30,000 UN forces, including British Commandos and 10,00 US Marines, are cutoff and surrounded by 120,000 Communist Chinese in the sub-zero temperatures of the snow-covered North Korean mountains, fight their way out and are ultimately victorious in their survival and rescue of over 90,000 refugees in a true Christmas Miracle.
Now That Should Be A Movie
Short Pitch
It is called A Christmas Far From Home
It is a War Epic
In the vein of Dunkirk
It is like 1917 meets The Revenant
It follows by-the-book but personable Marine General Oliver P. Smith
And ingenious, physically tough engineer John H. Partridge
As they fight to save 30,000 UN troops from 120,000 Communist Chinese in the sub-zero freezing mountains of North Korea
Problems arise when their superior officers do not listen to Smith and other officers regarding the enemy threat and the Communists cut off, overwhelm, and trap American forces by blowing up a bridge over a chasm
Together their dedication to their fellow Americans, ingenuity, and determination will not only save the nearly entire UN army but also over 90,000 North Korean refugees
The idea came to me when I was researching The Korean War and read A Christmas Far From Home during the Holiday Season and was blown away by the epic scale of the events
My unique approach would be the horror, harshness, and darkness of war juxtaposed with the sentimentality, joy, and light of the holidays, including the Christmas Miracle of the evacuation of Hungnam.
A set piece would be when the 5th and 7th Marines, including 600 wounded walking with the help of ice-glazed tree limbs, march into Hagaru. They had fought their way there over fourteen miles for four days and three sleepless nights. Their comrades gather on the surrounding hills to greet the arrival of their comrades who were covered with ice and stubble. At 600 yards from the perimeter, the column stops. The wounded and frostbitten who could walk crawled out of their trucks and fell in line with their comrades, their boots stomping the snow in perfect cadence. In the snow. As the column enters the perimeter, some grunts join them, marching alongside the column “From the Halls of Montezuma…”They began singing “…To the shores of Tripoli…” It is the Marines Hymn. “…We will fight our nation’s battles…” Rugged veterans were brought to tears. “Look at those bastards,” they say. “Those magnificent bastards.”
Target audiences would be military personnel and their families, military veterans and their families, Korean War veterans and their families, Korean Americans, South Koreans, history buffs, military enthusiasts, fans of war movies, fans of military games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, and men and women (20s to 80s).
Audiences would want to see it in theaters due to its epic scale and its legendary place in Marine lore, the themes of devotion, courage, dedication, determination, resilience, brotherhood and honor, the excitement of surviving, and the hope and miracle of Christmas found in the evacuation of the refugees.
Introduction
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie, in this longer-than-normal post, is A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During The Korean War by Stanley Weintraub, from Da Capo Press.
There is no glory, excitement, or adventure in war. However, The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir is one of those historical events that was seemingly made to be a movie featuring those elements. Around 30,000 Americans and UN forces, including the 10,000 Marines of X Corps, are cut off, surrounded, and attacked in overwhelming human wave after overwhelming human waves by over 120,000 Communist Chinese. Then for seventeen days and nights, they fight off constant attacks at places etched in Marine legend – Yudam-ni, Fox Hill, Hagaru-ri, Koto-ri, Sundong, Hamhung, Hungnam – and march between 80-100 miles through snow-covered mountains in sub-zero temperatures. Yet they escape the trap, bringing most of their dead, vehicles, and equipment out with them while destroying six Chinese divisions. Then on top of all that, there is one of the largest humanitarian evacuations in history in which 90,000-100,000 North Korean refugees are transported to freedom in South Korea. It is tailormade to be told with the power of cinema on the big screen. And the Christmas theme of Weintraub’s book proves that it should be a Holiday Season release.
Act I
After driving the North Korean Communist forces out of South Korea, General Douglas MacArthur promised the American and UN troops that they would be home for Christmas. [“The troops] have great faith in General Douglas MacArthur,” wrote AP reporter Hal Boyle. “They feel that he is Santa Clause in uniform who will lead them to final victory by Christmas.” But to accomplish this promise, MacArthur launched a so-called Christmas Offensive into North Korea to end the war by eliminating their army, crossing the 38th Parelle on October 9th, 1950. President Harry S. Truman warned him not to approach too close to the Manchurian border lest the Chinese take the UN presence as a threat. MacArthur assured the president that the Chinese would not be a threat. Still, President Truman made it clear that if he bombed any of the bridges on the Yalu, which served as the border between North Korea and China, he could only bomb the southern half.
