Time Surfing: Experience History.
Historical Backdrop
On November 27, 1950, nearly 8,000 Marines of the 5th and 7th Marine Regiments pushed toward Yudam-ni at the northwest corner of the Chosin Reservoir, unaware that between 120,000 and 150,000 well-hidden Chinese Communist soldiers waited in the surrounding mountains, backed by the worst winter weather conditions in 100 years. That same day, Company F, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, was sent to hold the high ground at Toktong Pass, the vital mountain road linking Yudam-ni to the Marine base at Hagaru-ri, under the command of Captain William Barber, a Silver Star recipient from Iwo Jima.
Our subject is Private First Class Thomas “Tommy” Kowalski, a 19-year-old rifleman from a coal town outside Scranton, Pennsylvania. Fox Company dug into a barren, wind-scoured hill and waited for a night that would become one of the most famous last stands of the Korean War.
November 27, 1950, 0620 hours — Road south of Hagaru-ri, North Korea, approaching Toktong Pass
You sit crammed in the open bed of a six-by-six truck, knees against a stranger’s pack, rifle muzzle-down between your boots. The convoy grinds along a one-lane gravel road cut into the mountainside, engines straining, exhaust freezing into gray clouds behind you. Your breath fogs inside your parka hood. The hills on both sides are bare and white, no cover, no trees left standing after weeks of shelling and fires. Somebody up front says this is Toktong Pass. Nobody talks much. The cold has already numbed your face into a mask.
November 27, 1950, 0930 hours — Hill 1419, Toktong Pass, North Korea
You climb off the truck onto frozen dirt and look up at the hill Captain Barber has picked. It humps up beside the road like a fist, bare rock and dead scrub grass under a skin of old snow. Your boots crunch on ground gone hard as concrete. Officers are already walking the ridgeline, pointing out fields of fire. You sling your rifle and reach for your entrenching tool. Digging into this ground is going to be brutal work, and everybody knows it.
November 27, 1950, 1230 hours — Fighting positions, Fox Hill, Toktong Pass
You hack at the frozen ground with your entrenching tool and it barely dents. The dirt is like stone. You and another Marine take turns, chipping out a shallow scrape that will have to pass for a foxhole. Sweat soaks your undershirt despite the cold, then goes clammy and freezes against your skin the moment you stop moving. Your fingers ache even through the mittens. Somewhere down the line a sergeant is cursing the ground itself.
November 27, 1950, 1530 hours — Fox Hill perimeter, overlooking the Main Supply Route
