American Fighting-Man: Destiny's Draftee
The man of 1950 was not a statesman; Dean Acheson and his fellow diplomatsof the free world had, in 1950, notably failed to stop the march of Communism.Nor was 1950's man a general; the best commander of the year, MacArthur, hadblundered and been beaten. Nor a scientist, for science--so sure at thecentury's beginning that it had all the answers--now waited for the politicians(or anyone else) to find a way of controlling the terrible power that sciencehad released. Nor an industrialist, for 1950, although it produced more goodsthan any other year in the world's history, was not preoccupied with goods, butwith life & death. Nor a scholar, for the world of 1950 was surfeited withundigested facts, and sought its salvation not in the conquest of new knowledgebut in what it could relearn from old old, old lessons. 1950's man might turnout to be the aging conspirator, Joseph Stalin but as the year closed, thatdreadful prospect was far from certain; if he was winning the game and not justan inning, Stalin's historians would record that 1950--and all other years fromthe death of Lenin--belonged to him. Or 1950's man might turn out to be anunknown saint, quietly living above the clash of armies and ideas. Him, too,the future would have to find.
As the year ended, 1950's man seemed to be an American in the bitterlyunwelcome role of the fighting-man. It was not a role the American had sought,either as an individual or as a nation. The U.S. fighting-man was notcivilization's crusader, but destiny's draftee.
The Peculiar Soldier. Most of the men in U.S. uniform around the world hadenlisted voluntarily, but few had taken to themselves the old, proud label of" regular," few had thought they would fight, and fewer still had foreseen theincredibly dirty and desperate war that waited for them. They hated it, assoldiers in all lands and times have hated wars, but the American had somespecial reasons for hating it. He was the most comfort- loving creature who hadever walked the earth--and he much preferred riding to walking. As well ascomfort, he loved and expected order; he yearned, like other men, for apredictable world, and the fantastic fog and gamble of war struck him as aterrifying affront.
Yet he was rightly as well as inevitably cast for his role as fighting-manin the middle of the 20th Century. No matter how the issue was defined, whetherhe was said to be fighting for progress or freedom or faith or survival, theAmerican's heritage and character were deeply bound up in the struggle. Morespecifically, it was inevitable that the American be in the forefront of thisbattle because it was the U.S. which had unleased gigantic forces of technologyand organizational ideas. These had created the great 20th Century revolution.Communism was a reaction, an effort to turn the worldwide forces set free byU.S. progress back into the old channels of slavery.
The American fighting-man could not win this struggle without millions ofallies--and it was the unfinished (almost unstarted) business of his governmentto find and mobilize those allies through U.N. and by all other means. But theallies would never be found unless the American fighting-man first took hispost and did his duty. On June 27, 1950, he was ordered to his post. Sincethen, the world has watched how he went about doing his duty.
He has been called soft and tough, resourceful and unskilled, unbelievablybrave and unbelievably timid, thoroughly disciplined and scornful ofdiscipline. One way or another, all of these generalizations are valid. He is apeculiar soldier, product of a peculiar country. His two outstandingcharacteristics seem to be contradictory. He is more of an individualist thansoldiers of other nations, and at the same time he is far more conscious of,and dependent on, teamwork. He fights as he lives, a part of a vast,complicated machine--but a thinking, deciding part, not an inert cog.
" In Our Time..." A British officer who has seen much of the U.S.fighting-man in Korea last week gave this shrewd, balanced appraisal:
" Your chaps have everything it takes to make great soldiers--intelligence,physique, doggedness and an amazing ability to endure adversity with grace. Thething they lack is proper discipline. They also would be better off with alittle more training in the art of retreat. I know they like to say that theAmerican soldier is taught only offensive tactics, but if Korea has provednothing else it has proved the absolute necessity of knowing how to retreat inorder. Your marines know how, but your Army men just don't. In our time, youknow, we were able to make quite a thing of the rearguard action.