The Chinese did take the UN force as a threat and began slipping troops over the Yalu on October 18. They used prefabricated wooden bridges, camouflaged to look like water and submerged just below the river’s surface. At night trucks passed at wheel top depth and troops waded through icy waters. The Chinese hid by day in caves, railway tunnels, and mine shafts and then traveled by the dark of night. Troops, dressed in white, would stand still like trees or roll themselves up to look like rocks. Then the Yalu froze over, minimizing the need for bridges. A scene in a movie could feature a plane flying over a mountain. The pilot looks down and sees nothing but snow on the mountainside. “No sign of the enemy,” he reports. The plane flies off. A moment later the “snow” moves as dozens of Chinese soldiers dressed in white stand up. They rush up the mountainside. There are hundreds of them. Then thousands. Soon 120,000 Communists are approaching the Americans strung out along the shores of the Chosin Reservoir.
The Chinese began attacking American positions around October 25th. But then they retreat. Despite the brief Chinese scare, an exit by Christmas is still on the timetable. “I doubt that we will ever go near the Manchurian border,” a Colonel Ernest V. Holmes told reporter Hal Boyle. “I will see you in Hawaii on Christmas Day.”
As the American forces slowly advanced up the snaking roads that curved around the mountains surrounding the Chosin Reservoir, the Chinese continued moving supplies into the mountainous region. They figured out the strength of the US and allied forces from the American radio programs that would name men and their units for the folks back home who wanted to know how their boys were doing. American colonel Robert Taplett can only guess at the size of the Chinese army as he looks up into the mountains and sees footprints crisscrossing the snow. From his biplane, he could see the shadows of foxholes. The mountains are crawling with people, he reports. As the Chinese pretended to retreat, they let POWs go with stories of starvation and lack of supplies to tell American officers, who would then send their men deeper into the mountains. “To catch a big fish,” says the Chinese general, “you must let the fish taste your bait.”
The Chinese attacked the Americans at Unsan, southwest of the Chosin, in early November, taking Father Emil Kapaun and Jewish immigrant Tibor Rubin prisoner. Still, MacArthur and his lapdog General Ned Almond ignored early warning signs, boasting to the press that the Third Division would be 9,000 miles away in Fort Benning, Georgia, by Christmas. “I hope to keep my promise to the GIs to have them home for Christmas,” the press records MacArthur saying.
Perhaps in a movie the historical figures General O. P. Smith, Colonel Allen D. MacLean, and Lieutenant Joseph Owen could be shown engaging in firefights with the Chinese on the ground and then having their reports ignored by higher command. There could be a scene of them trying to convince General Almond of the Chinese presence when he flies to the front line to pass out medals like Santa. Two of the medals were awarded to Lieutenant Colonel Don C. Faith and Lieutenant Everett Smalley. Off officers tore them off and threw them in the snow out of frustration with a high command that wasn’t listening to them. To the men on the front line, ad nauseam promises of “home for Christmas” became a joke.
“I hope to keep my promise to have them home for Christmas once we reach the Yalu.,” MacArthur said repeatedly. To bolster confidence, MacArthur flew over the Yalu’s southern bank. He saw no Chinese presence during the day. That was because at night trucks and conscripted peasant porters carrying a-frame burdens on their backs crossed the ice. Villagers and farmers then swept the tracks in the snow away. MacArthur’s confidence was supported by his “yes man” and head of intelligence, Charles Andrew Willoughby. When asked about POWs reporting large numbers of Chinese soldiers, Willoughby replied those were “Marine lies.” Still, when reporters asked MacArthur about American troops encountering Chinese resistance, his confidence seemed shaken. “Well, if they go fast enough,” MacArthur replied, with some annoyance. “Maybe some of them could be home by Christmas.”
