10
NATURE AND ARMY GENERALS ABHOR UNEVENNESS. In nature, the tides and flowing waters make jagged points smooth over time; the wind blows against desert sands making them even, undulating dunes. So too in trench warfare, Army generals, at least those in Korea in 1952 and 1953, preoccupied themselves with the task of straightening out a crooked system of trench line. If there was a jutting piece of real estate belonging to the communist Chinese Army that protruded unevenly into the flowing lines of the UN troops then the military leaders focused on “straightening.” The Chinese generals likewise did not like to see American held positions, such as outposts like Pork Chop or Yoke, breaking up their smooth lines. These were clear invitations for them to attack us and try to occupy our hillocks of battered earth and bring them into their own sector.
Moreover, it appeared especially desirable to straighten out the MLR when it also served to increase the territory under one’s control because of the “so called” peace talks that were taking place in Panmunjom. One of the most inconspicuous pieces of real estate that seemed to need straightening in April of 1953 involved the little knoll called Pork Chop Hill—so named because of its shape on a map. Retaking this hill that the Chinese had recently grabbed and possessing it for the peace talks would supposedly strengthen the hands of the negotiators. It was apparently important for each side to hold on to as much of the jagged pieces of real estate as possible because when (or if) a peace agreement was reached then the eventual pull back would be measured from the point of present occupation. Thus, the further up the peninsula our troops were situated the bigger the country of South Korea would be.
The politics that were influencing military actions at this time in Korea centered on the lack of progress in the peace negotiations in Panmunjom. The negotiators could not agree on issues of disengagement and the prisoner-of-war question that had played so large a role during 1952. To some people the war in Korea appeared to be like a chess game and we were the pieces to be moved about. The American chess pieces, especially the pawns—the lowly infantryman—would be moved to a particular spot. The Chinese generals and political officers would then move their pawns (similarly low infantrymen) into another square in a counter move. Our generals would then move knights, and so on. These grand schemes and strategies must have made great intellectual discussions at the respective War Colleges.
In the trenches of Korea, however, it was another matter—such movements resulted in human tragedy. When Ole Joe moved to a particular square and we moved to the same one to try and check him, it was done at the price of human blood—our blood and that of the Chinese. These chess moves were not fun, intellectual games; they involved the hopes, dreams, and lives of young men. Just a week before our leaving the line, the Chinese generals made a move that cost some human life, including that of our friend Zimdahl—he did not even get to know the outcome of that particular chess gambit!
We were moved in reserve behind the MLR across from a Chinese-held hill called Hassakol in the Yokkokchon valley. The hill of particular interest to the Chinese was the one we called Pork Chop Hill, a relatively small plot of real estate about 240 meters high. It possessed one singularly undesirable quality—it was located several thousand yards inside Chinese territory. Pork Chop was overshadowed by two other hills: the taller hill Hassakol and the larger but uglier hill Chink Baldy. The road leading out to the Pork Chop from beyond the American MLR was long and winding and was usually under constant observation by the Chinese artillery observers on Hassakol. It was a long walk out to Pork Chop, especially under the watchful eyes of the Chinese sharpshooters.
A DAY IN THE WARM SUN
Not long after we left the MLR, we moved to a blocking position near the Pork Chop. The squad tents we moved into were already in place when we arrived that night and we were assigned nice dry quarters. It was very hot since the rain had stopped and we rolled up the sides of the tent to get a breeze through our quarters. Although our platoon’s tents were pitched in a wooded ravine with a small stream running nearby it was only a short down hill walk to the Company Headquarters tent. A brief period of relaxation in the warm Korean spring sun ensued. Everyone felt relieved to be away from the constant explosions of 76 mm shells, listening post duty, and the ritualized half-on, half-off sleep/guard watch that we were constantly observing at the front these days during this period of increased enemy probes.
One of the guys got the idea of having a softball game and the American contingent in our platoon challenged friends from another platoon to an old fashioned softball game; someone located a couple of gloves, a battered bat, and a softball. Bases were fashioned out of T-shirts which all seemed to have the same dirty grey colored appearance that the bases back home used to have.
For a time it seemed just like home—our cares were gone and the war was a distant thought in our minds. More important than the war was the fact that I didn’t clutch up when it came my time at bat and got a hit, helped considerably by the bad bounce that the ball took in the rough infield which had been a rice paddy in its former life. Running the bases reminded me of playing baseball in the American Legion Junior Softball League back in Charleston only a couple of years before. Of course, a ball game in Charleston seemed like an eternity away now, or maybe it never really happened at all because it seemed so remote and so alien to our present situation.
