On the Camel's Head

In a muddy foxhole in central Korea crouched battlewise Colonel William Harris, commander of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The colonel was unshaven and bone tired; his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. A sodden G.I. blanket around his shoulders inadequately shielded him from the pouring rain. "This," said the colonel, "is the worst one we've had yet."

In the Hwachon Reservoir area, six miles above the 38th parallel, Colonel Harris' regiment was in a desperate fight for control of floodwaters--a scrap such as U.S. troops had not seen since the early part of 1945, when First Army doughfeet fought through the Huertgen Forest to seize the Roer River dams in Germany's Rhineland.

Threat of Flood. The Hwachon dam, 275 ft. high and Korea's third largest, lies at the end of a spit of land shaped like a camel's head, between the western arm of the reservoir and a bend of the Pukhan River. U.S. officers knew that if the Chinese opened the dam's 18 sluice gates simultaneously, they would create a bothersome flood in the Pukhan valley; if they shattered the dam with explosives, a terrible wall of water, 50 to 60 ft. high, would plunge down the valley and cut the U.N. line in two. Colonel Harris, in position at the base of the Hwachon camel's head, ordered one of his battalions to advance on the dam (at the tip of the camel's nose) and destroy the gate-operating machinery.

Before his men could reach their objective, the enemy opened ten of the dam's gates, released millions of gallons of water into the river valley. The flood reached seven feet in some gorges, forced U.S. engineers to cut two pontoon bridges (to save them from being swept away), then quickly subsided. Meanwhile, the attacking battalion was having a rough time. Murderous artillery and mortar fire forced it back.

Next day the troopers attacked again. Said Lieut. Albert Moses, commanding G Company: "We pushed off at 7:30 a.m., 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 Assault. Soon the whole 7th Regiment was in the fight. The sodden weather barred air support. Colonel Harris' most useful field pieces -- 105-mm. howitzers--could not get up the muddy road. A bulldozer at work widening the road for six-by-six trucks got stuck, which meant that ammunition had to come up by jeep. Colonel Harris decided to launch an amphibious assault.

In the 7th's command post, a lieutenant barked shrilly into a telephone: "Yes, goddamit, I said motorboat mechanics! The colonel wants some motorboat mechanics and he wants 'em quickly. Scratch around and see if you can find anyone who knows anything about motorboats, and send 'em the hell up here!"

The 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.

Individual as well as collective U.S. valor ran high during the fight on Hwachon's camel's head. One sergeant who wanted to rejoin his unit in spite of a broken foot protested violently against evacuation. "It ain't broken, it ain't broken," he cried to a medical corpsman. "I'm going back up!" The corpsman applied pressure to the foot, moved the broken bones. The sergeant's face contorted with pain, but he uttered no sound. The corpsman shook his head, then ordered the fighter out of combat.

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