Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [5]
My unit, B Company, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, landed at the port of Pusan, South Korea on July 10, 1950. Our hasty deployment from Japan to South Korea, on a World War II type, rusty Japanese transport ship, took about forty-eight hours. We fought our first daylong battle against the NKPA on the 24th of July.
In the first few weeks of combat, three U.S. infantry divisions—the 24th, 25th, and the 1st Cavalry—previously stationed in Japan were fighting eight well trained North Korean divisions. We were fighting delaying actions, and giving up ground, while more units were arriving in Pusan.
In our zone of western South Korea, the 25th and 1st Cavalry were mainly blocking the main roads to Pusan. As we tried to slow the advancement of the well disciplined NKPA, we had no solid line of defense. As the enemy continued their southward trek, the 27th Regiment was attacked and overrun almost on a daily basis—especially during July and August. During this period, my platoon had been reduced in strength from forty-eight to fourteen; they had been killed or wounded.
By the middle of August, I believe a verbal order from our regimental commander, Lt. Colonel John Michaelis, was issued for all companies to secretly check every man’s rifle to see if it had been fired, and if not—why. Immediately following the next enemy attack, we platoon leaders conducted the secret check; I found three men that had not fired a shot. When asked why, they replied that due to their religious beliefs they could not kill another human being. These men had trained with us for two years in Japan; these men were not cowards.
We reprimanded them, threatened them with court-martial, etc., and waited until the next inspection. During the second inspection, it was found that the same three men had fired all their ammunition. When I asked them if they had wounded or killed an enemy soldier, they replied, “No. We missed on purpose.” Since these were honorable soldiers, and truthful, one of them was assigned as our supply truck driver and the other two were assigned as ammo bearers for our 60mm mortar section; no punishment was administered. Our other three platoons reported similar results. We interviewed all incoming replacements before assigning them to a squad.
By the end of September, the U.S. led Eighth Army and its allies had defeated the NKPA and restored South Korea. The men began to wonder when the ships were coming to take us home for Christmas; it was not to be. Complying with orders from MacArthur, we crossed the 38th parallel with the mission of unifying all of Korea under the government of South Korea’s Syngman Rhee.
We crossed the 38th parallel in early October and marched approximately 125 miles north with little or no enemy resistance. By the end of the month, many of the units of the Eighth Army were north of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. The 27th had reached an area north of the Kuryong River near the North Korean town of Yongbyon.
We advanced farther northwest when we heard rumors that other units were engaged in heavy combat. While other units had reached the Manchurian border, we were about thirty-five miles from the Yalu River.
Unbeknownst to our intelligence, China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and his generals had already decided to intervene and help North Korea. They had already deployed 170,000 troops, south of the border, in the mountains of North Korea, with another 120,000 in reserve.
Around the middle of November, the Chinese Peoples Army (volunteers) struck us with a vengeance and drove the Eighth Army back about 150 miles; and eventually back into South Korea. By this time the weather had turned bitterly cold with the wind-chill reaching forty-to-fifty degrees below zero.
When we left Japan, in July, we were issued a wool olive drab Army overcoat, but we discarded them because they were too heavy and bulky to fight in. By Thanksgiving we had been issued the Army trench coat with removable liner; they were a great improvement. We were also issued goose down winter, or arctic, sleeping bags. They were