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Only A Few Came Home

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The Biloxi Beach Resort on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi is roughly 7000 miles from the Pusan perimeter in South Korea, but the sign in one of its windows reads "Charlie Company CP," or command post. And inside, some 54 years after they first met, Joe Stryker is teasing his old pal Berry F. Rhoden.

This is a reunion of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division—or "The Late Company C," as the men themselves refer to it. As they banter back and forth, for the moment it is as if they are all young again, back in Korea. Stryker is once again a platoon sergeant and Rhoden a squad leader serving under him.

It was in Korea that Company C passed into military legend, and Rhoden is one of three here who were serving in the unit on that terrible day in 1950. Hit by massive waves of North Koreans—probably as badly outnumbered as any American unit ever sent into battle against a modern enemy—they were almost completely annihilated. "We took up positions on the east bank of the Naktong River," recalls Rhoden, "and we were stretched so thin—really isolated from each other. We knew that a major attack might be coming soon. We knew we were extremely vulnerable. And we knew there was nothing we could do about it."

The attack by the North Koreans began on the evening of Aug. 31 and ended in the morning of Sept. 1. When it was over, at least 120 men, and perhaps more, of the original 200 were dead. At first it appeared that only seven men had lived through the night, but others managed to survive. Stryker, who had been reassigned just days before and missed the attack, is something of an unofficial historian for Company C. He knows for certain of 37 survivors and thinks there may be as many as 30 more.

Rhoden's squad had seven men including himself—four on the recoilless rifle and two on the BAR (automatic rifle). "That day," Rhoden continues, "we had seen a lot of activity on the other side of the river. Then that night they hit us, and we had never seen so many Koreans in our lives—men coming across the river as far as the eye could see."

Kumhwa Valley, 1951 At one end of the eight-inch trench knife was 20-year-old lieutenant David Hackworth. The receiving end of the blade was pressed against the neck of one of his men, who, despite being a combat veteran, was refusing to continue up the volcano-shaped mountain toward the 40 waiting Chinese. “I’d just as soon cut your throat as screw with you,” the lieutenant whispered. “You either go on this raid or die. Make up your mind.” The soldier decided to go. Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse—that was the motto of the Wolfhound Raiders, a Special Forces unit. After a string of daredevil successes, they’d been given the daunting task of taking Hill 400—the region’s highest point and a key North Korean stronghold. At midnight on November 4, 1951, the 39 Raiders jumped off. Two hours later they were under the Chinese perimeter wire. Stealth was their greatest asset, so when Hackworth unexpectedly spotted a sentry’s head sticking out of a trench, the Raider leader bellied up behind the enemy, who had fallen asleep on duty. For the second time that night, Hackworth grabbed his trench knife, and then in one swift move he cupped his victim’s mouth, snapped his head back, and slit his throat. He continued down the trench. The Raiders were about to attack when one of their men, Jimmie Mayamura, reported that the enemy force was greater than anticipated—well over 200. But before the Americans could reassess the game plan, the hill exploded. U.S. artillery began to rain down like a steel curtain on the Chinese positions. The Raiders scurried forward but were met with a hail of grenades. Their only chance was to close with the enemy. Jack Speed led his men in a wild charge up the hill and piled into the trenches, guns blazing. The price was high: three Raiders killed, 20 wounded. One heavy machine-gun nest was raking another Raider position. William Smith and James Salazar volunteered to take it out. They ran forward. Salazar laid down suppressing fire as Smith hurled two antitank grenades toward the bunker. A direct hit. A thunderous explosion threw dirt, metal, and flesh in every direction. As they hurried back to their positions, both men were cut down. Smith’s momentum carried him a few more feet, rolling him into Hackworth’s arms, where he died. The Raiders fanned out and broke for the top of the hill, coming right up under their umbrella of 60 mm mortar support. The Chinese stood their ground and fought for their lives. “Grenade!” someone yelled. Hackworth dived for cover. A second later, the frag rolled under his chest. “His ass went into orbit—at least 10 or 15 feet,” according to Jack Speed, who saw his CO hit the ground on fire, his left arm hanging off at the shoulder. “I yelled out, ‘The Old Man’s dead!’” As dawn broke, the battered Raiders found themselves scattered all over the battlefield: Chief Denny was shot in both arms, and Al Hearn, lying next to him, was blinded by a head injury, so Hearn held the rifle and Denny directed his fire. Tex Garvin was crippled with leg wounds but remained in the firefight; Speed got hit in the belly: “I stuck a handkerchief into the hole and just kept shooting.” The Old Man wasn’t dead. His machine gun had taken the brunt of the grenade’s explosion. After getting an arm sling and a shot of morphine from a medic, Hackworth assembled every conscious Raider for one last push. The 20 warriors crested the hill and got pinned down by a screaming machine gun. Mayamura and Robert Evans rushed it. They knocked out the crew, but it cost them their lives. Evans died before hitting the ground. Mayamura got shot in the eye and died a few days later. But Hill 400 had finally been captured. As relieving units arrived, the 30-odd badly wounded men helped one another to the aid station. There they saw seven hauntingly familiar corpses, each draped with a poncho. Last year on October 8, surviving Raiders—Hackworth, Speed, John Lipka, Julian Morrison, and Dave Forte—reunited in Hampton, Virginia to relive the horror-filled night they took Hill 400.

What was happening, they later learned, was that elements of three North Korean infantry divisions, perhaps as many as 20,000 men, were crossing the Naktong in that general area. Thousands of those soldiers were crossing right smack in front of them, where the only thing in the way was Company C.