A holiday atmosphere prevailed that day and the prospect looked merrier when we were informed that the beer rations that we had missed out on for the past weeks had finally been delivered. Army life could be fun, I thought. We were enjoying ourselves after a long time at the front. I felt pretty good about my place in the Army now as an assistant platoon sergeant—pretty good duty with a good bunch of guys. It was also reassuring to have a guy like Master Sergeant Rogers running the show. Rogers, a WWII veteran of the Italian campaign, was all business and garnered a great deal of respect. He was personable and knew what it took to be effective and to stay alive in combat. I had now been promoted to sergeant first class (a five striper) and enjoyed the responsibility of my new job, and the pay (as Army salary goes) was certainly very good for a nineteen year-old!
At 4:00 P.M., the NCOs were called to the company command tent. The CO was visibly upset. He had just received word that our company was going back up front at 8:30 that evening. Pork Chop Hill had fallen to the Chinese during the night and a counter attack, currently in progress, was faltering. Our company was needed to finish the job.
With the prospect of a potential disaster in the offing, our Company Commander, Captain King, was pretty sensitive to the ways GIs think and wanted to quell growing anxieties as much as possible. One problem situation that he was told about was that the menu for the evening called for our old nemesis, creamed chicken. He recognized right away that, superstitious or not, this particular meal would never do on the day of an attack, and he ordered the cooks to do something else—anything. Creamed chicken was considered to be a jinx for the company—this meal had been served when the company got clobbered on Outpost Charlie, before I arrived; it was also the meal served at the horrible blocking position shelling in which so many people were hit just before we went up on Jane Russell Hill. This meal was a bad omen indeed! No way was this stuff going to be served before the company went up on Pork Chop!
Many people had strong premonitions about the forthcoming battle. The tension was running high as we had our meal and went to the supply truck to get issued additional supplies an equipment—assault rations, hand grenades, extra bandoliers of ammunition. The atmosphere reeked of negative expectations and gallows humor. People were writing letters home as though these words to their families or girlfriends would be their last. Some guys had the habit of writing a “last letter” to be mailed only if they didn’t make it back. If they did return they would retrieve the letter and tear it up until next time.
The chaplain came to the company about an hour before our departure time and provided services to those interested—and as it usually happened before a battle, there were numerous takers in. Not being the religious type I never participated in such services, but never joked about others feeling the need to do so. At the end of formal services, a few of the men asked for special individual meetings with him.
Three men from the company told the chaplain that they were afraid their number was up and asked him to intercede on their behalf with the captain to get them special dispensation—they did not want to go on this operation. The chaplain, seeing their sincerity and their obvious plight, interceded on their behalf with the CO and got them excused from the attack. One of these men, a friend in my platoon, came to me crying and feeling very guilty about letting the others down. He was shaking so much that he would not have been very effective on the hill if he even made it there. I told him that I understood his situation and that no apology was needed. He had to do what was in his conscience. Deep down no one blamed them or said anything negative as we were leaving because many people went up the hill resenting the fact that they had to place their lives in such jeopardy.
The three men who took leave from the engagement, however, were immediately distanced from the others. It was as though they had become lepers. The CO had also given orders that they should be transferred back to the rear and that they shouldn’t be there when we came off the hill. He would see to their fate when he returned. Those of us who returned from Pork Chop Hill never saw them again. However, because of his wounds on the hill, the CO was unable to see their transfer situation to its conclusion.
MOVING UP TO THE PORK CHOP
Part of our journey to the MLR behind Pork Chop that evening was made in a column of eight Army deuce-and-a-half trucks (two and a half ton troop carrier trucks), each of which could hold about two squads of men with equipment. The officers and radiomen rode in jeeps to the drop off point. When we reached the point beyond which vehicles could not travel for safety reasons we dismounted and lined up our gear for a last minute check. We were told to fall out along side the road and have a break since there might be a further wait. We had a long march to reach our destination. One of the lieutenants said, “Maybe it’s cooled off up there. Maybe we’re not going up now.”
After about an hour or so, we started wondering why the delay? We were told that we would be at the hill by 8:30 that night. Rumors were running rampant. Give an Army outfit an extra few minutes of waiting time, particularly when the orders are ambiguous, and a thousand rumors will appear to fill the information void. After a while, one of the officers came by and told us, “The operation was possibly called off because the company on the hill had withdrawn.”
In a few minutes another person said, “We were going to make an attack—but at daybreak.” No one really knew. We could see Captain King trying to get someone on the PRC-10 radio but did not seem to have much success. We waited and waited. Then the word came that we were moving out; we were going up the hill. There had been no cancellation, no further delay.
