind thathe was going to push for a Marinedivision to be sent to Korea.

General Shepherd met withAdmiral Joy and General Almondon 9 July, and next day, accompa-nied by Colonel Krulak, sawMacArthur himself. He told themthat the only hope for an earlyreversal of the disastrous situationwas an amphibious assault againstthe enemy’s rear.

“Here I was,” said Shepherdlater, “recommending that a Marinedivision be sent to Korea, and theCommandant didn’t know any-thing about what I was doing.”

MacArthur recalled to Shepherdthe competence of the 1st MarineDivision when it had been underhis command during the CapeGloucester operation at Christmastime in 1943. Shepherd had thenbeen the assistant division com-mander. MacArthur went to hiswall map, stabbed at the port ofInchon with the stem of his corn-cob pipe, and said: “If I only hadthe 1st Marine Division under mycommand again, I would landthem here and cut off the NorthKorean armies from their logisticsupport and cause their withdraw-al and annihilation.”

Shepherd answered that ifMacArthur could get JCS approvalfor the assignment of the 1stMarine Division, he could have itready by mid-September. Mac-Arthur told Shepherd to draft forhis release a message to the JCSasking for the division.

Bluehearts, which would haveused the 1st Cavalry Division, wasabruptly cancelled. Planning inTokyo, under Brigadier GeneralEdwin K. “Pinky” Wright, USA, and

3

his Joint Strategic Plans andOperations Group (JSPOG), shift-ed to an amphibious operation inSeptember.

Under the U.N. Flag

On that same busy 10 July,MacArthur’s mantle of authoritywas embroidered with a newtitle—Commander in Chief, UnitedNations Command or “CinCUNC.”From then on operations in Koreaand surrounding waters would befought under the light-blue-and-white flag of the United Nations.

The sailing of the 1st ProvisionalMarine Brigade from San Diegobegan on 12 July. Core of theground element was the 5thMarines; the air element wasMarine Aircraft Group 33. Fillingthe brigade had gutted both the 1stMarine Division and the 1st MarineAircraft Wing.

General Cates was in San Diegoto see the Marines off. His longcigarette holder was famous; notmany Marines knew that he used itbecause gas in World War I hadweakened his lungs. GeneralShepherd was also on the dockand it gave him the opportunity todiscuss with Cates his promise toMacArthur of a full division. Couldthe 1st Marine Division be assem-bled and made ready in such ashort time?

“I don’t know,” said Cates dubi-ously; it would drain the MarineCorps completely.

“Clifton,” said Shepherd simply,“you can’t let me down.”

Visitors from Washington

In Tokyo, where it was already13 July, MacArthur was meetingwith visitors from Washington—Army General Collins and GeneralHoyt S. Vandenberg, chief of staffof the newly independent AirForce. Also present were Admiral

Radford, General Almond, andLieutenant General Walton H.Walker. It had just beenannounced that Walker was shift-ing his flag from Japan to Korea,and the Eighth Army wouldbecome the Eighth U.S. Army inKorea, which yielded the acronym“EUSAK.” MacArthur explained hisreasons for cancelling Blueheartsand said that he had not yet cho-sen a new target date or locationfor an amphibious strike, butfavored Inchon.

As soon as the meeting wasover, Collins and Walker flew toKorea, where Walker opened afield headquarters at Taegu for hisEighth Army. Collins spent only anhour on the ground and did notleave the airport before returningto Tokyo.

Next day, the 14th, he wasbriefed by General Almond andAdmiral Doyle, who had com-manded Amphibious Group Onesince January. Before that for twoyears Doyle had headed theAmphibious Training Command,Pacific Fleet. During World War IIhe served on the staff ofAmphibious Force, South Pacific.

Collins questioned the feasibilityof landing at Inchon. Doyle saidthat it would be difficult but couldbe done. Before leaving Tokyo,Collins assured MacArthur that hewould endorse the sending of afull-strength Marine division.

Earlier, during the planning forOperation Bluehearts, Doyle hadexpressed reservations over theuse of the 1st Cavalry Divisionbecause it was not amphibiouslytrained. His relations with Almondwere strained. He thought Almondarrogant and dictatorial and a per-son who “often confused himselfwith his boss.”

Lieutenant Haig, Almond’s aideand the keeper of his war diary,found his chief “volcanic” in per-sonality, “brilliant” but “irascible,”

and, with all that, a “phenomenal-ly gifted soldier.” Almond, like hisidol, General George S. Patton, Jr.,designed his own uniforms andwore a pistol on a leather beltadorned with a huge crested buck-le. He did this, he said, so as to beeasily recognized by his troops.

General Walker, a tenaciousman who deserved his nickname“Bulldog” (although he was“Johnnie” Walker to his friends),continued the piecemeal buildupof the Eighth Army. All of the 24thDivision was committed by 7 July.The 25th Division completed itsmove from Japan on 14 July.

Tactical Air Control Problems

The 1st Cavalry Division was inprocess of loading out from Japanin Doyle’s PhibGruOne whenBluehearts was cancelled in favorof an unopposed landing on 18July at Pohang-dong, a port some60 air miles northeast of Pusan.Plans developed for Bluehearts byboth PhibGruOne and 1st CavalryDivision were used for the opera-tion. For this non-hostile landingthe Navy insisted on control of anair space 100 miles in diameter cir-cling the landing site. This Navyrequirement for control of air traf-fic over the objective area conflict-ed with Air Force doctrine whichcalled for Air Force control of alltactical aircraft in the theater ofoperations.

Lieutenant General Earle E.“Pat” Partridge, whose Fifth AirForce Joint Operations Center wasin Taegu side-by-side withWalker’s Eighth Army headquar-ters, protested the Navy require-ment that would have caused himto vacate the control of air overvirtually all of the Pusan Perimeter.This began a doctrinal disputeinvolving the tactical control of airthat would continue for the rest ofthe war.

4

5

Oliver Prince Smith did not fill the Marine Corps“warrior” image. He was deeply religious, did notdrink, seldom raised his voice in anger, and

almost never swore. Tall, slender, and white-haired, helooked like a college professor is supposed to look andseldom does. Some of his contemporaries thought himpedantic and a bit slow. He smoked a pipe in a meditativeway, but when his mind was made up he could be as res-olute as a rock. He always commanded respect and, withthe passage of years, that respect became love and devo-tion on the part of those Marines who served under himin Korea. They came to know that he would never wastetheir lives needlessly.

As commanding general of the 1st Marine Division,Smith’s feud with the mercurial commander of X Corps,Major General Edward M. Almond, USA, would becomethe stuff of legends.

No one is ever known to have called him “Ollie.” To hisfamily he was “Oliver.” To his contemporaries and even-tually to the press, which at first tended to confuse himwith the controversial Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith ofWorld War II, he was always “O. P.” Smith. Some calledhim “the Professor” because of his studious ways and deepreading in military history.

Born in Menard, Texas, in 1893, he had by the time ofAmerica’s entry into the First World War worked his waythrough the University of California at Berkeley, Class of1916. While a student at Berkeley he qualified for a com-mission in the Army Reserve which he exchanged, a weekafter America’s entry into the war on 6 April 1917, for thegold bars of a Marine Corps second lieutenant.

The war in Europe, where the Marines gained interna-tional fame, passed him by; he spent the war years in lone-ly exile with the garrison on Guam. Afterward, in the1920s, he followed an unremarkable sequence of duty,much like that of most lieutenants and captains of thetime: barracks duty at Mare Island, sea duty in the Texas,staff duty at Headquarters Marine Corps, and a tour withthe Gendarmerie d’Haiti.

From June 1931 to June 1932, he attended the FieldOfficer’s Course at Fort Benning. Next came a year atQuantico, most of it spent as an instructor at the CompanyOfficer’s Course. He was assigned in 1934 to a two-yearcourse at the Ecole Superieur la de Guerre in Paris, thenconsidered the world’s premier school for rising youngofficers. Afterwards he returned to Quantico for moreduty as an instructor.

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 found him at SanDiego. As commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 6thMarines, he went to Iceland in the summer of 1941. He leftthe regiment after its return to the States, for duty onceagain at Headquarters in Washington. He went to thePacific in January 1944 in time to command the 5thMarines during the Talasea phase of the Cape Gloucesteroperation. He was the assistant commander of the 1stMarine Division during Peleliu and for Okinawa was theMarine Deputy Chief of Staff of the Tenth Army.

After the war he was the commandant of Marine CorpsSchools and base commander at Quantico until the springof 1948 when he became the assistant commandant andchief of staff at Headquarters. In late July 1950, he receivedcommand of the 1st Marine Division, destined for Korea,and held that command until May 1951.

After Inchon and Seoul, a larger, more desperate fightat Chosin Reservoir was ahead of him. In early 1951, the1st Marine Division was switched from Almond’s X Corpsto Major General Bryant E. Moore’s IX Corps. Moore diedof a heart attack on 24 February 1951 and, by seniority, O.P. Smith became the corps commander. Despite his expe-rience and qualifications, he held that command only solong as it took the Army to rush a more senior general toKorea.

O. P. Smith’s myriad of medals included the ArmyDistinguished Service Cross and both the Army and theNavy Distinguished Service Cross for his Korean WarService.

On his return to the United States, he became the com-manding general of the base at Camp Pendleton. Then inJuly 1953, with a promotion to lieutenant general, movedto the East Coast to the command of Fleet Marine Force,Atlantic, with headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia. He retiredon 1 September 1955 and for his many combat awards waspromoted to four-star general. He died on Christmas Day1977 at his home in Los Altos Hills, California, at age 81.

Major General Oliver P. Smith

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A8377

Joint Chiefs Reluctant

Returning to Washington,Collins briefed his fellow chiefs on15 July. He gave them the broadoutlines of MacArthur’s plannedamphibious assault, but expressedhis own doubts based on his expe-rience in the South Pacific and atNormandy.

The JCS chairman, General ofthe Army Omar N. Bradley,thought it “the riskiest military pro-posal I ever heard of.” In his opin-ion, MacArthur should be concen-trating on the dismal immediate sit-uation in South Korea rather thandreaming up “a blue sky schemelike Inchon.” Bradley wrote later:“because Truman was relying onus to an extraordinary degree formilitary counsel, we determined tokeep a close eye on the Inchonplan and, if we felt so compelled,finally cancel it.”

The JCS agreed that the 1stMarine Division should be broughtup to strength, but stopped shortof committing it to the Far East. On20 July, the Joint Chiefs informedMacArthur that the 1st MarineDivision could not be combatready until December. MacArthurerupted: the 1st Marine Divisionwas “absolutely vital” to the planbeing developed, under the code-name Chromite, by GeneralWright’s group. A draft, circulatedat CinCFE headquarters on 23 July,offered three alternatives:

Plan 100-B: A landing atInchon on the west coast.

Plan 100-C: A landing atKunsan on the west coast.

Plan 100-D: A landing atChunmunjin-up on the eastcoast.

MacArthur’s mind was now fullyset on Inchon. He informedCollins, in his capacity as executive

agent for the JCS, that lacking theMarine division, he had scheduledan amphibious assault at Inchon inmid-September to be executed bythe 5th Marines and the 2d InfantryDivision in conjunction with anattack northward by the EighthArmy. His message caused thechiefs to initiate a hurried teletypeconference with MacArthur on 24July. MacArthur prevailed and onthe following day, 25 July, thechiefs finally approved Mac-Arthur’s repeated requests for the1st Marine Division.

A New CG

Late in the afternoon of 25 July,Major General Oliver P. Smitharrived from Washington andchecked in at the Carlsbad Hotel inCarlsbad, California. He was totake command of the 1st MarineDivision at nearby CampPendleton on the following day.He phoned Brigadier GeneralHarry B. Liversedge, the base com-mander and acting division com-mander, to let him know that hehad arrived. Liversedge said that

6

Gen Oliver P. Smith Collection, Marine Corps Research Center

MajGen Oliver P. Smith, left, assumed command of the 1st Marine Division atCamp Pendleton on 26 July 1950. Col Homer L. Litzenberg, Jr., right, arrived on16 August with orders to reactivate the 7th Marines and have it ready for sailingby 3 September.

7

The younger Marines in the 1st Marines were ecsta-tic when they learned their regiment was going tobe commanded by the legendary “Chesty” Puller.

Older officers and non-commissioned officers in the reg-iment were less enthusiastic. They remembered the longcasualty list the 1st Marines had suffered at Peleliu whileunder Colonel Puller’s command. His style was to leadfrom the front, and, when he went into Korea, he alreadyhad an unprecedented four Navy Crosses.

Born in 1898, Puller had grown up in TidewaterVirginia where the scars of the Civil War were stillunhealed and where many Confederate veterans werestill alive to tell a young boy how it was to go to war.Lewis (which is what his family always called him) wentbriefly to Virginia Military Institute but dropped out inAugust 1918 to enlist in the Marines. To his disappoint-ment, the war ended before he could get to France. InJune 1919, he was promoted to second lieutenant andthen, 10 days later, with demobilization was placed oninactive duty. Before the month was out he had reenlist-ed in the Marines specifically to serve as a second lieu-tenant in the Gendarmerie d’Haiti. Most of the officers inthe Gendarmerie were white Marines; the rank and filewere black Haitians. Puller spent five years in Haiti fight-ing “Caco” rebels and making a reputation as a bushfighter.

He returned to the States in March 1924 and receivedhis regular commission in the Marine Corps. During thenext two years he did barracks duty in Norfolk, attendedBasic School in Philadelphia, served in the 10th Marinesat Quantico, and had an unsuccessful try at aviation atPensacola. Barracks duty for two years at Pearl Harborfollowed Pensacola. Then in 1928 he was assigned to theGuardia Nacional of Nicaragua. Here in 1930 he won hisfirst Navy Cross. First Lieutenant Puller, his citationreads, “led his forces into five successive engagementsagainst superior numbers of armed bandit forces.”

He came home in July 1931 to the year-long CompanyOfficers Course at Fort Benning. That taken, he returnedto Nicaragua for more bandit fighting and a second NavyCross, this time for taking his patrol of 40 Nicaraguansthrough a series of ambushes, in partnership with thealmost equally legendary Gunnery Sergeant William A.“Iron Man” Lee.

Now a captain, Puller came back to the West Coast inJanuary 1933, stayed a month, and then left to join theLegation Guard at Peiping. This included command ofthe fabled “Horse Marines.” In September 1934, he leftPeiping to become the commanding officer of the Marinedetachment on board the Augusta, flagship of the AsiaticFleet.

In June 1936, he came to Philadelphia to instruct atthe Basic School. His performance as a tactics instructor

and on the parade ground left its mark on the lieutenantswho would be the captains, majors, and lieutenantcolonels in the world war that was coming.

In June 1939, he went back to China, returning to theAugusta to command its Marines once again. A year laterhe left the ship to join the 4th Marines in Shanghai. Hereturned to the United States in August 1941, fourmonths before the war began, and was given commandof the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, at Camp Lejeune. Hecommanded (he would say “led”) this battalion atGuadalcanal and won his third Navy Cross for his suc-cessful defense of a mile-long line on the night of 24October 1942. The fourth Navy Cross came for overallperformance, from 26 December 1943 to 19 January1944, at Cape Gloucester as executive officer of the 7thMarines. In February 1944, he took command of the 1stMarines and led it in the terrible fight at Peleliu inSeptember and October.

Afterwards, he came back to command the InfantryTraining Regiment at Camp Lejeune. Next he wasDirector of the 8th Marine Corps Reserve District withheadquarters in New Orleans, and then took commandof the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor. From here hehammered Headquarters to be given command, onceagain, of his old regiment, the 1st Marines.

After Inchon, there was to be a fifth Navy Cross,earned at the Chosin Reservoir. In January 1951, hereceived a brigadier general’s stars and assignment as theassistant division commander. In May, he came back toCamp Pendleton to command the newly activated 3dMarine Brigade which became the 3d Marine Division.He moved to the Troop Training Unit, Pacific, onCoronado in June 1952 and from there moved east, nowwith the two stars of a major general, to Camp Lejeuneto take command of the 2d Marine Division in July 1954.His health began to fail and he was retired for disabilityon 1 November 1955. From then until his death on 11October 1971 at age 73 he lived in the little town ofSaluda in Tidewater Virginia.

Colonel Lewis B.“Chesty” Puller

Gen Oliver P. Smith Collection

he had just received a tip fromWashington that the division wasto be brought to war strength andsail to the Far East by mid-August.Both Liversedge and Smith knewthat what was left of the divisionwas nothing more than a shell.

Smith took command the nextday, 26 July. He had served in thedivision during World War II, com-manding the 5th Marines in itsTalasea landing at New Britain andwas the assistant division comman-der at Peleliu. Only 3,459 Marinesremained in the division at CampPendleton, fewer men than in asingle full-strength regiment.

When the Joint Chiefs askedGeneral Cates how he planned tobring the 1st Marine Division up towar strength, he had ready a two-pronged plan. Plan A would pro-vide three rifle companies andreplacements to the brigadealready deployed. Plan B woulduse Reserves to fill up the division.Essential to the filling out of the 1stMarine Division—and the 1stMarine Aircraft Wing as well—wasthe mobilization of the MarineCorps Reserve. “Behind everyMarine regular, figuratively speak-ing,” wrote official historians LynnMontross and Captain Nicholas A.Canzona, “stood two reservistswho were ready to step forwardand fill the gaps in the ranks.”

The 33,527 Marines in theOrganized Reserve in 1950 werescattered across the country inunits that included 21 infantry bat-talions and 30 fighter squadrons.Virtually all the officers and non-commissioned officers had WorldWar II experience, but the rankshad been filled out with young-sters, many of whom did not get toboot camp. Subsequent reservetraining had included both weeklyarmory “drills” and summer activeduty. Someone wryly decided theycould be classified as “almost com-bat ready.”

Behind the Organized Reservewas the Volunteer Marine CorpsReserve—90,044 men and women,most of them veterans, but with nofurther training after their return tocivilian life. President Truman,with the sanction of Congress,authorized the call-up of theMarine Corps Reserve on 19 July.An inspired public informationofficer coined the phrase, “MinuteMen of 1950.”

On 26 July, the day followingJCS approval of the 1st MarineDivision’s deployment, a courierarrived at Camp Pendleton fromWashington with instructions forSmith in his fleshing-out of the 1stMarine Division: ground elementsof the 1st Provisional MarineBrigade would re-combine withthe division upon its arrival in theFar East; units of the half-strength2d Marine Division at CampLejeune, North Carolina, would beordered to Camp Pendleton andre-designated as 1st MarineDivision units; all possible regularswould be stripped out of posts andstations and ordered to the divi-sion; and gaps in the ranks wouldbe filled with individual Reservesconsidered to be at least minimallycombat-ready.

Eighth Army Withdraws to Pusan

In Korea, at the end of July,Walker ordered the Eighth Army tofall back behind the Naktong River,the new defensive line forming theso-called “Pusan Perimeter.” Bothflanks of the Eighth Army werethreatened. In light of this deterio-rating situation, the Joint Chiefsasked MacArthur if he still plannedan amphibious operation inSeptember. An unperturbedMacArthur replied that “if the fullMarine Division is provided, thechances to launch the movementin September would be excellent.”

Reinforcements for Walker’s

Eighth Army began arriving direct-ly from the United States, includingthe 1st Provisional Marine Brigadewhich debarked at Pusan on 3August.

In Tokyo, General Stratemeyerbecame agitated when he learnedthat the 1st Provisional MarineBrigade, as an integrated air-ground team, intended to retainmission control of its aircraft. Anuneasy compromise was reachedby which the Marines were tooperate their two squadrons of car-rier-based Vought F4U Corsairswith their own controllers underthe general coordination ofPartridge’s Fifth Air Force.

Reserve Comes to Active Duty

The first reservists to reachPendleton—the 13th InfantryCompany from Los Angeles, the12th Amphibian Tractor Companyof San Francisco, and the 3dEngineer Company fromPhoenix—arrived on 31 July.Elements of the 2d Marine Divisionfrom Camp Lejeune began theirtrain journey the same day. In thatfirst week, 13,703 Marines joinedthe division.

On 4 August, the Commandantordered the reactivation of the 1stMarines and 7th Marines. Both reg-iments had been part of the 1stMarine Division in all its World WarII campaigns. The 1st Marines wasactivated that same day undercommand of the redoubtableColonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller,who, stationed at Pearl Harbor ascommanding officer of the MarineBarracks, had pestered Headquar-ters Marine Corps and GeneralSmith with demands that he bereturned to the command of theregiment he had led at Peleliu. By7 August, the strength of the 1stMarine Division stood at 17,162.

The experiences of LieutenantColonel Thomas L. Ridge’s 1st

8

Battalion, 6th Marines, were typicalof the buildup being done at adead run. Ridge had just takencommand of the battalion. A crackrifle and pistol shot, he had spentmost of World War II in intelli-gence assignments in LatinAmerica, but in late 1944 was

transferred to Fleet Marine Force,Pacific, in time for staff duty forIwo Jima and Okinawa. As anobserver at Okinawa he was twicewounded.

Ridge’s battalion, barelyreturned to Camp Lejeune from sixmonths deployment to the

Mediterranean, traveled by ancienttroop train to Camp Pendletonwhere it became the 3d Battalionof the reactivated 1st Marines. Inabout 10 days, the two-element,half-strength battalion expandedinto a three-element, full-strengthbattalion. The two rifle companies

9

During the course of the Korean War, MajorGeneral Field Harris would suffer a grievous per-sonal loss. While he served as Commanding

General, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, his son, LieutenantColonel William F. Harris, was with the 1st MarineDivision, as commanding officer of 3d Battalion, 7thMarines, at the Chosin Reservoir. The younger Harris’battalion was the rear guard for the breakout fromYudam-ni. Later, between Hagaru-ri and Koto-ri, Harrisdisappeared and was posted as missing in action. Later itwas determined that he had been killed.

