THE LIFE AND CRIMESOF         DANIEL JOHN WHALEN

I was born December 12th or 13th, 1927 (the family bible shows the 12th, my birth certificate shows the 13th) (1 ) during a snowstorm at the family home on the Sinnott place, on the SW quarter of Section 8 in Sinnott Township, Marshal County, Minnesota, about five miles north of Stephen, Minnesota. I was the 6th born (4th son) of James A. and Maysie (Sinnott) Whalen.

Uncle Bill coming over to the Sinnott place with a suitcase, setting it down and opening it up; and out came a little puppy we named Bingo. We had her for many years. We also had an old saddle horse called Fleetfoot that was very gentle. They put me on her back one time, gave her a slap on the rump; she ran around the straw stack and back but I hung on. I was about four years old at the time. Mother driving the old Saxon touring car with several of us children in the car and the car going in the ditch. A tie rod may have came off, they often did in those days. I don't remember her driving after that.

Walking to school (1/4 mile) and walking home from school one day in the afternoon, it turned quite dark. Of course we didn't know what was going on; but it was an eclipse of the sun - very scary to a little kid.

Playing a ball game called Burlum and playing ante-eye-over the woodshed. Drowning out gophers at recess in the spring.

The train going by on the railroad track west of the Sinnott place.

Going out with mother in the fall to the straw stacks and sacking up the whaet that had spilled ou of the thrashing machine. We used it for breakfast food and to feed the chickens.

Peeking through the crack in of Mother's bedroom door to get a look at our new brother John.

Mother driving the old Saxon touring car with several of us children in the car, and the car going in the ditch. A tie rod may have come off, they often did in those days. I don't remember her driving after that.

My Grandma (Mary Ann) Whalen making us brown sugar sandwiches.

I remember riding in a hayrack full of our belongings when we moved from the Sinnott place to the Hanson place (1/2 mile east). I was about 5 at the time.

The 3-day blizzards when no one went anywhere except Dad who went to the barn to milk and feed the cows and horses. He couldn't even let them out for water, the weather was so bad.

During the depression years, I remember Dad working for WPA hauling gravel in the winter with a team of horses and a sled, gravel ing roads. He left early in the morning and came back in the evening.

Getting Christmas presents one year from the county. I believe I got a gold colored tin tractor.

About 1940?

Running the sewing machine helping Mother hem dish towels made from flower sacks.

Taking turns washing and wiping the dishes while Frances told us a continuing story so we would help her. Playing cards and checkers to entertain ourselves. We had no radio most of the time.

Milking cows when the bucket was nearly as big as I was. Dipping water from a hole in the ice, carrying it to the water trough for the cows and horses to drink.

Coming home from school in the winter and having to dig enough wood from the wood pile (covered with snow) to last till the next day.

Missing school because of being sick (stomach). Also missing school herding the cows along the road and in the stubble fields after they had been thrashed and the field grew up green, during the spring and fall. It could be miserable on a horse, cold and sometimes rainy.
Going out to the field and driving the bundle racks from shock to shock for the bundle haulers at harvest time.
 

Mark bringing home 10 little skunks and building a long pen for them - and trying to keep them fed by hunting crows for them all summer.

World War II - Mark and Stephen were already in the Army, and Philip left for the Army. Reading the letters they sent home with parts blacked out or cut out by military censors.

With the older brothers gone, the younger ones helped milk cows, clean the barn, and haul hay. During harvest Dad was the operator of the neighbor's threshing machine all through harvest, and they thrashed for several of the neighbors. The boys did all the milking during harvest. When they finished our own harvesting and moved on to someone else's place, it was my job ( I was l5 or l6) to do the fall plowing with the Hart Par tractor while Dad was away threshing.

I also started running a bundle team hauling bundles at our place when I was l5 or l6. I could haul a pretty high load when we thrashed flax (it was light) and never tip over a load of bundles like some did when they didn't cross a drainage ditch squarely.