The Chinese also underestimated the Americans. A Maoist pamphlet claimed that the American infantry
….Are afraid of our night attacks…big knives and grenades; also of our courageous ’s attack[s]…if defeated, they have no orderly formations[s]…they become dazed and completely demoralized…They are afraid when their rear is cut off. When transportation comes to a standstill, the infantry loses the will to fight.
The Chinese soldiers might have believed the propaganda had they seen the tens of thousands of Thanksgiving dinners the military delivered to the troops. Even though the turkeys and canned veggies had to be thawed overnight, the troops enjoyed them. Despite the freezing diarrhea the meals caused, many troops participated in Thanksgiving Day prayers and patriotic songs. Afterward, one hill near Toktong Pass would become known as Turkey Hill due to the number of turkey bones left there by the Marines.
A human-interest piece would be on the 26th of November when Marine Private Stanley Lockwitz hosts a mock radio show. After another private, Siert Bergman sang Silent Night, Private Lockwitz challenged the leathernecks to guess to whom the singing voice belonged. He gave them a clue. “You shall return, as I shall return, by Christmas.” When someone guessed MacArthur, he said they had won the prize. Two howitzer shells to fire at “the target of your choosing. Goodbye and good luck.”
Act Two
During the night of November 26th-27th, the Home for Christmas Campaign was halted when the Chinese human waves attack began. By the night of the 28th, it was history. A soldier on watch woke up his unit with the declaration, “Man, the hills all around us on both sides are lit up like Christmas trees.” One veteran described the Chinese army with its torches moving like a forest of Christmas trees. The Chinese were hitting the US military supply line all over the place, from Yudam-ni to Koto-ri. They carried baskets full of grenades called potato mashers and other explosives which they hurled in bunches at the Americans. All illusions of being home for Christmas vanished as the U.S. forces were overwhelmed and fought a fighting withdrawal toward the port of Hungnam. Orders were made to carry out the wounded and dead. Their bodies covered with frozen pink blood were stacked like cordwood in truck beds and tied to tank torrents, fenders, howitzer barrels, and hoods. While Marine lore says no dead were left behind, some mass graves were hastily but honorable dug, covered with rocks, and funerals conducted, with crosses marking the resting places for Marines who wouldn’t be home for Christmas.
When MacArthur came on the air with a new radio message, people tuned in expecting to hear “We’ll be home for Christmas for sure.” Instead, he said, “All United States forces in Korea are facing annihilation.” In New York radio pundit Walter Winchell said, “If you have a son overseas, write to him. If you have a son in the 2nd Division, pray for him.” In Washington D. C., MacArthur’s Home by Christmas promise had been quickly forgotten. During a press conference regarding China’s entrance into the war and cutting off and surrounding the 30,000 men of X Corps, President Truman he would take whatever steps necessary to rescue the troops. When a reporter asked if that included the nuclear bomb, the president replied, “That includes every weapon we have.” With Soviet Russia also in possession of The Bomb, would this be a nuclear winter Christmas?
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir displays both the horror and bravery that arises out of the chaos of war. Grunts who had been discharged from the hospital stowaway on airplanes flying to the front and were used to plug holes in the line as soon as they landed. At Yudam-nim, Marines used frozen enemy bodies as sandbags to protect their guns. Brave wounded men volunteered to drive trucks even though they knew they would become special targets for the Chinese. A long, winding stretch of icy road became known in Marine lore as Hellfire Valley. Supplies that could not be carried out were burned so as not to fall into enemy hands. Whatever supplies the Chinese couldn’t use, they would also burn. Retreating Americans fired all their shells in the direction of the Chinese rather than allow them to fall into enemy hands. Corsairs provided air cover with napalm. The Chinese fired red flares to light up American positions. They almost overran airstrips. Even General Almond risked enemy fire as his biplane was flown between the frontlines and the rear. Artillery guns were lowered to fire point blank range at the Chinese soldiers charging barefoot across the snow. Tracer bullets lit up the night sky and reflected upon the snow-covered mountainsides. “One of the craziest sights,” remembered Private Francis Killeen. “…To stand on a mountaintop and look down at Corsairs making strikes…The place looked like one gigantic Christmas card, except most of it was on fire.”