Field Harris—and he was almost always called that,“Field-Harris,” as though it were one word—belonged tothe open cockpit and silk scarf era of Marine Corps avi-ation. Born in 1895 in Versailles, Kentucky, he receivedhis wings at Pensacola in 1929. But before that he had12 years seasoning in the Marine Corps.

He graduated from the Naval Academy in March 1917just before America’s entry into World War I. He spentthat war at sea in the Nevada and ashore with the 3dProvisional Brigade at Guantanamo, Cuba.

In 1919 he went to Cavite in the Philippines. Afterthree years there, he returned for three years in the officeof the Judge Advocate General in Washington. While soassigned he graduated from the George WashingtonUniversity School of Law. Then came another tour of seaduty, this time in the Wyoming, then a year as a studentat Quantico, and flight training at Pensacola. His newgold wings took him to San Diego where he served in asquadron of the West Coast Expeditionary Force.

He attended the Air Corps Tactical School at LangleyField, Virginia, after which came shore duty in Haiti andsea duty in the carrier Lexington. In 1935, he joined theAviation Section at Headquarters, followed by a year inthe Senior Course at the Naval War College in Newport,Rhode Island. In August 1941, he was sent to Egypt fromwhere, as assistant naval attache, he could study theRoyal Air Force’s support of Britain’s Eighth Army in itsdesert operations.

After Egypt and United States entry into the war, hewas sent to the South Pacific. In the Solomons, he servedsuccessively as Chief of Staff, Aircraft, Guadalanal;Commander, Aircraft, Northern Solomons; and comman-der of air for the Green Island operation. Each of these

three steps up the chain of islands earned him a Legionof Merit. After World War II, he became Director ofMarine Aviation in the Office of the Chief of NavalOperations (and received a fourth Legion of Merit). In1948 he was given command of Aircraft, Fleet MarineForce, Atlantic. A year later he moved to El Toro,California, for command of Aircraft, Fleet Marine, Pacific,with concomitant command of the 1st Marine AircraftWing.

His Korean War service was rewarded with both theArmy’s and the Navy’s Distinguished Service Medal. Onhis return to the United States in the summer of 1951, heagain became the commanding general of Air, FleetMarine Force, Atlantic. He retired in July 1953 with anadvancement to lieutenant general because of his com-bat decorations, a practice which is no longer followed.He died in 1967 at age 72.

Major General Field Harris

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A310952

in the battalion each numberingabout 100 men were doubled insize with a third rifle platoonadded. A third rifle company wasactivated. The weapons companyhad no heavy machine gun pla-toon and only two sections in itsantitank assault and 81mm mortarplatoons. A heavy machine gunplatoon was created and third sec-tions were added to the antitankassault and 81mm mortar platoons.World War II vintage supplies andequipment came in from the mobi-lization stocks stashed away at thesupply depot at Barstow,California—sufficient in quantity,poor in quality. The pressure ofthe unknown D-Day gave almostno time for unit shake-down andtraining.

Simultaneously with the groundunit buildup, Reserve fighter andground control squadrons werearriving at El Toro, California, to fillout the skeleton 1st Marine AircraftWing. The wing commander, MajorGeneral Field Harris, NavalAcademy 1917, and a naval aviatorsince 1929, had served in the SouthPacific in World War II. Morerecently he had been Director ofAviation at Marine CorpsHeadquarters. He was one of thoseprescient senior Marines who fore-saw a future for helicopters inamphibious operations.

7th Infantry Division and KATUSA

In parallel actions, MacArthur on4 August ordered Walker to rebuildthe Army’s 7th Infantry Division—the last division remaining inJapan—to full strength by 15September. The division had beenreduced to less than half-strengthby being repeatedly culled forfillers for the three divisionsalready deployed to Korea. UntilMacArthur’s directive, the divisionwas not scheduled to be up tostrength until 1 October and not

ready for amphibious operationsuntil 1951. Now, the division wasto get 30 percent of all replace-ments arriving from the UnitedStates. Moreover, a week later, on11 August, MacArthur directedWalker to send 8,000 South Koreanrecruits to fill out the division.

The first of 8,600 Koreanreplacements, straight out of therice paddies of South Korea andoff the streets of Pusan, beganarriving by ship at Yokohama afew days later. This infusion of rawuntrained manpower, called“KATUSA”—Korean Augmentationof the U.S. Army—arrived for themost part in baggy white pants,white jackets, and rubber shoes. Inthree weeks they had to beclothed, equipped, and made intosoldiers, including the learning ofrudimentary field sanitation as well

as rifle practice. The “buddy sys-tem” was employed—each Koreanrecruit was paired off with anAmerican counterpart.

Major General David G. Barr,the 7th Infantry Division’s com-mander, had been chief of staff ofseveral commands in Europe dur-ing World War II. After the war hehad headed the Army AdvisoryMission in Nanking, China. Henow seemed a bit old and slow,but he knew Chinese and theChinese army.

1st Marine Division Loads Out

Loading out of the 1st MarineDivision from San Diego began on8 August. That same day, GeneralFellers, back from Japan, toldSmith that the division would beemployed in Korea between 15

10

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A20115

MajGen Field Harris and a portion of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing staff arrive atBarber’s Point in Hawaii in early September enroute to the Far East. Leaving theMarine transport are, from left, Col Edward C. Dyer, Col Boeker C. Batterton, ColWilliam G. Manley, and Gen Harris.

and 25 September. Much of the heavy equipment to

be loaded arrived at dockside fromthe Barstow supply depot with notime for inspection. GeneralShepherd arrived on 13 August toobserve and encourage, joinednext day by General Cates. Puller’s1st Marines sailed from San Diego

on 14 August, 10 days after activa-tion. The Navy had very littleamphibious shipping on the WestCoast, and much of the divisionand its gear had to be lifted bycommercial shipping.

Among the pressing matters dis-cussed by Smith with his superiorsCates and Shepherd was the reacti-

vation of the 7th Marines. Nucleusof the 7th Marines would be theskeleton 6th Marines, which hadalready lost two battalions to the1st Marines. The 3d Battalion, 6thMarines, a half-strength peacetimebattalion with pieces scatteredaround the Mediterranean, becamethe 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, with

11

His troops called him “Litz the Blitz” for no partic-ular reason except the alliteration of sound. Hehad come up from the ranks and was extraordi-

narily proud of it. Immediately before the Korean Warbegan he was in command of the 6th Marines at CampLejeune, very much interested in his regimental baseballteams, and about to turn over the command to anothercolonel. When war came he was restored to commandof the regiment and sadly watched his skeleton battal-ions depart for Camp Pendleton to form the cadre for there-activated 1st Marines. This was scarcely done when hereceived orders to re-activate the 7th Marines on theWest Coast.

Litzenberg was a “Pennsylvania Dutchman,” born inSteelton, Pennsylvania, in 1903. His family moved toPhiladelphia and, after graduating from high school andtwo years in the National Guard, he enlisted in theMarine Corps in 1922. Subsequent to recruit training atParris Island, he was sent to Haiti. In 1925 he became asecond lieutenant. East Coast duty was followed byexpeditionary service in Nicaragua in 1928 and 1929, andthen by sea service in a string of battleships—Idaho,Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico—and the cruiserAugusta. After graduating from the Infantry School atFort Benning in 1933, he had two years with a MarineReserve battalion in Philadelphia. Next came two yearson Guam as aide to the governor and inspector-instruc-tor of the local militia. He came home in 1938 to serveat several levels as a war planner.

When World War II came, he was sent, as a major, toEngland to serve with a combined planning staff. Thistook him to North Africa for the amphibious assault ofCasablanca in November 1942. He came home to formand command the 3d Battalion, 24th Marines, in the new4th Marine Division, moving up to regimental executiveofficer for the assault of Roi-Namur in the Marshalls. Hethen went to the planning staff of the V AmphibiousCorps for Saipan and Tinian.

After the war he went to China for duty with theSeventh Fleet and stayed on with Naval Forces WesternPacific. He came home in 1948 and was given commandof the 6th Marines in 1949.

After Inchon, he continued in command of the 7thMarines through the battles of Seoul, Chosin Reservoir,and the Spring Offensive, coming home in April 1951.Soon promoted to brigadier general and subsequently tomajor general, he had many responsible assignmentsincluding assistant command of the 3d Marine Divisionin Japan, Inspector General of the Marine Corps, com-mand of Camp Pendleton, and command of Parris Island.He returned to Korea in 1957 to serve as senior memberof the United Nations component negotiating atPanmunjom. At the end of the year he came back forwhat would be his last assignment, another tour of dutyas Inspector General.

He retired in 1959, with an elevation to lieutenantgeneral because of his combat awards that included aNavy Cross, a Distinguished Service Cross, and threeSilver Stars. He died in the Bethesda Naval Hospital on27 June 1963 at age 68 and was buried in ArlingtonNational Cemetery with full military honors.

Colonel Homer L. Litzenberg, Jr.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A4718

orders to proceed to Japan by wayof the Suez Canal. Fillers for thebattalion and a completely newthird rifle company would have tocome from Camp Pendleton.

What was left of the 6th Marinesarrived at Pendleton on 16 August.The 7th Marines activated the nextday. Colonel Homer L. “Litz theBlitz” Litzenberg, Jr., a mercurialman who had commanded the 6thMarines at Camp Lejeune, contin-ued as commanding officer of the7th Marines with orders to embarkhis regiment not later than 3September.

Joint Chiefs Have a Problem

Although the National DefenseAct of 1947 was in effect, the rela-tionship of the Joint Chiefs to thetheater commanders was not tooclear. As a theater commanderMacArthur had broad leeway inhis actions. The JCS faced theHobson’s choice of askingMacArthur no questions and mak-ing no challenges, or exertingtheir capacity as the principaladvisors to President Truman inhis role.

The Joint Chiefs held an inten-

sive series of briefings in the WhiteHouse on 10 August, culminatingin an afternoon meeting with theNational Security Council.President Truman was told that awar-strength Marine division wasbeing assembled for service inKorea. Admiral Sherman assuredthe President, however, that theJCS would have to pass onMacArthur’s plans for an amphibi-ous operation.

On 12 August, MacArthur issuedCinCFE Operations Plan 100-B,specifically naming Inchon-Seoulas the objective area. No copy ofthis plan was sent to the JCS.

O. P. Smith Departs Pendleton

General Smith sent off the firstechelon of his division headquar-ters by air on 16 August. Two dayslater he closed his command postat Camp Pendleton and left by airfor Japan. Delayed by shippingshortages, outloading of a third ofSmith’s division—essentially thereinforced 1st Marines—was com-pleted on 22 August. In all, 19ships were employed.

Following close behind, Litzen-berg beat by two days the

embarkation date given him bySmith. The 7th Marines, filled upwith regulars pulled away fromposts and stations and reservists,sailed from San Diego on 1September.

Marine VersusAir Force Close Support

General Stratemeyer, Mac-Arthur’s Air Force component com-mander, apparently first heard ofthe possibility of an Inchon landingon 20 July. His first action was toinstruct his staff to prepare a smallcommand group with which hecould accompany MacArthur onthe operation. Almost a monthlater, on 14 August, MacArthur dis-cussed the proposed landing withStratemeyer, pointing out thatKimpo Airfield, just west of theHan River from Seoul, was the bestin Korea. MacArthur emphasizedthat the airfield must be quicklyrehabilitated from any battle dam-age and put to use.

By then news stories wereappearing that compared Fifth AirForce support of the Eighth Armyunfavorably with the close air sup-port being provided the Marine

12

USS Mount McKinley (AGC7) was the command centerafloat for the Inchon landing. It also served as a floating

hotel for the large number of VIPs who were in Gen DouglasMacArthur’s official party or were simply passing through.

National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-424523

brigade by its organic squadrons.On 23 August, Stratemeyer sent amemorandum to MacArthur statingthat the news stories were anotherstep “in a planned program to dis-credit the Air Force and the Armyand at the same time to unwarrant-edly enhance the prestige of theMarines.” He pointed out that theMarine squadrons, operating fromtwo aircraft carriers, were support-ing a brigade of about 3,000Marines on a front that could bemeasured in yards as compared tothe Fifth Air Force which had tosupply close air support for a frontof 160 miles.

General Walker, collocated atTaegu with General Partridge,pulled the rug out from underGeneral Stratemeyer’s doctrinalconcerns and contentions ofunfairness, by commenting official-ly: “Without the slightest intent ofdisparaging the support of the AirForce, I must say that I, in commonwith the vast majority of officers ofthe Army, feel strongly that theMarine system of close air supporthas much to commend it . . . . Ifeel strongly that the Army wouldbe well advised to emulate theMarine Corps and have its own tac-tical aviation.”

Top Brass Gathers in Tokyo

General Collins and AdmiralSherman—the latter had not beento Korea before—made a quickvisit on 22 August to Walker’sEighth Army headquarters atTaegu. Collins found Walker “tooinvolved in plugging holes in hisleaky front to give much thoughtto a later breakout.” On the morn-ing of 23 August, Collins accompa-nied Walker on a visit to all U. S.division commanders and theMarine brigade commander,Brigadier General Edward A. Craig.Collins found these field comman-ders confident but weary. Collins

then returned to Tokyo for the cru-cial conference at which Mac-Arthur must overcome JCS reserva-tions concerning the Inchon land-ing.

Major General Smith arrived atHaneda airport in Japan on 22August and was met by his oldfriend, Admiral Doyle, theprospective Attack ForceCommander. Smith later remem-bered that Doyle “was not veryhappy about the whole affair.”They proceeded to Doyle’s com-mand ship, USS Mount McKinley(AGC 7). Smith’s orders were toreport his division directly toCommander in Chief, Far East, foroperational control. His appoint-ment with General MacArthur wasset for 1730 that evening at the DaiIchi building. Colonel Alpha L.Bowser, Jr., the division G-3, whohad come out with the first eche-lon of Smith’s staff, gave him a hur-ried briefing on the tentative plansfor the division. “For the first time

I learned that the division was toland at Inchon on 15 September,”Smith wrote later.

On arriving at GHQ comfortablybefore the appointed time of 1730,Smith found that he was to meetfirst with Almond, who kept himwaiting until 1900. Almond calledmost soldiers and officers “son,”but when 58-year-old Almondaddressed 57-year-old Smith as“son,” it infuriated Smith. Almondfurther aggravated Smith by dis-missing the difficulties of anamphibious operation as being“purely mechanical.”

Having had his say, Almondushered Smith into MacArthur’soffice. MacArthur, in a cordial andexpansive mood, confidently toldSmith that the 1st Marine Divisionwould win the war by its landingat Inchon. The North Koreans hadcommitted all their troops againstthe Pusan Perimeter, and he didnot expect heavy opposition atInchon. The operation would be

13

National Archives Photo (USN) 80-G-422492

Gen Douglas MacArthur, center, greets Gen J. Lawton Collins, Chief of Staff, U.S.Army, and Adm Forrest P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, upon theirarrival in Tokyo on 21 August 1950. A critical conference would be held two dayslater at which MacArthur would have to convince these two members of the JointChiefs of Staff that a landing at Inchon was feasible.

somewhat “helter-skelter,” but itwould be successful. It wasMacArthur’s feeling that all handswould be home for Christmas, ifnot to the United States, at least toJapan.

Smith reported to Doyle his con-viction that MacArthur was firm inhis decision to land at Inchon on15 September. Doyle replied thathe thought there was still a chanceto substitute Posung-Myun, a fewmiles to the south of Inchon, as amore likely landing site. Doyle washaving his underwater demolitionteams reconnoiter those beaches.

Next day, 23 August, Smith metagain with Almond, this timeaccompanied by General Barr,commander of the 7th InfantryDivision. When Smith raised thepossibility of Posung-Myun as alanding site, Almond brushed himoff, saying that any landing atPosung-Myun would be no morethan a subsidiary landing.

Critical 23 AugustConference Convenes

Smith was not invited to the 23August conference. Nor wasShepherd. The all-important sum-mit conference began with briefopening remarks by MacArthur.General Wright then outlined thebasic plan which called for anassault landing by the 1st MarineDivision directly into the port ofInchon. After the capture ofInchon, the division was toadvance and seize, as rapidly aspossible, Kimpo Airfield, the townof Yongdung-po, and the southbank of the Han River. The divi-sion was then to cross the river,capture Seoul, and seize the domi-nant ground to the north.Meanwhile, the 7th InfantryDivision was to land behind theMarines, advance on the rightflank, secure the south bank of theHan southeast of Seoul and the

high ground north of Suwon.Thereafter, X Corps—1st Marineand 7th Infantry Divisions— wouldform the anvil against which theEighth Army, breaking out of thePusan Perimeter, would deliver thehammer blows that would destroythe North Korean Army.

After Wright’s briefing, Doyle, asthe prospective Attack Force com-mander, gave a thorough analysisof the naval aspects of the landing.Of greatest concern to Doyle werethe tides. A point of contentionwas the length of the naval gunfirepreparation. Doyle argued forthree to four days of pre-landingbombardment by air and navalgunfire, particularly to take out theshore batteries. MacArthur’s staffdisputed this on the basis of theloss of tactical surprise. AdmiralSherman was asked his opinionand replied, “I wouldn’t hesitate totake a ship up there.”

“Spoken like a Farragut,” saidMacArthur.

With his concerns brushedaside, Doyle concluded his brief-

ing with “the best that I can say isthat Inchon is not impossible.”

Collins questioned the ability ofthe Eighth Army to link up quicklywith X Corps. He suggestedKunsan, to the south, as an alter-nate landing site. Sherman, in gen-eral terms, supported Collins’reservations. General MacArthursat silently, puffing his pipe, forseveral moments. He then spokeand all agree that his expositionwas brilliant. He dazzled and pos-sibly confused his audience withan analogy from the French andIndian War, Wolfe’s victory atQuebec: “Like Montcalm, the NorthKoreans will regard the Inchonlanding as impossible. Like Wolfe I[can] take them by surprise.”

As he himself remembered hissummation years later in his mem-oirs:

The Navy’s objections as totides, hydrography, terrain,and physical handicaps areindeed substantial and perti-nent. But they are not insu-perable. My confidence in the

14

MajGen David G. Barr, left, Commanding General of the U. S. Army’s 7thInfantry Division meets with MajGen Edward M. Almond, CommandingGeneral, X Corps, to discuss the Inchon landing. The 7th Division would landbehind the Marines, advance on their right flank, and seize the commandingground south of Seoul. National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349013

Navy is complete, and in factI seem to have more confi-dence in the Navy than theNavy has in itself . . . . As tothe proposal for a landing atKunsan, it would indeedeliminate many of the hazardsof Inchon, but it would belargely ineffective and indeci-sive. It would be an attempt-ed envelopment which wouldnot envelop. It would notsever or destroy the enemy’ssupply lines or distributioncenter, and would thereforeserve little purpose. It wouldbe a “short envelopment,”and nothing in war is morefutile. But seizure of Inchonand Seoul will cut theenemy’s supply line and sealoff the entire southern penin-sula . . . . This in turn will par-alyze the fighting power ofthe troops that now faceWalker . . . . If my estimate is

inaccurate and should I runinto a defense with which Icannot cope, I will be therepersonally and will immedi-ately withdraw our forcesbefore they are committed toa bloody setback. The onlyloss then will be my profes-sional reputation. But Inchonwill not fail. Inchon will suc-ceed. And it will save 100,000lives.

Others at the conferencerecalled MacArthur’s closing wordsat the conference as being: “Weshall land at Inchon, and I shallcrush them.” This said, MacArthurknocked the ashes of his pipe outinto a glass ashtray, making it ring,and stalked majestically out of theroom.

General Collins still harboredreservations. He thought a mainpoint had been missed: what wasthe strength of the enemy at

Inchon and what was his capabili-ty to concentrate there?

Admiral Sherman was momen-tarily carried away by MacArthur’soratory, but once removed fromMacArthur’s personal magnetismhe too had second thoughts. Nextmorning, 24 August, he gatheredtogether in Admiral Joy’s office theprincipal Navy and Marine Corpscommanders. Present, in additionto Sherman and Joy, were AdmiralsRadford and Doyle and GeneralsShepherd and Smith. Despite gen-eral indignation over MacArthur’sfailure to give due weight to navalconsiderations, it was now abun-dantly clear that the landing wouldhave to made at or near Inchon.But perhaps there was still roomfor argument for another landingsite with fewer hydrographic prob-lems. Shepherd announced that hewas going to see MacArthur onceagain before returning to PearlHarbor and that he would make a

15

final plea for a landing south ofInchon in the vicinity of Posung-Myun.

Disappointment forGeneral Shepherd

Shepherd, accompanied byKrulak, arrived at GHQ for hisscheduled visit with MacArthur butwas short-stopped by Almond whodismissed the Posung-Myun site,saying that Inchon had been decid-ed upon and that was where thelanding would be. The discussionbecame heated. Fortunately,MacArthur entered the room andwaved Shepherd and Krulak intohis office.

Shepherd had some expectationof being named the landing forcecommander. Admiral Sherman hadrecommended, without any greatamount of enthusiasm, thatShepherd command X Corps forthe operation because of his greatamphibious experience and theexpertise of his Fleet Marine Force,Pacific staff. General Wright onMacArthur’s staff also recommend-ed it, but a rumor was prevalentthat Almond would get X Corps.MacArthur confirmed this intention,saying he would liked to have hadShepherd as commander, but thathe had promised it to Almond. Heasked if Shepherd would go alongas his amphibious advisor.Shepherd hedged slightly. He saidhe would gladly go along as anobserver.

