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grenades exploded where he had been a moment before. He was
quickly discouraged and rejoined his companions.
At 8 a.m. the remaining L. Company platoons formed up and
moved out single file along the ridgeline to join up with the first.
The forward observer lieutenant who replaced Jim Hillas (on R&R)
the day before (and who had been of no help during the night)
had me, Radioman Allan Lolie and himself fall in near the end of
the line. I was carrying a heavy roll of communication wire as the
lieutenant thought we might need it later. After about 100 yards of
rough going with this plus my rifle and extra ammo, it dawned on
me that we had nowhere to tie this wire into and hadn’t brought a
field phone with us anyway!
I dropped to the rear of the column in order to divest myself of
this load plus removing my field jacket as the morning had warmed
up considerably. The rest of the column ran on and disappeared
over a small rise in the ridge. As I approached this rise, a large shell
exploded just on the far side, which knocked me for a loop and
injured my right knee.
At this point I must backtrack a week or ten days. We’d had a
chance to go back to shower at a “washy – washy” set up by a river.
They would exchange your dirty clothes for clean ones if they had
them, and Korean women would wash what you had turned in
and pass them on to someone else. I ended up with a size 40 pair
of fatigue pants and white shorts also way too large. At least they
were clean. I had been wearing my old rags for 6-8 weeks.
To continue, I picked myself up and started up the trail, which
soon became a trench line about 3 feet deep. I could see no sign
of any L. Company people. Artillery fire from the Chinese was
becoming heavy and as the trench was exposed I began running.
Suddenly I found myself hamstrung as my shorts fell down around
my knees. Being unable to run, I lay down in the trench, unsnapped
my armored vest and ammo belt, undid my trousers and used my
bayonet to cut the shorts off and toss them out of the trench. As I
threw them away I wondered what the guys would think if a round
got me right then.
At any rate, I pulled up my pants, buckled up and ran on. Through
the smoke and dust I could see a body crumpled up in the trench
ahead of me. I knelt down and saw that it was Sgt. Petro, one of L.
Company’s squad leaders. He had died of a head wound.
The trench ran uphill from this point to a cluster of fighting bunkers and as I looked up from Petro’s body I saw a face in the bunker
slit - he was wearing an earflap cap. A Chinese soldier I thought;
I slowly raised my carbine and took a bead on him. I hesitated to
fire as he wasn’t showing a weapon and he suddenly stuck an arm
out and motioned to me. I crouched down and slowly eased up to
the bunker and around back to the entrance. Inside was one of the
Love Company’s men wearing several bandages on his head with
the ties hanging down over both ears. His face was darkened with
dried blood and in the shadow of the bunker opening he appeared
to be wearing a Chinese earflap cap. His story was that a shell
fragment had penetrated his helmet and ricocheted around inside
giving him an almost 360 degree scalp wound. The weird bandage
job was the best the medic could do. Blood was still running down
his neck into his fatigue jacket. He was afraid to try to make it back
along the trail until the shellfire let up some. I warned him to stay
away from the aperture as I had almost shot him and the next guy
might not hesitate.
There were three 60 mm mortars in this position apparently
untouched by the Chinese when they over ran the position during
the night. I crawled up to the edge of the parapet and it looked to
me as if they were well within range of the Chinese positions on
top of the main hill. However, I did not know how to operate them.
I foun