In l945 we moved 10 miles east to what was known as the Quarnstrom place - on the south west quarter of section 12, Augsburg township. Some small building we owned were put on wooden skids and moved ten miles on dirt roads to our new home.

The land was sandy and rocky; it wasn't very good footing for the tractor so we could only pull a 3-bottom plow instead of the 4-bottom one we pulled when plowing the gumbo soil on the old place. We also had to put a spring hitch on the plow so if you hooked a rock, the plow would come unhooked from the tractor instead of tearing up the plow. Then you backed up, hooked up the plow again, raised it enough to go over the rock, and continued plowing. You learned where the rocks were pretty fast.

The dirty thirties, as they have been called, were the times when it was so dry the dirt blew and piled up on the fence lines; there were little or no crops. When I was maybe 6 or 7, I remember being out in the field with Dad and one team of horses was hitched to the wagon; Dad was driving and I was sitting at the rear of the wagon leading another team. There was so much dirt in the air you could not see far at all. I guess the horses found the way home. I went to school at the Whalen school (Dis trict # 97) which was located 1/4 mile south of where we lived in the country. The school was located in the southeast quarter of section 8. Our home at that time (the Hanson place) was in the NW quarter of Section 9. I went to school there through the 6th grade when the school was closed. Then we walked a half mile to catch a school bus to Stephen, Minnesota (5 miles). In the afternoon we rode the bus home (we were on the long end of the bus route in the afternoon, so it was a 15 mile ride then). I went to the Stephen School (it was grade school and high school in one building) for 7th through 10th grade. Then I was sent away to school at the Northwest School Of Agriculture at Crookston, Minnesota which was 50 miles from home.

Going away to school was Dad's idea not mine; but it was a blessing in disguise as I developed enough confidence in myself to leave home in May 1947. The Ag School or cow collage was a high school that was run like a college. It had a 6-month school year, from October to March. We lived in dormitories, no supervised study halls; we studied in our rooms or at the Library. The school was run in connection with a agriculture experiment station which was a branch of the University of Minnesota. One advantage was you could help with the fall work without missing a lot of school and were out in time to do spring work. I believe that was why Dad sent me there. It was a good school, but the need for such a school declined and it is now a four-year college.

                     May 1, 1947 long enough to make enough money working for other farmers to
                      leave  home.

 
On May 1, 1947 Perry Haglund and another fellow from Roseau, Minnesota and I left for Montana, arriving in Havre May 2nd. I hung around what is now Cenex a day or two, getting a job with Halsey Stallcup about 40 miles north west of Havre for three weeks. I was never so far from town in my life.   Then I worked two weeks near Gilford, Montana. The rest of the summer until September 2nd, I worked for Hershel and Alice Fox (Marks friends), about 7 miles west of Havre on the north side of the river. I went to work on the Great Northern Railroad on September 5, 1947 as a laborer in the car department. I was advanced to helper about a year later and advanced helper at car-men's rate of pay when the 40 hour work week was put in place on September 1, 1949. I worked in the railyard as car inspector until I was drafted into the army in 1950.

 

In August 1950 I was "ordered" to report for a physical for the army which I passed. I was ordered to report for induction on September 19, 1950 at Butte, Montana. We went by troop train to Fort Riley, Kansas for processing from September 21st to October 6th. Then by troop train to camp Carson, Colorado near Colorado Springs for basic training (infantry) from October 7th 1950 to February 8th 1951. Training wasn't to bad. It got pretty cold, 19 below zero. We had classes inside then. We were treated as good as they could and still got done what needed to be done.

I met a lot of guys, including Herb Tholl of Wyoming and Curtis Zerbe of Kansas. We stayed together through training and Korea. We came home on the same ship.

After basic training we were given only about 8 or 10 days delay in route before reporting to Fort Lawton, near Seattle, Washington, on February 19th 1951 for more processing for shipment to Korea. We were loaded on the ship "Marine Adder" on March 6th at Pier 91, and we left that evening for points unknown to us at the time. The ship arrived at Yokahama, Japan on March 21st. We were loaded on trains for Camp Drake, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo and spent two days, March 22 and 23, there for more processing. Then we boarded the same ship and spent the next three days (including Easter Sunday) March 24th through 26th on our way to Pusan, Korea. There we were transferred from ship to train, and left late that night. We spent two days or so (27 - 28) on way to a replacement depot at Chechon which was only about 250 miles from Pusan. It was a very slow train - not enough power.

