Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [83]
After gathering all the dead we could find, we headed south to Hagaru-ri. We headed down the only road from the Chosin and it was nothing more than a dirt road about fifteen feet wide. For every mile we advanced, we had to fight for at least eight hours—it was brutal.
By this time the weather was taking its toll on men, and equipment. Our grenades were no longer working properly, and rifles were jamming due to the lubricating oil freezing. I saw many men urinating on their rifles in the hopes of thawing them out. I even saw men built a fire underneath a .30 caliber machine gun, to get it to work. But most of all, we were running out of ammo.
We continued on. We must have been about three days out of Hagaru-ri, and we were feeling everything was going to be alright now. Wrong! On the side of the road was a shack that was burning, so we all hurried over to it to get warm. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a bugle and here they came. They were on the high ground, and they were hitting us hard. By this time I only had four bullets for a .38 pistol. In their standard mode of attack, the Chinese ran through us then they returned.
During the first attack our Staff Sergeant had been hit in the right temple. Lucky for him it only penetrated the skin. We could see, and feel, it; it was a slug from a .45, and it was making him dizzy. As the Chinese were making their return attack, Bill and I protected the Sarge as best we could. Suddenly, a concussion grenade landed about ten feet in front of us. It knocked me backwards against a 6 x 6 truck. I heard Bill yelling that he had been hit in the face. I went over to him to check and see how bad he was hurt. Taking off my glove, I wiped off the snow and ice—that had been kicked up by the concussion grenade—from his face to find that he was okay. In just that short period of time, I was unable to put my glove back on. My hand was frozen stiff.
With no ammo, and weapons hardly working, we knew it was about over. Suddenly, in the distance I heard singing—I must have been hallucinating from the extreme cold. But it was getting louder. Low and behold, coming up the road was a unit of the British Royal Marines. What a sight! I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. And let me say this—those boys could fight!
Our lieutenant, who I had been with on Guadalcanal, was riding in a jeep leading our outfit. When we got to him, he was dead—or at least we thought so. I took my poncho and covered his body. The driver was lying on his side, and I could tell he was also dead.
Finally, ten-or-eleven days after our journey started, we arrived at Hagaru-ri—to a thundering cheer from the rest of the division. Unfortunately, along the way we lost roughly two-thousand men.
As I was walking down the road, I heard someone yelling, “Bob Grass. Is Bob Grass here?” I thought who in the world could that be? I turned around and there was my cousin, Jack, from Chicago. I didn’t even know he was in the Marines, let alone Korea. He was in the Marine Air Corps as a spotter for our airplanes. After seeing my hand, which by this time had a large water bubble, he said I needed to get it taken care of. I told him there were men who needed attention worse than I did. So, I waited until they were all taken of, then we went to the aid station. As we entered the tent, a colonel was raking a Marine over the coals about his feet not being that bad, and for him to get back to his unit. I could only think of what he was going to say to me, so I turned to leave when a captain came in the room. He took one look at my hand and said that it needed to be amputated. I told him I wanted to wait until I got to the hospital in Yokohama, Japan, and see what they said.
The captain told me there was a plane of wounded leaving and for me to hurry and get on it. I was the last person to board the last plane flying out of Hagaru-ri. It was nothing more than a strip that had been leveled by a bulldozer. Another Marine and I were sitting in bucket seats on the side of the plane, and as it took off the Chinese at the end of the runway