[451] Narrative of Capt N. A. Canzona, 28 Mar 56.
Seldom in Marine history have supporting arms played as vital a part as during this night at Hagaru. It is possible that a disaster was averted on East Hill when the Marines of Captain Benjamin S. Read’s How Battery shifted trails and plugged the hole in the line with howitzer fires alone. Lieutenant Colonel Banks and Major Walter T. Warren, commanding the antitank company of the 7th Marines, acted as observers. Reporting by telephone to the gun pits, they directed the sweating gunners so accurately that an enemy attack would have come up against a curtain of fire.[452]
[452] Capt Benjamin S. Read (as told to Hugh Morrow): “Our Guns Never Got Cold,” _Saturday Evening Post_, ccxxiii (7 Apr 51), 145.
Captain Strohmenger’s Dog Battery had been attached to 3/1 so long that a high degree of co-ordination existed. His 105s fired about 1200 rounds that night, and POW interrogations disclosed that enemy concentrations in rear areas were repeatedly broken up.
When CCF guns replied, shortly before midnight, there was danger of a fuel or ammunition dump being hit and starting a chain reaction of detonations in the crowded perimeter. Strohmenger ordered five of his howitzers to cease fire while he moved the sixth out about 150 yards to act as a decoy. Its flashes drew fire from the enemy, as he had hoped, revealing the positions of the Chinese artillery. Dog Battery officers set up two aiming circles and calculated the range and deflection. Then the command was given for all six Marine howitzers to open up. The enemy guns were silenced for the night. A later survey established that two CCF 76mm guns had been destroyed and two others removed.[453]
The 60mm mortars of the two rifle companies fired a total of more than 3200 rounds; and on both fronts the heavy machine guns of Weapons Company added tremendously to the fire power. Illuminating shells being scarce, two Korean houses on the Item Company’s front were set ablaze by orders of Lieutenant Fisher. The flames seemed to attract CCF soldiers like moths, and the machine guns of the two tanks stationed here reaped a deadly harvest. Curiously enough, the Chinese apparently did not realize what excellent targets they made when silhouetted against the burning buildings.