RALPH PUCKETT
Daylight was approaching and the familiar sting of freezing late-autumn temperatures was pervasive as 24-year-old 1st Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, commanding a detachment of 51 US Army Rangers, was handed a dangerous but necessary mission.
The Rangers were ordered to take high ground at Hill 205, overlooking the Chongchon River near the village of Unsan, and facilitate the advance of Task Force Dolvin and the 25th Infantry Division. The Korean War was in its fifth month, and the army of the communist North had invaded the South in an attempt to unify the government of the embattled peninsula by force. The United Nations, led by the US, had committed ground troops to stem the enemy tide, all the while wary of armed intervention from the neighbouring People’s Republic of China.
The defenders of Hill 205 proved to be tough Chinese troops, and the fight to come was one
