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"I've never been so damn miserable in my entire life."
-Cpl Mike Alessandrini
Weapons Co, 2d Bn, 1st Marines
On 12 March 1952, the First Marine Division had a distinguished visitor. In midmorning Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet, USA, commander of the Eighth United States Army in Korea, arrived at the division command post to confer with the division's commanding general, Major General John T. Selden. It was not a social call. LTG Van Fleet had come to brief MajGen Selden on a major development. The lstMarDiv was going to be moving. The entire Eighth Army was going to be moving.
Dubbed Operation Mixmaster, the move would involve nothing less than the total realignment of Eighth Army forces across the entire width of Korea. All told, it would entail the movement of more than 200,000 men and all their equipment over distances ranging from 25 to more than 150 road miles.
For the 1stMarDiv the operation would mean the longest movement of any Eighth Army unit, a lateral shift completely across Korea. After six months of defensive actions along what was called the Minnesota Line in eastern Korea, the division was to sidestep all the way to the Korean West Coast to take up new positions on the Jamestown Line. To accomplish this, the division would have to traverse nearly 160 miles of roads that left much to be desired in weather conditions that ranged from marginal to atrocious.
After outlining the lstMarDiv's new assignment LTG Van Fleet dropped his bomb. The division would have to be in place in its new sector by 1 April. MajGen Selden had exactly 20 days to complete an incredibly complex logistical operation involving nearly 30,000 Marines and their equipment. In the words of the division's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 (Operations), then-Lieutenant Colonel Gordon D. Gayle, "This presented many logistic problems beyond belief." Colonel Robert A. McGill, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4 (Logistics), and his staff were going to have their work cut out for them.
What had brought all this about? Two things: the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) and the geography of Korea.
After the horrific casualties of the spring and summer of 1951, casualties that had wrecked the CCF, the CCF high command had begun...