Pork Chop Hill was one of several exposed outposts along the UN Main Line of Resistance, defended by a single company or platoon in sandbag bunkers connected by trenches. The US 8th Cavalry Regiment had first seized it in October 1951. By late 1952, it fell within the US 7th Infantry Division's sector, one of many small hills traded back and forth in a war that had ground to a stalemate. Opposing the 7th Division were two veteran divisions of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army: the 141st Division of the 47th Army and the 67th Division of the 23rd Army. These were experienced units, skilled in night assaults, mountain warfare, and the infiltration tactics that made Chinese infantry feared after dark. When the nearby outpost of Old Baldy fell to the Chinese on March 23, 1953, Pork Chop Hill was suddenly exposed to attack from three sides.

The first battle came on the night of April 16, 1953, a moonless night when Chinese troops used a heavy artillery barrage to cover their approach. Company E of the 31st Infantry Regiment held the hill. By dawn on April 17, Company K under 1st Lieutenant Joseph Clemons and Company L under 1st Lieutenant Forest Crittenden were counterattacking up the slopes, suffering nearly 50 percent casualties before reaching the main trenches. Clemons, in tactical command, called for reinforcements, and Company G of the 17th Infantry Regiment -- led by his brother-in-law, 1st Lieutenant Walter Russell Jr. -- linked up at 08:30. All three companies endured continuous Chinese artillery as they cleared bunkers and dug in. Both sides fought under cover of darkness, using heavy preparatory barrages to screen their movements. The Chinese withdrew after two days. The UN held the hill, but the cost was steep.

The second battle, beginning July 6, dwarfed the first. More troops, heavier bombardment, five days of fighting that ground through men and ammunition at a rate the American public found increasingly hard to justify. This time the Chinese committed fresh forces and sustained their attacks through daylight hours, something they had avoided in April. The fighting was savage, often hand-to-hand in bunkers and trenches. On July 11, with casualties mounting and the armistice talks nearing conclusion, the UN command conceded the hill, withdrawing behind the main battle line. Less than three weeks later, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. The hill that men had died for was abandoned to a silence that has lasted since.

S.L.A. Marshall's book Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, Korea, Spring 1953 documented the first battle in detail, and the 1959 film starring Gregory Peck brought the story to American living rooms. But the controversy persisted: why had soldiers been ordered to take and hold ground with no tactical value while diplomats negotiated peace? The battle became a symbol of the Korean War's peculiar cruelty -- a conflict fought to a stalemate, where men died for hills they would abandon, in a war that ended not with victory or defeat but with an armistice that froze the peninsula in place. The soldiers who fought there -- Americans, Colombians, Ethiopians, Thais, and Koreans from both sides -- deserved better than a hill named after a cut of meat.