June 27, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the Fall of 1950 it looked as though the Korean War would be over. But shortly after General Douglas MacArthur pushed his forces deep into North Korea, his ten thousand First Division Marines found themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers. Their only chance for survival was to fight their way south through a narrow gorge. It needed to be held open at all costs. The mission was handed to Captain William Barber and the 234 Marines of Fox Company.Here to tell the story is Tom Clavin, author of The Last Stand of Fox Company.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. In the fall
of eighteen fifty, it looked as though the Korean War
would be over Shortly after General Douglas MacArthur pushed his
forces deep into North Korea. His ten thousand First Division
Marines found themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by one hundred
(00:31):
thousand Chinese soldiers. Their only chance for survival was to
fight their way south through a narrow gorge, and needed
to be held open at all costs. The mission was
handed to Captain William Barber and the two hundred and
thirty four Marines of Fox Company. Here to tell the
story is Tom Claven, author of The Last Stand of
(00:53):
Fox Company. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
The onset of the North Korean winter had been harsh.
They were froze and exhausted when it snowed, and they
were frozen and exhausted when it didn't snow. As referring
to the members of Fox Company and unremitting wet gale
blew constantly. The Marines took to calling at the Siberian
Express and glazed every rock with ice. Their knees, knuckles,
and elbows were covered with bloody scalps when continually slipping
(01:18):
on treacherous slopes, and their feet and hands were always numb.
Hours during the day were hardly noted, as they set
their body clocks only by daylight and darkness, and aside
from a vague awareness that Thanksgiving had just passed and
Christmas was coming, many had no idea what date it was,
much less what day of the week. Moreover, because canteen
(01:39):
water had to be thawed over campfires Stateside, notions of
hygiene had been abandoned from almost the moment they had
set foot on Korean soil. A twig I had to
do for a toothbrush, and they could barely lay their
heads down for the night in an abandoned hooch without
waking up with a scalpful of lice. Most had given
up trying to wipe their running noses with anything other
(01:59):
than the sleeves of They're filed the uniforms, and anyone
who grew a mustache soon had a revolting mass of
frozen mucus. Later a crossed his upper lip. They bitched
in grouse, but they never shirked a command, remaining true
to the Latin motto above the Eagle and the Marine
emblem Semper fidelis always faithful, and so just past noon,
while Fox Company mustered in the village of Hagaroorie, Lieutenant
(02:22):
Colonel Randolph Lockwood, commanding officer of the seventh Renement, second Battalion,
summoned his subordinate, Captain William Edward Barber, Fox Company's new COO,
for a trip in the company jeep to scout toc
Tong Pass. Now, this is the condition they were in
before the Battle of Fox Hill on toc Tong Pass.
So these are not marines who had been well fed
(02:43):
and well cared for and rested when the time came
to fight what would be an almost unimaginable odds against
the Chinese. In June of nineteen fifty, as many of
us know, the North Koreans crossed the thirty eighth Parallel
and invaded South Korea and almost pushed the American forces
there in South Korean Army into the sea. There were
(03:06):
reinforcements were sent as quickly as possible by President Truman
and MacArthur, and the UN forces started to push back
and push back the North Korean troops, and they even
pushed him back beyond the thirtieth Parallel and kept pushing,
and they started to up by the Chosen reservoir. They
were getting closer and closer to the Yalu River, which
(03:28):
was the border with China, and the Chinese were getting
a little bit nervous. Malsetung and Chuan Lai were giving
out warnings, don't come any closer, don't try to initiate
a war with us. If you make us more nervous,
we'll enter the war. And I guess it was kind
of hard for MacArthur, who was a string of victory
(03:48):
after victory going through the fall of nineteen fifty to
say stop. They also didn't believe the Chinese went enter
the war. They thought that the Chinese were maybe in
a vulnerable position then because it had only been the
year before that they defeated checks Kaishek and assumed the
control of the country, so they must be tired and
depleted the Chinese armies and maybe couldn't really put up
much of a fight. They were wrong. What happened was
(04:09):
the Chinese sent something like three hundred thousand troops across
the Yalu River to engage the UN forces, most of
whom were American soldiers, army and marines, and the First
Marine Division. Some of its forces were down in a
place called hagarou Ri, which was south of the Chosen
Reservoir and where the UN was setting up UN forces
(04:30):
was setting up a perimeter that presumably would stop the
Chinese from getting any further. But the rest of the
First Marine Division was up in a place called Yu Damni,
and they had at most maybe eight thousand marines up there.
They were being approached by one hundred thousand Chinese soldiers.
Those are not good odds. And there is a place
(04:52):
called Taktang Pass which was the only escape route for
those remaining members of the First Marine Division, and the
Chinese realized that, so they decided they were going to
try and close down that pass, which would block off
the escape route. And a couple of the American officers,
Colonel Litzenberg had the seventh Regiment, realized, we got to
(05:14):
keep that pass open. Unfortunately, they weren't a surplus of
American troops to go around. What they had was Fox Company,
two hundred and forty six men, and the orders were
given for Captain William Barber and his men to go
either by truck and by walking and hiking seven miles
up into the mountains to reach tac Toong Pass, and
(05:35):
when they did, they were supposed to hold it for
at least one night. Maybe if you hold it one night,
we can get enough people out that everything's okay. So
that was basically their mission, and so Fox Company went
up there. It was the night of November twenty seventh,
nineteen fifty. The temperature when they reached the top of
talk Toong passed and this is seven miles uphills, is
(05:56):
not fun for any of us. The temperature when they
reached the top of talk Time Pass was thirty below zero.
So it's not windshill. There was a temperature thirty below zero.
I would just referred to here the Siberian Express, that
wind that came off Siberia right across Korea. And they
got up there and they tried to dig in. And
(06:18):
so as night is falling, they're trying to dig a
trench or dig a foxhole or dig something, and their
spades are clanging off the ground and pitting themselves in
the head. They're knocking themselves out trying to dig in.
So they just did the best they can and they
settled in for the night, hoping that maybe the Chinese
would decide not to come their way. What they had
no idea of knowing these two hundred and forty six men.
(06:40):
That was only discovered later on is that the Chinese
assigned ten thousand troops to take that pass. Again, let's
do the math. Not good. Actually, it's very fortunate they
did not know what they were facing. So this is
where it all began. The Chinese attacked the Fox men
of Fox Company withheld as best they could all during
(07:02):
the night until dawn. Captain Barbara had set up a
perimeter as best he could. That our understanding is still
being taught in some classes at Quantico, because it was
extremely effective at not leaving much of any gaps for
the Chinese to get through, and covering fire from different positions.
