Combat· Korean War
Drive North to Punchbowl
After breaking the Chinese spring offensive, the 1st Marine Division turned to the attack again, driving north through the rugged mountains of east-central Korea toward the Punchbowl, a great extinct-volcano basin ringed by commanding ridges.
This campaign marked the division's transition from mobile warfare to the static, positional fighting that would define the rest of the war. The Marines fought their way up to a succession of defensive phase lines, the Kansas Line and then the Hays Line, seizing the dominating high ground around the Punchbowl's northern rim in bitter ridge battles against well-entrenched North Korean and Chinese troops. As armistice talks opened and the front congealed, the fighting settled into the grim routine of holding fortified lines, patrolling no-man's-land, and contesting key hills. The campaign also saw the combat debut of helicopter-borne assault, a Marine-developed technique that pointed toward the future of warfare.
Engagements in this conflict (7)
Record no. 47