CHINDONG-NI

Well. Guess this as good a time as any.

The afternoon of 7Aug when we wereon the road just a couple of miles out of Chindong-ni moving north,we were hit by fire from a rice paddy across from ourright front. Since we understood that we were needed on the massif ASAP wecontinued to move in the ditch up to a ville where we had earlier been hit bya 40 man NKA charge.

Art Oakley (he would die the following morning), our first platooncommander, got to the ville first, and set up his platoon to return fire.He had a section of LMGs with him.

In the meantime old Eagle Eye had spotted where the fire was comingfrom, and yelled up to Art to watch my tracers because I'd mark first theflanks of the position, then fire two rounds into each of the three autoweapons positions I'd been able to pick out. In the meantime my crazybuddy, Fritz Emmelman, who had the third platoon and who was the only manin the company not in the ditch, walked over to where I was firing with myrifle resting on the road, and stood just in front of my right elbow withhis binocs spotting for me. I had just about finished and was about to moveout to get up the ditch to the ville when a burst of fire came in.

Remember, tracers work both ways. This wasn't the firstburst, there had been others, but it was like 20 or so redhot marbles suddenly struck on the road, went over my head, but generally werecentered exactly where I was shooting from.

Good shooting, that, and themachine gunner should have been congratulated.

Several rounds kicked upright in front of me, and I was hit on the left side of my helmet, withabout the same impact as having been hit by a baseball bat when the batterhad really teed off. This slammed me into the ditch wall on the west sideof the ditch. I was momentarily stunned. When I came to there was a tall,skinny kid at my feet, face down and kicking in the sludge and water of thatditch and yelling bloody murder.

Then appeared Nigger Reeves like a deus exmachina. He flipped the kid over, picked him up by his shoulders andlooked at his neck. The kid had a through and through wound that penetratedjust behind his adam's apple. His eyes were the size of silver dollars.Nigger kept cussing at him and telling him he was OK, got him to his feet,shoved him toward the ville and the kid stumbled forward.

While all thisruckus was proceeding I was doing some exploring. I could feel my left eyeclosing, and blood beginning to flow down my face on the left side. I thenlooked down and saw a through and through hole in my helmet, which hadrolled between my legs when I slammed into the wall of the ditch. From theway my head was beginning to feel it must have taken half the brain with it.I reached up gingerly to see what I would find, and to my satisfaction notedthat my skull was intact. Later my left shoulder would become painful, butI've always believed that this had to be from either a piece of my helmetwhich was deflected or possibly a part of the copper jacket of the bullet.

My left eyebrow was sort of dangling, which is what was causing my visionproblems, and minute bits of something had made a sort of mince meat justunder my left eye for maybe a total of one square incle. What caused thelatter? The only thing I could ever figure is that one of the rounds hadhit right in front of me and caused tiny stones to hit me in the face.

Fritz Emmelmann didn't get a scratch, but would lose the back of his skullthe following morning at the same time the other two platoon commanders werekilled.

About an hour later I developed a pounding headache, and had periodsof double vision. Worse, this began what I described as a sort of "DreamSequence" where I really wasn't with the program, and this went on for abouttwo days through the fight on top of that hill. I seemed like I'd be fine, in full possessionof whatever had been bestowed on me in the first place,and then I'd drift back into la-la land. Many years later I wasstudying the clinical indications of depressed skull fractures, and my case,as I recalled it, was identical.

Had I a brainI'd have hopped on a stretcher and gotten the hell out of there. Hell, Ihad an honorable wound.

The gun was extremely well camouflaged, sothat from my position 75 meters from the gun I absolutely could not see itunless he fired. Then I could get a fix on him.

Remember, the NKA had smokeless ammunition. (We, therepresentatives of the greatest industrial nation in the world, did not.When one of our LMGs opened up it looked like someone had thrown an HC SmokeGrenade down beside the gun. Like the gunner was saying, "Here I am, comeand get me.")

As the only officer present Ihad relieved Nigger Reeves, and gone out to look at the company lines. Atthat point I sent back for a rocket team, still down on the ridge where Ihad been, and it probably took a half hour to get them up. I passed theword that I didn't want them to come over the top, but stay in the CompanyCP area until they heard from me.

