Combat· Korean War
Fox Hill 5-Day Siege at Toktong Pass
Toktong Pass was the high saddle on the road between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri, and whoever held it controlled the lifeline between the cut-off Marine regiments.
Fox Company, 7th Marines was posted alone on a hill commanding the pass and was immediately surrounded when the Chinese offensive broke. For five days and nights the company held its hilltop perimeter against repeated assaults in brutal cold, its dwindling ranks fighting from frozen foxholes, resupplied only by air and sustained by the certainty that the pass had to be kept open. The defenders inflicted enormous losses on the attackers while their own dead and wounded mounted, and they were finally relieved by a battalion that marched over the mountains to reach them. The stand of Fox Company at Toktong Pass became one of the most celebrated small-unit defensive actions in Marine Corps history.
Record no. 616