On this date december 5, 1950 -- Reds Hack at Escape Route

Communists in Pyongyang, by Earnest Hoberecht

Tokyo, Wednesday, (UP)

Chinese Communists poured thousands of reinforcements in Northeast Korea yeserday and pushed to within 17 miles of the port of Hamhung on the escape route for 15,000 to 20,000 U.S. marines and infantrymen trapped below the Chosin reservoir.

The Marines were fighting desperately to keep open a tiny airstrip at Hagaru, one mile south of the reservoir, long enough to evacuate their wounded before making their own supreme effort to escape the trap.

To the west, other waves of Chinese occupied burning Pyongyang and began hacking at the escape route of the US Eighth Army between Pyongyang and Seoul.

Six Chinese divisions hit the Americans south of the Chosin reservoir for the sixth straight day. Trapped there around Hagaru, 37 miles northwest of Hamhung, are the U. S. marine First division and two regiments of the U.S. Seventh Division. Marine commanders said they doubted if they could hold the Hagaru airstrip- through the night. [exerpt from Syracuse Herald Journal (Syracuse, New York)
page 1, December 5, 1950]