WE STOOD ON THE CROWDED DECK AND WATCHED with interest as we made our grand entry into Yokohama Harbor in Japan. It was just a few short years after the end of the war between Japan and the United States and extensive rebuilding was in progress. However, there were still many places in which post-war reconstruction had not yet taken root resulting in many conspicuously vacant blocks where buildings once stood.
After disembarking from the troop ship, most of the sick GIs were to say with considerable relief, we were transported to a processing center where we went through additional vaccinations, paper processing, and checking whether we had our dog tags, weapons, and winter clothes. During our brief stay at Yokohama I developed new friendships with other paratroopers who were also in transit to Korea—all but one of whom had volunteered. Some had stories similar to my own difficulties in getting transferred to the Far East. One of these troopers had been given the option of going to the stockade for some crime he had committed or volunteering for Korea; he reluctantly chose the latter. Several of the guys, like Stan Stinson, wound up in the same infantry unit with me. Stan and I had a parallel course for a while in the same infantry company until his wounds later in the war required his evacuation.
I became close friends with one other former paratrooper, James Sullivan (he went by the name of Sully), who had just come over from the 11th Airborne. With a hint of mystery, he admitted that his company did not really put up much of a fight to keep him. Sully was outgoing, friendly, somewhat impulsive, and a gutsy fellow. He was savvy in that he managed always to be first in the chow line and last in the vaccination line. He was adept with a deck of cards and not always trustworthy in the way he dealt them; we played hearts almost constantly during our waking times while we waited for the boat to take us over to Inchon, Korea.
In two days, and about five hundred Hearts games later, we were loaded on another troop ship; this time we all had arms that ached with what we were told was our final cholera shots. This troop ship was a bit more crowded and more run down than the one in which we made our ocean crossing. It was now only a short jaunt across the Sea of Japan to Inchon: our final port of embarkation. Our thoughts were often of anticipation as to what the situation would be like when we finally arrived at our destination.
We really did not know a great deal about the place we were going—Korea, a rugged peninsula that juts down from Manchuria into the Sea of Japan on the east and the Yellow Sea on the west. The land mass is divided into two halves politically and many would say arbitrarily. The Northern part, that is the portion above the 38th Parallel, was taken from Japan and given to Russia in 1945 for its part in defeating the Japanese in the Second World War. North Korea, originally a highly industrialized section of the peninsula, was by the 1950s a communist nation under the harsh leadership of Kim Il Sung.
South Korea, the nation in which we were investing a lot of our youth to defend, was originally a predominantly agricultural region of the country. From seacoast to seacoast—on the east and west shores of the peninsula—steep cliffs rose from the sea and met in the center carrying the hilly theme across the country. About two-thirds of south Korea’s territory is hilly and the remainder is flat plain. Korea is blessed (some might say damned) with a wide range of climate from extreme cold in winter to extremely wet in the spring and extremely hot in the summer. Many of the hills and valleys are luxuriously terraced with paddies, which in season provided bountiful harvests of rice, the predominant crop.
Our final destination would be a foxhole somewhere along a trench line that cut a jagged 255-mile path across the peninsula separating these two warring countries. I was up on deck when the transport made its stop near Inchon and dropped anchor some distance off shore because of the treacherous tides at Inchon. I could not see the shoreline in the distance but, interestingly, I could smell the offensive odor of fish distinctly coming from shore. Our entry into Inchon Harbor was in style indeed: military style. Since the troop transport could apparently not go all of the way into the harbor our troops had to embark over the side, down rope ladders, and into small bouncing landing craft that would take us the final distance to shore. We had been briefed that this was not going to be an easy transition since we had to carry our packs and M-1 rifle over the side of the ship with us. These warnings were an under-statement; what the naval briefing officer should have said was, “Your disembarkation on to the landing craft carrying all that gear is not humanly possible but you have to do it anyway!” Most of us made it on to the erratically bobbing small craft without a severe dunking, but not without an ample supply of sprained limbs, rope burns, water in the face, and abrasions.