There are other references and reminders of Christmas throughout the saga. Captured Marines and British Commandos watch in tears as Chinese loot a truck carrying mail. They rip Christmas care packages open and scatter the colorful wrapping paper to the wind. The socks, fountain pens, watches, and other gifts are of little use to the Chinese who are being barely fed and clothed by their own army. The column of withdrawing Marines is described as an army of walking Christmas trees. The wounded were wrapped up like Christmas presents. When the supplies at Hungnam were rigged with explosives and detonated to keep them out of Chinese hands, there were Christmas fireworks like none other (think Michael Bay). Wounded Marines being evacuated from Hagaru wished their comrades Merry Christmas if they had not seen them before then. Arriving at the hospital in Japan was like a premature Christmas. Fortunately, the live grenades in their pockets, which no one had checked before the evacuation, did not go off and ruin anyone’s Christmas. Although Weintraub’s book does not mention it, there was a constellation of biblical proportions that became known as the Star of Koto-ri and gave many a Marine and soldier hope and guidance in the darkness.
Covering the Marines for LIFE Magazine was photojournalist David Douglas Duncan (His photo of Captain Francis Ike Fenton Jr plays a part in another of my posts, The Darkest Summer). He came upon a Marine trying to break loose a single frost-covered bean from a can.
“If I were God and It was Christmas,” Duncan asked. “What would you ask for?”
The empty-eyed grunt looked over into the distance as the sun rose over snowy hills.
He replied, “Give me tomorrow.”
That statement inspired the title for Patrick K. O’Donnell’s book on “Bloody George” Company G, Third Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division. I discuss Captain Carl S. Sitter’s actions at East Hill that kept the base at Hagaru-ri open in another post.
I have covered Company F, Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division’s contribution to the American escape at Chosin in another post, but here are some incidents from their struggle recorded in Weintraub’s book. Private Charles Parker had been in the sick bay tent in Hagaru-ri with the flu but refused to be a casualty. He worried that he might be sent to a hospital in Japan while his Fox Company buddies went straight home to America for Christmas. While fighting on with Fox on their rocky hill he was shot and killed by a sniper. “Home for Christmas, my ass,” said Private Jerry Triggs, a seventeen-year-old ammo carrier. Moments later he was taken out by a grenade. Private Ken Benson was buddies with soon-to-be Medal of Honor recipient Private Hector Cafferata. The charging Chinese threw a satchel charge at them. “Home for Christmas, Hec?” Benson shouted at Cafferata as he returned the explosive to the Communists.
Like I said in my post about how The Last Stand of Fox Company shows the Battle of the Chosin contains both Man vs Man and Man vs Nature storylines. A Christmas Far From Home does so as well. The mountain passes were at 3,500 feet and the peaks at 6,500 feet. Men gasped in the first shock of exposure. Trucks lacked tire chains to negotiate the snow and ice. Caterpillar treads froze and jammed. Motors and generators were turned off to conserve fuel and restarted only with difficulty.
Men’s feet froze to the bottom of their socks and the skin peeled off upon removal. Plasma froze in bottles and broke them. Plasma would not go into the solution and the tubes would clog up with particles. Medics couldn’t change dressings because their hands would freeze if they took off their gloves. They did not cut a man’s clothes off to get to a wound because he would freeze to death. Years later the medics would remember icicles of blood
One moving scene was when the 5th and 7th Marines marched into Hagaru. 600 were wounded, walking slowly with ice-glazed sticks as support. It had taken four days and three sleepless nights for them to push fourteen miles through roadblocks. About six hundred yards from the perimeter the column halted, and the trucks came to a stop. The wounded and frostbitten crawled out and fell in line with their comrades. Then in silence, they pounded the snow, their feet marching in cadence. Other Marines gathered on the surrounding hills to greet the arrival of their comrades who were covered with ice and stubble. Then they began singing. It was the Marine’s Hymn. Rugged veterans were brought to tears. “Look at those bastards,” they said. “Those magnificent bastards.”
Act Three
By December 14 The planned Christmas victory had turned into hopes for a Christmas truce. Wired photos depicting cranes lifting tanks on ships at the Port of Hungnam had appeared in American newspapers. They were followed the next day by pictures of the burials in Hungnam, captioned “crosses marked the graves of Marines who won’t be home for Christmas.”
