Has it really been 60 years since I was 21 and about to be thrust into my generation's war?
Yep. North Korean units swept across the 38th Parallel on June 25, 1950. By mid-September, along with other GIs, I was rushed by chartered commercial airliner from Fort Benning, Ga., to California, to Camp Drake outside Tokyo, Japan, via Shemya, Alaska, then by train to Osaka for an overnight cargo boat trip to our destination, Pusan, South Korea.
By this time, North Korean forces had squeezed American troops into the Pusan Perimeter with the odds-on prospect of being pushed into the sea, a la World War II's Dunkirk debacle.
Bodies of GIs and the wounded were being evacuated by the hundreds. Medals for gallantry were won handily by the hour by young men trying to stave off waves of attacks. One early Medal of Honor recipient, Pfc. Melvin Brown, an Army engineer, was given the nation's highest award posthumously for standing on a 50-foot high wall single-handedly firing on communist troops and throwing hand grenades until he was out of firepower, then killing 10 or more with his small entrenching tool before being killed.
The ferocity of Pusan fighting for less than two months shows in the U.S. casualty statistics—4,599 killed, 12,058 wounded, 401 captured, 2,107 missing.
A coarse old master sergeant with service going back before World War II observed laconically to fledgling arrivals, most of us privates first class just a year or more in uniform, "Most of you will be dead in 48 hours."
Think "cannon fodder."
I escaped that fate. For the next 14 months and 11 days, assigned to headquarters company of the First Cavalry Division, I raced on foot, by truck, Jeep and tank rides up the peninsula with forward units of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, Gen. George Custer's fabled Battle of the Little Big Horn outfit, now led by the colorful Col. William A. (Wild Bill) Harris.
Along with a handful of other combat correspondents sent to the First Cavalry Division, our role was to find stories among combat units, type them on onionskin paper on our small portables, get them back to headquarters as best we could for distribution to civilian news wire services and be ready to assist units in combat operations if needed. We were still infantrymen with rifles and carbines, sometimes with captured Russian-made pistols and "burp" submachine guns.
Korea was as foreign and mystifying as the moon. The war itself was designated a United Nations operation, mockingly referred to as a "police action." Rubbish. It was war, one of the bloodiest ever fought in record cold and heat, on a landscape turned barren by mortar and artillery fire and aerial bombs, with burned-out villages, narrow dirt roads jammed with refugees, the stinging stench of rotting and burned cattle carcasses, and the smoking ruins of destroyed trucks and tanks. By the 1953 truce, 54,246 GIs had died, 103,284 had been wounded and 3,746 had been captured.
Our spearhead—Task Force 777—out of the Pusan Perimeter moved so fast that we outraced supply lines pell-mell northward through South Korea, the first unit across the 38th Parallel and into the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and almost to the Yalu River when we were finally slammed by Chinese forces pouring across the border.
Retreat was faster than our advance. No glorious victory now. Men on the run for their lives.
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This was coming of age the hard way. Promotions in rank came fast. So many deaths, so many vacancies in the ranks. Our group went from privates first class to sergeants first class quickly.
The ranks of former comrades are thinner. Our small unit's commander, Col. Hal Steward, in San Diego, is in his 90s. The rest are in their 80s. Dr. Bob Sykes, college professor, linguist (Korean and Japanese), insufferable wit and cynic, Bethany, W. Va. The effervescent, rail-thin Archie Ashworth, Corpus Christie, Texas, coiner of meaningless "Korean" phonics ("Wok a noodle, chick a noodle, koom bah wah.") Chuck Barbour, Raleigh, N.C., who remained in reserves to become a major, suffering Alzheimer's-type problems. Ed Cavanaugh, alive somewhere. Bobby Rushing, lung cancer death. Ed Gentry, gone. Master Sgt. Strawbridge, gone. Etc.
Image-laden memories remain vivid.
Heroism: The young sergeant atop a recon patrol tank crippled by an exploding wooden box road mine, manning the .50-caliber turret machine gun in the open, raking nearby hillsides crawling with Chinese riflemen, as the rest of us scattered into a rice paddy. Maj. James Webel, knocking out several enemy tanks with a small bazooka, then climbing on a tank and pouring gasoline into the open engine, which exploded and hurled him into the air.
Showmanship: "Wild Bill" Harris up front, carrying a swagger stick, a horse saddle on his Jeep hood, two shotgun riders with Thompson machine guns in the rear seat, lifting the spirit of his troops with his presence.
Waste: After volunteering to drive three-quarter-ton weapons carrier trucks to Inchon City to pick up 55-gallon gasoline barrels and ammunition, then driving several hours back to units, an officer ordered our trucks driven into a field and set afire lest they'd be captured by onrushing Chinese.
Futility: Instead of stopping at the 38th Parallel after driving North Korean forces out of the south, the haughty Gen. Douglas MacArthur pushed his luck. Chinese pushed our forces back below the 38th where we started, raising doubts about the costs in lives and treasure.
Comradeship: On Valentine's Day, 1951, several Air Force B-29 bombers (the type of Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb fame) flew low over the front dropping huge wooden crates packed with gifts—candy bars, combs, toothpaste, towels and washcloths, stationery.
GI pranks: The First Cav had a cocky pride bordering on arrogance. Nocturnal pranksters would paint the cavalry's famous yellow shoulder patch with black horse's head and diagonal stripe on destroyed enemy tanks, tall industrial chimneys, even vehicles of other Army units.
Screwups: Heavy winter clothing was weeks late in reaching painfully cold combat units.
Casualties: Korean War casualties were unique—shrapnel from deadly accurate Chinese 120-mm mortars and frostbite.
Despite all this, Korea, it's said, was the "forgotten war."
Now it's another anniversary of that long-ago war, even as Americans once again are dying by the hundreds in some distant battlefield in a remote corner of the globe for dubious purposes.
Bank on this: The only question about the next war is when and where.
Pat Murphy, right, now a Ketchum resident and part-time employee of the Idaho Mountain Express, receives a Bronze Star medal in North Korea in 1951.
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