And they made it through the first night, which was
(07:23):
supposed to be their only night, if they could hold
it for one night, they made it through the first night.
When dawn came, the Chinese retreated. The attacks stopped, And
the reason for that was that the Chinese were very
afraid of the American and Australian pilots air Force. They
had a certain kind of swagger to them and they
could inflict a lot of damage, and the Chinese, who
(07:44):
did not have an air force, really were kind of
exposed in the daytime, so they would only attack at night.
As Fox Company learned, if you can make it till dawn,
you've survived, because the Chinese will retreat. So this first
night of battle, they made it to dawn, and then
they had to count well who was left and how
many were left, and out of the original two forty six,
(08:07):
after the first night, Captain Barber was able to ascertain
that he had about one hundred and seventy five what
he called effectives. These were men who hadn't been killed
and who were not seriously wounded. They may have been
Some of them may have been wounded, but not as
seriously that they couldn't maintain their position. So during the
(08:27):
daytime they still had the problem with snipers. The Chinese
would be up in the hills and sniping on them.
There would be air drops made of supplies, but it
turned out that what Fox Company received was ammunition but
no food, and it might not have mattered anyway because
they couldn't eat the food. The rations that they were
given were frozen.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And you've been listening to Tom Claven, author of the
Last Stand of Fox Company. Go to Amazon or the
usual suspects and pick up a copy. North Korea is
a war that's sort of forgotten. Is a lot written
about World War I tie a whole lot written about Vietnam.
But we lost fifty thousand men in Korea, and we
lost it for a reason. I mean, look on a
(09:07):
map today and there's North Korea and there's South Korea.
When they say our wars had no purpose in the
Far East after World War Two, we have only one
shining example to point to the freedom enjoyed in South
Korea and the nightmare that is living in North Korea.
When we come back, we'll find out what happened to
(09:29):
Fox Company under the able leadership of Captain William Barber.
Here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories and with Tom Claven, author of The Last
Stand of Fox Company. We just learned that of the
two hundred and forty six original troops there to defend
Doc Tong Pass, only one hundred and seventy five after
Night one were quote effective, that is, not killed or
(10:30):
seriously wounded. Let's continue the story. Here's Claven.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
They couldn't light fires. I mean maybe during the day
sneak in a few fires to try and heat something up,
but certainly at night to give away their positions. So
what was happening is as time was going on, these
men were not able to eat any food. Maybe they
would be able to melt a tutsi roll. A little
details interesting that I'm glad I remembered is that a
benefit to the cold is that in many cases, when
(10:55):
one of these marines was shot and the wound started
to bleed, because the intense cold, the blood froze. It
stopped the bleeding. So some of the fellas alive today
or because they did not bleed to death. The other
thing about the coremen is they were going around treating
people who had gotten wounded. They had to keep these
morphine thurreats. They kept them in their mouths to keep
(11:18):
them from freezing. So when they found somebody who was wounded,
they would take something out of their mouth and inject
it so that they can get that relief, because if
they didn't, the morphine would freeze and they would be
no good. So they got through the first night. This
is the next day where they're trying to regroup. They
had to contract their perimeter a little bit. Captain Barber
(11:38):
is going around to the men, the different platoons. He
said to them, he said, it will be okay as
long as we fight like marines. That was what he
kept saying to them, to sort of rally them and
keep their spirits up. Now while he's doing this, of course,
the Chinese snipers are after him and his bullets pinging
and bouncing off all over the place, and a couple
of his men kept saying to him, captain, would you
get down, I mean, you're exposing yourself to the enemy fire.
(12:01):
And he made this declaration that I know sounds like
maybe silly bravado in a way, but he said to
his men, he said, they haven't yet made the bullet
that can kill me. And they were like, wow, you
know this is a captain, and they turned out to
be right. So he's going around, you know, rallying the troops,
having them try and dig in some more if they
(12:22):
can get some rest in some ways. And the Chinese
second night came and the Chinese attacked again, and they
had since been reinforced, so there were more of them,
and they came at Fox Hill again, and sometimes what
it came down to it was individual marines or small
groups of marines deciding that we might be surrounded, we
(12:44):
might be overrun, but we're not leaving our position. And
that's what happened in many of these cases. They were
not necessarily ordered by somebody you have to stay here
until you die or until you can't do anything else.
These young men decided, we're not giving up. We're going
to hold our position. You're not talking about long term
regular marines who made up the majority of Fox Company.
(13:06):
A lot of these guys were reserves that were called
up and sent overseas when the Korean War broke out,
So they were not people that had this great experience,
the battle hardened experience. They were eighty there was the
youngest was sixteen years old. He had sort of stuck
in and here he finds himself in Korea. There's a
fellow named Hector Caffarata, who is a screw up who
(13:29):
would get a promotion and then do something wrong, get
busted again, and do something good, but then get busted again.
And his friend Kenny Benson, both of New Jersey. Kenny
Benson was a guy who wore these big thick glasses
and like Hector, always did the wrong thing and always
was getting in trouble for his commanding officer. They were
(13:49):
sharing what they could call a foxhole together, and that
came a point where the Chinese attacked were coming up
from up the hill at their position and Cafferrata what
would happen is that the Chinese were throwing grenades and
one of them went off as Benson was trying to
reach for it, and it went off and it shattered
(14:11):
his glasses and pieces went into his eyes, and he
was blinded. He couldn't see. There was another grenade that
came up there that Cafferata went to toss away with
his left hand. Just as he left of hand, it exploded,
cost him a couple of fingers. This made them angry,
and so what happened was Caffarrata just got out of
the fox hole and he just started firing at these Chinese,
(14:33):
advancing Chinese soldiers. When his gun ran out of AMMO,
he gave it to Benson. Benson is blind, but he's
a marine who trained as a marine. He could reload
without being able to see. He reloads. Caferata is firing away,
kills some more and they did. This is going on.
Then the Chinese decide, after countless numbers have fallen down
(14:53):
being shot, what are we do in charging this guy?
Why don't we throw grenades at him and blow him up?
So they start throwing grenades. Ferada the only sport he
was interested in at any time in his life was hunting.
He don't know baseball, football or anything like that. He
picks up a spade and he starts batting of graades.
