IN THE 1980S, STATUES OF MEN ON A combat patrol were selected to be part of the design for the Korean War Memorial in DC. This was a fitting choice to represent many of our experiences during this war, given the predominant role of such engagements. Through rain or snow or throat-parching heat, regardless of the conditions, American and enemy patrols plodded through the Korean valleys and along the ridges to encounter their enemy. Combat patrols in Korea fell under two broad types: reconnaissance (recon) and contact. Recon patrols gathered information about the enemy. Contact patrols were varied and included raids, ambushes, artillery fire missions, or air strike coordination. Many of the patrols were conducted at night because the Allied Forces’ air superiority meant the Chinese and North Korean forces were kept in their bunkers and caves during daylight.
Some equipment was standard on any patrol: magnetic compass, flashlight, and map. The plastic ponchos, depicted in the Korean War Memorial, served two purposes. Not only did they provide protection against rain or snow, we also used them to huddle under at night to shield our flashlights for map reading. We always brought one grenade launcher on an M-1 rifle with a clip filled with crimped cartridges to use to launch grenades or flares. We usually made our own crimp cartridges with a pair of pliers to remove the slug from a cartridge.
Other equipment we took on patrols varied depending upon the mission. Those with the intent of aggressive actions against the enemy would be more laden with mission specific weaponry. For example, if the intent was to knock out a bunker, the patrol might carry along a bazooka or even a 57 mm recoilless rifle from the weapons platoon. If the intent were to go through barbed wire, we carried wire cutters, or even Bangalore torpedoes, to blow a path through barbed wire. If an ambush were intended then we would carry as much automatic weaponry as possible. We even had a couple of Thompson sub machine guns (like the gangsters in the movies used) and a cheaper version called a Grease gun that fired .45 caliber bullets. Having fast-firing weapons was important because many of the Chinese carried burp guns, a weapon that fired nine hundred fifty rounds per minute. In order to counter this type of firepower, my favorite weapon for patrols was the M-2 carbine that fired seven hundred fifty rounds per minute and was lighter than the M-1 or the BAR.
On patrols in which aggressive engagement was likely, we often carried a stretcher. Sometimes a medic might accompany contact patrols. We usually took a radioman that carried a PRC-10 radio. If the patrol was going to be out for a prolonged period of time, we also brought sufficient rations and water. Since all of this added weight it was only a necessity for long patrols. There was usually considerable preparation required prior to going out on patrol. In order to travel more quietly, we taped equipment that would rattle such as dog tags, canteens, and even the stocks of our rifles. Infantrymen would also blacken their faces, usually with a blackened cork, to prevent glare from lights or flares. If the patrol involved an unusual target, and if the opportunity was allowed, the patrol leader might actually “rehearse” the patrol by walking through the scenario at a location in the rear area before a patrol was sent out.
Aggressive patrol action, as was the style of warfare in the winter and spring of 1953, resulted in great losses on both sides. One rumor that sobered the lines in late May 1953 concerned the fate of a ten-man patrol from a company in the 31st Regiment in which all of the guys were killed during a recon patrol—the buzz had it that they fell asleep and they were all shot in the same way. This rumor turned out to be generally correct, however, the explanation for how they were all killed has not been resolved. Miller, Carroll, and Tackley (1982) pointed out:
Friendly and enemy patrols kept busy in the I Corps sector. The Chinese, apparently sensitive to the activities of the corps patrols and raiding parties, began to establish ambushes. One patrol of thirty-four men from the U. S. 7th Division fell into a trap set by the enemy on 9 March. Surrounded by some sixty Chinese the whole patrol became casualties: twenty men were killed, twelve wounded, and two missing. On another occasion a thirty-four man patrol from the U. S. 2nd Division ran head on into two Chinese companies. The patrol called for and received reinforcements, and the resulting engagement lasted until the next morning when the enemy broke contact and withdrew. The Americans suffered a total of sixty-three casualties in this fight, twelve of them killed, forty-three wounded, and five missing. Two platoons from the Columbian Battalion, raiding enemy positions on the morning of 10 March, engaged the Chinese in a short but intense fire fight. Forced to withdraw under heavy enemy artillery fire, the Colombians lost nineteen men killed, forty-four wounded, and eight missing (p. 279).
