Valleys of Death (4 page)

My fifteen-man section were mostly raw recruits. When I asked how many had any experience beyond basic training, only four hands went up. The entire force was moving sergeants from one unit to another trying to get them to the units as they were being deployed. The initial rush to bring a few divisions to strength left the follow-on divisions and units basically with all new sergeants and men.

Looking at my roster, I assigned Corporal James Walsh to lead one squad. He was about five feet, eleven inches tall and about 150 pounds, a wiry guy from New York; his father owned a bar in Brooklyn and he spoke with a thick accent. Being city boys from the East Coast, we bonded quickly. We were both brash and had that quiet cockiness about us. I guess that's why we were so close right from the start.

A Yankees fan, Walsh used to listen to games on the radio with me in the barracks. The Phillies were a young team and I had a good feeling that they'd meet the Yanks in the series. Or at least that is what I kept telling Walsh.

“If you guys make it, you ain't got a chance,” he told me. “The Phillies? How they gonna beat the Yankees?”

He talked for hours about Brooklyn, how he would play stickball in the streets late into the summer nights. Much like we did in Philadelphia.

My other squad leader, Corporal Walter Gray, was a little older and quieter, a good guy.

Corporal Robert Hall had been around a little and seemed like he was going to be good. I made him the gunner in Walsh's squad.

Scanning the rest of my roster, I stopped on Private First Class William Heaggley. He was also from Philadelphia. His parents owned a small neighborhood bakery.

But looking at his awards, I saw he'd recently won the Expert Infantryman's Badge. No small feat. The test is a very comprehensive look at every facet of what a top-notch infantryman should know, ranging from first aid and weapons to tactics. Out of a seven hundred-man battalion, only about ten to fifteen passed. Right off the bat, I knew Heaggley would be one of my best men.

He was the quiet type—a yes-or-no kind of guy. He was real shy, which made him even more valuable. It was good to bullshit when you were in the barracks, but in the field you had to be all business. Heaggley was all business with an eagle eye.

I would have liked to have made Heaggley a squad leader, but rank prevented that.

I had two young kids, Greenlowe and Jones. I didn't think either one of them was seventeen. Greenlowe was a nice young guy who listened to what he was told. Jones on the other hand was a smart-ass I knew I was going to have to watch.

Corporal Charles King from the mortar section was also in the barracks. King was a big Midwestern boy from Indiana with whom not too many people would want to tangle. You could tell he worked out—he had big muscular forearms like steel beams and a perfect back for carrying equipment in the field. And he was outgoing. He had a deep, infectious laugh.

He and I became good friends along with Walsh, Hall and Heaggley. Looking back, I realize we were a great crew. We were so optimistic and full of life. We talked about how this would be a short war and how we would all hang out when we returned.

“One day I'm going to take you-all down to New Orleans,” King told us.

“Mardi gras, you haven't lived until you've seen Mardi gras.”

“Yeah, well, you ain't lived until you see Yankee Stadium,” Walsh said.

As close as you become with one another—a brotherlike bond—I really knew very little about the others' pasts. In my case, the men of the section were together a very short time. Some were gone within days; others lasted a little longer. I knew Walsh the longest, but that was only four months. If you'd asked me how well I knew Walsh then, I'd have told you I knew him like a brother. But as the years pass, I realize I knew very little of his life before our friendship.

The 57 was a fairly new weapon to the Army's inventory, so we had a good supply of guns, ammo and parts. But few soldiers knew how to use it. Luckily, I'd taught it in Austria. Essentially, it was a lightweight breech-loaded gun developed after World War II to punch holes in tanks, bunkers and buildings. Capable of firing artillery-type shells without recoil, the weapon was effective in killing Soviet-style T-34 tanks and light enough that it could be fired from the shoulder, on a tripod, or in a jeep.

The colonel had us run wearing our field gear, helmet, pack and ammo belt everywhere we went. In Korea, we'd have gun jeeps and ammo trailers, but my men all needed strong legs and backs. The 57 recoilless rifle weighed forty-five pounds and the ammo weighed six pounds per round. We also needed to carry .30-caliber ammo for our rifles and grenades. If we needed to hump the guns and ammo up and down hills, we had to be ready.

We had a very limited time to train, so Colonel Johnson had us concentrate on battle drills. We found out that Johnson had been captured on Bataan during World War II and remained a prisoner for over three years before being released. Because of Bataan, he was less trusting and understood the harshness of war.

The battalion spent time on the range shooting every rifle and machine gun in the arsenal. On the grenade range, instead of the normal sandbag pit, we ran up, threw the grenades and hit the prone position to mimic real-life combat conditions.

Johnson knew that in Korea we wouldn't have the protection of the pit. One man, I'm not sure from which company, didn't get down fast enough and shrapnel caught him in the leg. We could see the blood as he rolled on the ground moaning. The medics put him on a litter and carried him over to a waiting ambulance. Everybody was hollering at him as they put him in the ambulance.

“Million-dollar wound,” they all chanted.

When we weren't shooting, we spent time getting shot at. And in retrospect, it was great training for the hell we would face on the battlefield.

Colonel Johnson marched us out on the range and had the 3.5 mortars and artillery fire five hundred yards down-range. Then he walked the battalion to within a hundred yards of the exploding shells. Everything I'd heard about the colonel proved to be true. He was tough and knew what it was going to take to put a green unit together so it had a chance of survival in combat. I could feel the earth shake. The force of the explosions was like punches to the chest. Afterward, we staggered off a little dazed. Johnson was certainly doing everything he could to get us ready.

One day we were practicing crew drills in the company area. It is similar to practicing football plays. The squad leader identifies a target, direction, distance and what type of round to be fired, while the crew prepares the weapon to fire. Quick, sharp and concise. We'd gotten it down to several seconds between rounds, but the goal was to repeat it to the point that it became muscle memory. It had to be that way because in combat, we'd have to do it under fire.

