Truce negotiations, as earlier noted, began at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and ground fighting slowed. When the Communists broke off the truce sessions in late August General Van Fleet, then EUSAK commander, ordered an offensive by the X Corps to seize the entire Punchbowl. Along with other X Corps divisions, the Marines attacked on 31 August. They secured initial objectives, and then moved north to the Soyang River to seize additional designated objectives. Following the bitter action in the Punchbowl area, the Marines were involved in consolidating and improving their defenses.
As the battle lines became comparatively stabilized in 1951, the enemy began to develop his AA defenses to peak efficiency. Marine pilots engaged in CAS, observation, interdiction, and armed reconnaissance missions began to encounter accurate and intense ground fire.[574] Aircraft losses increased, and with them, the number of USMC aviators who fell into enemy hands. More than half of the Marine POWs taken during the year—18 of 31—were on 1st MAW station lists. Captive airmen represented VMF-323, VMF(N)-513, Hedron MAG-33 (Headquarters Squadron 33), VMO-6, VMF-312, VMF-311, and VMA-121.
[574] One Marine who had conducted volunteer AAA reconnaissance missions over North Korea was Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. May, CO of the 1st 90mm AAAGunBn. In December 1951 he was lost in such a mission—the same flight in which Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, of VMA-121, was captured. MajGen A. F. Binney ltr to Hd, HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, dtd 14 Sep 66.
The year 1952, like 1950, saw a large number of Marines taken into hostile custody—a total of 70. As the year began, CCF and UNC ground forces had settled down to a bunker warfare system often compared to the trench warfare of World War I. Air activity remained much as it had the preceding year. Air losses decreased, however, with only 11 pilots becoming POWs, in contrast to the 59 infantry Marines captured. In March, the 1st Marine Division moved from the X Corps zone of action on the east-central front to the I Corps western coastal flank. Here the Marines encountered “steadily increasing aggressiveness as the enemy launched larger and more frequent attacks against outpost positions.”[575] Probes, patrol actions, and aggressive defense of the MLR and its outposts took their toll.
[575] MacDonald, POW, p. 139.
Enemy pressure reached its height in October, when 41 Marine infantrymen were seized, the second highest number taken in any month during the war. In the COPs Detroit and Frisco defense of 6–7 October, the 7th Marines listed 22 MIA, of whom 13 became POWs, practically all of them being wounded prior to capture. On 26 October, the Communists lunged at 7th Marines COPs Ronson and Warsaw, adjacent to the main battle position, the Hook. In the ensuing action, 27 Marines were “marched, carried, or dragged off the hill and taken into the Chinese lines.”[576] Surprisingly, all 27 were recovered alive in the prisoner exchanges the following year.
[576] Ibid., p. 149.
Of the 11 Marine airmen who became statistics on a POW list in 1952, 4 were shot down in an ill-fated 10-day period beginning 6 May. Again, all-too-accurate hostile AA fire was the villain. In similar incidents during the year, two Marines engaged in “good Samaritan” aerial activities became POWs for their efforts. In February, First Lieutenant Kenneth W. Henry, an AO assigned to the Marine detachment aboard the light cruiser USS Manchester, and Lieutenant Edwin C. Moore, USN, whirled off in the cruiser’s HO3S to attempt rescue of a downed Navy fighter pilot, Ensign Marvin Broomhead. In the bright early afternoon, as Henry was maneuvering the helicopter sling, their ship suddenly crashed—apparently from enemy machine gun fire intended for a combat air patrol operating in the vicinity. Two of the three men—Broomhead and Henry—were injured, but managed to drag themselves to a hidden position and waited to be rescued. Instead, they were discovered shortly before midnight by a Chinese patrol.
A similar mishap occurred on 16 May to First Lieutenant Duke Williams, Jr., of VMF-212. Searching for a crashed pilot, his plane was struck by AA and he managed to jump. His parachute blossomed down into the midst of 15 waiting Koreans who had gathered to take him prisoner.
During the last seven months of hostilities in Korea, from January-July 1953, 41 Marines were captured. These included a VMO-6 pilot and air observer in the little OE-1 spotting planes shot down in two separate incidents, plus 39 ground Marines trapped in the vicious outpost struggles of March and July. Except for two Marines who died, the rest were freed a few months after their capture during Operation BIG SWITCH.