Major General Robert H. Soule was in charge of the evacuation. Using 109 vessels of all kinds, he oversaw 193 boatloads of 105,000 US and South Korean troops, 17,500 vehicles, and nearly 350,00 tons of supplies shipped out to fight another day. For his actions, he would be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
The last serious attempt by the Communist Chinese to break through the force covering the evacuation occurred in the early morning of December 18th. The 1st Battalion of the 3rd Division’s 15th Regiment held off the attackers until the Chinese broke off the fight and retreated after three hours. The last Marine presence would be an air control center maintained on an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) until the day before Christmas.
The curtain on the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir fell on the morning and afternoon of the 24th – Christmas Eve. Soule’s 3rd Division embarked from seven beaches at Hungnam as demolition teams planted five hundred 1,000-pound bombs. At 2:36 PM there was a Christmas fireworks show like never before as everything that could not be moved was blown up to keep it out of Chinese hands.
Some Americans are almost left behind. They found some powdered milk that the demolition team had missed and spelled out SOS on a runway. They were rescued just in time. A truly nail-biting movie scene if there ever was one. One of the men was back in Tokyo on Christmas Day to surprise his family who thought he was dead. When President Truman received the message of the escape of X Corps, he said it was “the best Christmas present I have ever had.” (Glenn C. Cowart calls his book about the evacuation from Hungnam Miracle in Korea.)
Subplot: Christmas Miracle of the Tootsie Rolls
Many of the soldiers and grunts were saved by a communication error. Marine weapon companies were running out of 60mm mortar rounds, so radiomen began requesting air drops using the code name Tootsie Rolls. Dozens of the crates containing the candy were loaded by Japanese warehouse workers unaware of the specialized codes.
This mistake ended up saving many lives in two ways. First, when the “mortar rounds” were parachuted into Chinese hands, the Communists found that the “shells” were not to the specifics required to be fired from their mortars. Secondly, after being softened by body heat, the chewy candy became a source of energy for the weary American troops. They could hold them against their cheeks and munch on them for hours as they marched for miles. The candies also plugged bullet holes in engine blocks and vehicle radiators.
Supporting Characters
There are a variety of historical characters who should be portrayed in a film adaptation of Mr. Weintraub’s book. Because of their actions during the battle, fourteen Americans, including Tom Hudner, would receive the Medal of Honor, half of them posthumously. There is leatherneck legend Colonel Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller who said. “We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.” There is also Homer “Blitzen Litzen” Litzenbberg, colonel of the 7th Marine Regiment.
There is 32-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Don C. Faith, a tragic hero of the Korean War. Along with Colonel Allen MacLean, he was ordered to hold the eastern edges of the reservoir with battalions from the 7th Division 31st, and 32nd Regiments. Both had staff backgrounds, and this would be their first time leading troops in combat. Despite being frustrated by his commanders, Faith bravely carried out his duties and paid the ultimate price on December 1, 1950. His widow would receive his posthumously Medal of Honor the following year. He was officially Missing In Action until 2013. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. [Note: In researching this post I have decided to do an entire post on Faith and his task force.]
Maggie Higgins, a feisty female reporter who became a “boil on the brass’s neck” for her willingness to face danger just like the rest of the reporters, all of whom were men. General O. P. Smith ordered her to board a plane as Koto-ri was evacuated. As the plane took off, the passengers could see the tracers of the Chinese guns firing at the aircraft. The man sitting next to Higgins, General Lemuel Shepherd, quipped “My, God, Maggie, won’t it be awful if the two of us are found crashed together.” When the plane touched down at the port of Hungnam, Higgins still drove back to within forty-five miles of Hagaru to try to cover as much of the withdrawal as possible.
Major Characters and Plot Points
Engineer John H. Partridge and the Christmas Miracle at Funchilin Pass
Lieutenant Colonel John H. Partridge made the Marine’s escape possible by building a runway and airlifting a bridge at Funchilin Pass. There was a one-lane concrete bridge that crossed the narrow, 2,900-foot-deep canyon. Below were four steel penstocks – huge intake pipes – carrying water from the reservoir to a power plant. General O. P. Smith had wondered if the North Koreans were planning a trap when he crossed the bridge in early November. Then while the Americans were breaking out of Hagaru, the Chinese blew up a twenty-four-foot section. The Chinese further blocked the route by dynamiting the supports for a concrete trestle, impeding escape.