During a short smoke break, a runner came and told me that the colonel was walking through the company and checking barracks. Shit. I had two cases of beer and a case of soda in the shower, with the cold water running on them so they would be cool when we finished training. Alcohol was not permitted in the barracks and I was wasting water. I ran to the barracks and arrived just in time.

“Sir, Corporal Richardson, weapons platoon. I'm the barracks noncommissioned officer, follow me, sir.”

He nodded and followed me through the door and into the barracks. As we walked, Johnson scanned the room and asked me about the platoon.

“Your men ready for Korea?”

“They're training hard and we'll be ready, sir.”

We turned the corner and I could hear the shower running over the cans. I was prepared to take my ass-chewing like a man.

“Sir, I've got some drinks in the shower trying to keep them cool for the men.”

He looked at the shower and turned to me.

“That's good, Corporal, the barracks look good,” Johnson said. “Use every minute you can to get your men ready.”

CHAPTER THREE

MOVEMENT TO THE FAR EAST

On August 4, eight trucks sat idling at the end of the street.

Men mingled in crisp green fatigues and full field gear, helmets, weapons and packs. A melancholy cloud hung over the whole company area. A few men clutched their wives and girlfriends like drowning men clutch a life raft. I stood with the single guys, smoking and telling jokes near the back of the formation.

I was anxious to get going. Hurry up and wait. One of the first things you learn about the Army.

I saw Roberts. He was hugging his beautiful young wife—tall, slim and graceful. I knew a lot of us envied him that day. She was the kind of woman that most of us hoped to come home to when the war was over.

Finally, the first sergeant came out of the orderly room and moved to his position in the company street. Immediately the platoon sergeants called their platoons to attention. There was a gravity to it. We were on the doorstep of war. We all knew it and wanted to be disciplined because when the bullets started, discipline could be the difference between life and death. The company formed, the platoon sergeants made their reports.

“All present and accounted for.”

We all stood ramrod straight, our rifles at our sides. The first sergeant, company roster in hand, started calling each man's name.

“Corporal Richardson, William.”

“Present,” I loudly responded.

It felt good to release some of the tension. We were going off to war, and most of us, including me, had no idea what we were about to face. After calling out all 172 names, each one answered, the first sergeant turned and reported to McAbee.

“All present, sir.”

McAbee gave the command to “post.”

The first sergeant and the platoon sergeants moved to the back of the formation. There was a quietness that surrounded everything. A sort of finality. Seconds later, the order was given to board the trucks. We rode to the railhead in silence. Roberts just sat looking out of the truck, back to where he'd left his wife.

At the railhead the battalion was loaded on three trains for the three-and-a-half-day trip to California. They were World War II olive-drab cars. Each train was made up of two baggage cars, one kitchen car and several sleeper coaches. One baggage car was used to accommodate the company's field mess equipment. This is where our meals would be prepared and distributed while we crossed the country.

Seats in the daytime converted to an upper and lower bunk at night and at one end of the coach there was a bathroom capable of handling six to ten men at a time. It was pretty damn nice. There was only one thing missing—beer. We'd barely been on the rails for a day before King convinced a civilian at one of the stations to get us some cases of beer.

We put it in the bathroom sinks to keep cool. By the time we got to Pennsylvania, the order came down banning beer. That didn't stop us. The trick was to hide it so the officers could not find it. Each coach had two or three water coolers mounted to the wall and the porters helped us hide the beer in the bottom of the cabinet that held up the tank.

I watched as America sped across my window, marveling at how much it had changed since I'd been gone. I remembered my first train ride after getting back from Austria. I was with three hundred other soldiers heading home fresh from occupation duty. I was on my way to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to process my orders and be assigned to a new unit.

Squeezing down the aisle in the middle of the train, I found a seat near the back of the car. The train crept out of the station and was soon barreling down the track. Looking out of the window, I noticed metal lightning rods on the roofs of the houses. They seemed to sprout out of the roofs like weeds.

“When did they start putting lightning rods on all the houses?”

The soldier next to me looked out the window and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

I pointed to the rooftops and they all started to laugh.

“They're not lightning rods,” the guy said. “They are television antennas.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You mean to tell me that all those people have televisions?”

“How long have you been gone?” the soldier asked me.

I laughed at the memory as the train pulled into a town near Chicago. Each stop, we all filed off and did jumping jacks, push-ups and sit-ups on the platform. Civilians, waiting for a train, stood off to the side and watched. Some of the men, probably World War II veterans, wanted to know where we were going and wished us luck. They knew what was in store. As the train pulled out of the station, they cheered. We were off to war. Off to fight the first battle against Communism.

But there was little to cheer about in the papers and on the radio. We followed the war closely as we traveled. Every stop, besides beer, we got the latest papers, and the radio was on all day. The reports from the front were sobering.

The war in Korea had reached crisis level. American and South Korean units were fighting for their lives. They'd been swept from the 38th parallel and quickly forced out of Seoul. The North Koreans swept south toward Pusan, a port on the eastern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Now our troops were making their last stand along the Naktong River in the west and a line north of Taegu reaching east to the sea of Japan. It was bad and we knew it.

King, usually boisterous and chatty, was quiet as soon as we crossed into Indiana.

He had just returned from Okinawa and had not been able to take a leave. We were scheduled to go through Indiana very close to his hometown. He was struggling with himself over whether to get off the train and go home. It wasn't that he was scared to go to Korea. He was just not sure he could go to war without seeing his family. What if he never came back? No one said it. We didn't have to. We all knew and wouldn't blame him if he got off the train. You could see him debating in his head. Finally, he got up from staring out the window and pulled me aside.