Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [28]
On the 5th of July, just ten days after the war started in Korea, I finished basic. Being issued an eleven day leave, I visited my family—in Denver. After my leave, I was to report to Camp Stoneman, California, which was a port of debarkation since World War II.
Instead of shipping out from San Francisco, the Army boarded us on a troop train—complete with mess hall—bound for Seattle, Washington. I can’t recall how many days it took, but the views along the trip were fantastic. Arriving at Naval Pier 91, to board ships, they took enough of us to fill a C-119 (Flying Boxcar) and loaded us on a bus. We were taken to McCord Air Force Base, to be flown to Japan. We flew to Japan via Anchorage, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands.
After arriving in Japan we were taken to Camp Drake, which was the former home of the 1st Cavalry Division who had already been deployed to Korea. Being issued our gear, we went by the slowest train ever built to the base of Mt. Fuji where there was a large tent city. I don’t recall what units were there, but I do know the entire 17th Infantry Regiment was there. Here I was assigned to the Heavy Mortar Company. However, being young and dumb, I walked up to an opened end of a tent that had the First Sergeants field desk blocking the entrance. I dropped my duffel bag, leaned over, and put my hands on the desk. The next thing I remember was picking my butt up from the middle of a dirt street, and was told in no certain terms to get my ass back to personnel—to get re-assigned. In my twenty-eight-and-a-half years in the Army, I never put my hands on a First Sergeants desk again. My new assignment was Item Company, 17th Infantry Regiment, where I stayed during my entire tour of Korea.
In each rifle squad we had three American soldiers and five or six Korean soldiers, which was both tragic and comical. Not being used to our rich food, the Koreans over ate and was sick a lot. Being smaller in stature, their boots didn’t fit, and very few had ever held a rifle—let alone fired one. Then there was the language barrier.
While at Camp Fuji we trained for a couple of weeks during which time we were hit by a typhoon. Two other guys and myself rode it out in a one-and-a-half ton trailer. The wind spun us around numerous times, and we just knew it was going to turn us over. After the storm subsided, we exited the trailer to find a sight that was everlasting.
After collecting what we could of our gear, we loaded onto another one of those typical “slow moving” Japanese trains headed for the port of Yokohama. From there we headed for the port city of Pusan. The bad thing about Pusan was you could smell it before you saw it. It looked like you were floating in a cesspool; the harbor looked like raw sewage—which it was. Koreans, men and women, in small boats would come along side the ships too scoop up garbage that had been thrown overboard. After docking, we disembarked for a four-or-five mile hike, to get our land legs back, and then we returned to the ship.
We then left Pusan in a huge convoy, headed for the invasion of Inchon. It was mid-afternoon when we reached the harbor at Inchon, and the Navy was still pounding the hell out of Inchon and the surrounding area. The concussion from the ships guns that were closest to us would vibrate our ship. Soon, we were ordered to get all of our gear and get into lines as we had practiced over and over. We then proceeded over the side and down the rope ladders to our waiting landing craft. My guess is we were roughly a thousand yards from shore. When we landed, there was a seawall about four feet high, which we had to scale. Through the years I have seen pictures of various landing sites at Inchon with no seawall. I don’t know where the photographer took the picture, but he sure wasn’t where we came ashore.
In my short seventeen years, I had never been