Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series: Outpost War - U.S. Marines from the Nevada Battles to the Armistice

When 1953 began, the Jamestown Line had become, in the words of Marine Corporal Robert Hall who fought there, "a messy, rambling series of ditches five to seven feet deep" that linked a succession of bunkers constructed of sandbags and timber and used for shelter or fighting. The trenches wandered erratically to prevent Chinese attackers who penetrated the perimeter from delivering deadly enfilade fire along lengthy, straight segments. As for the bunkers themselves, since "piles of trash, ration cans, scrap paper, and protruding stove pipes" revealed their location, the enemy "must have known where every bunker was."

A bunker, therefore, could easily become a death trap. As a result, the Marines had learned to dig and man fighting holes outside the bunkers. Hall described such a hole as "simply a niche in the forward wall of the trench, usually covered with planks and a few sandbags." Within the hole, a crude shelf held hand grenades and a sound-powered telephone linked the hole to the company command post. Along with the fighting holes, Hall and his fellow Marines dug "rabbit holes," emergency shelters near the bottom of the trench wall that provided "protection from the stray Chinese mortar round that sometimes dropped into the trench."

Some bunkers contained firing ports for .30-caliber or .50-caliber machine guns and accommodations for the crews. Chicken wire strung across the firing ports prevented Chinese assault troops from throwing grenades inside, but fire from the machine guns soon tore away the wire, which could be replaced only at night when darkness provided concealment from Chinese observers.

By night, during the early months of 1953, a cold wind usually blew from the north, sometimes bringing with it the sound of Chinese loudspeakers broadcasting English-language appeals to surrender, interspersed with country music. The enemy's propaganda tended to reflect Communist ideology, urging members of the United Nations forces to escape their capitalist masters. The Chinese, however, also tried to take advantage of the fact that the combatants in Korea were discussing a ceasefire even as they fought. Since the summer of 1951, truce talks had taken place at Kaesong and later at Panmunjom, with the United Nations delegation traveling to the site of the talks through a carefully marked demilitarized corridor. When the talks seemed to be making progress, the Chinese used a more subtle approach, trying to persuade members of the United Nations forces not to risk their lives in a war that had almost ended.