The hill was actually some distance away across the valley floor around the tip of the MLR hill. It was necessary to make our way through an initial valley then along a creek bed until we rounded a knoll and could see the outline of the Pork Chop in the distance. The column moved slowly along a small rocky trail, what had formerly been a stream, but was now dry. After about a half hour march along this trail the column came to a halt.
When the column stopped I sat on a rock listening for sounds of movement up ahead, a signal that we were moving on, for what seemed like an eternity in the fading light. As I waited I chanced to glimpse a beautiful wild, blue flower nearby. I touched it lightly to see if it was real or only in my imagination. It was real, but it seemed so fragile and out-of-place in this hellish scene. My thoughts were carried away to more pleasant times, to Japan where flowers were blooming everywhere near the little hotel in Nara.
As men and equipment shuffled ahead of me, my thoughts came back to the present and I realized where I was. I stood up and adjusted my equipment for the march ahead. For a fleeting moment my thoughts were on the little vulnerable flower alongside the trail. I worried that it would be trampled by the men who were following so I reached down and placed a few rocks in a sort of a wall to protect it against the war. It was now time to go.
A short distance down the road, marching in columns of two and maintaining the obligatory distance between men, I found myself at the tail end of our platoon’s column, bringing up the rear just in front of the mortar platoon as we moved toward the shadowy uncertainty up ahead. My shoulders ached from the heavy pack crammed full of the necessities of combat including three days of assault rations, extra clips of M-2 ammunition, a couple of 60 mm mortar rounds, and some extra grenades. The evening sky was dimly illuminated but we could occasionally see the familiar tracer bullets making their colorful trails through the night sky hoping to find frail human bodies huddled somewhere in the shadow world. Skylines in pitched artillery wars are often highlighted with the bright red of flares interspersed with blue bursts of white phosphorus shells.
THE GATES OF HELL OPENED UP
The first incoming 76 mm shell, from somewhere on Hassakol or Chink Baldy, landed in the middle of the first platoon formation bursting and sending its deadly steel fragments into the frail forms marching through the shadowy night. Cries of “Medic, Oh my God, I’m hit!” pierced the night as the men in formation automatically dived to the ground. Flares now lit the night sky producing an eerie glow over our head. We were like a line of ducks in a shooting gallery as we moved along the approach road.
Someone yelled, “Go Forward! Quickly!” I don’t know who yelled it—it could have been me. A second or so later, a third shell landed in the ranks dropping others in their tracks. Seeing that the possible slaughter of the entire company on that approach road was likely, the non-coms began to urge the line to hurry up the hill and into the safety of trenches some distance up the slope; their dark snake-like line could be seen now in the glow of the flares bursting overhead.
Bringing up the rear and feeling very exposed on the road I kept yelling for the troops in front to “Move it up! Get moving!”
As I moved forward at a faster pace, I noticed a crumpled form lying at the side of the road and went over to check it out. It was the ROK private we affectionately called Moosemaid; he was shaking and whimpering. I urged him to get moving up the hill.
He said, “Aniyo, mianhamnida!” (No, I’m sorry!) He then spoke almost in a whisper, “No Sajee (Sergeant). No, no I can’t.”
Knowing that it was sure death to remain on this path I gave him a gentle kick yelling, “Move, move to the top!” He half crawled to his feet and then moved haltingly toward the slope. The next series of shells burst in a synchronized line along our file dropping other forms violently to the ground. Moose-maid lay mortally wounded, breathing his last breath on earth just a few days before his eighteenth birthday.
S. L. A. Marshall (1956) wrote of Fox Company’s entrance into the battle for Pork Chop Hill as follows:
Fox’s men started arriving on the hill at 21:30. One platoon was deployed into the Pork Chop trenches. Several of the officers rushed forward to talk to Denton and Clemons. Captain King, moving with the main body of the company, was still some distance down the rear slope. His radio had been jammed by the enemy as he began the approach, and he could get no idea of how his lead platoon was faring, nor could he talk to the commanders he was supposed to contact.