Shepherd showed no rancor,then or later, at not getting com-mand. He and Almond were bothVirginians and both had gone toVirginia Military Institute—Almond,class of 1915 and Shepherd, classof 1917. Their personal relationswere good but not close. Shepherdlater characterized Almond as “anexcellent corps commander. Hewas energetic, forceful, brave, and

in many ways did a good job underdifficult conditions.” O. P. Smithwould not come to shareShepherd’s good opinion ofAlmond.

Plans Progress

The day following the 23 Augustconference, General Stratemeyerdirected his staff to develop a FEAFplan to support the landing. Theplan was to be separate from theCinCFE plan and was to providemission direction for all combat air-craft not essential to the close sup-port of the Eighth Army.

MacArthur, on 26 August, for-mally announced Almond’s assign-ment as commanding general of XCorps. MacArthur had told him thathe would continue, at the sametime, to be the chief of staff of FarEast Command. MacArthur’s pre-diction was that Almond wouldsoon be able to return to Tokyo.The landing at Inchon and subse-quent capture of Seoul would endthe war.

General Bradley’s assessment ofAlmond was less than enthusiastic:

Ned Almond had nevercommanded a corps—ortroops in an amphibiousassault. However, he and hisstaff, mostly recruited fromMacArthur’s headquarters,were ably backstopped by theexpertise of the Navy andMarines, notably that of OliverP. Smith, who commandedthe 1st Marine Division, whichwould spearhead the assault.

MacArthur had not asked Collinsand Sherman to approve his plannor would they have had theauthority to do so. The best theyhad to take back with them toWashington was a fairly clear con-cept of MacArthur’s intended oper-ations.

Collins and Sherman reported toBradley and the other chiefs whatthey had learned about the Inchonplan, repeating their own misgiv-ings. On 26 August, Bradley briefedPresident Truman and SecretaryJohnson. The President was moreoptimistic than the chiefs.

‘Conditional’ Approval

On 28 August, the Joint Chiefssent MacArthur a “conditional”approval, concurring in anamphibious turning movement,either at Inchon or across a favor-able beach to the south. Chief“conditions” were that MacArthurwas to provide amplifying detailsand keep them abreast of any mod-ification of his plans. The JointChiefs specifically suggested prepa-ration of an alternate plan for alanding at Kunsan.

X Corps dated its OperationOrder No. 1, written largely by thefacile pen of Colonel Forney, as 28August; distribution was a day orso later. The 1st Marine Division“was charged with the responsibili-ty as the Landing Force to assaultINCHON, conduct beachheadoperations, seize and protectKIMPO airfield, then advance tothe HAN River line west of SEOUL.This achieved, the Division wasfurther directed to seize SEOUL,and the commanding ground northof SEOUL, on order.”

O. P. Smith’s division staff, thenon the Mount McKinley, was at halfstrength. Part of the remainder wasenroute from the United States;part was with Craig’s 1st MarineBrigade in the south of Korea. Thebrigade, although an organic partof the division, was still under theoperational control of GeneralWalker. Smith’s staff, directed byColonel Gregon A. Williams aschief of staff, worked well withDoyle’s PhibGruOne staff. Abovethis harmonious relationship, the

16

17

exact status of the more seniorcommands was indistinct andvaguely defined. From amidst awelter of paper, misunderstanding,ragged tempers, and sleep depriva-tion, Division Order 2-50, expand-ing on the corps order, emerged on4 September.

Smith wrote later in the MarineCorps Gazette:

By dedicated work on thepart of the Division staff, withthe wholehearted support ofAdm Doyle’s PhibGruOnestaff, within three days a

detailed plan for the InchonLanding was drawn up, andtwo days later an advanceplanning draft of 1stMarDivOpO 2-50 (Inchon Landing)was issued.

Time available for planning wasso short that the assault regiments,contrary to amphibious doctrine,would get rigid landing plansdrawn up completely by division.

The always dapper GeneralStratemeyer, seeking to solidify hiscontention that he was GeneralMacArthur’s tactical air comman-

der, conferred with Joy, Struble,and Almond at CinCFE headquar-ters on 30 August. All that he couldget was a general agreement onthe adequacy of a CinCFE 8 Julydirective, “Coordination of AirEffort of Far East Air Forces andUnited States Naval Forces, FarEast.” Building on that, Stratemeyersent a message to MacArthur, thegist of it being: “It is recognizedthat ComNavFE must have controlof air operations within the objec-tive area during the amphibiousphase. Air operations outside ofthe objective area are part of the

Junior officers and enlisted Marines did not get a briefingon their unit’s role in the landing until embarked inamphibious shipping enroute to the objective area. However,

by then, because of leakage to the press, it was an opensecret that the Marines were going to land at Inchon.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2681

overall air campaign, and duringthe amphibious phase contributeto the success of the amphibiousoperation.”

MacArthur’s headquarters issuedOperation Order No. 1 on 30August, but neither a copy of thisorder nor any other amplifyingdetail had reached Washington by5 September. On that date thechiefs sent a further request fordetails to MacArthur. Choosing toconsider the 28 August JCS mes-sage to be sufficient approval,MacArthur dismissed the requestwith a brief message, stating “thegeneral outline of the plan remainsas described to you.”

Later he would write that hisplan “was opposed by powerfulmilitary in Washington.” He knewthat Omar Bradley, the JCS chair-man, had recently testified toCongress that large-scale amphibi-ous operations were obsolete. Hedisliked Bradley personally andderisively referred to him as a“farmer.”

Both Bradley and Truman camefrom Missouri working-class fami-lies and were proud of it. A routinehad been established under whichthe Joint Chiefs kept Trumaninformed, usually by a personalbriefing by Bradley, of the currentsituation in Korea.

On 7 September, MacArthurreceived a JCS message which hesaid chilled him to the marrow ofhis bones. The message asked foran “estimate as to the feasibilityand chance of success of projectedoperation if initiated on plannedschedule.”

The offending message remind-ed MacArthur that all reserves inthe Far East had been committedto the Eighth Army and all avail-able general reserves in the UnitedStates—except for the 82dAirborne Division—had been com-mitted to the Far East Command.No further reinforcement was in

prospect for at least four months.In light of this situation, a freshevaluation of Inchon was request-ed.

MacArthur Protests

An indignant MacArthur firedback an answer, the concludingparagraph of which said: “Theembarkation of the troops and thepreliminary air and naval prepara-tions are proceeding according toschedule. I repeat that I and all mycommanders and staff officers areenthusiastic for and confident ofthe success of the envelopingmovement.”

The last sentence was manifest-ly not true. Lack of enthusiasm wasreadily apparent at all levels ofcommand.

Next day, 8 September, the JCSsent MacArthur a short, contritemessage: “We approve your planand the President has beeninformed.” The phrase “thePresident has been informed”annoyed MacArthur. To him itimplied something less than presi-dential approval and he interpret-ed it as a threat on PresidentTruman’s part to overrule the JointChiefs. General Collins, for one,had no recollection of Truman everexpressing any doubt about thesuccess of the Inchon landing orany inclination to override theactions of the JCS with respect tothe operation.

Beach Reconnaissance

According to the intelligenceavailable to General Smith, theenemy had about 2,500 troops inthe Inchon-Kimpo region, includ-ing at least two battalions of the226th Independent MarineRegiment and two companies ofthe 918th Artillery Regiment. TheNorth Koreans had apparently pre-pared strong defensive positions.

Reconnaissance reports indicated106 hard targets, such as gunemplacements, along the Inchonbeaches.

Some of the best beach intelli-gence was obtained by Navy off-shore reconnaissance. Best knownare the exploits of LieutenantEugene F. Clark, ex-enlisted manand an experienced amphibioussailor. He and two South Koreansleft Sasebo on 31 August on boardthe British destroyer HMS Charity,transferred the next morning to aSouth Korean frigate, and landedthat evening on Yong-hong-do, 14miles off Inchon and one of thehundreds of islands that dottedKorea’s west coast. The islanderswere friendly. Clark organized theisland’s teenagers into coastwatch-ing parties and commandeered theisland’s only motorized sampan.For two weeks he fought a noctur-nal war, capturing more sampans,sending agents into Inchon, andtesting the mud flats for himself.His greatest accomplishment wasdiscovering that one of the mainnavigation lights for Flying FishChannel was still operable. GHQ atTokyo instructed him to turn onthe light at midnight on 14September. This he would do.

Anticipated hydrographic condi-tions were much more frighteningthan the quality of expectedenemy resistance. Doyle’s AttackForce would have to thread its wayfrom the Yellow Sea through thetortuous Flying Fish Channel. Ashad already been determined, the15th of September was the bestday of the month because of theheight and spacing of the tides.The morning high tide—an incred-ible 31.5 feet—would be at 0659and the evening high tide at 1919.In between these times, as the tidefell, the currents would rip out ofthe channel at seven or eightknots, exposing mud flats acrosswhich even amphibian tractors

18

could not be expected to crawl.

Wolmi-do: Key to Operation

Wolmi-do (“Moon Tip Island”),the long narrow island that formedthe northern arm of Inchon’s innerharbor, was thought to have about500 defenders. Wolmi-do harborwas connected to the Inchon dockarea by a 600-yard-long causeway.“Wolmi-do,” wrote Smith, was “thekey to the whole operation.”

Brigade staff officers, headed bytheir chief of staff, Colonel EdwardW. Snedeker, were called to Japanfrom Pusan. They recommendedthat the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines,be used for the assault of Wolmi-do.

Smith’s plan, as it emerged, wasto take Wolmi-do on the morningtide by landing the 3d Battalion,5th Marines, across Green Beach.Then would come a long wait of12 hours until the evening tidecame in and the remainder of thedivision could continue the land-ing. The rest of the 5th Marineswould cross Red Beach to thenorth of Wolmi-do, while Puller’s1st Marines landed over BlueBeach in the inner harbor to thesouth. Designation of the landingsites as “beaches” was misleading;the harbor was edged with cut-granite sea walls that would haveto be scaled or penetrated.

Colonel Snedeker recommend-

ed that the new 1st Korean MarineCorps Regiment be added to thetroop list. The assignment of theRepublic of Korea (ROK) Marinesto the division was approved byGHQ on 3 September. The EighthArmy was instructed to providethem weapons.

Almond asked Smith to take partin a war-gaming of the operation.Smith saw it as nothing more thana “CPX” or command post exerciseand a waste of precious time. Hesent a major in his place.

Almond inspected units of Barr’s7th Division at their camps—Fuji,McNair, McGill, Drake, andWhittington—between 31 Augustthrough 3 September. His aide,

19

This pre-landing aerial photograph shows clearly the convo-luted nature of the Inchon “beachhead.” MajGen Oliver P.Smith, commanding the landing force, considered Wolmi-

do, the island at the lower left of the photo, the key to thewhole situation. Seizure of Wolmi-do would precede themain landings on Inchon itself.

Terrain Handbook No. 65: Seoul and Vicinity (GHQ, Far East Command, 16 August 1950)

First Lieutenant Haig, accompaniedhim and took extensive notes.With few exceptions, Almondgained a “good” to “excellent”impression of the units he visited.

On the morning of 2 SeptemberAlmond met with the officers of hisCorps staff who were involved inhis war game. He pointed out thenecessity for frequent visits to sub-ordinate units by commanding offi-cers and the need for strong, well-organized, defenses for Corps

headquarters. “The front line is theperimeter of the place where youhappen to be,” said Almond.

Meanwhile, the main body of the1st Marine Division arrived at Kobe,Japan—except for the 5th Marines,which was still at Pusan, and the7th Marines, which was still at sea.

Typhoon JaneDisrupts Embarkation

Typhoon Jane, with winds up to

74 miles an hour, struck Kobe on 3September. Two feet of water cov-ered the docks. One ship, with allthe division’s signal gear, settled tothe bottom at her pier. All unload-ing and loading stopped for 24hours. Property sergeants, called infrom the outlying battalions,worked frantically to sort out theirunits’ gear.

Adding to General Smith’s wor-ries, the availability of the 5thMarines was now challenged.General Walker, deeply involved inthe bitter defense of the NaktongBulge, strongly opposed the releaseof this now-seasoned regimentfrom his Eighth Army. To meetWalker’s objections, and influencedby his own favorable impression ofthe 7th Division, Almond sentColonel Forney, now the MarineDeputy Chief of Staff, X Corps, toask O. P. Smith whether the 7thMarines would arrive in time to besubstituted for the 5th Marines, oralternatively, if not, would the 32dInfantry be acceptable?

A conference on the proposedsubstitution was held on theevening of 3 September. Present,among others, were GeneralsAlmond and Smith and AdmiralsJoy, Struble, and Doyle. Strangely,General Barr, the 7th Division’scommander, was not there. Thediscussion became heated. Smithargued that the proposal wentbeyond a considered risk. If thesubstitution were made, hedeclared, he would change hisscheme of maneuver. He wouldcall off the landing of the 1stMarines over Blue Beach and givethem the 5th Marines’ mission oflanding on Red Beach with the 32dInfantry following behind.

Admiral Struble (Shepherdthought him “slippery”) resolvedthe contretemps by suggesting thata regiment of Barr’s 7th Divisionbe immediately embarked to standoff Pusan as a floating reserve,

20

allowing the release of the 1stProvisional Marine Brigade. InGeneral Smith’s mind, Almond’sproposal exemplified the wide gulfseparating Army and Marine Corpsthinking. As Colonel Bowser,General Smith’s operations officer,remembered it, Doyle and Smith“came back about 11 o’clock hav-ing won their point, that the[Marine] brigade must come out ofthe Pusan perimeter and be part ofour landing force.”

The Mount McKinley, flagship ofthe Attack Force—with Smith onboard so as to be in a better posi-tion to supervise the out-loading—

set sail from Tokyo for Kobe on 4September, arriving there early thenext afternoon. That evening Smithcalled a conference of all availableMarine Corps commanders tostress the urgency of the operation.

Almond Inspects Marines

A day later, 6 September,General Almond came to Kobe toinspect 1st Marine Division units.He lunched with the staff noncom-missioned officers at Camp Otsuaccompanied by General Smithand Lieutenant Colonel AllanSutter, then visited the 2d and 3d

Battalions of the 1st Marines.Afterwards he went to Camp Sakainear Osaka to see the 11thMarines, the division’s artillery reg-iment commanded by ColonelJames H. Brower, and was favor-ably impressed.” He commented inhis diary: “A large percentage ofthe troops were drawn from activeMarine reserve units . . . . TheArmy should have done likewisebut did not.”

In the evening Smith and hisstaff briefed him on the division’soperation plan. Again Almond wasfavorably impressed, but hethought Smith’s planned subse-quent moves ashore too slow anddeliberate. He stressed to Smith theneed for speed in capturing KimpoAirfield and Seoul itself. Smith wasless impressed with Almond, say-ing: “The inspection consisted [ofAlmond] primarily questioningmen, I suppose for the purpose offinding out what made Marinestick.”

In the 1st Marine Division, oper-ational planning trickled down tothe battalion level. The 3dBattalion, 1st Marines, underLieutenant Colonel Thomas L.Ridge, had steamed comfortably toJapan in the General Simon B.Buckner (AP 123) and wasensconced in what had been thebarracks for a battalion of the 24thInfantry Division at Otsu on thesouth shore of Lake Biwa. Therewas no room for field training andthe best the battalion could do wasroad-bound conditioning marches.The commanding officer and thethree majors in the battalion weresummoned to a meeting on boardthe regimental command shipberthed in Kobe. There had been aplethora of rumors, but now forthe first time they learned officiallythat they were to land at Inchon.The regimental S-2, Captain StoneW. Quillian, went over the beachdefenses, tapping a large map

21

President Harry S. Truman and Marine Commandant Gen Clifton B. Catesexchange warm greetings at a Marine Corps field demonstration at Quantico inJune 1950,10 days before the outbreak of the Korean War. This friendly rela-tionship dissolved when Truman, in an ill-advised note, called the Marine Corps“the Navy’s police force.”

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A407260

studded with suspected weaponsemplacements. The S-3, MajorRobert E. Lorigan, then briefed thescheme of maneuver. The 3dBattalion would be the right flankunit of the main landing. Thesewere the D-Day objectives. Tap,tap. This piece of high ground wasthe battalion’s objective. Tap, tap.This hook of land on the extremeright flank had to be taken. Tap,tap. The landing would be at 1730;it would be dark at 1900. Therewere no enthusiastic cheers fromthe listeners.

Then the regimental comman-der, Chesty Puller, got to his feet.“You people are lucky,” hegrowled. “We used to have to waitevery 10 or 15 years for a war. Youget one every five years. You peo-ple have been living by the sword.By God, you better be prepared todie by the sword.”

The troop list for the landingforce totalled 29,731 persons, to beloaded out in six embarkationgroups. Four groups would loadout of Kobe, one group out ofPusan, and one group—made upof the Army’s 2d Engineer SpecialBrigade—out of Yokohama. Not allunits could be combat loaded;some compromises had to beaccepted.

One Marine Corps unit that wasnot ready to go was the 1stArmored Amphibian TractorBattalion, activated but not yetcombat ready. The Army’sCompany A, 56th AmphibianTractor Battalion, was substituted.

President Writes Letter

As the Marines combat loadedtheir amphibious ships at Kobe,the Pacific edition of Stars andStripes reached them with a storythat President Truman had calledthem “the Navy’s police force.”This compounded a previouslyperceived insult when the

President labeled the UnitedNations intervention in Korea a“police action.” The enragedMarines chalked on the tarpaulinscovering their trucks and tanks,“Horrible Harry’s Police Force” andsimilar epithets.

What had happened was that on21 August, Congressman GordonL. McDonough of California hadwritten President Truman a well-intentioned letter urging that theMarines be given a voice on theJoint Chiefs of Staff. The Presidentfired back a feisty note: “For yourinformation the Marine Corps isthe Navy’s police force and as longas I am President that is what itwill remain. They have a propa-ganda machine that is almost equalto Stalin’s . . . . The Chief of NavalOperations is the Chief of Staff ofthe Navy of which the Marines area part.”

He had dictated the letter to hissecretary, Rose Conway, and sentit without any member of his staffseeing it.

McDonough inserted the letterinto the Congressional Recordwhere it appeared on 1 September.The story reached the newspapersfour days later and a great publicoutcry went up. By five o’clock thenext afternoon Truman’s advisorshad prevailed upon him to send anapology to General Cates: “I sin-cerely regret the unfortunatechoice of language which I used.”Truman, in further fence-mending,in company with Cates, made asurprise visit two mornings later ata Marine Corps League conventioncoincidentally being held inWashington’s Statler Hotel andcharmed his audience.

Pulling Togetherthe Landing Force

General Craig’s 1st ProvisionalMarine Brigade was relieved of itscombat commitment at midnight, 5

September. The brigade had donemost of its fighting with a peace-time structure, that is, at abouttwo-thirds its authorized wartimestrength: two rifle companies to abattalion instead of three, fourguns to an artillery battery insteadof six. The 5th Marines did not geta third company for its threeinfantry battalions until just beforemounting out for Inchon.

The Korean 1st MarineRegiment, some 3,000 men, com-manded by Lieutenant ColonelKim Sung Eun, arrived in Pusan on5 September to join the 1st MarineDivision. They were in khaki uni-forms including cloth caps, andequipped with Japanese rifles andmachine guns. The South KoreanMarines were issued American uni-forms—including helmets—andeach was given one day on therifle range to fire his new Americanweapons.

Built around a cadre drawn fromthe ROK Navy, the Korean MarineCorps (“KMCs” to the U.S. Marines)had been activated 15 April 1949.Company-size units had firstdeployed to southern Korea, andthen to Cheju Island, to rout outCommunist-bent guerrillas. Afterthe North Korean invasion, theKMCs, growing to regimental size,had made small-scale hit-and-runraids along the west coast againstthe flank of the invaders.

Craig assigned LieutenantColonel Charles W. Harrison, untilrecently the executive officer ofthe 6th Marines at Camp Lejeune,as liaison officer to the KMCs. Hisparty, given a radio jeep, wasmade up of three corporalradiomen, and a corporal driver.Harrison was well-chosen. His par-ents had been missionaries inKorea. He himself had graduatedfrom the foreign high school inPyongyang in 1928 and he had aworking knowledge of Korean.

While the 5th Marines were

22

loading out, a paper, marked“Confidential” and giving specificson a landing beach at Kaesong,was widely distributed and one ormore copies were purposely “lost.”Perhaps the word got back to theNorth Koreans.

The amphibious assault trans-port Henrico (APA 45) known tothe fleet as “Happy Hank,” hadbrought the 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, to Pusan. Now the shipreceived the same battalion, itsnumbers, thinned by the fightingin the Pusan Perimeter, nowbrought up to war strength. TheNavy crew did their best to pro-vide a little extra for their Marinepassengers. The wardroom wasmade available to the officers 24hours a day.

Marguerite “Maggie” Higgins, amovie-star-pretty blonde reportingon the war for the New YorkHerald-Tribune occupied one ofthe few staterooms. She had beena war correspondent in Europeduring the last years of World WarII and had been in Korea since thebeginning of the new war. Ribaldrumors as to her imagined noctur-nal associations inevitably circulat-ed throughout the ship.

Major General Field Harris,Commanding General, 1st MarineAircraft Wing—O. P. Smith’s avia-tor counterpart—arrived in Tokyoon 3 September. His forward eche-lon of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing,was informed of the Inchon-Seouloperation three days later.Planning for the employment ofMarine air was completed on 9September. Marine Aircraft Group33, relieved of its close supportrole in the Pusan Perimeter, wouldbe the operating element. Harrisand his forward echelon embarkedat Kobe on 10 September asTactical Air Command, X Corps.

