War: THE BATTLE OF NO NAME RIDGE

TIME Correspondent James Bell was with the U.S. Marines on the Naktong front last week. His report:

NO NAME RIDGE is a barren, useless place with a few scrub bushes and a patch of reddish soil in the center, the result of a landslide in some forgotten rainy season. To the right, a dark gully scars its side. It is called No Name Ridge for the quite straightforward reason that it has no name. But No Name Ridge will not be forgotten by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Early one morning last week, a U.S. Marine assault force prepared to storm No Name Ridge. For 5 minutes, the height was pounded by U.S. artillery. Then for a quarter of an hour Marine Corsair fighter planes raked it with bombs, rockets and machine guns. After this there was another 10-minute artillery barrage; then the Corsairs came back over for final strafing runs.

So Much Guts. As the Marines advanced down the valley toward the ridge they were met with a hail of fire. From the left rear came the angry eruption of a machine gun. Then another machine gun opened from the valley floor to the right rear as the marines started up No Name Ridge. From the top of the hill came more machine-gun fire, interlaced with blasts from other automatic weapons and mortars.

Hell burst around the leathernecks as they moved up the barren face of the ridge. Everywhere along the assault line, men dropped. To continue looked impossible. But, all glory forever to the bravest men I ever saw, the line did not break. The casualties were unthinkable, but the assault force never turned back. It moved, fell down, got up and moved again.

"I never saw men with so much guts," said Marine Brigadier General Edward Craig, as he watched through his glasses. Craig's hand trembled slightly, but his mouth was as determined as the thin line of marines on the forbidding face of the ridge.

For more than an hour the assault force stumbled and struggled forward against a solid wall of fire. A Red mortar was knocked out by artillery, but the machine guns and automatic weapons continued without letup. As the marines neared the crest, their line ripped apart; the North Koreans rose from their positions and came forward throwing grenades. The Reds were cut down but not before their grenades had done terrible work among the marines.

The marine line wavered and paused; it withdrew a bit and waited. Then with a final thrust, some ten marines reached the northern crest. They never came back.

Finally, the assault force was ordered to withdraw. Men too exhausted to cry crawled back down the ridge with no name. For all their terrible sacrifice the ridge was still in enemy hands.

Scribner's Characters. The ridge became quiet. Medical corpsmen, leading stretcher-bearing teams of brave and unflinching South Koreans, began to cross the valley to pick up the wounded. They carried the wounded through the valley at the foot of the ridge and up a narrow trail to an aid station just beyond the bean fields where General Craig sat sweeping the height with his field glasses. I sat there beside him, wondering if the stream of litter bearers would ever stop coming up out of that damned valley.