Partridge, commander of the Marine Engineer Battalion, was summoned by General O. P. Smith to inspect the damage. He flew over the scene in a helicopter, cockpit open in the sub-zero winds, hazarding Chinese fire to make notes of what was needed. Four Treadway bridges, each weighing 2,500 pounds, including their plywood planking, were needed. They would then have to be installed under fire at the bridge site. “I will get you a bridge,” replied General Smith.
There was a test drop by a Flying Boxcar. The Treadway section smashed upon landing. Partridge radioed for eight treadways and two large G-5 parachutes to be attached to the ends of each span. He picked out a drop zone a mile and a half from the Pass. C-119 Brockway trucks with winches would be required. Fortunately, there were some at Koto-ri. Flying at eight hundred feet above the mountain top, C-119s spilled the girders at 9:30 on the morning of December 7 as the Marines were fighting From Hagaru to Koto-ri.
After possibly the only airdropped bridge in history, Marine squads were required to move along the ridge lines to protect the Treadways from snipers and enemy infiltration. The wounded and dead were allowed to be transported on the Treadways and trucks. Tanks were also required to ward off the North Korean refugees from overrunning the bridge work.
During a snowstorm, one Treadway fell into Chinese hands. Now the enemy was aware of the work at Funchilin Pass. Another section shattered on impact. Most of the parachutes were blown away in the artic gusts, but some were used to wrap the wounded. One British commando said the Yanks “were tied up like a Christmas present.”
If the bridge failed, over a thousand trucks and other vehicles, loaded with wounded, would be captured. Engineers began building a base of sand and timbers at the end of the abutment. Enemy prisoners were employed in the work crews. A mortar shell or grenade could end the operation, so Litzenberg had fifty-ton tanks shield as much of the work as possible. For three and a half hours the tanks risked enemy fire as they shielded the complex installation.
Lieutenant Colonel Donald Schmuck’s battalion of 1st Marines stormed Hill 1081. Despite heavy casualties, they took the hill and guarded the pass, allowing the Americans to descend across the chasm. One of Chesty Puller’s battalions had been assigned to fall behind the last tank. The demolition team would be the last Americans over the Treadways. Stalled tanks and intermittent Chinese attacks disrupted the line of march.
The steel treads iced over, creating dangerous footing. They also did not fit. The gaps over the chasm were twenty-nine feet. Engineers built a crib of railway ties under plywood flooring that connected the girders and closed the gaps. Bolstering the subsurface when the ties ran out were timbers called “dead men.” This led to rumors that dead Chinese were used to build the bridge.
The final obstacle was a trestle blocking the road beyond the bridge. A bulldozer blade drove against it under mortar fire. The structure slung sideways like a gate, the ice skidding it off the road. The way was clear.
Work was still ongoing on the afternoon of December 9. A bulldozer broke through panels between the Treadways. Nothing could cross until the heavy vehicle exited in reverse and the break was fixed. The bulldozer teetered hazardously mid-chasm. The night lit up as Marine gunfire drove off the attacking Chinese. Cheers of relief came from onlookers as the bulldozer driver gingerly backed his machine off the bridge.
In the dusk, Partridge tried the passage in his jeep and confirmed to Litzenberg that the convoy could go ahead. It was nearly dark as everyone descended an elevation of 4,500 feet while an Arctic gust blew through the valley. More than 1,400 vehicles, including the huge Brockway, inched slowly across. The bridge had a maximum width of eleven feet, four inches, with a margin of two inches for tanks. The fifty-ton Brockway trucks were the first to test the weight. Partridge had them pushed closer together with bulldozer blades for equal weight. Half of their treads were over the bridge’s edge. They traveled two miles an hour. But they made it across. And the bridge held. Other vehicles were guided by guards with flashlights. Many of the vehicles carried wounded and dead and were spaced about fifty yards from each other to deny the enemy easy targets in case of attack.