Meanwhile, Almond continuedhis restless visits and inspections.On 9 September, General Barr

briefed him on the 7th InfantryDivision’s plan of operations.Almond thought the plan ade-quate, but was concerned overpossible problems of liaison andcoordination with the 1st MarineDivision. Events would prove himright

Almond’s Good Ideas

A restive General Almondformed, for commando work, aSpecial Operations Company, XCorps, sometimes called a “RaiderGroup,” under command ofColonel Louis B. Ely, Jr., USA. WithAlmond’s encouragement, Ely pro-posed a raid to seize KimpoAirfield. Almond asked Smith for100 Marine volunteers to join theSpecial Operations Company;Smith, skeptical of the mission andunimpressed by Ely, stalled in pro-viding Marines and the requestwas cancelled. As it turned out, Elyand his company would make anapproach to the beach, but the dis-tance from ship to shore provedtoo great for rubber boats.

Brigadier General Henry I.Hodes, USA, the assistant divisioncommander of the 7th InfantryDivision, visited Smith on theMount McKinley on 9 September.Almond, still concerned by Smith’sdeliberate manner, had come upwith yet another idea for the swiftseizure of Kimpo. Almond’s newplan called for landing a battalionof the 32d Infantry on Wolmi-dothe evening of D-Day. It would“barrel” down the road to Seoul intrucks and tanks provided by theMarines. Smith, horrified by a planhe considered tactically impossi-ble, told Hodes that he had notanks to lend him.

The Secretary of the Navy, alert-ed by parents’ complaints thatunderage sons were being sent toKorea, on 8 September sent a last-minute order to remove Marines

under 18 before sailing, reducingthe landing force by about 500men. Those who were close tobeing 18 were held in Japan onother duties and eventually foundtheir way to the division asreplacements.

Second Typhoon

Weathermen said that a secondtyphoon, “Kezia,” was followingclose behind “Jane.” Rear AdmiralArleigh A. Burke, USN, had arrivedin Tokyo from Washington to beAdmiral Joy’s deputy chief of staff.Burke attempted to make an officecall on MacArthur to express hisconcerns regarding the comingtyphoon and was blocked byAlmond. Burke refused to discussthe matter with Almond and wentback to his office. By the time hegot there, a message was waitingthat MacArthur would see him.Burke hurried back to GHQ andexplained to MacArthur that if thetyphoon came up and blew westthere could be no landing on the15th or 16th.

“What do we do, Admiral?”asked MacArthur.

“We sail early,” said Burke.MacArthur agreed.

Navy meteorologists had firstpicked up signs of Kezia off theMariana Islands on 6 September.Whipping up winds of 100 milesper hour, the typhoon movedsteadily toward Japan and the EastChina Sea. Most endangered werethe amphibious ships of AdmiralDoyle’s Attack Force. The route forall six transport groups to Inchonplaced them squarely in the pathof the on-coming oriental hurri-cane.

Both Doyle and O.P. Smith, thetwo who would bear the burdenof directing the actual landing,were painfully aware that all thenormal steps of preparing for anamphibious operation were either

23

being compressed or ignored com-pletely in order to squeeze theoperation into an impossibly shorttime frame. During World War II, atleast three months would havebeen spent in planning and train-ing for an operation of this magni-tude. Beginning with Guadalcanal,a rehearsal—or rehearsals—wasconsidered essential. For Inchonthere would be no rehearsal.Doyle wryly concluded that a gooddeal would depend upon howskillfully the individual coxswainscould perform in finding their wayto the beaches.

Captain Martin J. “Stormy”Sexton, a World War II Raider andnow aide-de-camp to GeneralSmith, said later: “There was not

even time for landing exercises bythe LVTs. Some of the LVT crewshad not even had the opportunityto try their engines out in the waterand paddle around.”

Execution

Marine aircraft squadrons VMF-214 and VMF-323 began the soft-ening-up of Wolmi-do on 10September with the delivery ofnapalm. Operating from the decksof the light carriers Sicily (CVE118) and Badoeng Strait (CVE 116)(“Bing-Ding” to the Marines andsailors), the Marine fliers burnedout most of the buildings on theisland. Strikes by Navy aircraftfrom the big carriers Valley Forge

(CV 45), Philippine Sea (CV 47),and Boxer (CV 21) continued forthe next two days.

Joint Task Force 7 (JTF 7) wasofficially activated under AdmiralStruble the following day, 11September. Almond and X Corpswould be subordinate to Strubleand JTF 7 until Almond assumedcommand ashore and JTF 7 wasdissolved.

Preliminary and diversionary airand naval gunfire strikes wereroughly divided into 30 percentdelivered north of Inchon, 30 per-cent south, and 40 percent againstInchon itself. Except for a few gun-nery ships held back to protect theflanks of the Pusan Perimeter, JTF7—in its other guise, the Seventh

24

Marines prime an F4U-4B of VMF-323 for take-off from thedeck of the light aircraft carrier Badoeng Strait (CVE 116)standing off Korea. VMF-214, embarked in sister carrier

Sicily (CVE 118), played a companion role in close supportof the assault. The bent-wing Corsairs would prove onceagain to be ideal close support aircraft.

Photo courtesy of LtCol Leo J. Ihli, USMC (Ret)

Fleet—included all the combatantships in the Far East. Among themwere three fast carriers, two escortcarriers, and a British light carrier.In the final count, the force num-bered some 230 ships, including 34Japanese vessels, mostly ex-U.S.Navy LSTs (landing ships, tank)with Japanese crews. The Frenchcontributed one tropical frigate, LaGrandiere, which arrived atSasebo with a five-month supplyof wine and a pin-up picture ofEsther Williams, but no codingmachine.

Mount McKinley, with Doyle,Smith, and their staffs on board,got underway from Kobe themorning of 11 September—a dayahead of schedule because of theapproach of Typhoon Kezia—andsteamed for Sasebo. Winds of thetyphoon whipped up to 125 milesper hour. Doyle was gambling thatKezia would veer off to the north.

Almond held a last meeting atGHQ on 12 September to deal withthe urgency for an early sailingbecause of the threat of Kezia.General Shepherd, General Wright,and Admiral Burke attended. Thatafternoon General MacArthur andhis party left Haneda airport to fly

to Itazuke air base. From therethey would go by automobile toSasebo.

MacArthur Goes to Sea

Because of the storm the MountMcKinley was late in reaching port.MacArthur’s party waited in theBachelor Officers Quarters, pass-ing the time having sandwiches. Itwas close to midnight before theMount McKinley rounded thesouthern tip of Kyushu anddocked at Sasebo. MacArthur andhis party boarded the ship and shewas underway again within anhour. With General Shepherd camehis G-3, Colonel Victor H. Krulak,and his aide and future son-in-law,Major James B. Ord, Jr.

MacArthur had five generals inhis party—Shepherd, Almond, andWright, and two others: MajorGeneral Courtney Whitney—hisdeputy chief of staff for civil affairs,but more importantly his press offi-cer—and Major General Alonzo P.Fox. Fox was chief of staff toMacArthur in his capacity as“SCAP” (Supreme CommanderAllied Powers) and LieutenantHaig’s father-in law. Absent from

the group was Lieutenant GeneralGeorge Stratemeyer, USAF, whohad had some expectation ofaccompanying MacArthur as his airboss. In assignment of spaces,MacArthur grandly ignored tradi-tional ship protocol and took overDoyle’s cabin. Doyle moved to hissea cabin off the flag bridge.Almond appropriated the ship’scaptain’s cabin. O. P. Smith man-aged to keep his stateroom.

After breakfast on the morningof the 13th, Admiral Doyle led theembarked flag officers in a tour ofthe Mount McKinley, hoping toimpress the Army generals thatamphibious operations requiredspecialization. MacArthur did notgo along.

The absence of General Strate-meyer from MacArthur’s party wasa clear signal that the Navy hadbeen successful in keeping the AirForce from operating within theamphibious objective area—a circlewith a 100-mile radius drawnaround Inchon. There would be noFEAF operations within this radiusunless specifically requested byStruble. MacArthur remained abovethese doctrinal squabbles.

25

Operation ‘Common Knowledge’

Neither General MacArthur norAdmiral Struble favored extensiveair and naval gunfire preparationof the objective area, primarilybecause it would cause a loss oftactical surprise. Their concern waslargely academic. All sorts of leak-age circulated in Japan—and evenreached the media in the UnitedStates—that an amphibious opera-tion was being mounted out with aprobable target of Inchon. At theTokyo Press Club the impendinglanding was derisively called“Operation Common Knowledge.”The North Korean commandalmost certainly heard theserumors and almost equally certainhad tide tables for Inchon. Mao TseTung is supposed to have pointedat Inchon on a map of Korea andhave said, “The Americans willland here.”

American intelligence knew thatthe Russians had supplied mines,but how many had been sown inFlying Fish Channel? The lack oftime and sufficient minesweepersmade orderly mine-sweepingoperations impossible.

‘Sitting Ducks’

The pre-landing naval gunfirebombardment began at 0700 on 13September with a column of cruis-ers and destroyers coming up thechannel. The weather was good,the sea calm. Four cruisers—Toledo(CA 133), Rochester (CA 124), HMSKenya, and HMS Jamaica—foundtheir bombardment stations severalmiles south of Inchon and droppedanchor. Six destroyers—Mansfield(DD 728), DeHaven (DD 727),Lyman K. Swenson (DD 729),Collett (DD 730), Gurke (DD 783),and Henderson (DD 785)—contin-ued on past the cruisers and wereabout to earn for themselves therueful title of “Sitting Ducks.”

What appeared to be a string ofmines was sighted in the vicinity ofPalmi-do. The destroyers openedfire with their 40mm guns and themines began to explode. Leavingthe Henderson behind to continueshooting at the mines, the fiveother destroyers steamed closer totheir objectives. Gurke anchored800 yards off Wolmi-do, which wasbeing pounded by carrier air.

The remaining four destroyerstook station behind Gurke. Justbefore 1300 they opened fire.Within minutes return fire cameblazing back from hidden shorebatteries. Collett took five hits,knocking out her fire direction sys-tem; her guns switched to individ-ual control. Gurke took two lighthits. DeHaven was slightly dam-aged. Lyman K. Swenson felt anear miss that caused two casual-ties. After an hour’s bombardmentthe destroyers withdrew. One manhad been killed—ironicallyLieutenant (Junior Grade) DavidSwenson, nephew of the admiralfor whom the destroyer wasnamed—and eight were wounded.

From their more distant anchor-age, the cruisers picked up thebombardment with 6-inch and 8-inch salvos. After that the carrieraircraft resumed their attack.

Next day, 14 September, five ofthe destroyers came back (thedamaged Collett was left behind)and banged away again. At first thedestroyers drew feeble return fire.By the time they withdrew 75 min-utes later, having delivered 1,7005-inch shells, there was no returnfire at all. The Navy, with consid-erable satisfaction, reportedWolmi-do now ready for capture.

Attack Force Gathers

Admiral Doyle had won hisgamble against the typhoon. TheYellow Sea was quiet and all ele-ments of the Attack Force were in

place off Inchon. General Craig’sembarked 1st Provisional MarineBrigade, having arrived fromPusan, was formally dissolved on13 September and its partsreturned to the control of the par-ent division. Craig became theassistant division commander.

The Attack Force eased its wayup Flying Fish Channel so as to bein the transport area before day-light on 15 September. GeneralMacArthur spent a restless night.Standing at the rail of the MountMcKinley in the darkness, heentertained certain morbidthoughts, at least as he remem-bered them later in hisReminiscences: “Within five hours40,000 men would act boldly, inthe hope that 100,000 others man-ning the thin defense lines in SouthKorea would not die. I alone wasresponsible for tomorrow, and if Ifailed, the dreadful results wouldrest on judgment day against mysoul.”

George Gilman, an ensign in theMount McKinley, had less loftythoughts: “None of us boat groupofficers had ever had any experi-ence operating under such tidalconditions before, let alone everhaving been involved in anamphibious landing . . . . As themorning of September 15approached, we realized we hadall the ingredients for a disaster onour hands.”

Destination Wolmi-do

L-hour was to be 0630. At 0545,the pre-landing shore bombard-ment began. Lieutenant ColonelRobert D. “Tap” Taplett’s 3dBattalion, 5th Marines, was boatedby 0600. The carrier-based MarineCorsairs completed their last sweepof the beach 15 minutes later.

“G Company was to land to theright of Green Beach in the assault,wheel right, and seize the domi-

26

nant hill mass on the island, RadioHill,” remembered Robert D.“Dewey” Bohn (then a first lieu-tenant; he would retire a majorgeneral). His company wasembarked in the fast destroyertransport Diachenko (APD 123).She stopped her engines at about0300, the troop compartment lightscame on, and reveille soundedover the public address system.

Most of the Marines were

already awake. They hoped for thetraditional “steak and eggs” pre-landing breakfast of World War II;instead they got scrambled pow-dered eggs, dry toast, and cannedapricots. At about first light,Company G went over the sideand down the cargo nets into thebobbing LCVPs, which thencleared the ship and began to cir-cle.

Three LSMRs—medium landing

ships converted to rocket ships—sent their loads of thousands of 5-inch rockets screeching shorewardtoward Wolmi-do. The islandseemed to explode under theimpact. Then the landing craftbegan the run to Green Beach.MacArthur, Shepherd, Almond,Smith, Whitney, and Doyle allwatched from the flag bridge ofthe Mount McKinley.

Seven LCVPs brought in the firstwave, one platoon of Company Gon the right and three platoons ofCompany H on the left. The land-ing craft converged on the narrowbeach—scarcely 50 yards wide—and grounded at 0633, three min-utes behind schedule. The remain-der of the two assault companiescame in as the second wave twominutes later. Resistance was limit-ed to a few scattered shots.

Captain Patrick E. Wildman,commanding Company H, left asmall detachment to clear NorthPoint and then plunged across theisland toward his objectives—thenorthern nose of Radio Hill andthe shoreline of the burning indus-trial area facing Inchon. After ashort pause to reorganize, Bohntook Company G towards thesouthern half of Radio Hill, 105meters high. Resistance was half-hearted. At 0655, Sergeant Alvin E.Smith, guide of the 3d Platoon,secured an American flag to thetrunk of a shattered tree.MacArthur, watching the actionashore from his swivel chair on thebridge of the Mount McKinley, sawthe flag go up and said, “That’s it.Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

Ten tanks—six M-26 Pershingsand four modified M-4A3Shermans, all under SecondLieutenant Granville G. Sweet—landed in the third wave at 0646from three utility landing ships(LSUs). They crunched their wayinland, poised to help the infantry.

Lieutenant Colonel Taplett land-

27

28

ed from his free boat a few min-utes later. At almost the same time,Captain Robert A. McMullenbrought in the fourth wave bearingCompany I, the battalion reserve.His company, following behindCompany H, encountered an angry

nest of about a platoon of by-passed North Koreans. A flurry ofhand grenades was exchanged.McMullen signaled Sweet’s tanks tocome forward. A Sherman with adozer blade sealed the die-hardNorth Koreans in their holes.

Moving on to the near end ofthe causeway that stretched toInchon itself, McMullen foundmore North Korean defenders hid-ing in a cave. One of Sweet’s tanksfired a 90mm round into the mouthof the cave. There was a muffledexplosion and 30 dazed and deaf-ened North Koreans came stagger-ing out with their hands abovetheir heads. “Captured forty-fiveprisoners . . . meeting light resis-tance,” radioed Taplett at 0745 tothe Mount McKinley.

Wildman’s Marines were findingit slow going in the ruins of theindustrial area. Taplett orderedBohn to take the rest of Radio Hilland by 0800 the high ground wasMarine Corps property.

‘Wolmi-do Secured’

Once again Taplett radioed theMount McKinley, this time:“Wolmi-do secured.”

With the success of the Marinelanding blaring over the loud-speakers, MacArthur left the bridge

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2686

Reveille in the amphibious ships went at 0300 on the morning of 15 September.Marines hoped for the traditional “steak-and-eggs” D-day breakfast of World WarII, but most transports fed simpler fare, such as powdered eggs and canned apri-cots. Breakfast on board the landing ships was even more spartan.

By 0655, the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, had landed onWolmi-do and had an American flag flying at the top of a

shell-blasted tree. An hour later the battalion commanderreported resistance as light and 45 dazed prisoners taken.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-GK-234I-A2694

to pen a message to AdmiralStruble in his flagship Rochester:“The Navy and Marines have nevershone more brightly than thismorning.”

Ashore, Taplett consolidated hisgains. His three rifle companies, byprearranged plan, took up defen-sive positions facing Inchon. Theempty swimming pool at the tip ofNorth Point became a stockade forprisoners.

At about 10 o’clock Taplettordered Bohn to take Sowolmi-do,an islet dangling to the south ofWolmi-do with a lighthouse at theend of the causeway. Bohn sentSecond Lieutenant John D.Counselman, leader of his 3dPlatoon, with a rifle squad and asection of tanks. As a prelude tothe assault, a flight of Corsairsdrenched Sowolmi-do with na-palm. Covered by the two tanksand a curtain of 81mm mortar fire,Counselman’s riflemen crossed thenarrow causeway, taking fire froma hill honey-combed with em-

placements. Flamethrowers and3.5-inch rocket launchers burnedand blasted the dug-in enemy.Seventeen were killed, 19 surren-dered, and eight or more managedto hide out. The lighthouse was

taken and the job completed inless than two hours. Three Marineswere wounded, bringing Taplett’scasualties for the day to nonekilled, 17 wounded.

Word was passed that some ofthe North Koreans who hadescaped were trying to swim forInchon. A number of Bohn’sMarines lined up rifle-range fash-ion and shot at what they saw asheads bobbing in the water. Othersdismissed the targets as imaginary.Mopping up of the island wascompleted by noon.

Taplett, growing restless andseeing no sign of enemy activity,proposed to division that he makean assault on the city from his pre-sent position or at least a recon-naissance in force. Smith respond-ed to his proposal with a firm neg-ative.

Waiting for Evening Tide

The remainder of the divisionwas steaming toward the innertransport area. There would nowbe a long wait until the eveningtide swept in and the assault regi-

29

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2798

Some North Korean defenders of Wolmi-do stubbornly remained in their cave-like positions and had to be burned out by flamethrowers. U.S. Marines werereadily distinguishable at this stage of the war by their wear of camouflage hel-met covers and leggings.

M-26 Pershing tanks, new to the Marines, began to land in the third wave atWolmi-do and were soon put to use against North Korean fortified positions. Atank-infantry patrol assaulted and took Sowolmi-do, an islet dangling at the endof a causeway from the main island.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

ments could be landed. Marines,standing at the rail of their trans-ports, strained their eyes lookingfor their intended beaches butcould see nothing but smoke. Thebombardment, alternating betweennaval gunfire and air strikes, con-tinued.

During the course of the after-noon, Admiral Struble had hisadmiral’s barge lowered into thewater from the Rochester (“Roach-Catcher”). He swung by the MountMcKinley to pick up GeneralMacArthur for a personal recon-naissance from close offshore ofWolmi-do and the harbor. Almondand Shepherd went with them.

They swung close to the seawallfronting the harbor. “General,” saidShepherd, “You’re getting inmighty close to the beach. They’reshooting at us.” MacArthur ignoredthe caution.

Naval gunfire and carrier airsought to hit everything that could

be found in the way of targetswithin a 25-mile radius of Inchon.(The D-Day action for the aircrafton board the carrier Boxer waslabeled “Event 15” and consisted ofa strike with 12 F4U Corsairs andfive AD Skyraiders.) The smoke ofthe bombardment and from burn-ing buildings mixed with the rainso that a gray-green pall hung overthe city.

H-Hour for the main landingwas 1730. Lieutenant ColonelRaymond L. Murray’s 5th Marines,minus the 3d Battalion alreadyashore on Wolmi-do, was to landover Red Beach, to the left andnorth of Wolmi-do. Murray’s regi-ment was to seize the O-A line, ablue arc on the overlay to thedivision’s attack order. On theground O-A line swung 3,000yards from Cemetery Hill on thenorth or left flank, throughObservatory Hill in the center, andthen through a maze of buildings,including the British Consulate,

30

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2723

Marines from the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, escorted a steady stream of prison-ers back to Green Beach on the seaward side of Wolmi-do. Landing ships andcraft could beach as long as the tide was high, but once the tide receded theywould be left high and dry on the mud flats.

A corpsman bandages the forearm of a wounded North Korean prisoner onWolmi-do. He and other prisoners were moved to one of the several prison stock-ades that were set up on the landing beaches.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2802

until it reached the inner tidalbasin.

The 1st and 2d Battalions, 5thMarines, under LieutenantColonels George R. Newton andHarold S. Roise respectively,would land abreast across RedBeach. The new 1st ROK MarineRegiment would follow themashore.

Newton and Roise had thePusan Perimeter behind them, butnot much other infantry experi-ence. Newton, commissioned in1938 from the Naval Academy, waswith the Embassy Guard at Pekingwhen World War II came on 7

December 1941 and spent the waras a prisoner of the Japanese.Roise, commissioned from theUniversity of Idaho in 1939, hadserved at sea during the war.

In the assault, Newton’s 1stBattalion and Roise’s 2d Battalionwould come away from the attacktransports Henrico and Cavalier(APA 37) in landing craft. Both bat-talions would land in column ofcompanies across the seawall ontonarrow Red Beach. Newton, on theleft, was to take Cemetery Hill andthe northern half of ObservatoryHill. Roise, on the right, was totake his half of Observatory Hill,

the British Consulate, and the innertidal basin.

