Too young to have fought through the Second World War yet old enough to inherit its aftermath, men like Joe Cruse entered service in an uneasy period when Britain still maintained imperial garrisons across the world while quietly exhausting itself in the process. By the time Korea erupted in 1950, many of the senior non-commissioned officers and troop commanders around him carried rows of ribbons for overseas campaigning. Cruse would slowly add medals over the next several years, beginning with Palestine.
Though near twenty-two and five years older than some of the youngest recruits, he was still among the younger Marines arriving at Bickleigh in 1949 and 1950. Some, like Gordon Payne, were barely nineteen years old when 41 Independent Commando was assembled. He was among the volunteers for additional heavy weapons instruction who found Cruse serving among the training staff. They found the corporal calm, experienced, and dependable throughout the six-week course. Not long afterward, the Korean War intervened and the entire course — instructors included — was swept wholesale into the newly forming Commando.
The final weeks of August 1950 amounted to an operational emergency when the United Nations position in Korea nearly collapsed following the North Korean invasion in June. American and South Korean forces had been driven into the shrinking Pusan Perimeter before General MacArthur’s Inchon landings abruptly reversed the campaign. The rapid advance north that followed created an opportunity for amphibious raids against the North Korean coast and rail system. The United States Marines requested a British Commando unit capable of reconnaissance and raiding operations in support of the 1st Marine Division. The Royal Marines responded with remarkable speed.
Volunteers (some of whom volunteered under orders) were gathered from training establishments, ships, reserve pools, and overseas postings. Some Marines were diverted directly from troopships already bound elsewhere and others arrived from the Far East Fleet. A significant number were those veterans of the Second World War whose experience gave the hastily assembled unit a professional core from the beginning. The atmosphere at Bickleigh swelled with excitement and uncertainty.
Few of the Marines knew much about Korea itself when Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Drysdale first addressed the assembled volunteers. The briefing was short and informal as Drysdale explained only that the Americans had requested a Commando unit to operate alongside the U.S. Marines in Korea as a reconnaissance and raiding force. To many of the younger Marines, it sounded adventurous rather than ominous.
Cruse was among the first hundred men to depart Britain during the opening days of September. They flew aboard BOAC commercial aircraft, traveling in civilian clothes due to several transit countries that objected to uniformed troops crossing their territory. Marines who lacked suitable civilian attire were issued suits before departure, many apparently recycled demobilization clothing from the postwar years. Their attempts to appear inconspicuous were foiled in part by carrying neatly folded greatcoats with bright brass ‘Royal Marine’ emblazoned buttons over their arms at London Airport.
The unit moved east through Cairo, Karachi, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and finally Japan. It was not a typical military transit via commercial airliners with stewardesses, tropical stopovers, and nights in luxury hotels before the abrupt transition into military staging camps and combat preparation.
The Commando established itself first at Yokosuka and later at Camp McGill near Mount Fuji. The Royal Marines re-equipped entirely with American weapons, uniforms and equipment. Mortars, Browning machine guns, radios, and clothing all differed from British counterparts they were used to. The Marines drilled endlessly on rubber boat operations, firing tables, raiding procedures, demolitions, more rubber boat operations, and night landings.
COASTAL RAIDS
With their faces blacked with grease and boot blackening or cocoa or burned paper, the Marines paddled quietly toward the North Korean coast in their rubber dinghies. Two months of training culminated in their mission that night. The moon had not yet risen and before them was the silhouette of hills against the starry horizon. Their tow boats had departed, having dropped the tow-line to return to one of two destroyers standing off outside the mine danger area. The assault troops were left alone in the surf to paddle the last distance through the chilly, dark water, where every stroke stirred fascinating swirls of phosphorescence.
Ahead of them on the dark beach was a tiny blinking red light of Lieutenant Peter Thomas who had swum ashore alone to confirm the viability of the landing site. They paddled nearer and nearer until suddenly they hit solid land and clambered out of the boats into the cold foam. “’Out quick, get out…Come on, for Christ’s sake.” A scramble of legs and weapons; up to knees or waist in water that tugs and pushes and throws us onto a shelf of coarse sand. The shelf slopes too steeply to be nice. It is an urgent but not a quick task to drag the boat up to it.”
With the boat dragged onto the beach, the Marines set about unloading their twenty 20-pound satchels of plastic explosive and TNT. Major Aldridge arrived to set up the little headquarters while the heavy weapons section set about guarding the now empty boats.
