part0020

Let me tell you about “Big Mike” Roberts, just in case you never met him. I’m not much of a writer; I tend to veer, as Jeeves would say. In late May, 1952, the 3rd Bn., 1st Marines came off the line. We had been on the Outpost Line of Resistance (OPLR) since mid March, when we moved from the mountains on the eastern front. For a time, the hills were numbered, in a seemingly random order which had nothing to do with their elevation. Apparently a ploy to confuse the Chinese radio listeners and keep them from figuring out our situation, or operations; not a few of our enemy had been raised in the Chinatowns of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles and educated at our major universities, a fact that many historians seem to have lost sight of over time. During the Retreat from the Yalu and Chosen, they acquired many of our radios and were able to listen to every word transmitted. Forward of the OPLR, the big hills which would later become known as Carson, Vegas, Frisco, and Seattle, we maintained smaller outposts and listening posts. Nightly patrols covered the ground between outposts and the OPLR The outposts might be manned by a squad reinforced with a section of 60-mm. mortars, maybe a heavy machine gun, and a couple of light machine guns. The remainder of the platoon manning the OPLR hills might have some 81-mm. mortars attached. The plan, as it was explained to me when I joined the 3rd Bn. was for the men on the OPs to delay any Chicom assault, or stop them if possible, but then to bug out to the OPLR and help them hold the damned hill. The problem was that we were a noisy bunch of klutzes. Trying to dig fighting holes and trenches with small picks and “engineering tools” (shovels) was noisy. When men were on the outposts, they shot the breeze constantly, let their canteen lids clank against their canteens, and you could hear them farting from a quarter mile away. The men were clearly visible from the Chicom high ground, such as Taedoksan. And those Chicom mortar men could fire three rounds of 61-mm. mortar H.E. and place two out of the three right into our shallow trenches. For example, on my first day on the squad outpost forward of “Vegas” three rounds hit the back side of the trench line. One of them landed in the observation pit, occupied by the forward observer/ forward air controller. Three men from the squad had shrapnel wounds in their backs (all evacuated) and the F.O. had both legs blown off at mid-thigh. I packed the F.O. down the hill to a heliport and put him in the basket myself; I don’t know if he was still alive, but I know that he had shit down my back as I scrambled down the hill with him. Chris Martinsen was our corpsman. He and our Squad Leader, Sgt. Thurmond, had made tourniquets out of empty bandoleers and had given the F.O. morphine and serum albumin before he was put on a stretcher. I was on the downhill end of the stretcher and another guy was uphill carrying the other end of it. When the guy on the uphill end fell, he let go of the stretcher, and I was wearing the F.O. like a horse collar. The other guy wouldn’t touch the man, so I ended up packing him down the hill. I had a lot of respect for Martinsen, even though he was from New Jersey. He and I were close to the same age; I was 17, he was 18 (on a “Kiddy Cruise” as he called it). We were readers, and talked about books, and about our travels prior to enlisting. Unlike the other troops, neither of us had owned a car or even had one in the family, so we were left out of the yak sessions about cars and broads (the main topic of conversation among the other New Yorkers and New Jersey troops in the squad). Both of us resented “authority figures,” especially the ones behind us on the OPLR or the MLR. We were friends then, and still write to each other once a month. When the squad sent out patrols forward of the OP, it was hairy because of the mines left by the ROK troops we relieved. It was even worse when we had to patrol between the outposts, as we were likely to run into a marine patrol from the other hill and have a fire fight with them. It seemed to me that I was the only man who had any night vision.

I was a BAR-man, and often the last man in the column. When the point man, Cpl. Collins (Thurmond’s replacement) opened fire on a patrol about fifty yards away, I could clearly see that they were marines. Luckily, Collins fired eight rounds wildly and only hit one of the men in the friendly patrol in the ankle. What set that off was the guy behind Collins had hit the deck and cranked off a round which grazed the back of Collins’ skull; then the shit hit the fan, and I was hollering, “They’re fucking marines!” which got everybody’s attention and ended the fracas. Not everybody fired their weapon; not because they didn’t mistake our troops for Chicoms, but because they didn’t want to get their weapons dirty. Did I mention that the short-timers would chuck grenades at us when we returned from a patrol? A Canuck from Maine named Perletier damned near got me with a frag, and I damned near shot him with my BAR because I was so damned mad at the S.O.B.

If you were on those hills, I don’t have to tell you that they were steep. We had to cut steps in the reverse slope and shore them with ammo crates for the YoBos to climb them carrying our water, chow, and ammo on their pack-boards (average 100 pounds each). You had to admire those poor bastards, who were practically our slaves. I guess that sums up my disillusionment with the marines I was serving with on that outpost forward of the OPLR. Most of the men were draftees or reservists who hadn’t been on active duty for a long time. Piss poor marines, in my opinion. Most of them were NFGs who came on the 18th and 19th Replacement Drafts. Men like Sgt. Thurmond and Cpl. Johnson (an Amer-Indian) were 10th Draft, and had some experience. Too bad they left us in the hands of incompetents. I was a 15-Draft replacement, but nobody paid any attention to what I had to say because of my age and beardlessness, and because I was an Okie out of California. So, when the Battalion (3/1) came off the lines after nearly 3 months, I wanted to get the hell out of the rifle company. (Item/3/1 commanded by senior Captain Richard “Dick” Smith, or “Shitty Smitty,” or “Ration-can Smith” as he was known to his troops. Smith got promoted to Major and became the S-3 of 3rd Bn., 1st Marines, and that probably accounts for the fucked-up “Battle of Bunker Hill.” Lt. Col. Gerald T. Armitage was commanding the 3rd Bn., 1st Marines the time when we came off the OPLR and OPs. After we had a swim in the Imjin River and scrubbed our filthy dungarees, Armitage announced that he was going to form a “Raider Platoon,” and called for volunteers. A hundred or more men from the rifle companies volunteered, along with several corpsmen. Michael F. Roberts (4207138 E3), a corpsman from Cleveland, Ohio, was among them, and he stood out like a lighthouse in the fog due to his size. I will continue this diatribe in an attachment. I’ve got some good pictures of Big Mike when he received his Silver Star right after Bunker Hill. As a matter of fact, I’ve got snapshots of “Doc” Chris Martinsen HM3 as well. Let me know if any of this shit is of interest to you, and I’ll give you the whole nine yards. I have the rosters of our Naval Personnel for June and August and September, 1952. You are welcome to them also. I figure it’s about time someone wrote a book about our “Docs.” Martinsen and I are both Total and Permanent with Service-connected Disability (PTSD). It would do him good to get some of his shit off his chest also. I know he’s blocked a lot of it out. Chris spent some time in the psych ward in the Naval Hospital in Yokuska, before returning to the States. We bitch a lot about our aging problems and seldom talk about the war. But we both saw plenty, and he more than I did. Chris extended his tour and was there until after the war ended. He also spent some time with the Korean Marine Regiment before I left in December, 1952.