Karavolades Stairs, Santorini, Greece

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He looks keen.

David Douglas Duncan, Captain Francis “Ike” Fenton Jr., commander of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment near the Naktong River, 1950, Nelson Gallery, Kansas City.

In hilly terrain near Pusan, South Korea, Capt. F. I. “Ike” Fenton of the U.S. Marines hears more bad news. It is August 1950, and his company has been fighting all night. More than half of his 190 men are wounded or killed. They are out of ammunition. He has lost radio contact with his superiors. His radioman’s batteries have just expired, and that his much needed resupply was not coming. And now, he is told, his first sergeant is mortally wounded.

David Douglas Duncan takes Fenton’s picture. Duncan, a former marine, is on assignment for Life magazine. He gets as close to the action as possible, trying to show, he says, “what a man endures when his country decides to go to war.” Duncan’s photographs are among the best known of the war, and a few, including that of Fenton, are ranked among the top American combat photographs ever.

Captain Francis “Ike” Fenton Jr., was the son of Colonel Francis Fenton Sr., a Marine Corps chaplain who was famously photographed on Iwo Jima giving funeral rites to his other son Pfc. Michael Fenton in 1945. Ike Fenton also served in the Second World War, and was a veteran marine by the outbreak of the Korean War.

At the outbreak of war, the 195 men and officers of Baker Company found themselves in combat on the frontlines of the Pusan perimeter, holding off an onslaught of North Korean attacks. Desperately short of food, ammunition, and supplies, he petitioned battalion headquarters for relief. He was told something along the lines of “hold the line, at all costs.” He assured his commanding officer that Baker Company would not retreat. “The only Marines coming off that hill are dead Marines.” he promised.

The photograph is taken in that cold September in 1950 shortly after that request for supplies and Fenton’s grim expression is evident. Without communications, ammunition, and at half strength, Baker Company continued to hold the line. The fighting had been so vicious that many men were down to their last few rounds of ammunition, and the close quarters fighting had left many men with broken or missing bayonets. Baker Company would continue to hold its ground at the Pusan perimeter for several more days, borrowing hand grenades and bayonets from sister companies. The Incheon Landing on 15 September caught the North Koreans off guard allowing Baker Company to be finally pulled off the line.

Of the 195 officers and men, only 88 enlisted men and Captain Fenton were able to walk off the line, evacuating back to the United States in 2 November 1950.

Fenton continued to serve in the Marine Corps, commanding a battalion during the Vietnam War before finally retiring at the rank of Colonel. He died in 1997 and is buried at Arlington.

Polar Bears hanging out at an abandoned weather station on Kolyuchin Island in the Arctic Ocean.

HT: C.W. Swanson.

HT: Sea Run.