The pale, yellow sun slipped behind the ridges to the west just before 5 p.m. on November 27, and in the sudden darkness the temperatures plummeted to minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit; a 20 m.p.h. Siberian wind howled off the bald faces of ugly saw-toothed mountains that seemed to frown down upon Smith’s huddled Marines. One must think that a Gyrene trained in lightning amphibious strikes (which is why Army brat MacArthur nevertheless chose his rival Marine Corps for the Inchon landing) wondered how he ended up freezing his tail off high in the windswept Korean mountains eighty miles from the Sea of Japan. But such thoughts would have evaporated when the peaceful night was suddenly lit up by star shells and the silence broken by the unnerving clanging of gongs and the blowing of bugles followed by an eruption of small arms and mortar fire.
The Chinese attack Marine commander Smith feared had come.
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