" Also, it seems to me that you are a little too reluctant to takecasualties for your own good. I've seen an entire American division held up allday because a regimental commander was unwilling to risk what at most wouldhave been ten or 20 casualties. I don't want to sound blood-thirsty, but 20casualties in a light action today may frequently save 100 or so tomorrow."
Like all British observers of the U.S. Army, this observer was bothenvious and appalled at the bulk and variety of U.S. equipment and its" amenities." One Briton in Korea says that he saw tanks held up for hours bybeer and refrigerator trucks. Another, who had been with U.S. troops landing inSouthern France, said last week. " In France, I thought someone was just havinghis little joke when they brought the office wastebaskets ashore from the ship.But damned if they didn't do the same thing in Korea, too."
Night Into Day. The American fighting-man who went forth to battle,brandishing his chocolate bars, his beer cans and his wastebaskets, was(contrary to the expectations of many) no lily. He had proved himself able toendure the tortures of climate and the thrusts of a brave and well-led enemy.His soldierly virtues were attested by the fact that he had been able to stayin Korea at all.
His defects were many, serious--and understandable. Unless he was in anextremely well-trained outfit, he was prone to inner panic at the opening of anight attack. On several occasions, Red units had broken up American units bynight charges accompanied by shouting and bugle calls. Old soldiers, aware thatthe Army needs sterner training before it goes to battle, said that the answerto this was more night training. A more typically American answer was inpractice last week around the Hungnam beachhead: lavish use of star shells,which changed night to day. Another defect was that the U.S. Army was roadboundby its enormous supply train, a defect that grew out of the very strength ofU.S. technology. The relative security of American life had dulled the U.S.fighting-man's caution, made him unwary about taking cover in the presence ofthe enemy. Said a sergeant instructing new arrivals in Korea: " If you seeanyone on the skyline, don't shoot. He's probably one of our guys."
These were explainable demerits. More surprising--and disgraceful--was thefact that the American fighting-man in Korea, despite his country's vauntedindustrial superiority, found that his government had not given him weapons asnumerous or as good as he needed and had a right to expect.
The Men. More important than the weapons in 1950, as in 1066, were the menwho used them. What were they like? Better trained, more experienced and olderthan the G.I.s of World War II, the U.S. Army in battle in Korea was thenearest approach to a professional army that the U.S. had ever sent into war.The men in it did not lend themselves to easy characterization. Nobody couldfind a typical U.S. soldier of 1950. There was no one type; there were as manytypes as there were men. Here are some of the men:
PRIVATE KENNETH SHADRICK, 19, of Skin Fork, W.Va., the first U.S.infantryman reported killed in Korea, fired his bazooka at a Red tank on July5, looked up to check his aim, and was cut down by machine-gun fire.
MAY. GEN. WILLIAM F. DEAN, trapped with his 4th Infantry Division inTaejon, sent his men out of the besieged, burning city while he went after Redtanks with a bazooka; he is listed as missing in action.
CORP. HIDEO HASIMOTO, a Japanese-American who had been interned in theU.S. during World War II, kept hurling hand grenades at the storming Reds;after he ran out of grenades, he threw rocks.
2ND LIEUT. JOHN CHARLES TRENT, of Memphis, captain of West Point's 1949football team, was killed by a rifle bullet at Wonsan, while he was walkingfrom foxhole to foxhole to see that his men--fighting for three days &nights--had not fallen asleep.
PFC. DONALD PATTON, who in his frontline foxhole slept through thebloodiest night attack which the Reds hurled against the U.S.'s position on thefamed " Bowling Alley" near Taegu, woke up the next morning, looked at thesmoking, knocked-out Red tanks and cried in a frightened voice: " Holy Cow! Whathappened?"
PFC. JOHN D. LASHARE, 17, of Moundsville, W.Va., went around reciting the23rd Psalm (" Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." ).
PFC. JOHN A. PALMA, of Brooklyn, was captured by the Chinese Reds andlater released. Said he: " We prayed like hell all the time."