Mcgreades go back and start blowing up the Chinese that
are running up the hill. It sounds funny, but this
(15:14):
is what happened, is and not only the eyewitness accounts,
but as I again getting ahead of a little story
a little bit, but it was this description which was
by his commanding officer. A lieutenant of his platoon witnessed
this going on, addition to a few others, which is
why Hector ka Ferata was one of the three winners
of the Medal of Honor for the Battle of Fox Hill.
The man who put him in for the Medal of Honor,
(15:34):
with Lieutenant Robert McCarthy, listed that during the course of
that night that Cafarata killed something like forty one Chinese.
The actual count by those at Fox Hild that day
was that over one hundred Chinese were dead thanks to
caffarata between his guns, and but when McCarthy was asked
about it, he said, no way any would believe me,
(15:56):
so I put a lower number so that they wouldn't
think I was making it up. Anyway. That position held
throughout the night, and Confarado only realized towards the morning
that he had left his sleeping bag when the attack
began without putting his boots on. So he's there in
his stocking feet and thirty blow zero fighting these guys off,
as if the odds weren't bad enough. Dick Bonelli, Dick Bonelli,
(16:18):
the guy who stole a car and ended up in
Fox Company. There's a point where he has to take
over a machine gun because everybody around it he's the
only one left. Everyone else has died. He hasn't used
the machine gun since Basic. But his lieutenant says to him,
you either man that position or I find you dead
over that gun, and so he does. He keeps his position,
and then the point comes where they're starting to surround him,
(16:38):
and he sees some other people surrounding. He actually what
we would call now a rambo moment. He just puts
the bandoliers over his chest, picks up the gun, and
start working his way down the hill. As he's mowing
down the Chinese, he ended up with the silver Star.
The other thing that they which we didn't mention, but
is also relevant to this, is that they discovered when
they started to count the Chinese dead and look them
(16:59):
over the bodies, that many of the Chinese soldiers had
already tied tourniquets on their legs in their arms, so
that if they got shot in those areas, their legs
in the arms, they would not bleed to death. They
can keep coming, they could keep fighting. So they like
pre treated themselves for wounds their limbs. So pretty fanatical,
(17:20):
and as you can imagine, it's even more amazing that
any of Fox companies survived because not only were they
being you know, trying to hold back ten thousand troops,
but some of them just got up and kept coming again.
There's another story of what happened to of another one
of our characters, Walt Hiskett, born and raised in Chicago.
He gets wounded the first wounded the first night, very
(17:40):
seriously wounded, and he's in the mid tent that they
set up and at some point on the second night,
a sergeant comes in the medical tent and says, listen,
fellas that were being overrun. We don't know who's going
to come. The next one in this tent's going to be.
If it's Chinese. Maybe if you just lie there, don't
pick up a gun or anything, they'll let you live.
Don't know what to tell you, but start praying. He
(18:02):
runs out again. So for the next few hours of
the night, different prayers are being said. They hear all
kinds of sounds and the noise outside of the fighting
and the bullets and the grenades and the mortars and
everything else. And there's all kinds of bullets that are
flying through the tent because of the crossfires going on.
And then well Hisskeott had this wonderful story of when
(18:23):
he's lying there, and this is after he said to
the guy next to him, he says, tell you what,
he's not a religious guy. He said, he said, I
might make it. I might make it through tonight. I'm
going to dedicate my life to God. They meant it
very sincerely. Anyway, he's lying there, and they know if
they make it till dawn, they've survived. And then all
of a sudden they start to see these thin beams
of sunlight come through the bullet holes in the tent
(18:45):
because the sun is rising. I just love that image,
thin beams of sunlight coming through, and I know everybody
knows the wounded. No, we've survived, We've made it through
another night.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you're listening to Tom Claven, author of The Last
Stand of Fox comey, and what a story he's telling us,
and my goodness, the story of just what some of
the reserves did, particularly Hector Albert Cafferata Medal of Honor winner.
He killed over one hundred Chinese, but they had to
lower the number because no one would have believed he
(19:16):
could have killed that many enemy soldiers. When we come back,
more of the remarkable story of the Last Stand a
Fox Company. Here on our American stories, and we continue
(19:39):
with our American stories and with Tom Clavin, and he's
the author of the Last Stand of Fox Company. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
What ended up happening is Colonel Listenberg had radio Barber
and said, listen, we're sort of out of harm's way.
You can leave now. And then Barbara looked around and
he said we're surrounded. You know, he didn't know what
the exact number turned out that they were, you know,
ten thousand Chinese around them. There's no place for us
to go, you know. Basically he was not saying it,
(20:12):
but he knew this had turned into a suicide mission.
And he said, goodbye and good luck. We will hold
as long as we can, and that was how he
signed off. Well, they held first night, the second night,
the third night, when they ran out of ammunition, they
fought with knives, with rocks, with their helmets, and Barbara
at one point was shot, took a bullet in the groin.
(20:34):
Out of all places, he refused to lie down. He refused.
They offered to make a stretcher for him. He grabbed
a tree branch and he would go from position to position,
limping on his tree branch to encourage his troops to
tell them, you know, we'll hold, we will hold, we
will hold. It became like his mantra. Now, after three
(20:55):
nights of this and contact that have eventually been lost
with Regiment A headquarters, a character comes into the story,
a gentleman named Raymond Davis. He was a lieutenant colonel
at the time. He was the head of the first Battalion,
seventh Regiment, and he and his men had made it
to death to Hagaroorie and were basically safe. But he said,
(21:15):
we can't leave Fox Company behind. Maybe we can get
enough guys to relieve them. So he raised four hundred
marines and they did something. Instead of going the main
route where they would be totally exposed to the Chinese,
they went over the mountains, basically over the ridges. Sometimes
the snow was chest deep, and they did it to
have try and avoid engaging the Chinese. They wanted to
(21:36):
sneak past them to get to Fox Company to relieve
them if they could. There were some firefights they stumbled
upon some Chinese positions, but otherwise they went. They took
them two nights to do this, and sometimes they went
off course. Sometimes they were so exhausted they couldn't see
what they were doing, but they kept plunging on in
the snow, trudging, trudging, trudging, and finally on the fit
(21:58):
would turned out to be the fifth day they get
to They were called eventually be called the ridge runners
because that's what they did as fast as they could
up and down the ridges, and they got to came
over the hill where Fox Company was not knowing if
they were going to find anybody alive, and they there
was an astonishing site that they saw. And as a
(22:19):
character in the book named Joe Owen, who was one
of the Ridge runners who described it for me, he
got to a certain point where he could see, you know,
they Fox Company guys were waving, was still here? Was
still here, some of them anyway, And he got to
the point where they were advancing so that they could
walk to where the Fox Company perimeter was a little
bit that was left of it. And he walked something
(22:42):
like the last one hundred yards or so. His feet
never touched the ground. The reason why it was littered
with Chinese corpses. There were one hundreds it turned out
to be there were two thousand of them. They were
all over the place and they had just been mown
down over the three three four nights of fighting by
Fox Company. And there was this rather emotional meeting between
(23:03):
Colonel Davis and Captain Barber, because they didn't know if
they'd see each other alive. And Davis was very emotionally
affected by seeing Barber, you know, standing there staggering on
his tree limb, and the few guys who were left,
and this little perimeter, you know, had become like the Alamo,
but with a few survivors. And Barbara was thinking, oh
(23:27):
my god, you guys came back for us. You know,
you didn't abandon you know, Marines don't leave other marines behind.