On March 29th I was assigned to the 4^th Platoon L Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division which was in reserve at the time. We moved up near the artillery (northeast of Chunchon) late on April 3rd and spent the night. We could tell where the fighting was going on - we could see tracers going back and forth all night and wondered what we were getting into. There was not much sleep with artillery firing. We moved out the next morning, April 4th; me with a pack-board on my back with several rounds of 57 Recoilless rifle ammunition, plus bedroll, c-rations and a rifle. I had blisters on the ball of each foot as big as quarters that evening. We moved up the road some distance, then up into the hills. Mortar rounds fell about a quarter mile from us and my stomach got pretty nervous. I told myself I'd better quit worrying about it if I didn't want to crack up; it never bothered me again while in Korea.

We crossed the 38th Parallel for the first time on April 5th; about this time I received the Combat Infantry Badge. The Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) opened the sluice gates on the Hwachon Reservoir a few miles above us in North Korea on April 9th to cause us as much problems as they could. It did cause some flooding and washed out a bridge at IX Corps. The Hwachon Reservoir was captured by April 15th. We were short of men to cover the line assigned to us, and I spent one night on the front side of the hill as a rifleman. There was a little shooting on my right; but it didn't last long. The next morning they checked to see what was out there and discovered they had killed some farmer's ox. If it moved you shot it.

General MacArthur was canned and General Ridgeway took over his job; and General Van Fleet took over as 8th Army Commander. I think it was about this time that the CCF lit smoke pots over the whole area to prevent our side from observing what was happening on their side of the line. The smoke got pretty thick at times; on one move we couldn't see 50 feet in front of us. It was spooky and you wondered if "Joe Chink" (as we called them) would step out in front of you. We made it to our new positions OK.

About this time, the 3rd Battalion (my Battalion) went into reserve for about two weeks. On the evening of May 17th it was on to trucks and back to the front near Yongnae - Ri. We unloaded off the trucks and went back into the hills nearby, we never received orders to dig in so we figured something wasn't right. About 8 a.m. the next morning (May 18th) we found out how right we were and we were in a hell of a mess. The Chinese (CCF) had broke through the Republic of Korea (R.O.K's) on our right flank and had a roadblock behind us. Some were sent up the road to bust up the roadblock, but the road was blocked by two of our tanks that were knocked out. The group I was with pulled back a mile or two and set up on a hill waiting for orders on what we were to do next. We sat there about a half a mile east of the main supply route until late in the afternoon. A truck and a jeep were turned loose down the hill we were on and burned, so the CCF could not get any use out of them.

A navy fighter plane (F4U Corsair) flew over low that afternoon with smoke coming from the rear of the plane. About a mile south of us he rolled over upside down and the pilot fell out. We watched expecting his parachute to open, it never did open and he and the plane went down over a hill from us.

Early in the afternoon I heard our company commander (at the time Captain Barenkamp) telling the Field First Sergeant "You know more about this than I do, take over!" and the Captain headed south. Later that afternoon we began to move south through the valley; there were hills to the east of us and hills to the west between us and the road where the roadblock was. Earlier I had seen a platoon of Chinese coming out of a valley to the west and going south down the road toward the roadblock. I picked up some talk on my little radio that I thought was Chinese; there were no Koreans in the area that we knew of. On the way south we came upon a group carrying a wounded man on a stretcher. I helped carry the stretcher for a while; but I didn't have the strength to do it for long and I turned it back to the guy I relieved. The guy on the stretcher may have been the wounded man I saw earlier. Also earlier in the day Don Rice of Buffalo, Missouri was seriously wounded some distance back from where we came from. The standing order was, "You don't go back to help a wounded man because those with him will take care of him; if you go back, we may not only lose the wounded man but you also." Bill Whistler of Chicago went back to help Don who died and Bill was captured and died in a North Korean prison. I read in a paper, after I came home, about Bill dying.

