Combat· Korean War
Outpost War 1952
By the late summer of 1952 the fighting along the Jamestown Line escalated from nightly patrol skirmishes into a series of pitched battles for the key outposts that screened the main line of resistance.
This was the height of the outpost war, a grinding contest in which the Chinese hurled battalion-strength attacks behind devastating artillery barrages against individual hills, and the Marines fought to hold or retake them at close quarters. The struggle for Bunker Hill in August opened the most intense stretch, followed by costly fights for a string of outposts and culminating in the savage battle for the Hook in October, the largest single action of the year in the Marine sector. The fighting was inordinately costly for ground that changed hands by the yard, and a large share of all Marine casualties in Korea fell in this period. It was siege warfare in the truest sense, waged for outcrops that mattered only because both sides chose to fight for them.
Engagements in this conflict (6)
Record no. 48