PDA

View Full Version : Lest we forget Korea



thedrifter
11-10-07, 06:45 AM
Lest we forget Korea

By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News
November 10, 2007

It has been called history's "Forgotten War," a terrible struggle that was dwarfed by the sheer overwhelming dimensions of World War II and blurred by the controversy that was Vietnam. A war best known to many because of the M*A*S*H TV series.

But no matter how overlooked it is, the Korean War will always remain one of the country's epic conflicts, the first time the West encountered Communists on the field of battle, three years of fierce, brutal warfare.

It began on June 25, 1950, when eight divisions of the North Korean People's Army crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the Republic of Korea. The United Nations - led largely by the United States - responded and within weeks, allied forces had arrived at the somewhat obscure Asian peninsula to help rescue the Republic of Korea.

In November, the Communist Chinese army entered the war, a war that would last until July 27, 1953, when a cease-fire was signed.

By that time, an estimated 36,500 Americans had died in combat. An additional 92,000 had been wounded. As the nation stands on the cusp of another Veterans Day, the Rocky Mountains News presents the Korean War stories of three local men - our way of paying honor to all those with lasting memories of the Forgotten War.

BOB BROCKISH

Old Marine has never forgotten the Battle of Horsehoe Ridge


He is 76 years old, the father of eight, the grandfather of 12, but the tone of his voice, the disdain and skepticism are pure 19-year-old as he expels the words.

"Police action? Hey, that was a war, not President Truman's 'police action.' "

He sounds the way he probably sounded back in October 1950 - which was precisely when U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Bob Brockish found out his three months as a reservist were about to end and he was heading toward some place called Korea, which was probably in Asia, although he couldn't tell you exactly where.

He arrived March 6, 1951, "really fortunate" to have missed the brutal winter. As it turned out, that was about all he missed.

By the time he arrived back home in Denver nine months later, he had seen enough carnage, smelled enough napalm, stood eyeball to eyeball with enough death to last for eternity. But out of all the battles he fought in, there was one that stood out like neon, one that lasted "18 hours but took a lifetime." His first.

The Battle of Horseshoe Ridge.

By the evening of April 23, the 1st Marine Battalion was in place, drawn up in a circle "like a wagon train" around Hill 307, the lump of land that would come to be known as Horseshoe Ridge.

Company C - Charlie Company, Brockish's company - was in the center, flanked by Able Company to the right and Baker Company to the left. The landscape was desolate. But as Brockish was about to find out for the first time, war isn't about scenery or aesthetics.

No, war's "primary purpose is to kill the enemy. You hold that piece of real estate so you can kill more of the enemy. And if you have to move off it, you move off it. Then you come back, take it and kill more enemy."

Brockish wasn't a combat virgin. He'd been on night reconnaissance patrols, out in the rainy blackness, tense, scared, quiet. But this night felt different. When the first attack came at 8 p.m., the sound and fury were almost a relief. Even more of a relief, the attack ended after 15 minutes.

Then, after a few "probing" attacks by the Chinese army, "pretty much all hell broke loose."

From Brockish's perspective, "without much fight, the ROK guys collapsed," leaving a huge breach between the Marines and the Army. The enemy poured through. Hand-to-hand combat. Chaos. Screams.

Meanwhile, Pfc. Brockish was firing away with his Browning Automatic Rifle, feeling the earth lurch and heave beneath him as incoming and outgoing artillery exploded. At one point, a mortar erupted near his foxhole and for one eternal second, "it was like my entire body was levitating four inches off the ground."

Later, as he lined up an enemy soldier in his gunsights, a mortar landed next to the man and "he just disappeared in a big somersault in all this blue light."

The fighting was so relentless and fierce that Brockish's company commander was able to read his map by the light of the tracer bullets fired overhead.

The air reeked of cordite and death.

By 0800 Brockish's squad leader confirmed what most of the guys suspected - Charlie Company was surrounded, and it would have to fight its way out.

Within the hour, Brockish was battling down Horseshoe Ridge.

He wasn't sure exactly what to do because, after all, "How do you let go of the tail of a tiger without it biting you?" But he fought on, fought the way he'd been trained to fight, fought on instinct. Fought like a Marine

Through swarms of machine-gun bullets, mortars and sniper fire, Charlie Company withdrew, weaving down the ridge, zig-zagging into and out of terraced rice paddies. Finally, as he reached the last one, Brockish turned in time to see a fellow Marine lose most of his head in a hail of bullets. He didn't have to time to mourn. He was too busy fighting.

Brockish spent the rest of the summer and fall taking part in other fierce battles. Along the way, he was promoted to corporal, squad leader and sergeant. Then it was December and he was back home.

Some 56 years later, he doesn't regret hearing the call of duty.

"No, I don't feel that it wasn't worthwhile," he says. "I don't feel that way at all."

He pauses. Looks out one of the windows in his comfy Lafayette home and says, "I know they call it the 'Forgotten War.' And I guess it was forgotten for a long time.

