Quickly sizing up the situation, the company commander ordered the 1st Platoon to rejoin the rest of the assault force. As the platoon began to pull back at 1435 the Chinese blanketed the route with a heavy barrage, firing “over four hundred rounds in a five minute period.”[125] This intense shelling took the lives of three Marines, wounded a number of others, and halted the assault force just short of its final goal. Even though the Chinese had been driven from the three intermediate objectives, the devastating enemy mortar and artillery fire made the Marine position untenable. A third of the platoon moved back to Objective V; the rest worked their way along a route east of that objective. While the rest of Company A and Weapons Company elements occupied Hill T, the diversionary force, Company C, reinforced by other Weapons Company personnel, had remained at a strongpoint not far from Objective S. All supporting ground weapons assisted in the withdrawal. In addition to lending direct fire support, Marine tanks brought forward emergency supplies and evacuated casualties. By 1730, the assault force had returned to friendly lines, followed shortly by the rest of the battalion. [125] 1/5 ComdD, May 52, p. 10. Although the battalion failed to seize and hold all of its objectives, that part of the mission calling for inflicting casualties and taking prisoners had been successfully executed.[126] Marines counted 35 enemy dead, 53 wounded, and 1 POW, and estimated that an additional 70 CCF had been killed and 105 wounded. Seven Marines were killed and 66 wounded in the action described by some observers as “the largest offensive effort the 1st Marine Division [has] made since last September.”[127] The battalion fire support was well controlled and coordinated from an observation post on the MLR. Five air strikes, including one MPQ-14 mission, were credited with destroying three artillery pieces and an equal number of mortars, damaging two other mortars, and demolishing six personnel bunkers. [126] Lieutenant Colonel Nihart believed that the heavy enemy shelling, which had caused the early retirement of his battalion, had been possible either because Chinese mortar and artillery positions were so well camouflaged that intelligence had not located them or else so well protected that UNC counterbattery fire had failed to destroy them. _Nihart comments._ [127] 5thMar ComdD, May 52, p. 9.