Ample and accurate military intelligence is essential to being properly prepared for defensive action and critical for developing offensive action plans. In Korea, one of the primary sources of military intelligence came from the direct observations of the GIs in close proximity to enemy forces. Although much can be learned from aerial reconnaissance and by a knowledgeable observer with a pair of binoculars scanning the enemy positions from a safe vantage point from our own lines, this approach seldom allowed the opportunity to obtain key information about enemy positions and activities, such as whether the Chinese were getting resupplied or whether any new weapons had been moved to the front. In order to obtain such crucial information, someone had to go close to those positions or even behind them to get a clearer look.
On one of our recon patrols we got close enough to the enemy positions to determine that there were women’s voices coming from the Chinese line, laughing and talking. We were not able to get close enough to determine if the women were incorporated into their units as soldiers or whether they were there for other purposes.
In Korea, the reconnaissance patrol had as its mission the acquisition of pertinent current information. It was designed not to engage the enemy as this would jeopardize the mission of the patrol. These patrols often were conducted with relatively few persons (from two to twelve) to better avoid detection. The fewer heads bobbing through the valley, the less the enemy observers have to look at. Both contact and recon patrols had their risks. Anytime a patrol went out into the valley, regardless of initial purpose, one could expect the unexpected and to find danger coming from many possible sources. Sometimes, the danger came early in a patrol just as one left the MLR and at other times there could be danger encountered on the return. Vigilance was required at all times. A journey into no-man’s-land produced feelings of nervous anticipation—a gnawing in the pit of one’s stomach like those encountered on the first parachute jump or when enemy mortar shells were falling in our sector—that had to be ignored in order to go forward.
On patrol one snowy winter evening, as we were just leaving our positions on the MLR heading down an icy trail toward the valley below, we stopped for a breather. There was no place to sit comfortably, so I simply leaned my field pack, containing ammunition, against a snow bank and relaxed for a few seconds. One of the guys in the patrol shouted at me, “Don’t move your foot!”
I looked down. My right boot was only an inch away from three small metal prongs sticking up through the snow. An anti-personnel mine. My heart skipped a couple of beats as I contemplated what would have happened if my boot had fallen just a fraction to the left!
Moss pulled me erect and I avoided tripping the mine plunger. We marked the spot so that later we could inform the officer in command of the section of the MLR positions from which we departed that the mine was there so he could have it mapped or moved to a new location. We usually had mines planted in front of our positions but they were always carefully mapped and marked so that they would not trap friendlies. Mines know neither enemy nor friend—and one of our own men could easily trip that mine because it was so close to the trail. As we went into the valley floor my mind toiled over the fact that so much in this business depended upon sheer luck. The space of an inch could mean either destruction or life.
We were back up on the section of the MLR opposite the Chinese-held T-Bone Hill. Our hilltop positions ran almost parallel to T-Bone and trailed out into a pair of sloping “fingers.” These slopes ran down toward the valley floor near two other hills called the “Alligator Jaws.” Not far from the end of one of the Alligator Jaws was a frozen stream that, in warmer times, ran down into the valley below. We were close to the famed “Joe’s Mail Box,” where periodically the Chinese unloaded batches of propaganda leaflets, usually dropped in bundles, in hopes that the American troops would pick them up and distribute them to their friends.
The materials left by the Chinese propagandists were often rudimentary documents with stereotypic references, for example, referring to American businessmen as “Mr. Moneybags,” and intimating that while we were freezing and dying in Korea Mr. Moneybags was off with our women in Florida. The text of one of the propaganda leaflets collected there is provided in Appendix A to give the reader an idea of the messages that were intended to discourage the American troops.
Sometimes the Chinese left “free passes” that promised the bearer safe passage through the Chinese lines and lots of money, good food, and a nice life just for throwing down our weapons and coming over to their side. Our brass considered possession of such a “free pass” as showing bad faith punishable by court martial. Nevertheless, some guys, even those with good old-fashioned American values, carried these passes with them as an “insurance policy,” just in case of capture.
Close-up of the area known as Alligator Jaws.
The stream below the knoll was frozen solid and there were still snow drifts in places along the ridge. A George Company patrol reported that there was a body frozen in the stream at the eastern base of the knoll below the lower Alligator Jaw. Earlier that day my squad had volunteered for a recon patrol in the area. The CO told us to verify if there was a body, and to retrieve it, if possible. This area was under direct observation of the Chinese hill. We were advised to depart during the night and do our excavation while it was still dark. Having to dig up another body was not what I originally intended when I volunteered, especially after the gruesome experience described in Chapter 7. We did not know if the body was an American or Chinese soldier. Either way, we were to bring it back to the company area. Then it would be turned over to Graves Registration once we were back in the company. Graves Registration might bring in an intelligence specialist to determine if useful information, such as unit identification, was available from the body or its effects.
