THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY

 

“Gut-clenching and meticulously detailed . . . Using the journals, letters and memories of Fox Hill survivors, Drury and Clavin tell a story so realistic that many readers will have to stop and take deep breaths as the story unfolds. The authors’ ability to make individual Marines come to life makes their heroics and sacrifices all the more compelling.”     

USA Today

 “Vigorous . . . Skillfully written . . . The Last Stand of Fox Company captures the weeklong battle’s essence as well as most of its facets: the anxiety, the loneliness, the comradeship, the humor, the terror, the heroism, the futility, the boredom, and the tragedy of war with all its death. It also captures the wonder of war— those marines who miraculously survived.”

—Leatherneck Magazine

 

In Quantico, Virginia, the National Museum of the Marine Corps has four sections devoted to signature Corps actions in 20^th-century American wars: Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Khe San . . . and Fox Hill.  In the new paperback edition of THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY: A True Story of U. S. Marines in Combat (Grove Press; November 10, 2009; 978-0-8021-4451-5), which includes a new Afterword, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, bestselling authors of Halsey’s Typhoon, use first-hand interviews with survivors to bring to life one of the greatest stands against an enemy in United States military history.

David Halberstam referred to the Korean War as a war “orphaned by history.”  American forces began their defense of South Korea in June 1950.  But U.S. officials failed to take seriously Mao’s warning that if General Douglas MacArthur’s U.N. forces crossed the 38^th Parallel, China would intervene, and by the last week of November, no American official had any idea that roughly 300,000 Chinese troops were already inside Korea.  MacArthur in particular was unaware that his forces were significantly outnumbered in an unfamiliar and increasingly brutal territory. 

Instead, the 8,000-strong First Marine Division was trapped and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir.  Their only chance for survival was to fight their way south, through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge in the Nangnim Mountains. The pass would need to be held open at all costs.  The mission was handed to Captain William Barber and the 246 Marines of Fox Company, a courageous but undermanned unit of the First Marines, who were ordered to climb seven miles of frozen terrain to a rocky promontory overlooking the escape route.  The Marines had no way of knowing that the land they would occupy — it was soon dubbed “Fox Hill”— was surrounded by 10,000 Chinese soldiers.

Facing nighttime temperatures that plunged to 30 degrees below zero, Barber’s men faced a massive assault by thousands of enemy infantry in an attack that lasted four days and five nights of nearly continuous Chinese attempts to take Fox Hill.  Amid the relentless violence, three-quarters of Fox Company’s Marines were killed, wounded, or captured. The men fought on in the punishing conditions without much food or sleep, reduced to gnawing at frozen C-Rations and sharing sleeping bags with their own wounded to survive.  The cold became so intense that rifles and machine guns jammed with ice, bazookas would not fire, and Marines were forced to load bullets into the chambers of their automatic weapons one at a time. The desperate Marines fought off the Chinese with shovels, knives, rocks, and their bare hands.  Then, just when it looked like the outfit would be overrun, Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Davis, a fearless Marine officer who was fighting south from Chosin, volunteered to lead a force of four hundred men on a daring mission that would cut a hole in the Chinese lines and relieve the men of Fox Company. 

When the beleaguered company finally began its descent from Fox Hill, the reality of the situation became clear: outnumbered at least 10 to one, the men had survived five nights of fierce firefights, and had dispatched over half of the enemy they had faced.  THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism and self-sacrifice in the face of impossible odds. 

Bob Drury is a contributing editor and foreign correspondent for Men’s Health magazine who has reported from numerous war zones.  His last book, The Rescue Season, was made into a documentary by the History Channel. 

Tom Clavin is the author of 10 books, including Dark Noon: The Final Voyage of the Fishing Boat Pelican.

THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat

November 10, 2009 / 978-0-8021-4451-5 / 355 pages / $15