This was the beginning of Cruse’s first operations in Korea, launched from the U.S.S. Horace A. Bass, one of the two American assault personnel destroyers used to carry C and D Troops against the North Korean coast. Heavy weapons as split between the two, with the other half operating off of the U.S.S. Wantuck. Cruse had nearly missed the landing completely – while preparing on the Bass, as equipment was being brought up from below, a heavy hatch cover fell onto Cruse’s knee and caused a nasty injury. The medical officer told him not to go ashore, but Joe ignored the advice and went anyway.
While the assault engineers and other small raiding parties were off to the area of the tunnel, the beach remained quiet for the time it took to lay charges. “Suddenly, a lot of things seemed to be happening at once. From up the hill came a loud, anguished incoherent shouting. To the right, along the beach, there was a loud noise a cry,” which turned out to be Lieutenant Pounds electrocuting himself cutting wires, but it was enough to expedite the end of the operation and the order came to withdraw.
The waning crescent moon had risen and under its pale light, the Marines scrambled to drag their boats back out into the surf and paddle back to their P-boats waiting off the coast. “The next to last boat was being pushed into the surf by Corporal Babb. There was the sound of rifle fire and he was hit and lying in the water with his boat well into the surf. The group from the last boat shouted to his boat to keep going. They carried Corporal Babb to their boat, then paddled harder than ever before. Being part of the demolition team, they knew that the time fuses were ticking.”
Exactly on scheduled time, the train tunnel erupted in “the biggest bang let off in any such raid this war.” The raid was completed successfully, with the exception of Babb who later died back aboard the ship. The following night, the Commando struck again farther along the coast, this time against another tunnel and a bridge. The same pattern repeated under darkness: landing craft towing the rubber boats, Marines waiting offshore among fishing-net floats mistaken at first for mines, assault troops going in through rough surf, and the withdrawal timed against the fuses already burning behind them. Both targets were destroyed.
HELL FIRE VALLEY
The Commando landed at Hungnam during the third week of November and moved through a country already beginning to freeze. Snow lay in valleys and across hillsides rising up from roads (little more than mountain tracks) twisting northward around mountains toward the Chosin Reservoir. The rapid United Nations advance to the Yalu River had rendered further coastal raiding increasingly irrelevant and 41 Commando had instead been ordered north to join the 1st Marine Division near the Chosin Reservoir deep in the mountains of North Korea. During those days, the Royal Marines were finally outfitted American winter clothing: heavy parkas lined with fur, layered cold-weather gear, mittens, and the rubberized “shoepacs” intended to protect against subzero temperatures. The clothing looked impressive enough, but the boots would later prove disastrous.
For several days, the Commando occupied a battered schoolhouse near Hungnam while preparing to move north to the front. The Americans issued mountains of ammunition, grenades, machine gun belts, mortar rounds, and winter rations while transport columns formed for the journey inland. The scale of the American logistical system still astonished many of the Marines, futher impressed by the Thanksgiving dinners appearing across the entire front line as though by magic — turkey, pumpkin pie, and hot meals delivered even into the frozen mountains around Chosin.
By the evening of November 28th, 41 Commando climbed aboard open American trucks and began the ascent toward the rear base of the 1st Marine Division at Koto-ri. The road wound upward along steep mountain slopes where the land simply disappeared into blackness beyond the edge of the track. In the most precipitous places, the route narrowed to little more than frozen dirt hacked into the mountainside. Any exposed moisture stiffened instantly into ice - breath froze against collars and sleeves. The men stamped their feet in the backs of the trucks trying to preserve feeling in their toes until they finally reached Koto-ri after dark.
The following morning many of the Americans stared in disbelief as the Royal Marines shaved, cleaned weapons, and formed ranks despite the conditions. Hot breakfasts froze almost immediately after being ladled onto mess tins. Water turned solid in containers. Radios failed as batteries died in the cold.
The news arriving through the night had grown steadily worse. Farther north, the Chinese offensive had engulfed elements of the 1st Marine Division around Hagaru-ri and Yudam-ni. Entire American units were cut off in the mountains. The single supply road north from Koto-ri now represented the only route into the reservoir basin, and Chinese forces already dominated the heights overlooking it. Drysdale received orders to break through to Hagaru-ri at all costs.