And so this was kind of this emotional meeting in
which it was emotional for people witnessing it, but they
couldn't say anything to each other. They couldn't find the words.
So anyway, out of the two hundred and forty six
that went up that hill, let me mention something about the
Chinese too. After the fifth day, the commander of the
(23:51):
Chinese was saying, you know, we've been trying to dislodge
these guys and it's not going to happen. I can't
afford to lose any more guys. I mean, I've lost
two thousand soldiers already. So they turned around and left,
you know, And so Fox Company, excuse me, Colonel Davis's
men could make stretchers and stuff like that. At the
two hundred and forty six that went up to Fox
(24:14):
Hill sixty, we're able to walk off it. The rest
were either dead or were had to be carried off
in stretchers, including the point finally came with Colonel Captain
Barber couldn't couldn't stand anymore, couldn't walk, So they put
him on a stretcher and he had to turn over
command of the company to Elmo Peterson. Elmo Peterson was
(24:36):
by this point he had not eaten or slept in
like five days, and he had by this point had
three bullets in him. He refused to lie down. He
refused he was going to command his platoon and co
command the company. What Fox Company had to do at
this point was they had to walk hike down the MSR,
(24:58):
the main supply route to the American perimeter, the newly
established American perimeter in haigar Ure, which was a safe
point and which was fortified enough that the Chinese would
not attack it. They tried a few times and been repelled,
And so that's what they did. It took him something
like twenty hours of hiking. These guys are frostbitten and
(25:20):
they get to like about whatever it is one hundred
yards of the American perimeter. And that's when Elmo Peterson
finally falters. Like I say, this, by this point is
six days. He hasn't slept or eating. He's got the
bullets in them and everything, and he finally gets to
a point where he just goes like this and he
falls to his knees in the snow, and then he
goes over on his face, and a couple of the
(25:43):
guys in Fox Company, who we have, of course, we
interviewed for this, went over to him. They pick him up.
They think this is still a pulse, so they you know,
he put they put his arms around their shoulders. They're
dragging him towards the American perimeter and then he gets
he gets close, he gets closer to it, and he
regains consciousness and he says, I'm walking, I'm walking across,
I'm walking in. So meanwhile the rest of the company,
(26:05):
they're not in great shape either. You think of the
painting of the Spirit of seventy six. One guy's got
a bandage around his eye and the other one's got this.
That's what these guys look like, you know, in awful shape.
And they actually get to the point where they're about
to cross into the perimeter, and Peterson and a couple
of other officers say, no, we're going to enter like marines.
They actually have these guys the sixty guys who were
(26:26):
left Fox Company straighten up, get back erect and as
they cross into the American perimeter, they sing the Marine
Corps him. You know, even Hollywood couldn't make this up.
We really felt that people would want to know. Okay,
we've been spending whatever it is, two hundred and eighty
five pages with these guys and all the things they
(26:46):
went through, what happened to them. I won't go on
to everybody but Walt Hissken Is because at least to
the next thing, I'm going to say an amazing story.
He did, He did survive. He goes back to Chicago,
gets a job in construction, finishes his high school equivalencely diploma,
goes to college, finishes college, goes to the seminary, becomes
a minister, and then he was out of the Marine Corps.
(27:11):
At this time, he enlisted in the Navy, and he
spends twenty four years in the Navy as a chaplain.
When he retires, he is the head of the Marine
Corps Chaplains of the Navy, and in nineteen sixty seven
and sixty eight he is the chaplain for Fox Company
when it was deployed to Vietnam. This is an amazing
(27:34):
story of Walt Hiskett. I'm glad to report he's alive
and well living in Arizona. He's a wonderful, wonderful man.
Most of the members, surviving members of Fox Company to
this day still suffer from the consequences of the frostbite
they suffered during the Battle of Fox Hill. Dick Bonelli
joined the US Postal Service when he came back to
the United States, and during his career there he could
(27:58):
not work in a facility in which the temperature fell
below sixty eight degrees. He just couldn't. His hands would
stopped working, you know, because of the frostbite that he suffered,
and so he had sometimes had to be transferred, you know,
and he ended up in Florida, which worked better for him.
He and Hector Cafferato are practically neighbors. I should mention,
I think I forgot that Hector caw fraud I didn't mention.
I think at the Middle of Honor, so did Captain
(28:20):
William Barber, and so did Colonel Raymond Davis. So there
were three Medal of Honor winners out of this event. Yeah.
A lot of times when authors write their books they'll
say this, this is dedicated to my wife or my children,
or by this, but our dedication is to the United
States Marines who fought and died on Fox Hill.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And a terrific job on the editing of this story
by Greg Hengler, And a special thanks to Tom Claven
and his co author is always Bob Drury for telling
this story in the first place. We care about these
stories here in now American stories. Americans care about these stories.
That's why their books are best sellers hearing stories like this,
(28:58):
these stories of valor, honor, courage, and my goodness, the
idea of it, You're going to leave no marine behind,
and how breathtaking it is to see that in action.
Even these marines were stunned that others were coming to
their aid under such treacherous circumstances, and that we'd all
want something like that in our life, that someone would
(29:19):
do something like that for US risk Golf, for US
three Medal of Honor recipients, Captain William Barber, Colonel Raymond Davis,
and of course Hector Albert Caferata. And Caferata was a
marine reserve, and so many of these guys were reserves.
