Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [134]
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During September we had taken another hill, and I was walking on the ridge line when I heard a voice say, “Hey fool, get off that ridge line, there’s a sniper on that next hill.” I quickly got down, hooked into the commo line, and took off running down the hill. The area had not been cleared of mines and as I briskly moved down the hill, I worried about stepping on one.
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We had a crew chief, George Best, from Ohio who liked to play practical jokes. There were three new replacements assigned to our unit, and George had warned them about incoming shells and the sound they made. He whistled just like an incoming shell and everyone dove off the three-quarter ton truck. He started laughing, and as soon as they got back on the truck, real shells—white phosphorus ones—started coming in. These would burn a hole in you, if they hit you. As the shell hit between me and the truck; George yelled, “Charlie, we’ll see you on the other side of the hill.” I probably set a world speed record getting out of there.
The shells were getting closer and I had about a six-hundred yard sprint to be on the back side of the hill. As I was running, suddenly a pheasant flew up in front of me and I thought I had stepped on a mine. It scared me so bad I about lost everything. Finally, the shelling stopped and I caught up with the rest of the crew; we then high-tailed it out of there.
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Our unit was the lead artillery battalion; we had control over eleven battalions, which fired constantly for several days to soften up “Old Baldy.” The fire control section—the ones that called in artillery fire—was under the command of the 61st. As you can imagine, it was hard to get any sleep under these conditions.
My crew was dispatched to set up communication lines between the artillery forward observers and the liaison section, which was just behind the front lines. We had to climb up a steep hill, then down the backside. On our way up we noticed a small cave near the top. I approached the cave and at the last minute decided not to go in it, but to continue on. Due to the hard climb, we left our weapons in our vehicle with the driver—a mistake.
Unknown to us, there were six guerrillas hiding in that cave; apparently their mission was to blow-up our ammo dump. After we passed the cave, they came out and headed down the hill. Upon completing our mission, we were going back when we heard a lot of shooting. When we reached the bottom, there laid five dead North Koreans; four had been shot between the eyes and the fifth one through the heart.
Our driver was a new replacement from Tennessee. As the North Koreans were coming down the hill they noticed him and began shooting. So, he rolled to the ground and returned fire. He told me that he was a hillbilly from Tennessee and had hunted all his life. Luckily, he still had the M-1 rifle instead of the carbine that was normally issued to new replacements. I have always regretted that I never learned his name. I understand that he was awarded the Silver Star for his actions.
After the battle was over, and the 7th Cavalry had taken the hill, my CO called me in and asked me to pick a guy to go with me to return the radios back to the other artillery batteries that had supported us. I chose Sgt. Joseph Noe—a great guy. We were given a map with the unit locations marked on it, and a compass.
Since it was going to be a several day trip, we loaded several C-rations in our vehicle. The temperature was dipping down to zero—or lower—at nights, so we took three blankets with us. On our first day out, we came to a bombed out village where we stopped. We hid behind a wall to protect us from being shot at by a sniper. As we opened our first can of rations, about ten Korean kids, hungry and wearing very few clothes, came out from behind the wall—what