When I was told they were in place I feltthe best chance of getting the weapon and a couple of rounds from down therewould be to break down the 3.5 and have one man attempt to get it to me. Tosay that it was dangerous on that ridge is a masterpiece of understatement.Anyway, that's how it happened.

The gunner, moving from position toposition, and there were lots of them, got the 3.5 to me and we assembledit in the two man foxhole.

Then who would take the shot? He was thegunner, but you have to realize that we got the 3.5s the day we boardedship at San Diego, and got 8 rounds per tube when we reached Pusan and weretold that there would be no resupply. I had ordered two rounds put throughthe roof of a building down to our right front when we were holding aridge line at least partly because I wanted to see if the damned thingswould work. And those were the only two rounds we had fired. So, like inbasketball, who takes the shot?

The gunner could hardly be consideredexpert with the 3.5, nor could I, but I had the advantage of having watchedthat damned Maxim for 30 minutes or so. Come to think of it (and I justremembered) the gun was first spotted by watching ammo carriers move to theposition since the gun didn't fire unless he had a target. On the otherhand, we were taking sporadic rifle fire on a continuing basis, andsustained bursts from several HMGs and LMGs at various ranges whenever theythought they had a target.

So I decided to take the shot. And maybe, inthe back of my mind, I was looking for a little payback for Wally. Nowlater there was a legend that got started that the HMG I killed was the onethat got Wally. Don't think so, but that's not important now. Whatever.

I knew that to stand in that hole was certain death, so I found a place whereI could just get 4" or so of the tube exposed. Obviously, given theterrain and the situation, it was better to load the round first instead offrom the rear as the training films showed. Anyway, I took careful aim withmy remaining right eye, since my left eye was closed, and got the round off.Very satisfying whoosh!

I aimed at where I reckoned the center of thetripod was, about a foot below where the barrel was. I missed, but thankGod caught what I figured later was the upper right shield of the Maxim. Inspite of the poor hit on the gun, the round threw the gun and a couple ofcrew members up in the air and to their left. There was a scurrying aroundin the weeds, although we could see nothing, and the rifle fire from theMarines poured into the area.

The NKA returned fire, and it turned intoquite a fire fight. But only for a few minutes because every Marine on thathill knew we had to conserve ammo. So it wasn't like no one else was thereto take the shot. I just hogged it.

The word got out that I had killed theMG and a story built up about me going out gunning to get the crew thatkilled Wally. Nice myth, but not true. This was even relayed back toWally's widow and two sons by a classmate, John Patrick.

In the meantime everyone thought I'd been fatally wounded at Taedobok Pass.And that's the troop scoop. Just a selfish officer taking a shot after someother poor SOB had jackassed the weapon up the hill.

The Company Commander was hit between the horns, and in his leftshoulder by HMG fire. (In this case a shot in the head was the equivalentof a flesh wound.) The Company XO had gone down from heat exhaustion anddid not recover until well after the sun went down. The MG Officer had beenleft behind to guide up the Army company that was to relieve us.

All buttwo of the Staff NCOs were down, and one of those two had been painfully hitin the hand. Many if not most of the Sergeants and Corporals were dead orwounded. That's what happens in combat.

So you could observe that DCompany went from strong leadership to no leadership in a matter of a fewminutes.Those officers and NCOs who had been responsible for D Company at 0800that morning by 0815 had not been decimated, they'd been eliminated.

I don't know to this day if Finn, the CompanyCommander had put the platoons on line or had the usual two up and one backto go over the top. It was obvious that with the enemy strength to ourfront that the company should have stopped on the topographical crest, butI'm not going to criticize anyone because I wasn't there and know not whatsituation they thought they were facing.

Fritz Emmelman's platoon was sortof to the left (south) of the other platoon positions. The first time I hadgone over the ground to see the positions we were holding on assumingcommand I had to see Fritz' body, but paid it no heed. It had to appear tome to be just another freshly dead body, and there were many bodies on thathill.

Shortly after I did the 3.5 thing and about the time I was going torepair to my air conditioned, upholstered CP area, not, someone shouted overthat Lt. Emmelman was still alive. Someone had reported that they had heardhim groaning. I only had one corpsman left of the three the Company hadstarted off that morning with, and when I assumed command I told him that hewas to stay in the CP area and off the forward slope or I'd shoot himmyself.