T/SGT. WAYNE H. KERR, of Cleveland, was on safe desk duty, but got into anL-5 at night when other pilots had refused the mission; holding a flashlight inone hand to light up the instrument panel, he landed on a tiny, badly lightedmountain strip and flew out a wounded marine.
CAPTAIN " WHISTLIN' JOE" ROGERS, 26, of the 36th Squadron, EightFighter-Bomber Group, had probably killed more North Koreans and Chinese thanany other flyer. During World War II, to his disgust, he had been aninstructor, saw no combat. He had made up for it in Korea. Air Force men likedto talk about Joe's exploits--his trick of barrel-rolling when he came in for astrafing run, the time he attached a whistle to one of his wings to scare theenemy, thus earned his nickname. The story they liked best was the one aboutJoe chatting at the bar with a B-26 pilot who, not knowing Joe's record, wasbeefing because he had to fly combat two days in a row. " How many missions yougot?" asked Joe. " Eight," said the other flyer. Joe didn't say anything. Atthat point a third man joined them and asked Joe how many missions he had." Hundert an'fifty-three," said Joe. The B- 26 man quietly set down his glassand faded away.
SERGEANT JOHN LLOYD ran a motor pool. Helping a war correspondent fix aflat tire, Lloyd talked very American talk, and very happy. " You need any gas?I am the stingiest man alive with gas. Anybody comes in here with more thanhalf a tank don't get any, that's all. They get mad. But when we get orders tomove, I have got some saved up, and then I'm not such a bad guy." The tirerepaired, Sergeant Lloyd went over to a compressor which would not work, turneda screw, took hold of a valve, told a G.I. who was standing by to kick thething; after three tries, the thing worked. " Of course," he said, inexplanation of the procedure, " the bad problem is parts. We don't do bad. If wecome across anything on the road, damaged, we strip it for parts. When we gottime, we send a party out to scour the road for vehicles, gook or otherwise." Ajeep marked H.Q. 35 drove up. " You see old 35 there," said Sergeant Lloyd." That is our reserve. Whenever a jeep comes up here and needs a part bad, wetake it off old 35." How did he replace the parts on old 35? " Ah, that is aprofessional secret. If I don't keep this stuff rolling around here, it's justmy tail, that's all."
54 Days to Pusan. Very few Americans got to Korea because they wanted tofight. PRIVATE STANLEY POPKO, of Bayonne, N.J., for instance, was in Koreabecause he had wanted an education. His father was a night watchman forStandard Oil of New Jersey; there was never any money to spare in the family.After Stan graduated from Bayonne Technical High School last year, he lookedaround for a job that would permit him to go on to night school, finallydecided to let Uncle Sam take care of his further education. First he tried theNavy, but it had a waiting list. " So I thought," says Popko, " I'd go see whatthe Army had to offer. At the Army place there was a first lieutenant. He was areal good salesman. First he said I could pick my own branch and then I couldgo to school wherever I wanted to. Boy, did he sell me!"
They taught Popko to fire an M-I rifle and a carbine. The closes he cameto artillery and flamethrowers was an exhibition; he also saw a tank from adistance. After his basic training was over, he went to Quartermaster School atCamp Lee, Va., where they made him a salvage technician, i.e., " one of the guyswho clean up the battlefields."
On Sunday, June 25, Popko slept late, played a double-header softball gameagainst a local bakery company. When he returned to barracks, someone turned ona radio. The North Koreans had attacked the South Koreans. " We figured that ifthe Koreans wanted to fight among themselves, let them fight. It was like thatrevolution in China. It was nothing to do with us."
Fifty-four days later, Popko was in Pusan.
A lieutenant was just about to assign Popko to duty in a warehouse when asergeant rushed in, crying: " They got to have riflemen." Popko thought: " Thereis the only guy in the world I'd like to shoot." The sergeant won his argumentwith the lieutenant and got Popko.
