By late March of 1953, the Korean War remained mostly static as peace negotiations went back and forth. U.N. and communist forces launched repeated bloody assaults to secure control over countless hills and ridges along the frontline. The men of the 1st Marine Division were ordered to guard a series of hilltop outposts known as "The Cities."
The communists had avoided attacking the area in recent months, but they began moving thousands of men to the frontline. Lt. Col. John I. Williamson knew something big was about to happen in the sector. The commanding officer of the 1st Tank Battalion put his premonition in writing.
"I'm sort of expecting all hell to break loose within the next two nights," Williamson wrote. "Sort of a hunch."
Two days later, Chinese artillery opened fire on the chain of combat outposts. What followed became the bloodiest fighting Marines endured on the Jamestown Line during the entire war.
The Marines Defend the Outposts
The Marines had nicknamed their forward positions "The Cities," a series of outposts called Reno, Carson, Vegas, Berlin, East Berlin and the Reno Block. The set of Nevada-inspired names came from Lt. Col. Anthony Caputo, executive officer of the 5th Marine Regiment, who saw the isolated hilltops as a dangerous bet.
"It's a gamble if we can hold them," Caputo said.
Lt. Col. Jonas M. Platt's 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, defended the Nevada Cities with approximately 40 Marines and two Navy corpsmen manning each outpost. The positions served as early warning posts in front of the Main Line of Resistance, giving the main force of Marines advance notice of enemy attacks while peace talks continued at Panmunjom just miles away. Chinese commanders viewed the hilltops as valuable bargaining chips; seizing them would strengthen their position at the negotiating table and threaten Seoul.
Unlike most situations, the tactical situation favored the attackers. Carson sat 800 yards forward of the MLR, near two Chinese positions. Reno occupied the most exposed ground at 1,600 yards out, perched on terrain that made reinforcement nearly impossible under fire. Vegas, the highest point, stood 1,300 yards from the MLR.
Author Lee Ballenger described the problem in "The Final Crucible: Marines in Korea, 1953."
The outposts "were surrounded by higher ground held by the enemy, and each one depended on the others for flank defense," Ballenger wrote. "If one outpost fell, the others were as vulnerable as a stack of dominos in a hurricane."
The Chinese Attack the Nevada City Outposts
On the evening of March 26, 1953, approximately 3,500 soldiers from the Chinese 358th Regiment attacked the outposts simultaneously. The Marines defending the three positions were outnumbered nearly 30 to one. The enemy came forward in massive waves that one Marine compared to "Tartar hordes from the steppes of Mongolia."
At Carson, 1st Lt. John F. Ingalls of Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, oversaw the defenses.
"As the bombardment intensified, the men withdrew into the bunkers," Ingalls recalled. "Ammunition shortage was a problem, and I ordered them to fix bayonets."
Reno collapsed quickly under the enemy assault. The Marines who survived the initial onslaught retreated into caves carved into the hillside, but enemy soldiers began sealing the entrances. Trapped Marines "were passing out from lack of oxygen" as the air supply dwindled.
Elements of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines rushed toward Reno to break through to the trapped men. The relief force ran into a Chinese ambush at a steep slope the Marines called "The Ladder." Enemy machine guns opened fire from the high ground, cutting down Marines as they advanced. The fighting turned into hand-to-hand combat in the darkness, with Marines and Chinese soldiers grappling in the trenches and shell holes.
The relief force took devastating casualties and couldn't break through to Reno.
Sgt. Bill Janzen witnessed Pfc. Henry A. Fifield get hit by shrapnel from a mortar round that bent the barrel of his Browning Automatic Rifle.
"He didn't know if it would function or not, but said he'd take his chances with it and took off," Janzen remembered. "That was his third wound in five and a half months."
Close Combat on Vegas
At Vegas, Sgt. George Johannes of H Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines had just helped evacuate a wounded Marine when he encountered a Chinese soldier at point-blank range.
"Halfway down the hill, a gook with a burp gun appeared in the trench about 20 feet in front of me," Johannes said. "Five or six rounds from my carbine dropped him very quickly."
As Johannes reached the MLR and looked back, Vegas appeared "lit up like a Christmas tree" from the explosions and tracers crisscrossing the hilltop.
