The wing closed out its share of the Korean War 35 minutes before the cease-fire. A VMA-251 aviator, Captain William J. Foster, Jr., dropped three 2,000-pound bombs at 2125 in support of UN troops. The distinction of flying this final Marine mission over the bombline had gone, fittingly, to the wing’s newly-arrived “Black Patch” squadron. At sea, U.S. and British warships ended the 17-month naval siege by shelling Wonsan for the last time, and at 2200 the ships in the harbor turned on their lights. In compliance with the terms of the armistice, full evacuation of the WCIDU and ECIDU islands north of the 38th Parallel started at 2200. Island defense forces off both coasts at this time began a systematic destruction of their fortifications as they prepared to move south.

As early as 2100 Marine line units reported seeing Chinese soldiers forward of their own positions, policing their areas. An hour later large groups of enemy were observed along the division sector. Some “waved lighted candles, flashlights, and banners while others removed their dead and wounded, and apparently looked for souvenirs.”536 A few attempts were made by the Chinese to fraternize. One group approached a Marine listening post and asked for water and wanted to talk. Others hung up gift bags at the base of outpost Ava and shouted, “How are you? Come on over and let’s have a party,” while the Marines stared at them in silence.537 The last hostile incoming in the 1st Marine Division sector was reported at 2152 when five rounds of 82mm mortar landed on a Korean outpost, COP Camel.

Marines on line that night warily scanned the darkness in front of their trenches. Slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity the white star cluster shells began to burst over positions all along the line. Thousands of flares illuminated the sky and craggy hills along the 155-mile front, from the Yellow Sea to Sea of Japan. The war in Korea was over. Of the men from the one Marine Division and air wing committed in Korea during the three-year conflict, 4,262 had been killed in battle. An additional 26,038 Marines were wounded. No fewer than 42 Marines would receive the Nation’s highest combat decoration, the Medal of Honor, for outstanding valor—26 of them posthumously.