" I Was All Alone." Unhappy, scared and wishing he had never left Bayonne,Popko was loaded onto a truck with 60 other G.I.s, and started along dusty" Cavalry Boulevard" toward the Naktong River front. Says Popko: " After thefirst couple of days we got to be pretty good. We learned the tricks. We knewwhat to watch for and when to fire and how to take care of yourself. If you canlive through the first couple of days, you got a chance."
About three weeks after Popka had moved to the front, the big attackcame--part of the enemy's hard-driving try to take Taegu. Popko's squad washolding the left side of Hill 303. (Scene of the infamous massacre of U.S.prisoners by North Korean troops.) The enemy came up in three manzai-screamingwaves. " Once I was going to get out of the hole and throw my rifle away and goover the hill. You can't explain how it is. You just think you can't stand itany more. But the guy in the next hole to me started talking sense to me."
By 3 a.m., all was quietly. Popko's platoon sergeant discovered that allthe other men on Hill 303 had either been killed or pushed back. Popko and hisbuddies managed to get off the hill with the help of a South Korean who ledthem through enemy lines. At dawn, they were ordered to retake the hill. Acouple of times that morning, Stan Popko ran up & down that hill, chasingthe enemy or being chased by him. Then he went up for the last time. " It seemedlike I was all alone. There were supposed to be guys on both sides of me, but Icouldn't see them. I spent a lot of time in Korea looking back down a road andwondering when someone was going to come up it and help us. There never seemedto be anyone coming up.
" I kept going up this hill carefully and then all of a sudden I see thislight machine gun up real close. There were two gooks with it. I grabbed agrenade and threw it at 'em. The damned thing was a dud and didn't go off. Thefirst thing I felt was my leg hurt real bad. Then the other leg hurt and bothmy arms were numb. I yelled, `I got hit!' but there was no one around. I lookedup and saw both of these gooks coming for me. I couldn't find my rifle and Iknew I couldn't throw my last grenade because I could hardly move my arms."
" I Lay There Real Still." " I figure that they're going to get me. I didn'tthink about very much. I just said to myself the bastards won't get me aliveand they aren't going to live either. I got the last grenade and held it. Whenthey got real close to me, I was going to pull the pin and let it go betweenus."
" I lay there real still and they come up slow as hell. I was just ready topull the pin when a hell of an explosion came between me and them. It must havebeen our artillery. The next thing I knew I was at the bottom of a rise. I musthave been rolled 100 feet or more. What happened to the gooks I don't know.They weren't around."
Stan Popko, hurting bad, started crawling. He figured he crawled almost amile before he looked up and saw a tank coming down the road.
" The turret man was waving his big 50-cal. machine gun at me, and Ifigured he was going to let me have it. I yelled, `I'm a G.I.' He looked at meand then the other way. The tank went right by me.
" I got up some way and started to run. I took two steps and fell down. Isaw two G.I.s coming toward me and I passed out. I stopped worrying.
" I came to the next morning about 6 o'clock and I felt for my right hand.I couldn't find it. I started yelling like hell and this South Korean kid whobrought water around to our stretchers came in and asked me what the troublewas. He showed my hand to me. It was in a cast and I just was scared to lookfor it. I thought sure they'd cut it off."
Later that day Popko was taken to the Pusan airfield and flown to ahospital near Tokyo. Two weeks later they sent him home to Bayonne, N.J. A lotof people asked him would he do it again--enlist if he knew what was ahead?Said Stan Popko: " I guess I would. I can't see myself spending my life as acounterman or hanging around streetcorners."
The Sun Never Sets. A man's past, the things that shape his character, arereduced in wartime to a few sentences in a personnel file. But ENSIGN DAVIDTATUM, like any fighting-man, is the kind of fighter he is in large measurebecause of the way he grew up and the things he learned. Tatum flies a Grummanjet fighter off the carrier Valley Forge. When he was a boy in Baton Rouge,La., his father gave him a BB-gun, with instructions to stand guard over theTatums' little back garden, then beset by seed-snatching sparrows. David scaredoff the birds; frequently he hit one, but he didn't enjoy the sport. " I wouldlook at these sparrows and think, `He didn't do me any harm. He was minding hisown business.' I felt guilty."
