Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [102]
In early summer of 1950, I returned to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds where I was discharged—five days before the start of the Korean War. I returned to California and for six weeks held a couple of uninteresting jobs around Merced, so I re-enlisted. I returned to Fort Ord to wait for assignment; it seemed nearly everyone that was waiting for assignment was being sent to Korea—I would be no exception.
On the 22nd of November, 1950 I arrived at the 2nd Infantry Division Headquarters at Pyongyang, North Korea. When I arrived everyone was saying the war was over. General MacArthur himself was saying that we would be home by Christmas, which sounded great to me. Having spent my first enlistment in Ordnance, repairing firearms, I didn’t figure I would get into the war anyway. However, on the 23th of November my bubble burst. Along with eleven other guys, I was headed to the 23rd Infantry Regiment; apparently they needed “shooters,” not “fixers.”
Three of us had been assigned to K Company, 3rd BN. Riding in an open jeep all day, with the temperature below freezing; we arrived at company headquarters after dark. Here we learned that out of two-hundred men, only ninety-five were left and a couple weeks earlier an entire platoon had been lost. While waiting for replacements, the company was assigned guard duty at Company Headquarters—we three were all they got!
After spending the night in a Korean adobe house, which was being used as Captain Haynes’ Company Headquarters, we were each assigned to different platoons. Around noon everyone was alerted to move up to the front lines and rejoin the regiment.
On the 25th of November, under the cover of darkness, Chinese forces attacked all along the line of the Eighth Army. We loaded onto open trucks on the morning of the twenty-sixth for our journey north to rejoin the regiment. With the temperature below zero and adding in the wind chill from the moving trucks, it must have been fifty degrees below zero. Twenty-four of us sat in the back, on wooden jump seats, jammed together and did our best to wiggle our feet and fingers. We also rubbed our upper legs to keep them from going numb.
As we arrived in the small town of Samin that afternoon, another convoy was on the road headed in our direction. By the markings on their front bumpers they were from the 9th Infantry Regiment, which also belonged to the 2nd Division.
The lead truck had a canvas top over the cargo area and there was a soldier at the front of the bed poking his head our from under the canvas. When he was asked how the 9th was doing, he said nothing. However, he clinched his fist and with only his thumb sticking up, he motioned in the direction of the rear of the truck. This made no sense until his convoy started moving, and we could see in the truck.
The truck bed was piled to the top of the bows with uncovered bodies—each lying on a litter. The next six trucks, in the convoy, were identical. I had never witnessed anything like that in my entire life; I began to feel sick. A knot rose up in my throat; tears rolled up in my eyes; and I found it hard to breathe. Up to this point, we had been talking and joking—not now. Silence came over us for a long time.
We found out later that these casualties were from a battle at a place called “Chinaman’s Hat.”
* * * * * *
On the 29th of November, Colonel Paul Freeman ordered the 23rd north to hold a vital road junction west of the village of Kunu-ri. After marching all day we arrived at the junction. The road ran west to Sinanju and southward to Sunch’on.
As we headed north, we passed vehicles with the markings of the 24th Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, and a thought came to my mind, “Why in the world were we headed towards the front lines when everyone else was going away from it?” I thought this was a good question. The answer; the 23rd was to hold the road junction so all the other Eighth Army units could pull out.
The 3rd