Re: July 1950

[<Cfbernard@aol.com>]

Gernilee Gramming,

My earlier note to you that cited Lacey Barnett bounced back.  I will try to 
send it again.  Reading this letter brought this account of the Regiments 
first fights to mind.  Was your brother in Hqs or "Mike" Company?

"Love" Company will be in Louisville, KY next weekend.  We can phone you from 
there if you will send us a phone number.  I expect that several of us who 
were at Chochiwon will be there, and two of us from the company in Japan.  
You need contact with one of our officers who was taken prisoner during this 
fight.  He may be in Louisville as well.

He is Eli Culbertson.  His address will be on to you shortly.

Best,

Carl Bernard


OSAN, CHONUI, AND CHOCHIWON,  THE 21st INFANTRY REGIMENT'S FIRST THREE 
BATTLES IN KOREA

Who and What We Were

To the Japanese people we were the victorious, occupying army astride their 
industrious, talented, martial nation.  We say ourselves committed and 
engaged in reorienting them to become a positive, but peaceful economic force 
in Asia.  We even thought to raise the status of Japan's women by extending 
them voting and property rights.  Indulgent and overconfident in the American 
nuclear umbrella, we seldom engaged in field exercises, involving ourselves 
chiefly with housekeeping and garrison duties.  All units were under-strength.

Our first fight in Korea was with 540 men who had to move up, locate, and 
prepare a defensive position in less than five days; naturally, we were 
roundly defeated. Compare this preparation and result with five months of 
preparation and the 400,000-plus troops involved in our Persian Gulf conflict

Many of the WWII weapons we took to Korea had been condemned by our own 
division ordnance inspectors as "unfit for combat."   For example, a sergeant 
and I taught a class on flame-throwers the month before we embarked; but we 
had to cannibalize all eight weapons in the Regiment to get two that worked. 
All had "503 PIR" stenciled on them by the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment 
that had dropped onto Corregidor with them five years earlier.

General Matthew Ridgway, the splendid soldier who brought us back from being 
a beaten Army headed off the Korean Peninsula in a near-panic motorized 
retreat, said we had gone to Korea in a  "... state of shameful 
un-readiness," striking a forceful corrective theme

Our national age-old tradition that we didn't need an Army once the enemy at 
hand was beaten. Hiroshima and Nagasaki persuaded us that ground forces were 
no longer relevant, so we slashed our defense budget and the size of our 
forces. We filled our intelligence services with incompetents, also 
traditional, and deliberately chose to assign our least qualified people to 
infantry units that would be first in combat.  As a final error, personnel in 
Japan were constantly moved, destroying unit cohesion - the most beautiful 
word in the lexicon of soldiers. Combat units survive on personnel who know 
and trust each other.   

A capable fighting unit is NOT just a set of well-trained and competent 
individuals.  A brief illustration:  I was one of two lieutenants in the 
regiment trained as parachutists.  This got me sent to the airfield at Kokura 
to load out TFS, to which I did not belong.  Colonel Smith said, "Stay on the 
plane.  I've got work for you."  As my fourth platoon in eight months, this 
ensured me about the same close personal contacts as a hired gun. 

What We Did

The official history is unkind about what happened to my platoon full of 
strangers in our first fight.  It says we failed to get the word to withdraw 
and didn't know the rest of the outfit had left.  True, and most of the 
platoon was destroyed because we stayed too long in a losing fight

The TFS Executive Officer, Major Floyd Martin attributed the reason that my 
new TFS platoon never received the withdrawal order at Osan to the company 
commander's telling Brad Smith that I was dead and my platoon gone. This 
misstatement left my platoon serving as a rear guard for a short time, rather 
than the close-in combat outpost line (COPL) role originally required by our 
location.  

Before the NK infantry ground attack began, I'd gone back with my bazooka 
gunner to the ditch that led to a road splitting our company positions, 
keeping me alive for the horror of Chochiwon six days later.  I had heard the 
Bazookas firing and could see the tanks going on through anyway, making me 
believe our young gunners were missing their targets

Another platoon leader, 2/Lt Jansen Cox (murdered as a POW) was there already 
with his Bazooka team, and we worked from the relatively safe locale of the 
ditch.  2/Lt Ollie Connor, another platoon leader originally from I Company, 
was on top of the hill-knob just south of us. (The T-34's coaxial MGs were 
Jan's and my only danger, and we were safe as soon as the big tube passed us 
by.)  The eight hits I got myself with no discernible effect on the passing 
T-34s corrected my impression of gunners firing wide, and it taught me a 
valuable lesson for Love Company's fight the following week

In his On To Berlin. General Gavin details burying parachutists in Sicily 
with bits of Bazookas ground up in their bodies.  The seats in Hell closest 
to the fire are for Army officers who knew the Bazooka didn't work and did 
not alert our soldiers to its inability to kill tanks, while keeping the 
larger, much more effective 3.5-inch rocket launcher back in the States. 