Ed Emmelman was my old buddy, going back to our days in 1/5 inNorth China. We had gone to Guam together, and returned to Tsingtaotogether, had been commissioned at the same time and then been classmates inBasic School. We had then driven together to Camp Pendleton to again reportto the 1stMarDiv. On the way I'd stopped for a week in Gary, Indiana, myhome town, to be with my pregnant wife, and in that week Fritz hadthoroughly ingratiated himself with both my family and Mary Jane's. SoFritz was a lot more than just a casual acquaintance.

I got myself out towhere he was lying, face down, on the lip of a foxhole. It was a wonderthat he hadn't been hit again just lying there for the incoming fire was attimes vicious, and by that time he had been there for some four hours. As Ieased myself into the foxhole that Ed was half in and half out of I took onelook at the head wound and didn't believe that he could be alive. I put myhand on his shoulder and he was obviously not into rigor, as he should havebeen.

I shook him slightly and he said: "Who's that?" I told him "Sully.You're bad hit Ed, and we've got to get you out of here." He said that wasOK but then told me he couldn't see and asked me if I had a cup of coffee?I told him no, and began to consider what we could do with him.

I left himright where he was, and used his and my battle dressing, a gauze pad about4" square, to try to get a dressing over the hole in his head which waslosing what looked like to me gray matter. I had to lift his head to getthis tied, and he complained of the pain, which I considered a hopeful sign.When the single battle dressing didn't get the job done, I used his toattempt to cover the rest of the fracture. Then, what to do? I couldn'tturn him because I feared the leakage from the back of his head wouldincrease. Finally the Marine who was with me and I grabbed him by the armsand gave him the bum's rush over the topographical crest to the CP area.Once there the Corpsman tidied up my sloppy work on the forward slope.

Thenight before we had gotten an air drop on the ridge and someone brought up aparachute, and we put Ed in it face down. There wasn't a prayer of carryinghim down that slope, so we knew that he would have to be dragged down on hisface in that parachute. Ed kept moaning and asking for a cup of coffee. Itold him that he'd get his coffee at the bottom of the hill, then gave himtwo 1/4 grain amps of morphine.

Now you'll ask, where did I get themorphine? All the officers had been in combat before, and we knew how oftenCorpsmen did the disappearing act since they tended to get a might careless.So we decided that we would all carry a 10 ampule kit on our web belts. Andwe did, and used them as required. And now you're gonna say: Didn't heknow that men with belly and head wounds shouldn't be given morphine? Ofcourse I did.

But frankly, I didn't give Ed a prayer of getting to thebottom of that hill alive, and thought to myself that the morphine mightwell ease him out. And no one who was not there on that hill at that timecan be my judge. And that was the end of that.

Not.

The Top told me that the last time he had seenhim was sitting up in a stretcher, drinking a cup of coffee.

Turned around and therewas Ed.

He'd retired in '51 as a 1stLt and had various diversions sincethen. We then began a two day tour of Frisco, and things had changed littlesince the last liberty we'd pitched together in Tientsin.

Ed went on tohave a full career in the Indianapolis Police Department and long sinceretired. The last I heard he is beginning to suffer from the ravages ofage, as are all of us, but in Ed's case more particularly his eyesight is aproblem. The entire back of his head is a silver plate, he told me. And asI told him, "Ed, don't ever let anyone tell you that you don't have anybrains, because I saw them."

Danse macabre indeed, but that's how Marinesare wired.

I can recall one very hot day when my battalion was moving out of theAp Co Bi Thanh Tanh area north of Hue to a new CP location closer toRoute #1. I had put the battalion in a column of companies, with eachcompany on a different route of march so we'd coverthe waterfront one last time on the way out. I was with the HeadquartersGroup, which included the 81mm mortars.

My pattern on breaks was to breakout a canteen and walk to the back of the column, sucking on that canteenand exchanging pleasantries about the heat, the leeches, the condition ofthe feet, and the lack of enemy contact. As I regained the head of thecolumn and the "Saddle Up" was shouted down the line I could overhear one ofmy NCOs say in a stage whisper something like this: "Look at that oldson-of-a-bitch up there. If that old bastard can hack it you shouldn't behavin' any trouble."

Of course I wasn't packing a base plate, tube or tenrounds of ammunition, but rank doth have its privileges.

So anyway, youcan't say that anything that happened to me in Korea slowed me down longterm. I will admit that it took me until '55 before I really got goingagain, but maybe part of that was psychological. I don't know.