While carrying the man on the stretcher, I became separated from my company, but hurried on south and caught up with a group of 5 men (one lieutenant and four men) from K Company. This was about 6 in the evening. I joined this group and we continued south hoping to find our line or at least friendly forces. As we went along in the dark, we could smell white phosphorous (it burns until it is used up or runs out of air) near our trail. We kept going south on this trail until near midnight when we came to a fork in the trail. The lieutenant that was with us got down and felt the tracks of those ahead of us to determine which trail they took (I think there was some rain so he could feel the tracks). He picked the trail to the left (southeast), and we continued on south. After a while, we could hear tank motors and see cigarettes in the dark. got closer and stood still; the lieutenant called out as to who it was (hoping they were friendly). Boy were we happy when they called back, and we had hit the bull's eye. It was our battalion, and our companies were right there. They let us come in, and were pretty happy to see us as we lost about 50% of our men who were killed, wounded, and captured that day. This was about 12:30 a.m. on May 19th. I found my company, and they took me up on the hill about 100 yards west of the tanks. I was the 4th platoon runner at this time; but as short of men as they were, I was put on the front side of the hill as a rifleman thatnight. So I didn't get much sleep that night.During the night a Chinese soldier approachedthe tankers (he spoke good English). He wantedto surrender and said he had been trained by the Americans in China after World War 2. Theydidn't dare let him come in at night as he mayhave been trying to pull a fast one to get in closeand throw a grenade at them. They told him togo back out a ways, stay still, and they would lethim come in after daylight. Well there must have been some shooting during the night when I was asleep as he didn't stay still; when they went to look for him, he was shot several times and was dead. It was to bad; but they couldn't bring him in at night. We might have lost some of our men.

The morning I got back to the tankers and my company I saw our company commander, Captain Barenkamp, and asked him when he got in to the tankers (he was there when I came in at 12:30 a.m.) and he lied to me and said he got in at 2 a.m. I didn't know of any witness so I said nothing. When talking by phone to my friend Albert Schuster in New York 42 years later I mentioned this to him and he said oh yes I heard him tell him to take over so it wasn't my imagination.

I don't know if the group with the wounded man on the stretcher got out or not. In fact I don't know if anyone got out after the group I came out with. They might have made it back to our outfits when I was sleeping. My sleeping on the front is another story.

The CCF (Chinese Communist Forces) and the NKPA (North Korean Peoples Army) threw about 12 divisions of men against our one division in an attempt to annihilate the 2nd division. They got a lot of us; but we got 65,000 or more of them and captured thousands of prisoners. Our artillery fired 2,000 rounds in front of K Company 38th Regiment and 44,000 rounds in the area in 24 hours.

We had moved back to an assembly area near Hongchon on May 23rd, but that didn't last long. About 2 a.m. we were awakened and told toget ready to move out in 2 hours. A tank tipped spearhead (group of infantry headed by tanks) had been sent up the road the day before to cut off escaping enemy at a bridge crossing the Soyang River. We moved out at about 4 a.m. in trucks. You could see little fires in the hills around us as we went north (dumb GIs, I thought - fires at night?). About 6 a.m. all hell broke loose up ahead and we came to a stop. I was sitting on the east side about the middle of the truck and I was over the tailgate very quickly. Maybe over the top of somebody else, I moved so quickly.

Several of us lay under the rear of the truck for protection. There was some action up ahead. They couldn't do much until daylight when air strikes and artillery could be called in on the enemy positions. Kind of lively the next few hours. We had some wounded and they managed to get some trucks turned around and took the wounded back to where they could be cared for and evacuated to a field hospital

While lying under the truck a bullet went into the roadway about 3 feet from my left foot. We stayed under the truck until 2 in the after noon when we got the all clear, then some of us went up to the CCF positions to check them out. No dead or wounded left behind, but some weep ons were left behind, some American madeprobably captured from some American outfit earlier. No CCF around. I found a little box with several little packets of white powder, I figured it was dope and left it there.We moved back south again.

