Koto-ri and the Treadway Bridge

The village of Koto-ri, about ten miles south of Hagaru-ri, was the last real position before the road dropped out of the mountains. Beyond it the road descended through the Funchilin Pass, threading a narrow gorge down to the coastal plain and the port of Hungnam. When the withdrawing column reached Koto-ri on December 7, it confronted a crisis that threatened the whole escape. Chinese engineers had reached the pass first and blown the only bridge spanning a deep, sixteen-foot-deep gorge on the road below. Without a bridge, the 1,400-vehicle train of the division—tanks, trucks, and artillery—could go no farther. The vehicles and guns would have to be destroyed and abandoned, and the column reduced to walking out on foot, carrying its wounded through a gauntlet of enemy fire, if it could make it at all. Everything the Marines had fought for would be left behind on the mountain. The answer was one of the most audacious operations of the campaign. Eight massive 2,500-pound Treadway bridge sections, each the size of a truck bed, were loaded onto C-119 Flying Boxcars and parachuted to the engineers waiting in the gorge below. The drop, on December 7, was the first major combat airdrop of bridging equipment in history. Two sections were damaged on landing—one was lost entirely—but six came down intact in the snow. Then came the harder work. Army engineers of the 58th Engineer Treadway Bridge Company worked through the freezing night under Chinese fire to drag the sections down the slope and winch them into place across the gap, bolting them to the cliff face. By December 9 the bridge was complete. At dawn the column began to cross—tanks and trucks threading the narrow span, one by one, while infantry held the heights above—and by December 11 the lead elements reached the port of Hungnam. The bridge that had fallen from the sky had opened the road to survival, and the march of the Chosin Few was nearly done.