thedrifter
09-05-03, 11:54 AM
Korea: Stories from veterans of 'America's forgotten war'
In Carl Malachowski's case, "lucky" is the ultimate understatement.
Shredded by shrapnel from a grenade, tossed down a 200-foot cliff in a doomed rescue effort, frozen by frostbite, he survived the infamous Korean War standoff between Allied and Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir in the winter of 1950.
When he returned to the United States, the 20-year-old Marine told a Connecticut newspaper he was lucky to be alive.
"Very much so," said Malachowski, now 73 and a Naples resident. "There is a God."
The Chosin Few, an international organization for Chosin veterans, estimates 2,500 Allied soldiers, including 718 Marines, were killed or wounded in the two-week campaign. More than 12,000 more suffered combat or cold-related injuries.
Malachowski's memories of the battle are a record of ice and misery.
At Chosin, high in the mountains of North Korea, wind chills plummeted to 70 below zero, he recalls. Food froze. Liquid medicines froze. Men froze. Sleeping bags were rendered deadly; if a soldier slipped inside to warm himself, the metal zipper could freeze and he would be trapped inside.
The sun seldom shone. The snow almost always fell.
And the Chinese troops kept coming, Malachowski recalls.
They pounded pots and pans when they attacked, blew trumpets, made as much noise as they could to suggest strength in numbers, he said. Not that they needed to pretend: estimates on the number of Chinese troops at Chosin ranged from 120,000 to 200,000.
The number of Allied troops was a fraction of either figure — 20,000 ground troops, most of them from the 1st Marine Division.
Wounded in three places by a grenade, Malachowski was taken from Chosin by truck. During the trip, the truck tumbled down a cliff and nine of the 12 men aboard were killed.
Later, in a hospital in Japan, Malachowski forbade doctors to amputate his frostbitten feet. A half-century later, he still has no feeling in his toes or fingertips.
The three-year conflict has been called a "forgotten war," and he agrees. But it grieves him to think of it that way, and sarcasm creeps into his voice at the term "police action" — the way the war was referred to at the time.
"We used to tell them, 'If it's a police action, boy, it's a tough beat and you better send over more cops,'" said Malachowski, who received a Purple Heart for his injuries.
As the 50th anniversary of the Korean War armistice approaches, the border between North and South Korea remains a tinderbox. On Thursday, North Korean troops on the fortified Demilitarized Zone fired four rounds from a military outpost; South Korean troops responded with 17 rounds of their own. It was the first such activity since November 2001.
While Malachowski said he would support U.S. troops if they were called to fight in Korea — or anywhere — he doesn't want it to happen.
He, like many other veterans, has had enough of war.
"I don't think we should send our young men over there to a losing battle," he said.
Bill Waters
He can still hear the refrain.
"Banzai, Banzai, Banzai," mutters 75-year-old Bill Waters, his North Florida accent still thick as sawgrass after all these years.
The refrain echoes in Waters' head during the day and as he tries to sleep — even now, 53 years later.
That battle cry of the North Korean and Chinese troops, along with other vivid images of his seven months on Korean soil, have haunted the Bonita Springs resident for years.
"The first battle, it was really hard to shoot someone who was running the other way, but that's what we were over there for; it was hard for me," Waters said, his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. "You finally get used to it, shooting somebody, because you know they'll shoot you and then you don't care."
He landed in Pusan on July 31, 1950, a little more than a month after the fighting began. He was given only two hours before he was firing his carbine rifle with the No. 9 painted on the side.
From there, it seemed, the fighting never stopped.
There are places he remembers by name: Hill 165, Inchon, the Naktong River. Others he simply remembers by the events that happened, like the rice paddy where only seven men out of his company came out alive.
He was one of them, uninjured after a bullet ricocheted off his left boot heel. His one regret — leaving his buddy, who was shot through both knees and begging for help — behind.
Remembering is almost Waters' undoing.
"I can go on and on about the stuff that happened," said Waters, who saw four major battles in his seven months.
As he tells his stories of Korea, tears slip down his time-worn cheeks almost unnoticed until the pooling in his eyes become too much and he pulls off his wire glasses and wipes the tears away with work-roughened thumbs.
Then he goes on and tells the next story of the next battle, of the next war cry, "Banzai, Banzai, Banzai" screaming through his head.
Andy Stewart
Andy Stewart, 73, has a photo of the place where he was shot in December 1950.
It's an aerial view, black and white, of a finger lake wedged among craggy cliffs, a scene so stark and barren it could belong on the moon: The Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.
More than 50 years later, Stewart still doesn't understand what strategic position this winter wasteland played in the Korean War.
"Who would fight over something like that?" Stewart asked.
But for two weeks in November and December of 1950, Allied forces battled Chinese troops and sub-zero temperatures there. Stewart, then 20, was in the 1st Marine Division and was shot in the lower right leg during combat.
He was put on the hood of a Jeep and taken out of the fighting for medical treatment. The warmth of the engine spared him some of the frostbite suffered by other soldiers, he said.