We could not bring one wounded sergeant with us. We left him with a Korean 
farmer with a wheelbarrow.  We gave him my rose gold Longines wristwatch 
(poker game) with a note asking the first American unit he met to give the 
farmer $100 cash for delivering the sergeant.  They arrived in Pusan on the 
8th, making it to the coast and down on a fishing boat!  I don't know if the 
farmer got his money.  It took me and the stragglers I had gathered up three 
days of prudent walking around North Korean units to reach our retreating 
forces. 

Our group was too large.  After the third time we were nearly caught, I 
detailed a very young first-rate soldier who had been walking scout for us to 
take about five men with him and another trail south.  This was buried in my 
memory until 1985 at a TFS reunion in Ohio when a tall old man came up to ask 
if I remembered him.  It was the same guy; they got back a day before usI met 
the 34th Infantry Regimental Commander very early in the morning three days 
later at Chonan.  We had broken into a schoolhouse near Ansong and torn a 
large map from a geography book that had the road south to Chonan on it.  
Scraps of a South Korean recon unit had been with us the day before, helping 
with locations.  Their CO shot one of his men who wanted to surrender and 
turn us in as proof they were willing to become good communists.  

We had gone sharply east from Osan and were in hilly country until forced to 
go west to regain the main road.  I had located all the NK tanks we had seen 
(only tanks; we would not have been able to evade infantry) on my map, and 
explained their location to the Colonel. Some were just outside Chonan!  (The 
Colonel was killed fighting them later that morning.)  I described the fight 
at Osan to him as well as I could, with a particular emphasis on the 
invulnerable tanks.  I was adamant about the impossibility of our Bazooka 
killing tanks, even from the flank where I had been shooting.  He asked 
whether I had pulled the rocket's safety clips before loading and firing, and 
speculated that the fuses were possibly too old or had been badly stored, 
hence damaged in Japan.  The fragments I had in my face and hands helped me 
assure him that they were exploding.  I showed him how we were perfectly safe 
firing from down in our ditch after the big gun with the co-axially mounted 
MG had dragged by

I thought that some of our bazooka rounds had not exploded, and attributed 
this to the warhead not having time to arm because we were too close.  Jan 
had said something like this at the time. The Colonel had someone with him 
who knew these were T-34s, describing a slanting, hexagonal turret.  I had no 
idea earlier what kind of tank it was.  

 My discussion with him was also about the artillery FO who had been with me, 
and the fact that we had lost communication, hence had almost no support 
after the first tanks went through us. They tore up our wire while the rain 
was taking out our obsolete radios.  Combined arms training could have 
identified the problem of mixing tank treads and telephone wire; alas, 
housekeeping in Japan left little time for such things

Artillery would have made a difference when the Korean infantry dismounted 
and moved in those long lines around us.  I mentioned that my platoon's .30 
caliber machine gun, and the BARs were not effective once the North Koreans 
first got off their trucks some 1000 yards out.  The .50 cal might have 
reached them (firing from a knob several hundred yards behind me) but the 
Koreans were well out of my range until dispersing just before their assault. 
 This is almost the same story as at Chochiwon, particularly the long columns 
walking around us.  We fired, and they kept going on their course

I had thought I was on loan to "B" Company and went on back to "Love" after 
Doc Duerk had finished patching me up and dosing me with medicinal alcohol, 
thoughtfully keeping me overnight on one of his stretchers.  Captain Cox had 
given away my platoon, but said there would be one available shortly; very 
true

A and D Companies, the still usable elements of the 21st Infantry Regiment's 
First Battalion, not committed at Osan, were in a blocking position at Chonui 
when they were attacked early on 10 July by a force they could not contain.  
Their forced withdrawal caused a number of their men to be left in 
uncoordinated fragments on position; not a defense.  The Regiment's Third 
Battalion was directed to counterattack to recover the blocking position 
about noon on 10 July.  This well-done effort succeeded despite considerable 
resistance by North Koreans who had not yet established a coherent defense on 
the positions they had seized.  We rescued about ten men from A Company.  We 
found four men on the 4.2 heavy mortar position with their hands tied behind 
them with telephone wire, each shot in the head.  One was a corporal in 
khaki, a reporter from the Stars and Stripes.