Navy corpsman Billy Rivers Penn, attached to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, fought multiple hand-to-hand battles during the chaos. A Chinese soldier stabbed him with a bayonet, driving the blade through his left leg above the ankle.
"He started to cock his rifle with the bolt action when I got my .45 and shot him in the head," Penn later said.
Penn encountered another enemy soldier moments later and "beat him unconscious with a rock." While placing a wounded Marine inside a cave, a Chinese soldier threw a satchel charge through the entrance. The explosion knocked Penn unconscious. When he came to, Chinese troops were pulling any survivors from the rubble. Penn and the others became prisoners of war.
Only Carson held. Its men in 28 fighting positions repelled wave after wave of attackers in close combat that required ka-bars and bayonets. After eight hours, enemy casualties had reached an estimated 600, four times the Marine toll so far, but the attackers controlled both Vegas and Reno.
Failed Counterattacks
Col. Lewis "Silent Lew" Walt, commanding officer of the 5th Marines, recognized the growing crisis and organized immediate counterattacks. Shortly after midnight on March 27, F Company's lead platoon pushed toward Vegas and got close enough to confirm Chinese troops on the hill before heavy fire drove them back to the MLR by 3 a.m.
Walt tried again at first light. Company D, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, under Capt. John B. Melvin attacked at 11:20 a.m. after Major General Edwin A. Pollock ordered concentrated air and artillery strikes. The intensity of the responding enemy fire support shocked even the veterans in the group.
"The noise was deafening," Melvin said later. "They would start walking the mortars toward us from every direction possible. You could only hope that the next round wouldn't be on target."
Within an hour, Melvin's first platoon was down to only nine able-bodied men. The survivors pushed through flooded rice paddies and up muddy slopes but couldn't reach the crest. Marine commanders realized the fortifications were now impregnable Chinese obstacles; they would need to destroy Vegas to retake it.
The Final Assault
On the morning of March 28, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing dropped 28 tons of bombs on Vegas in just 23 minutes. The hilltop was covered under smoke and debris as explosions walked across the Chinese positions. Some bombs landed within 450 feet of the Marines preparing to attack, close enough that the concussions knocked men off their feet. When the smoke cleared, Vegas looked like a lunar landscape, craters overlapping craters, collapsed trenches, destroyed bunkers.
E Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines led the attack to recapture Vegas. They fought their way up the bomb-shattered slopes under heavy fire, pushing through Chinese positions in brutal close-quarters combat. The fighting was savage with grenades, bayonets, and rifle butts in the remaining trenches and massive shell holes.
Tanks from Williamson’s battalion helped repel enemy reinforcements while providing direct fire support for the Marine assault. The tanks also helped haul supplies up the rough terrain as ammunition ran low.
Supporting the assault and resupply efforts was an unlikely Marine. A small Mongolian mare named Sergeant Reckless. The horse had been purchased from some locals for $250 by Lt. Eric Pederson of the Recoilless Rifle Platoon and trained to carry ammunition. The Marines had taught her to step over communication lines and barbed wire, to lie flat during shelling, and to navigate routes by memory.
As E Company fought its way up to Vegas, Reckless made trip after trip up the shell-torn trails. She would then carry wounded Marines back to the MLR.
Sgt. Harold Wadley watched her climb toward the fighting through the barrage.
"I looked back at the eastern skyline through all the smoke and swinging flare light and could hardly believe my eyes," Wadley recalled years later.
Reckless made 51 trips that day, carrying nearly 10,000 pounds of ammunition, 386 rounds for the 75mm recoilless rifles. She worked alone most of the time, moving without a handler even as shells landed around her. Shrapnel wounded her twice, once above the left eye and once in the left flank, but she kept climbing.
As E Company pushed higher on Vegas, Sgt. Daniel P. Matthews led his squad forward until machine gun fire from the peak pinned them down. The deadly fire also prevented a corpsman from evacuating a wounded Marine lying exposed in the open.
Matthews worked his way to the base of the enemy machine gun nest and leaped onto the rock fortification surrounding it. He charged the three-man crew with his rifle, taking them by surprise. The enemy turned their weapons on Matthews, seriously wounding him, but he kept fighting. He killed two gunners and forced the third to flee, silencing the gun and allowing the corpsman to reach the wounded Marine. Matthews died from his wounds moments later.
