Word: mortars
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Rolling with the Punch. The Americans were spending plenty of ammunition. Some busy gun crews, stripped to the waist in the warm, weather, hardly had time for a drink of water. Their howitzers and Long Tom rifles hurled hundreds of thousands of shells. Mortar ammo was in such plentiful supply that one crew lobbed 100 shells at a single Chinese silhouetted on a ridge line...
...marines' left, in the Hwachon area, an R.O.K. division was holding eight miles of front. Although this Korean unit had fought well in other battles, its men were frightened by the heaviest artillery, mortar and small-arms fire they had ever seen, and completely demoralized by the Reds' attack signals: bugles, whistles, green flares. The ROKs broke...
...Chinese. At first, the plan seemed to work; Harvey and his men met only two Chinese. "They were dumfounded," said Harvey. "My chaps shot them from the hip." But after they had turned south, when Captain Harvey led his men into a narrow valley, Chinese on the crests poured mortar and machine-gun fire on the Gloucesters. "It was a case of running, one group firing while the others crossed that spot, then running while the others fired. It was really hell there, I can tell you. Chaps were falling all around, marking the route like a bloody paper-chase...
...trying to get on the camel's nose. Finally we got a few men into some abandoned enemy trenches and had a good view of his positions, but we had one platoon badly chopped up. I was hitting them with 57-and 75-mm. guns, 81-mm. mortars, and 155s from the rear. But we just couldn't get 'em all, and we withdrew under heavy mortar fire. We had to leave some of our wounded. A patrol got them out later, but they were all dead...
...water-borne attack did not wait for the mechanics to arrive. One company cast off in plywood boats, paddled by hand. Some of the boats were smashed by mortar fire. Finally the Chinese launched a full-scale counterattack. The Americans threw it back, then withdrew. By that time the battle for the dam had become academic. The Chinese had already wasted much of the reservoir water; if they had been able to blow the dam (they may have lacked know-how or explosives), they would almost certainly have done so earlier...