As the landing craft approached the dilapidated pier at Inchon our nostrils became increasingly sensitized to the odor of fish that had been laid out in the sun to dry, a form of food preservation. It was a dramatic entrance on to Korean shores. We were glad to be ashore even though our immediate destiny was uncertain. We stayed only briefly at Inchon Harbor before boarding the trucks that would take us to the replacement center near Seoul.
The Army did not seem to be in much of a hurry to get us up front; we mostly sat around inside the barbed wire enclosed replacement camp known as a Repple Depot until they decided our division assignments. Being young and energetic, and somewhat open to experiencing novel things, some of us decided to wander into town for a visit even though it was “off limits” or absolutely forbidden. The compound was surrounded with barbed wire fence and concertina wire and there were armed guards posted every so often, walking post in order to assure that we did not wander into the surrounding civilian areas.
Although it was not much of a town, some of the guys who had done the same thing the night before said they had a good time, finding some girls and booze. “Why not try the same thing ourselves?” Sully suggested.
“Sure, I’m game,” I replied not hesitating.
At nightfall, with blankets tied around our waists, we crawled through a hole in the fence and headed to town. The blankets were needed to use for barter for different commodities since we had no money. We found the location where the other guys had told us all of the action was. It really was not difficult to find since there were others headed in the same direction and the trail was well marked. We were greeted at the little makeshift hut or “hoochie” by a very friendly Korean man who bade us to come inside. Once seated, we began to discuss our wishes in specific terms. Our conversation appeared to be proceeding in the proper direction we had hoped when we heard some noises and loud voices coming from outside the house. A military policeman stuck his head into the doorway and brusquely ordered us to step outside and into the lineup.
We found ourselves prisoners among a line of other guys, some laughing others cursing softly to themselves. We were marched back to camp and held at attention, with all of the trappings of disgrace, until the camp commandant came to our formation and took down our names and serial numbers—information readily available on our dog tags. We were all provided with a written notice (called a DR or Delinquency Report) that we were to receive “company punishment” when we arrived at our final duty assignment because we had disobeyed orders, violated a prohibited area, and destroyed government property (this is a catchall charge that can be applied to anyone who even cuts himself while shaving or stubs his toe while marching).
In addition, for our misdeeds, we were all assigned to punishment duty that consisted of a work detail that was ordered to dig a large garbage sump for the post. The garbage sump was quite an ambitious undertaking. The corporal in charge of the work detail marked off an outline on the ground in the shape of a square that was 24 x 24 feet. The ten GIs who had been rounded up in the dragnet began to ply their new trade as sump digger—under orders to turn this rocky Korean earth into a functioning garbage pit. We began this ominous chore not knowing how far we would get before the Army had other duties for us to fulfill.
The next afternoon we were ordered to stop our digging and fall into formation to receive our permanent unit assignments. We thought that it was just as well that we quit digging because in a day and a half the proposed huge sump hole had barely gotten started (it was only 1/4 inch deep in one corner).
We formed a ragtag circle around the high wooden platform. The duty sergeant informed us that he was going to read out our names and our duty assignments and we were to move our gear into a designated area for the divisions to which we were to be assigned. He shouted out names and assignments for a long time until most everyone had a placement. Sully and I went to the area designated for the 17th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division. We milled around for a bit as the sergeant’s reading droned on. He paused for a breath when, in a moment of sheer elitist bravado, Sully shouted out to the duty sergeant, “Hey Sarge! What is the chance that us airborne guys will be sent to the 187th?” The 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team was the only parachute infantry unit in the Far East Command that spent most of its time in Sasebo, Japan, and was presently attached to the 7th Infantry Division for a brief tour.
The sergeant stopped his reading from his list and peered angrily into the crowd as though to burn holes through the questioner. He then shouted, “You’re goddamn in the 7th now!” “Fall out and get your gear together. You’re asses are moving up!”
We boarded a train to the front, a journey that would take about three days. The train traveled to Chunchon in Central Korea then north to meet up with the 7th Infantry Division holding down the central front in the Kumhwa Valley, east and south of Panmunjom. We had been assigned to the 17th Infantry Regiment, known in Korea as the “Buffaloes.” Sully and I received an almost identical set of orders that also contained the small red “DR” attached. The train moved along toward Chunchon, Korea at a snail’s pace. (This inch-by-inch travel was thought by some to be how the city of Inchon received its name).