Meanwhile, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class William R. Charette moved through the chaos while treating wounded Marines. He jumped into a trench to help an injured Marine when a Chinese grenade landed next to them.
"I was scared," Charette recalled. "I knew I couldn't jump on the grenade. So I grabbed my medical bag and tried to push it away."
As he covered the wounded man's body with his own, the grenade exploded, temporarily blinding Charette and destroying his medical bag. Despite his injuries, he tore parts of his uniform to use as improvised bandages and continued treating the casualties.
At 1:13 p.m. on March 28, E Company had captured Vegas. By 2:55 p.m., the outpost was declared secure. More than 200 wounded men required treatment at aid stations established on the nearby slopes.
The Final Two Days
The enemy launched repeated counterattacks on March 29 and 30, determined to retake Vegas. Waves of infantry assaulted the battered hilltop under the cover of artillery barrages. The Marines repelled each attack, often in hand-to-hand fighting among the ruins. By 11 a.m. on March 30, the assaults finally stopped, enemy casualties had become unsustainable.
Walt made a difficult decision about Outpost Reno. It remained in Chinese hands and retaking it would cost hundreds more casualties. Worse, the enemy on Reno could flank Vegas and make that position untenable. Walt declared Reno lost and ordered Marine aircraft and artillery to destroy it. For hours, bombs and shells pounded the hilltop until nothing remained but rubble, denying its use to both sides.
Carson's Marines had held throughout the entire five-day battle, never yielding their position despite repeated assaults.
The Cost in Lives
Of the approximately 1,500 Marines engaged in the Nevada Cities battle, 1,015 became casualties, a devastating 70 percent casualty rate. The toll included 156 killed in action, 801 wounded and 19 captured. Enemy losses reached an estimated 4,000 casualties, including 1,200 killed, effectively destroying the entire 358th Regiment.
Sgt. Frank Metersky of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, recalled the violent ferocity of the battle.
"I can never forget the black Marine in the wire with half his head blown off on the trail to Vegas as you came around the turn," he wrote decades later. "It has haunted me."
One rifleman who fought on Vegas captured the battle's intensity and the uniqueness of the Marine Corps fighting to secure the area with a poignant observation. He called the contested hilltop "the highest damn beachhead in Korea."
The Nevada Cities battle led to two Medals of Honor, one posthumously for Matthews and one to Charette, who survived his wounds. The engagement also earned the Marines several Navy Crosses and Silver Stars. Reckless was awarded for his actions and promoted to staff sergeant, becoming one of only two animals to achieve a non-commissioned officer rank in Marine Corps history.
Penn survived brutal conditions as a POW before he was released in late 1953 along with 14 other survivors from the battle. Gen. Mark Clark sent a letter to Penn’s parents in Mississippi.
"I join you in your prayers of thanksgiving that your son, Billy R. Penn, has been recovered from the enemy and that he will soon be with you," wrote Clark.
After returning home, Penn attended the University of Mississippi and used his experiences from Korea to become a physician.
Walt continued his distinguished Marine Corps career, rising to four-star general. He commanded III Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam, became Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1968 and retired in 1971 after more than 34 years of service.
The Bitter End of the Korean War
Two months later, the Turkish Brigade and Army 25th Infantry Division moved into the area and faced renewed enemy pressure. This forced U.N. commanders to abandon Vegas and Carson for good. The strategic value couldn't justify the mounting casualties.
On July 27, 1953, four months after the Nevada Cities battle, an armistice ended the fighting in Korea. The battle lines froze roughly where they stood, becoming the border that divides North and South Korea today.
The Marines proved their fighting spirit and held two of the three outposts against impossible odds. According to some accounts, the Marines even sang the Marine Corps Hymn during lulls in the fighting. But the price was brutal. More than a thousand American casualties for a few hilltops that would be abandoned just weeks later, all while peace negotiators argued over prisoner exchanges and boundary lines a few miles away.
The Battle for Outpost Vegas and the surrounding hilltops proved to be the bloodiest battle for the Marine Corps in 1953 and some of the harshest fighting in the entire war. Though Sgt. Reckless remains a Marine Corps legend, the heroics shown by the thousands of Marines that fought there have often been overlooked.
