From Yudam-ni to Hungnam

On 30 November, "Ned" Almond flew in to Hagaru-ri to see Smith, said the situation had changed radically for the worse all across the front, there would be no attack to the west, X Corps would fall back to Hungnam. Weapons, equipment, and vehicles were to be abandoned as necessary. Smith demurred, and he told Almond the Marines would fight their way out.

Next day Lieutenant Colonel Raymond G. Davis with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, started across country from Yudam-ni to relieve Fox Company still grimly holding on to Toktong Pass. He reached there on 2 December, found only eighty-two of the original Marines unwounded. Meanwhile, Taplett's 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, led the main body out of Yudam-ni along the road, carefully shepherded overhead by Marine air. The column reached Hagarn-ri on 3 December having done four teen miles of fighting and marching in seventy-nine hours.

The breakout southward from Hagarn-ri began on 6 December, led by Litzenberg's 7th Marines, followed by Murray's 5th Marines with 41 Commando and 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, attached. The Marines were bringing everything out and there was a solid mass of vehicles on the road. On the flanks, the rifle companies leapfrogged from one piece of critical terrain to the next. Overhead was close air support, Marine air reserving for themselves a corridor a mile wide over the column with Navy and Air Force working farther out. Last elements from Hagaru-ri had completed the eleven-mile march and entered the perimeter at Koto-ri by midnight on the seventh.

Next morning the Division resumed its march to the sea. Funchilin Pass was now held by the Chinese and had to be cleared. The 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, made a successful uphill attack from Chinhung-ni on 8 December. By the morning of 12 December the Division had closed at Hungnam. The weather along the coast seemed almost balmy to the Marines. The Reservoir had cost them 4400 battle casualties (730 killed or died of wounds) and uncounted cases of frostbite and pneumonia. All the fight was out of the Chinese. They had lost perhaps 25,000 dead and did not press the perimeter as X Corps prepared to evacuate Hungnam.

There was a curious rumor in circulation that the Marines were going to Indochina to help the French. "Chesty" Puller, aboard the MSTS transport General Collins, reviewed for some of his junior officers the events of the Russo—Japanese 1907 war in Korea and was gloomy in his prognostications. The Marines unloaded at Pusan, jolted down the road, and spent Christmas in the Bean Patch at Masan.