He learned the Ten Commandments in Sunday School, but they meant nothingto him. " My mother taught me that it was right to go to church, but that youdidn't have to go to church to have religion. She taught me to hate ahypocrite--a Sunday Christian." His parents also taught him to respect olderpeople--a lesson driven home more than once with a switch. " I didn't mind that.It didn't hurt--it only stung a little. I would rather be beaten than fussedat."
In school, he won second place in an essay contest on " Why I Am Glad I Aman American." He had gotten most of his ideas on this subject from a comic bookwhose hero was Uncle Sam. The book said that Uncle Sam was happy because he wasfree to go around and " lip off" about anything he pleased, because " he didn'thave to mind his Ps and Qs."
In sixth-grade geography, David Tatum learned that there was a worldbeyond America. He had heard a little about the Roman Empire, which conqueredthe world and, in time, fell. He learned about the British Empire, which alsoruled a large part of the world--in fact, said Teacher, the sun never set onit. Tatum could not understand that, so the teacher got a globe and patientlyexplained the celestial facts. In a larger sense, Tatum never understood; hestill wonders with a mixture of curiosity and awe how the British managed tokeep control of so much land, so many people.
Sparrows & People. His seventh-grade teacher taught him some currentaffairs--something about the isms. Naziism to him was the swastika, and evilbecause it was against the underdog. Fascism to him was a fat man on a balcony.Communism? Today he says without hesitation and with deep seriousness: " I willnot live under Communism."
In 1946, just after he turned 18 and liable for the draft, he volunteeredfor the Navy. Soon after he joined, he sat in the movies holding hands with hisgirl. They were showing newsreels of the Bikini A-bomb test. For the first timehe was frightened of war. Without knowing it, he squeezed Mary's hand so hardthat she cried out. " I was sorry for those ships going down," he says. " I toldmyself, `Tatum, you ought to be in a foxhole, not on a ship. This is where aman can get hurt.'" But he really liked ships. " A ship is home," he says.
The Navy sent him to college (Rice Institute in Houston), then topre-flight school at Pensacola, Fla. In December 1948, he qualified for carrierduty. On July 31, 1950, he joined the Valley Forge at Okinawa. On Aug. 6, heflew his first combat mission. The next day, on another mission, was the firsttime the 22-year-old, raised under the rule of law & order and under theTen Commandments, killed a man. In his journal, Tatum wrote later in neat blockletters: " Monday, August 7. Armed Recon Southwest Korea. Up to Taejon andSeoul. Shot up 2 junks, one supplies. Burned other troops. Burned in water."Somehow, he did not feel about the dead Koreans as he had about his father'ssparrows. " Probably because I didn't have to pick up the Koreans and look atthem."
But jet fighters over Korea flew very low; sometimes a pilot had to lookat the people he shot. On one mission, Tatum was firing into some troops movingalong the road. With them walked an elderly woman. She was hit, and literallyexploded: she had obviously been carrying ammunition in her pack. " That I don'tlike. If you have never seen arms and legs flying through the air..." saysTatum, his sentence dangling like a severed limb.
None of the other fellows in his squadron liked this business of shootingcivilians. But, " I figured if we had to kill ten civilians to kill one soldierwho might later shoot at us, we were justified."
Butterflies & Men in White. Tatum flew an average of one mission everytwo days, about an hour and 40 minutes to each mission. The entries in hisjournal are phrased like a boy's diary notes on how many butterflies he caughtor what odd shells he found on the beach, but there is a deadly difference:
" August 12. Armed Recon. Hit Kimpo airfield, burned 4 Yak fighters,damaged one more. Burned truck south of Taejon. Heavy flak.
" August 13. Armed Recon north of 38th. Burned trucks, one bus, one motorlaunch...Encountered 20-mm. & 40-mm, ack-ack. Hit on plane by 20-mm. Landedaboard, wire broke, hit fence.