During my time in Korea I never witnessed body desecration by Americans, with two exceptions on the approaches to Outpost Yoke (see Chapter 12). On two different slopes, soldiers, likely Americans, had placed a human skull and cross bones along the trail, apparently as a warning to the Chinese. These bones likely came from unearthed old graves that overlooked the rice paddies, rather than our current enemies. They were in an area that was heavily shelled, and old bones were scattered everywhere. One member of our unit added his name to one of the skulls.
I did once see a gruesome example of body desecration around the neck of a soldier from the Turkish Brigade attached to our Division, right before this recon patrol. He had a string of ears around his neck. One of my buddies, when he learned that we were designated to go into the valley to retrieve the body, asked, “If you find a guy and he turns out to be a Chink, would you bring back his ears so I can make a necklace out of them?” We joked that we would try to accommodate his request, if he would really wear the necklace.
The proposed patrol action was pretty straightforward. Our task was to leave our positions on the MLR at 4:00 A.M. in order to take advantage of the cover of darkness and make it out to the tip of the lower Alligator Jaw before daylight. We would then be able to find the body frozen in the ice and break it out of there under the cover of darkness. This would allow us to get back to our own lines before full daylight and before Chinese artillery observers could get some shots off at us.
The walk out to the lower jaw was uneventful. I stopped the patrol a couple of hundred yards away from the knoll to enable Frank Field (Vito) and Del Kenway to scout out the area for possible enemy activity. They soon returned with the “all clear” and we moved into positions around the little knoll, setting up a fire support base to cover us in the event there were enemy soldiers further down the stream where the body was supposed to be in the ice.
Once the men were in place, Vito and I moved out along the ice covered stream searching for the body. It was still dark enough to provide protection from the hill but it was also difficult to make out forms in the ice. We had some difficulty detecting a frozen body as we moved along the bank. We waited until it got a little lighter and made another pass on the return back up stream. As we walked back up the stream, Vito stopped and said, “I see him! There he is. Right over there in the ice.”
I moved up to where Vito was standing and squinted into the gray dawn, finally seeing the form of a man in the ice. His head, knees, and what looked like an arm were sticking out of the ice. I moved over toward the silent figure and reached for my sharp knife and the hatchet we had brought along to dig him out.
While Vito watched the front for any sign of enemy movement, I took my knife and began to dig around the head area. I cleared out the ice, removed my glove, and felt the head with my hand. As my hand ran along where the ears should be, I suddenly got a very cold chill up and down my spine. It was not a body, but simply a pile of rocks! I called Vito over to see my discovery, and we both began to laugh. Vito, almost uncontrollably laughing, said, “I thought you were cutting off his ears! Would you have cut a Chink’s ears off, Butcher?”
All I could think of to say to him at the time was, “I don’t think so, maybe.” As I look back at this event, I am thankful it was a pile of rocks and not the body of a Chinese soldier. I hope that I would not have sunk so low as to take a trophy from another human being. Needless to say, we never did find a body.
Unlike the information-gathering recon patrols, ambush patrols have warlike intent and motivation. The primary mission involves the goal of engaging the enemy in some manner and accomplishing a particular task, for example, to capture a prisoner, destroy emplacements, to interrupt enemy activity by calling in artillery on to their positions, and so forth.
About a month after the “ice man patrol” we ran one down to Alligator Jaws and Ole Joe’s Mail Box to set up an ambush for the next evening in order to try and intercept any enemy “mailmen” en route to drop off propaganda. It seemed like a good plan given the fact that those propaganda leaflets had to get there somehow.
Our mission was to make our way to the hill undetected and find a hideout to quietly spend the day where we could observe the base of the hill from the knoll and then get set up before the Chinese infantry started patrolling the valley at dusk. Everything went according to plan. At 4:00 A.M. we moved out of our positions and made our way quietly down the slope and across the valley toward the knoll that would be our residence for the day. Our plan was to get to our location, develop camouflaged quarters to avoid daytime detection, and catch up on our sleep in the warm sun while killing time until dark.
Recon patrol into the Alligator Jaws.