At the same time, there was a sharp build-up of fire against the Love Company front and Denton could see a body of Chinese crossing the valley from Hassakkol. On the radio, he called on the artillery to fire “Flash Pork Chop” which would interdict the forward slope with killing fire. The barrage dropped quickly and it scattered the Chinese attack. Whether it was cause and effect, the Chinese loosed the heaviest concentration of artillery and mortar fire against Pork Chop that had hit the hill. (Denton believed that an enemy radio man hiding in one of the bunkers had called for the TOT). It dropped mainly on the trenches where Fox’s lead squads were deploying and on the rear slope where the two platoons were still toiling upward. Before having any chance to engage, Fox Company lost nineteen men; and as the steel continued to rain down, the entrenched men huddled and the columns broke and scattered. Such was the state of disorganization, that it took Fox another three hours to get the greater part of its force set on the hill, and the platoons never did get satisfactorily tied into one another. (Pp. 137-138).
The murderous fire on the road wasn’t the last of our troubles; the shelling intensified as we moved up the slope toward the trenches. When the lead men in the company reached the trench line, the fire continued cutting deeper into the ranks. Evidently, there was a Chinese artillery observer somewhere to our rear handily placing the fire along our line as we proceeded up the slope. At this point, many of the remaining men had made it to the reverse slope and were dispersed along the hill jammed in little clumps like cars in a rush hour traffic jam. As shells continued to rain down, each man tried to dig his head and torso as close to the earth as possible to avoid the jagged shrapnel that violently erupted from each exploding shell. Almost everyone in the company experienced burning sensations from the shrapnel in some part of their anatomy.
“What’s the hold up? Move into the trench!” someone yelled.
Captain King, Sergeant Robertson, and Sergeant Rogers were at the head of the column trying to gain a picture of what was happening on the hill and trying to locate the promised guide to find our positions. No one was there to provide directions to our movement. As we began to push the line forward to escape the inferno on the slope, we could hear Chinese voices shouting commands at the top of the hill and could hear small arms fire along the ridge.
“Some routine reinforcement!” someone muttered.
We pushed toward the closest section of trench, which was now crowded with bodies and GIs trying to make it to some defensible position. As I reached the trench I could see Rogers trying to get the newly arrived riflemen to disburse in an organized fashion. He said to me that he was taking the positions to the left and indicated that I should move any troops I could muster through the trench on the right. I could now see a trench line with a large bunker near the crest. This was the last time that I would see Sergeant Rogers until the next morning.
At that time, a tremendous shower of artillery shells burst along the top of the crest as I dived headlong into a bunker. The room was crowded with no place to sit, so I left the area and moved down toward the right to seek the next portion of covered trench. It was obviously going to be a very long night!
At the top of Pork Chop utter confusion reigned—both armies were disjointed with small bands of men roaming the trench line looking for comrades with like uniforms within the trench work; others finding a brief safety or rather the illusion of safety from the bursting shells in a sharp bend of a trench where one could cover both approaches.
One of our Puerto Rican soldiers, a machine gunner named Munoz, made his way above the trench slowly. As he passed a deep portion of the trench, he saw a Chinese soldier standing in the trench looking in the other direction. He leaped in on top of the man and quickly put an end to the fellow’s misery on the Chop! This was the last I saw of Munoz who was seriously wounded on the hill.
Not finding a manned position on the right flank, I made my way back to the chow bunker where some of our men could now be found. We set up guards for the trench to watch for Chinese that might enter this section of the trench from either direction. Inside the bunker, we were using as an aid station were a number of wounded and displaced men from several units—some only recently making it up the hill from the fiery trail below. There was no communication between the hill and the Battalion Command post—all of the radios were jammed. Every once in a while you could hear, in the CP, a radioman trying to get through to no avail.
Bill Estes, my friend from Belle, West Virginia, had been knocked unconscious by the shelling on the road. When he made it up the hill about two hours later, he had a horrible shrapnel gash in his hand, a sliver of shrapnel still protruding. He stuck it in front of me and asked if I would try to fix it (there were no medics in the bunker but someone found a first aid kit). I pulled out the metal sliver and held a cloth over the hole in his hand. Not knowing anything about medical treatment, I filled up the hole with methylate and re-wrapped it. Though quite rudimentary in construction, the bandage appeared to work and Bill seemed happy with the outcome at the time. A few years after the war ended, when we met back in Belle, Bill joked about the fantastic job I did on his hand that night.
The author (left) and Dale “Ziggy” Bernhardt, shortly before the battle for Pork Chop Hill, 1953.
It took another hour for the survivors from the approach road to make it to the top of the hill; most were wounded and couldn’t walk the steep trail up the hill. From the trench near the chow bunker, we could see on top of the company command post where Captain King and the remnants of Love Company were holed up. For most of them this would be their last hour of life.
