Over The Seawall: U.S. Marines At Inchon [Illustrated Edition]

Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons

• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786256096
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Includes more than 40 maps, plans and illustrations.This volume in the official History of the Marine Corps chronicles the invasion by United States Marines at Inchon in the initial stages of the Korean War.The Battle of Inchon was an amphibious invasion and battle of the Korean War that resulted in a decisive victory and strategic reversal in favor of the United Nations. The operation involved some 75, 000 troops and 261 naval vessels, and led to the recapture of the South Korea capital Seoul two weeks later. The code name for the operation was Operation Chromite. The battle began on 15 September 1950 and ended on 19 September. Through a surprise amphibious assault far from the Pusan Perimeter that UN and South Korean forces were desperately defending, the largely undefended city of Incheon was secured after being bombed by UN forces. The battle ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA). The subsequent UN recapture of Seoul partially severed NKPA's supply lines in South Korea. The majority of United Nations ground forces involved were U.S. Marines, commanded by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of the United States Army. MacArthur was the driving force behind the operation, overcoming the strong misgivings of more cautious generals to a risky assault over extremely unfavorable terrain.

 

APPENDIX 1—Major General Oliver P. Smith

Oliver Prince Smith did not fill the Marine Corps “warrior” image. He was deeply religious, did not drink, seldom raised his voice in anger, and almost never swore. Tall, slender, and white-haired, he looked like a college professor is supposed to look and seldom does. Some of his contemporaries thought him pedantic and a bit slow. He smoked a pipe in a meditative way, but when his mind was made up he could be as resolute as a rock. He always commanded respect and, with the passage of years, that respect became love and devotion on the part of those Marines who served under him in Korea. They came to know that he would never waste their lives needlessly.

As commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, Smith’s feud with the mercurial commander of X Corps, Major General Edward M. Almond, USA, would become the stuff of legends.

No one is ever known to have called him “Ollie.” To his family he was “Oliver.” To his contemporaries and eventually to the press, which at first tended to confuse him with the controversial Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith of World War II, he was always “0. P.’, Smith. Some called him “the Professor” because of his studious ways and deep reading in military history.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) A8377

 

Born in Menard, Texas, in 1893, he had by the time of America’s entry into the First World War worked his way through the University of California at Berkeley, Class of 1916. While a student at Berkeley he qualified for a commission in the Army Reserve which he exchanged, a week after America’s entry into the war on 6 April 1917, for the gold bars of a Marine Corps second lieutenant.

The war in Europe, where the Marines gained international fame, passed him by; he spent the war years in lonely exile with the garrison on Guam. Afterward, in the 1920s, he followed an unremarkable sequence of duty, much like that of most lieutenants and captains of the time: barracks duty at Mare Island, sea duty in the Texas, staff duty at Headquarters Marine Corps, and a tour with the Gendarmerie d’Haiti.

From June 1931 to June 1932, he attended the Field Officer’s Course at Fort Benning. Next came a year at Quantico, most of it spent as an instructor at the Company Officer’s Course. He was assigned in 1934 to a two-year course at the Ecole Superieur la de Guerre in Paris, then considered the world’s premier school for rising young officers. Afterwards he returned to Quantico for more duty as an instructor.

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 found him at San Diego. As commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, he went to Iceland in the summer of 1941. He left the regiment after its return to the States, for duty once again at Headquarters in Washington. He went to the Pacific in January 1944 in time to command the 5th Marines during the Talasea phase of the Cape Gloucester operation. He was the assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division during Peleliu and for Okinawa was the Marine Deputy Chief of Staff of the Tenth Army.

After the war he was the commandant of Marine Corps Schools and base commander at Quantico until the spring of 1948 when he became the assistant commandant and chief of staff at Headquarters. In late July 1950, he received command of the 1st Marine Division, destined for Korea, and held that command until May 1951.

After Inchon and Seoul, a larger, more desperate fight at Chosin Reservoir was ahead of him. In early 1951, the 1st Marine Division was switched from Almond’s X Corps to Major General Bryant E. Moore’s IX Corps. Moore died of a heart attack on 24 February 1951 and, by seniority, O. P. Smith became the corps commander. Despite his experience and qualifications, he held that command only so long as it took the Army to rush a more senior general to Korea.

O. P. Smith’s myriad of medals included the Army Distinguished Service Cross and both the Army and the Navy Distinguished Service Cross for his Korean War Service.

On his return to the United States, he became the commanding general of the base at Camp Pendleton. Then in July 1953, with a promotion to lieutenant general, moved to the East Coast to the command of Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, with headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia. He retired on 1 September 1955 and for his many combat awards was promoted to four-star general. He died on Christmas Day 1977 at his home in Los Altos Hills, California, at age 81.

 

APPENDIX 2—Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller

The younger Marines in the 1st Marines were ecstatic when they learned their regiment was going to be commanded by the legendary “Chesty” Puller. Older officers and non-commissioned officers in the regiment were less enthusiastic. They remembered the long casualty list the 1st Marines had suffered at Peleliu while under Colonel Puller’s command. His style was to lead from the front, and, when he went into Korea, he already had an unprecedented four Navy Crosses.

