[599] 7thMar _SAR_, 26; RCT-7 _URpt 6_; 3/7 _SAR_, n. p.; 1stMar _SAR_, 25; 3/1 _SAR_, 8; 5thMar _SAR_, 35; 1/5 _SAR_, 19; Smith, _Notes_, 1077; Sawyer Comments, 25 Oct 56. Captain Morris’ Charlie Company and a platoon of Baker Company, 1/7, moved down the MSR and secured the bridge site after a short fight. While Charlie Company outposted the area, the Baker platoon crossed behind the broken bridge and suddenly found about 50 Chinese in foxholes. “They were so badly frozen,” reported Sawyer, “that the men simply lifted them from the holes and sat them on the road where Marines from Charlie Company took them over.”[600] Late in the afternoon a patrol from 1/7 attempted to make contact with 1/1 by moving down the MSR. Chinese fire forced the men off the road and they scrambled across the defile below the overpass and into 1/1’s lines.[601] [600] Sawyer Comments, 25 Oct 56. [601] _Ibid._, Schmuck Comments. Lieutenant Colonel Partridge arrived with Weapons Company, 1/7, and the bridge sections followed in the Brockway truck. Even the enemy lent a hand when Communist prisoners were put to work as laborers. After the abutments were constructed, a Brockway truck laid the treadways and plywood panels in position so that both trucks and tanks could cross. At about 1530, three hours after the start, the bridge was in place. Partridge drove his jeep to the top of the pass to inform Lieutenant Colonel Banks, Commanding Division Train No. 1, that he could begin the descent. Sawyer’s troops had not been idle that afternoon and a total of about 60 CCF prisoners were taken during attacks to drive the enemy back from the bridge site. At about 1700 Partridge returned, and an hour later the first elements of the Division trains began to cross. Only a few vehicles had reached the other side when a disastrous accident threatened to undo everything that had been accomplished. A tractor towing an earth-moving pan broke through the plywood center panel, rendering it useless. And with the treadways spaced as they were, the way was closed to wheeled vehicles. A first ray of hope glimmered when an expert tractor driver, Technical Sergeant Wilfred H. Prosser, managed to back the machine off the wrecked bridge. Then Partridge did some mental calculations and came up with the answer that a total width of 136 inches would result if the treadways were placed as far apart as possible. This would allow a very slight margin at both extremes--two inches to spare for the M-26s on the treadways; and barely half an inch for the jeeps using the 45-inch interval between the metal lips on the inboard edges of the treadways.