JMJ

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Korea 1951

5th Rct 24th Div,
Kumwah,North Korea..

Front Lines Kumwah.North Korea

As time went on our focus was on this very high hill to our front. Almost daily this hill was strafed by our airplanes.We would judge whether the pilot was married or not married, if he was not married the airplane would fly real low and near most touch the tree tops. The married pilot flew high above the tree line, also the artillery that hit that hill, soon it was given a name .We called it "The million dollar hill" the idea was that all the shells, all the strafing added up to a million dollars. In the History books and to this day that hill is referred to as "the Million Dollar Hill"
The Ghost

What would you call it? As we look down the ridge line there was another company.That had a particular problem that we all heard about later,..This is what happenned. Each night they would hear something moving around to there front. They would fire there rifles. The next day the same sounds but no matter how many rounds fired the mysterious sounds continued. Now the soldiers were getting worried, what was this mysterious thing that could not be killed. Finally the Sgt ask for volunteers the next time they heard the sounds they would go after it. So that night they heard the sounds and went after it, and caught a pig that was coming up the hill to find food.
Lesson Learned

One day my fox hole buddy says lets dig our fox hole down by the barb wire, this was in the early days when we got on the line. So we took our shovels and dug a hole close to the barb wire that the enemy would have to go over to get to us.

It look good all we would have to do would be to fire straight ahead at the barb wire. We neatly put the grenades, clips of ammo on the sand bags. We were ready. However to our left was the machine gun emplacement high above us and to our right two soldiers with rifle above us.But it was quiet a couple of days. Then came the night. I was sleeping on the ridge line. When my buddy had finished his guard duty he would come get me,then he would sleep on the ridge line. One night he came up to wake me up, all of a sudden there were red flares going up and other colored flares. The left flank was firing there weapons, then our men started to fire. I wanted to get to our fox hole but as we looked down. We could see the machine gun tracers going over our fox hole, our fox hole was now in the line of fire. So we split and stayed on the ridge line.I had ammo in my rifle and my ammo belt. So I started to fire to our front, I kept pulling my trigger then it stopped, my rifle had jammed. I looked around and I saw a soldier pulling commo wire for a telephone, I told him my rifle jammed so he said he would help, he got along side me and fired his weapon until it all got quiet again.

The next morning I did two things. We dug a new fox hole near the ridge line and I took my rifle apart got out the bad round clean my weapon. A couple of nights later I used it again and I fired off eight rounds with out a problem.

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