"But you know what?"

The old Marine looks back at his visitor. His jaw is chiseled stone. His eyes don't blink. His voice is both stoic and emotional.

" I've never forgotten it."

DON SIMMONDS

Kansas farm boy survives war's 'worst massacre of Americans'


The Siege of Outpost Harry had been bad enough - close to a week of fighting, maybe a million rounds of artillery pummeling both sides - but what really etched fear into the Kansas farm boy, what really made him whisper all those prayers, was the Battle of the Kumsong River Salient.

If anybody knew that the Communist Chinese army was preparing for a massive attack on the land bulge between U.S. and South Korean forces, nobody had told Sgt. Don Simmonds about it. As a member of the Army's 555 Field Artillery Battalion - the "triple nickel" they called it - he knew his way around the 105mm howitzer. Knew combat, too.

But he sure didn't know what to make of it when 80,000 enemy troops launched a fierce surge at 9:45 p.m. on July 13, 1953, against the vastly outnumbered Americans and South Koreans. Aren't the cease-fire talks under way? Shouldn't the fighting be winding down?

Shouldn't it be time for him to return home? To the farm, to college, to Kingman, Kan., where he'd enlisted. He'd been too young to fight in World War II but not too young to help. Taking part in scrap metal drives, becoming an aircraft spotter, able to recognize any kind of enemy aircraft just in case the Germans or Japanese tried anything funny.

World War II had been a "total patriotic effort on the part of everyone," a "total mobilization." So when Korea became engulfed in war, Simmonds knew where his duty had to take him.

He'd arrived in February 1953, been assigned to the triple nickel a month later, marching through a strange countryside. One where the farmers used human excrement to fertilize their crops and the stench from the abundant "honey bucket brigades" was overpowering. A place where the dust was piled three inches deep on the dirt roads. So much dust that even when it rained and the roads turned to mud, "there was still dust in the air. Never figured out how that could be."

But now Simmonds wasn't marching on any road. He was surrounded. And he had no time to think about patriotism or smells or mud and dust. No time to think about anything but firing the howitzer, waiting for one of the enemy's phosphorous shells to ignite the rainy night sky so he could sneak a look at the teeming waves of enemy soldiers.

It was 2:05 a.m., when the Chinese overran the Americans and South Koreans. The order to pull out was given. Good thing, too.

The truck that was supposed to pull Simmonds' gun already had been destroyed by enemy fire. Gasoline had lapped down the hill and soaked the ground he was standing on, ground that was piled with bags of explosive powder used to fire the howitzer's shells. Ground perilously vulnerable to the volley of mortars launched by the Chinese. Years later, Simmonds would wonder "how the whole area didn't go up." Years later, he'd recall, "They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, they're right. That's the night I became a believer."

A soldier's instincts led Simmonds away from the road - surely the Chinese would be perched there. Better to slide under the darkness and follow a stream that paralleled the road. The Chinese soldiers were so close, "You could hear 'em chattering. If only we had a few hand grenades, we probably could have wiped out half of 'em."

Simmonds moved through the shallow water, scarcely breathing. Wary. "Scared to death, you bet." Eventually, he made it to safety, a survivor of what the Aug. 1, 1953, edition of Stars & Stripes called "the worst massacre of Americans in the Korean War." Yes, the Chinese had suffered staggering losses - rows of bodies stacked on top of each other - but for the U.S., the tragedy was no less profound: 297 killed, 910 wounded, 88 captured.

Simmonds returned to Kingman in 1954. It was a quiet homecoming - "No parades, no nothing." Not even much curiosity.

Hey, haven't seen ya in a while, Don. Where ya been?

Korea.

Oh, yeah, think I heard something about that.

But he hadn't joined the Army for the parades or the glory. He'd gone and fought for his country because "it was drummed into me that it was my duty to serve. I owed this duty to my country."

He's sitting in his kitchen. The hands that fly here and there to help narrate his stories are still, wrapped around a cup of coffee. There are tears in his eyes.

See, he doesn't care if some people call Korea the "Forgotten War." He doesn't care that an official peace treaty still hasn't been signed. All he knows is South Korea is a vibrant country. All he knows is "Korea is one of the biggest success stories for the military. We stopped communism."

His hand moves to heart. His voice cracks a little.

"And that makes me feel pretty good."

He's thinking of "the real heroes. You know, the ones who didn't come back." He's thinking about them and the night that was the last one any of them saw. The night so long ago, when the prayers he sent from hell somehow made it all the way to heaven.

DON JOHNSON

Amid icy hell of Chosin Reservoir, dying was 'just a question of when'

It was cold. Siberian cold. Forty-eight-degrees-below-zero cold. Ground-frozen-solid cold. So cold your toes could snap off from frostbite. So cold it was virtually impossible to bleed to death. So cold doctors had to warm up morphine capsules in their mouths before they could use them to quiet the moans of the wounded who weren't bleeding to death.

But not cold enough to freeze your fear.