There were several Chinese soldiers crawling around on top of their bunker. I yelled for someone with an automatic weapon; Moss took a BAR and tried to clear the Chinese off the command bunker. The team fired about fifty rounds of ammunition at the rooftop and the vicinity. Moss and his ROK ammo bearer then moved the gun on top of the trench to find a better placement and continued to fire toward the CP. This was the last time that I saw Dale on the Pork Chop until the next day when he, Vito, and I made it off the hill.
CLARK GABLE’S REVENGE
Two Chinese soldiers, apparently somewhat confused and separated from their main body of men, wandered into three men from one of our squads who were moving through the trench looking for others from the platoon. They surrendered to the Americans. A difficult predicament and complex decision ensued. What were the GIs going to do with prisoners? It was not even possible to evacuate our own wounded off the hill, let alone spare people to take prisoners back though the maelstrom we came up in. The squad leader left the two prisoners in the charge of one of the ROK soldiers, Clark Gable, who was seriously wounded and lying in the trench, unable to go anywhere. Clark had been hit by a large piece of shrapnel that severed one leg almost completely off and injured the other. Clark, barely conscious and articulate having been given morphine, acknowledged his willingness to guard the prisoners. No sooner had the corporal walked a few feet down the trench, in order to search for others in his squad, when he heard two shots ring out from the vicinity of Clark Gable’s location.
The squad leader ran back to where he had left Clark Gable and the two prisoners to see what happened. He saw two crumpled, lifeless forms on the ground and Clark with his rifle still elevated was smiling a toothy grin. The squad leader was unsure as to what happened. He surmised, however, that the two Chinese soldiers could have decided to rush Clark and take away his weapon. Or, more likely, since Clark Gable did not like the Chinese for the things that happened to his family, he simply settled an old score. The true story of what happened here will likely never be known.
****
It is impossible to describe the artillery hell that was Pork Chop Hill. Through the night, American forces were firing shells with proximity fuses—that is, fuses that exploded about twenty feet in the air rather than on impact with the ground. These shells sprayed shrapnel downward and in a widespread direction as they exploded. The idea behind the tree top shell burst is that if the American troops can find cover in their bunkers then the proximity fuses exploding overhead would kill any thing walking around the hill and above the bunkers. Toward the end of the evening the American forces on Pork Chop Hill held two small enclaves and the Chinese occupied the remainder.
At one point during the night, with a lull in the shelling, I crept slowly down a trench looking to see if there were any more men in the gun emplacements to the north of the chow bunker. At a wide place in the trench, the depth became shallower because a large shell had apparently landed on the side and blew out a large crater on the edge of it. I peered through the shadows to look around the hill and saw three Chinese bodies in front of the trench fixed to the barbed wire, one of them absent the top of his head.
A bit further in, I ran into another GI making his way down the trench; he was from Love Company. He was trying to make his way back to the reverse slope of the hill and locate some troops from his unit. He mentioned that he had seen a couple of Chinese infantrymen a little ways down the trench. As we talked there in the night we decided to cause them some problems and throw a few grenades their way. We crawled down the trench line where it made a sharp turn to the left and lobbed several grenades in the trench in their direction. Afterward, with them taken out, we made our way back down the hill toward the CP and the temporary aid station.
The battle for Pork Chop Hill was the epitome of battlefield confusion. Incidents such as these were the rule rather than the exception. Everywhere on the hill, especially the high ground, there was in intermingling of Chinese and American troops throughout the night and neither side could get an organized force of more than a handful of troops to take command of the hill.
Without a sufficient force to sweep the hill, it simply became a matter of survival. Our goals became limited—to try and make it through that hell and gather enough forces at daybreak to claim the high ground. I had not seen any of the company officers or Sgt. Rogers for most of the evening, since we had parted ways at the top of the hill to set up in different directions. One report from the left flank indicated that all had been killed in a direct hit on a bunker. With all of the company officers gone I, being the senior NCO now on the hill, assumed command of what was remaining of the stragglers of Fox Company. We tried to organize the remaining troops so that we were still able to mount an effective defense around the makeshift CP.
THE LAST DITCH STAND
At around 2:30 in the morning the shellfire slackened a little, though the flares continued to light the sky as though it were daylight. One of the lookouts from the trench line running to the right of the bunker we had formed as a platoon CP and first aid station, yelled into the bunker that he saw a Chinese skirmish line moving slowly up the hill to our rear about 300 yards away. With the Chinese holding the high ground to our left, firing machine guns into our positions, we were afraid that we would be completely trapped between two bodies of enemy troops. We realized that we had to make a last ditch stand against the forces coming up the hill because we could at least see them.
Another NCO and I began to yell to our guys in the bunkers that were close: “Everyone out into the trench.”
