Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [182]
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I arrived in Korea during October of 1952, where I was assigned to Item Company, 3rd BN, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. I was a corporal in the third platoon.
When I joined the company they were on the MLR. It wasn’t bad there, except when they shot mortars at us. I would yell “incoming,” and everyone would take cover.
It was extremely cold there, and I had just left Pearl Harbor where it was warm all the time. Sometimes I wished I was in Hell, so I could warm up. Come to think of it, I was in Hell. We would wrap paper, or plastic, around our uniforms to help keep our body heat in—this was our cold weather gear.
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In March of 1953, we were sent to Outpost Dagmar. Our first day there we set up, then later the next day all hell broke loose; we fought all through the night. They came over the top of the hill, and were able to get into our trenches; we now had to fight hand-to-hand combat, and I had fired my M-1 rifle until it wouldn’t fire any more. A “gook” came at me and I had to use my bayonet on him. To this day I don’t know why, but for some reason I was unable to pull the bayonet out of his body. Finally, I just had to release it from my rifle.
We were able to run them out of the trenches and off the hill, with the help of V.T. This is where an artillery shell detonates in the air about twenty-to-forty feet above the ground, scattering shrapnel in a wide area. After the shelling it had became deathly quiet, as if I had gone deaf.
I thought I was the only one left living on Dagmar. I wanted to get off the hill, but there may have been wounded men that needed my help. As I crawled around the hill, I noticed movement in one of the bunkers and I thought it was a “gook.” After having pulled the pin from a hand grenade, I wondered if it was one of us. So, I yelled, “Friend or foe?” A voice yelled back, “Hale, is that you?” I sure was glad to hear Harvey Harriott’s voice; he was my fire team leader.
Continuing on around the hill, I came upon a machine gun nest and all the Marines looked to be dead. As we moved on, I saw a hand move and told Harriott one was still alive. We dug him out, then the three of us headed for the CP. Our leader, Lt. John Peeler, was a fantastic Marine, and fighter.
By now it was beginning to get daylight, so we went back to look for any wounded or dead. Only four or five men had not been wounded, so the corpsman got busy taking care of the rest. We were lucky to have found a few of our dead. Apparently I had been wounded when a grenade went off between my legs. Thank God I was lying on the ground, and I was skinny; most of the shrapnel went over me.
We placed our dead in a row and the dead “gooks” in a pile, so when night came and we were relieved, we could easily take our dead with us. We were pretty sure the “gooks” wouldn’t be back that night, for they had lost too many. Lt. Peeler couldn’t believe we had killed so many. Our replacements arrived right at dusk.
Our replacements were our company’s second platoon. Except for me, what was left of our platoon was able to go back to the MLR. I had to stay behind to show the second platoon their firing positions. Since I had stayed awake all day, it had been at least thirty-six hours since I had been to sleep.
When dusk arrived, I went to my firing position and fell asleep. Suddenly, the “gooks” were all over the hill and had gotten into our trenches. When I woke up, I found myself being carried by some Marines. I asked them, “What’s going on?” They thought I was dead and they were going to put me with the other dead.
A patrol came by the hill, so I went back with them to rejoin my platoon. From here we went to another hill, Outpost 2 (OP2), at Panmunjom—where the peace talks were being held. On one side of the hill we could shoot the enemy, but they couldn’t shoot back. However, the opposite held true for the other side of the hill.