U.S. Marine Cpl. Don Johnson looked through the thick snow that fell like wads of cotton, looked through the frigid nighttime blackness that seemed to swallow up the Godforsaken land, and saw nothing but the certainty of his own death.

Sure, so far he'd made it, but he wasn't kidding himself. Nobody who was stationed around Chosin Reservoir was. None of us thought we were gonna live and that's really scary. You know you're going to die soon. It's just a question of when.

The best you could do was sit up at night and look through the clouds for the Star of Koto-ri. If you saw it, that meant the sky might clear by daylight so that the Corsairs could come in and "bomb the hell" out of the Chinese soldiers, the 200,000 soldiers who outnumbered the Marines by something like 10 to 1, driving them back.

Of course, they always returned at night. Sheltered by blackness so thick "you couldn't see your hand in front of your face," flowing up the hills "like a sea of corn," announcing their attacks with blaring horns and screaming whistles, attacking with mortars and artillery and, inevitably, with their bodies, their sheer numbers.

That's why Johnson always kept a ton of ammo close by, carrying bandoliers of the stuff around his neck and shoulders like scarves. When you ran out of ammo, you'd have to "fix bayonets," be prepared for hand-to-hand combat when the Chinese broke through. Not Johnson. Even if the big artillery guns he was firing ever ran out of ammo, he wouldn't.

Geez, how long had he been in Korea anyway? Thanksgiving 1950 was less than a week old - was it really only three months since he'd left Denver? Four months since his reserve unit had been called up? The reserve unit he'd only joined after serving his two-year hitch, and the only reason he'd joined it was so he could make some extra dough before he and Joan got married.

But all of a sudden he was off to Korea and "just where the hell was that?" He landed in time to be dropped into the 1st Marines Division. In time for the Inchon invasion, firing those 155 mm guns.

The U.S. had been on a roll. Driving the North Koreans out of South Korea, driving them close to the Yalu River, the border separating North Korea from China. Now the Marines and the Army's 7th Infantry Division and the ROK army were at the Chosin Reservoir. The plan was to keep on pushing, even though intelligence had the Chinese army massing at the border - 300,000 troops, some reports said.

It was Nov. 27. Nighttime. Hell, seemed like it was always night. Got dark at 4:30 and the light didn't come back for 16 hours. Not that there was much to see. Everything was so desolate. And, with those winds straight out of Siberia, so cold. Coldest winter in 100 years. And, as Johnson squinted out at the bleak landscape, he found himself thinking: "Who the hell would want this place?"

Some guys were dying for a cigarette. But you couldn't strike a match unless you wanted to "wind up with a Chinese mortar round in your back pocket." All you could do was shiver inside of however many layers of clothes you could squeeze under your parka. All you could do was wait.

Johnson wasn't exactly surprised when the cacophony of bugles and whistles erupted and the frozen ground shook with explosions. Scared but not surprised.

The battle that began in November lasted into December. But it didn't stay at Chosin. Early on, it became clear that no matter how many of the enemy the Marines killed, more would keep coming; waves and waves of them, inexorable as the tide of the ocean. After a brutal night of sound, fury and carnage, the inevitable happened.

Johnson knew the code, knew that "Marines never retreat, they just attack in another direction." So, he, they, attacked in another direction. In this case, the direction was south. Yudam-Ni to Hagaru-ri to Koto-ri. Back across the 38th Parallel, 78 long, bloody miles, the battle never really stopping.

On the clear days, the Corsairs would fly in low, blasting the Chinese, giving the Marines a break. On cloudy days, on snowy days, it was a free-for-all of machine guns, mortar, artillery, rifles, bayonets, desperation.

By Dec. 10, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was over. The second deadliest fight of the war, it claimed the lives of 1,641 Americans and an estimated 40,000 Chinese. It would go down in Marine annals as one of the Corps' finest moments, a battle where a vastly outnumbered force inflicted hellish casualties on the enemy.

For Johnson, Chosin was the end of his Korean experience. Severe frostbite in his feet led to an infection that spread to other parts of his body. After recovering at a military hospital in Japan, he finished out his tour guarding the U.S. legation in Vietnam.

He returned to Denver in August 1951. It was a Wednesday. By the following Monday, he was back on the job at an automobile parts store. A few people asked him where he'd been. Most didn't.

He married Joan on Sept. 9, 1951. They had three kids. He became a public school teacher, then, eventually, president and general manager of KRMA- TV, the public television station. He retired in 1993.

Today, at 79, he is still a proud member of the "Chosin Few," the organization of the 2,900 surviving members of the battle. He speaks with pride of his service and pooh-poohs the lack of celebration - or even interest - that greeted his return from war.

"So what if nobody seemed to know - or care?" he says. "We did. We cared because it was our job to help save democracy. We did what we were supposed to do, and it's a great privilege to have been able to give something back to this great country of ours."

His eyes are wet with tears. Warm tears. The kind he couldn't have shed 57 years ago. Tears would have just frozen solid at the Chosin Reservoir.

Ellie