clanging of cymbals, a formidable new enemy arose out of the night to smash those probing fingers of men . . . Red China had entered the war. The photographs in this chapter, “Retreat, Hell!,” were made after the 1st Division Marines had been hit by the Chinese Communists near the Changjin Reservoir, where they regrouped . . . then turned and fought their way back to Hungnam and the sea. The wind that blew from the north—from Manchuria and the Siberian steppes beyond—down over the Yalu and the mountains all around . . . down into the gorges with their frozen streams and naked rocks . . . down across the plateau, glistening and empty . . . down along the ice-capped road—now shrieking and wild—that wind was like nothing ever known by the trapped Marines, yet they had to march through it. While men of their ranks covered the rear and the flanks and skirmished out in front, the bulk of the Division moved as a column, back along the road to the sea. When attacked by nearly one hundred thousand well-armed, aggressive, thoroughly indoctrinated Chinese Communist soldiers—the Marines of the Division had been separated, pushing north in regiments, with the icy waters of the reservoir between. They were following Tenth Corps' orders. For nine unbelievable days and nights they had fought, killed Communists and held . . . fought, killed Communists and held—pulling back as they fought—until, after it had seemed useless and impossible, they had linked up again at a stark little town named Hagaru, now known for only that reason—and the fact that it was the place where Marines with bulldozers and tanks and shovels and their bare hands had scraped out an airfield in three days, from the snow and earth, so that over two thousand of their buddies, frozen and wounded and dead, could be evacuated—while they, surrounded and vastly outnumbered, stayed to fight. And when the planes came in for the casualties, and the pilots told the men on the ground that the whole world was following their retreat, they cursed with 156 l Ⅵ. “Retreat, Hell!” This is War!
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