It was easy duty for the day at least! We scouted the slope of the knoll and gradually made our way to the top. Finding some comfortable hiding places among some large boulders along the military crest of the hill, we posted a guard and the remainder of the patrol began to accomplish the daytime chore of napping in the noonday sun. After two hours, we changed the sentinel and decided to place another guard down the hill a hundred yards to cover the approach more clearly.
The day-long wait on the knoll was boring and one of our corporals began to entertain himself by razzing a newcomer on his first patrol. He was from another squad, temporarily assigned to serve as our ammo bearer. The corporal was unmerciful in his mocking, and the newcomer was not assertive in defending himself. The taunts included: “You look like a girl! Are you a girl? Are you a fairy? What are you going to do on R&R in Japan...pick flowers? Go to Sunday school? How come you look like a girl?”
Such biased statements against women and gays were not uncommon among infantry soldiers in the 1950s. After awhile, I intervened, not because I saw the comments as offensive, which I now recognize they were, but because they were distracting from our mission.
Shortly after quieting down the heckling, we shifted our position. Soon we began to take some incoming rounds toward the base of the hill—not from the T-Bone, our usual gift giver—but from the valley east of the knoll. Vito and I crawled up the slope for a better look and saw an incredible sight: four tanks were approaching the knoll ahead of us with guns blazing. Our first concern was that we had been discovered and were under attack by a Chinese tank force.
Although we were operating according to a “radio silence” patrol police, we decided that it might be an opportunity to engage the tanks if they were enemy. Our radioman, Ray Daggett, contacted base but, as we were on the line reporting the tanks and getting division artillery alerted to the possibility of a tank shoot, we watched the tanks turn directly north and head for a knoll to the east of T-Bone. We now recognized them as American. They were heading around the T-Bone to do some shooting so we sat back to watch the show. Our CO also thought that it would be important to inform the tanks that our patrol was in their vicinity to prevent other rounds from coming our way.
The tanks fired a number of rounds against what appeared to be a trench line and a cave entrance at the base of the hill then turned tail and headed back to our the American lines to our right. Our next concern was whether our breaking radio silence to report the tanks had blown our own cover; however, it returned to quiet on our knoll for the next few hours. We decided that our plan for setting up the ambush was still viable.
As the sun began to disappear behind the hill to the west we moved the patrol down to the base of the slope to set up the ambush. Moss and the machine gun team set up on the high ground covering the approaches to the knoll as we planned while the remainder of the patrol found positions along the worn path that appeared to have been used by pedestrians in recent days. We settled in and waited for Ole Joe to come and make a mail delivery. Full darkness came, but no Chinese. It was evident that there was going to be no mailman that night.
The time to return approached and we packed up our gear and headed back to our lines. This turned out to be a patrol with no direct contact but certainly one that was far from routine.
Patrols, especially when they have caused the enemy some inconvenience or damage, can result in retaliation in kind. One day my friend, Bill Estes from Belle, West Virginia, who was now in the mortar section of Fox company, and I had the task of going down the ridge on a two-man patrol only about 300 yards toward Hassakol to serve as forward observers on a fire mission against some suspected artillery observers that the Chinese had posted to fire against us.
The CO instructed us to fire only a couple of mortar rounds because he was afraid that we would be found out and would draw fire from the Chinese. He was right! In spite of the fact that we had found ourselves a pretty good position to avoid detection, as soon as we got off our rounds against the suspected targets, we came under searing machine gun fire from two different positions on the enemy hill. The Chinese also were zeroing in their mortars against our hideout. Bill and I decided that it was time to clear out. As we headed back along the trail back up to the MLR, the machine gun bullets were kicking up dirt around our feet. Our actions might have appeared humorous to someone observing because we were running clumsily at a crouch, stumbling, and falling here and there as we headed for safety. We, however, did not find it funny until we got back through our wire and into the safety of our emplacements. When we got back, we wondered out loud, “What are two peace-loving West Virginia boys doing playing such a dangerous game in this far away land?”
Trail marker for Outpost Yoke.