“Two things scared me todeath,” said Roise of the landingplan. “One, we were not landingon a beach; we were landingagainst a seawall. Each LCVP hadtwo ladders, which would be usedto climb up and over the wall. Thiswas risky . . . . Two, the landingwas scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thiswould give us only about twohours of daylight to clear the cityand set up for the night.”

Captain Francis I. “Ike” Fenton,Jr., commander of Company B inNewton’s battalion, sharply

31

Gen MacArthur indulged his passion for visiting the “front.”During the interval between the morning and evening land-ings he personally “reconnoitered” the Inchon beaches in

VAdm Arthur D. Struble’s barge. Struble sits to MacArthur’sright. On his left is Army MajGen Courtney Whitney, often-called MacArthur’s “press secretary.”

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348839

32

Seldom does a Marine Corps regiment go intocombat with a lesser grade than full colonel incommand. But when Brigadier General Edward

Craig arrived at Camp Pendleton in July 1950 to formthe 1st Provisional Marine Brigade for service inKorea he found no reason to supplant the command-ing officer of the 5th Marines, Lieutenant ColonelRaymond Murray. The tall, rangy Texan was anexception to the general rule. He had already madehis reputation as a fighter and of being a step aheadof his grade in his assignments. As a major atGuadalcanal he had commanded the 2d Battalion, 6thMarines, and for his conspicuous gallantry hadearned his first Silver Star.

After Guadalcanal, came Tarawa for the battalionand a second Silver Star for Murray, now a lieutenantcolonel. Finally, at Saipan, although he was painfullywounded, Murray’s control of his battalion was suchthat it brought him a Navy Cross.

Novelist Leon Uris served in Murray’s battalion.Later, when he wrote his book Battle Cry, he usedMurray as his model for “High Pockets” Huxley, hishard-charging fictional battalion commander.

Born in Alhambra, California, in 1913, Murraygrew up in Harlingen, Texas. When he accepted hiscommission in July 1935, after graduating from TexasA&M College, then the incubator of many Army andMarine officers, he had behind him four years of theArmy’s Reserve Officers Training Corps and twoyears of the Texas National Guard. He had alsostarred at football and basketball. After attendingBasic School, then in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, hewas detailed to the 2d Marine Brigade in San Diego.The brigade went to troubled China a year later.Murray served for a short time in Shanghai, thenmoved to a prized slot in the Embassy Guard inPeking. He came back to San Diego in 1940 andreturned to the 2d Marine Brigade which withinmonths expanded into the 2d Marine Division. A 1stProvisional Marine Brigade was pulled out of the 2dDivision in the summer of 1941 for service in Iceland.Murray, now a captain and soon to be a major, wentwith it. He was back in San Diego in April 1942 andin October sailed with the 6th Marines for the war inthe Pacific.

He came home in August 1944 and served atQuantico, Camp Lejeune, Hawaii, and CampPendleton. Promotions were slow after 1945 andMurray was still a lieutenant colonel when theKorean War began in 1950. As commander of theinfantry element of the later-day 1st ProvisionalMarine Brigade in the “fire brigade” defense of thePusan Perimeter, he received his third and fourth

Silver Stars for his staunch leadership.At Inchon, Major General O. P. Smith gave Murray

and his now-seasoned regiment the more complicat-ed northern half of the landing. After Inchon andSeoul, Murray would continue in command throughthe Chosin Reservoir campaign. That battle in sub-zero weather brought him the Army’s DistinguishedService Cross as well as his second Navy Cross.Finally, in January 1951 he was promoted to colonel.

Coming home from Korea in April 1951, he attend-ed the National War College and then was hand-picked to command The Basic School, since WorldWar II at Quantico. Next he served at CampPendleton and Camp Lejeune. A promotion tobrigadier general came in June 1959. Assignments inOkinawa, then Pendleton again, and Parris Island fol-lowed. Serving at Headquarters Marine Corps in 1967as a major general, he was ordered to Vietnam asDeputy Commander, III Marine Amphibious Force.His strong physique finally failed him. He wasinvalided home in February 1968 to Bethesda NavalHospital where he remained until his retirement on 1August 1968. He now lives in Oceanside, California,close to Camp Pendleton.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond L. Murray

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A42922

remembered the characteristics ofRed Beach:

Once on the beach therewas an open area of about200 yards. The left flank wasmarked by Cemetery Hill.From the sea it looked like asheer cliff. To the right ofCemetery Hill was a brewery,some work shops, and a cot-ton mill. Further to the rightand about 600 yards in fromthe beach was ObservatoryHill, overlooking the entirelanding area and consideredcritical; it was the regimentalobjective. Further to the rightwas a five-story office build-ing built of concrete and rein-forced steel.

Captain John R. Stevens’Company A was to land on theright flank. In the assault would bethe 2d Platoon under SecondLieutenant Francis W. Muetzel andthe 1st Platoon under GunnerySergeant Orval F. McMullen. Inreserve was the 3d Platoon underFirst Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez,who had joined the company as itloaded out from Pusan.

Three miles to the south of the5th Marines, Chesty Puller’s 1stMarines was to land across Blue

Beach. Puller’s mission was tosecure the O-1 line, a 4,000-yardarc that went inland as deep as3,000 yards, and then hookedaround to the left to cut off Inchonfrom Seoul.

Blue Beach One, 500 yardswide, had its left flank marked bya salt evaporator. What looked tobe a road formed the boundary tothe south with Blue Beach Two.

The 2d Battalion, 1st Marines,was under affable, white-hairedLieutenant Colonel Allan Sutter.After landing over Blue BeachOne, he was to take a critical roadjunction about 1,000 yards north-east of the beach, and Hill 117,nearly two miles inland, whichcommanded Inchon’s “back door”and the highway to Seoul, 22 milesaway.

Sutter, a graduate of ValleyForge Military Academy andDartmouth College, had gained hisMarine Corps commission in 1937through the Platoon LeadersCourse, a program under whichcollege students spent two sum-mers at Quantico to qualify as sec-ond lieutenants. He then spent ayear at the Basic School inPhiladelphia before being assignedtroop duties. During World War II,Sutter was a signal officer atGuadalcanal, Guam, and Okinawa.

Blue Beach Two, also 500 yardswide, had its left flank marked bythe supposed road and its rightflank by a narrow ramp jutting sea-ward. A cove, further to the right,named at the last minute “BlueBeach Three,” offered an alternateor supplementary landing site.Ridge, with the 3d Battalion, wasto cross the seawall girdling BlueBeach Two and take Hill 233, amile southeast of the beach, and,on the extreme right, a small cape,flanking Blue Beach and toppedby Hill 94.

At best, the four assault battal-ions coming across Red and BlueBeaches would have but twohours of high tide and daylight toturn the plan into reality. Smith,after fully committing his two regi-ments, would have nothing left asa division reserve except two half-trained Korean Marine battalions.

Assaulting Red Beach

It would be a long ride to RedBeach for the 1st and 2d Battalionsof the 5th Marines. Troops begandebarking from the transports atabout 1530. “As you climb downthat net into the LCVP you’rescared,” remembered Private FirstClass Doug Koch of Company D,5th Marines. “What keeps you

33

Navy transports stand off Inchon and Wolmi-do before thelanding. Amphibious lift for Inchon, some of it literally bor-

rowed back from the Japanese, was a rusty travesty of thegreat amphibious armadas of World War II.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2865

going is knowing this is what youhave to do.”

The Horace A. Bass (APD 124),the Red Beach control vessel,slowly steamed ahead with a longfile of landing craft “trailing behindlike a brood of ducklings.”

The supporting rocket ships letgo with a final fusillade of some6,500 5-inch rockets. The resultingcloud of dust and smoke com-

pletely masked the beach area.The Horace A. Bass, an escortdestroyer converted into a high-speed transport and anxious to getinto the fight, banged away withher 5-inch guns. She then dippedher signal flag and the first waveheaded for Red Beach.

The eight LCVPs in the firstwave crossed the line of departureat H-8 with 2,200 yards to go. The

four boats on the left carried thetwo assault platoons of CompanyA. Captain Steven’s mission was totake Cemetery Hill and to securethe left flank of the beachhead.The four boats on the right carriedthe assault elements of CaptainSamuel Jaskilka’s Company E,which was to clear the right flankof the beach and then capture thehill that held the British Consulate.

As the first wave passed themid-way point, two squadrons ofMarine Corps Corsairs—VMF-214under Lieutenant Colonel Walter E.Lischied and VMF-323 under MajorArnold A. Lund—came in to strafeboth Red and Blue Beaches. Theyexhausted their loads and flewaway. Not satisfied, CaptainStevens called for further air strikesagainst Red Beach. Four Navy A-4D Skyraiders made strafing passesuntil the wave had only 30 yards togo.

On the right, First LieutenantEdwin A. Deptula’s 1st Platoon,Company E, hit the seawall at1731, one minute behind schedule.Designated Marines threwgrenades up over the seawall, andafter they exploded, Deptula tookhis platoon up the scaling ladders.A few stray rounds whined over-head.

Deptula pushed inland about100 yards to the railroad tracksagainst no resistance. The rest ofCompany E landed about 10 min-utes later. Captain Jaskilka (whowould retire as a four-star general)quickly re-organized his companynear the Nippon Flour Companybuilding just south of the beach-head. Deptula’s platoon continueddown the railroad tracks to theBritish Consulate. Jaskilka sentanother platoon to cross the rail-road tracks and then move up theslope of 200-foot-high ObservatoryHill.

On the left flank it was not quitethat easy. One of the four landing

34

craft, with half the 1st Platoon,Company A, on board, laggedbehind with engine trouble. Theremaining three boats reached theseawall at 1733. Sergeant CharlesD. Allen took his half of the 1stPlatoon over the wall and receivedfire from his north flank and froma bunker directly to his front.Several Marines went down.

To Allen’s right, SecondLieutenant Frank Muetzel found abreach in the seawall and broughthis 2d Platoon ashore. Facing themwas a pillbox. Two Marines threwgrenades and six bloody NorthKorean soldiers came out.

Cemetery Hill loomed ahead, butMuetzel’s immediate objective wasAsahi Brewery. He slipped southof Cemetery Hill and marchedunopposed down a street to thebrewery. There was a brief indul-gence in green beer.

Sergeant Allen, with his half-pla-toon, was making no progressagainst the bunker to his front. Thesecond wave landed, bringing inthe 3d Platoon under BaldomeroLopez and the missing half of the1st Platoon. Too many Marineswere now crowded into too smalla space.

Lopez charged forward alone.

He took out the bunker with agrenade and moved forwardagainst a second bunker, pullingthe pin from another grenade.Before he could throw it, he washit. The grenade dropped by hisside. He smothered the explosionwith his body. This gained him aposthumous Medal of Honor. TwoMarines went against the bunkerwith flamethrowers. They wereshot down but the bunker wastaken.

Captain Stevens’s boat landedhim in Company E’s zone ofaction. Unable to get to his owncompany, he radioed his executive

35

Gen Oliver P. Smith Collection, Marine Corps Research Center

Aerial photo of Red Beach shows the pounding it took in thepre-landing naval gunfire and air attacks. The 1st and 2d

Battalions, 5th Marines, landed across this beach immedi-ately north of the causeway leading to Wolmi-do.

officer, First Lieutenant Fred F.Eubanks, Jr., to take charge.Stevens then radioed Muetzel toleave the brewery and get back tothe beach where he could helpout.

On the way back, Muetzel founda route up the southern slope ofCemetery Hill and launched anassault. The summit was alive withNorth Koreans, but there was nofight left in them. Dazed and spir-itless from the pounding they hadtaken from the air and sea, theythrew up their hands and surren-dered. Muetzel sent them down tothe base of the hill under guard.

Eubanks’ Company E Marinesmeanwhile had bested theobstructing bunker with grenadesand a flamethrower. His 1st and 2dPlatoons pushed through andjoined Muetzel’s 2d Platoon. At1755, 25 minutes after H-Hour,Captain Stevens fired an amber

flare, signaling that Cemetery Hillwas secure. It had cost his compa-ny eight Marines killed and 28wounded.

Coming in on the third andfourth waves, Company C, 1stBattalion, was to take the northernhalf of Observatory Hill, andCompany D, 2d Battalion, was totake the southern half. It did notwork out quite that way. Parts ofCompanies C and D were landedon the wrong beaches. CompanyC, once ashore, had to wait 12minutes for its commander,Captain Poul F. Pedersen. InPedersen’s boat was the fifth wavecommander who had decided totow a stalled LCVP. Once ashore,Pedersen had trouble sorting outhis company from amongst thejumble of Marines that had gath-ered in the center of the beach.

Maggie Higgins, the Herald-Tribune correspondent, came off

the Henrico in Wave 5 along withJohn Davies of the Newark DailyNews, Lionel Crane of the LondonDaily Press, and a photographer.As their landing craft hit the sea-wall, the wave commander, FirstLieutenant Richard J. “Spike”Schening, urged on his Marineswith, “Come on you big, braveMarines. Let’s get the hell out ofhere.”

The photographer decided hehad had enough and that he wouldgo back to the Henrico. Maggieconsidered doing the same, butthen, juggling her typewriter, she,along with Davies and Crane, fol-lowed Schening over the seawall.

Eight LSTs crossed the line ofdeparture, as scheduled, at 1830and were headed for the seawall.Seeing the congestion on RedBeach, the skippers of the LSTsconcluded that the Marines wereheld up and could not advance.

36

The lead LST received some mortarand machine-gun fire and firedback with its own 20mm and40mm guns. Two other LSTs joinedin. Unfortunately, they were spray-ing ground already occupied bythe Marines.

The LST fire showered Muetzel’splatoon, holding the crest ofCemetery Hill. Muetzel pulled backhis platoon. As his Marines sliddown the hill, they came under firefrom a North Korean machine gun

in a building on Observatory Hill.A chance 40mm shell from one ofthe LSTs knocked out the gun.Weapons Company and Head-quarters and Service Company ofRoise’s 2d Battalion landed about1830 and came under LST fire thatkilled one Marine and wounded 23others.

By 1900, all eight LSTs hadstopped firing and were nestledagainst the seawall. By thenSecond Lieutenant Byron L.

Magness had taken his 2d Platoon,Company C, reinforced by SecondLieutenant Max A. Merritt’s 60mmmortar section, up to the saddlethat divided the crest ofObservatory Hill. Their radios werenot working and they had noflares. They had to inform thebeach of their success by sendingback a runner.

Meanwhile, the 1st Battalion’sreserve company—Company Bunder Captain “Ike” Fenton—hadlanded in the 2d Battalion’s zone.Lieutenant Colonel Newtonordered Fenton to assumeCompany C’s mission and take thenorthern half of Observatory Hill.Six Marines were wounded alongthe way, but by about 2000 Fentonwas at the top and tied in with theMagness-Merritt platoon.

In the right half of the regimen-tal zone of action, Roise was get-ting the congestion on the beachstraightened out. Company D,commanded by First Lieutenant H.J. Smith, had followed Company Eashore, but had landed to the leftin the 1st Battalion zone. Smith(called “Hog Jaw” to make up forhis non-existent first and secondnames) understood that Jaskilka’sCompany E was already on thecrest of Observatory Hill. Underthat assumption he started hiscompany in route column up thestreet leading to the top of the hill.An enemy machine gun interrupt-ed his march. After a brisk firefightthat caused several Marine casual-ties, the enemy was driven off andCompany D began to dig in for thenight. A platoon from Company F,the battalion reserve, filled in thegap between Company D and theMagness-Merritt positions. Theonly part of the O-A line that wasnot now under control was theextreme right flank where the lineended at the inner tidal basin.

Maggie Higgins, after seeing thewar, such as it was, found a boat

37

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A3701

Marines enroute to Red Beach go over the side of their assault transport, downthe cargo net hand-over-hand, and into the waiting LCVP, a version of thefamous “Higgins boat” of World War II.

on Red Beach that was returning tothe Mount McKinley, where, afterthe personal intercession ofAdmiral Doyle, she was allowed tostay for the night. She slept on astretcher in the sick bay. Next day,Admiral Doyle specified that in thefuture women would be allowedon board only between the hoursof nine in the morning and nine atnight. (About a month later,Maggie’s transportation orderswere modified. She would still beallowed on board any Navy shipbut would have to be chaperonedby a female nurse.)

Murray, the regimental comman-

der, came ashore at about 1830and set up his command post atthe end of the causeway that ledfrom the mainland to Wolmi-do.Roise wished to stay where he wasfor the night, but Murray orderedhim to reach the tidal basin.Company F, under Captain Uel D.Peters, faced around in the darkand plunged forward. Shortly aftermidnight, Roise reported that hishalf of the O-A line was complete.

Assaulting Blue Beach

The confusion was greater onBlue Beach than on Red Beach.

Amphibian tractors, rather thanlanding craft, were used for theassault. The seawall was in disre-pair with numerous breaks upwhich it was presumed theamphibian tractors could crawl.The 18 Army armored amphibians(LVT[A]s) forming the first wavecrossed the line of departure at1645 and headed toward Inchon.At four knots they needed three-quarters of an hour to hit thebeach at H-Hour.

The soldiers had the compassesand seamanship to pierce thesmoke and reached the beach ontime. The second and following

38

Marines go over the seawall forming the sharp edge of RedBeach. The Marine on the ladder has been identified as 1stLt

Baldomero Lopez. Moments later he would give his life andearn a posthumous Medal of Honor.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A3190

waves did not do so well. Rain andsmoke had completely blotted outany view of the beach. From thebridge of his ship, the Blue Beachcontrol officer watched the firsttwo or three waves disappear intothe smoke. He requested permis-

sion to stop sending any furtherwaves ashore until he could seewhat was happening to them.Permission was denied.

As Major Edwin H. Simmons,the commander of WeaponsCompany, 3d Battalion, 1st

Marines, remembered it:

We had been told that awave guide would pick us upand lead us to the line ofdeparture . . . . Two LCVPsdid come alongside our wave.

39

Baldomero Lopez was always eager. During WorldWar II, he was 17 when he enlisted in the Navy inJuly 1943. Most thought him a Mexican American,

but his father, also named Baldomero, as a young manhad come to Tampa from the Asturias region of Spain.Los Asturianos, the men of Asturias, are known for theirvalor and honor.

He was appointed from the fleet to the NavalAcademy in July 1944. His class, 1948A, was hurriedthrough in three years. Lucky Bag, his class book, calledhim “one of the biggest hearted, best natured fellows inthe brigade.” Otherwise he does not seem to have beenexceptional. His nickname at the Academy was “Lobo.”This changed to “Punchy” after he came into the MarineCorps in June 1947, because it was generally believedthat he had boxed while at Annapolis. After Basic Schoolhe stayed on at Quantico as a platoon commander in thePlatoon Leaders Class. In 1948, he went to North Chinaas part of a Marine presence that was in its last days. Heserved first as a mortar section leader and then as a rifleplatoon commander at Tsingtao and Shanghai.

When the Marines closed out in China, he came backto Camp Pendleton. In the early summer of 1950, whenthe formation of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigadestripped the 1st Marine Division dry, he asked to beincluded but was left behind. He went out, however, toKorea in the draft that was sent to Pusan to fill the 5thMarines to war strength before embarking for Inchon. Hewas given the 3d Platoon, Company A, 1st Battalion.

Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball presented theposthumous Medal of Honor to his father and mother atceremonies in Washington on 30 August 1951.Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at therisk of his life above and beyond the call of duty asa Rifle Platoon Commander of Company A, FirstBattalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division(Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressorforces during the Inchon invasion in Korea on 15September 1950. With his platoon, First LieutenantLopez was engaged in the reduction of immediateenemy beach defenses after landing with theassault waves. Exposing himself to hostile fire, hemoved forward alongside a bunker and preparedto throw a hand grenade into the next pillbox

whose fire was pinning down that sector of thebeach. Taken under fire by an enemy automaticweapon and hit in the right shoulder and chest ashe lifted his arm to throw, he fell backward anddropped the deadly missile. After a moment, heturned and dragged his body forward in an effortto retrieve the grenade and throw it. In critical con-dition from pain and loss of blood, and unable tograsp the hand grenade firmly enough to hurl it, hechose to sacrifice himself rather than endanger thelives of his men and, with a sweeping motion of hiswounded right arm, cradled the grenade under himand absorbed the full impact of the explosion. Hisexceptional courage, fortitude and devotion to dutyreflect the highest credit upon First LieutenantLopez and the United States Naval Service. He gal-lantly gave his life for his country.

First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A43985

The first was filled with pho-tographers. The second wasloaded with Korean inter-preters. Two of these werehastily dumped into my LVT,apparently under the mistak-en notion that I was a battal-ion commander. Both inter-preters spoke Korean andJapanese; neither spokeEnglish. Time was passing,and we were feeling faintlydesperate when we camealongside the central controlvessel. I asked the bridge forinstructions. A naval officerwith a bullhorn pointed outthe direction of Blue Two, butnothing could be seen in thatdirection except mustard-col-ored haze and black smoke.We were on our way whenour path crossed that of

40

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2816

A key objective for the 5th Marines was the 200-foot-high Observatory Hill. Boththe 1st and 2d Battalions converged on the hill with Marines from Company Btaking the weather station on its top.

Marines setup a temporary barricade on the causeway toInchon, after mopping up and consolidating their positionson Wolmi-do. Although not expecting a counterattack, they

position a 3.5-inch rocket launcher and a machine gun justin case. The 3.5-inch rocket launcher proved itself adequateagainst the vaunted T-34 tank.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A2747

another wave. I asked if theywere headed for Blue Two.Their wave commanderanswered, “Hell, no. We’rethe 2d Battalion headed forBlue One.” We then veeredoff to the right. I broke outmy map and asked my LVTdriver if he had a compass.He looked at his instrumentpanel and said, “Search me.Six weeks ago I was driving atruck in San Francisco.”