As we passed slowly through the sections of Seoul, I was struck by the incredible destruction that the city had suffered since the war. It was Hell’s landscape! Originally a large colonial city of over a million and a half people, it was now almost devoid of commercial activity and human life. There were burned out buildings and piles of rubble everywhere.
One of the most vivid memories I have of Seoul city was a large building face, really only a wall remnant, of a large structure that had once been a public commercial or government building. The wall contained three large pock holes running in a diagonal line from the bottom left to the top right of the building, in all likelihood direct hit shell holes from a high powered cannon, probably an 85 mm from one of the communist T-34 tanks that advanced on Seoul at the beginning of the war.
The train slowly made its way toward our final destination, the ancient city of Chunchon, stopping periodically—probably to fix the rails up ahead we thought. Our train resembled one of those antiques that we had seen in Western movies or in films about the Orient in the 1920s with open-sided cars. Periodically, when we slowed to a stop we were mobbed by civilians, many of them young children who looked to us like street urchins in terms of their clothing. They reminded me somewhat of myself in the past running around the streets of Charleston. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, especially children, were displaced during the Korean War; it was astounding. The tattered children appeared to be suffering from malnutrition, and most of the GIs on the train were suckers for their smiles, their sorrowful faces, and their ever-present outstretched hands. We tried to fill the dirty little hands with anything we had to eat from our packs and our ration tins. One of the youngsters, who couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, kept holding his fingers to his lips asking for cigarettes. I didn’t smoke cigarettes at the time and motioned that I did not have any.
Someone said aloud, “He’s too young to smoke anyway!”
Someone else pointed out, “He’s not interested in smoking them stupid. He’s only interested in trading them for food so he can stay alive.”
Someone handed him a couple of cigarettes and he moved toward the back of the crowd. Seeing these kids was perhaps the saddest part of the ride toward the front.
The long journey from stateside through countless processing centers, vaccinations, paper trails, and assignment rosters finally ended at my ultimate arrival at the company rear of Fox Company of the 17th Infantry Regiment. Company rear was little more than a wide spot in the road with a few storage and supply tents and some sandbagged trenches which could serve as a refuge in the event of incoming long range artillery shells. In a short while, the Company Executive Officer and the company clerk met us at our truck. The lieutenant directed us to leave our duffle bags in storage and only take exactly what we needed up front, which was not much—a bedroll, pack with rations and some extra clothing, an M-1 rifle, and the most important piece of equipment—an entrenching tool (a combination shovel and spade carried by each infantryman). He looked at Sully and me with some dismay when he saw the Delinquency Report attached to our orders saying, “A couple of screw-ups huh?”
The Exec told us that the DRs would be given to Captain Vaughn when he had time to deal with them; he then briefed us about the company positions as we marched up toward the forward positions.
It was getting dark when we arrived at the company command post (CP) on the hill. Sergeant Casper, the platoon sergeant, welcomed us in a very friendly and reassuring greeting. He was a calm combat veteran from the Second World War and had been with the 7th Infantry for several months. He seemed to know quite well what he was doing and projected an air of confidence to others. We were a bit on edge and did not know what to expect and his introductory words were very quieting.
He told us that a lot had been happening the past few days with the Chinese apparently stepping up their offensive. However, we were in a relatively quiet sector for the moment and that we were not expecting anything from “Old Joe” tonight so we shouldn’t have any problems getting some sleep. He assured us, “Don’t worry about pulling guard for a few days. We’ll give you a chance to get used to it up here.” We immediately liked the sergeant and were disappointed to learn later that he was a short timer and only had a week or so to go before he rotated back to the States.
Fox Company sign at company rear area.
