The last direct confrontation with the enemy at Vegas had occurred that morning, about 1100, when five Chinese unconcernedly walked up to the outpost, apparently to surrender. Then, suddenly, they began throwing grenades and firing their automatic weapons. The little delegation was promptly dispatched by two Marine fire teams. Three CCF soldiers were killed and two taken prisoners, one of whom later died.

As darkness fell on the 30th, Marine artillery fired heavy harassing and interdiction missions and regimental TOTs on enemy supply routes and assembly areas. Although the shoot was dual-purposed, both to prevent another Chinese attempt at retaking Vegas and to foil a possible diversionary probe elsewhere in the division sector, neither situation developed. For the fourth consecutive night, giant searchlights from the Army’s 2d Platoon, 61st Field Artillery Battery illuminated the battlefield to spotlight the enemy withdrawal routes. Two of the quadruple .50 caliber machine gun mounts from the 1st Provisional AAA-AW Battery were also displaced to MLR positions in anticipation of trouble, but the CCF had apparently had enough of a thoroughly bloodied nose from the Marine fighters and decided to call it quits.

By daybreak, the Vegas sentry forces could report that things had been relatively quiet—the first time in five interminably long nights—and Companies D and E, 5th Marines, which had been watchdogging it at the outpost moved back to the MLR. At 0800, the 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, reverted to parent control, and by noon, reliefs were under way not only for Vegas but for Corinne, Dagmar, Hedy, and Bunker in the 1st Marines sector. A 5th Marines body recovery detail, meanwhile, had moved out to search the draws.

If ground action was light on the 31st, supporting arms activity was a different story, starting with seven MPQ drops on enemy artillery positions and ammunition caves in the early hours of darkness. Between 0650 and 1900, 23 air strikes were flown in the Vegas-Reno area by VMA-121 ADs and AUs of -212 and -323, MAG-12 squadrons, as well as three quartets of Air Force Thunderjets dispatched by Fifth Air Force. Artillery fired a total of 800 rounds on 156 enemy concentrations, again with 4.2-inch mortars from the 461st Infantry Battalion reinforcing 1/11 fires on hostile mortars, ammunition dumps, and supply points. If the outgoing was aimed at discouraging Communist plans for new acquisitions, their incoming had dropped to a new low in comparison with the heightened activity of the past five days. A total of 699 rounds was reported in the division sector, most of it falling in 5th Marines territory.

Aftermath384

Recapture and defense of the Vegas outpost was one of the intense, contained struggles which came to characterize the latter part of the Korean War. The action developed into a five-day siege involving over 4,000 ground and air Marines and was the most bloody action that Marines on the western front had yet engaged in. Its cost can be seen, in part, by the casualties sustained by the 1st Marine Division. The infantry strength of two battalions was required to retake Outpost Vegas and defend it against successive Chinese counterattacks. A total of 520 Marine replacements were received during the operation. Marine casualties totaled 1,015, or 116 killed, 441 wounded/evacuated, 360 wounded/not evacuated, and 98 missing, of which 19 were known to be prisoners. Losses for the critical five-day period represented 70 percent of division casualties for the entire month—1,488 killed, wounded, and missing (not including 128 in the KMC sector).

Enemy casualties were listed conservatively as 2,221. This represented 536 counted killed, 654 estimated killed, 174 counted wounded, 853 estimated wounded, and 4 prisoners. The Marines, moreover, in the five days of furious fighting had knocked out the 358th CCF Regiment, numbering between 3,000 and 3,500 men, and destroyed its effectiveness as a unit.

Throughout the Vegas operation, the 1st Marine Air Wing had flown 218 combat missions against the Nevada Cities hills (63 percent of the entire month’s total 346 CAS missions), bombing and strafing enemy weapons positions, bunkers, ammunition dumps, trenches, and troops. On the 27th and 28th, while heavy fighting raged in both the Marine and 7th Army Division sectors, Marine Air Group 33 pilots flew 75 sorties—resulting in their highest daily sortie rate and air hours since December 1952. The March 28th date was a noteworthy one for MAG-12, too. It established a new record for combat sorties and bomb tonnage unloaded on the enemy in a single day; the group executed 129 sorties and dropped 207.64 tons of bombs and napalm.

Although restricted on two days by weather conditions, close air support was effectively used throughout the Vegas Cities operation. A total of 81 four-aircraft flights dropped approximately 426 tons of explosives in CAS missions. Smoke and flare planes—despite a shortage of both flare planes and flares385—were employed throughout the period as were the rotary aircraft of the two helicopter squadrons, the latter for casualty evacuation operations.

Tanks, provided by the Company A direct support tank company, were used day and night, firing from nine positions along the MLR. Their effective use to mark air targets was of particular importance in connection with their support role, while the tank light also helped to provide illumination of the objective area in hours of darkness. Approximately 7,000 rounds of 90mm tank ammunition were fired.

During these five tense days the enemy deluged Marine positions with 45,000 rounds of artillery, mortar, and mixed fire. Indicative of the savage pounding the Vegas area took is the fact that incoming Chinese artillery for the full two-week period from 1–15 March totaled only 3,289 rounds. Marine efforts to defend, counterattack, secure, and hold the Vegas outpost against repeated Chinese assaults were “marked by maximum use of and coordination with various supporting arms and organic weapons.”386 Three light artillery battalions, two medium battalions, two 8-inch batteries, one 4.5-inch rocket battery, and two companies of 4.2-inch mortars fired a combined total of 104,864 rounds between 27–31 March; the 11th Marines and its heavy Army reinforcing elements, in support of 5th and 7th Marines units, executed 332 counterbattery and 666 countermortar missions. Of the total number fired, 132 were air observed.