Were not a lot of military experience. Boy, they got
(29:41):
it quick. Two hundred and forty six started the mission.
Sixty were able to walk off. The story of the
last stand of Fox Company a beauty. Here on our
American stories. Joy us
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Name
And we continue with our American stories. In the fall
of eighteen fifty, it looked as though the Korean War
would be over Shortly after General Douglas MacArthur pushed his
forces deep into North Korea. His ten thousand First Division
Marines found themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by one hundred
(00:31):
thousand Chinese soldiers. Their only chance for survival was to
fight their way south through a narrow gorge, and needed
to be held open at all costs. The mission was
handed to Captain William Barber and the two hundred and
thirty four Marines of Fox Company. Here to tell the
story is Tom Claven, author of The Last Stand of
(00:53):
Fox Company. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
The onset of the North Korean winter had been harsh.
They were froze and exhausted when it snowed, and they
were frozen and exhausted when it didn't snow. As referring
to the members of Fox Company and unremitting wet gale
blew constantly. The Marines took to calling at the Siberian
Express and glazed every rock with ice. Their knees, knuckles,
and elbows were covered with bloody scalps when continually slipping
(01:18):
on treacherous slopes, and their feet and hands were always numb.
Hours during the day were hardly noted, as they set
their body clocks only by daylight and darkness, and aside
from a vague awareness that Thanksgiving had just passed and
Christmas was coming, many had no idea what date it was,
much less what day of the week. Moreover, because canteen
(01:39):
water had to be thawed over campfires Stateside, notions of
hygiene had been abandoned from almost the moment they had
set foot on Korean soil. A twig I had to
do for a toothbrush, and they could barely lay their
heads down for the night in an abandoned hooch without
waking up with a scalpful of lice. Most had given
up trying to wipe their running noses with anything other
(01:59):
than the sleeves of They're filed the uniforms, and anyone
who grew a mustache soon had a revolting mass of
frozen mucus. Later a crossed his upper lip. They bitched
in grouse, but they never shirked a command, remaining true
to the Latin motto above the Eagle and the Marine
emblem Semper fidelis always faithful, and so just past noon,
while Fox Company mustered in the village of Hagaroorie, Lieutenant
(02:22):
Colonel Randolph Lockwood, commanding officer of the seventh Renement, second Battalion,
summoned his subordinate, Captain William Edward Barber, Fox Company's new COO,
for a trip in the company jeep to scout toc
Tong Pass. Now, this is the condition they were in
before the Battle of Fox Hill on toc Tong Pass.
So these are not marines who had been well fed
(02:43):
and well cared for and rested when the time came
to fight what would be an almost unimaginable odds against
the Chinese. In June of nineteen fifty, as many of
us know, the North Koreans crossed the thirty eighth Parallel
and invaded South Korea and almost pushed the American forces
there in South Korean Army into the sea. There were
(03:06):
reinforcements were sent as quickly as possible by President Truman
and MacArthur, and the UN forces started to push back
and push back the North Korean troops, and they even
pushed him back beyond the thirtieth Parallel and kept pushing,
and they started to up by the Chosen reservoir. They
were getting closer and closer to the Yalu River, which
(03:28):
was the border with China, and the Chinese were getting
a little bit nervous. Malsetung and Chuan Lai were giving
out warnings, don't come any closer, don't try to initiate
a war with us. If you make us more nervous,
we'll enter the war. And I guess it was kind
of hard for MacArthur, who was a string of victory
(03:48):
after victory going through the fall of nineteen fifty to
say stop. They also didn't believe the Chinese went enter
the war. They thought that the Chinese were maybe in
a vulnerable position then because it had only been the
year before that they defeated checks Kaishek and assumed the
control of the country, so they must be tired and
depleted the Chinese armies and maybe couldn't really put up
much of a fight. They were wrong. What happened was
(04:09):
the Chinese sent something like three hundred thousand troops across
the Yalu River to engage the UN forces, most of
whom were American soldiers, army and marines, and the First
Marine Division. Some of its forces were down in a
place called hagarou Ri, which was south of the Chosen
Reservoir and where the UN was setting up UN forces
(04:30):
was setting up a perimeter that presumably would stop the
Chinese from getting any further. But the rest of the
First Marine Division was up in a place called Yu Damni,
and they had at most maybe eight thousand marines up there.
They were being approached by one hundred thousand Chinese soldiers.
Those are not good odds. And there is a place
(04:52):
called Taktang Pass which was the only escape route for
those remaining members of the First Marine Division, and the
Chinese realized that, so they decided they were going to
try and close down that pass, which would block off
the escape route. And a couple of the American officers,
Colonel Litzenberg had the seventh Regiment, realized, we got to
(05:14):
keep that pass open. Unfortunately, they weren't a surplus of
American troops to go around. What they had was Fox Company,
two hundred and forty six men, and the orders were
given for Captain William Barber and his men to go
either by truck and by walking and hiking seven miles
up into the mountains to reach tac Toong Pass, and
(05:35):
when they did, they were supposed to hold it for
at least one night. Maybe if you hold it one night,
we can get enough people out that everything's okay. So
that was basically their mission, and so Fox Company went
up there. It was the night of November twenty seventh,
nineteen fifty. The temperature when they reached the top of
talk Toong passed and this is seven miles uphills, is
(05:56):
not fun for any of us. The temperature when they
reached the top of talk Time Pass was thirty below zero.
So it's not windshill. There was a temperature thirty below zero.
I would just referred to here the Siberian Express, that
wind that came off Siberia right across Korea. And they
got up there and they tried to dig in. And
(06:18):
so as night is falling, they're trying to dig a
trench or dig a foxhole or dig something, and their
spades are clanging off the ground and pitting themselves in
the head. They're knocking themselves out trying to dig in.
So they just did the best they can and they
settled in for the night, hoping that maybe the Chinese
would decide not to come their way. What they had
no idea of knowing these two hundred and forty six men.
(06:40):
That was only discovered later on is that the Chinese
assigned ten thousand troops to take that pass. Again, let's
do the math. Not good. Actually, it's very fortunate they
did not know what they were facing. So this is
where it all began. The Chinese attacked the Fox men
of Fox Company withheld as best they could all during
(07:02):
the night until dawn. Captain Barbara had set up a
perimeter as best he could. That our understanding is still
being taught in some classes at Quantico, because it was
extremely effective at not leaving much of any gaps for
the Chinese to get through, and covering fire from different positions.