"It was a strange time in my life," said Stewart, a Naples resident, of the war. "I'll put it that way. Sometimes the best, sometimes the worst."
Before he left for Korea, Stewart's father told him to "just do your job." It was advice that all the Allied soldiers at Chosin seemed to be heeding, Stewart recalls.
"I don't think we thought about it," Stewart said. "You do your job and go home."
In the years that followed, though, Stewart has allowed himself some thoughts.
He made a wooden display box to house his medals, including his Purple Heart; the case will belong to his daughter someday. The cold that slipped into his bones 50 years ago continues to creak out a complaint in chilly weather.
But the most difficult memories are of the men who didn't come home, he said.
"This is probably the hardest for us, the friends that we lost," Stewart said. "That's the hardest part of being in a war, any war."
More and more, he wants to share his memories with others.
"I guess we don't want it to be forgotten," he said. "For us, anyway, it was an important part of our history. It's something we were involved with, right or wrong."
Dick Brann
As a Marine, Dick Brann was ready to see a little action.
Even now, 52 years after he left Korea, he doesn't regret an instant he spent halfway around the world.
"I think Marines want to go into combat, most are real anxious to go into combat," said Brann, now 74. "Once you get there it's a little different. When we landed I wasn't afraid, I just said, 'It's not going to be me. Somebody else is going to die, but it's not going to be me.' I think it's a healthy attitude to have. Once the shooting starts, you don't worry about it."
And he didn't.
He didn't worry about dying during any of his battles, including one of the most famous of the Korean War, the Chosin Reservoir, where temperatures dipped to 50 below and most of the men ended up with frostbite.
Brann was no exception. He still has limited feeling in his hands and no feeling in his lower legs. He was also injured during the battle, but it was so cold he didn't realize it at the time.
"There was so much incoming you don't know if it was mortar or artillery or rifle," Brann said. "I didn't even know it all night. Some guy told me I had blood coming out of my boot, so I went and got it sewed up."
For that he earned his first Purple Heart, awarded to those wounded in combat. A second came from shrapnel in his back.
Chosin is what he remembers the most about the war. Other memories are sketchy at best. But Chosin is vivid. How the troops were surrounded by the Chinese and how they fought their way out. How the bodies of the dead Chinese would stack up and the Americans would use them as shields.
He remembers and he tells his story as often as he can, so others don't forget.
"A lot of people, war bothers them. I came back and no nightmares. I think you forget," Brann said. "You remember what you want to remember. My legs hurt, my back hurts and I just got that prostate cancer and that radiation hurts.
"But there are good things to remember: your friends, the kids. That's the bad part, when you lose your friends. Those things you try not to think about."
continued.......
In Carl Malachowski's case, "lucky" is the ultimate understatement.
Shredded by shrapnel from a grenade, tossed down a 200-foot cliff in a doomed rescue effort, frozen by frostbite, he survived the infamous Korean War standoff between Allied and Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir in the winter of 1950.
When he returned to the United States, the 20-year-old Marine told a Connecticut newspaper he was lucky to be alive.
"Very much so," said Malachowski, now 73 and a Naples resident. "There is a God."
The Chosin Few, an international organization for Chosin veterans, estimates 2,500 Allied soldiers, including 718 Marines, were killed or wounded in the two-week campaign. More than 12,000 more suffered combat or cold-related injuries.
Malachowski's memories of the battle are a record of ice and misery.
At Chosin, high in the mountains of North Korea, wind chills plummeted to 70 below zero, he recalls. Food froze. Liquid medicines froze. Men froze. Sleeping bags were rendered deadly; if a soldier slipped inside to warm himself, the metal zipper could freeze and he would be trapped inside.
The sun seldom shone. The snow almost always fell.
And the Chinese troops kept coming, Malachowski recalls.
They pounded pots and pans when they attacked, blew trumpets, made as much noise as they could to suggest strength in numbers, he said. Not that they needed to pretend: estimates on the number of Chinese troops at Chosin ranged from 120,000 to 200,000.
The number of Allied troops was a fraction of either figure — 20,000 ground troops, most of them from the 1st Marine Division.
Wounded in three places by a grenade, Malachowski was taken from Chosin by truck. During the trip, the truck tumbled down a cliff and nine of the 12 men aboard were killed.
Later, in a hospital in Japan, Malachowski forbade doctors to amputate his frostbitten feet. A half-century later, he still has no feeling in his toes or fingertips.
The three-year conflict has been called a "forgotten war," and he agrees. But it grieves him to think of it that way, and sarcasm creeps into his voice at the term "police action" — the way the war was referred to at the time.
"We used to tell them, 'If it's a police action, boy, it's a tough beat and you better send over more cops,'" said Malachowski, who received a Purple Heart for his injuries.
As the 50th anniversary of the Korean War armistice approaches, the border between North and South Korea remains a tinderbox. On Thursday, North Korean troops on the fortified Demilitarized Zone fired four rounds from a military outpost; South Korean troops responded with 17 rounds of their own. It was the first such activity since November 2001.
While Malachowski said he would support U.S. troops if they were called to fight in Korea — or anywhere — he doesn't want it to happen.