Our night withdrawal back to our original positions north of Chochiwon was 
tightly controlled, despite the dislocations caused by the numbers we had 
killed, wounded  and evacuated during the counterattack.  K Company's 
positions were partially occupied by the North Korean soldiers able to flank 
us when we were focused at Chonui.  They fought much of the night; K Company 
was forced into locations slightly different from where they had prepared 
defenses on 9 July

The Koreans attacked our just-evacuated positions at Chonui at first light, 
and moved on through them to our new locations in heavy fog.  One of their 
elements moved as close to our front as they could and kept us under sporadic 
fire.  As the fog cleared, and we could see something over three hundred 
yards to our front, trotting formations were visible scurrying eastward 
parallel to our positions.  This was almost the same situation as at Osan on 
the 5th.  My light machine gun and that of the third platoon were not able to 
stop their flanking movement here either.  The company mortars were shooting 
for first platoon. Our artillery, unknown to us, had already been taken out 
by infiltrators.  Our problematic ally, the USAF took out its own FAC early.  
It was not the last time the magic pill of air power would fail us

Love Company's idiotic "hold at all costs" order kept us in place.  We got 
relief from this at 1100 hours, and were authorized to pull back at 1130. 
Captain Cox gave me the artillery FO and instructions to stay on my position 
until then. We were defending against what the official history later 
described as: "This attack on the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry was one of the 
most perfectly coordinated assaults ever launched by North Koreans against 
American troops." Our defense was later described as "...the most impressive 
performance yet of American troops in Korea"; small comfort to the company's 
men who paid its costs.

Unknown to us the Koreans had already flanked our positions and had machine 
guns on the ridge behind us before launching their "pinning" attack.  Our 
ammunition was already diminished by the previous day's fight, and the well 
installed North Korean roadblocks to the company's rear kept us from being 
resupplied.  Most survivors of this fight went due south in small groups into 
the NK force behind us that had gotten there by going around our flanks.  
Twenty-seven of these men found they had no option but surrender.  A dozen of 
these did not survive the stay in "Tiger's Camp." ('Johnny's list,' kept in 
his toothpaste tube by one of the 15, tells when, how, and where these and 
other POWs died.  See the Readers Digest of January, 1998

The lucky handful with me who covered the final withdrawal went west 
immediately across the road from where the BN CP had been, crossed the 
railroad track and the river,  surviving to fight again.  The lessons: first 
be lucky; then keep a clip of ammunition for the pullout you may have to 
make; and never willingly  take the desperate possibility of living as a POW. 
 The official history intoned: "One officer of L Company [me] who came out 
with some men said that after he and others had removed an enemy machine gun 
blocking their escape route, some uninjured men by the side of the road 
simply refused to try to go on.  One noncom said, 'Lieutenant, you will have 
to go on, I'm too beat up.  They'll just have to take me.'" I never learned 
if he survived prison camp since he was not from Love Company, but the odds 
were grim

Two months later I identified the bodies of a number of those still there who 
had been KIA or wounded early in the fight.  All the wounded had been killed, 
and also many who had surrendered.  Graves Registration led me by the hand, 
sobbing much too hard to see, through our abandoned positions and the 
battalion aid station to name the ones I could

Almost all of the men captured from Love Company were taken after we had 
stayed much too long above Chochiwon because of the order that kept us in 
place. Captain Cox, some of our veteran NCOs, and the replacements we had 
received made a great difference, and the company fought surprisingly well.  
We delayed the North Koreans for two days, but at great cost

What We Learned

Regarding rifle companies, taking data still true today, almost 90 % of 
WWII's war casualties (killed, captured, and wounded) were in the Army.  Of 
these, about 90 % were in the infantry's rifle platoons.  I suspect that 90 % 
of the other casualties were Marine infantrymen.  Essentially, these numbers 
say that being in an infantry rifle platoon in combat means you are going to 
be killed or wounded; not if you will be hit, but when and how bad

The most effective leader of fighters I've ever known was the sergeant who 
had deserted the 24th Infantry Division's headquarters to come forward to our 
rifle company.  My watching everything he did, understanding why, and 
imitating him is likely why I'm alive today.  Even though he was younger than 
I, his previous experience with Merrill's Marauders was far more relevant 
than my non-fighting role in the 7th Marines. You may never encounter such an 
exemplar of military virtue when you need him most, but borrow the right 
things from each of the best you do come across. 

