Been reading this book. Fox Company was a 7th marine company under Barber, a mustang that fought at Iwo, defending a pass at Haguru-Ri. I recommend it.
But the point of this post is writing about the cold. The battle happened after Thanksgiving but this was in an Appalachian altitude mountain range in an read the same latitude as Pennsylvania in the word winter in 30 years.
Unlike the 101st at Bastogne, the Marines had cold weather gear. Cold pack (wool) overshoes over waterproofed and lined winter boots. Three layer of pants, longjohns, wool pants, and windbreaker style over pants. Four layers on their trunk. Cotton undershirt, long johns, wool tunic, and an alpaca wool lined over-coat. Wool hat under their helmet that had flaps that went down past their ears. Winter gloves with leather or thick canvas mittens over that. Some cut a hole in the gloves/mittens for their trigger finger.
The wind was funneled through that pass and came straight from Siberia. As they were digging foxholes in the 16inch deep frosted ground, someone had thermometer and it said -23 Fahrenheit.
That cold weather gear was good, but not enough.
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I always wondered what would happen if MacArthur had settled for establish a tough, defensive line from Wonson, west, making Pyongyang a South Korean city close to the DMZ instead of Seoul. Giving Mao less provocation by encroaching too near the Yalu River, squeezing the Norks into a smaller territory with lass ability to cause trouble in 50 years. "If you cause trouble, we push you back a parallel."
But that wasn't Dugout Doug's way.
2 comments:
Great book! Those guys were real studs.
They're just kids, too.
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