And they made it through the first night, which was
(07:23):
supposed to be their only night, if they could hold
it for one night, they made it through the first night.
When dawn came, the Chinese retreated. The attacks stopped, And
the reason for that was that the Chinese were very
afraid of the American and Australian pilots air Force. They
had a certain kind of swagger to them and they
could inflict a lot of damage, and the Chinese, who
(07:44):
did not have an air force, really were kind of
exposed in the daytime, so they would only attack at night.
As Fox Company learned, if you can make it till dawn,
you've survived, because the Chinese will retreat. So this first
night of battle, they made it to dawn, and then
they had to count well who was left and how
many were left, and out of the original two forty six,
(08:07):
after the first night, Captain Barber was able to ascertain
that he had about one hundred and seventy five what
he called effectives. These were men who hadn't been killed
and who were not seriously wounded. They may have been
Some of them may have been wounded, but not as
seriously that they couldn't maintain their position. So during the
(08:27):
daytime they still had the problem with snipers. The Chinese
would be up in the hills and sniping on them.
There would be air drops made of supplies, but it
turned out that what Fox Company received was ammunition but
no food, and it might not have mattered anyway because
they couldn't eat the food. The rations that they were
given were frozen.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And you've been listening to Tom Claven, author of the
Last Stand of Fox Company. Go to Amazon or the
usual suspects and pick up a copy. North Korea is
a war that's sort of forgotten. Is a lot written
about World War I tie a whole lot written about Vietnam.
But we lost fifty thousand men in Korea, and we
lost it for a reason. I mean, look on a
(09:07):
map today and there's North Korea and there's South Korea.
When they say our wars had no purpose in the
Far East after World War Two, we have only one
shining example to point to the freedom enjoyed in South
Korea and the nightmare that is living in North Korea.
When we come back, we'll find out what happened to
(09:29):
Fox Company under the able leadership of Captain William Barber.
Here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories and with Tom Claven, author of The Last
Stand of Fox Company. We just learned that of the
two hundred and forty six original troops there to defend
Doc Tong Pass, only one hundred and seventy five after
Night one were quote effective, that is, not killed or
(10:30):
seriously wounded. Let's continue the story. Here's Claven.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
They couldn't light fires. I mean maybe during the day
sneak in a few fires to try and heat something up,
but certainly at night to give away their positions. So
what was happening is as time was going on, these
men were not able to eat any food. Maybe they
would be able to melt a tutsi roll. A little
details interesting that I'm glad I remembered is that a
benefit to the cold is that in many cases, when
(10:55):
one of these marines was shot and the wound started
to bleed, because the intense cold, the blood froze. It
stopped the bleeding. So some of the fellas alive today
or because they did not bleed to death. The other
thing about the coremen is they were going around treating
people who had gotten wounded. They had to keep these
morphine thurreats. They kept them in their mouths to keep
(11:18):
them from freezing. So when they found somebody who was wounded,
they would take something out of their mouth and inject
it so that they can get that relief, because if
they didn't, the morphine would freeze and they would be
no good. So they got through the first night. This
is the next day where they're trying to regroup. They
had to contract their perimeter a little bit. Captain Barber
(11:38):
is going around to the men, the different platoons. He
said to them, he said, it will be okay as
long as we fight like marines. That was what he
kept saying to them, to sort of rally them and
keep their spirits up. Now while he's doing this, of course,
the Chinese snipers are after him and his bullets pinging
and bouncing off all over the place, and a couple
of his men kept saying to him, captain, would you
get down, I mean, you're exposing yourself to the enemy fire.
(12:01):
And he made this declaration that I know sounds like
maybe silly bravado in a way, but he said to
his men, he said, they haven't yet made the bullet
that can kill me. And they were like, wow, you
know this is a captain, and they turned out to
be right. So he's going around, you know, rallying the troops,
having them try and dig in some more if they
(12:22):
can get some rest in some ways. And the Chinese
second night came and the Chinese attacked again, and they
had since been reinforced, so there were more of them,
and they came at Fox Hill again, and sometimes what
it came down to it was individual marines or small
groups of marines deciding that we might be surrounded, we
(12:44):
might be overrun, but we're not leaving our position. And
that's what happened in many of these cases. They were
not necessarily ordered by somebody you have to stay here
until you die or until you can't do anything else.
These young men decided, we're not giving up. We're going
to hold our position. You're not talking about long term
regular marines who made up the majority of Fox Company.
(13:06):
A lot of these guys were reserves that were called
up and sent overseas when the Korean War broke out,
So they were not people that had this great experience,
the battle hardened experience. They were eighty there was the
youngest was sixteen years old. He had sort of stuck
in and here he finds himself in Korea. There's a
fellow named Hector Caffarata, who is a screw up who
(13:29):
would get a promotion and then do something wrong, get
busted again, and do something good, but then get busted again.
And his friend Kenny Benson, both of New Jersey. Kenny
Benson was a guy who wore these big thick glasses
and like Hector, always did the wrong thing and always
was getting in trouble for his commanding officer. They were
(13:49):
sharing what they could call a foxhole together, and that
came a point where the Chinese attacked were coming up
from up the hill at their position and Cafferrata what
would happen is that the Chinese were throwing grenades and
one of them went off as Benson was trying to
reach for it, and it went off and it shattered
(14:11):
his glasses and pieces went into his eyes, and he
was blinded. He couldn't see. There was another grenade that
came up there that Cafferata went to toss away with
his left hand. Just as he left of hand, it exploded,
cost him a couple of fingers. This made them angry,
and so what happened was Caffarrata just got out of
the fox hole and he just started firing at these Chinese,
(14:33):
advancing Chinese soldiers. When his gun ran out of AMMO,
he gave it to Benson. Benson is blind, but he's
a marine who trained as a marine. He could reload
without being able to see. He reloads. Caferata is firing away,
kills some more and they did. This is going on.
Then the Chinese decide, after countless numbers have fallen down
(14:53):
being shot, what are we do in charging this guy?
Why don't we throw grenades at him and blow him up?
So they start throwing grenades. Ferada the only sport he
was interested in at any time in his life was hunting.
He don't know baseball, football or anything like that. He
picks up a spade and he starts batting of graades.
Mcgreades go back and start blowing up the Chinese that
are running up the hill. It sounds funny, but this
(15:14):
is what happened, is and not only the eyewitness accounts,
but as I again getting ahead of a little story
a little bit, but it was this description which was
by his commanding officer. A lieutenant of his platoon witnessed
this going on, addition to a few others, which is
why Hector ka Ferata was one of the three winners
of the Medal of Honor for the Battle of Fox Hill.