He, like many other veterans, has had enough of war.
"I don't think we should send our young men over there to a losing battle," he said.
Bill Waters
He can still hear the refrain.
"Banzai, Banzai, Banzai," mutters 75-year-old Bill Waters, his North Florida accent still thick as sawgrass after all these years.
The refrain echoes in Waters' head during the day and as he tries to sleep — even now, 53 years later.
That battle cry of the North Korean and Chinese troops, along with other vivid images of his seven months on Korean soil, have haunted the Bonita Springs resident for years.
"The first battle, it was really hard to shoot someone who was running the other way, but that's what we were over there for; it was hard for me," Waters said, his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. "You finally get used to it, shooting somebody, because you know they'll shoot you and then you don't care."
He landed in Pusan on July 31, 1950, a little more than a month after the fighting began. He was given only two hours before he was firing his carbine rifle with the No. 9 painted on the side.
From there, it seemed, the fighting never stopped.
There are places he remembers by name: Hill 165, Inchon, the Naktong River. Others he simply remembers by the events that happened, like the rice paddy where only seven men out of his company came out alive.
He was one of them, uninjured after a bullet ricocheted off his left boot heel. His one regret — leaving his buddy, who was shot through both knees and begging for help — behind.
Remembering is almost Waters' undoing.
"I can go on and on about the stuff that happened," said Waters, who saw four major battles in his seven months.
As he tells his stories of Korea, tears slip down his time-worn cheeks almost unnoticed until the pooling in his eyes become too much and he pulls off his wire glasses and wipes the tears away with work-roughened thumbs.
Then he goes on and tells the next story of the next battle, of the next war cry, "Banzai, Banzai, Banzai" screaming through his head.
Andy Stewart
Andy Stewart, 73, has a photo of the place where he was shot in December 1950.
It's an aerial view, black and white, of a finger lake wedged among craggy cliffs, a scene so stark and barren it could belong on the moon: The Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.
More than 50 years later, Stewart still doesn't understand what strategic position this winter wasteland played in the Korean War.
"Who would fight over something like that?" Stewart asked.
But for two weeks in November and December of 1950, Allied forces battled Chinese troops and sub-zero temperatures there. Stewart, then 20, was in the 1st Marine Division and was shot in the lower right leg during combat.
He was put on the hood of a Jeep and taken out of the fighting for medical treatment. The warmth of the engine spared him some of the frostbite suffered by other soldiers, he said.
"It was a strange time in my life," said Stewart, a Naples resident, of the war. "I'll put it that way. Sometimes the best, sometimes the worst."
Before he left for Korea, Stewart's father told him to "just do your job." It was advice that all the Allied soldiers at Chosin seemed to be heeding, Stewart recalls.
"I don't think we thought about it," Stewart said. "You do your job and go home."
In the years that followed, though, Stewart has allowed himself some thoughts.
He made a wooden display box to house his medals, including his Purple Heart; the case will belong to his daughter someday. The cold that slipped into his bones 50 years ago continues to creak out a complaint in chilly weather.
But the most difficult memories are of the men who didn't come home, he said.
"This is probably the hardest for us, the friends that we lost," Stewart said. "That's the hardest part of being in a war, any war."
More and more, he wants to share his memories with others.
"I guess we don't want it to be forgotten," he said. "For us, anyway, it was an important part of our history. It's something we were involved with, right or wrong."
Dick Brann
As a Marine, Dick Brann was ready to see a little action.
Even now, 52 years after he left Korea, he doesn't regret an instant he spent halfway around the world.
"I think Marines want to go into combat, most are real anxious to go into combat," said Brann, now 74. "Once you get there it's a little different. When we landed I wasn't afraid, I just said, 'It's not going to be me. Somebody else is going to die, but it's not going to be me.' I think it's a healthy attitude to have. Once the shooting starts, you don't worry about it."
And he didn't.
He didn't worry about dying during any of his battles, including one of the most famous of the Korean War, the Chosin Reservoir, where temperatures dipped to 50 below and most of the men ended up with frostbite.
Brann was no exception. He still has limited feeling in his hands and no feeling in his lower legs. He was also injured during the battle, but it was so cold he didn't realize it at the time.
"There was so much incoming you don't know if it was mortar or artillery or rifle," Brann said. "I didn't even know it all night. Some guy told me I had blood coming out of my boot, so I went and got it sewed up."
For that he earned his first Purple Heart, awarded to those wounded in combat. A second came from shrapnel in his back.
Chosin is what he remembers the most about the war. Other memories are sketchy at best. But Chosin is vivid. How the troops were surrounded by the Chinese and how they fought their way out. How the bodies of the dead Chinese would stack up and the Americans would use them as shields.
He remembers and he tells his story as often as he can, so others don't forget.
"A lot of people, war bothers them. I came back and no nightmares. I think you forget," Brann said. "You remember what you want to remember. My legs hurt, my back hurts and I just got that prostate cancer and that radiation hurts.
"But there are good things to remember: your friends, the kids. That's the bad part, when you lose your friends. Those things you try not to think about."
continued.......