Valleys of Death (12 page)

 

 

Early the next morning, we were back on foot, advancing toward the North Koreans behind three American tanks. We were receiving heavy artillery fire and I tried to stay close to the tanks, hoping the armor would shield us from the shrapnel flying through the air. One second I was looking back to make sure Walsh's squad was keeping up and the next I was stunned. A shell landed on the tank, sending shrapnel and fire into the air. The explosion was deafening and I stumbled back dazed.

Falling down in the tracks behind the tank, I saw the crew crawling out of the escape hatch. Machine gun fire was kicking up dirt all around me as I hugged the ground. I could see two tankers lying under the tank. They were wounded and couldn't crawl away from the hulk.

“Walsh,” I screamed. “Help me get these guys.”

A couple of artillery rounds landed on the road. I felt a sharp, hot pain in my left shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Walsh asked as he raced to my side.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head trying to reassure him.

I didn't have time to worry about it.The machine gun rounds pinged off the armor as I crawled underneath the tank and grabbed one of the tankers by his collar. Pain shot through my arm and my shoulder felt hot and weak. I let go, but hung on with my good hand. Walsh grabbed the other tanker and we dragged the pair to a nearby ditch.

“Medic! Medic!” I screamed.

Blood poured out of their ears from the impact. Both men stared absently into the sky, almost like the blast had blown them far away from the hell around them. Walsh was urging his men to keep going. It was the only way to get out of the artillery fire. I left the tankers and kept the section moving out of the artillery.

With the two remaining tanks the company commander directed our assault on the hill to our right front. With the help of the tanks and our 57 direct fire, we took the lower portion of the hill. As we prepared to assault the North Korean position on the top of the hill, Walsh grabbed me. My shirt was now slick with blood from my shoulder. I could feel it trickle down my arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said. “Go get that shoulder taken care of.”

“Quiet,” I snapped.

I didn't want the rest of the section to know that I was wounded. I wiped the blood off on my pants and looked up at the hill. My shoulder burned, but there was no way I was leaving my men except in a body bag. Walsh wouldn't let it go. He was stubborn and kept after me. I knew that I would have done the same thing for him if he were wounded.

“Get a medic before we start up this goddamned hill,” I said. “Don't say anything to anybody, understand?”

“Yeah, Rich, yeah,” Walsh said as he went to get the medic. He looked relieved.

I squatted down and tried to take off my gear and jacket so the medic could get to the wound. My left hand shook as I peeled the shirt off, now a few shades darker from the blood. The medic arrived with Walsh. He wiped away the blood with a wad of gauze and started to bandage the gash. It was on the backside of my shoulder and I couldn't see the wound.

“A few pieces of shrapnel,” the medic said. “You can move it, right? Probably nothing torn or broken.”

The bandage felt good and I pulled my shirt back on. The attack was about to start. I saw the medic filling out a tag, a slip of paper put on each wounded soldier detailing treatments given and needed. A tag meant a trip to the hospital.

“Save the tag. I don't need it,” I said.

A couple of days later, we sat overlooking the 38th parallel. We'd pushed the North Koreans back and now awaited orders to attack. My section was covering a road. I had set my two guns on the left side so we could get good flanking shots at anything approaching.

Sitting in my foxhole, I watched as the full moon began to rise. I got the feeling that there was something safe and secure as it washed gently over us. I felt like God was protecting us or surely trying to help. He'd at least kept me alive. My shoulder throbbed, but I kept humming “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away” to keep my mind off the pain.

Timeline to Pyongyang.
Constructed by author based on daily battalion situation reports from the National Archives

 

 

 

If only we were back home, we could all go to sleep under the moon's calming light and wake up safe to the warmth of the sun.

CHAPTER NINE

THE GENERAL

I woke up and my shoulder was on fire. I could hear Walsh and Heaggley talking.

“You'd better get Vaillancourt up here,” Walsh said.

I blacked out and woke up again in the back of a jeep ambulance bouncing down the road. It was dark and I had no idea where I was headed. I passed out again, and when I came to, the medics were transferring me to a box ambulance. I could see other litters with wounded soldiers. Holy shit, I thought, I must be being evacuated further to the rear. The last thing I heard was the rumble of the ambulance's engine before I passed out.

I woke this time just as they carried me into the battalion's aid station. The medics set the stretcher on a dirt floor. There was a medic leaning over me, and he spoke to me with a quiet, reassuring voice.

“You'll be okay, Sarge, I'll take care of you.”

When I was thirteen years old, my old gang and I were down by the railroad with a bow and arrow. We were using the top of a peach basket for a target. We were shooting the arrows a hundred yards to the target that was placed on a hill. One of us would sit on the hill and collect the arrows that had been shot, then bring them back to the firing point and another guy would go to the hill. It was my turn and I was lying on the hill waiting to collect the arrows when I looked up and an arrow was headed right for me. I tried to roll out of the way, but the arrow dug deep into the calf of my left leg. The tip went right down to the bone.

I quickly pulled it out.

I was afraid to tell my mother and hid my injury for five days. I knew I would catch hell for being on the railroad, to say nothing of being stupid for lying on the hill next to the target. Soon, the wound was infected and I was forced to tell my mother.

When my mother asked how it happened, I lied.