Someone else yelled, “Bring what weapons you can find. This is it! We’re being over run!”
“Here they come,” another cried. “I can see them about a hundred yards down the hill.”
I moved through the trench whispering to each person, “Now, hold your fire till they get close on us. Make every shot count.”
Our situation was desperate now; we could see a couple of hundred men moving up the hill in our front. We found ourselves effectively trapped between the two hostile forces. We assumed that this would be our last stand—a suicide stand—and we wanted to make the best of it. We now knew how Custer must have felt at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Things were pretty grim.
We waited and watched as the shadowy figures crept toward us. Then one of the men to the left of me decided the approaching line of shadows was getting too close and so he tossed a hand grenade at the closest figures in the skirmish line. It burst a few yards in front of them and they began to speed up their charge at us—now yelling as they made their assault. We began to take aim at the advancing figures.
The first voice I heard coming from the advancing troops was in English. “Wait! Hold your fire!” Someone then yelled, “They’re Americans!” The yelling got closer. Then one of the advancing troopers, a lieutenant from Easy Company nearly out of breath, recognized our helmets and called for his troops to hold fire and move into the trenches.
We were extremely relieved and elated over the turn of events. However, the Lieutenant was not. “Why did you throw that hand grenade at us?” he asked angrily. The soldier replied, “We thought you were Chinese! Why did all of you have your steel helmets off?” The lieutenant breathlessly pointed out that they removed their helmets because they thought it would enable them to move quieter! But, unfortunately it almost got them killed because in the darkness without the steel helmet they looked like Chinese.
They were lucky, it could have been even more of a disaster had we not recognized their true identity when we did.
Battalion Headquarters had informed the lieutenant before the assault that our company had been completely annihilated because they had not had any communications from us since last evening. Easy Company, as they attacked the hill, were operating under the belief that Fox Company had been destroyed and that the hill was completely in Chinese hands. So the Battalion commander called in artillery on our positions through the night. The brass at Battalion had simply written us off as dead and called for another counterattack!
All was well, though, and we considered ourselves fortunate. We had lived through the Chinese shelling as we approached the hill as well as “flashpoint” from our own artillery barrage as we tried to reform our platoons. Two separate armies had thrown their artillery at us incessantly throughout the evening and it had taken its toll.
In his book about Pork Chop Hill, Marshall noted:
During the first 24 hours the guns fired 37,655 rounds in defense of Arsenal, Dale, and the Pork Chop. The proportions were 9,823 rounds fired by the heavies and 27,832 by the light howitzers. On the second day after Arsenal and Dale had been saved and only Pork Chop was in jeopardy, the supporting fire built up to 77,349 rounds total. Never at Verdun were guns worked at any such rate as this. The battle of Kwajalein, our most intense shoot during World War II, was still a lesser thing when measured in terms of artillery expenditure per hour, weight of metal against yards of earth and the grand output of the guns. It set the all time mark for artillery effort. Pork Chop when the fight was over was as clean picked as Old Baldy. And its cratered slopes will not soon bloom again, for they are too well planted with rusty shards and empty tins and bones. (p. 146)
Rogers returned to the trench line where we were located early in the morning, before daybreak. He had been pinned down most of the evening by Chinese on top of his bunker to our left. All of the officers in the company were either dead or severely wounded and the first sergeant was wounded and not able to command. Sergeant Rogers assumed command of the company, which was still out of radio communication with Battalion rear. He asked me to take charge of the platoon.
DEPARTURE FROM THE HILL
After the hill was secured, we rounded up the wounded and began the evacuation. The return trip was made a bit easier in that a couple of half-tracks, that is, armored personnel carriers, were brought forward to evacuate men back to the MLR area. A collection point for the wounded was established and we set about to determine what our casualty situation was.
Our unit was evacuated from the hill in the late morning. It was no longer an integrated, functioning unit. We were able to get all of the survivors from our company into only two trucks on our way back to the rear; we started out in eight trucks. It was a difficult ride to our new quarters. We had suffered nearly seventy percent casualties and in some platoons even higher. Over twenty percent of our company had become casualties before we got off the road to Pork Chop in our first few moments of the battle.
It was difficult to fathom the extent of our losses—the Chinese artillery had decimated our ranks. So many good men were gone now-–Grasshold, Moosemaid, Lee, Zimdahl, and many, many others. The number of severely wounded from the artillery barrages was shocking, including Captain King and Lt. LaRoca. Many of us suffered shrapnel wounds that did not require us to leave the company.
