Both company fronts bristled with concertinas, trip flares, booby traps, and five-gallon cans of gasoline rigged with thermite bombs for illumination. Three probable routes of enemy attack channeled the low hills to the southwest—a main draw leading to the junction between the two company sectors, and a lesser draw providing an approach to each. The ground in front of the junction had been mined, and two tanks from the Provisional Platoon were stationed in this quarter. Detachments from Weapons Company also reinforced both rifle companies. Thus the six platoons faced the enemy in the following order:
| ITEM COMPANY | HOW COMPANY | ||||
| Lt Fisher | Capt Corley | ||||
| Lt Degerne | Lt Hall | Lt Needham | Lt Barrett | Lt Endsley | Lt Mason |
| 1st | 3d | 2d | 1st | 3d | 2d |
Beginning at 1700, hot food was served to all hands in rotation. A fifty per cent alert went into effect after dark as the men were sent back on regular schedule for coffee and a smoke in warming tents located as close to the front as possible. The first snowflakes fluttered down about 1950, muffling the clank of the dozers at work as usual under the floodlights on the airstrip behind the How Company’s sector. Just before 2130, the expected time of CCF attack, both company commanders ordered a hundred per cent alert, but the enemy did not show up on schedule. It was just over an hour later when three red flares and three blasts on a police whistle signaled the beginning of the attack. Soon trip flares and exploding booby traps revealed the approach of probing patrols composed of five to ten men.
A few minutes later, white phosphorus mortar shells scorched the Marine front line with accurate aim. The main CCF attack followed shortly afterwards, with both company sectors being hit by assault waves closing in to grenade-throwing distance.
The enemy in turn was staggered by the full power of Marine supporting arms. Snowflakes reduced an already low visibility, but fields of fire had been carefully charted and artillery and mortar concentrations skillfully registered in. Still, the Communists kept on coming in spite of frightful losses. Second Lieutenant Wayne L. Hall, commanding the 3d Platoon in the center of Item Company, was jumped by three Chinese whom he killed with a .45 caliber automatic pistol after his carbine jammed. The third foe pitched forward into Hall’s foxhole.
On the left flank, tied in with How Company, First Lieutenant Robert C. Needham’s 2d Platoon sustained most of the attack on Item Company. The fire of Second Lieutenant James J. Boley’s 60mm mortars and Second Lieutenant John H. Miller’s light machine guns was concentrated in this area. It seemed impossible that enemy burp guns could miss such a target as Lieutenant Fisher, six feet two inches in height and weighing 235 pounds. But he continued to pass up and down the line, pausing at each foxhole for a few words of encouragement. By midnight the enemy pressure on Needham’s and Hall’s lines had slackened, and on the right flank Second Lieutenant Mayhlon L. Degernes’ 1st Platoon received only light attacks.
This was also the case on the left flank of How Company, where Second Lieutenant Ronald A. Mason’s 2d Platoon saw little action as compared to the other two. A front of some 800 yards in the center of the 2300-yard Marine line, including two platoon positions and parts of two others, bore the brunt of the CCF assault on How and Item Companies.
Captain Corley had just visited his center platoon when the first attacks hit How Company. Second Lieutenant Wendell C. Endsley was killed while the company commander was on his way to Second Lieutenant Roscoe L. Barrett’s 1st Platoon, on the right, which soon had its left flank heavily engaged.
Never was CCF skill at night attacks displayed more effectively. Barrett concluded that the Chinese actually rolled down the slope into the How Company lines, so that they seemed to emerge from the very earth. The 3d Platoon, already thinned by accurate CCF white phosphorus mortar fire, was now further reduced in strength by grenades and burp gun bursts. About this time the company wire net went out and Corley could keep in touch with his platoons only by runners. The battalion telephone line also being cut, he reported his situation by radio to the Battalion CP.
Two wiremen were killed while trying to repair the line. The Chinese continued to come on in waves, each preceded by concentrations of light and heavy mortar fire on the right and center of the How Company position. About 0030 the enemy broke through in the 3d Platoon area and penetrated as far back as the Company CP. A scene of pandemonium ensued, the sound of Chinese trumpets and whistles adding to the confusion as it became difficult to tell friend from foe. “Tracers were so thick,” recalled Sergeant Keith E. Davis, “that they lighted up the darkness like a Christmas tree.”[443]