Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [69]
We shot down a whole line of them, only to have another line behind them. The second line had no weapons, so they stopped just long enough to pick up a weapon from a fallen comrade.
We had no weapon larger than the 75mm recoilless rifle. However, we did have 60 and 80mm mortars, but no shells. Our ammo was running low and we had no way of getting air support. You’ve got to understand what it feels like to be in combat and not have enough ammunition, or a weapon that doesn’t work. That feeling is—helplessness.
Major John McLaughlin had assumed command of the ill-fated segment of the task force. By 0200 hours, on the thirtieth, his men were out of grenades and they were completely surrounded. As our guns lay silent, the major walked down the line of quiet men. He informed us that the Chinese had captured a G.I. and sent him back to tell us that if we didn’t surrender in fifteen minutes, they would wipe us out.
The major asked the men what they wanted to do. If we said stay and fight—he would fight. After some debate, few of the men wanted to hold out until daylight when our planes would come back. However, the Chinese were so close our planes could not strike them without hitting us. With most of the men wounded, and the temperature dipping to twenty below zero, we were in dire need of medical care and shelter. Major McLaughlin had no choice—surrender.
He went away and a few minutes later, all along the railroad bank and across the narrow road—and even the hills beyond—the Chinese stood up. They were as close as thirty feet of our perimeter.
The Chinese were not familiar with our 75mm recoilless rifle. Earlier I had reloaded the rifle and before I was able to fire it, I was hit in the forehead; therefore, it was still loaded. One of the Chinese soldiers pulled the trigger, and the four officers standing at the rear of the rifle completely disintegrated from the back-blast. Even though I was wounded, bleeding, and half conscious, I had the urge to smirk at our captor’s.
There was a young soldier lying on the ground, next to me, who had half of his stomach blown away from a mortar round. As he cried, and screamed for help, the Chinese rolled him off the road to die.
After our capture, the wounded were ordered to board trucks. We thought we were being returned to our lines as requested by the major in the terms of the surrender. We soon found out that the Chinese had no intention of honoring such an agreement. They quickly herded all 143 of us into some farm houses. As I regained consciousness, my head, arm, and legs were in pain as if some one was sticking me with a hot pin. What I did not consider was the possibility that for the next thirty-two months and twenty days, I would be fighting just to survive.
I don’t know how long we stayed here, but I’ve been told it was for one day and one night. When morning came, we were fed one can of corn for every five men; then we were herded outside for our miserable, unforgettable death march to our first prison camp at Kanggye, North Korea.
We marched back down to the road where we had fought in Hell Fire Valley. Many of the wounded were still there—slowly dying. Some of the prisoners took blankets from the trucks to cover their fallen comrades. The dead were still lying in the road, and in the ditch, where they had fallen—rigid from death and cold. Bodies of hundreds of dead Americans, and Chinese soldiers littered the frozen ground; the carnage around us was unbelievable. As we continued past this site, we crossed the road and moved out onto a frozen stream. Here we were forced to stand—on the ice—for hours before moving north.
We marched northwest towards P’Yongyang-Manojin railroad, and a place called Kanggye, which was roughly sixty-to-seventy air miles from where we were ambushed. Traveling mostly at night to avoid detections by allied aircraft, we covered a distance of 120-150 miles