Chinese resistance suddenly collapsed about 1100. Thus it seemed almost an anticlimax that East Hill, after holding out against the Marines more than a week, should have been retaken at a cost of one man killed and three wounded. About 30 CCF dead were found.
As events were to prove, however, this was but the first round in a hard-fought 22-hour battle for the hill mass. The next phase began at 1130, when Roise ordered Captain Peters’ Fox Company to relieve Smith so that Dog Company could resume the attack against Objective B, a ridge about 500 yards to the southeast. The lower slopes of this position were now being cleared by 2/7.
After a 10-minute artillery preparation, the three platoons of Dog Company jumped off at 1250. The Chinese put up a stubborn resistance and it took until 1430 to seize the new objective. Marine casualties were moderate, however, and Captain Smith set up three platoon positions along the ridge running to the south whence he could control the road leading out of Hagaru.
Late in the day the enemy appeared to be massing for a counterattack in the saddle between the two objectives. Johnson called an air strike and all Dog and Fox Company troops within range opened up with everything they had as McNaughton led a patrol against the Chinese in the saddle. Caught between the infantry fires and the rocket and strafing runs of the Corsairs, the CCF survivors surrendered en masse to McNaughton and his platoon. About 220 prisoners were taken to set a record for the 1st Marine Division in the Reservoir campaign.[559]
[559] 2/5 SAR, 28–29.
At the request of Captain Smith, the saddle between the two Marine companies was occupied by reinforcements consisting of an officer and 11 men from the regimental AT Company and an officer and 32 men from the 4th Signal Battalion, USA. Shortly after dark the enemy launched a vigorous counterattack. Tanks and 81mm mortars fired in support of Marines who made good use of 2.36″ white phosphorus rockets at close range.
Although the Chinese endured frightful casualties, they returned again and again to the attack until midnight. It was evident that they considered this a fight to a finish for East Hill, and at 0205 they renewed the assault against all three companies of the 2d Battalion as well as Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion.
The struggle during the next three hours was considered the most spectacular if not the most fiercely contested battle of the entire Reservoir campaign even by veterans of the Yudam-ni actions. Never before had they seen the Chinese come on in such numbers or return to the attack with such persistence. The darkness was crisscrossed with a fiery pattern of tracer bullets at one moment, and next the uncanny radiance of an illumination shell would reveal Chinese columns shuffling in at a trot, only to go down in heaps as they deployed. Marine tanks, artillery, mortars, rockets and machine guns reaped a deadly harvest, and still the enemy kept on coming with a dogged fatalism which commanded the respect of the Marines. Looking like round little gnomes in their padded cotton uniforms, groups of Chinese contrived at times to approach within grenade-throwing distance before being cut down.
The fight was not entirely one-sided. The Marines took a pounding from CCF mortars and machine guns, and by 0300 Dog Company was hard-pressed in its three extended positions pointed like a pistol at the heart of the enemy’s assembly areas. Both McNaughton and the executive officer, First Lieutenant James H. Honeycutt, were wounded but remained in action.
This was the second time in three months that Dog Company had spearheaded a Marine attack on a desperately defended hill complex. Northwest of Seoul in September, only 26 able-bodied men had survived to break the back of North Korean resistance. The company commander, First Lieutenant H. J. Smith, had died a hero’s death at the moment of victory, and First Lieutenant Karle F. Seydel was the unit’s only unwounded officer.