The man who put him in for the Medal of Honor,
(15:34):
with Lieutenant Robert McCarthy, listed that during the course of
that night that Cafarata killed something like forty one Chinese.
The actual count by those at Fox Hild that day
was that over one hundred Chinese were dead thanks to
caffarata between his guns, and but when McCarthy was asked
about it, he said, no way any would believe me,
(15:56):
so I put a lower number so that they wouldn't
think I was making it up. Anyway. That position held
throughout the night, and Confarado only realized towards the morning
that he had left his sleeping bag when the attack
began without putting his boots on. So he's there in
his stocking feet and thirty blow zero fighting these guys off,
as if the odds weren't bad enough. Dick Bonelli, Dick Bonelli,
(16:18):
the guy who stole a car and ended up in
Fox Company. There's a point where he has to take
over a machine gun because everybody around it he's the
only one left. Everyone else has died. He hasn't used
the machine gun since Basic. But his lieutenant says to him,
you either man that position or I find you dead
over that gun, and so he does. He keeps his position,
and then the point comes where they're starting to surround him,
(16:38):
and he sees some other people surrounding. He actually what
we would call now a rambo moment. He just puts
the bandoliers over his chest, picks up the gun, and
start working his way down the hill. As he's mowing
down the Chinese, he ended up with the silver Star.
The other thing that they which we didn't mention, but
is also relevant to this, is that they discovered when
they started to count the Chinese dead and look them
(16:59):
over the bodies, that many of the Chinese soldiers had
already tied tourniquets on their legs in their arms, so
that if they got shot in those areas, their legs
in the arms, they would not bleed to death. They
can keep coming, they could keep fighting. So they like
pre treated themselves for wounds their limbs. So pretty fanatical,
(17:20):
and as you can imagine, it's even more amazing that
any of Fox companies survived because not only were they
being you know, trying to hold back ten thousand troops,
but some of them just got up and kept coming again.
There's another story of what happened to of another one
of our characters, Walt Hiskett, born and raised in Chicago.
He gets wounded the first wounded the first night, very
(17:40):
seriously wounded, and he's in the mid tent that they
set up and at some point on the second night,
a sergeant comes in the medical tent and says, listen,
fellas that were being overrun. We don't know who's going
to come. The next one in this tent's going to be.
If it's Chinese. Maybe if you just lie there, don't
pick up a gun or anything, they'll let you live.
Don't know what to tell you, but start praying. He
(18:02):
runs out again. So for the next few hours of
the night, different prayers are being said. They hear all
kinds of sounds and the noise outside of the fighting
and the bullets and the grenades and the mortars and
everything else. And there's all kinds of bullets that are
flying through the tent because of the crossfires going on.
And then well Hisskeott had this wonderful story of when
(18:23):
he's lying there, and this is after he said to
the guy next to him, he says, tell you what,
he's not a religious guy. He said, he said, I
might make it. I might make it through tonight. I'm
going to dedicate my life to God. They meant it
very sincerely. Anyway, he's lying there, and they know if
they make it till dawn, they've survived. And then all
of a sudden they start to see these thin beams
of sunlight come through the bullet holes in the tent
(18:45):
because the sun is rising. I just love that image,
thin beams of sunlight coming through, and I know everybody
knows the wounded. No, we've survived, We've made it through
another night.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you're listening to Tom Claven, author of The Last
Stand of Fox comey, and what a story he's telling us,
and my goodness, the story of just what some of
the reserves did, particularly Hector Albert Cafferata Medal of Honor winner.
He killed over one hundred Chinese, but they had to
lower the number because no one would have believed he
(19:16):
could have killed that many enemy soldiers. When we come back,
more of the remarkable story of the Last Stand a
Fox Company. Here on our American stories, and we continue
(19:39):
with our American stories and with Tom Clavin, and he's
the author of the Last Stand of Fox Company. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
What ended up happening is Colonel Listenberg had radio Barber
and said, listen, we're sort of out of harm's way.
You can leave now. And then Barbara looked around and
he said we're surrounded. You know, he didn't know what
the exact number turned out that they were, you know,
ten thousand Chinese around them. There's no place for us
to go, you know. Basically he was not saying it,
(20:12):
but he knew this had turned into a suicide mission.
And he said, goodbye and good luck. We will hold
as long as we can, and that was how he
signed off. Well, they held first night, the second night,
the third night, when they ran out of ammunition, they
fought with knives, with rocks, with their helmets, and Barbara
at one point was shot, took a bullet in the groin.
(20:34):
Out of all places, he refused to lie down. He refused.
They offered to make a stretcher for him. He grabbed
a tree branch and he would go from position to position,
limping on his tree branch to encourage his troops to
tell them, you know, we'll hold, we will hold, we
will hold. It became like his mantra. Now, after three
(20:55):
nights of this and contact that have eventually been lost
with Regiment A headquarters, a character comes into the story,
a gentleman named Raymond Davis. He was a lieutenant colonel
at the time. He was the head of the first Battalion,
seventh Regiment, and he and his men had made it
to death to Hagaroorie and were basically safe. But he said,
(21:15):
we can't leave Fox Company behind. Maybe we can get
enough guys to relieve them. So he raised four hundred
marines and they did something. Instead of going the main
route where they would be totally exposed to the Chinese,
they went over the mountains, basically over the ridges. Sometimes
the snow was chest deep, and they did it to
have try and avoid engaging the Chinese. They wanted to
(21:36):
sneak past them to get to Fox Company to relieve
them if they could. There were some firefights they stumbled
upon some Chinese positions, but otherwise they went. They took
them two nights to do this, and sometimes they went
off course. Sometimes they were so exhausted they couldn't see
what they were doing, but they kept plunging on in
the snow, trudging, trudging, trudging, and finally on the fit
(21:58):
would turned out to be the fifth day they get
to They were called eventually be called the ridge runners
because that's what they did as fast as they could
up and down the ridges, and they got to came
over the hill where Fox Company was not knowing if
they were going to find anybody alive, and they there
was an astonishing site that they saw. And as a
(22:19):
character in the book named Joe Owen, who was one
of the Ridge runners who described it for me, he
got to a certain point where he could see, you know,
they Fox Company guys were waving, was still here? Was
still here, some of them anyway, And he got to
the point where they were advancing so that they could
walk to where the Fox Company perimeter was a little
bit that was left of it. And he walked something
(22:42):
like the last one hundred yards or so. His feet
never touched the ground. The reason why it was littered
with Chinese corpses. There were one hundreds it turned out
to be there were two thousand of them. They were
all over the place and they had just been mown
down over the three three four nights of fighting by
Fox Company. And there was this rather emotional meeting between
(23:03):
Colonel Davis and Captain Barber, because they didn't know if
they'd see each other alive. And Davis was very emotionally
affected by seeing Barber, you know, standing there staggering on
his tree limb, and the few guys who were left,
and this little perimeter, you know, had become like the Alamo,
but with a few survivors. And Barbara was thinking, oh
(23:27):
my god, you guys came back for us. You know,
you didn't abandon you know, Marines don't leave other marines behind.