We were in the valley around Inje when two C - 119 air force cargo planes were approaching to make an air drop of ammo for an artillery battery. Someone goofed, as I remember it, and fired an artillery piece and it blew one side of the tail section off one plane. The two planes collided and both crashed, killing all on board I'm sure. I saw the crash site about a week later, just a big hole left.

We were on the march north on May 28^th when word came back through the line of march that Lieutenant William D. Clark (son of General Mark W. Clark of World War II fame) was wounded and sitting in the ditch. It was only a few minutes until I saw him in the left ditch waiting for a litter jeep. I have an article from a Life or Look magazine where he tells about sitting there in the ditch. He was wounded twice more after that. Saw Jack Benny put on a show about this time.

My unit went into reserve near Hongchan June 5th and stayed there for 40 days, taking on replacements, supplies and training and resting. It may have been June when we had a training exercise in the rear especially for the new replacements and I was acting as company runner (running for the captain). I don't remember the captains name. It was one of those days when what can go wrong, did go wrong. One guys B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle) went off killing him, the artillery put on a demonstration and a short round landed near by killing several and wounding some. The air force put on a demonstration with napalm, hit the wrong hill and burned several guys bad. I don't remember if any were from my company, but everyone was shook up. It was a rough day and worse when you kill your own men. I smoked two packs of cigarettes in 8 hours that day, a normal 24 hour day I would smoke one pack. I can still remember standing next to the captain during a lot of this. We pulled ourselves together and went on.

All good things come to an end and on July 15th we were ordered out of reserve to relieve the 5th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division on the Punchbowl. I believe Lieutenant Peter H. Monfare was our company commander about this time. He was from Springfield, South Dakota; he graduated from West Point about a year earlier. He was a very good officer, liked by everyone. Every man was important to him. We were on the Punchbowl about six weeks. It was a big valley 2 or 3 miles across; they pulled reconnaisance patrols in it regularly, day and night. It was one of the few times I went on patrol and I went on day and night patrols. The night patrol was spooky! When we were on patrol one day, it was raining and fairly warm (this was in August). We put on our ponchos to keep the rain off; but it was a lost cause as we sweated so much we were wet anyway.

A prisoner was picked up on one of these day patrols. He wanted something to eat and a haircut. Some smart guy gave him a chunk of tobacco. I suppose he was scared, anyway he swallowed it and got sick. The officer in charge made them put him on a stretcher and take him back to the front line. It was pretty good duty on the Punchbowl, not much going on. They would run us up and down the mountain to keep us in shape; and we were in such good shape we could run up the mountain, without a load that is. We were ordered off the hill to move into a blocking position behind the 38th Regiment about the 1st of August. It was raining hard as we crossed a swollen creek; our truck was pulling load of medical supplies which tipped over, and that was a big loss in such a situation. The 38th Regiment was in a tough battle and we were in a spot where I could see men going up the trail to the fighting. It was a rough battle and became known as "Bloody Ridge".

Before I go on to the next battle I'll write some things down I remember, but don't know when or where they occurred. I was laying a phone wire late one afternoon and heard a 60 mm mortar fall maybe an eighth of a mile or so to our right. I went by our mortar section and my friend Sergeant Schuster (Sergeant in charge of our 60 mm mortars) who was standing outside his bunker. I advised him to get in his bunker as I heard a mortar fall near us. He went under cover and I continued laying phone wire to the company command post or forward observer. I got some distance from Sergeant Schuster and I heard a mortar land back in the direction I started from, but kept on going to my destination. At my destination I heard that the last mortar I had heard hit one of our mortar pits, destroying the mortar. They sent the mortar crew off the hill that evening to pick up another mortar, so they got to spend the night in the rear.