“I fell on some reeds and one penetrated my leg,” I said.

She did not buy my bullshit story and grabbed one of my buddies. He talked, and she scolded me all the way to the doctor's office, which was a few doors down. In those days the doctor worked out of his home. He propped my leg up on a table and took out what looked like a big green worm.

“You're lucky,” he said. “Had you waited any longer, the infection would have spread.”

I may have been lucky, but I didn't learn anything. I woke in the battalion aid station just as the doctor was cleaning out my shoulder wound. It wasn't infected, but he told me I was lucky.

For the next several hours I rested on a stretcher next to a wall with a large crack in it. I could see on the other side three or four South Korean soldiers. They were standing around a guy tied to a chair. They were working him over with what looked like rubber hoses. He was gagged, but I could still hear him moaning and trying to scream. I watched for a while and then turned my head and tried not to think of what I had seen.

I didn't know the facts. I knew the North Koreans slaughtered a lot of innocent men, women and children. I also knew some of the South Korean civilians had collaborated. I knew one thing for sure: It was out of my hands. But I still felt a little sorry for the guy.

The next day, I felt fine. The doctors still had me on a Jell-O diet, so when the doctor came on his rounds, I told him I wanted to leave.

“I need to get back to my unit,” I said.

He shook his head. I pleaded with him. I was worried about my men.

“You leave, Sergeant, and you're on your own,” the doctor said. “I am not releasing you.”

I pulled my uniform shirt on and found the medic from the night before and got my rifle and gear. “Good luck,” he said as I started north along the road. I had no idea how far I had to walk to get back to my company.

Not more than a half a mile down the road a military police jeep stopped me.

“Where are you headed?” asked the driver.

“Third Battalion, Eighth Cav,” I said.

“Get in, we'll take you up the road,” the driver said.

I jumped in the back, grateful for the ride. We got to a road junction and there was a steady stream of traffic moving in all directions. Long lines of trucks filled with supplies and troops, some towing massive artillery, crawled along the road.

One of the MPs walked over and talked to an officer standing by a jeep. He motioned for me to come over a few minutes later.

“The general's going to get you back to your unit.”

“A general, holy shit.”

The general was a tall, lean man with an air of authority. As I got closer, I could see one star on his helmet. It was Brigadier General Charles Day Palmer, the commander of the First Cavalry Division Artillery. A World War II veteran, he'd fought in the Normandy invasion, the breakout at St. Lo and the battles across France and the low countries to the Siegfried Line with the Second Armored Division.

“I understand you are a sergeant in the Third of the Eighth,” he said.

“ Yes sir. L Company.”

“Just stay with me and I'll get you back to your unit.”

He turned and grabbed the radio handset from his jeep. A battalion commander who'd missed his initial point (IP), the time when his unit had to move on the road, was on the other end.

“Colonel, is your executive officer there? Put him on the radio,” Palmer said.

The executive officer came on the radio.

“Major, you are now in command of the battalion. I'm going to give you a new IP time. Do not miss it. Tell the colonel to report to my headquarters ASAP. Do you understand the message?”

“Roger that, sir,” the new battalion commander said.

I also got the message: to never, ever miss an IP time.

“Lets go,” the general said to me, climbing into his jeep. We skirted the road and drove up to his headquarters. The headquarters had just moved into what looked like a number of wooden schoolhouses.

When we stopped, Palmer called a sergeant major over to his jeep.

I didn't catch his name, but it didn't matter. When you're that senior, sergeant major is fine.

“Get someone to give Sergeant Richardson a haircut and then bring him to my mess for dinner tonight,” Palmer said.

I sat down in a field chair outside, and the sergeant major talked to me while my hair was being cut. He told me that the headquarters just moved in and hadn't finished setting up security.

“We have a possible situation,” he said.

“Yeah, what's that?” I asked.

“Do you see that high hill directly behind this building? We just moved in here today, and I am afraid there could be some North Koreans up there in that pagoda,” the sergeant major said. “I haven't been able to get anyone up there yet. To be honest with you, my guys are not very good at taking care of things like this.”

“Well, Sarge, what do you want me to do?”

“If I give you a couple of men, would you go up there and check it out?” he said.

“I guess so, if that's what you want, but who the hell does your security?” I asked. “The quartering party should have checked that out before you moved into this place.”

He agreed. “I know, but they didn't, and now it's worrying me.”

After my haircut, the sergeant major brought two of his men to me. They were young privates and didn't seem too confident. These were not the battle-hardened soldiers from my section.

“Look, you men stay back and cover me as we move up the hill,” I said. “Then while you move up I will cover you.”

I took the lead up the fairly steep hill. When I got a ways up, I called the pair of soldiers forward. Then I moved out again. We did this five or six times until we got to the pagoda. Crouching, I approached with my rifle at the ready. I moved quickly to the rear. The pagoda was deserted and there was no sign of any recent activity. We stayed up there for thirty minutes. The guys with me had been very nervous and now looked relieved. The sergeant major thanked us and I made a point to personally thank the two men. There was nothing like a little excitement before supper.

The general's mess was in a room with a table set up in a U shape. The kitchen truck was backed up to a room next to it where the cooking was done. The general asked me to sit next to him at the head of the table. He introduced me to his staff and then called the mess sergeant over.