WOUNDED EVERYWHERE
Even though Clark Gable was severely disabled from his wounds and obviously no longer suited for combat, the fight was not out of him. Moreover, he seemed drastically altered from the affable, fun-loving guy that we all loved. Another story was revealed about Clark Gable at the end of the battle of Pork Chop Hill when he was finally evacuated to the Battalion Aid Station in the rear area. Apparently Clark Gable had passed out for a while, probably from loss of blood, and when he awoke he was lying on a stretcher that had been placed among several rows of wounded men.
He awakened to find that he was lying next to a wounded Chinese soldier. Clark became enraged and crawled off his stretcher and over to the Chinese soldier. He placed his strong hands around the man’s neck and strangled him to death before the medics could free his hands.
The ravages of war can take away from human beings the very dignity and humane spirit that our social orders instill in us from childhood. Clark Gable was not insane nor was he a cruel villain or a heinous criminal. He simply was a relatively uneducated farm boy who had been so violently jolted and misshapen by his circumstances in those hours on Pork Chop that he was no longer the person he started out to be. So go the horrendous tides of war as they break harshly over the hearts of men.
At one end of the company an area had been set up as an outdoor morgue by a team from Graves Registration. Row after row of corpses, in all imaginable shapes of mutilation; some without limbs, some smashed beyond recognition, others burned to a crisp from an enemy flamethrower, were laid out along the old rice paddy. This was a ghastly nightmarish sight, like something out of a macabre movie. With the heavy duties he had from his increased responsibility, Sgt. Rogers asked me if I would take on the gruesome task of identifying the dead from our outfit. Someone had to do it but as I proceeded through the heavy task, I was not handling this job particularly well. I moved zombie-like along the rows accompanied by the NCO from Graves Registration with my roster in hand trying to match up names with the dog tags and likenesses of the lifeless forms lying about. Some were easy, others not so.
The identification of the dead was one of the most unpleasant tasks that I had ever been given to do, and I was flooded with mixed feelings. I was angry, sad, and quite overwhelmed by the experience of seeing my friends who were now corpses—lying there mixed in with Chinese dead.
As we walked along the rows, as I was later told, I became so overwhelmed and frustrated by the sight of it all that I lost my composure for a moment and kicked the head of one of the Chinese dead lying on the ground. My foot struck this mangled head, that turned out not to be firmly attached to the body. I felt both surprised and a bit guilty about it, but I simply went on about the task at hand without comment. Without saying a word, the Graves Registration corporal quietly readjusted the head on the shoulders from which it came. We continued our silent walk through this macabre scene—stopping occasionally to check off a dog tag and check a name on the list.
The irritability I experienced and the anger that quickly surfaced during that walk was a common feeling that many of us possessed during the aftermath of Pork Chop. We were typically jumpy and on edge, especially with sudden or loud noises. Whistling sounds that mimicked incoming shells were particularly disturbing after our night in the shooting gallery. These mood alterations are symptomatic of PTSD.
The military historian General S. L. A. Marshall, who wrote the book Pork Chop Hill, had a team of interviewers conducting post engagement de-briefing interviews with each of us shortly after we returned from the action on the Pork Chop. Marshall’s interview with me was poorly timed—following my return from Graves Registration site. The questions caught me in a pretty bad mood and I was not talkative. I simply cut the interview short, particularly when it appeared to me that the interviewer was simply fishing for sensationalistic and “quotable” stories. For example, he was particularly interested in a story that was going around that I had captured a Chinese hand grenade on Jane Russell and then threw it back at them on Pork Chop. This would of course had made interesting copy, but it was not true. The true story was that I had obtained a Chinese “potato masher” type grenade on Jane Russell Hill and carried it around for a while. Actually, one of the guys would use it as a sort of a joke at times, particularly with new men. They would toss it with the pin still intact at someone. I do not know what happened to that grenade. The only grenades I threw on the Pork Chop were good old-fashioned American ones that I knew would work.
I believe this interview only added to my growing discontent with some aspects of the Army. I was already having great reservations, particularly some of the questionable command decisions that were being made. Why were we being sent into situations like Pork Chop Hill? Obviously, I thought, just for political reasons. By the end of the Pork Chop I began to feel pretty hopeless about the military situation. The tone of this after-action interview simply underscored my dysphoria. In addition, I think the duty of body identification that befell me as second-in-command of the company at that time added immeasurably to my low mood.