The night sky as seen from the front—the end point of the long string of military stopovers—created a lasting impression on my mind. It was beautiful in a strange sort of way. I was impressed at first by the dark night stillness that seemed to creep in around me as I surveyed the valley floor below our trench line. There were no searchlight units operating close to our positions, consequently the sky retained to some extent its darkness for a time. As I watched the outline of the enemy hills, some several thousand yards in the distance, my gaze was attracted to a sudden sequence of lights emerging from a place near the valley floor traveling upward into the sky. The red lights cutting a distinct skyward path were tracer bullets from a machine gun below—they etched the night sky with colorful dots as if being placed there by a master painter.
Occasionally in the distance we would see a flash of light followed a few seconds later by the sound of an explosion. As I studied the valley with interest, my thoughts centered on the practical question of what was the procedure for estimating distance to targets by counting the seconds that elapsed between the flash and sound of an exploding shell that we were taught in basic training. Practical reality always had a way of intruding into moments of reverie at the front.
I found myself a wide section of the trench line and bedded down on the hard, cold ground in my sleeping bag. In spite of the sergeant’s reassurance about the “relatively safe place,” I did not sleep soundly that night. On several occasions incoming artillery shells on our side of the lines startled me into wakefulness, and I must add created some anxiety. I was reassured by the lone sentry standing a few feet away that the rounds were a good distance away. I was awakened on two occasions with parachute flares bursting overhead and drifting toward the valley floor where someone thought they had seen movement. It was a long and generally restless night.
In the morning my new squad leader showed me around our trench line and introduced me to the other guys in the squad. Everyone looked pretty ragged and unshaven, and their clothes were about the dirtiest things that I had seen since my stove cleaning stint at the consolidated mess hall at Ft. Meade. I was introduced to another rifleman and told that I would be standing watch in shifts with him and sharing the bunker near by. The bunker was in a slightly widened part of the trench a few yards away and was covered with about six layers of sandbags. The routine was that one man would sleep and the other would stand watch—two hours on, two hours off. The other soldier, whose name was Mike Yancik, had been in the platoon for a couple of weeks. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the tactical situation we were holding at the time so I settled in to learn how to be a combat infantryman.
Later in the afternoon, Sgt. Casper came by my new foxhole with Sully in tow and said that he wanted to show us the third platoon’s positions over the ridge so that we could get an orientation to their situation. Their positions were a bit more precarious than ours and they had received some probes from the Chinese a couple of nights before and had killed two of them on the wire (barbed wire and concertina wire that was strung out in front of our positions.) The worst part of the visit to the third platoon was that one had to make his way across an unprotected area to get there—by running. If I ran in a crouch, I was told, then the sniper on the Chinese hill would not be able to see me clearly. An upright stroll across would be a sure invitation to wind up on a Graves Registration listing. I watched as the sergeant made his way across the open area and I mimicked his movements, rather awkwardly, but it worked. A few minutes later, I heard a rifle shot from the Chinese sniper as one of our guys made his way in the other direction. The sniper missed but it was a clear reminder that this place was dangerous!
Although our present positions were relatively well defended because of the steep rock ledge below them, we were not immune to artillery fire that was periodic yet regular and intense. The Chinese Army regularly threw harassing artillery and mortar rounds into our positions to keep us down. We had a good vantage point overlooking the trails that the Chinese were using to bring up supplies and to launch patrols against our front. Another attraction for the Chinese artillery fire were the two tanks that were dug in about 100 yards on our left to provide support for our forces and to fire their howitzers at the Chinese positions from our post. One thing that infantrymen learn pretty quickly on the front lines is that tanks and machine guns draw return enemy fire. It’s best to bed down in an area that is somewhat distant from these attractive targets!
Even though the Chinese artillery shells hitting this sector were of the general harassment variety, even random shells could have a disastrous effect. That evening, two men from another platoon were killed as a result of a direct hit on their bunker. Both were sleeping at the time and never knew what hit them. Though dying in one’s sleep at the end of one’s life might seem to be an attractive and welcome way to go, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, considered an acceptable alternative to experience at such a young age and with so much life left. Direct shell hits were ominous and mentally unsettling events—a danger that I had not factored into my desire to experience military combat. I did not like to anticipate such possibilities.
