Wells said that McBride followed him out of the airplane door, and when they hit the ground General Ridgway was seen standing near a jeep. Both Rangers headed toward the mountains and Hill 151, with Wells nursing a sprained ankle. He recalled another injury worse than his own: one of the men from the 187th, a Puerto Rican, was shot in the hand while in the air. Wounded or not, he was just ahead of them.

Over on the 2d Platoon’s aircraft, Paulding noticed that he had a black crew chief. It was the first time that he had seen one. The chief kept running up and down the aisle, passing out cigarettes. When the doors opened on the four-minute light, he took his position in the back of the aircraft, placed his headset on, and remained there. When the plane approached the DZ, each Ranger yelled “Buffalo” as he bailed out.

The jump was so low that after the shock of the chute opening and about two oscillations, the Rangers were on the ground. Once on the ground, the Rangers recovered their bundles without any difficulty.

The DZ was hot! After Posey and Anderson jumped from the 2d Platoon aircraft, both landed close together off the DZ, where an enemy’s mortar was set up. Some of the enemy were firing mortar rounds into the DZ, while others were firing small arms at the paratroopers. Posey and Anderson were removing their parachutes when Posey heard Anderson say, “We’re in the middle of this—let’s go to work.” Posey, armed with a BAR, and Anderson, with an M-1 rifle, concentrated their fire on the enemy’s position. After killing all five enemy soldiers and destroying the mortars, they continued to fight from their primary landing position to the assembly area. Working as a team, they overcame two other enemy rifle positions before reaching the assembly area. While First Sergeant West was assembling the company, Posey and Anderson took their positions with the 2d Platoon and prepared to move out for Hill 151.

By the time Weathersbee arrived at the assembly area, Rangers were knocking out one enemy emplacement after the other. Weathersbee remembers a machine gun nest on the edge of his platoon’s area that West knocked out personally. According to witnesses, he “tippy toed” up to the nest, pulled a pin on his grenade, and dropped it in the hole. Every enemy emplacement the Rangers encountered was destroyed or captured.

Johnson, in the 3d Platoon, was the last man in his stick. Cliette and Boatwright were the stick leaders for that group. After their aircraft cleared the runway they headed north and flew over the ocean. The plane made a turn and flew over Seoul, heading for the Drop Zone. When the turn was made, the Rangers were given the red light, indicating that exiting the aircraft would begin within the next ten minutes. The jump light panel was beside the door at a level of about 4 ½ feet. Its red and green lights were operated from the pilot’s compartment. It was the jumpmaster’s duty to check the aircraft in his vicinity and the ground for safety configurations.

“Cat Eyes” Jackson was in the left stick, which would jump from the door on the left (if facing the front of the airplane). The men went through the usual procedure before exiting: stand up, hook up, check equipment. They were ready to go as they watched the red light, waiting anxiously for the green.

When the green light came on Cliette, the jumpmaster, was having trouble with a bundle that got stuck in the door cross ways because of the wind. The right stick completely bailed out before the bundle was cleared from the left door. As soon as it was wrestled free, the left stick cleared the plane. (Black paratroopers were famous for exiting—or, in airborne slang, un-assing—the aircraft quickly.) Concerned that the delay caused by the bundle would mean his stick would either land on a hill occupied by the enemy or some other place off the DZ, Jackson completely unhooked and crossed over to the right door just as the other stick started to move. He rehooked on the run but didn’t have time to insert the safety pin in the static line snap fasteners. He moved to the door and jumped out.

According to Jackson,

in a C-46, you expect to get a good, sharp, hard opening shock with the T-7 type parachute, as you count: one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three. I don’t know whether I had a good or bad position, but when that chute popped out, I just felt good about it—until, when descending, I saw that I had a couple of bullet holes in my chute! I’m thinking that people are shooting at us because we were late getting out of the aircraft. I landed in either a peach or apple orchard and my chute was tangled up in small trees. I heard a couple of shots—they were firing at us. I crawled into a nearby shack and was able to get out of my harness. After removing my chute, I started down the field to get our mortars. I picked up a couple of men that jumped with me: Adell Allen, Anthony Andrade, David Lesure and some others.

Back to the fourth aircraft: Queen jumped with Anthony’s mortar section and six men from Headquarters and Headquarters Company from the 187th. Once the aircraft was loaded, they took off with the usual grunts and groans about getting the old, heavily loaded ship up and off the runway. Everyone yelled when they cleared the strip and the pilot raised the wheels. They joined the flight in a V-formation heading west out toward Seoul and the Yellow Sea. The airplane turned back east toward land after a couple of minutes over the water.

