Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [51]
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In San Diego, on August 15, we boarded the USNS General Simon Buckner headed for Japan. During our ten day voyage, we learned how to tear down and reassemble our weapons. Once we mastered this, our senior NCO’s would tear one weapon down and reassemble it with a part missing. We were then blindfolded and had to tear it down, figure out which part was missing, find the part in a spare parts box, reassemble the weapon, and load it with ammo. After which time we removed our blindfolds and fired a few rounds off the side of the ship—little did I know in just a few weeks this training would pay off.
We finally arrived in Japan, where we went through more training to get us ready physically and mentally—for combat. We were then taken to Kobe, Japan, where we boarded LST’s headed for Inchon, South Korea.
We were to be part of the Inchon Invasion scheduled for September 15. However, we ran into a storm while sailing in the Sea of Japan. I remember the water coming over the bow and splashing over the trucks that were tied down to the deck. Next, you could see the bow come up out of the water, and her flat bottom slapping down on the water; the whole ship groaned, creaked, and popped. Needless to say, I was one scared nineteen year old; however, we made it on schedule.
Once we arrived, we watched as the thirty foot tide receded from the harbor and out from under our LST. That was an eerie feeling, watching the water that we were once floating in vanish from beneath our vessel, leaving us setting in the mud; now we were happy that we were on a flat-bottomed ship.
Now that we couldn’t move, we had a bigger problem—the Navy ships shelling the coastline. They were lobbing shells over our heads and if they fired a short round, we could have easily been hit. This went on all morning and into the afternoon.
Finally, the tide began to return, so we loaded into our Amtracts; which were stored in the belly of the LST. The LST lowered its ramp and we drove off into the water. Our mission was to head to the mouth of a creek, or storm drainage area, to secure it so the Seabees could come ashore with their equipment the following morning.
Corporal Barnes, our lead wireman, was hit and killed as he was cutting some barbed wire. Since we were receiving very little fire, we figured we were being shot at by a sniper. Just ahead of us was a smokestack with a hole in it about three-quarters up. We quickly set up two light machine guns, and zeroed in on the hole. After watching several tracers disappear into the hole, we stopped firing for a few minutes. The enemy fire had stopped, so we proceeded cutting the wire and moved further ashore.
What a first night! Little did I know, worse nights were a head.
The following day we got a good scare as we were advancing forward on foot. As we were moving along a trail on a hillside, suddenly we heard what sounded like machine gun fire. Immediately everyone hit the ground. The sound then lessened some, so we looked up and saw a female pheasant flying off her nest. Not being a bird hunter, I didn’t realize they made that kind of noise when they took off. Needless to say, it wasn’t funny at the time, but afterwards it was a little humorous.
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On our way to Seoul we had to cross the Han River, but all the bridges in our area had been blown up during the early days of the war. So, they had to bring up some DUKW’s to ferry us across. Talking about being surprised! The driver of our DUKW was a hometown buddy of mine. He was in our Reserve Company, and when they disbanded us at Camp Pendleton he was assigned to the motor pool. Finally, we reassembled on the other side and proceeded toward Seoul—on foot.
As we entered Seoul, the street fighting that we encountered was almost indescribable. There were