It was part of the last great offensive of the North Korean army, the high-water mark of its success fighting without Chinese troops. "We held them off for a time, but there were so many of them," Rhoden recalls. "They were pouring automatic weapon fire and grenades on us. I think we ran out of ammo in about 45 minutes." "It was like millionsof ants crossing the river and coming at us when we first saw them," joins in Terry McDaniel, who was a supply sergeant with Company C.

The third veteran who was with Company C that night, Rusty Davidson, recalls only the very beginning of the battle—the moon illuminating the North Koreans as they crossed the Naktong so that, for a moment, they presented a great target. "Someone in our platoon yelled out that it was going to be a turkey shoot, but then there were so many of them that we realized that we were the turkeys," he says.

At that point, Davidson blanked out—he has no memory of what happened the rest of the night, of being overrun or of how he somehow made it back to American lines.

Charlie Company's commander was Capt. Cyril Bartholdi. Known to the men as Captain Bart, he had served in World War II and was strong, experienced and very much trusted by the men. He was the great-grandson of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty. And he had known almost from the start that his men had no chance. At best, they were a light trip wire in the way of a formidable enemy.

At the time, Berry Rhoden recalls, he was a relatively newly minted soldier—18 years old, a kid from rural Florida whose previous incarnation had been as a moonshiner. He had volunteered for the Army because the feds were getting close to picking him up.

On that day, Rhoden was the last man to hear the final anguished cries of the unit being overrun and the sad answer from a powerless higher headquarters that could do nothing for them, except to ask them to hold out a little longer. 'We cannot hold! Repeat:We cannot hold!" Rhoden heard Captain Bartholdi yell into his radio. "Hold your positions at all costs!" the voice at battalion headquarters replied.

Soon they were completely surrounded. There was a moment when Rhoden looked up and saw nothing around him but North Koreans in all directions. So he and his men surrendered.

Three men were shot as the enemy troops moved in, their dead bodies then bayoneted by their captors. The remaining four, including Rhoden, were beaten and tortured. The next day, they were taken out into the rice paddies and shot from behind, sprayed with a burp gun.

Rhoden was hit with one bullet, and he thinks that two of the other men took more hits. Rhoden's intestines partially flopped out, and he knew his chances of making it were marginal. He pretended to be dead. When night came, he turned his T-shirt into a giant bandage by folding it up and locking in his loose intestines with his belt.

Two of the other men were still alive and desperately wanted water; the third had been badly beaten and at first could not move. So Rhoden crawled to a nearby stream, took off his T-shirt, sopped up water in it, brought it back and squeezed water onto the lips of his comrades. Rhoden told the man who had not been wounded to try to get away. Then Rhoden passed out. Sometime that night, he reached over to touch his comrades and found that both were dead. "I just refused to die,"Rhoden says. "I kept telling myself I was an American soldier, and I could not give up."

That began eight days of trying to find his way to safety. He was picked up twice more by enemy troops but each time was able to escape: first, when an American airstrike hit; second, when the unit that held him was hit by American artillery fire.

On the final day, exhausted, having had almost nothing to eat except one cucumber, which made him violently ill (the last cucumber he ever knowingly ate), Rhoden crawled to a bridge. He was too tired to move any farther. Behind him he heard the heavy roar of a tank. "If it's American, I'm rescued," he thought. "And if it's North Korean, I'm dead." On the tank was a white star—American! Rhoden kneeled in its path, doubled over. Just then a jeep pulled up.

It's odd, he says, how you recall the little things—often the dumb little things. One of the men in the jeep had yelled out, "What's the matter, Mac, you got a cramp?" "A cramp," he'd thought. "I'm dying. I can't move another step, and he thinks it's a cramp."

He had traveled, he later estimated, some seven or eight miles to his rescue point. Most of that had been covered by crawling. His Korean war was over. (He stayed in the Army, served in Vietnam and got out in 1969.)

Terry McDaniel, who also had been captured and watched North Koreans execute some prisoners, was liberated by advancing Americans several weeks later.

Of those who had started the battle, few were as lucky or resilient as Rhoden or McDaniel. Captain Bartholdi, for example, was captured, tortured and killed.

Those who survived understood in some elemental way that their unit had been sacrificed to buy time for others who might delay the North Korean drive. It was a hard thing for any soldier to accept—that in the cruelty of war he had been judged to be expendable. Yet somehow the strategy had worked: Although the North Koreans pushed forward some 10 miles, they failed to drive the Americans off the peninsula.

Though reunions of Charlie Company once drew as many as 20 men, the numbers have thinned. Some men have died, and some are too old now to make the trip. Still, these gatherings are very important, believes Dorothy Franks, the widow of Captain Bartholdi. These men—who have been friends and comrades for more than half a century—still cannot bear to talk about what happened with anyone who did not share the hardship and horror of those days.

Even if Korea remains to most Americans our forgotten war, they find it all too easy to remember—forgetting is the hard part.

North Korea invaded the South on June 25, 1950, and occupied all but the Pusan perimeter by August. On Aug. 31, three North Korean divisions crossed the Naktong River in a push to take Pusan. The only thing in the way were the men of Company C and other elements of the 2nd Infantry Division.

PARADE Contributing Editor David Halberstam is the author of 14 best-selling books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Best and the Brightest, on the Vietnam War. He is currently at work on a book on the Korean War. David Halberstam. November 7, 2004. Only A Few Came Home. PARADE Magazine. ‹http://www.parade.com/›

In Devil Shadow Subtitled: UN Special Operations During the Korean War. Making extensive use of documents declassified from Department of Defense and CIA archives, as well as interviews with veterans of savage air-land-sea battles, Haas offers the most realistic account yet published of UN efforts behind enemy lines. Filled with detailed descriptions of classified operations never before made known to the public. A disturbing account replete with tragedy, heroism, scandal, and bitter bureaucratic feuding.

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