After a week on the line, dodging artillery shells and playing chicken with the sniper across the way, it came our turn to run a patrol into the valley, an ambush patrol near the Chinese positions. I volunteered to go on this trip into no-man’s-land and the platoon sergeant hesitatingly agreed because I was pretty green. It was a fourteen-man patrol whose mission it was to go out into the valley as soon as it became dark, make our way to a preselected location, and set up our ambush along a worn path in hopes of surprising the Chinese (who were probably planning to do the same thing to us somewhere out there.) Patrols in our outfit always had an even number of troops so that the each man was responsible for knowing where his buddy was at all times.
I had the job of assistant bazooka man for the patrol, which essentially meant that, in addition to my M-1 rifle, I was carrying an extra pack containing several bazooka shells. The bazooka, an anti-tank or anti-pillbox weapon, looked like a collection of wide pipes when it was dismantled. When it was put together it resembled a stovepipe or that musical instrument from which it derived its name. Because I had not fired one of these contraptions since basic training, the platoon sergeant thought it wise that I get in a few practice shots in case I had to take over the job on the patrol. We went to one of the forward firing positions and I took aim on a burnt out tank on the valley floor some distance away. Either the long range to the target or my bad aim resulted in two misses but the desired practice served to remind me of the procedures.
The moon was full and the lighting in the valley such that one could see our formation pretty clearly for about ten yards. We moved into the valley quickly and quietly finding the location we wanted just across a knee-deep stream that we waded through. The walk out into the valley took about two hours. Once we were in position we simply waited in silence hoping that our hunt would be successful. Once we settled in I began to notice that the night was really getting quite cold and I was beginning to shiver. Damn, I thought to myself, this is only October and it’s already freezing. In trying to take a drink of water from my canteen I discovered that there was a thin coating of ice on the surface. What kind of winter lay ahead? I wondered if I had made a mistake in submitting my parade of transfer requests and leaving the pleasant climate of North Carolina for this cold place. Could it be that I might live to regret my decision to go overseas?
We waited in ambush for six shivering hours then carefully began our trek back across the valley to our own positions being wary of falling into a trap set by Old Joe that might be awaiting our return journey. The return, following a different route, was uneventful. When we got back to our positions we went to the platoon Command Post (CP) for a cup of coffee and some C-rations because we were famished. After chowing down I started back to my foxhole when the platoon sergeant stopped me and held out his hand. He handed me an official paper indicating that I was now eligible to wear a CIB (Combat Infantryman’s Badge). The CIB is one of the most prized possessions that an infantry soldier can own. The only way that a soldier can wear the CIB is to spend six days under fire as an infantry soldier. After all of my journey and frustration getting into a combat unit—at last, I had something to show for my efforts.
****
The major offensive that the Communist Army launched against the U.N. forces beginning around October 8th was beginning to spread into the Kumhwa Valley on the Central front. The entire valley had been a boiling caldron of activity from mid-September through October of 1952. Several slopes became embroiled in what was referred to as the “Battle of the Hills,” with Sniper Ridge, Whitehorse, and Triangle Ridge being prominently displayed in the dispatches. The ROK army, our South Korean Army allies, got the initial brunt of the attack on White Horse Hill but soon several other hills were in the path of the enemy aggressive initiative. Jane Russell Hill, actually a pair of hills named after the actress with the buxom figure, was a part of Triangle Ridge.
The military historian MacDonald (1986) described the Battle for Triangle Ridge, in October, 1952, as a Chinese effort to make a point during the U. S. Presidential elections by assaulting White Horse Hill. The American general, Van Fleet, then responded with an attack on enemy positions in the Triangle Hill complex, in an effort to relieve Chinese pressure. This effort involved the American 7th Division committing a battalion a day to the fighting. When the battle ended, with only portions of the positions in American hands, Van Fleet’s Division had suffered 9,000 casualties.