The nine Army LVT(A)s makingup the first wave for Blue BeachOne got ashore on schedule, butfound themselves boxed in by anearth slide that blocked the exitroad. The remaining nine Armyarmored amphibian tractors, form-ing Wave 1 for Blue Beach Two,made it to the seawall shortly afterH-Hour but were less successful ingetting ashore. The “road” separat-ing Blue One and Two turned outto be a muck-filled drainage ditch.After exchanging fire with scat-tered defenders in factory build-ings behind the seawall, the Army

vehicles backed off and milledaround, getting intermixed withthe incoming troop-carrying Waves2 and 3.

From his seat on the bridge ofthe Mount McKinley, MacArthur,surrounded by his gaggle of gener-als and admirals, peered throughthe gathering gloom of smoke,rain, and darkness and listened tothe reports crackling over the loud-speaker. From his perspective, allseemed to be going well.

Lieutenant Colonel Sutter’s sec-ond wave landed elements of bothhis two assault companies,Company D, under Captain WelbyW. Cronk, and Company F, underCaptain Goodwin C. Groff, acrossBlue Beach One shortly after H-Hour. Some of his amphibian trac-tors hung up on a mud bank about300 yards offshore and their occu-pants had to wade the rest of theway. Most of Sutter’s last threewaves, bringing in his reserve,Company E, drifted to the right. AsSutter reported it: “For someunknown reason the third, fourth,and fifth waves were diverted from

landing either on Beach BLUE-1 oralong the rock causeway by a con-trol boat. Instead they were direct-ed to the right of the two beachesprescribed for the regiment andlanded at Beach BLUE-3.”

Wave 2 for Blue Beach Two,with Ridge’s assault companies,passed through the Army tractors,Company G under Captain GeorgeC. Westover on the left, Company Iunder First Lieutenant Joseph R.“Bull” Fisher on the right. Theyreached the seawall about 10 min-utes after H-Hour. The tractorsbearing Company G formed up incolumn and muddled their way upthe drainage ditch. Company Iwent over the seawall using alu-minum ladders, some of whichbuckled. Assault engineers fromCaptain Lester G. Harmon’sCompany C, 1st EngineerBattalion, reached the wall andrigged cargo nets to help the laterwaves climb ashore.

Ridge, the 3d Battalion comman-der, accompanied by his executiveoffice, Major Reginald R. Myers,seeing the congestion on Blue

41

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

Amphibian tractors (LVTs) churn away from the landingships (LSTs) that brought them to Inchon. “Amtracks” were

used chiefly for the assault of Blue Beach within the innerharbor.

Beach Two, moved in his free boatto explore the possibilities of BlueBeach Three. He found a mudramp broken through the seawalland some of his battalion wasdiverted to this landing point. Anenemy machine gun in a towerabout 500 yards inland caused afew casualties before it wasknocked out by fire from theArmy’s armored tractors.

More serious problems confront-ed Lieutenant Colonel JackHawkins’ 1st Battalion, which wasin regimental reserve. Boated inLCVP landing craft, he was orderedby Puller, who was already ashore,to land his battalion. If things hadgone well Hawkins should havebeached at about H+45 minutes or1815. Veering off far to the left inthe gloom, his leading waves mis-took the wall of the tidal basin forthe seawall of Blue Beach Two.

Most of Company B and some ofCompany A had landed beforeHawkins could correct the error.Most of those who landed were re-boated and sent on to Blue BeachTwo. Because of a shortage ofboats, however, one platoon wasleft behind. Marching overland toBlue Beach Two this orphan pla-toon gilded the lily by picking upa bag of prisoners enroute.

The 3d Battalion, 1st Marines’reserve—Company H underCaptain Clarence E. Corley, Jr.—landed across Blue Beaches Twoand Three. The 1st Platoon, led byFirst Lieutenant William Swanson,had the mission of securing theright flank of the bridgehead.Swanson slid his platoon behindCompany I and moved against aplatoon-sized enemy dug in onHill 94, which topped the fish-hook cape bounding the beach-

head on the south. The NorthKoreans were driven out, but at acost. Swanson himself was severe-ly wounded in the thigh and evac-uated. (Swanson returned to the 3dBattalion in late winter 1951, waswounded in the hand at the end ofMarch, and killed by one of ourown mines on 15 May 1951.)

Corley’s Company H, less its 1stPlatoon, moved into the gapbetween Companies G and I. The2d Platoon, Company H, was sentforward at midnight to outpost Hill233, a mile to the front, gothalfway there, to Hill 180, andreceived permission to stay put forthe night.

Generals Almond and Shepherdcame in with the ninth wave, alongwith Admiral Struble, for a look-see at how events were progress-ing on Blue Beach. Almond’s aide,Lieutenant Haig, had come in to

42

Red Beach on board one of theLSTs. He had with him Almond’spersonal baggage and the where-withal to establish a mobile com-mand post including a van fittedout as sleeping quarters and anoffice. In transit Haig had lost twoof the general’s five jeeps, sweptover the side of the LST in thetyphoon. When Haig met up withhis boss, Almond’s first questionwas whether Haig had gotten hisbaggage ashore without getting itwet.

While the 5th Marines wereassaulting Red Beach, BrigadierGeneral Craig—with his brigadedissolved and now the assistant

division commander—came a-shore at Wolmi-do and, joiningTaplett’s 3d Battalion, establishedan advance division commandpost. Craig had brought his brigadestaff ashore intact to function as aninterim division staff. Since hisarrival in the objective area, Craighad had no opportunity to meetwith O. P. Smith face-to-face.

During the night, Taplett’s bat-talion crossed the causeway fromWolmi-do and rejoined the mainbody of the 5th Marines on RedBeach. Before morning the 1stMarine Division had all its firstday’s objectives. Resistance hadbeen scattered—of the sort that

goes down in the situation reportas “light to moderate.” Total Marinecasualties for the first day’s fightingwere 20 killed, 1 died of wounds,1 missing in action, and 174wounded.

Assault Continues

At about midnight Puller andMurray received the division’sattack order for the next day.Murray was to bring the 5thMarines up on line abreast ofPuller’s 1st Marines. The axis forthe advance on Seoul would bethe intertwined highway and rail-road. The Korean Marine regiment

43

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-GK-234I-A409339

On the morning following the landing, the Marinesmarched through Inchon itself against no resistance.Initially, the Marines enjoyed a 10 to one numerical advan-

tage over the mediocre defense force. North Korean resis-tance stiffened in both numbers and quality as the attackmoved inland toward Seoul.

was initially left behind in Inchonto mop up.

The day, 16 September, wasclear and pleasant. The climatewas about the same as our north-eastern states at this time of year,warm during the day, a bit cool atnight.

Murray elected to advance incolumn of battalions, leading offwith Roise’s 2d Battalion, followedby the 1st and 3d Battalions in thatorder. The 2d Battalion’s advancethrough Inchon was strangelyquiet. The enemy had vanishedduring the night.

Corsairs Against T-34s

Five miles to Murray’s front, sixof the vaunted Soviet-built T-34tanks, without infantry escort, wererumbling down the Seoul highwaytoward him. Near the village ofKansong-ni, eight Corsairs fromVMF-214 swept down on theadvancing tanks with rockets andnapalm. One Corsair, flown byCaptain William F. Simpson, Jr.,failed to come out of its dive,

killing Simpson, but the tank attackwas halted. One T-34 was engulfedin flames, a second had its tracksknocked off, and a third stoodmotionless on the road. A secondflight of Corsairs came over to fin-ish off the disabled T-34s. Thepilots pulled away, thinking incor-rectly that all six tanks were dead.

On the ground, Roise’s 2dBattalion, 5th Marines, made solidcontact with Sutter’s 2d Battalion,1st Marines, on Hill 117. The twobattalions continued the advanceagainst nothing heavier than sniperfire. By 1100 elements of both bat-talions were just short of Kansong-ni where they could see the smokestill rising from the fires set by thebattle of T-34s and Corsairs.

Meanwhile, General Craig hadmoved his command group intoInchon itself. On the outskirts ofthe city, he found what he thoughtwould be a good location for thedivision command post including asite close by where a landing stripcould be bulldozed. He orderedhis temporary command postmoved forward.

Thirty “SCAJAP” LSTs, mannedfor the most part with Japanesecrews, had been collected for theInchon landing. Those that werecarrying troops did not beach, butsent their passengers off inamphibian tractors. After theassault waves had swept aheadthey did beach, when the tidespermitted, for general unloading.Beach conditions and the mixed

44

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348506

Once ashore at Inchon, the Marines see for themselves that naval gunfire haddestroyed much of the city. Once ashore, the rule-of-thumb was that each assaultbattalion would have a cruiser or destroyer available for on-call missions.

The rubber-tired amphibious DUKW pulls a trailer about a mile outside of Inchonon the first morning after the landing. These “ducks” were used primarily to moveguns, ammunition, and supplies for the artillery.

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348502

quality of the Japanese crewsthrew the planned schedule forunloading completely out of bal-ance.

The landing and employment oftanks presented problems. TheMarines had just received M-26Pershings as replacements for their

M-4A3 Shermans. Few of the mem-bers of Lieutenant Colonel Harry T.Milne’s 1st Tank Battalion—exceptfor Company A, which had beenwith the 5th Marines and had theM-26 at Pusan—were familiar withthe Pershing. The tankers receivedtheir instruction on the new tanks

on board ship—not the best placefor tank training.

Major Vincent J. Gottschalk’sVMO-6, the division’s observationsquadron, began flying reconnais-sance missions at first light on D+1,16 September. VMO-6 possessedeight Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopters

45

A curious Marine passes three knocked-out T-34 tanks. Thevaunted Soviet-built tank proved no match for the array ofweapons that the Marines could bring to bear, ranging from

a Corsair fighter-bomber’s rockets to the 3.5-inch rocketlaunchers in the rifle and weapons companies.

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348504

M-26 Pershing tanks emerge from the maws of beached LSTs(“landing ships, tank”) at Inchon. Marine tankers, previ-ously equipped with the obsolescent M-4 Sherman tank,

were re-equipped with the Pershings literally while on theirway to the objective area.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

and eight OY airplanes and hadbeen with the 1st Brigade at Pusanwhere for the first time Marinesused helicopters in combat. Thatday, First Lieutenant Max Nebergallpulled a ditched Navy pilot out ofInchon harbor in the first of manyrescue operations.

In the 1st Marines’ zone ofaction Puller sent Ridge’s 3dBattalion to make a sweep ofMunhang Peninsula. Ridge usedamphibian tractors as personnelcarriers—a bold but dangerouspractice—and advanced on abroad front, Companies G and I

abreast with Company H followingin reserve. Prisoners and materielwere taken, but there was almostno fighting. By noon the divisionheld the 0-3 line, a front threemiles long, secured on both flanksby water. Smith ordered Murrayand Puller to move on forward andseize the Force Beachhead Line(FBHL) which would conclude theassault phase of the amphibiousoperation.

Murray chose to advance in twoprongs. Roise with the 2d Battalionwould continue to advance withhis right flank tied to the Seoulhighway. Taplett, coming up frombehind with the 3d Battalion wasto swing wide to the left. Newton,with the 1st Battalion, would fol-low in reserve.

Roise’s battalion, escorted byLieutenant Sweet’s five M-26Pershing tanks, moved up the roadand at about 1330 rounded thebend into Kansong-ni. Two ofSweet’s tanks crawled up a knollfrom which they could cover theadvancing riflemen. From this van-tage point the Marine tankers sawthree T-34 tanks, not dead as sup-posed, but ready for battle withhatches buttoned up and 85mmguns leveled on the bend in theroad. Sweet’s tanks smacked the T-34s with 20 rounds of armor-pierc-ing shells. The T-34s went up inflames. Company D led theadvance past the three burninghulks. Nearby the Marines foundthe two tanks knocked out earlierby the Corsairs. The sixth tank hadvanished.

Company D continued foranother thousand yards and thenclimbed a high hill on the westside of the road. Company F joinedCompany D on their left. Theywere still two miles from the ForceBeachhead Line, but it looked likea good time and place to dig in forthe night.

On Roise’s left, Taplett’s 3d

46

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A130235

Maj Vincent J. Gottschalk, commanding officer of VMO-6, prepares to take off inan OY light observation aircraft. Among the varied missions of the squadron wasspotting and adjusting artillery fire on the retreating North Koreans for theground troops.

Battalion advanced uneventfullyand now held high ground over-looking the FBHL. His patrolsreached the edge of Ascom City—

once the village of Taejong-ni andnow the remnants of a huge ser-vice command that had been usedby the U.S. Army during the occu-

pation—to his front. The sea wasto his left.

South of the 5th Marines,Puller’s 1st Marines, having spentmost of the day pulling together itsscattered parts, did not jump off inthe new attack until about 1600.Sutter’s 2d Battalion went forwardon the right of the road pastKansong-ni for a thousand yardsand then tied in with Roise’s bat-talion for the night. Hawkins’ 1stBattalion filled in between Sutterand Ridge. Ridge’s 3d Battalionhad done more hiking than fight-ing and at the end of the day wasrelieved by the Division Recon-naissance Company, under pugna-cious Captain Kenneth J.Houghton, attached to the 1stMarines as the division’s right flankelement. Ridge’s Marines went intoregimental reserve. Houghton’sreconnaissance Marines engagedno enemy but found huge cachesof arms and ammunition.

47

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC349015

For much of the advance up the axis of the Inchon-Seoulhighway, and even sometimes traveling cross-country,Marines used amphibian tractors as personnel carriers pro-

tected along the way by M-26 tanks. The North Koreans, inturn, tried to choke off these advances with ambushes andantitank mines.

A Korean civilian eager to assist the advancing forces, shows one of the division’sreconnaissance Marines a large cache of dynamite and ammunition hidden ina storage cave. It was one of several caches uncovered by Capt KennethHoughton’s Marines on the division’s right flank.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A2821

O. P. Smith OpensHis Command Post

General Craig had just gottenback from his search for a site forthe division command post, whenhe learned that O. P. Smith, accom-panied by Admiral Struble andGeneral Shepherd, had landed.Smith was satisfied with Craig’srecommended site. Craig then tookhim for a quick tour of the troopdispositions and at 1800 Smith offi-cially assumed command ashore.During the day, General Almondvisited Red Beach and the 5thMarines.

Smith was joined later thatevening by Major General Frank E.Lowe, an Army Reserve officer andPresident Truman’s personalobserver, who had arrived unan-nounced. Lowe moved into thedivision command post. He andSmith got along famously. “Hisfrank and disarming manner madehim welcome throughout the divi-sion,” remembered Smith.

More Enemy T-34 Tanks

The night of 16-17 Septemberwas quiet, so quiet, the official his-tory remarks, that a truck comingdown the highway from Seouldrove unimpeded through theMarine front lines, until finallystopped by a line of M-26 tanksseveral hundred yards to the rear.The tankers, the 1st Platoon,Company A, under First LieutenantWilliam D. Pomeroy, took a sur-prised NKPA officer and fourenlisted men prisoner.

Lieutenant “Hog Jaw” Smith,commander of Company D, 5thMarines, from his observation postoverlooking the highway was suffi-ciently apprehensive, however,about a sharp bend in the road tothe left front of his position to out-post it. He dispatched his 2dPlatoon with machine guns and

rocket launchers attached, allunder Second Lieutenant Lee R.Howard, for that purpose.

During the night the NorthKoreans formed up a tank-infantrycolumn—six T-34s from the 42dNKPA Mechanized Regiment andabout 200 infantry from the 18thNKPA Division in Seoul—somemiles east of Ascom City. Howardsaw the lead tank at about dawn,reported its approach to “Hog Jaw”Smith, who reported it to Roise,who could not quite believe it.Obviously the North Koreans didnot know the Marines were wait-ing for them. Howard let the col-umn come abreast of his knoll-topposition and then opened up.Official historians Montross andCanzona say: “The Red infantrywent down under the hail of leadlike wheat under the sickle.”Corporal Oley J. Douglas, stillarmed with the 2.36-inch rocketlauncher and not the new 3.5-inch,slid down the hill to get a bettershot at the tanks. At a range of 75

yards he killed the first T-34 anddamaged the second. The remain-ing four tanks continued to plowforward to be met by a cacophonyof 90mm fire from Pomeroy’s M-26tanks at 600 yards range, 75mmrecoilless rifle fire at 500 yards, andmore rockets, some coming fromSutter’s battalion on the other sideof the road. Private First ClassWalter C. Monegan, Jr., fromCompany F, 1st Marines, fired his3.5-inch rocket launcher at point-blank range. Just which weaponskilled which tanks would beargued, but the essentials were thatall six T-34s were knocked out andtheir crews killed.

MacArthur Comes Ashore

MacArthur, instantly recogniz-able in his braided cap, sunglasses,well-worn khakis, and leatherflight jacket, came grandly ashorethat same morning, 17 September.His large accompanying partyincluded Struble, Almond,

48

Photo by Frank Noel, Associated Press

Front-line Marines found that stripping a prisoner bare took all the fight out ofhim and also eliminated the possibility of hidden weapons. Rear-echelon author-ities found the practice distasteful and ordered the Marines to desist.

Shepherd, Whitney, Wright, andFox; a bodyguard bristling withweapons; and a large number ofthe press corps. A train of jeepswas hastily assembled and theparty proceeded to the 1st MarineDivision headquarters in a dirt-floored Quonset hut where Smithjoined the party. MacArthur pre-sented him a Silver Star medal.

MacArthur and his entouragethen visited Puller at the 1stMarines’ observation post.MacArthur climbed the hill. Pullerput down his binoculars and the

two great actors shook hands.MacArthur gave Puller a Silver Star.

MacArthur’s cavalcade nextdrove to the site of the still-smok-ing hulls of the dreaded NorthKorean T-34 tanks that had coun-terattacked at dawn. Shepherd,looking at the still-burning T-34s,commented to Almond that theyproved that “bazookas” coulddestroy tanks.

“You damned Marines!” snort-ed Almond. “You always seem tobe in the right spot at the righttime . . . . MacArthur would arrive

just as the Marines knocked outfive tanks.” Shepherd replied,“Well, Ned, we’re just doing ourjob, that’s all.”

MacArthur climbed back into hisjeep and the star-studded partydrove on. Seven dazed NorthKorean soldiers crawled out fromthe culvert over which MacArthur’sjeep had parked and meekly sur-rendered.

Next stop for MacArthur was the5th Marines command post.MacArthur went to award SilverStars to General Craig and ColonelMurray only to learn that his sup-ply of medals was exhausted.“Make a note,” he told his aide.The medals were delivered later.

MacArthur finished his tour witha visit to Green Beach at Wolmi-do, where unloading from the LSTswas progressing, and to see theoccupants of the prisoner of warstockade—671 of them underguard of the 1st Marine Division’smilitary police.

Ashore at Wolmi-do, MacArthurfound evidence, to his great satis-

49

At a temporary aid station at Pier No.2, designated Yellow Beach, a wound-ed Marine is given whole blood by aNavy corpsman. From this station, thewounded were evacuated to hospitalships off shore.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349024

50

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348526

On the morning of 17 September, Gen MacArthur, sur-rounded by subordinates, bodyguards, and photographers,made a grand and much publicized tour of the Inchonbeachhead. MacArthur is unmistakable in his crushed cap,sunglasses, and leather jacket. LtGen Lemuel C. Shepherd,

Jr., on the left, is in his usual khakis and carrying his trade-mark cocomacaque, or Haitian walking stick. MajGen O. P.Smith, in khaki fore-n-aft cap and canvas leggings, trudgesalong behind Shepherd.

Almost obscured by the jeep’s windshield, a photographerpeers through his lens at the command echelons of theInchon landing during the 17 September visit. GenMacArthur in hawk-like profile stares straight ahead.

MajGen O. P. Smith sits smiling in the middle of the rearseat, flanked on his right by MajGen Edward M. Almondand on his left by VAdm Arthur D. Struble. The unidentifiedMarine driver awaits instructions.

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348522

faction, that the enemy had begunan intensive fortification of theisland. Later he pontificated: “HadI listened to those who wanted todelay the landing until the nexthigh tides, nearly a month later,Wolmi-do would have been animpregnable fortress.”

Almond, just before leaving withhis boss to return to the MountMcKinley, informed Smith thatBarr’s 7th Infantry Division wouldbegin landing the next day, com-ing in on the 1st Marine Division’sright flank. Smith, returning to hiscommand post, learned that MajorGeneral James M. Gavin, USA, ofWorld War II airborne fame, hadarrived to study the Marine Corps’use of close air support.

An airstrip was set up next tothe division command post thatsame day, 17 September. After that,Gottschalk’s VMO-6 flew a fullschedule of observation, evacua-tion, liaison, and reconnaissanceflights.

51

Department of Defense Photo (USA) SC348516

FMFPac commander LtGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, VMI 1917, on the right, pointsout something significant to the X Corps commander, MajGen Edward M.Almond, VMI 1915, as they move by motor launch from the Mount McKinley tothe beach. Shepherd, although relegated to the position of observer instead ofcorps commander, held no grudge against Almond.

Marine helicopters, fragile and few in number, were founduseful in evacuating severely wounded Marines to hospitalfacilities to the rear or at sea. As the war progressed, more

suitable helicopters arrived and the practice became stan-dard.

Photo by Frank Noel, Associated Press

Infantry Advances

The battle with the T-34sdelayed for an hour the jump-offfor the day’s attacks. The nextphase line was 19 miles long andMurray’s 5th Marines had two-thirds of it. At 0700, the KoreanMarines’ 3d Battalion had passedthrough Roise’s 2d Battalion toclean up the outskirts of AscomCity. Roise himself jumped off twohours later, Captain Jaskilka’sCompany E in the lead. Theadvance was to be in column andthen a left turn into Ascom City.

