Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [57]
Roughly at 1730 hours, on September 15, 1950, we disembarked our ship and loaded into AMTRACS for our trip to the beach. It was pure chaos; the sea was full with ships unloading troops, rockets were being fired at the beach, and the big guns of the battleships were firing at the shoreline.
We were supposed to have been in the third wave, landing at Blue Beach. However, due to the confusion from all the firing, and restricted visibility from the rockets, we were in the first wave to hit the beach. Actually, there was no beach, just an eight foot high seawall that we had to climb. Each AMTRAC’s coxswain had built a four-or-five foot ladder, which we used to climb over the wall. Our objective was to secure the beach and proceed to a small hill south of our landing site. We were to accomplish this by 2000 hours.
As we made our way toward the hill, we were approached by many civilians fleeing the fighting that was going on in the city of Inchon. I stopped to treat as many of the wounded civilians as I could; these were the first casualties of the war that I treated.
That first night we were all nervous, and closely watched for infiltrators. On the skyline I spied a figure and called to Gunny Dartez for instructions; he told me to keep an eye on it, so I spent most of the night with my carbine, and attention, glued to it. If it had moved, I would have shot its twig off—it was a bush. The following morning we headed toward Seoul, which was twenty miles away.
One day we had stopped to reorganize, when I heard that a couple men had fallen behind. Apparently, one of them was suffering from heat exhaustion and was being helped by another soldier. I could see them about two-hundred yards away, on the side of a hill, so I grabbed my medical kit and went to help. The guy wasn’t in that bad of shape, so I gave him some water and a salt tablet; then I sent him on to his unit. They hadn’t gotten twenty yards when a mortar round hit behind us; the blast knocked me to my knees. The soldier with the heat problem was peppered with some small stones and dirt, but wasn’t seriously injured. However, the other guy was injured. We got him back to his unit where his corpsman could take care of him. I returned to my unit, which was a mortar platoon.
On our way to Seoul we passed through the small town of Yongdung-po, and some small dikes, when I heard someone calling for a corpsman. Immediately, I ran into a burning thatch hut, but found no one. My buddies were yelling for me to get back to the line, since I had gone about thirty yards out in front of it. Not finding anyone, I was sure it was a North Korean soldier looking for a trophy—an American Corpsman. To avoid being called by an enemy soldier, we used a code word—lame duck—to call for a corpsman.
We were in reserve one day while in Seoul, and sitting on the sides of a wide street trying not to be targets for snipers. Suddenly, an officer came walking down the middle of the street waving and shouting words of encouragement to the men. Following him were some junior officers ducking and trying not to get hit by the bullets that were ricocheting off the street. I turned to the guy next to me and asked, “Who the hell is that nut?”
He replied, “That’s ‘Chesty’ Puller, a Marine’s Marine!”
That was the only time I ever saw “Chesty,” but, I’ll always remember it.
In Seoul we were set up on a small plateau, dotted with Korean houses. Our rifle platoons were higher up on the hill flushing out the enemy. Soon, two Koreans carrying a litter with a wounded Marine came down the hill. The officer accompanying them asked for a corpsman to transport the wounded soldier to the aid station. The Koreans carried the litter, and two Marines went along as guards.
The wounded Marine was Sgt. John Darakjian, who had thrown a grenade into a hole where a North Korean soldier was hiding. The North Korean threw it back out, and it exploded in front of the sergeant—blowing the side of his face off. Needless to say, he was in serious condition. I had to ask where the aid station was, and was told,