Lt. Gen. Alpha L. Bowser Jr. USMC - Page 3

The limb that we perched on was 65 to 75 miles long, depending on where you started to measure it and where you stopped. It was serviced by a single, narrow, winding road. Both of our flanks were wide open, except for elements of the Army 7th Division to the east of the Reservoir. In a sense, our rear was also open. As our division commander, Major General Oliver P. Smith, so aptly put it: "There was no rear."

We damn well knew around mid-November that we were in serious trouble. But since the Chinese forces had not yet shown themselves in strength, we could not convince higher headquarters that we should ease back and feel our way forward to find out what might be in store for us.

All of us at Division HQ used every trick in the bag to slow our advance hoping the enemy might show his hand before we got too spread out. At the same time we were using time to build up levels of supply at selected points along the main supply route and to setting up defenses at place like Chinhung-ni, Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri. The fact that we did so proved a Godsend during our withdrawal. Gen Smith took an awful lot of unpleasant pressure from X Corps, on why we were not moving out faster.

Gen Smith also saw the wisdom of moving the Division Tactical Command Post to the foot of the Reservoir at Hagaru-ri, near the center of our badly-fragmented division. It proved to be the right move at the right time. It put us in position to communicate with the fighting elements of the division and to influence the action in a fashion that would not have possible had we remained to the rear.

The decision to leave a division rear echelon capable of getting supplies forward to us