WWII Marine Recalled for Korea; Survived Mao's Trap

In 1950, Marine Reservist George Williamson, age 21 and already a veteran of the World War II battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, received orders to report again for duty. Troops of the Peoples Republic of Korea (Communist North Korea) had invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea), sweeping in quickly to control the capital Seoul and all of the country except a small corner in the southeast called Pusan. U.S. and other U.N. troops swiftly mobilized to stop the onslaught, in what became the first military peace-keeping campaign by the five-year-old United Nations.

Williamson had told the Marines he was 18 when he enlisted at age 15. In 1950, he was a happy young civilian, a ski instructor at Sun Valley, Idaho and grateful to have survived the vicious fighting on the Pacific islands. He was deer hunting when the local sheriff found him.

"George, I got special papers for you," the sheriff said. "There's a big thing in Korea. They're losing their country. I've been recalled. You've been recalled."

Williamson reported as ordered.

"The next thing I knew I was in Oakland, Calif., on Treasure Island getting outfitted again." The Marine Corps, he said, only had World War I weapons available at the time.

"I'm giving you 23 guys, Sergeant," he was told. They flew from San Francisco to Hawaii in a China Clipper and left for Korea in mid-August, 1950. A blown engine on the R5D four-motor prop aircraft interrupted the journey with a forced landing at Wake Island. They arrived in Japan, where they took a Korean grain freighter to Pusan. The ship had rice mat decks and low ceilings "built for short people," Williamson said. The temperature in Korea was 105 degrees fahrenheit.

U.S. troops had engaged North Korean troops for the first time in July. The U.S. took heavy casualties and was forced to retreat. By September, fresh U.N. troops – from the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands – captured Inchon behind North Korean lines and pushed the Pusan perimeter out.

"The (South) Korean army was in disarray," Williamson said. "We began to ride patrols in trucks day and night to fight North Koreans wherever we found them.

"Our people were outnumbered. We began to lose people."

Some of the new U.S. soldiers, he said, were frightened, out of food and ammo, dropping their rifles and surrendering to the enemy.

"When we recaptured them as POWs, they thought we had abandoned them. They thought they would be put to slavery... the young people were afraid of dying."

Just as Japan sought to conquer other countries to gain access to natural resources, mountainous North Korea coveted the more prosperous, farmlandrich South Korea and desired to re-unite the nation. The two Koreas had been created in 1945 when the great powers sliced Korea at the 38th parallel into Soviet and U.S. zones of occupation. In 1949, Communist strategist Mao Tse-tung, victorious over the Chinese Nationalists who had fled to Taiwan, proclaimed the People's Republic of China. He wasted no time in helping his North Korean pals, supplying endless waves of ill-supplied peasant soldiers.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur sent Williamson's First Marine Division to the Chosin Reservoir in the northernmost part of North Korea, almost at the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. Williamson was at a location called Yudam-ni. (See map).

There at the reservoir Mao sprang "The Trap." The Chinese attacked U.S. soldiers and Marines at all locations around the Chosin Reservoir on Nov. 27, 1950.

No one knows for certain how many Chinese Communist soldiers surrounded the 30,000 U.N. troops – 120,000? 150,000? They attacked and just kept coming. "He [Mao] didn't care how many people he lost," Williamson said.

About 80 percent of the Chinese peasant soldiers had rifles, he said. The others fought with sticks and rocks, and grabbed weapons from fallen comrades when they could. Their shoes were made out of rabbit skins.

"Their quilted uniforms of off-white were the only thing they had -- no blankets, no packs, no food. When they were committed into combat that's all they had. We were amazed."

Nevertheless, they were the enemy and bent on annihilating the U.N. troops by sheer force of numbers.

The Chinese used the snowy weather, the 30- to 50-below temperature (the coldest winter in Korea in 100 years) and the darkness of night to their advantage. They hid in the pine trees by day and attacked in the dark or at daybreak, accompanied by noise from bugles, bells and brass gongs. "It's frightening. All these people yelling and screaming, banging on brass plates, blowing bugles. That was their method of attack, psycholgically."

The Chinese tactic was to line up in a straight line five and six deep.

"The rows were coming toward you," Williamson said. "Up to six waves of people. We did away with them with just enough time to reload for the next wave."

Often the battle required hand-to-hand combat. Williamson has a scar on his chest from an attack with a "long ugly knife, rather dirty," The knife blade was too wide to go through his ribs to hit a vital organ. The enemy solider, Williamson said, "If anything, I think he was scared. In fights you are expressionless. You are uptight."

Williamson's friend shot the attacker.

"They would shoot six inches or a foot from me all the time."

By daybreak when there was enough light, U.S. airpower and artillery roared into action.

"The wonderful U.S. Air Force would really lay into them," Williamson said.

Pin-point artillery, under the command of the respected Gen. Matthew Ridgeway, kept the enemy at bay.

The Marines held their ground for five days until the commanders decided enough was enough.

"We could have stayed and fought and won. We were winning. Our general [O.P. Smith, whom Williamson admired)] said 'This is futile. We are not going to win anything politically by doing this. He ordered the division to withdraw. He said 'We are simply attacking in a different direction.'

"We had to fight our way out of the whole mess."

The U.S. media characterized the action as a "retreat from death" and poured criticism on the command decision. It was, in the end, a pyrrhic victory for the Chinese, whose army was decimated.

Under constant mortar fire, the troops made their way 78 miles back to Hungnam on the coast by way of a narrow icy road walled by steep cliffs, barely wide enough for a tank. Supply dumps placed earlier along the road sustained them. They carried with them the bodies of their fallen comrades. As the weather cleared, they began dropping heavy gear. The Chinese blew up a vital bridge at Toktong Pass and U.S. forces built a new one in a day, enabling the weary, frostbitten line of soldiers to continue on their way. When they got to Hungnam, hospital ships and a massive rescue armada evacuated 100,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians. Of Williamson's platoon of 27 men, 15 had survived.

Williamson fought again at the Punchbowl ("Everyone in the outfit got hit, with mortar, flying rocks, schrapnel) and at Heartbreak Ridge in central (South) Korea, where he was "stitched up and ready to go again."

"There were too many small battles. We were hot after them at this point. We were able to cut off their supply routes. It took a lot of fighting."

The Korean countryside suffered from the mortar barrages.

"There wasn't a tree left. They were burned or blown up. The civilian population had taken off. {The combatants] turned central Korea into a desert. There was not even a bird. The Chinese had gone over the land. They ate grass, leaves, trees, decimated it.

The superior U.N. forces prevailed.

"They lost. We won. We overwhelmed them with air superiority. Anything by truck we would blow it up. We eliminated all their supply lines."

The North Koreans sued for peace.

By this time, Williamson had taken a slug in the leg, weighed 124 pounds and had hepatitis A. A 10-month stay at an army hospital in Kyoto ("They thought I was in the army.") did not cure him, but he was well enough to train other sergeants.

"Finally they shipped me home."

Williamson returned to Seattle where he worked at Boeing. His girlfriend's father sent him to a civilian doctor, who prescribed medication called chloroquine, which cleared up his hepatitis.

"I kissed everybody," he said.

In 1975, six months before the fall of Saigon, Williamson got another call, this time to serve in Vietnam. He was 36. He found himself in a room at Camp Pendleton with other battle-scarred veterans.

"It's too damn late," the officer in charge told the men sitting in front of him. "You will be going home. You have given enough."

George Williamson, 87, lives in Bear Valley Springs with his wfe Nancy and likes to golf.