The force assembled under his command became known thereafter as Task Force Drysdale — a composite column built around 41 Independent Commando with G Company, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines and elements of the U.S. Army’s 31st Infantry Regiment, tanks, engineers, divisional transport, and supply vehicles. In total the convoy stretched for well over a hundred trucks along the mountain road. Cruse and the heavy weapons sections occupied trucks somewhere near the middle of the convoy. They boarded a 30cwt. Truck and Cruse’s section a 6x6 2 ½ ton truck. Ahead and behind stretched a seemingly endless chain of vehicles loaded with troops, ammunition, fuel, and supplies.
Drysdale initially attempted a methodical advance. 41 Commando assaulted the first ridge line while G Company prepared to leapfrog through and seize the next hill farther north. American aircraft softened the positions beforehand with rockets and napalm, allowing the Marines to clear the opening ridge relatively quickly.
The Chinese simply flowed back onto the abandoned heights the moment the Marines continued forward. Every pause stalled the convoy farther behind schedule while darkness approached steadily through the mountains. By mid-afternoon, Drysdale abandoned the leapfrogging assaults altogether and ordered the column to force its way north along the road.
The firing intensified with every mile as Chinese troops descended from the hills to flank the road, firing down into the convoy from gullies, rocks, and snow-covered embankments. American aircraft still circled overhead during daylight to strafe the slopes and suppress enemy fire, but as dusk approached their support became less effective. Mortars began landing among the trucks and soon vehicles exploded or caught fire, dead drivers slumped over steering wheels, and wrecked transports were shoved aside to keep the road open.
The tanks created further confusion. Drysdale wanted them staggered through the convoy to provide mutual protection along the entire column. Instead, the tanks grouped together and repeatedly surged ahead after lengthy refueling halts, leaving long sections of the convoy exposed behind them. Every delay allowed the Chinese to tighten their grip around the road. By dusk the convoy had become fully committed inside the pass later remembered as Hell Fire Valley.
A bright moon against the snow revealed movement across the hillsides. Chinese troops
appeared everywhere as shadows descending through the drifts only yards from the road. Marines fired from the truck beds while machine guns answered from the slopes above. Chinese mortar rounds burst among the vehicles, spraying fragments through canvas, ammunition boxes, and packed bodies.
Each halt was a chaotic scramble as Marines piled out from the trucks, exchanged fire at near point-blank range, then scrambled aboard again once the obstructions ahead cleared. The fighting possessed no stable front line anymore. Chinese soldiers infiltrated among the vehicles while the column slowly fragmented into isolated groups struggling independently through darkness and snow.
The first time Cruse’s truck came under fire, Corporal Chris Hill was badly wounded. The Marines moved him to the back of the truck and dressed his wounds despite showing no sign of life. Joe lost his gloves while attending to Hill. He never found them again and would spend the remainder of the night with bare hands in temperatures approaching forty degrees below zero.
Behind them, an American recoilless rifle returned fire until the gunner was killed. Their officer ordered another man on the gun who replied callously “Fuck you, lieutenant, I’m not going up there!” When the Heavy Weapons moved off they left the American vehicle behind – it was the last vehicle they saw that night.
The truck came to another sudden stop and a violent concentration of Chinese fire fell upon the immobilized vehicle. The metallic hammering of bullets sounded off ammunition crates and mortar bombs stacked in the truck bed around them. Streaking tracers slashed through the darkness from the hillsides only yards away. Chinese troops had already descended almost onto the roadside itself. In the snow and drifting smoke, it became impossible to distinguish clearly between shadows, vehicles, and men.
Corporal Cruse was riding passenger to the American driver who was killed when the truck jolted to a halt and shooting erupted from both sides of the road. The section of heavy weapons immediately returned fire from the truck bed while bullets cracked through the wooden sideboards and ricocheted from the metal fittings around them.
Mortar bombs followed one after another. The second bomb killed Corporal Joe Belsey immediately – a tragic loss as Belsey had fought to join 41 Commando despite being newly married only weeks earlier. Drysdale himself had initially refused to take him north before eventually relenting after repeated requests. Now he lay dead with a hole through his forehead somewhere in Hell Fire Valley while the convoy fought blindly onward into the mountains.
Payne’s number two on the machine gun, Joe McCourt, was killed next by a burst. Seconds later Payne himself was struck across the eyebrow, either directly or by ricochet, and knocked unconscious among the piled ammunition and dead Marines in the truck bed. Under the withering fire, Corporal Cruse ordered everyone off the truck to take cover behind the vehicle – the only available refuge on the open road.
