One measure of the results of the Bunker Hill fighting is seen in the price paid. Chinese losses were estimated by the 1st Marine Division at approximately 3,200, including more than 400 known dead. Marine casualties in the action were 48 killed and 313 seriously wounded. Several hundred additional wounded were treated at 1st Marines medical facilities and returned to duty shortly thereafter.
To replace combat losses in the infantry regiment, General Selden on 12 August directed that rear area service and support units fill the vacancies. Two hundred Marines, nearly all of them volunteers, were provided to Colonel Layer by the 14th. To offset other losses within the division, its commander similarly had requested on 12 August that the Commandant, General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., authorize an air-lifting of 500 enlisted Marine infantrymen to the 1st Marine Division as soon as possible. Pointing out that mounting battle casualties had reduced the effective strength of the division, General Selden also urged that each of the next two monthly replacement drafts scheduled for the division be increased by 500 more enlisted men. After some debate at the next senior administrative headquarters,[197] the request was granted by General Shepherd, and the emergency replacements were made available from the 3d Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California. The initial replacement of 500 Marines arrived on 21 August.
[197] CG, FMFPac, Lieutenant General Hart, requested the Commandant to delay decision until FMFPac could survey the combat replacement situation and aircraft availability. After a quick evaluation of both these factors, General Hart on the 14th recommended approval. FMFPac ComdD, Aug 52, App. I, Encl. (6). The air lift of 500 replacements to Korea was an “all out effort for Marine Aviation Transport based on the West Coast. This general support of Korean based forces demonstrated the total capability of Marine Aviation in support of ground forces.” MajGen Samuel S. Jack to Hd, HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, dtd 27 Jun 67, hereafter Jack ltr.
More men to replace divisional combat losses might have been required had not the medical support been such an efficient operation. After the battle, the regimental surgeon, Lieutenant Robert E. Murto, called for a review of the medical facilities in effect during the Bunker, Siberia, and Stromboli fighting. In attendance were the battalion doctors and the division surgeon, Captain Lawrence E. Bach. Participants discussed both the major difficulties and routine procedures involved in medical care of the wounded. Problem areas were the high incidence of heat exhaustion, ground transportation of the wounded, enemy artillery fire that interfered with helicopter evacuations, and the need for increased medical support under battle conditions.
Regarding the last category, the surgeons noted that medical supplies during the heavy fighting of 9–16 August were never at a dangerously low level. The only shortage that had developed was in stretchers, due to the normal delay in transfer of stretchers from medical stations along the evacuation route to the company forward medical facilities. To help combat the Chinese artillery problem, medical officers had placed aid stations on the reverse slopes of hills. There was no available or known solution to hastening and easing the movement of battlefield casualties over the ground. The armored personnel carrier offered some protection from ground fire and a ride less painful than one in a truck, but the wheeled vehicles remained the most widely used.
There was little that could be done about the number of heat exhaustion cases. High temperature and humidity, vigorous activity, and the wearing of the armored vest (and to some degree, the steel helmet), combined to produce the casualties. All the surgeons agreed that regardless of the number of heat casualties, the wearing of these two items must continue. Regimental doctors credited the armored vest with saving the lives of 17 Marines. Several other Marines, they noted, had received only slight head wounds from bullets that had spent most of their velocity penetrating the steel helmet.
Helicopter evacuation saved the lives of other Marines. The doctors credited the flying skills and bravery of the evacuation pilots for these rescues. Immediate response to day and night calls was instrumental in the recovery of numerous Marines. Rear Admiral Lamont Pugh, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, commented upon the value of the helicopter and on other reasons for success of medical support. After a Far East inspection trip, which included a visit to the 1st Marine Division during the battle of Bunker Hill, Admiral Pugh expressed the following opinion:
... [I] attributed the new low record “2% mortality” of those men wounded in action to the bullet resistant vest, to skillful frontline surgery with availability of whole blood, the utilization of helicopters for casualty evacuation direct to hospital ships and rear area hospitals, and the efficient manner in which the Hospital Corpsmen of the Navy fulfilled their mission with the Marines.[198]
[198] PacFlt EvalRpt No. 5, Chap. 12. p. 12-8.
In another logistical area, the performance was not quite as satisfactory, for the level of supply of one important item—illuminating shells—fell dangerously low during the Bunker fighting. On 16 August, 3/1 reported early in the morning that “artillery illumination was exhausted and 81mm mortar illumination was fast diminishing.”[199] To replace the shell-produced light, the regiment used a flare plane.[200]