Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [25]
December arrived with temperatures dipping to thirty below zero, or colder. As I walked around the ward, I noticed the patients with frostbite outnumbered those with gunshot wounds by three-to-one. One day some of us were playing at a card table that we had set up at the foot of the bed of a patient with severe frostbite. As his big toe began to throb with pain, he reached down to wiggle it and it fell off in his hand; he passed out. Needless to say, we all got a little queasy.
On the 10th of December I was transferred to the 8th Station Hospital in Kobe, Japan—ninety-four days after I was wounded. My doctor told me to expect to be there a couple of months, because infected wounds healed slower in Japan. He also said that I would eventually return to duty—in Korea.
Two days before Christmas, they removed another piece of shrapnel—about 11mm in size—from my left thigh. During the first week of January my leg had scabbed over, and I was told following a seven day leave I would be departing for Korea. However, three days before I was to leave, my leg ruptured and I had to return to the hospital. Once again it was oozing the stinking, black tar-like liquid. On the 31st of January I had more surgery to remove shrapnel that had been discovered near the wound—this was my fifth operation.
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On the 21st of March, while I was playing cards, a ward boy came in and told me I had a visitor. I turned around and there stood John Bontrager—he was on a five day R&R. I was able to get a special two day pass so we could go into town and bring each other up to date on what we had done in the past two years.
John was able to spend one night in an empty bed at the hospital. He then had to go to Camp Drake, then back to his unit in Korea.
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I was transferred to the Army hospital at Nara on the 9th of April, which was pretty much a rehabilitation center; it was located thirty-five miles from Kobe.
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May 1st, known as May Day, is the communists New Years Day. A group of Japanese communists began to protest in front of the hospital, and as the day progressed they got rowdier. Having locked all the doors we placed a machine gun, with three riflemen, on the roof. As the crowd began to rattle the front doors, one of the guys with me on the roof whistled. When they looked up, I fixed the machine gun on them and they suddenly quieted down, and began to leave.
Two days later I received orders to return to my unit; however, I came down with malaria—of all things. It must have been from the rice paddy water I drank eight months earlier. For the next five days I mostly laid flat on my back, with a temperature reaching as high as 105.6 degrees.
It was around this time that I became the recipient of a one-year “involuntary extension” on my enlistment; all thanks to our illustrious “give ‘em hell” president—Mr. Truman. However, I wasn’t alone, it happened to all military personnel.
On the 16th of May, eight months and five days after I had been wounded, I went by train from Kyoto to Tokyo ending up at Camp Drake—my original base. While there I saw three guys from D Company who, because of rotation, were on their way home. This gave me hope that my days in Korea would not be long.
Leaving Camp Drake on the twentieth, I arrived at Pusan two days later. From there I traveled by train to Chonan and after spending a night, I was on to Seoul. The day after I arrived at Seoul, I rejoined D Company at the 38th parallel. There were very few guys that I knew; most of the guys I had been with, had either been killed, wounded or rotated home. However, Otto was still there and we had quite a reunion.
I was asked by the first sergeant to take over as squad leader of my old machine gun squad. However, I informed him I wasn’t climbing up and down any more hills, so he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I could be the jeep driver for the company commander, which they