In spite of my beginning to question the meaning of the war and our leader’s actions in sending us into hell pits like Pork Chop Hill, I moved up the chain of command and became a platoon sergeant. Sergeant Rogers indicated that he was taking over as the first sergeant and he wanted me to assume permanent command of the platoon. It wasn’t much of a platoon at that point in terms of size. We had fewer than twenty-five percent complement at the time—less than a quarter of the men who originally went up the hill. It was indeed a meager, limping outfit that I inherited—barely what one would call a platoon.
Within a few days, however, we received a new batch of cannon fodder—enough men, both American and ROK, to bring up our strength to nearly a hundred percent. I stood with Lee Rogers as the new men dismounted from the vehicles and received their platoon assignments. My new batch of men fell into ranks and Rogers addressed them in a very emotional voice—saying words that made me feel uncomfortable, given my present state of mind after Pork Chop.
He told the formation in a shrill, cracking voice, “Men. You’re now in the one of the best platoons in the Battalion. You are replacing a lot of good men who died on that hill yesterday! I want you to remember them.”
He continued after a long pause: “This is your platoon sergeant. His name is Sgt. First Class Butcher—and that’s what he is, too! You listen to him and you might have a chance to come back off the next hill. If you don’t listen to him then I hope your affairs are in order. Now, I want you to go and mark your names clearly into your belts, your boots, and clothing so that we will be able to identify your corpses better! Fall out!”
Sergeant Rogers was sometimes viewed by the troops as a harsh (“Chicken-shit” in Army terms) disciplinarian. At this point I was not sure what Rogers was trying to do with that introduction but it seemed to put a good bit of distance between me and the newcomers—setting a pretty frightening tone. He appeared to be as upset with the incredible losses we suffered on the hill. It seemed as though, in spite of his usual normally distant manner, he was as close to some of the men who died as I was.
As I moved to the head of the formation with Rogers to take command of the platoon I was initially hesitant—my voice was low and I searched for words. But, as I talked to them about my expectations of them in the field, I found myself sounding just like Old Scarface. A bit more hesitating perhaps, but it was almost like the words and ideas I was expressing were not my own. It was as though I was reading lines from a script prepared by a mean old sergeant somewhere, enunciating words that were handed down by some mysterious process from my NCO predecessors. It was frightening to my new charges to hear the things that needed to be said; it was even more frightening for me to have to tell them.
When the platoon was dismissed, I waited for a while then went to the command tent that had been set up for NCOs. There were a few new faces among them, but everyone was silent. I was quite shaken by all of the losses of close personal friends and I vowed to keep more emotional distance from this new group of men. I didn’t even care to know their names. I needed to have insulation from emotional ties at that point. I did not want any more close attachments. A large piece of me died with those guys on the hill. Now I fell into the well-defined role of platoon sergeant and began to view these faces as nameless automatons, nothing more.
THE SACRIFICES OF FOX COMPANY ON PORK CHOP
Although Fox Company was devastated by the initial artillery attack and prevented from engaging in organized attacks, there was considerable hand-to-hand and bunker-to-bunker fighting carried out by sections of our troops. These actions were often in concert with men from E or L Companies. Moreover, we held major sections of the trench on the hill throughout the night, preventing the Chinese from controlling strategic points of the trench line. Had these bastions along the trench line not been established then L Company’s final early morning assault would likely have been a disaster—with Chinese waiting for them rather than our ragtag band. A large portion of the hill was actually held by elements of Fox Company when Easy Company arrived. Easy Company’s arrival on the slopes gave us the fresh troops to gain the hill. When our tattered remnants left, there were American flags on the high ground.
Our Korean buddy “Moosemaid,” Kon Do Baull, killed on Pork Chop Hill, April 1953.
After Pork Chop there were no oratories, no eulogies, no Gettysburg Address to honor those who struggled and lost their lives there. There was only the temporary silence of reserve positions for a few days to allow us to identify our fallen, indoctrinate newly assigned personnel to fill our depleted ranks, and to replenish our supplies of ammunition in preparation to return to the trenches.
There was the beer ration on our first night off Pork Chop—this time a very ample supply to go around because there were so few to join in. There was no music from Billy Marshall’s fiddle. He, like so many others, was gone never to return to our now depleted ranks. He had been severely wounded and sent to Japan. During his long recovery in Japan he met and married a Japanese woman. They moved to Hillsville, Virginia and began a new life.
I had the opportunity to visit Billy Marshall a few years after the war at his home. We talked about the April battle for Pork Chop and the later one in July. After both battles, Pork Chop remained under U.N. control. However, we knew that the outcome of the sacrifices on Pork Chop was to blow up the mountain and hand it back to the Chinese. The hand-off to the Chinese occurred within weeks of the second hard fought battle, just before the Armistice was signed ending the fighting.