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Korea veteran's peace of mind is one detail away
Saturday, November 11, 2000 By Robert Dvorchak, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Robert D. Kirchner says it took five seconds to become a veteran.
It happened to him 50 years ago this month on a hill in Korea when a Chinese army marked the First Marine Division for annihilation, launching an attack with bugles, cymbals, screams and mortars in the wee hours of a frozen morning.
"It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck," said Kirchner, now 71.
He was a private first class in Fox Company, assigned to hold open a pass linking two Marine regiments with their supply base during the epic battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Of the 265 men who were dug in atop Fox Hill, Kirchner was one of only 27 Marines able to walk off after a six-night, five-day battle fought in temperatures of about 30 degrees below zero.
Still suffering from frostbite-related disability, he lives today in quiet retirement in Bethel Park. But Kirchner has been saluted as a Marine legend by a corps commandant, had his hand kissed by wounded comrades and is regularly invited to speak to raw recruits at Parris Island, S.C.
If there's anything he wants people to realize this Veterans Day, which follows by a day the 225th birthday of the Marine Corps, it's how savage war is and why it's important to remember those who served.
"Anybody who knows what war is like doesn't want any part of it," Kirchner said.
He had never heard of Korea and had never killed anyone before, but he was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve when war broke out in 1950. Married and the father of an infant daughter, Kirchner went from his job at Rosedale Foundry and Machine Co. on the North Side to a legendary battle.
The Chosin Reservoir campaign was supposed to be the final offensive of the war, but Communist China had infiltrated an army into North Korea.
On the night of Nov. 27-28, 1950, a force of 60,000 soldiers surrounded the 15,000-member Marine Division and attacked. Their plan was to cut off Marine formations and destroy them piecemeal, including Kirchner's Fox Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.
"I never saw so many Chinese in my life. There could have been a million of them. They just kept coming and coming and coming," Kirchner said.
He was so engrossed in the battle that he fought for eight hours without his boots on. Over the next six nights and five days, he never slept and didn't eat, except for the snow he swallowed because his canteens were frozen.
It was so cold that his breath would freeze on his parka, and corpsmen kept containers of morphine in their mouths to keep them from freezing.
A grim pattern developed. The Chinese would overrun the hill and the Marines would regroup and take it back, over and over.
"It was fix bayonets and charge back up," Kirchner said. "We killed them with bayonets. We killed them with Ka-Bar knives. When we ran out of ammunition, we had to strip stuff off the dead Chinese or our own buddies."
One night, a Marine who got caught out in front of the line jumped into Kirchner's foxhole. He held a bayonet to the man's throat until he realized he was a fellow Marine. Then Kirchner handed him a spare rifle.
"We'll probably get killed, but I'm going to take some of them with me," he told his new comrade.
Of the five men who began the battle in that foxhole, only Kirchner survived.
"We were down to one man a hole," Kirchner said. "You make peace with God. You do a lot of crying, feel sorry for yourself, ask yourself what am I fighting this war for. I was just scared to death. I just wanted to come back alive."
He had a picture of his 8-month-old daughter in his pack, but it was lost during one of the Chinese attacks.
If Fox Company hadn't held the pass open, two regiments of Marines -- about 8,000 men -- would have been cut off by the enemy. Fox Company refused to yield, but at a terrible human cost.
"People ought to know what it's like to run a bayonet through someone and have him puke on you, to see your buddies with their arms blown off, to have a buddy in foxhole get shot and take four hours to die before he drowns in his own blood," Kirchner said. "We took prisoners and we shot them. A lot of people don't want to hear that. But we couldn't spare anybody to guard them."
On the other hand, Kirchner was at one point the last line of defense in front of a tent housing the wounded. Had he been overrun, the Chinese surely would killed every one of the wounded. One of them, who would later be awarded the Medal of Honor, kissed Kirchner's hand for standing firm.
But one of the other things he had to do in the heat of battle was use a dead buddy as a shield, like a sandbag. His name was Roger Gonzalez, and at battle's end, his corpse had absorbed more than 200 bullets meant for Kirchner.
During a reunion a few years ago in San Antonio, Texas, Kirchner met the Gonzalez family.
"I cried. I told them how sorry I was. They forgave me, which was a huge relief for me. I had carried that with me for a long time. They knew I was the last person with him before he died."
When a battalion led by future commandant Ray Davis reached Fox Hill, relieved that the Marines still held it, the 5th and 7th Regiments were able to get back to the supply base at Hagaru.
Kirchner was among the Marines in that 7-mile march, hobbling along on frozen feet. Before they entered the perimeter, the defenders of the pass were among those who sang the "Marine Corps Hymn."
"We were a proud bunch," he said.
At an aid station, Kirchner's boots were removed. His toes were in a big clump like a blood blister, and tissue from his heels peeled off when his socks were removed.
He had never been on an airplane until he was evacuated to a MASH unit. Ultimately, he was sent to Philadelphia Naval Hospital, where a doctor drew circles around his lower legs to mark the pattern for amputation. Miraculously, he recovered without having to see his feet cut off.
The Marines, despite horrendous casualties, continued to fight their way back to the sea, a trek of 78 miles against impossible odds. Their action earned the division a Presidential Unit Citation.
"I don't like the word retreat. It sounds like defeat. We were anything but defeated," Kirchner said.
After he recovered, Kirchner went back to work. He had three more children. Most people have never heard of Chosin Reservoir, a forgotten battle in a forgotten war.
"People didn't believe me anyway, so I just shut up. We did our job and that was it," Kirchner said. "I got a Purple Heart and a thank you."
The Marines never forgot, however. A reunion of the Chosin Few, as they are called, is scheduled for next month in Camp Pendleton, Calif.
One of the most cherished traditions in the Corps is, whenever possible, to bring everybody back home, including the dead.
But under the circumstances, some dead Marines were left on those bleak hills around Chosin Reservoir.
Kirchner wants to return one day to that far-off battlefield with Ray Davis to erect memorials for comrades who didn't make it out. The markers have already been carved in stone.
"We did leave some dead behind. It just bugged me all these years," Kirchner said.
"I'll go back if I have to crawl up those hills. Then I'm going to be at peace for the rest of my life. Until then, I'm not."
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