Born in 1898, Puller had grown up in Tidewater Virginia where the scars of the Civil War were still unhealed and where many Confederate veterans were still alive to tell a young boy how it was to go to war. Lewis (which is what his family always called him) went briefly to Virginia Military Institute but dropped out in August 1918 to enlist in the Marines. To his disappointment, the war ended before he could get to France. In June 1919, he was promoted to second lieutenant and then, 10 days later, with demobilization was placed on inactive duty. Before the month was out he had reenlisted in the Marines specifically to serve as a second lieutenant in the Gendarmerie d’Haiti. Most of the officers in the Gendarmerie were white Marines; the rank and file were black Haitians. Puller spent five years in Haiti fighting “Caco” rebels and making a reputation as a bush fighter.

He returned to the States in March 1924 and received his regular commission in the Marine Corps. During the next two years he did barracks duty in Norfolk, attended Basic School in Philadelphia, served in the 10th Marines at Quantico, and had an unsuccessful try at aviation at Pensacola. Barracks duty for two years at Pearl Harbor followed Pensacola. Then in 1928 he was assigned to the Guardia Nacional of Nicaragua. Here in 1930 he won his first Navy Cross. First Lieutenant Puller, his citation reads, “led his forces into five successive engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces.”

He came home in July 1931 to the year-long Company Officers Course at Fort Benning. That taken, he returned to Nicaragua for more bandit fighting and a second Navy Cross, this time for taking his patrol of 40 Nicaraguans through a series of ambushes, in partnership with the almost equally legendary Gunnery Sergeant William A. “Iron Man” Lee.

Now a captain, Puller came back to the West Coast in January 1933, stayed a month, and then left to join the Legation Guard at Peiping. This included command of the fabled “Horse Marines.” In September 1934, he left Peiping to become the commanding officer of the Marine detachment on board the Augusta, flagship of the Asiatic Fleet.

In June 1936, he came to Philadelphia to instruct at the Basic School. His performance as a tactics instructor and on the parade ground left its mark on the lieutenants who would be the captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels in the world war that was coming.

Gen. Oliver P. Smith Collection

 

In June 1939, he went back to China, returning to the Augusta to command its Marines once again. A year later he left the ship to join the 4th Marines in Shanghai. He returned to the United States in August 1941, four months before the war began, and was given command of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, at Camp Lejeune. He commanded (he would say “led”) this battalion at Guadalcanal and won his third Navy Cross for his successful defense of a mile-long line on the night of 24 October 1942. The fourth Navy Cross came for overall performance, from 26 December 1943 to 19 January 1944, at Cape Gloucester as executive officer of the 7th Marines. In February 1944, he took command of the 1st Marines and led it in the terrible fight at Peleliu in September and October.

Afterwards, he came back to command the Infantry Training Regiment at Camp Lejeune. Next he was Director of the 8th Marine Corps Reserve District with headquarters in New Orleans, and then took command of the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor. From here he hammered Headquarters to be given command, once again, of his old regiment, the 1st Marines.

After Inchon, there was to be a fifth Navy Cross, earned at the Chosin Reservoir. In January 1951, he received a brigadier general’s stars and assignment as the assistant division commander. In May, he came back to Camp Pendleton to command the newly activated 3d Marine Brigade which became the 3d Marine Division. He moved to the Troop Training Unit, Pacific, on Coronado in June 1952 and from there moved east, now with the two stars of a major general, to Camp Lejeune to take command of the 2d Marine Division in July 1954. His health began to fail and he was retired for disability on 1 November 1955. From then until his death on 11 October 1971 at age 73 he lived in the little town of Saluda in Tidewater Virginia.

APPENDIX 3—Major General Field Harris

During the course of the Korean War, Major General Field Harris would suffer a grievous personal loss. While he served as Commanding General, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, his son, Lieutenant Colonel William F. Harris, was with the 1st Marine Division, as commanding officer of 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, at the Chosin Reservoir. The younger Harris’ battalion was the rear guard for the breakout from Yudam-ni. Later, between Hagaru-ri and Koto-ri, Harris disappeared and was posted as missing in action. Later it was determined that he had been killed.

Field Harris—and he was almost always called that, “Field-Harris,” as though it were one word—belonged to the open cockpit and silk scarf era of Marine Corps aviation. Born in 1895 in Versailles, Kentucky, he received his wings at Pensacola in 1929. But before that he had 12 years seasoning in the Marine Corps.

He graduated from the Naval Academy in March 1917 just before America’s entry into World War I. He spent that war at sea in the Nevada and ashore with the 3d Provisional Brigade at Guantanamo, Cuba.

In 1919 he went to Cavite in the Philippines. After three years there, he returned for three years in the office of the Judge Advocate General in Washington. While so assigned he graduated from the George Washington University School of Law. Then came another tour of sea duty, this time in the Wyoming, then a year as a student at Quantico, and flight training at Pensacola. His new gold wings took him to San Diego where he served in a squadron of the West Coast Expeditionary Force.

He attended the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, Virginia, after which came shore duty in Haiti and sea duty in the carrier Lexington. In 1935, he joined the Aviation Section at Headquarters, followed by a year in the Senior Course at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. In August 1941, he was sent to Egypt from where, as assistant naval attaché, he could study the Royal Air Force’s support of Britain’s Eighth Army in its desert operations.

After Egypt and United States entry into the war, he was sent to the South Pacific. In the Solomons, he served successively as Chief of Staff, Aircraft, Guadalcanal; Commander, Aircraft, Northern Solomons; and commander of air for the Green Island operation. Each of these three steps up the chain of islands earned him a Legion of Merit. After World War II, he became Director of Marine Aviation in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (and received a fourth Legion of Merit). In 1948 he was given command of Aircraft, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic. A year later he moved to El Tor...