Company E, joined by 2dPlatoon, Company F, spent themorning in a methodical clearing

of the densely built-up area of lit-tle pockets of resistance. Roisefound that the road on the mapthat was supposed to lead to hisnext objective, four miles distant,was nonexistent on the ground.The renewed advance did not getoff until mid-afternoon.

The inexperienced 3d Battalionof the Korean Marines ran intotrouble on the other side of AscomCity. Taplett’s 3d Battalion, 5thMarines, in regimental reserve,moved in to help and efficientlyknocked out the moderate resis-tance. Pomeroy came up with hisplatoon of M-26 tanks. Looking forRoise’s 2d Battalion and, not find-ing the mythical road, he instead

found Taplett’s 3d Battalion.Eventually, Pomeroy reached the2d Battalion and a road that wouldlead to Kimpo Airfield now aboutfive miles away. He was joined byhis company commander, CaptainGearl M. English, and another pla-toon of tanks.

Meanwhile, Roise advanced totwo high hills some 4,000 yardssouth of Kimpo. He launched hisattack against the airfield withCompanies D and E in the assault.They moved rapidly against noth-ing but light small arms fire.Captain English brought up histanks to help, assigning a tank pla-toon to support each of the assaultcompanies. By 1800, Roise’sMarines were at the southern endof the main runway. Each of histhree rifle companies curled intoseparate perimeters for the night.Lieutenant Deptula’s 1st Platoon,Company E, was positioned wellout to the front in the hamlet ofSoryu-li as an outpost.

During the afternoon, Newtonand the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines,had moved up on Roise’s rightagainst no resistance. Taplett’s 3dBattalion, having eased the situa-tion for the Korean Marines, wastwo miles to the rear, again in reg-imental reserve.

With 1st Marines

Throughout the day, 17September, Puller’s 1st Marines hadcontinued its advance. On the leftflank Sutter, with the 2d Battalion,straddled the highway and movedforward behind an intermittentcurtain of howitzer fire deliveredby the 11th Marines. Essentially,Sutter was attacking due east fromMahang-ri to Sosa, two fair-sizedvillages. He deployed Company Eon the left of the road, Company Fon the right, and kept Company Din reserve. As the 5th Marinesmoved to the northeast toward

52

Kimpo, a considerable gap widen-ed between the two regiments.

North Korean resistance thick-ened as Sutter neared Sosa. Pullerordered Ridge to move the 3dBattalion up on Sutter’s right flank.Ridge decided again to useamphibian tractors as personnelcarriers. Westover’s Company Gclanked up the road behind the 2dPlatoon, Company B tanks, underSecond Lieutenant Brian J.Cummings. In a defile, some braveNorth Koreans tried to stopCummings’ M-26s with grenades.The advance on the road stalled.Company G got up on the highside of the defile to the right of theroad. With Sutter’s battalion on theleft, the Marines had a converging“turkey shoot” and broke up theNorth Korean attack. Sutter andRidge dug in for the night, eachbattalion on its own side of thedefile. To their south, Hawkins’ 1stBattalion and Houghton’sReconnaissance Company hadcleared up Namdong Peninsula.The night would pass quietly forthe 1st Marines.

To the rear, Inchon was in a

shambles. Most of the city officialshad fled before the North Koreancapture of the city. Fortunately,Admiral Sohn Won Yil, the chief ofnaval operations of the ROK Navy,

had come ashore to observe theoperations of the Korean MarineRegiment. (He also received aMacArthur Silver Star.) Sohnpicked a temporary mayor whowas installed on the morning of 18September by authority of a 1stMarine Division proclamation.

5th Marines Takes Kimpo

The night of 17-18 Septemberwas tense for the 5th Marines.Murray was certain that the NorthKoreans would not give up Kimpo,the best airfield in Korea, without afight, and he was right. The airfieldwas under the apparent commandof a Chinese-trained brigadier gen-eral, Wan Yong. The garrison,nominally the NKPA 1st Air ForceDivision, was in truth a patchworkof bits and pieces of several regi-ments, with not more than a fewhundred effectives.

The North Koreans went againstRoise’s well dug-in battalion in

53

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

When not moving from hill to hill, the Marines frequently found themselvesattacking across flat rice paddies. Ironically, Kimpo, in addition to having thebest airfield in Korea, was also known for growing the best rice.

Shore party operations followed close behind the assault waves and within a fewdays, stocks of ammunition, rations, and other supplies had reached the levelneeded for the drive to Seoul and its capture.

Photo by Frank Noel, Associated Press

three badly coordinated attacks.The first hit Deptula’s outpost atabout 0300 in the morning, theCommunists using rifles andmachine pistols, backed by a T-34tank. Deptula skillfully fought offfour half-hearted assaults and by0500 had withdrawn successfullyto Company E’s main line of resis-tance.

The second attack came fromboth the west and east againstJaskilka’s Company E. The thirdattack hit Harrell’s Company F fur-ther to the south. Both attackswere easily contained. The routedenemy fled toward the Han River.

At daylight Roise jumped off inpursuit. His Marines swept acrossthe airfield, securing it and its sur-rounding villages by 1000.Companies E and F mopped upand Company D went on to takeHill 131 overlooking the Han. In 24hours of fighting, Roise had lostfour Marines killed and 19 wound-ed. His Marines had taken 10 pris-

oners and had counted about 100enemy dead.

1st Marines Advances

In the 1st Marines’ zone ofaction, Ridge, with the 3d Battalionoutside of Sosa, decided that thecenter of North Korean resistancemust be on Hill 123. During thenight he called for naval gunfire.HMS Kenya, Captain P. W. Brockcommanding, delivered some 300rounds of 6-inch shells somewherebetween Sosa and Hill 123. Ridge’snaval gunfire spotter was not surewhere they impacted, but Ridge, inthe interest of inter-allied cordiali-ty, sent Captain Brock a “welldone.”

At dawn Sutter charged aheadastride the Seoul highway, Comp-any E on the left of the road andCompany D on the right. Pre-mature airbursts on the part of hisartillery preparatory fires cost him

54

Department of Defense Photo (USN) 420271

Fumigation and bath platoons would arrive later, but during the assault phaseof the Inchon operation Marines seized the opportunity to clean up when andwhere they could. Helmets made convenient washbasins.

Correspondents and photographers examine a Russian-built Yak fighter in adestroyed hanger at Kimpo Airfield. Captured by the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,Marine engineers quickly made the airfield operative and ready to receive ele-ments of MAG-33. National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349036

two killed and three wounded.Behind the 2d Battalion, Ridge

mounted up the 3d Battalion in amotorized column made up of amixture of jeeps, amphibian trac-tors (LVTs), and amphibious trucks(DUKWs). Corsairs from VMF-214worked over Sosa, sighted six T-34s beyond the town, andknocked out two of them. Ridgethundered ahead in a cloud of dustbehind the tanks of Company B,1st Tank Battalion. Together theybrushed aside some light resis-

tance, including an antitank road-block. By noon Ridge had clearedthe town. His battalion then swungto the left off the road and movedup Hill 123 while his naval gunfirespotter continued to look for someevidence as to where the Kenya’sshells might have hit. The 3dBattalion was barely on the hilland not yet dug in when a barrageof North Korean 120mm mortarshells drenched their positioncausing 30 casualties. The rompover the green hills, marred as they

were with the red-orange scars ofshell holes and trench lines, wasover. The war was getting serious.

Sutter’s 2d Battalion, meanwhile,went straight ahead, left flank onthe railroad tracks, into a defensiveposition about a mile beyond Sosa.A barrage of mortar shells cost him14 casualties. Hawkins’ 1stBattalion continued advancing onthe right and for the third straightday encountered nothing but a fewrifle shots.

Kimpo AirfieldBecomes Operational

Murray displaced his commandpost forward from Ascom City toKimpo. His regiment spent a quietday sending patrols around the air-field. The field was in relativelygood shape. A North KoreanSoviet-built Yakovlev Yak-3 fighterand two Ilyushin “Shturmovik”attack aircraft were found in near-flyable condition.

The first aircraft to land atKimpo was a Marine H03S-1 heli-copter. It arrived at 1000 thatmorning, 18 September, piloted byCaptain Victor A. Armstrong ofVMO-6 and with General Shepherdand Colonel Krulak as passengers.General Craig who had just arrivedby jeep met them.

Captain George W. King’sCompany A, 1st Engineer Battal-ion, made the field operationalwith temporary repairs. GeneralsHarris and Cushman came in byhelicopter that afternoon. On theiradvice, General Almond autho-rized the establishment of MarineAircraft Group 33 (MAG-33) on thefield.

Corsairs began to arrive the nextday. Harris set up the headquartersof his Tactical Air Command. TwoCorsair squadrons, VMF-312 andVMF-212, came in. Night fightersquadron VMF(N)-542, underLieutenant Colonel Max J.

55

Volcansek, Jr., arrived from Japan.There was a paper shuffle ofsquadrons between Marine AircraftGroups 12 and 33. Marine AircraftGroup 33 under Brigadier GeneralThomas J. Cushman was now inbusiness ashore. MAG-12 pickedup the squadrons afloat. VMFs 214and 323 continued to operate fromthe Sicily and Badoeng Strait, andthe night-fighters of VMF(N)-513from their base at Itazuke in Japan.

Reinforcements Arrive

On Murray’s left the 2d KMCBattalion joined the 1st KMCBattalion. The ROK Army’s 17thRegiment landed at Inchon and,temporarily under 1st MarineDivision control was given an ini-tial mission of completing theclean-up of the unswept areabetween Ascom City and the sea.

Almond, pressing forward, con-ferred with Smith on the morningof 18 September concerning thereadiness of the 1st MarineDivision to cross the Han. Smithpointed out that the 7th Division

must take over its zone of actionand free his right flank so he couldconcentrate his forces to cross theriver. Smith already had it in hismind that the 5th Marines wouldgo over first to be followed by the1st Marines. His 7th Marines wasstill at sea. He went forward toKimpo to discuss the matter withMurray.

The first unit of the 7th Division,the 32d Infantry, landed, aspromised on the 18th, wasattached temporarily to the 1stMarine Division. Smith relayedAlmond’s orders to the 32d torelieve the 1st Marines on the rightflank and then to operate in thezone of action assigned to the 7thDivision.

7th Division Becomes Operational

On the morning of 19September, General Barr estab-lished his 7th Division’s commandpost ashore. Almond called Barrand Smith together at the 1stMarine Division command post todiscuss the 7th Division’s immedi-

ate assumption of what had beenthe 1st Marines’ zone of actionsouth of the Inchon-Seoul high-way.

The 31st Infantry had begunlanding. The 32d Infantry wouldbe detached from the 1st MarineDivision at 1800. With these tworegiments Barr was to begin oper-ations. Smith would then be ableto side-slip Puller’s regiment fullyto the left of the Seoul highway.

Almond’s aide, Lieutenant Haig,who was a fly on the tent wall atthese meetings, observed that “theMarines’ respect for the 7thDivision at this stage of the warwas ostentatiously low.”

Advancing to the Han

After that meeting, the peripatet-ic Almond went on to visit thecommand posts of both the 32dInfantry and the 1st Marines. Hethen proceeded to the 5th Marinescommand post on Kimpo Airfieldto discuss with Murray the crossingof the Han that was scheduled forthe following day. Murray told himthat he planned to cross in columnof battalions using amphibian trac-tors, amphibious trucks, and pon-toon floats at a ferry crossing sitenortheast of Kimpo.

A significant range of hills sepa-rated the 5th Marines on Kimpofrom Yongdung-po and the Han.During the night of 18-19September, Murray had orderedNewton forward with the 1stBattalion to seize Hill 118 and thenHills 80 and 85, overlooking theKalchon River near where it joinedthe Han.

At dawn, before Newton couldmove out, a company-sized NorthKorean force attacked Company Cbehind a shower of mortar shells.While Company C slaughtered theNorth Koreans, “Ike” Fenton’sCompany B moved against Hill118. There was the usual air and

56

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A3727

1stLt John V. Hanes flew in first Marine Corsair to land at Kimpo Airfield.Having taken hits while on a bombing mission, Hanes was grateful that therewas a friendly airfield on which to land. BGen Thomas J. Cushman, AssistantWing Commander of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, greets him.

artillery preparation before thejump-off, and Company B took thepeak of Hill 118 without sufferinga single casualty. The trappedattacking North Koreans lost per-haps 300 dead (there is alwaysoptimism in the count of enemydead) and 100 prisoners. CompanyC lost two killed and six wounded.

To the 5th Marines’ right, Ridge’s3d Battalion, 1st Marines, withCompanies H and I in the assault,moved off Hill 123 toward LookoutHill, so-called because it gave agood view of the Kalchon and thetown of Yongdung-po beyond.Official historians Montross andCanzona called the attack, whichcost two killed and 15 wounded,“too successful,” because it putRidge’s battalion well out in frontof the 5th Marines on his left andSutter’s 2d Battalion on his right.

Sutter’s battalion was advancingalong the Seoul highway behind

Captain Richard M. Taylor’sCompany C tanks and had gone lit-tle more than a quarter-mile whenthe lead M-26 hit a box mine thatblew off a track and two roadwheels. The antitank barrier ofmines was formidable. The wholecolumn came to a stop. Small-armsfire smashed in from neighboringHill 72. The 11th Marines, the divi-sion’s artillery regiment, took Hill72 under howitzer fire. Corsairsfrom ever-ready VMF-214 came tohelp. A platoon of engineers underFirst Lieutenant George A. Babeblew up the box mines with“snowball” charges of C-3 plasticexplosive. Sutter used all three ofhis rifle companies to uncover theminefield and force his waythrough. His infantry went forwarda mile into heavy fighting aroundHill 146 while the tanks waited onthe side of the road. A secondminefield was encountered, and

more work by the engineers wasneeded. At 1900, Sutter ordered hisbattalion to dig in. His Marines hadadvanced nearly three miles at acost of four killed and 18 wound-ed. Yongdung-po was still morethan two miles in front of him.

Smith moved his command postforward the afternoon of 19September to a site Craig selectedabout a mile and a half southeastof Kimpo; it had been used for U.S.dependents housing during theoccupation. From here Smith waswithin easy jeep or helicopter dis-tance of his front-line units. Theabandoned Quonset huts werenear ideal except for occasionalharassment apparently by a singleNKPA gun. The backbone for theperimeter defense around the com-mand post was provided by a sec-tion of the Division Band trainedas a machine gun platoon.

The 32d Infantry, now detached

57

from the division, was somewhereto Sutter’s right rear. The Army bat-talion that relieved Hawkins’ bat-talion had spent the day moppingup rather than continuing theattack.

Hawkins’ 1st Battalion, 1stMarines, was on its way to relieveNewton’s 1st Battalion, 5thMarines, an 11-mile motor marchfrom the division’s right flank.

Captain Robert H. Barrow’sCompany A, 1st Marines, was thefirst to reach Hill 118 and relieveFenton’s Company B, 5th Marines.

Company C, 1st Marines, was toreplace Company C, 5th Marines,on Hills 80 and 85. Newton wasanxious to pull back his 1stBattalion, 5th Marines, to Kimpo toget ready for the river crossing thenext day, and it was almost dark

when Hawkins reached him.Company C, 1st Marines, underCaptain Robert P. Wray, had notyet arrived.

Barrow, a tall Louisianian and afuture Marine Commandant, real-ized the tactical importance of Hills80 and 85 and radioed for permis-sion to move Company A forwardto the two hills. Permission wasdenied. Newton made it knownthat he would pull Company C offthe hills no later than 2100. Wray’sCompany C did not reach Hill 118until 2200; Hills 80 and 85 were leftempty.

Confused Day

Before dawn the next day, 20September, Hawkins’ Marines onHill 118 heard the North Koreansassault the empty hills. Then theycame on in company-sizedstrength in a futile attack againstthe entrenched Marines on Hill118.

Meanwhile, shortly before dawna battalion-sized North Koreanforce, led by five T-34 tanks fol-lowed by an ammunition truck,came down the Seoul highwayagainst Sutter’s 2d Battalion, 1stMarines. Companies D and E heldpositions on each side of the road.The column roared through thegap between them and hit head-onagainst Company F’s support posi-tion. The North Koreans werecaught in a sleeve. Companies Dand E poured fire into their flanks.Howitzer fire by the 2d and 4thBattalions, 11th Marines, sealed inthe entrapped North Korean col-umn. “A fortunate grenade wasdropped in the enemy ammunitiontruck and offered some illumina-tion,” noted the 2d Battalion’sSpecial Action Report, “enablingtwo tanks to be destroyed by 3.5”rocket fire.”

The rocket gunner was PrivateFirst Class Monegan, the tank-killer

58

of Soryu-li. He slid down the slopefrom Company F with his 3.5-inchrocket launcher and knocked outthe first and second tanks. Machinegun fire killed him as he took aimon the third T-34. His family wouldreceive a posthumous Medal of

Honor. A third T-34 was capturedintact. Sutter’s battalion claimed300 enemy dead. Half an hourafter breaking up the North Koreanattack, the 2d Battalion moved for-ward in its own attack.

Yongdung-po was drenched

that day with shell-fire. Pullermoved to align his regiment forthe assault of the town. Hawkinswas to take Hills 80 and 85.Sutter was to advance to the firstof two highway bridges crossingthe Kalchon. Ridge was to stay in

59

Nineteen-year-old Walter Monegan in five days ofaction fought two battles against North Korean T-34 tanks, won them both, and lost his own life.

Born on Christmas Day 1930, he could not wait untilhis 17th birthday, enlisting in the Army in November1947. The Army discovered he was underage andpromptly sent him home. He tried again on 22 March1948, enlisting in the Marine Corps. After recruit trainingat Parris Island in June he was sent to China to join the3d Marines at Tsingtao. After a year in China he camehome, was stationed at Camp Pendleton for a year, andthen was sent to Marine Barracks, Naval Air Station,Seattle. He had barely re-enlisted in July 1950 when hewas ordered to return to Camp Pendleton to join the 2dBattalion, 1st Marines, then being formed.

His remains, buried temporarily at Inchon, werereturned home and re-interred in Arlington NationalCemetery on 19 July 1951. His wife, Elizabeth C.Monegan, holding their infant child, Walter III, receivedhis posthumous Medal of Honor from Secretary of theNavy Dan Kimball, on 8 February 1952.Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at therisk of his life above and beyond the call of dutywhile serving as a Rocket Gunner attached toCompany F, Second Battalion, First Marines, FirstMarine Division (Reinforced), in action againstenemy aggressor forces near Sosa-ri, Korea, on 17and 20 September 1950. Dug in a hill overlookingthe main Seoul highway when six enemy tanksthreatened to break through the Battalion positionduring a pre- dawn attack on 17 September, PrivateFirst Class Monegan promptly moved forward withhis bazooka under heavy hostile automaticweapons fire and engaged the lead tank at a rangeof less than 50 yards. After scoring a direct hit andkilling the sole surviving tankman with his carbineas he came through the escape hatch, he boldlyfired two more rounds of ammunition at theoncoming tanks, disorganizing the attack andenabling our tank crews to continue blasting withtheir 90-mm guns. With his own and an adjacentcompany’s position threatened by annihilationwhen an overwhelming enemy tank-infantry forceby-passed the area and proceeded toward the bat-

talion Command Post during the early morning ofSeptember 20, he seized his rocket launcher and, intotal darkness, charged down the slope of the hillwhere the tanks had broken through. Quick to actwhen an illuminating shell hit the area, he scored adirect hit on one of the tanks as hostile rifle andautomatic weapons fire raked the area at closerange. Again exposing himself he fired anotherround to destroy a second tank and, as the reartank turned to retreat, stood upright to fire and wasfatally struck down by hostile machine-gun firewhen another illuminating shell silhouetted himagainst the sky. Private First Class Monegan’s dar-ing initiative, gallant fighting spirit and courageousdevotion to duty were contributing factors in thesuccess of his company in repelling the enemy andhis self-sacrificing efforts throughout sustain andenhance the highest traditions of the United StatesNaval Service. He gallantly gave his life for hiscountry.

Private First Class Walter C. Monegan, Jr.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A45432

reserve on Lookout Hill.Hawkins sent out Captain Wray

with Company C to capture Hills

80 and 85, that had been free forthe taking, the day before. Wray,covered by the 81mm mortars and

Browning water-cooled machineguns of Major William L. Bates, Jr.’sWeapons Company, made a text-

60

Lieutenant Commiskey was no stranger to war. As anenlisted Marine he had been wounded at Iwo Jimaand received a letter of commendation for “exhibit-

ing high qualities of leadership and courage in the faceof a stubborn and fanatical enemy.”

Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1927, he hadjoined the Marine Corps two days after his 17th birthday.He served more than five years as an enlisted man andwas a staff sergeant drill instructor at Parris Island whenhe was selected for officer training in 1949. He complet-ed this training in June 1950. Two months later he waswith the 1st Marines and on his way to Korea.

He came from a family of fighters. His father had beena machine gun instructor in World War I. One brotherhad been with the Marine Raiders in World War II.Another brother was badly wounded while with the187th Airborne Infantry in Korea.

In the action on 20 September, that gained HenryCommiskey the nation’s highest award for valor, heescaped unscathed, but a week later he was slightlywounded in the fight for Seoul and on 8 December seri-ously wounded in the knee at the Chosin Reservoir. Senthome for hospitalization, he recovered and went toPensacola in September 1951 for flight training, receivinghis wings in June 1953 and then qualifying as a jet pilot.

