Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [205]
When my R&R was over, I was flown to meet my outfit on the small island of Koje-do; here we guarded Chinese POW’s for a month. When Joseph Stalin died, the prisoners held a funeral parade, marching around their compounds. As they marched, they chanted songs. They made large white wreaths from toilet paper, and bleached their uniforms white. Thinking there may be an uprising, we were put on twenty-four hour alert. However, after a couple of days, everything settled down.
Every sergeant was assigned a work detail of ten prisoners, who were building an airstrip on the island. My group was responsible for crushing rock used for the runways. When they got tired of loading rock and wanted to rest, which was usually half of the day, they overloaded the crusher to stop it. They knew they weren’t allowed to put their hands in the crusher, so they watched me unload it while they rested. We weren’t allowed to carry weapons while on our work details; however, we usually had three-or-four guards in each group for our protection.
Later that month, prisoners were exchanged for the first time during the war. This was such a huge event; news services from around the world were there to cover the exchange. Our company lined the dock as injured POW’s passed by as they unloaded from ambulances, trucks, and buses. Suddenly, a sergeant from our company accidentally let off a burst of about ten rounds. Needless to say, the reporters hit the ground.
* * * * * *
Now we were back in Korea, in the area of Heartbreak Ridge, when the truce ending the fighting was signed. Just hours before the signing, our artillery fired several rounds into the enemy lines; which had to be the stupidest order ever given by a gung-ho officer. Guess what? They returned fire, not with several rounds, but what seemed to be around seventy rounds. There I was, lying on the ground in a bunker, wondering could I have survived all this time in Korea to get blown up because of a stupid order with only a few hours of fighting left.
At 10:00 AM on the morning of July 27, 1953, General Mark Clark signed the truce. It called for a twelve hour cease-fire before the truce went into effect at 10:00 PM. The following morning, both sides came out of their trenches waving at each other with clothing and flags—and joy. What an awesome sight too see, so many of them and so few of us.
I had enough points to rotate home, so two days later I was aboard a ship headed for home. After traveling twelve days on a ship, I then traveled another two days aboard a train bound for Camp Carson for processing. Then I flew home to meet Shirley and our son Karl, at the St. Louis airport—ready for civilian life.
~~Seventy-Seven~~
Clyde Corsaro
5th RCT
U.S. Army
My father had a job in Montreal, Canada, driving a cement truck. This is where I was born on March 12, 1932. After finishing the eleventh grade, I quit school. By the time I was seventeen, I figured I had already learned everything I needed to know. So in 1950, I started working at a paper mill in my hometown of Niagara Falls, New York.
When the North Korean Army crossed the 38th parallel—like everyone else—I was assigned the classification of 1-A by my local draft board. As of June 1951 I had not yet received my letter from President Truman, and I became panicky that my war was going to pass me by. So, I did a dumb thing—I volunteered for the draft.
After completing sixteen weeks of basic and advanced infantry training, at Fort Dix, New Jersey, I was given a two week furlough. On Good Friday 1953 at the end of my furlough, I boarded the 20th Century Limited in Buffalo, New York. Not only was I excited about going to Korea, but for the first time in my life I was able to ride and sleep in a Pullman car. We arrived in Chicago the following morning and joined up with the rest of the troop train, which was attached to the back of a passenger train.
As we traveled to Seattle, on Easter Sunday, the officer in charge rounded us all up at a rest stop and offered us a chance to attend a non-sectarian service somewhere up the line. I