Patrols could encounter unexpected difficulties brought on by darkness or inclement weather, as well as enemy action. Navigating across unknown terrain at night without the benefit of light or recognizable landmarks was sometimes very frightening. One night we went on a large ambush patrol to a place on the valley floor that the Division Intelligence Corp had singled out as a likely heavy traffic area for Chinese patrols. An arrogant new lieutenant led the patrol. An artillery officer, brought along to handle the shell placement if we had to call in artillery fire for support, assisted him. The patrol also consisted of two machine gun teams, two BAR teams, and a dozen riflemen, most of whom were armed with automatic carbines. We were definitely a well-heeled group of men, in terms of weaponry and destructive potential. We were expected to make a good accounting of ourselves if the Chinese happened to visit our ambush site.
Unfortunately, no one, including the lieutenant, was familiar with the terrain in this area. We were departing from a different section of the line in order to approach our objective from a different direction. The patrol left our designated MLR departure point on time, just as the curtain of darkness was beginning to fall. As we proceeded slowly through the valley, the night sky became darker and then pitch black, and was indistinguishable from the dark earth stretching before us. The lieutenant was navigating only by compass headings, and every other man on the patrol was getting his bearings from the shadowy figure he was following a few steps in front of him. We had to stop the formation frequently to get our bearings. It was very difficult for us to make out anything other than the one person moving in directly in front of us. We had to be attentive to slight movements to keep from losing sight of each other.
We arrived at a location in the valley that the lieutenant thought should be our ambush point and he began to set up the automatic weapons teams in the desired line-up. One of the squad leaders, Moss, quietly raised a question as to our exact location. He did not believe the slight knoll that we were presently occupying was our designated location. The lieutenant insisted that we were in the right place and set up the patrol according to plan. After a while, further questions were raised about where we were. One of the BAR teams found itself occupying a position near a small stream—a stream that was not on the map we had studied earlier or that we had figured into our original game plan. It quickly became apparent to everyone in the patrol that we were not at the place we thought we were. “Where in the hell are we?” someone whispered. No one knew, exactly.
The lieutenant, with a flashlight, got under a tent made from his poncho to read the map. He finally concluded that we were in the wrong place but could not tell exactly where we were. We found out later that we had not made the progress that we assumed because we had to move so slowly in the darkness. In actuality, we had made it only half way to our objective.
We found ourselves in a difficult predicament. Not only did we fail our mission, we had difficulty returning to the MLR because we were given a designated position on the front line to which we could return. That is, we were expected to be at a particular sector of the line at a given time. No one else on the American lines expected a patrol to show up in front of their positions. If we tried to go back to our lines through any other point, we would likely draw fire from our own troops.
It was therefore necessary for us to remain in the valley through the night and move slowly up to the MLR without, of course, arousing the men on the line. It was also necessary for us to break radio silence to warn the line troops about this patrol that “did not know exactly where they were,” since we could not determine exactly the location through which we were returning on the line. As we laid in front of the American positions we were nervous about the possibility that some machine gunner up there might detect movement on our part, and thinking we were Chinese, open fire. This was indeed a rather difficult circumstance!
Eventually, when we were able to get back through the lines, it was quite embarrassing for the patrol to return in this manner after such a showy send off. A couple of guys in the line company sector that we went back through noted that we sure had a lot of weapons and ammunition on us. They said, joshing us, “What a lot of nice guns you guys have! How many Chinks did you guys kill with that arsenal?” And, “Do you have silencers on those weapons? We didn’t hear any of them go off!”
Things often do not work out as well as intended in wartime operations. It is always best for leaders to be open to information from everyone on patrol. Also, unexpected conditions in the environment often impede the best-laid plans of mice and men.
Crucial to the integrity of the patrol’s mission, as well as to the feeling of security of the combatants on patrol, were clear and effective communications about what was happening. It was critical for the patrol to be well briefed in advance of the engagement and for the patrol leader to keep everyone informed as much as possible of the dangers we were facing or alterations in the plan of attack or objective. This was not always easy given the fact that usually both radio silence was observed and verbal communications between the men on patrol were kept to a minimum.
The most desirable forms of communication when troops were in noman’s-land were hand signals and whispers. The enemy patrols usually followed the same discipline as far as we could tell. One of our recon patrols once observed an interesting communication interchange in a much larger column of Chinese troops that moved quietly through the valley. At one point the first man in the Chinese formation stopped (possibly detecting our presence) and tried to get the rest of the group to stop with a hand signal. A man in the center of the formation, who likely was the patrol leader, signaled for the men to keep moving. When the point man went to the likely leader and spoke something to him, the leader aggressively kicked him then pushed him forward in apparent anger. Apparently clear communications were not the only factors being considered in this situation.
