Battle at Anping

Lieut. Douglas A. Cowin's 42-man Marine detachment had a routine mission: to carry six truckloads of supplies up the 75-mile route from Tientsin to Peiping. Because they had been fired on before in this area, bitterly contested by Chinese Communist and Nationalist armies, the marines traveled in an armed convoy of weapons carriers, staff cars and jeeps. At high noon, on a paved road near Anping, the mission ceased to be routine.

From the dense fields of kaoliang lining each side of the highway came a spatter of small-arms fire. With a combat-developed reflex motion, the marines sprang from their vehicles, took cover in a ditch and fired back. Mortar shells and machine-gun bullets flushed the ambushers--Chinese riflemen, some clad in loincloths, some in the bluish uniforms of Chinese Communists.

Lieut. Cowin fell, fatally wounded. Under Major Fred. J. Freese, a U.S. Army Special Service officer, the marines dug in for an all-day fight. But, after four hours, they had run out of mortar shells. Major Freese seized on a lull, ordered his men to make a break. In Peiping that night the weary detachment completed its mission. Its casualties: three killed, twelve wounded.

Marine headquarters refused to make accusations. Communist headquarters at Yenan was less circumspect; it announced that Red units had fought marines at Anping, called the battle a consequence of U.S. interference in China. U.S. authorities noted that the convoy had been taking supplies not to Chinese Nationalists, but to a tripartite (Nationalist-Communist-U.S.) truce team trying to avert open civil war in the Peiping area.

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