I did not see Sergeant Schuster for a while; anyway we never talked about this mortar incident so when I wrote to him in 1989, I was quite surprised when he told me I had saved his life when I warned him to get in his hole. He said everything he left outside of his bunker was blown away and he would have been also had I not warned him. It was just the normal thing to do I guess, and I thought no more about it. I couldn't have saved a nicer guy, besides he befriended me when I joined the company.

Another time I was looking away from the front and heard an explosion; I turned around and looked up and saw parts of a fighter plane going in all directions. I think the pilot bailed out but I did not see him. They sent a young new kid with me to string a phone wire one evening and he froze on me in a very dangerous situation. I had to give him a boot in the rear end to bring him around. Anyone is scared in such a situation, but he was petrified. I felt sorry for him. I don't know what happened to him; I never saw him again that I know of.

It must have been early fall when they desegregated the outfits in Korea, one of them was the 9th Regiment. We got one third of the colored people and the 38th Regiment got one third, and one third stayed in the 9th regiment where they were. We had no trouble with the colored men; in fact I think if they had good leaders - leaders they liked, trusted and who treated them good - they were no different than anyone else. There was one colored fellow who was a Private First Class when he joined us; about 4 months later, he was in for Master Sergeant. He was slightly wounded and refused to leave his men to go to the rear for a short time. His name was "George Washington" from Georgia I believe. I thought I had his address, but I don't. One time, up front, a Catholic Chaplain came up and said Mass, right on the back side of the hill. Things weren't very calm at the time and we were ready to dive for a hole. There was another chaplain (he was a missionary priest from Ireland), a real nice person. He had been in Korea 15 years and still had his Irish brogue. All the sisters that had been with him were killed by North Koreans, I believe, and he joined the 23^rd Regiment as Chaplain; they gave him the rank of honorary Sergeant. We were settling in on a hill one afternoon and I had been sent down the hill to get some water I believe it was; all of a sudden a jet (ours) strafed across the top of the hill. Didn't hit anyone; but boy was Captain Jackson mad. They put out orange panels to mark a hill for strafing and had put it out the wrong way I guess. Whenever we were on the march we would stop to rest now and then; and when we were ready to move again; you would hear the call down the line "Saddle up, moving out" and everyone would just do that. The 2nd Infantry Division had about twice as many casualties as any other division over there. We had too good a reputation I guess; and the Chinese and North Koreans didn't like us very well either which resulted in us getting more than our share of the tough battles. I mentioned once in this account of my time in Korea that my sleeping time at the front was another story; so I will tell a story on myself that will give you a picture of what I mean. Early in my time in Korea I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't do any good to lay in my hole and worry about what was happening, or what might happen, so I might as well sleep. One evening I was told by a sergeant to go up to a certain point on the top of the hill where the rifle platoons were dug in and dig a hole for the forward observer (they give instructions to the artillery, or to who ever they are observing for, as where to fire the guns). I dug the hole and got back to the hole I was sharing with a sergeant and crawled into our hole with him and went to sleep - sleeping all night. In the morning he asked me if I'd heard the incoming rounds (we called them incoming mail). I said "what rounds- "? I didn't hear anything. He said rounds came in close enough to throw dirt in our hole; and every time one came in he would slide down in the hole and I would slide down in the hole also. I never heard a thing. It's hard even for me to believe I could sleep that hard .

Heartbreak Ridge: on September 13th we (23rd Infantry Regiment) were given orders to take three hills running north and south - 894 on the south, 931 in the middle and 851 on the north. The hills were measured in meters. I have a picture of myself and others starting in toward the above hills. Shortly after we crossed over a small pass between two hills, I heard a shot hit a rock on my right, then I felt something nick the fingernail on the middle finger on my left hand. I got down quickly and checked my finger, it was all there except for a chip from the tip of the nail. It was a close call. I think a nearby spent bullet hit a rock and either a piece of the bullet or a rock chip ricocheted and hit my finger. That's as close as I came to being wounded!

I don't remember much about the next week or so other than a continued bombardment of the hill we were trying to take up ahead, hearing about the hard time the rifle platoons were having. We'd dig in for the night if we had moved. This went on for five days when word came up from the rear that myself, Herb Tholl, Curtis Zerbie, Gordon Wilbur and Herbert Lawrence were to move out to the rear (company rear) to await our turn to go to Japan for R & R. We left the hill about noon September 18th. We were pretty happy to get off the hill.