Patrols, whether recon or contact, required 360-degree observation and defense. Because we were running a large number of patrols into the valley, we developed an effective style of communication and patrol movement, using a point man (almost always Vito) and the remainder of the formation in a diamond-shaped formation with the patrol leader in the center of the formation. The men on the extreme points on the diamond were important lookouts in their respective directions and the last man in the formation was responsible for protecting the rear from attack.
The importance of clear communication was aptly demonstrated one night when we were taking out a large twenty-two man combat patrol deep into no-man’s-land near the Chinese hill to interdict Chinese patrol actions. Our mission was to move out later in the evening and to try to catch Chinese patrols early in the morning when they were returning to their base along a suspected departure route. A lieutenant was leading this patrol from another platoon and I was second in command. We were also told that we would be taking with us on this patrol four soldiers, originally from a Spanish speaking battalion (recently disbanded), who had been reassigned to other units. These soldiers wanted to become an active part of the activities. When we pointed out to the CO that the four men (one a sergeant first class) could speak no English and that this situation might present some problems in communication on the patrol, we were told that we had to communicate with hand signals that the men could understand.
When the patrol passed through our own lines and formed into a diamond shaped unit to proceed into the valley we became aware that there was little light with which to guide our movement. It became clear that some modifications were going to have to be made in our marching formation because it turned out to be one of those inky nights that required a closer contact between men in order to avoid getting separated. As we proceeded through the valley on the way to our objective, the four new men missed the signal from the lieutenant that the formation was to stop to get our bearings and they simply kept moving through the darkness to who knows where. When we sent two men to find them they were nowhere to be found. They had simply marched off into the darkness.
We couldn’t worry about them at this point but had to proceed to our objective with the force, now lessened by one fire team, that we now had. We located our proposed ambush site about an hour later and set up along the trail and waited. We were concerned that the four lost men would show up in our path at some point and engage in a firefight with us as identification would be very difficult in the dark, black night. We waited out our prescribed time for the ambush until about 4:30 A.M. and then headed back to the MLR arriving there just at the break of dawn. When we got safely within our own lines we began to inquire about the four men but nothing had been heard from them. Then, about an hour after daybreak, after we had gotten breakfast and were getting ready to sleep, we heard that the men had made it back through the lines. We were all relieved that none of the ugly possible outcomes had occurred and that they were safely back.
The perilous nature of combat and the specific hazards of combat patrols were made apparent through the actions of one patrol that moved through our outpost positions one evening in the winter of 1953. A few weeks after our own misadventure on Spud Hill another patrol from a different company spent a few hours in our outpost positions awaiting darkness before they jumped off across the Yokkokchon Valley on a raid against the T-Bone, around Spud Hill.
The patrol leader, another arrogant lieutenant who was also overly confident, spent a few hours in our CP in preparation for his raiding patrol. Our company commander informed him about our patrol action against Spud Hill a few weeks before and suggested that he discuss with us the scenario he had planned. We tried to provide him a description of the terrain in the vicinity of his objective (we had already crawled much of the way across that valley floor!) He seemed to be hyped up and did not want to hear about possible problems that he might encounter. When Vito and I tried to point out where our patrol had been and what we encountered when the Chinese worked their way behind us he simply brushed us off saying, “We are not going to do that. We are going to do things my way!”
Some of the men in his patrol confided in our guys as they waited in our bunkers that they had reservations about the plan of action and felt that the lieutenant was “glory bound” and blinded by the enormous potential for medals and honor in the closing days of the Korean War. They thought he was from a prominent family back in the States and had political ambitions after the war and wanted to make a big splash in combat.
The patrol was a disaster. A few hours after they left our lines, there was a great deal of commotion on the valley floor—flares, artillery, and a lot of machine gun fire. The lieutenant and several of the men on the patrol were killed in action and several others were wounded as the Chinese pummeled them. One of the riflemen who returned from the raid indicated that the lieutenant had been impulsive in his launching the raid and had them assault the hill from too great a distance. They were exposed too long to Chinese fire and did not have a chance once the enemy knew of their presence in the valley. The intermixing of political ambition with military duty can be problematic when highly risky action and uncertain forces are involved. It is difficult to know what happened on that hill because the reporting was spotty. However, in trying to piece together the outcomes from the information we obtained, it appeared to many that the lieutenant had simply allowed his blind ambition to narrow his judgment and to make field decisions that did not reflect the reality of the situation.
