The Imjin and Kapyong Battles by Paul MacKenzie

Author:Paul MacKenzie
Language: nld
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

EIGHT

Kapyong: The Final Day

What are those blinking white lights sparkling on the ground?

LIEUTENANT ROD MIDDLETON, 2PPCLI, to U.S. helicopter pilot above Hill 677, 8:00 am, re. Chinese anti-aircraft fire1

It was the most beautiful sight I can ever remember seeing.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER, 2PPCLI, re. 10:30 AM supply drop2

If the 118th CPV division renewed its vigorous attacks on Hill 677 in the hours after dawn, then the chances of survival for the Patricias would be lower than they had been after midnight. “By that time our Mortar Platoon was almost completely out of mortar bombs,” Private Mike Czuboka remembered. “The rifle companies were also down to a few rounds of ammunition. Our food and water was almost gone.”3 Some of the badly wounded, to be sure, could now be evacuated by two American helicopters, but ground fire from the Chinese as the machines flew in was a reminder that the enemy still surrounded the battalion and could close in again.4 After a night of sometimes quite vicious hand-to-hand fighting one or two soldiers found they were unable to switch off their bloodlust. Decades later PPCLI veterans could claim that they had felt no hatred for the enemy, but early Wednesday morning after the fighting had died down two Patricias, discovering a pair of wounded Chinese forward of their position, first rummaged through their possessions and then deliberately picked them up and threw them to their deaths down a steep slope.5 Other soldiers maintained a remarkable sang-froid in the face of imminent danger. “I responded to the desperate situation as soldiers are wont to do when they can’t do anything about it,” Corporal John Bishop of 2 Platoon later wrote. “I got my head down and fell into a comfortable doze.”6 But there was no doubt in the mind of the CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone, that if the enemy kept pushing, “in all probability the 2 PPCLI would have been annihilated.”7 Or as an unidentified Patricia reflected a quarter century later, “what happened to the Gloucesters could easily have happened to us.”8 That it did not was due to the actions of both friends and enemies.

The situation of those atop Hill 677 improved considerably after 10:30 AM when the airdrop of supplies Stone had requested six hours earlier occurred. A flight of C-119 Flying Boxcars from Japan roared in low overhead and unloaded multiple parachute-retarded pallets on which food, water, and ammunition were stored. Luckily nobody below was hit—the pallets came down “really fast” recalled Harry Welsh, who was only three feet from where one bounced on impact9—and only four landed too far outside the perimeter to be retrieved. The small-arms ammunition delivered was all .30 or .50 caliber and the mortar bombs all 81-mm in size, but as the vehicles and weapons of the mortar platoon were American—as were the carbines and submachine-guns many men had unofficially acquired—this was still, as a member of the platoon put it, a “big help” to the battalion. “A minor miracle” had taken place, one of his buddies argued more feelingly.

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