Korean Odyssey by Dale A. Dye

Author:Dale A. Dye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

The USS Henrico, steaming slowly alongside her sister troop transport USS Cavalier, gave Marines aboard a sobering view as the first phase of Operation Chromite commenced just after dawn on 15 September. Able Company Marines and almost everyone else not otherwise occupied crowded the rails in silence, all eyes on the line of warships closing on Wolmi-do Island. Signal lamps flickered and the eerie silence was torn by the drumroll of eight-inch and five-inch naval guns from cruisers and destroyers pounding the operation’s first objective. Whispered conversations ceased or turned into shouts as the ear-splitting noise rolled over the waters of the Yellow Sea. The gunfire support vessels raked Wolmi-do unmercifully in a stroboscopic display of muzzle flash at sea and detonations ashore on the crucial island.

When the ships finished and turned away to reform the gun-line, Navy and Marine aircraft roared in from over the horizon and added their explosive weight to the attack. And that was the Marine Corps cue to land the landing force. LCVPs and LSTs churned toward Wolmi-do carrying 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, and a platoon of M-26 Pershing tanks.

Second Lieutenant Art Boyle watched from the fantail as the Henrico turned away from the island. “Hell of a show,” he said to Sgt. Ron Edison standing nearby. “Maybe Three-Five will have it easy.”

“Don’t see how there could be much left standing on that island,” Edison said. “Hope they hit our beaches just as hard.”

“They will.” Staff Sgt. Steve Petrosky was watching with a foot propped on a lifeline. He was remembering the dazzling, deafening preparatory fire he’d witnessed in the Marianas. “You think nobody can survive something like that—but they always do.”

It was late on D-Day afternoon when Act II began. A second high tide had flooded into Inchon Harbor. Cruisers and destroyers returned to the Fire Support Area and erupted in a flashing, roaring display of gunfire support for the big show, the landings on the mainland. Wolmi-do, that critical little mud lump that controlled access to Flying Fish Channel, was secure. The causeway connecting the island with the mainland was open. Third Battalion of RCT-5 was poised on the island to join the fight when landing forces secured the other end of that causeway.

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