Although it was extremely important for our forces to establish an aggressive presence through patrol activity it was indeed very difficult for patrol size forces to make the kind of splash that the lieutenant wanted. During the winter of 1953, there was heavy patrol activity in the Yokkokchon Valley, much of which had come up empty handed. Hermes (1966) pointed out that during February and March the Corps sent out 2,500 patrols to raid, ambush, or reconnoiter, and fewer than a hundred made any contact with the enemy. During March only one prisoner-of-war was captured (Hermes, 369-370).
Our skill at running night combat patrols came in handy in another sector of our lives—a raid on a KSC camp in order to obtain supplies for some planned festivities. One night, back in reserve, several guys in our platoon decided that we would have some fun, but for some reason there were no beer rations available. Moss, Vito, and I decided that we would surprise the guys in the platoon with some alcohol for a festive evening. There was a KSC camp close by with the usual contingent of black marketers at which we purchased some spirits to aid our celebration. Unfortunately, we could not muster enough money to buy even a single bottle of whiskey on the black market (fifths of Canadian Club or Seagrams sold for about $15 per bottle). We thus concocted a plan that would enable the black marketers to help us obtain alcohol that involved a little old-fashioned infantry ingenuity.
One of the new guys in the platoon had served in the military police for a brief stint before coming to Korea. He still had an armband with the often-dreaded initials “MP” on it and a police whistle that MPs usually carry. All we had to do was to improvise appropriate headgear for our deception. Using a helmet liner and some white tape from a first aid kit, we fashioned identification by taping the helmet to read in bold letters “MP.” We were ready for our little visit to the KSC bootleggers.
The core of the plan was as follows: two of us would go to the KSC camp and locate the black marketer, which was not too difficult to do because they were quite prevalent. The third person (wearing the improvised MP paraphernalia) would wait in the wings until he saw a signal from us. We would bring the bootlegger close by, hopefully with a couple of bottles of booze in hand, and initiate a discussion about the price of the purchase. At the appropriate time, before we would be expected to hand over the money but after we got our hands on the bootie, we would light up a cigarette as a signal. Our phony police officer would then rush up, blowing his whistle, in a simulated effort to interrupt the illegal activity. The raid was slated to be at dusk in order to capitalize on the best lighting for the cigarette signal and for the MP lettering to be clearly visible for maximum effect. What a remarkable, yet simple, plan!
There has never been a patrol in the history of the U. S. Army that ran as smoothly as this one and had such tangible and refreshing results. Everything went as scheduled. We located our black marketer who happened to have several bottles of CC. He brought two of them to us where we waited in a stand of trees at the edge of a rice paddy. We insisted upon checking the tops and bottoms of the bottles to assure that they had not been tampered with (a trick they were known to do at times). When we were satisfied with the product, I lit up a cigarette, of course after first offering one to our black marketer friend. Just as I lit up my cigarette we heard a series of sharp whistles and the three of us looked to see our MP look-alike running swiftly toward us waving his pistol, yelling, “Halt, Halt! Stop right there. Police arrest!”
Our black marketer looked quickly at the “cop” and then headed as fast as he could through the brush in making his escape. We took his lead and headed back in our own direction with the MP chasing us—all three of us laughing gleefully. The fake MP chased us for some distance until we were all out of breath. We rolled on the ground laughing then opened the first bottle to toast our successful patrol. The campfire was indeed warm and the troops exceedingly happy upon our return.
Our compatriots in the British and Australian armies did not have to go to such extreme efforts to get a drink. They had NAAFI (Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes) pubs, a source of envy for American troops. Our PX (Post Exchange) stores paled in comparison. My first, and unfortunately only, experience with a NAAFI happened one evening when we were in reserve. The NCOs of our company were invited to a NAAFI Sergeants Club. Stan Stinson and I caught a jeep and went over for a look-see.
We were bowled over by their highly civilized establishment. We were only three miles from the front lines and here was a very homey and quaint pub. It was a treat for a couple of grungy GIs just off the front to sit down, with music blaring from a jukebox, and have a few drinks. The other patrons in the establishment, mostly Aussies, wore headgear quite different from ours and carried strange looking weapons (Bren Guns). Otherwise, their circumstances and manner was interchangeable with ours. We had a most pleasant evening and wondered, as we left, why our country had broken away from such nice folks as the British so long ago.