Then came the marchers. Each man was like a walking arsenal, weighed down with as many weapons as possible. Veteran Harry Smith said it was like an army of walking Christmas trees, decorated with grenades and rifles. Some veterans remember seeing a few trucks and jeeps slide across the ice and off the bridge, dead and wounded tossed from their seats and beds like ragdolls, their headlights illumining and streaming down the canyon walls as they disappeared into the chasm.
By 0200 hours on December 11th Partridge concluded that everyone who could get across had. The Chinese had to be denied access. The last American vehicles to cross were the tanks. If they broke down, they would block the bridge. Refugees were clamoring to cross the bridge. Suddenly five rushed forward, claiming to be Chinese soldiers wanting to surrender. Suddenly they began throwing grenades and other explosives. The American officer standing guard tried firing, but his trigger was frozen. He swung his carbine in hand-to-hand combat. A corporal covered him with a BAR. The last two tanks were ambushed, one set ablaze. But the bridge was held.
The last to cross was Marine legend Chesty Pully. Dead Marines were lashed to his jeep hood and bumper. The mob of refugees behind him had almost reached the bridge when it exploded. The Marines accidentally left behind and fought their way down, through, and up the canyon. The North Korean refugees followed. On the 12th, the Air Force was assured that no Americans were left and bombed the remains of the bridge.
Major General Oliver Prince Smith
And of course, the superb leadership of General Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, and one of the most underrated generals in American history. He insisted upon having a base at Hagaru, sixty-four miles of rugged, winding upland road from the harbor at Hungnam, as a way to evacuate casualties. “What casualties,” General Almond replied. Smith resisted Almond’s orders that would separate his troops or leave them strung out along the mountain roads that he had been told to go “barreling up.” He moved slowly, establishing supply camps at Chinghung-ni and Hagaru-ri in the hills below the Chosin Reservoir. He did not believe in the realism of X Corps’ war plans. Winter campaigning in the mountains of North Korea was too much to ask of the American marines and soldiers. How were they to be supplied? How were the wounded to be evacuated?
His forebodings became fact on November 26. While visiting Yudam-ni, the northernmost point reached by the Marines, the Chinese attacked his motor convoy. He was in the thick of the fighting. When Marines stepped off airplanes, he would ask their units. “2nd Battalion,” a devil dog replied. “Well, you’re in 3rd Battalion now,” he told him as he directed him to a place on the firing line. His decision to build an airstrip at Hagaru, despite Ned Almond’s criticism, provided evacuation for wounded before it was ever finished. On December 4th, General Almond presented him with a Distinguished Service Cross. Smith said he never got a citation of what exactly he had done to deserve the award.
Even in battle, Almond and Smith found something on which to disagree. Almond believed that the weapons and vehicles should be destroyed and abandoned. Smith insisted on taking them all out. “Gentleman,” he said to his officers. “We’re going out of here. And we are going out like Marines. We are sticking together, and we are taking out our dead and wounded and our equipment. Are there any questions?”
During a press conference, he told reporters that the Marines were not retreating but attacking their way out. “There can be no retreat when there’s no rear. You can’t retreat, or even withdraw when you’re surrounded. The only thing you can do is break out, and in order to do that, you have to attack, and that’s what you have to do.” Reporters would shorten this into the legendary phrase: Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.
At home, his wife Esther followed the news of the withdrawal. She wrote him a letter that included Exodus 23:20: Behold I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
On December 5 as the troops headed out of Hagaru, Smith wanted to march with his men into the foggy morning. However, his superiors worried that if he was captured, it would give the enemy a great propaganda prize, so he flew the contested miles. He doffed his helmet despite the cold weather at a mass grave at Koto-ri. He was the last to leave there as well, flying in a helicopter over a stream of troops and vehicles heading south toward the Funchilin Pass. Smith’s going by the book, suggests Weintraub, might not have just saved X Corps at the Chosin, but the entire American presence in Korea.
On December 13th he closed his command post in Hungnam and attended a memorial service at beachhead cemetery. A picture of him, cap in hand, his white-haired head bowed in respect to a freshly dug grave, a plain white cross at the head, was splashed across national newspapers. He told reporters that the men were in high spirits. One of his regimental commanders told him that while he was not a religious man, he felt “that we had walked in the hand of God.”
Incidentally, Smith would pass away on Christmas Day, 1977.