In early October our unit was ordered to defend a section of the line in the Kumhwa Valley and after a long rainy march we arrived at a reserve position behind Triangle Ridge near White Horse and Sniper Ridges. This reserve duty, referred to as a “blocking position,” was designed to guard against a breakthrough on any of the hills that were under direct assault from the Chinese. Should the Chinese capture any of these hills we were prepared and in position to counterattack. Since we were not in direct positions facing the enemy this reserve activity was considered somewhat easy duty. It was easy duty, if you discount the intense and almost incessant artillery barrages that fell onto our midst.
We were scattered about foxholes, hastily dug along the sloping hill. There were also a few huts that afforded only minimal protection from the shelling because they only had a layer or two of sandbags on the top. During the long day of shelling several hundred rounds fell in our vicinity killing several men and wounding a score of others. One hut received a direct hit killing or wounding everyone inside. Neither the foxholes nor the huts provided much protection from direct hits but I decided, after picking up several small pieces of shrapnel in my hand, that I would take the risk of moving into one of the huts for a while. Perhaps one could avoid the smaller pieces of shrapnel inside even the thin walls.
Once inside, however, I regretted my decision because one of the ten or so guys in there was having a very loud religious experience. With each screaming incoming shell he let out a shriek calling out for God to spare him, in return for which, he promised loudly that he would forever be his dutiful servant and change his wicked life. I had heard the expression “There are no atheists in foxholes” before and I supposed it referred to our friend. Most people, however, simply took the shelling with a designed resignation minus the showy religious fervor. Most of us doubted the sincerity of our friend’s promises given the vile language and behavior he generally demonstrated, but if it made him feel more secure, more power to him. His screaming and running about the hut became more intense and he had to be restrained by a couple of guys at one point to keep him from hurting himself. Unfortunately, he was killed just a short time later when he received a direct hit on his bunker while asleep.
I was almost to the point of deciding to return to the open foxhole when someone yelled out that there was hot chow being set up at the bottom of the hill for anyone who was hungry. I was starved so I grabbed my mess kit and started to go toward the area where the food was supposedly located. At that instant a series of incoming shells whistled their approach and I dived back in the hoochie for cover as they burst, spewing their maiming fragments around the company area. It became quiet for a moment and I gathered up my mess kit once again and headed out.
Someone shouted, “Hey, Where are you going?”
I tried to appear calm, saying, “To get some supper.”
“You’re crazy to go out in that!” someone else said.
Another guy handed me his mess kit and said, “Would you please fill mine up too?” I agreed, taking his mess kit in my other hand.
On reaching the bottom of the little hill I soon found that I was all by myself—no one else had ventured out. I hurried down to the line of thermos type chow cans and looked inside finding the one with the main dish—creamed chicken—and quickly filled up the two kits. As I topped off the last one I heard the now familiar and ominous whistle of an incoming shell and I crouched to the ground as it exploded a hundred yards away. I hurriedly stood up and ran quickly and a bit awkwardly back to the hut just as a series of shells burst on the scene, this time near the food area. I dived into the bunker, preserving the precious cargo of chicken stew (which tasted wonderful, by the way). A moment later, we looked out to where the chow line had been set up and saw instead a large crater where the once inviting food containers had once stood. The remainder of the supper had been destroyed. The artillery and rocket fire continued into the night; and early the next morning we left the reserve position and returned to the Main Line of Resistance (MLR).
****
We soon found ourselves back in frontline positions occupying a relatively quiet sector of the Missouri Line. We settled in with some relief after the intense shelling in the blocking position behind White Horse Hill and had hopes for a quiet breathing spell. Then, our Regimental Commander, Col. William Hardick, took a page from Robert E. Lee’s book during the American Civil War and initiated a lateral troop movement in order to concentrate forces in a small sector of the line—a move that turned out to be an effective mobilization of force in an attack against Jane Russell Hill. The Second Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment was alerted that we were being moved over to the right side of the MLR, about twelve miles, from which we were to launch an assault to re-take a position on the Triangle Ridge. We prepared to launch our attack early in the morning and moved out at about 6:00 A.M. We marched in a quickstep formation, carrying all of the equipment needed to assault a hill, and moved into position to make the assault by 1:00 P.M. in the afternoon.