At Vegas, meanwhile, communications failure continued to complicate defensive measures at the outpost. Because of this, on the order of regimental commander, Colonel Walt, operational control had been transferred, at 2119, from 1/5 to 3/5. Three minutes before midnight all contact with Vegas was lost. As with Reno, reinforcements sent out with the mission of buttressing the Vegas detachment had been delayed. When it became evident that the Company D platoon had been pinned down at the Block, a platoon from E/2/5 jumped off at 2323 for the Vegas position.
Shored up to reinforced company strength, the composite unit at the Block had prepared to move on for the ultimate relief of C/1/5 forces at Reno. Chinese firepower and troops continued to lash the position, however. There seemed to be no limit to the number of reserve troops the enemy could throw into the attack. At 2157, two Chinese platoons had hit the Block. Twenty minutes later, another two platoons struck. By 2300, the Marines had repulsed three attacks, numbering more than 200 troops, amid a continuing withering avalanche of bullets and shells. Shortly before midnight, a full enemy company had deployed south from Reno to the Block, but had been largely cut down by friendly 90mm tank fire and VT rounds from 1/11. Reinforced and reorganized, the Marines again prepared for a counterpunch on Reno.
By midnight on the 26th, after five blistering hours of battle—to develop into five days of intense conflict and continuing counterattacks—the early efforts of the enemy were partly successful. Two of the Nevada Hill outposts had fallen, and Marine attempts to strengthen them were initially being thwarted by Chinese troops that had overflowed the Block and southward toward the MLR. COP Carson was holding. But the enemy was in control of Reno and Vegas and was using the Reno position to mass troops and firepower to further brace his continuing assault on Vegas.
Initially, the 5th Marines had expected to launch an immediate counterattack to regain Reno. In the early hours of the 27th, however, it became apparent this plan would have to be revised. Reinforcing elements from the 5th Marines, composed largely of F/2/5, had been unable to mount out effectively from the Block for Reno. At 0144, the commanding officer of Company F, Captain Ralph L. Walz, reported he had one platoon left. Between then and 0220 his diminishing unit had rallied for attack three times. It had successively engaged the enemy in fire fights, one of 30 minutes’ duration, evacuated its wounded, regrouped, and then had come under heavy incoming again. Countermortar fire had been requested and delivered on active enemy positions at Arrowhead, Hills 29, 45, and 21B, some 500 yards northwest of Vegas.
But as the Marines girded their defending platoon at the Block to company-plus size, the Chinese had done likewise, throwing in continuous rounds of new mortar attacks and additional troops. When, at 0246, another hostile company was seen spreading south from Reno toward the Block, the 1st Battalion directed artillery fires on the enemy and ordered its troops to disengage and return to the MLR. By 0300, early efforts to retake Reno were suspended. Relief forces from Companies F and C were on their way back to the battalion area. Ground action had ceased.
During these early attempts to rescue Reno and its defenders on the night of 26–27 March, Marine elements had struggled for more than four hours trying to get to Reno, but the enemy had completely surrounded it. At Reno itself, the Marine in command of the outpost when the Chinese struck, Second Lieutenant Rufus A. Seymour, machine gun platoon commander of C/1/5, had been taken prisoner along with several of his men. Of the Marines originally on duty there, all but five had been killed. Casualties of the Reno reinforcing units were later estimated by the regimental commander as being “as high as 35 percent, with many dead.”[369]
[369] Statement by LtGen Lewis W. Walt, as cited in Eloise Engle, Medic (New York, N.Y.: John Day, May 1967), p. 211.
A 21-year-old Navy hospital corpsman from Alexandria, Virginia,[370] attached to a Company C relief platoon from 1/5, helped save many Marine lives that night in the Reno Block area. He was Hospitalman Francis C. Hammond, who lost his own life but was awarded posthumously the nation’s highest honor for bravery under fire. For more than four exhausting hours the young hospitalman helped others to safety, even though he had been struck early in the fighting and was hobbling around with a leg injury. When his unit was ordered to withdraw from its attack against a strongly fortified CCF position, Hammond skillfully directed the evacuation of wounded Marines and remained behind to assist other corpsmen. Shell fragments from a mortar blast struck him, this time, fatally.
[370] In 1956, a newly-completed school in Alexandria, Virginia was named the Francis C. Hammond High School and dedicated in his memory.
The Vegas reinforcing units, in those dark early hours of the 27th, had come closer to their objective. Shortly after midnight two platoons, composed of elements from D/2/5 and C/1/5, had reached a point 400 yards from the outpost, in the vicinity of the entrance to the communication trench. When the enemy threw in powerful new assault forces at Vegas, F/2/7, a company from the regimental reserve, came under operational control of 3/5 and moved out from the MLR to reinforce the position. By 0300 the first relief platoon, despite heavy and continuing Chinese barrages, got to within 200 yards of the outpost. At this time, however, it was found that the enemy was in control of Vegas as well as Reno. Marines from D/2/5, C/1/5, E/2/5, and F/2/7 relief forces, on order, began to pull back to the MLR at 0417. Initial attempts to regain control of the two outposts were temporarily halted, and instead it was decided to launch a coordinated daylight attack.