And so this was kind of this emotional meeting in
which it was emotional for people witnessing it, but they
couldn't say anything to each other. They couldn't find the words.
So anyway, out of the two hundred and forty six
that went up that hill, let me mention something about the
Chinese too. After the fifth day, the commander of the
(23:51):
Chinese was saying, you know, we've been trying to dislodge
these guys and it's not going to happen. I can't
afford to lose any more guys. I mean, I've lost
two thousand soldiers already. So they turned around and left,
you know, And so Fox Company, excuse me, Colonel Davis's
men could make stretchers and stuff like that. At the
two hundred and forty six that went up to Fox
(24:14):
Hill sixty, we're able to walk off it. The rest
were either dead or were had to be carried off
in stretchers, including the point finally came with Colonel Captain
Barber couldn't couldn't stand anymore, couldn't walk, So they put
him on a stretcher and he had to turn over
command of the company to Elmo Peterson. Elmo Peterson was
(24:36):
by this point he had not eaten or slept in
like five days, and he had by this point had
three bullets in him. He refused to lie down. He
refused he was going to command his platoon and co
command the company. What Fox Company had to do at
this point was they had to walk hike down the MSR,
(24:58):
the main supply route to the American perimeter, the newly
established American perimeter in haigar Ure, which was a safe
point and which was fortified enough that the Chinese would
not attack it. They tried a few times and been repelled,
And so that's what they did. It took him something
like twenty hours of hiking. These guys are frostbitten and
(25:20):
they get to like about whatever it is one hundred
yards of the American perimeter. And that's when Elmo Peterson
finally falters. Like I say, this, by this point is
six days. He hasn't slept or eating. He's got the
bullets in them and everything, and he finally gets to
a point where he just goes like this and he
falls to his knees in the snow, and then he
goes over on his face, and a couple of the
(25:43):
guys in Fox Company, who we have, of course, we
interviewed for this, went over to him. They pick him up.
They think this is still a pulse, so they you know,
he put they put his arms around their shoulders. They're
dragging him towards the American perimeter and then he gets
he gets close, he gets closer to it, and he
regains consciousness and he says, I'm walking, I'm walking across,
I'm walking in. So meanwhile the rest of the company,
(26:05):
they're not in great shape either. You think of the
painting of the Spirit of seventy six. One guy's got
a bandage around his eye and the other one's got this.
That's what these guys look like, you know, in awful shape.
And they actually get to the point where they're about
to cross into the perimeter, and Peterson and a couple
of other officers say, no, we're going to enter like marines.
They actually have these guys the sixty guys who were
(26:26):
left Fox Company straighten up, get back erect and as
they cross into the American perimeter, they sing the Marine
Corps him. You know, even Hollywood couldn't make this up.
We really felt that people would want to know. Okay,
we've been spending whatever it is, two hundred and eighty
five pages with these guys and all the things they
(26:46):
went through, what happened to them. I won't go on
to everybody but Walt Hissken Is because at least to
the next thing, I'm going to say an amazing story.
He did, He did survive. He goes back to Chicago,
gets a job in construction, finishes his high school equivalencely diploma,
goes to college, finishes college, goes to the seminary, becomes
a minister, and then he was out of the Marine Corps.
(27:11):
At this time, he enlisted in the Navy, and he
spends twenty four years in the Navy as a chaplain.
When he retires, he is the head of the Marine
Corps Chaplains of the Navy, and in nineteen sixty seven
and sixty eight he is the chaplain for Fox Company
when it was deployed to Vietnam. This is an amazing
(27:34):
story of Walt Hiskett. I'm glad to report he's alive
and well living in Arizona. He's a wonderful, wonderful man.
Most of the members, surviving members of Fox Company to
this day still suffer from the consequences of the frostbite
they suffered during the Battle of Fox Hill. Dick Bonelli
joined the US Postal Service when he came back to
the United States, and during his career there he could
(27:58):
not work in a facility in which the temperature fell
below sixty eight degrees. He just couldn't. His hands would
stopped working, you know, because of the frostbite that he suffered,
and so he had sometimes had to be transferred, you know,
and he ended up in Florida, which worked better for him.
He and Hector Cafferato are practically neighbors. I should mention,
I think I forgot that Hector caw fraud I didn't mention.
I think at the Middle of Honor, so did Captain
(28:20):
William Barber, and so did Colonel Raymond Davis. So there
were three Medal of Honor winners out of this event. Yeah.
A lot of times when authors write their books they'll
say this, this is dedicated to my wife or my children,
or by this, but our dedication is to the United
States Marines who fought and died on Fox Hill.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And a terrific job on the editing of this story
by Greg Hengler, And a special thanks to Tom Claven
and his co author is always Bob Drury for telling
this story in the first place. We care about these
stories here in now American stories. Americans care about these stories.
That's why their books are best sellers hearing stories like this,
(28:58):
these stories of valor, honor, courage, and my goodness, the
idea of it, You're going to leave no marine behind,
and how breathtaking it is to see that in action.
Even these marines were stunned that others were coming to
their aid under such treacherous circumstances, and that we'd all
want something like that in our life, that someone would
(29:19):
do something like that for US risk Golf, for US
three Medal of Honor recipients, Captain William Barber, Colonel Raymond Davis,
and of course Hector Albert Caferata. And Caferata was a
marine reserve, and so many of these guys were reserves.
Were not a lot of military experience. Boy, they got
(29:41):
it quick. Two hundred and forty six started the mission.
Sixty were able to walk off. The story of the
last stand of Fox Company a beauty. Here on our
American stories. Joy us
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Name
Host
Lee Habeeb
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