Chapter 20 6. "The Most Spectacular Battle"

According to the plan of General Song Shilun, commander of the Ninth Corps, the 26th Army will mainly attack Xiajieyuli, and the latest attack time should be December 5.However, Jieyuli was very calm on December 5th, and the Chinese army did not make any large-scale attacks.The reason why the 26th Army did not launch an attack as scheduled was because the army was advancing slowly. On the 5th, they were still 50 to 70 kilometers away from Xiajieyu.Therefore, when the U.S. Marine Division 1 in Liutan-ri retreated to Xiajieyu-ri, the best opportunity for the 26th Army to attack the U.S. troops in Xiajieyu-ri had been lost.The battlefield report after the war showed that before the U.S. troops in Liutanli did not break through, the U.S. troops in Xiajieyuli had only two infantry platoons.

The post-war summary of the Chinese Twenty-seventh Army has general significance for the Chinese army in the Korean battlefield at that time: the enemy was underestimated; On the 5th of July, the number of US troops assembled in Xiajieyuli reached about 10,000, and about 1,000 vehicles of various types.The personnel and vehicles of the U.S. military are concentrated in a small area with a radius of only a few square kilometers. With such a density, coupled with the mountains of military supplies, even if one shell falls here, it will cause huge casualties.However, the Chinese army fighting on the eastern front of the Korean Peninsula lacks the ability to move artillery quickly, so it can only watch the US military gather together on a large scale.

However, at least Commander Smith knew in his heart that the Chinese army was determined to eat him: the Chinese 26th Army was approaching here step by step, and the 27th Army was also pressing from the direction of Yudam-ri.To make matters worse, on the way of the 1st Marine Division's next retreat, Chinese soldiers from about five or six divisions had already moved south quickly, preparing to block the road from Xiajieyuli to Gutuli and even Wulaoli on both sides.And now, all the bridges on this road have been blown up by Chinese engineers.It can be said that the 1st Marine Division is still deeply surrounded, and the way out must be full of death traps.

The order issued by the U.S. Tenth Army is just one sentence: retreat to the Hamhung area as soon as possible. Commander Smith also wished he could retreat to Hamhung, which is on the edge of the East Korean Gulf, but his land division couldn't make it any faster. Apart from reorganizing the troops that had suffered huge losses from fierce battles, and allowing the soldiers to recover their physical strength a little. In addition, and more importantly, the wounded in every tent in Xiajieyu must be evacuated first.The number of wounded was about 5,000, and it was absolutely impossible to take them through the long bloody road and retreat to the coast.

There's only one way: by air.The wounded were airlifted out of Xiaheyuli. The airstrip in Xiajieyu is finally operational.This was the only ray of light that Mr. Smith felt in these dark days.When Almond, the commander of the Tenth Army, urged the 1st Marine Division to quickly attack northward, the 1st Marine Division seriously delayed the northward advance because of its insistence on building the airport. Smith almost lost his career as a soldier because of this.But only 11 days later, when the first C-47 plane of the Far East Air Force flew out of Hagaru-ri carrying the wounded, the Tenth Army finally saw the necessity of building this airport.

In the work of evacuating the wounded, the Marines found the fake wounded of the 7th Division of the US Army who had fled in a hurry on the runway of the airport.These U.S. Army soldiers "went to the runway, wrapped themselves in a blanket, fell on a stretcher and groaned loudly, and the medics lifted them onto the plane."In this case, a military doctor reported a strange number to Commander Smith: There were originally 450 wounded in the tent under his jurisdiction, but the number of wounded he transported away that day was 941.When it got dark, he returned from the airport to find another 260 people lying in his tent.The military doctor believes that if inspections are not strengthened, more "uninjured soldiers will get on the plane."Commander Smith immediately announced that the military doctor was "the final arbiter of eligibility to board the plane."In order to carry out the ruling more conveniently, the military doctor chose a living "sample": a military doctor named Laysenden was walking-limping-limping due to frostbite feet, so all the wounded had to be compared with this military doctor, "injury condition" No one heavier than Dr. Lessenden is allowed on the plane."