The convoy ahead had vanished into the darkness. Behind them there were no signs of further vehicles. For the first time it became apparent that they were entirely on their own. After a few moments, it was evident no more vehicles were coming up behind them. In all, Corporal Cruse had five men: Gordon Payne, Al Toogood, Leonard Hayes, Fredrick Roberts, and Joseph Dumbrick. Cruse inquired whether they should attempt to return toward Koto-ri or continue north after the convoy.
The decision was made with little discussion – they had their orders and would attempt to reach Hagaru-ri. Chinese troops occupying the ditches and slopes overlooking the convoy route made the road impassable. Firing continued both ahead and behind them. The survivors crawled across the open ground to the embankment beside the road, scrambled over a narrow-gauge railway line, and descended toward a river running roughly parallel to the valley floor.
The river valley offered concealment but little safety. Snow reflected cold moonlight across the ground while Chinese troops moved throughout the surrounding hills. Soon after moving off the road, the Marines heard movement on a rise overlooking the river. Believing it might be another portion of the convoy digging in defensively, the group climbed cautiously toward the sound. Instead, they walked directly into a Chinese position. A sentry challenged them in the darkness and Cruse answered instantly with complete nonsense — “Hallyongtai,” merely gibberish meant to confuse the sentry for a second or two. The sentry hesitated just long enough for Cruse to shoot him.
The Marines threw themselves flat expecting the entire hillside to erupt around them, but it stayed quiet. No bugles sounded and no Chinese charge descended through the darkness. Shapes moved faintly higher on the slope, but the enemy position somehow failed to react properly. After several agonizing minutes the Marines slipped back down toward the river.
While they were waiting, an American Marine sergeant emerged from the darkness to join them. He had been separated from his own group and with minimal conversation (no one ever learned his name) joined the group of Royal Marines.
They would have to cross the frozen river to escape the Chinese concentrations along the road. The enemy had strung barbed wire along the bank, which proved to be a problem, particularly for Marine Stock who needed Dumbrick to untangle him. Reeds and bullrushes cracked loudly around them as they forced their way toward the bank, each sound seeming impossibly loud in the darkness.
It was evident that the river had frozen only partially, with ice covered sections near the banks opening to black water flowing through the center. The Marines edged carefully across until the ice soon gave way beneath them. There was no alternative but to wade. The water proved shallow — but deep enough to flood over the tops of their shoepacs. Within seconds their boots filled with icy water, ensuring cases of frostbite once it froze over after climbing the opposite bank.
On the far bank, they discovered heavily trampled tracks crossing through the snow — evidence of large numbers of Chinese troops moving across the river earlier in the night. The tracks stretched across the snow in astonishing numbers. None of the Marines yet appreciated what that truly meant.
The Marines followed the river cautiously through the remainder of the night. Several times they dropped and waited to evade Chinese troops. Each time it was progressively more difficult to get going again as the cold, exhaustion and hunger consumed them. Eventually the lights of Hagaru-ri came into view and the firing ahead gradually diminished as the surviving elements of Task Force Drysdale reached refuge. Behind them, the sounds of battle also began fading as the isolated rear sections of the convoy exhausted their ammunition and were overwhelmed.
As the temperature plunged toward forty degrees below zero, every mile became agony. The survivors could no longer feel their feet. Wet socks had frozen solid inside the shoepacs while weapons and webbing stiffened beneath layers of ice. Joe’s hands were brutally numb without his gloves and Toogood and Hayes had icy legs from crossing the deepest section of the river. The men concentrated simply on placing one foot ahead of the other through the snow and darkness.
Near dawn they were finally challenged again – this time it was an American outpost at the perimeter at Hagaru-ri.
Trip flares and grenade wires covered the approaches to the American positions while machine guns searched constantly into the darkness beyond the wire. Chinese attacks had struck repeatedly through the night and the perimeter remained under pressure from every direction. Wounded men crowded the aid stations while engineers continued expanding the frozen airstrip under intermittent fire.
Cruse led the survivors through the lines shortly after dawn. Only then, beneath the lights and confusion of the perimeter, did the true extent of their condition become obvious. Payne’s face had frozen beneath the blood from the wound above his eye. The Marines’ boots had long since frozen solid inside the shoepacs. Some of the men could barely walk. Others had already lost sensation entirely from the knees downward.