The Christmas Miracle of the Rescue of Over 90,000 Refugees
What would make this story ideal for a Holiday Season release is the rescue of 90,000-100,000 North Korean refugees. The civilians, many of them Christians, followed the army as it retreated from the Chosin Reservoir, braving the same freezing temperatures and winds and their own hunger. AP reporter Hal Boyle said, “There was a Biblical pageantry about it. In a plane at 4,000 feet[,] the great retreat looked like a scene from a silent movie epic…But as the plane came lower, the tableau surged with swarming life.” The refugees loaded up trains at Hamhung to take them to the Hungnam Port. They were unconcerned with the fumes and sparks that burned holes in their parkas.
There was much military debate about them since the Chinese could easily infiltrate them and ambush ground troops. American civilians at home, some of them children of missionaries, put pressure on the military to rescue the North Koreans fleeing Communism for freedom. The editors and publishers of Life, TIME, and Reader’s Digest and foreign policy guru John Foster Dulles, the most influential Presbyterian layman in America, said the US-led command could not be perceived as abandoning Korean Christians to the cruel mercies of communism so close to Christmas.
Rescue ships arrived on December 17-18 and began loading. One refugee recalled the naval gunfire covering the evacuation was like “shooting stars falling on the horizon.” The military put them on specially selected ships, overflowing past capacity. One, the SS Meredith Victory, holds the Guinness Book of World Records for “the greatest rescue operation ever by a single ship,” carrying a human cargo of 14,000. The refugees would be offloaded in South Korean territory and breathe free air on Christmas Day. For many of the veterans of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign, this made their suffering worthwhile.
The film could end with a montage of Christmas. Soldiers and Marines returning to their bases in South Korea are to be greeted by Christmas trees and turkeys. American POWs are herded by guards into barracks where red paper bells and other Christmas decorations have been set up by the Communists for propaganda purposes. Some of the wounded GJs are spending Christmas in the States, in hospitals some with their families. For them, MacArthur kept his promise to have them home for Christmas. Finally, Korean families disembark in South Korea. Their Christmas gift is freedom.
Final Thoughts
I think it is time for a major American movie about the Chosin Reservoir to combat Communist Chinese propaganda. A movie based on A Christmas Far From Home should end with the American rescue of the refugees to combat the recent blockbuster The Battle at Lake Changjin. The $200 million, take on the events surrounding the battle, which made over $800 million at the Chinese box office, claims that the Chinese Army’s actions at the Chosin are an example of how to annihilate an enemy, even though American casualties were less than 20,000, while Chinese suffered losses of between 40,000 and 60,000 while failing to capture or destroy the UN forces. The most expensive Chinese film ever made ends with a horde of well-manicured soldiers standing on the docks at Hungnam, having supposedly driven off the Americans, cheering, raising guns in the air, and waving dozens of red flags meant to arouse nationalist pride. An American take on the same events could end with a humble act of charity, and nationalist pride displayed in an act of compassion. While the government backing Lake Changjin, and its sequels and spinoffs, calls itself The People’s Republic of China, an American movie can show that the United States is “a republic of the people, by the people, for the people,” by its works.
The story of the Chosin Reservoir is ideal for a Holiday Season cinematic release. While there is no glory in war, reading about the battle never fails to get my blood pumping and fills me with admiration and respect for the courage and endurance of the veterans of “The Forgotten War.” They are heroes because they survived with dignity. The acts of humanity during a war are the true meaning of Christmas. The evacuation of Hungnam is a Christmas miracle. Like Christmas lights in the dark of winter, like a star in the night sky, like Christ’s birth into a world darkened by sin, the acts of courage and humanity in the darkness of war shine brightly. In a world dominated by headlines about war and division, from Ukraine and Israel to Iran and China, a movie about the miracle of Christmas during the Cold and Korean wars can give modern audiences hope with a reminder that to paraphrase Paul Harvey, “during [Christmastimes] like this, it is important to remember that there have always been [Christmastimes] like this.”
Because it would be an epic way to remember and honor the bravery and sacrifice of the Americans and Koreans who fought and struggled for freedom and give audiences hope during dark Christmastimes is why I believe that A Christmas Far from Home by Stanley Weintraub Should Be A Movie.