He returned to Korea in April 1954 as a pilot withVMA-212. Coming home in September, he returned toline duty at his own request and was assigned once moreto the 1st Marine Division. Next assignment was in 1956to Jackson, Mississippi, close to his birthplace, for threeyears duty as a recruiter. In 1959, now a major, he wentto the Amphibious Warfare School, Junior Course, atQuantico, and stayed on as an instructor at the BasicSchool. He retired from active duty in 1966 to Meridian,Mississippi, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot woundon 15 August 1971.Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at therisk of his life above and beyond the call of dutywhile serving as a Platoon Leader in Company C,First Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division(Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressorforces near Yongdungp’o, Korea, on 20 September1950. Directed to attack hostile forces well dug inon Hill 85, First Lieutenant Commiskey, thenSecond Lieutenant, spearheaded the assault, charg-ing up the steep slopes on the run. Coolly disre-garding the heavy enemy machine-gun and small-arms fire, he plunged on well forward of the rest of

his platoon and was the first man to reach the crestof the objective. Armed only with a pistol, hejumped into a hostile machine-gun emplacementoccupied by five enemy troops and quickly dis-posed of four of the soldiers with his automatic pis-tol. Grappling with the fifth, First LieutenantCommiskey knocked him to the ground and heldhim until he could obtain a weapon from anothermember of his platoon and kill the last of theenemy gun crew. Countinuing his bold assault, hemoved to the next emplacement, killed two ormore of the enemy and then led his platoon towardthe rear nose of the hill to rout the remainder of thehostile troops and destroy them as they fled fromtheir positions. His valiant leadership and coura-geous fighting spirit served to inspire the men ofhis company to heroic endeavor in seizing theobjective and reflect the highest credit upon FirstLieutenant Commiskey and the United States NavalService.

Second Lieutenant Henry A. Commiskey

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A43766

book double envelopment of Hill80 against stubborn resistance. The1st Platoon, under SecondLieutenant William A. Craven,came in on the left. Second

Lieutenant Henry A. Commiskeycame in on the right with the 3dPlatoon. Together they took Hill80. The day was almost done butWray went on against Hill 85,

repeating his double envelopment.Craven set up a base of fire withhis platoon on the northern slopeof Hill 80. Second Lieutenant JohnN. Guild went forward on the left

61

On 20 September, as the loading continues, an LST, beacheduntil the next high tide comes in, has discharged its cargo.

The small landing craft to the right are a 36-foot LCVP andtwo 50-foot LCMs.

Department of Defense Photo (USN) 80-G-426159

Amphibious trucks, “ducks” to Marines, are readied atInchon to be moved up for use in crossing the Han River.The division was well supported by the versatile trucks of the

1st Amphibian Truck Company, an element of the 1st MotorTransport Battalion.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC348700

with his 2d Platoon and got almostto the top of the hill before beingmortally wounded. Commiskeywent out in front of his 3d Platoonin a one-man assault that earnedhim a Medal of Honor.

While Wray worked at capturingHills 80 and 85, Hawkins’ com-mand group and Barrow’s Marineswatched as spectators from Hill118. They saw to their left front, totheir horror, a tracked “Weasel”with a wire party from the 1st

Signal Battalion hit a mine on theapproach to a bridge across theKalchon near where it joined theHan. In full sight of Hill 118, twoMarine wiremen were taken pris-oner. A truck from Company A, 1stEngineers, with a driver and threepassengers, unaware of the fate ofthe communicators, now camealong the road. Barrow tried tocatch their attention with rifle fireover their heads, but the truck con-tinued into the ambush. Three

engineers got away; one, PrivateFirst Class Clayton O. Edwards,was captured. (He would laterescape from a train taking prison-ers into North Korea.)

Meanwhile, Sutter’s 2d Battalion,having begun the day by breakingup the T-34 tank-led North Koreanattack, had moved forwarduneventfully, except for harassingfire from their open right flank.They reached their day’s objective,the highway bridge over theKalchon, shortly after noon. Thebridge was a long concrete span.The engineers inspected it and cer-tified it strong enough to bear M-26Pershing tanks for next day’s attackinto Yongdung-po itself. The sec-ond bridge, crossing a tributary ofthe Kalchon, lay 2,000 yardsahead. A high ridge, seeminglyteeming with North Koreandefenders, to the right of the roaddominated the bridge. Sutter’sneighbor on his right wasLieutenant Colonel Charles M.Mount, USA, with the 2d Battalion,32d Infantry. The ridge command-ing the second bridge was techni-cally in Mount’s zone of action. At1300, Sutter asked Mount for per-mission to fire against the ridge.Mount readily agreed, but it tookseven hours to get the fire missioncleared through the layers of regi-mental and division staffs andapproved by X Corps. It was darkbefore Colonel Brower’s 11thMarines was allowed to fire.

During the day, General Almondvisited Colonel Puller at the 1stMarines’ command post. Almondadmired Puller’s aggressive tacticsand there was also a VirginiaMilitary Institute connection.Puller, saying he could not reachSmith either by wire or radio,asked permission to burnYongdung-po before committinghis troops to its capture. Almondauthorized its burning.

Almond’s habit of visiting the

62

Marine regiments and issuingorders directly to subordinate com-manders had become a seriousaggravation to Smith. A divisionorder went out that any directorder received from Almondwould be immediately relayed todivision headquarters for ratifica-tion.

Ready to Cross the Han

The shelling of Yongdung-po,now blazing with fires, continuedthroughout the night. Puller’s planof attack for the 1st Marines on 21September was to have the 2dBattalion continue its advanceastride the Inchon-Seoul highway.

The 1st Battalion on the left wouldattack across country and the 3dBattalion, occupying Lookout Hill,would initially stay in reserve.

During the previous day,Captain Richard L. Bland had occu-pied Hill 55 overlooking the Hanwith Company B, 1st Marines.Now, shortly after dawn, he tookhis company across the bridge thathad been the site of the ambush ofthe Marine communicators andengineers. In late afternoon,Hawkins sent Company C andWeapons Company across thebridge to join with Company B toform a perimeter for the night.

During the day, Ridge’s 3dBattalion, in reserve on Lookout

Hill, had grown impatient and hadcome forward prematurely, gettingout in front of both the 1st and 2dBattalions. Its prospective assaultcompanies, Companies G and I,reached and huddled behind thedike on the western bank of theKalchon close to a water gatewhere a tributary entered into themain stream. This put them ingood position to watch theapproach march of Barrow’sCompany A to the Kalchon.

With Bland’s Company B stalledon the opposite bank of theKalchon, Hawkins had committedCompany A to an attack from itspositions on Hill 80 across a mileof rice paddies to the river. Barrow

63

Following a burst of sniper fire, Marines quickly take coveralong a dike near the Han River. So far, the Marines had

suffered only light casualties, while the North Koreans hadlost heavily. National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349026

deployed his platoons in a classictwo-up one-back formation. Asthey came forward through thewaist-high rice straw, a 3dBattalion officer, watching from hisposition behind the dike, wasreminded of the stories he hadbeen told of the Marines advancingthrough the wheat into BelleauWood. Without a shot being fired,Company A waded the stream andmarched into Yongdung-po.Barrow radioed Hawkins forinstructions. Hawkins told him tokeep on going.

The crossing of the Kalchon byRidge’s 3d Battalion was less easy.Going over the dike was eerily likegoing “over the top” of the trench-es in the First World War. SecondLieutenant Spencer H. Jarnagin ofCompany G formed his platoon in

line on the near side of the dikeclose to the water gate. At hiswhistle signal they started across.As they came out of the defiladeprovided by the dike, Maximheavy machine guns on the oppo-site dike, perhaps 50 yards distant,opened up. Jarnagin fell backdead. His platoon recoiled, someof them wounded. Denied artillerysupport and with his 81mm mor-tars lacking ammunition, the battal-ion’s Weapons Company comman-der called up his platoon of sixwater-cooled Browning machineguns.

During the rapid cross-countrymovement toward Seoul the heavymachine guns were initiallyattached by section to the riflecompanies. They could not keepup with the light machine guns nor

did the rifle company commandersfully understand their capabilities.Consequently they were pulledback to company control andemployed in battery for overheadfire in the attack. Now, in this situ-ation so much like the WesternFront, they would come into theirown.

With their barrels just clearingthe top of the dike, the Browningsengaged the Maxims, just as theyhad done in 1918, and it was theBrownings that won. The 3dBattalion then crossed the Kalchonat the water gate, Westover’sCompany G to the left of the tribu-tary, First Lieutenant JosephFisher’s Company I to the right.

Early that morning Sutter’s bat-talion crossed the second bridgewithout incident except for fire

64

Marines of Capt Robert H. Barrow’s Company A, 1stBattalion, 1st Marines, move into Yongdung-po. Althoughthe town seemed empty and dead, they carefully searched

each building and side street but failed to uncover a flickerof enemy resistance.

National Archives Photo (USMC) 127-N-A3610

that continued to come in fromacross the boundary separating the1st Marine Division from the 7thInfantry Division. Frustrated by thelack of artillery support, Sutterseized the bit in his teeth andshelled the offending ridge withhis attached 4.2-inch mortarsbefore sending up Companies Eand F to take the high ground.While they were so engaged,Captain Welby W. Cronk tookCompany D along the highwayand ran into another section ofheavily fortified dike. Heavy fight-ing, supported by the ever-willingCorsairs of VMF-214, continued inSutter’s zone until late in theevening, when Sutter recalledCompanies E and F to tuck theminto a battalion perimeter for thenight.

In Yongdung-po, Barrow couldhear the furious firefight beingwaged by Sutter’s battalion some-where to his right. Crossing thetown against scattered oppositionBarrow reached yet another dike.Beyond it was a sandy flat reach-ing about a mile to the Han. To hisleft rear was Bland’s Company B.Barrow dug in on the dike in asausage-shaped perimeter. Atnightfall, the Marines of CompanyA heard the characteristic chug-ging clatter of advancing tanks.Five T-34s, without infantry escort,came up the Inchon-Seoul high-way and pumped steel into thewestern face of Company A’s posi-tion. Barrow’s 3.5-inch rocket gun-ners knocked out one and dam-aged two others.

Almond had been returningeach evening to the MountMcKinley, but on the morning of21 September he moved the head-quarters of X Corps ashore andopened his command post inInchon.

MacArthur came ashore againthat afternoon enroute to Japan. Apride of generals—Almond,

Shepherd, Smith, Barr, Harris, andLowe—had gathered at KimpoAirfield to see him off. Mutual con-gratulations were exchanged, andMacArthur flew to Tokyo. “He was,in my opinion, the greatest militaryleader of our century,” musedGeneral Shepherd, the Virginiagentleman, in 1967.

Later that day, in a ceremony atX Corps headquarters in Inchonand in accordance with establishedamphibious doctrine, overall com-mand of the operation passed

from Admiral Struble to GeneralAlmond.

By midnight, five infantryassaults against Barrow’s positionhad followed the attack by the T-34s. All were beaten back, theheaviest fighting being in front ofSecond Lieutenant John J. Swords’3d Platoon.

Pause in the Fighting

When the morning of 22 Sep-tember came, Barrow’s Marines

65

Gen Douglas MacArthur and MajGen Edward M. Almond examine a map atKimpo Airfield shortly before the general’s departure for Japan. MacArthurwould tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff that “his forces were pounding at the gates ofSeoul.” National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349084

were able to count 275 enemydead. The four remaining T-34s,two damaged, two intact, werefound abandoned nearby. The 1stand 3d Battalions renewed theirattack and converged on Barrow’sposition against negligible resis-tance.

Sutter was not the only com-mander to complain about the firecontrol problems along the bound-ary between the two divisions. The7th Division reported Marine Corpsfire falling in its zone. Almond metwith Barr and Smith and then toldhis aide, Lieutenant Haig, to tele-phone Corps headquarters andstraighten out the situation.

Almond, continuing his critiqueof the Marines’ performance,expressed his concern over Smith’s“open” left flank. Smith explainedto Almond his use of the 1stKorean Marine Corps Regiment,also that he had formed a KimpoAirfield defense force, using com-bat support and service units.Almond appeared somewhat mol-lified.

The Korean Marines, leavingone battalion behind in Inchon,had followed the 5th Marines toKimpo Airfield, and made its firstattack northwest of the airfield on19 September against light resis-tance. That same day the battalion

from Inchon rejoined its parentregiment. Now, with one battalionto be left behind to cover thenorthwest flank, the KMC regimentprepared to follow the 5th Marinesacross the Han.

Smith’s third organic infantryregiment, the 7th Marines, includ-ing the battalion that had comefrom the Mediterranean by way ofthe Suez Canal, had arrived in theharbor. Colonel Homer Litzenbergasked General Smith what elementhe wanted landed first. “Aninfantry battalion,” said Smith.“And what next?” “Another infantrybattalion.”

Litzenberg opened his command

66

Navy Hospital Corpsmen Richard E. Rosegoom and Frank J.Yasso, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, give first aid to awounded North Korean while another prisoner is marchedto the rear. While always there for Marines, corpsmen also

were available to treat prisoners of war and Korean civil-ians; the latter were second in number only to the Marinesthemselves.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC349054

post two miles south of Kimpo. His3d Battalion, under Major MauriceE. Roach, moved into an assemblyarea nearby. The 1st Battalion,under Lieutenant Colonel Thorn-ton M. Hinkle, reached Hill 131 amile north of the airfield sometimeafter midnight. The 1st Battalion,under Lieutenant Colonel Ray-mond G. Davis, stayed in the har-bor to unload the ships that hadbrought in the regiment.

Smith made a note in his journalthat Almond’s concerns over openflanks had increased now that XCorps’ command post was ashore.With the arrival of the 7th Marines,Smith himself could rest more eas-ily concerning the security of hisnorthwest flank.

Coordination between the 1stMarine Division and the 7thDivision continued to be poor. Anextensive minefield delayed the32d Infantry as it attacked alongthe Seoul-Suwon highway on 20September, but on that same daythe 32d did take T’ongdok moun-tain and a part of Copper MineHill. The rest of Copper Mine Hillwas taken the next day and, asnight fell, the Army regiment helda line two miles south of Anyang-ni. The big event of 22 Septemberfor the 32d Infantry was the cap-ture of Suwon Airfield and open-ing it to friendly traffic.

Sutter’s 2d Battalion reverted toregimental reserve the afternoonof 22 September after seven days

in the assault. His grimy Marinesgathered together in a bivouacarea where they could wash andrest. The 22 September entry inAlmond’s war diary, dutifully keptby Haig, noted that Sutter’s battal-ion had taken 116 casualties as“the result of aggressive forwardmovement without the requiredartillery preparation.” Thatevening, Almond, after a busy day,entertained Admiral Doyle andselected staff officers at dinner athis newly established mess inInchon.

Almond and Smith Disagree

By 23 September, the 32dInfantry had secured its objectives

67

Loaded in amphibious tractors and trucks, Korean Marinesprepare to follow the 5th Marines across the Han River. Amajor portion of the 1st Korean Marine Corps Regiment had

followed the 5th Marines to Kimpo Airfield, made its firstattack northwest of the field, and were now poised to liber-ate the Korean capital.

National Archives Photo (USA) 111-SC348702

overlooking the Han, south andsoutheast of Yongdung-po. The 3dBattalion of the Army’s highlyregarded 187th Airborne Regiment,with Almond’s “GHQ RaiderGroup” attached, arrived at Kimpoand temporarily came under 1stMarine Division control. Smithgave it the mission of covering hisnorthwest flank, freeing the 7thMarines for a crossing of the Han.

Almond ordered his commandpost displaced forward fromInchon to Ascom City. During theday he visited Barr’s commandpost and passed out a liberal num-ber of Silver Stars, Bronze Stars,and Purple Hearts. Smith foundAlmond’s practice of presentingon-the-spot awards disruptive anda cause for hurt feelings and mis-understandings. He thoughtAlmond was inspired byNapoleon, but MacArthur was amore immediate practitioner. Smithhad, it will be remembered, him-

self received a Silver Star fromMacArthur as had Barr and AdmiralDoyle. MacArthur was even moregenerous to Admiral Struble, givinghim the Army’s DistinguishedService Cross.

The 5th Marines was now firmlyacross the Han but was having dif-ficulty in expanding its bridge-head. Mid-morning on the 23d,Almond met with Smith and urgedhim to put the 1st Marines acrossthe river. He again complained thatthe Marines were not pressing theattack vigorously enough. Almondsuggested that Smith cross the Hansoutheast of Seoul with the 1stMarines and then attack frontallyinto the city. Smith countered witha less-rash plan to have the 1stMarines cross at the 5th Marines’bridgehead. Almond reluctantlyconcurred.

From 15 through 23 September,the 1st Marine Division had suf-fered 165 men killed in action or

died of wounds, 5 Marines stillmissing in action, and 988 menwounded. In turn the division hadtaken, by fairly accurate count,1,873 prisoners, and claimed 6,500enemy casualties.

During the day, 23 September,Smith visited the observation postof the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines,which had just taken Hill 108 over-looking the rail and highwaybridges, their spans broken, intoSeoul. A Marine major, who knewof O. P. Smith’s study of the CivilWar, presumed to remark that theposition was similar to that ofBurnside at Falmouth on the northbank of the Rappahannock acrossfrom Fredericksburg in December1862. General Smith looked withamusement at the major andpatiently explained that he wouldnot make the same mistake asBurnside. There would be nofrontal assault across the river intoSeoul.

68

SourcesThe official history, The

Inchon-Seoul Operation by LynnMontross and Capt Nicholas A.Canzona, Volume II in the series,U.S. Marine Operations in Korea,1950-1953 (Washington, D.C.:Historical Branch, G-3 Division,HQMC, 1955), provided a center-line for this account.

Other official histories of greatuse were Roy E. Appleman, Southto the Naktong, North to the Yalu(Washington, D.C.: Office of theChief of Military History, Depart-ment of the Army, 1961); James A.Field, Jr., History of United StatesNaval Operations: Korea (Wash-ington, D.C.: Government PrintingOffice, 1962); and James F.Schnabel, Policy and Direction:The First Year (Washington: Officeof the Chief of Military History,Department of the Army, 1972).

Victory at High Tide (Philadel-phia: Lippincott, 1968) by ColRobert D. Heinl, Jr., remains thebest single-volume account ofInchon.

Among the other useful sec-ondary sources were AlexanderHaig, Jr., Inner Circles (New York:Warner Books, 1992); Clay Blair,The Forgotten War: America inKorea, 1950-1953 (New York:Times Books, 1987); Gen DouglasMacArthur, Reminiscences (NewYork: McGraw Hill, 1964); GenOmar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, AGeneral’s Life: An Autobiography(New York: Simon and Schuster,1983); Donald Knox, The KoreanWar: Pusan to Chosin (San Diego:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985);Marguerite Higgins, War in Korea:The Report of a Women CombatCorrespondent (Garden City:Doubleday & Company, 1951);Gen J. Lawton Collins, LightningJoe: An Autobiography (BatonRouge: Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1979); and Cdr Malcolm W.Cagle and Cdr Frank A. Manson,The Sea War in Korea (Annapolis:U.S. Naval Institute, 1957).

Valuable insights were provid-ed by an Inchon war game devel-oped at the Marine CorpsHistorical Center (MCHC) in 1987,

which examined the operationfrom the viewpoint of its principalcommanders, using their reports,writings, and memoirs. Among theprimary sources used, the mostimportant were the unit files andrecords held by MCHC of the 1stMarine Division and its subordi-nate regiments and battalions.Also important were the biograph-ic files held by Reference Section.

Other primary sources of greatuse were the oral histories,diaries, and memoirs of many ofthe participants. The most impor-tant of these were those ofGenerals Stratemeyer, Almond,Cates, Shepherd, O. P. Smith,Craig, V. H. Krulak, and Bowser,and Admirals Burke and Doyle. Afully annotated draft of the text ison file at the Marine CorpsHistorical Center. As is their tradi-tion, the members of the staff atthe Center were fully supportivein the production of this anniver-sary pamphlet. Photographs byFrank Noel are used with the per-mission of Associated Press/WorldWide Photos.

About the Author

Edwin Howard Simmons, aretired Marine brigadier gen-

eral, was, as a major, the com-manding officer of WeaponsCompany, 3d Battalion, 1stMarines, in the landing acrossBlue Beach Two at Inchon. Hisactive service spanned 30years—1942 to 1972—andincluded combat in World War IIand Vietnam as well as Korea. Awriter and historian all his adultlife, he was the Director of Marine Corps History andMuseums from 1972 until 1996 and is now the DirectorEmeritus.

He was born in Billingsport, New Jersey, the site of abattle along the Delaware River in the AmericanRevolution, and received his commission in the MarineCorps through the Army ROTC at Lehigh University. Healso has a master’s degree from Ohio State Universityand is a graduate of the National War College. A one-time managing editor of the Marine Corps Gazette, hehas been published widely, including more than 300 arti-cles and essays. His most recent books are The UnitedStates Marines: A History (1998), The Marines (1998), andDog Company Six (2000).

He is married, has four grown children, and lives withhis wife, Frances, at their residence, “Dunmarchin,” twomiles up the Potomac from Mount Vernon.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines inthe Korean War era, is published for the education and training ofMarines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. MarineCorps, Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defenseobservance of the 50th anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have beendefrayed in part by contributions from members of the Marine CorpsHeritage Foundation.

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS

Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC (RET)

GENERAL EDITOR,

KOREAN WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Charles R. Smith

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION

Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor

W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist

Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician

Marine Corps Historical CenterBuilding 58, Washington Navy Yard

Washington, D.C. 20374-50402000

PCN 190 00315 100

Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series

OVER THE SEAWALLU.S. Marines

at Inchonby Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons

U.S. Marine Corps, Retired