Both company fronts bristled with concertinas, trip flares, booby traps, and five-gallon cans of gasoline rigged with thermite bombs for illumination. Three probable routes of enemy attack channeled the low hills to the southwest--a main draw leading to the junction between the two company sectors, and a lesser draw providing an approach to each. The ground in front of the junction had been mined, and two tanks from the Provisional Platoon were stationed in this quarter. Detachments from Weapons Company also reinforced both rifle companies. Thus the six platoons faced the enemy in the following order: ITEM COMPANY HOW COMPANY Lt Fisher Capt Corley Lt Degerne Lt Hall Lt Needham Lt Barrett Lt Endsley Lt Mason 1st 3d 2d 1st 3d 2d Beginning at 1700, hot food was served to all hands in rotation. A fifty per cent alert went into effect after dark as the men were sent back on regular schedule for coffee and a smoke in warming tents located as close to the front as possible. The first snowflakes fluttered down about 1950, muffling the clank of the dozers at work as usual under the floodlights on the airstrip behind the How Company’s sector. Just before 2130, the expected time of CCF attack, both company commanders ordered a hundred per cent alert, but the enemy did not show up on schedule. It was just over an hour later when three red flares and three blasts on a police whistle signaled the beginning of the attack. Soon trip flares and exploding booby traps revealed the approach of probing patrols composed of five to ten men. A few minutes later, white phosphorus mortar shells scorched the Marine front line with accurate aim. The main CCF attack followed shortly afterwards, with both company sectors being hit by assault waves closing in to grenade-throwing distance. The enemy in turn was staggered by the full power of Marine supporting arms. Snowflakes reduced an already low visibility, but fields of fire had been carefully charted and artillery and mortar concentrations skillfully registered in. Still, the Communists kept on coming in spite of frightful losses. Second Lieutenant Wayne L. Hall, commanding the 3d Platoon in the center of Item Company, was jumped by three Chinese whom he killed with a .45 caliber automatic pistol after his carbine jammed. The third foe pitched forward into Hall’s foxhole.