Queen was sitting in the rear of the aircraft near the radio operator’s table until the four-minute warning, and then he came up to help with jumpmaster checks on the troopers at the rear. The old C-46 slowed down to about ninety knots and held it pretty steady in formation. As the airplanes approached the drop zone (DZ), sporadic machine gun and small arms fire could be heard from the ground. Jets from the Air Force had gone in and done some strafing of the DZ and suspected troop locations. The XO from Headquarters Company got his radio bundle hung up in the door and they almost passed the DZ. Anthony pushed out his mortar bundles but he didn’t appear to follow them closely. Queen jumped last. He “swept the plane clean” to make sure no one was still aboard before bailing out.

By 0920 hours on 23 March, the whole company—six officers, two Korean officers, and ninety-five enlisted men—had landed via parachute north of Munsan-ni, Korea, with the mission of securing Hill 151. Hill 151 was approximately 2,000 yards north of the DZ, the dominating terrain feature in the zone of action of the 2d Battalion of the 187th. Queen policed the DZ for personnel and equipment and headed for the assembly area. There were only two noteworthy injuries among the members of the unit, all of whom had landed in the DZ. Queen found Corporal Jenkins unable to walk after badly spraining his ankle, and Private First Class Eugene Coleman had hit his head in some manner and lost his memory. The 2d Rangers, less their 60mm mortar section, were in their assembly area by 1000 hours and about seventy percent effective. Queen had landed near an orchard and picked up Lieutenant Lee, one of the Korean officers. Queen saw Allen on the road and sent Lieutenant Lee with him. Queen also saw Anthony, who had not recovered all his bundles but was trying to assemble his platoon.

In this jump Corporal Donald Wright, Company L, 187th ARCT, was also injured. Carrying the same heavy combat load as the Rangers—an SCR-300 radio, weapon, ammo, and combat pack with two days of C-rations—he landed against the wall of a stone dike. Jumping from an altitude of 600 to 800 feet, men were on the ground in twenty-seven to thirty-six seconds. With so little time to change flight direction and so many other jumpers to stay clear of, Wright had few options. He had intended to slip (change direction) and land on top of the dike. However, his sink (descent) rate was too fast and the dike appeared to move upward to meet him during his descent. He rolled down the dike and had to cut his way out of the chute. His injuries included a set of damaged and broken teeth as well as a busted hip and knee. But since he could still move, he continued to perform his function as radio operator.²⁴

Jump and combat casualties were being handled by a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit on the DZ set up by the Indian Army. Queen, who would find Jenkins and Coleman later, did a quick check of the area but found no Buffalo Rangers at the MASH unit. Queen also saw General Ridgway on the DZ, with his grenades taped to his harness/suspenders, as was his usual style. Ridgway was standing near an L-5 aircraft that appeared to have flown him into the air head. Queen stayed out of talking range because he didn’t want to get mixed up in any media coverage by civilian correspondents who might be traveling with Ridgway. Queen looked up in the air and saw General MacArthur’s C-54 or C-124 flying about 5,000 to 6,000 feet and circling the DZ on the south side of the Imjin River. Finally, Queen spotted the 1st Battalion jumping on the same DZ, when they should have jumped on another DZ about two miles south. Ridgway immediately caught the airborne operation errors.

Once Jackson oriented himself and got out of his harness, he began looking for the bundles marked with blue ribbon. He couldn’t find them. Instead, he found two bundles with machine guns in them. When he and several others from the mortar section reached the assembly area, they picked up the rounds of mortar ammo each Ranger had dropped there. Every man in the company parachuted in with at least one round in his pack. When they passed through the assembly area, they dropped that round, to be picked up by mortar section personnel such as Jackson. The mortars were to be mounted first in the assembly area, and then to support the company in the attack on Hill 151, as necessary. In the assembly area, Jackson and others put the machine guns down and found their mortars; other members of 2d Ranger Company had found the mortars and taken them off the DZ. There was plenty of ammo, and they loaded up. Jackson met Hargrove, a squad leader from the 2d Platoon, which had knocked out a Russian 82mm mortar by dropping an incendiary grenade in the tube to destroy it—but the men had kept the Russian sight. Hargrove gave Jackson the sight which, unlike its U.S. counterpart, was capable of rotating the full 360 degrees. This meant the mortar crew only had to set out one aiming stake. The mortar section fell in behind 3d Platoon. When they reached the first ridge, Captain Allen was there with the company command and Lieutenant Anthony.