" August 26. Armed Recon...Destroyed 3 trucks, 2 loaded with supplies.
" September 16. Strafed & killed many troops on road from Taejon toSeoul, strafed & sank junk full of troops on Han River northeast of Inchon.Caught troops coming out cave in hill to board junk. Many casualties..."
On Sept. 19, Tatum was shot down--by two bullets from North Korean rifles.He did not even notice that the plane had been hit until the pressure gauge onthe instrument panel began to fall of to zero, and he realized that one of theslugs had hit fuel lines. He managed to turn around and ditch the plane about amile offshore in the sea. He remembers scrambling into the life raft andwatching the plane sink slowly. " I gave it sort of a half salute." His mainworry was what his plane captain would think when Ensign Tatum was reportedmissing. A British cruiser picked him up.
That evening Tatum was unable to sleep. He thought about hislife-insurance policy and how, if he had got killed, the Navy would have had toread all the letters from his girl which he had saved. " A hell of a job forsomebody." But then he pulled his blanket over his shoulder and went to sleep.His crash landing is the only war experience Tatum dreams about. The men inwhite he shot on the road, or the old woman's detached arms and legs, neverdisturb his sleep.
Ensign Tatum describes patriotism this way: " I don't necessarily believein the big shots as individuals. But there are a lot of people like me and you.I believe in them. I believe in the American girl I see walking in the street.I have never even met her, but I believe in her."
" If These People Aren't Stopped." If there is any one story of a U.S.fighting-man that can sum up the best in all the stories, it is that of MarineSERGEANT ROBERT WARD, a full- blooded Cherokee Indian who grew up in LosAngeles. He got to be a wonderful marksman with a bow & arrow. When he gothungry he would go out into the country and kill himself a rabbit. Ward's twoolder brothers were killed in action in World War II. Robert served in theNavy, later joined the marines. After he went into action in Korea last summer,his mother wrote to the President and to the Marine Corps, begging thatsergeant Ward, her only surviving son, be transferred from the combat zone. Themarines' General Clifton Gates agreed to apply the " only surviving son" rule.(On their own or their parents' request, sole surviving sons serving in anybranch of the U.S. Armed Forces may be assigned duty outside the combat zone,if another son or daughter in the family has been killed as a result of the" hazards" of service since 1940.) Leather-faced Sergeant Ward intercepted thetransfer orders, went on fighting.
Eventually, despite his protests, Ward was transferred to a desk job inJapan. Last week his mother received a letter from Sergeant Ward. He wrote:
" I'm no hero, but...if these people aren't stopped here on their ownground, we will have to share the thing which so many have died to preventtheir loved ones from sharing--the sight of death in our own backyards; ofwomen and children being victims of these people. I went on the warpath for theright to do my bit to keep our people free and proud and now I'm shackled to auseless job.
" I ask you, my mother, to free me so I can once again be free to help myboys. They placed their faith in me and...whenever I led I brought them allback and now someone else leads them and I know they need me. Maybe in a senseI need them--my dirty, stinking and loyal platoon.
" Once I cried before you when I thought I'd lost someone whom I loved verydearly, and once again I did cry when I was told I must leave my men. So, I askof you the one thing your heart does not want to do--release me to fight.
" I pace my room feeling useless, being no good to anyone. I'm nobarracks-parade-ground marine--I'm a Cherokee Indian and I'm happiest beingmiserable with my men up in those mountains.
" I know you'll understand and that your blessings will go with me intowhatever the future holds in store for us..."
Sergeant Ward was sent back to Korea and his dirty, stinking and loyalplatoon. His mother said: " When men in our tribe say something, they mean it."
Not all of the U.S. fighting-men are as brave as Sergeant Ward. Very fewof them can say what they mean as fervidly as he. But most of them know whatthey are fighting against--" The sight of death in our own backyards; of women of women and children being victims of these people."