This sergeant burned the first tank we killed an hour after we had wasted its 
crew.  He had poked a loaded carbine's muzzle through the pistol port they 
opened to shoot us off the back of their tank, and his ricochets took out the 
crew.  I asked him later why he was burning it, as the crew was already dead. 
 He answered: "I want them others to know where this one is, what happened to 
it, and for them to be discouraged about the idea of coming where we are." 

The only flaw in his theory was the noxious brown trail of smoke that helped 
US Air Force pilots see it.  They strafed it in the middle of our position 
for the next two hours!  We were dug in so well by then that none of us were 
hit.  DOUBLE LESSON: dig yourself in if any aircraft overfly the area, as 
they do not discriminate well.  Do not count on your own planes to solve your 
problem with dug-in enemy infantry.  This only happens in Hollywood scripts.  
Note also, that much of the advantage we think our airplanes should provide 
disappears as the enemy quickly learns to dig in too.  

Simply stated: decorations for the infantry's fighters at platoon level are 
awarded in an erratic manner, and too few of those earned are ever granted.  
Most are not because men in rifle squads see a world few others do, and many 
at these levels are often not able to describe what they have seen even if 
they are aware of its significance.  Also, there are few persons with whom 
they can talk

S/Sgt. Hugh Brown had deserted forward from the Division's headquarters on 
July 1st  to join "Love" company.  We found this out when proposing a 
battlefield commission for him while we were still on the Naktong.  He left a 
hospital without permission after his second wound in late September, because 
being promoted required 30 days on the line; he did not want to return to 
Japan as the junior officer in the company (we innocents thought the war was 
over after Seoul was retaken

The backbone of the Army is its rifle squads and platoons.  Their leadership 
is "absolutely critical."  The words: your team has to function after you get 
hit. This means you must prepare all of them to lead it when you are gone.  
Few circumstances let men prepare their people for this, the ultimate 
responsibility of a leader

My purpose is to tap my experience, exposure, and observations, to help 
soldiers and Marines better learn and prepare for the world in which they 
must work.  General Ridgeway called this "the aimed fire war," the focus of 
which is to help fighters think about what it takes to carry out their 
greatest responsibility, leading their fellows for some of what may be the 
last minutes of their lives.  By the circumstances of this work, fighter 
leaders are vulnerable, and often short lived.  The term "leader" is  a 
formal designation, but its affirmation is always in the hands of those who 
are led.  

Men fight for comrades, those with them in the battle; they do not fight for 
larger and more glorious goals.  Note that the "fighting" I am speaking of is 
an intimate horror to which only walking infantry are exposed and must 
endure.  My word picture of fighting: "Crawling on your belly like a serpent 
close enough to throw a grenade at the hostile wretch with the noisy machine 
gun."  This narrow view allows for one to throw the grenade and another to 
stand up and shoot the gunner when he swings his tube around to kill the 
grenadier.

Machine gunners come with support crews who stay by knowing and countering 
your form of attack.  Being outfought comes at high cost, with no appeals!  
Such roles are ultimate unnatural acts that neither you nor the grenade guy 
may survive.  There are no other solutions, however; do not expect Rambo to 
come up to do it for you.  You and your team are the only sure resource you 
have for staying alive.  Fighting means moving in isolation with the rest of 
your rifle squad into a lonesome, menacing void.  Your psychic or material 
resources may be few: what you have at hand, acquired, hoarded, and fully 
mastered.  

Your most valuable asset is earned confidence in yourself, bolstered by what 
you know of your fellows.  The sound of a machine gun includes the screams of 
the men it hits.  This makes your confidence transient at best, and subject 
to getting used up.  The role and responsibility of the leader in all this is 
to earn, acquire, and share this critical confidence with all of his men.  
The operative word is earn. 

In a body of fighting men, be it a four-man fire-team, the remnants of a 12 
man squad, or even a large unit like the 22 men still left in your platoon, 
everyone is responsible for all the others.  Survival is mutually dependent. 
Your role is taking care of yourself and each of them as you sort out how to 
accomplish your mission, and then set about carrying it out.  A crucial 
phrase is mutual trust, and again, this must be earned.  Bobby Burns: "Wad a 
gift the giftie gie us, to see oursels as others see us," is precisely what 
each leader must distill within himself: the burden and exultation in the 
eyes of the men responding.  

