We still had a long way to go to do our tour of duty. One time
there, we were in a position and we burned the barrels of our
mortars out. We carried roughly, in the half-tracks, 1100 rounds.
We've used a lot of rounds before to stop our enemies,
the Chinese. They were like ants coming at us sometimes and you
just laid down a barrage as fast as you can. But at this one
spot we were at, we ran out of ammunition. All four mortars were
going as fast as you could. And that's, well you're looking at
a hundred and or one thousand, one hundred rounds per mortar.
We burned those barrels up. Most of us had gone deaf.
A lot of guys were bleeding from the ears.
I know at that time, I'm pretty tall for a 4.2 mortar, I worked
as number two. I don't know what happened to the number two man,
that's who fired them down the barrel, eh? And I'm in a position
where they loaded it into your arm and a little charge is on the
back, that's to give it more distance. And I could ram them down
the barrel as fast as I can and their changing bring in closer to
us and that and back out, those barrels turned red. I thought
near the end there that we'll be lucky to stay here. Those shells
they've got to explode in that barrel. Those barrels were so
damn red, and I know after that all of us they had to bring in
new weapons for us. Some of the guys were there lighting their
cigarettes off of them they were so red.
That's a lot of fire power.
Whatever we did, or caused there, it did the trick anyway again.
But I don't realize or I don't think they realized, because I
never see it written anywhere. They talked about how many shells
had been fired, this and that, but boy for four thousand, four
hundred rounds of ammunition all of them 4.2 mortar going off you
never hear nothing on it. To me that was quite a feat.
There had to be a reason for it, they never said what it was for.
It had to do something with guns, but no other outfit had,
had to fire that many mortars before.
They had no radio communication, they had bugles. So we got to
know the bugles when they attacked. The attack, the sound and go.
If I'm not mistaken there were seven lines that would come.
Like the first ones, they got rifles, machine guns; next ones
they're maybe grenades, and the other lines were coming to pick
up from their dead or their wounded take their weapons and carry
on. The rear ones there to carry their dead out or to bury them
right there. A lot of times they couldn't get them out,
you could tell they were burying their dead right on the hill
side there. And with no radios they'd have bandoleers of
explosives trying to get up to your barbed wire and they'd blow
it, and they'd sacrifice their own life for that. Short fuses.
They'd go up and... but there was this one time that was going on
and one of the guys, I guess he learned how to play a bugle in
his younger days. He learned how to blow retreat in Chinese.
The Chinese are blowing attack and he's blowing retreat.
I thought that was great. I don't know whether it worked or not
but we were still there after a while anyway. There was good
memories and bad memories. Even though some of the things
were bad and yet they were comical when you look back at them.
Here's your enemy blowing to get their troops up the hill and
he's blowing to retreat them, to see who they're going to listen
first. But I give them credit. At night they'd creep and creep
and creep during the night. And they'd pick your weak points,
well, four o'clock in the morning. Especially, and work with the
moon, when the moon comes up. They'd come when the moon's
way down and you can't see nothing on the hill side and that's
when they start creeping up. I know a lot of times there we'd
have our canned rations, hang that on the barbed wire with little
pebbles in there in case they sneak up and try to get
through the barbed wire or something and that would start
rattling. And then of course somebody opens fire and all hell
broke loose then. Everybody shooting at shadows then because you
know if they come they're coming and they're just like ants.
They crawl right over top of you. That's why we used an awful
lot of artillery and mortar there in Korea. It's the only way
you can stop them. Outnumbered, we were terrifically outnumbered.
