Darkness on the night of 6 November descended like a cloak over the 124th CCF Division. In the morning the Chinese had vanished. The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, encountered no opposition whatever as it occupied the southern tips of Hills 891 and 987.[287] [287] 7thMar _SAR_ 14. The mysterious disappearance of this unit, following the equally strange withdrawal of the Chinese Reds who made the first CCF contacts in the EUSAK zone, aroused no end of speculation. Officers of the 7th Marines believed that enemy losses had been heavy enough for a disabling effect. This opinion was confirmed the following year when a Marine Corps Board visited Korea for a special analytical study of Marine operations of 1950, based on all Army and Marine records available at that time as well as interviews and interrogations. The Board concluded that “the 124th CCF Division was estimated to have been rendered militarily noneffective.”[288] [288] _Marine Corps Board Study_ (hereafter _MCB Study_), II-C-16. _CCF Army Histories_, 31, states that the 124th was in action in west central Korea by the middle of November. Following the enemy’s disappearance on the night of 6–7 November, the 7th Marines occupied the southern reaches of Hills 891 and 987 while reconnoitering to the top of 891. The rest of the day and all the next was devoted to consolidating positions along the MSR and sending out patrols in a vain search for the vanished 124th CCF Division.[289] [289] 7thMar _SAR_, 14; 3/7 _SAR_, n. p.; Roach Comments, 7 May 56. On 8 November, General Almond visited the 7th Marines. Upon hearing of the valor of Captain Cooney at “How Hill,” he awarded that officer the Silver Star medal on the spot. There being neither pendant nor citation available, the Corps Commander pinned a slip of paper to Cooney’s jacket in the brief ceremony. Scrawled on the fragment was the inscription, “Silver Star Medal for Gallantry in Action--Almond.”[290] [290] Earney-Harris-Mooney interv, 20 Oct 55; CG’s Diary in X Corps _WD_, 8 Nov 50; Roach Comments, 7 May 56. While the 7th Marines advanced astride the MSR, a volunteer patrol of fifteen men, led by First Lieutenant William F. Goggin of 2/7, traced a lonely, circuitous route in the mountains to the west. Having left Chinhung-ni at 1200 on 8 November, the scouting party covered some 25 miles through perpendicular wilds during the following 26 hours. This journey brought it to the Chosin Reservoir plateau at a point just southwest of Koto-ri. Lieutenant Goggin, his slight wound the only scar of the patrol’s single clash with Chinese, radioed Colonel Litzenberg that Koto-ri was clear of enemy. He then led his party southward, and in the evening of the 9th, returned through the lines of 3/7.[291] [291] 7thMar _SAR_, 13–14; Geer, _The New Breed_, 243–247; Goggin interv.