The attention a leader gives the mission and those responsible for executing 
it is the first part of hostilities, indispensable mutual confidence 
building.  The building blocks must be both psychic and physical.  Mastering 
needed tools may including some as simple as treating blisters or wounds, 
clearing a jammed rifle, and hitting what one shoots at, but it must be 
automatic and done very well.  Observe everyone, but especially the most 
effective of the leaders in your outfit.  Imitate these gifted and/or 
experienced ones!  Put yourself in their shoes to better understand what they 
do.  Think about how to orient yourself to do the same things.  Such men may 
be above or below you in rank.  Relative status does not and should not limit 
what you can learn from any of them

Fighting that "distinguishes" soldiers from their fellows is too seldom 
recognized in the field.  This stems from the fact that those who fight, the 
routine activities of rifle squads, often heroic, encounter those that far up 
front who are not writers and may not  recognize what actions merit 
recognition.  Nevertheless, combat decorations have great importance; nowhere 
is the strict truth about what has happened more important.  

Napoleon remarked to the effect that a man would go to the "...gates of hell 
for a bit of ribbon to wear on his chest," a mystique of combat.  Infantrymen 
are the persons who earn these honors, yet these usually fail to be awarded.  
That is the main reason the Combat Infantry Badge is so important and the 
reason why some qualified men wear it only. 

Being terrorized by the circumstances in which you find yourself in battle is 
natural and wholly concentrates the mind, but it must not numb it.  Just 
knowing this may happen is the best protection from it you can muster.  Good 
enough, leave your shelter and as you crawl towards that tank, keep looking 
for an open port; and look hard for the infantry he may have deployed to 
protect his precious hardware from hard cases like you.  

Note that my focus on tanks is not incidental.  The most terrifying sound you 
will ever hear is the crunching sound of tank tracks very close by.  Do not 
think that their crews have become evil by confinement in their steel boxes, 
but they are looking to grind your body dead or alive under their treads.  
This is simply the most effective psychological warfare they can practice on 
those infantrymen who survive.  A tanker's immediate intention is to lower 
the morale of those of you who are still able to watch and every man is a 
large sack of blood, alive or not.  This nasty fraud has been often known to 
work

Can such psychic shocks be overcome?  Yes, indeed.  Errant thoughts such as 
anticipating ones own sudden death can momentarily paralyze the mind, making 
the outcome even more certain, or they may make it easier to throw down an 
empty rifle to plead for life; bad outcomes better avoided by thinking and 
planning in advance.  

A former Army Chief of Staff acknowledged a heartfelt theme our nation needs 
to embrace:   "NO MORE TASK FORCE SMITHS."  The following quote is from the 
manual the troops in the Gulf used

"History has shown that sometimes the troops are misinformed on the 
capabilities of a piece of equipment or a unit's capability to execute a 
mission in a specified time.  This misconception is enhanced by limits to 
training and shortcuts in training to meet mission goals.  As an example Task 
Force Smith, which as a well-trained unit, was not told of the inability of 
the 2.36 inch rocket to penetrate the frontal armor of North Korean tanks, 
panic set in after rounds bounced off the front of the tanks

One might well interpret this to mean that we shouldn't buy exotic Stealth 
bombers just to keep aerospace workers employed.  It certainly means that our 
intelligence must take on new qualities and become adequate and timely.  It 
means that we must retain and assign our most competent leaders and soldiers 
to man "first to fight" units.  And it means that our Senators and 
Congressmen must insist on fielding an Army that is well equipped and 
properly trained.  It is certain to be needed again one day

Think about the wastebasket in your office catching fire from one careless 
person still smoking cigarettes; a cup of coffee puts it out with little 
fuss.  The garden hose is required  if the office is burning,  the fire 
department if the building itself begins to flame. You'll be dynamiting the 
buildings that are not burning to stop the conflagration if the whole block 
goes up.  The lesson for the Army in this: Prepare well and ahead of the 
crisis. 

A recent book on Korea by John Toland (In Mortal Combat) declares that the 
Korean War  "... may eventually turn out to have been the decisive conflict 
that started the collapse of communism.  In any case, those who fought and 
died in that war did not fight and die in vain."  This seems a reasonable 
historical assessment.