The artillery shelling was the hottest during a 24-hour period ending at 1600 on 28–29 March. During this time 35,809 rounds were fired (33,041 from the four Marine battalions). This even surpassed the previous record of 34,881 rounds fired during a one-day period in the Bunker Hill defense of August 1952. A new one-day battalion total for West Korean fighting was also set on the 28th; 1/11 fired 11,079 rounds, exceeding the record of 10,652 set by 3/11 during the Bunker Hill fighting.

Marines at a rear area supply point achieved another record. In a 24-hour period, during the heavy fighting on 28–29 March, 130 men handled 2,841 tons of ammunition. Second Lieutenant Donald E. Spangler, an ammunition platoon commander with the 1st Ordnance Battalion, who had but 13 hours’ sleep in the entire five days of fighting, proudly noted that his unit had “more than doubled the tonnage that the U.S. Army says a man can handle in 14 hours.”387

As for the men on the front line, besides the Medal of Honor winners, 10 Marines were awarded the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest combat award. Nine citations were for the Vegas action and one for the 1st Marines defense of Dagmar, in staving off an enemy penetration on the night of the 26th.

Battlefront tactics employed by the CCF in its assault of the Vegas Cities outposts were largely consistent with their previous strategy. As in the past, the enemy launched simultaneous attacks against several Marine positions in attempt to fragment defensive artillery firepower. Characteristically, the enemy preceded his thrust with heavy preassault concentrations of artillery and mortar fire. He also took advantage of the twin ploys of surprise and overwhelming strength, with wave after wave of Chinese rolling over the objective. Innovative techniques consisted of scaling ladders, fashioned from lightweight but sturdy bamboo, which were used to traverse Marine wire defenses, and of having an artillery liaison officer attached to infantry squads to better direct supporting fires during the attack. Analysis of Chinese firepower tactics indicated deliberate counterbattery efforts by the CCF, although this employment of artillery was secondary to its support of ground troops.

Actually, the Chinese attack on the forward Marine outposts the night of the 26th appeared to have been part of an overall reinvigorated spring assault. Opening gun of this offense had been fired three nights earlier, on the 23d, when they swept over an Army hill defense at Old Baldy, 25 miles northeast of the Marine Vegas Hills. Despite heavy Allied gunfire and bombing by Air Force and Marine planes under Fifth Air Force flight orders, the Chinese had clung to the hill, burrowed deeply, and resisted all efforts to be dislodged. After three days of fighting, U.S. 7th Division troops had abandoned the Old Baldy hill at dawn on the 26th. The CCF, apparently emboldened by this success, that same night had launched a series of probes at nine UN outposts on the Korean far western front in an attempt to further extend their frontline acquisitions.

Following the loss of Reno, a new outpost, Elko, was established on Hill 47, southeast of Carson and 765 yards from the MLR, to prevent the enemy from using the Hill 47 position as an attack and patrol route to the MLR. In addition to this new platoon-strength outpost, the Marines substantially shored up Vegas from its former platoon garrison to a detachment consisting of 2 officers and 133 enlisted men.

Headlines had told Americans at home and the free peoples around the world the story of the “Nevada Cities” in Korea and the Marines’ five-day stand there to prevent loss of critical UNC territory. The event that marked an official “well done” to the Marines themselves was a message from the Commandant, General Shepherd, who on 30 March sent the following dispatch to General Pollock, CG, 1st Marine Division:

In turn, General Pollock congratulated the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing of General Megee and its six participating squadrons (VMAs-121, -212, -323, VMFs-115, -311, and VMF(N)-513). Citing the close air support missions of the Marine flyers during the operation, General Pollock noted that the air strikes of the 28th were “particularly well executed and contributed materially to the success of the 1st Marine Division in retaking and holding the objective.”389

Plaudits had also come to the 1st Marine Division from the Korean Minister of Defense, Pai Yung Shin,390 the day immediately preceding the Vegas attack. On 25 March, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation streamer,391 for action from 26 October 1950 to 15 February 1953, had been placed on the division colors in ceremonies at the division command post, attended by the Korean Defense Minister; Vice Admiral Woon Il Sohn, Chief of Korean Naval Operations; Major General Hyan Zoon Shin, Commandant of the Korean Marine Corps; General Pollock, division commander, and his troops. The event marked the fourth Korean PUC awarded to Marine units since the beginning of the war.

A directive at the end of the month put the 7th Marines on the alert to move into 5th Marines positions in the right regimental sector. This was to be accomplished on 4–5 April when, after 68 days on line, the 5th Marines moved south to Camp Rose to become the division reserve regiment. The prospect of a new stage in the off-and-on truce negotiations had also come late in the month. On 28 March, the Communists informed the UN of their willingness to discuss the Allied proposal for return of sick and wounded prisoners. This exchange had originally been suggested by the UN more than a year earlier, in December 1951. Notification of the new Chinese intentions came, ironically, on a day when the Vegas outpost fighting was at its height.

As the month closed on the Vegas chapter, Marines on line and in the reserve companies who had just sweated through the bloodiest exchange of the war on the I Corps front to date added their own epitaph. With a touch of ungallantry that can be understood, they called the disputed crest of Vegas “the highest damn beachhead in Korea.”