Casualties from the convoy arrived alongside wounded Marines from the Chinese assaults against the perimeter itself. Dead and wounded lay crowded together in the snow outside aid tents while stretcher bearers moved continuously between the defensive lines and the medical area. Morphine, plasma, blankets, and ammunition all arrived across the newly carved airstrip while Chinese troops occupied the ridges overlooking the basin.
The survivors from Cruse’s group were directed into a warming tent where the Americans cut the frozen shoepacs away from their feet because the boots had frozen solid to flesh and socks. A new pain came when circulation returned to their extremities. Three members of the group suffered catastrophic frostbite injuries. Albert Toogood eventually lost part of his foot. Others lost toes or portions of their feet entirely. Cruse and Payne escaped comparatively lightly, though even they suffered severe frostbite that continued troubling them for the remainder of their lives.
The treatment available at Hagaru-ri remained primitive. The Marines were forbidden from placing their feet near the stove inside the warming tent because rapid heating could worsen the injuries. Instead, American medical personnel issued alcohol — likely surgical spirit — while attempting gradually to restore circulation. It provided a surreal warmth and numbness against the sounds of battle outside the tent during the night.
The Marines at Hagaru-ri fought continuously while engineers lengthened the frozen runway enough to evacuate casualties by aircraft. Small spotter planes began carrying out the walking wounded one or two at a time, flying low over Chinese-held hillsides where enemy troops regularly fired upon the aircraft.
Eventually Cruse and the other frostbite casualties were flown south from Hagaru-ri aboard small observation aircraft operating from the frozen strip. From there they were transferred through Hungnam to the American hospital ship U.S.S. Consolation anchored offshore where Joe remained for several days while doctors attempted to save damaged tissue in his feet.
The Marines watched blackened skin split and peel away while swollen flesh slowly regained circulation. Payne later remembered assuming at one stage that he would lose multiple toes permanently. The front portions of his feet had turned completely black — polished black beneath the ward lighting. American doctors admitted openly that the outcome remained uncertain.
Cruse and the lighter casualties were eventually transferred onward to Japan aboard the transport ship U.S.S. Breckenridge in order to clear space aboard the hospital vessel.
The journey south revealed the wider cost of Chosin. Men crowded the decks and passageways wrapped in blankets and bandages. Amputees lay beside frostbite victims while surgeons and corpsmen moved continuously among them.
Frostbite cases alone numbered in the thousands across the United Nations forces. Marines arrived missing fingers, toes, feet, or entire limbs. Others carried gunshot wounds or shell fragments suffered during the withdrawal through Toktong Pass and Hell Fire Valley. Several American casualties suffered from frozen hands where exposed skin had adhered instantly to weapons and vehicle metal during the fighting.
In Japan, Cruse entered a long and frustrating recovery where he and the other Royal Marines spent weeks moving through hospitals. The survivors eventually learned the full scale of what had happened inside Hell Fire Valley. More than twenty Royal Marines from 41 Commando had been killed during the convoy battle alone. Others disappeared into Chinese captivity after the rear of the column was overrun. Marines who survived the encirclement carried memories of abandoned trucks, frozen bodies beside the road, and the long lines of dead later recovered during the fighting withdrawal south.
The Marines who escaped Hell Fire Valley carried with them the knowledge that many of the men they had trained beside at Bickleigh — boys and veterans alike — remained somewhere in the frozen Korean mountains where Task Force Drysdale had been torn apart on the road to Hagaru-ri. It was learned later that Chris Hill, who had been presumed dead, was in fact alive and taken prisoner. It had become a ‘very sensitive subject’ since and Corporal Cruse was questioned about the circumstances when he returned to the United Kingdom in early 1951.
Hill had shown no signs of life when they placed him in the truck. Under continuous fire, with men dying around them and Chinese troops closing on the convoy, the Marines had done everything possible for him. Learning later that Hill had survived and been taken prisoner came as a surprise to everyone involved.
One interviewing officer (in one of many interviews) ‘who showed little understanding of conditions that night in Hell Fire Valley, asked, “Did you take Corporal Hill’s pulse?” Corporal Cruse very facetiously replied, “If I had the facilities, I would have arranged for a P.U.L.H.E.E.M.S.!”’ That being the ‘full top to toe medical examination given regularly to all Royal Marines.’ It was a bitter reception for a man who had just fought his way out of Hell Fire Valley, but it was characteristic of Cruse that he met the question with sarcasm rather than anger. The experience did nothing to deter him from continuing his service.