Late on the afternoon of 24 September 1950, Captain Robert H. Barrow’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st
Marines, secured the military crest of Hill 79 in the southwest corner of Seoul, the enemy-occupied capital of the Republic of South Korea. This momentous day for Barrow and his men began with a nervewracking crossing of the Han River in open-hatched DUKWs, the ubiquitous amphibious trucks of World War II. Debarkation on the north shore had been followed by an unorthodox passage of lines “on the fly” of the regiment’s lead battalion and the subsequent hightempo attack on Hill 79.
Now the rifle company assumed defensive positions on the objective, the men gazing in awe at the capital city arrayed to their north and east, sprawling virtually to the horizon. Thousands of North Korean Peoples’ Army (NKPA) troops lay waiting for them behind barricades or among countless courtyards and rooftops. Tens of thousands of civilians still clung to life in the battered city. The Marines were a very long way from the barren beaches of Tarawa or Peleliu.