In addition to the wounded, Commander Smith insisted on carrying the bodies of nearly 200 American soldiers onto the plane.For this reason, he quarreled with the headquarters of the Tenth Army again. Smith's attitude was very tough: "We will bring back these corpses at the cost of our lives. We will never leave these dead soldiers in the lonely and desolate Northeast Northeast." In the village!" However, in Liutan, the bodies of the dead American soldiers had been buried on the spot.What annoyed Smith even more was that the frostbite of the soldiers transported to the Japanese hospital caused public opinion to criticize the 1st Marine Division, saying that the frostbite of the soldiers was "the negligence of the commander" and asked the military court to "investigate the negligence".For this reason, Smith angrily wrote another letter to General Cates, the commander of the US Marine Corps:

I just awarded a silver star here to a sergeant who took off his gloves to throw a grenade and got frostbitten fingers, can you court martial this soldier for failing to take effective measures to prevent frostbite ?Can you send his battalion commander, regimental commander, and division commander to a court-martial for this? In the battle on the Eastern Korean Front, the number of Chinese troops with poor equipment and supplies who lost combat effectiveness or even died due to frostbite was about 10,000, which is almost astronomical compared to the number of combat soldiers lost by the US military. number.

Although Mr. Smith's anger implied evasion, it is indisputable that war is war. In order to retreat, the U.S. military carried out an unprecedented supply of supplies to Xiajieyu.U.S. military four-engine aircraft dropped large quantities of food, medicine, gasoline and ammunition with red, blue, yellow, green and orange parachutes.The parachutes of the Ambassador's Air Force were so large that they had to be retrieved from the ground in Hagaru-ri, but the parachutes that landed in Hagaru-ri had been torn apart by American soldiers and used as blankets and scarves to keep out the cold.Because the ground was very frozen, more than half of the airdropped materials were damaged when they landed, and some fell within the fire control range of the Chinese army. Therefore, although the total weight of the airdropped materials had reached more than 300 tons, Commander Smith still thought it was not enough.Another important addition to the 1st Marine Division is personnel. More than 500 Marine Corps officers and soldiers who were wounded when they landed in Incheon and have now recovered were also air-dropped to Xiajieyu-ri to serve as the main assault force when the First Marine Division retreated.

During the great retreat of the First U.S. Marine Division in Xiajieyu, one issue has become a historic one. That is, according to the power of the U.S. Air Force, more than 10,000 U.S. troops in Xiajieyu were transported by air. Get out, not impossible.At that time, the U.S. Air Force sent Major General Dana, who was in charge of commanding military operations in this area, to meet with Commander Smith in Xiagaru, and clearly suggested that the Air Force's C-47 aircraft be used to evacuate all personnel of the 1st Marine Division.However, why the Marine Corps gave up the safe air retreat and chose the ground breakout of the narrow escape, the explanation of Commander Smith is: if the airlift is carried out, the circular position in Xiajieyu must be gradually contracted, and the troops will be transported away in batches. , then, once the Chinese army launches a large-scale attack during the airlift (this possibility is extremely high), not only will the airlift immediately fall into great chaos, but it will be difficult for the U.S. military in the state of airlift to immediately organize effective resistance. It will suffer great casualties, and there may even be an uncontrollable situation. Once this situation occurs, the First Marine Division will be completely destroyed.Furthermore, the air transport must draw out troops to guard the airport, and the troops guarding the airport will be completely annihilated by the Chinese army after the last plane takes off.In addition, the battalion that broke out together while waiting for the large troops to retreat at Huangcaoling had no possibility of breaking through alone, and they would also become a delicious meal for the Chinese army alone.Given all these factors, a ground breakout, while dangerous, offers more opportunities than airlift in terms of saving more lives.

Smith was a division commander, the division commander of the entire division of the 1st Division of the United States Marine Corps. On the afternoon of December 5th, half a day before the retreat time set by Smith, Smith held a press conference at the strong request of the reporters.American journalists, British journalists, and French journalists have flown in from Hamhung, and they have reported the dire situation of the Marine Corps to the world.The brutal retreat was imminent, and Smith didn't have the heart to engage in verbal dealings with the reporters, but when the reporter mentioned whether the Marine Corps was "retreating" or "retreating", he once made a strange noise when the Marine Corps was retreating southward from Liutan-ri. Commander Smith, who gave the order to "attack south", became excited immediately: To retreat is to be forced by the enemy, and it is to move to the rear area maintained by friendly forces.However, in this battle, the rear is also occupied by the enemy, so this is not a retreat, but an attack! On the second day, the headlines of the major Western newspapers were eye-catching and frightening: It is unreasonable to say that the retreat is an attack in other directions!