That night a night attack was planned and Company L (my company) was named to lead the attack. They took their objective about midnight after tough fighting (3 casualties - flamethrowers were used); but the quiet didn't last long as they were hit by counter attacks, up to a battalion in size or more. Company L ran out of ammo and got overrun. The N.K.P.A. got in between L and K Companies. To make a long story short, Company L lost all but 55 men including Lieutenant .Peter H. Monfore, our company commander, was among them. Lt. Pete was very well liked and we really missed him. I don't know how many men we had before the attack.

We spent about 2 days at the company rear before they took us to Chunchon air strip to load on a C - 47 to Kokura, Japan for five days. When we landed, they got us clean sun tans etc. Then t-bone steak in front of us with ice cream and peaches for desert. We hadn't seen a meal like that in the army since we left the U.S.A.. I could only eat about half of it, but really enjoyed it. The only other time we got a meal like that in the army was when we landed at Sasebo, Japan on our way home for good. We just laid around during the day and went to the N.C.O. club in the evening and lived it up.

On the afternoon of the 5th day we went back to Camp Kokura and were happy to hear we couldn't fly out to Korea as the weather was bad. We flew out the next day back to Chunchon air strip, then by truck to Company L. We spent about a day and half at company rear, then were taken back to Company L on the front line. It was spooky to have to go back in again after the big loss about 10 days before. It was good to see the ones we had been with and find out who was still there. I don't remember if they received any replacements while we were gone. Maybe officers. I don't remember much from the time we went back in on about September 28th until the evening of October 12th when I remember my company moving up on a hill in the dark. I didn't know what was going on or where we were going. Then we stopped and I guess we dug in for the night. What a night! I think I was on the tail end of the company - last man on the hill and no one behind me. I don't remember sleeping that night; there was a feeling of excitement in the air. I didn't know what was about to happen. They threw a string of artillery fire all around the hill we were on until daylight the next morning. It was like the 4th of July watching those shells burst all night. On the next hill left of us I could see the fuses on the N.K.P.'s grenades burn all the way down to the ground where they exploded (our grenades couldn't be seen in flight) I don't know if anyone was down where they were throwing the grenades. Morning came and everything turned quiet. The French were supposed to attack around 7 a.m., as I remember. We waited and nothing happened. Then there was some small arms fire in K Companies area about 9 a.m. I guess that's what the French were waiting for. Over the hill to our right they came screaming and hollering, shooting and throwing grenades. Within a few minutes it was all over. The battle of Heartbreak Ridge which had gone on for 30 days was over.

 
September 13th - October 13th, 1951. We stayed in our positions for 3 or 4 hours and no more attacks occurred, then we moved to new positions to the right of hill 851. I guess the NKPA had enough as we sat there for 5 to 7 days waiting to be relieved by units of the 7th Division. Prisoners were taken in that final battle on October 13th. One of them told those who captured him that they would have hit us from the rear that last night; but the artillery kept them from getting around behind us where I was and attacking us.

We went into a long period in reserve about the 20th of October. My Regiment had been on the front since we relieved the Marines on the Punchbowl on July 15th, it was good to get off the front again. I was sent different packages at times, which were appreciated and shared with others. One time Frances Crummy (sister) sent a package that didn't last long. It was a box of rum soaked cigars. We hadn't seen cigars since we left the U.S.A. (2)

We were up front one time, some of us were standing on the back of a hill and they were shelling up ahead of us. I wasn't far from a deserted enemy bunker when there was an explosion about 150 or 200 yards down the hill. I dove in through the hole in the front of the old bunker and about the same time a Lieutenant came in through the back entrance (now you are supposed to check out any old bunker before you enter it). The Lieutenant looked at me and said, "Corporal, did you check this bunker out before you entered it?"Then we both broke out laughing as neither one of us had.

part 2