You Tremble Body

Dudley C. Gould

Description

Commissioned in the US Infantry after two years Royal Canadian Army and a year training in the US Army Air Force, ending in Czechoslovakia facing Ruskies and Dud's rifle platoon is overrun on an outpost and he plays dead while the screaming Chinese Fourth Field Army trots by. On the 23rd of the May Massacre clipped by a sniper, much more misery and home to brood over bloody scenes. Locating a few fellow survivors, inspired to put it all down-YOU TREMBLE BODY.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Canadian Forces Land Force Command
• Military history of the United States
• Military
• United States Armed Forces
• Korean War
• Czechoslovakia
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 juin 1999
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681623108
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also by dudley c gould:
History Cast in Metal
Copyright 1976, Cast Metals Institute
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 76-4193

T URNER P UBLISHING C OMPANY
Copyright 1999 dudley c gould
Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced without the written consent of the author and publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 98-89377
ISBN: 978-1-56311-485-4
Printed in the United States of America. Additional copies may be purchased directly from the publisher. Limited Edition.
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
P REFACE
1: Y OU T REMBLE B ODY
2: D ON T W ORRY H ONEY
3: T ASK F ORCE J OKE
4: R ETURN OF THE W OUNDED
5: I NTERLUDE
6: R ELIEVE M ARINES
7: H 1100
8: T AEUSAN - F OOLS M OUNTAIN (3878 FEET )
9: D ECLINE
10: K ACH IL -B ONG , H 1232, M AGPIE M OUNTAIN
11: T HE C ASUALTY

P REFACE
I was advised by two publishers not to bother to write this book. Nobody wants to hear about the Korean War. And Ernest Hemingway should not have written about WWI. This work is no more about the Korean War than Farewell To Arms was about the war to end all wars. They are both about what happened to men at war - You Tremble Body about a rifle platoon leader and his defenseless wife.
Why should a war be forgotten that, by the presence of my old American infantry division, continues to guarantee the peace of Asia? It s not forgotten by America s fighting men - the war that wounded 103,000 American soldiers, lost 7000 prisoners of war, half of them in torturous and miserable deaths, 8177 still missing in action and 54,246 killed outright, compared to the very well-remembered, well-advertised war that followed in Vietnam, that drew American civilians to their TV sets, that lasted six years longer than the Korean War with only 4,000 more killed. Counting buddies of mine, our foreign battalions, ROKS and enemy civilians, some 4,000,000 died in South and North Korea.
Korea was particularly hard on infantrymen, 11,800 howitzer rounds one night by the 38th Field Artillery Battalion on one small area in an eleven-hour TOT, time on target; and the longest linear ground combat ever endured, twice as long as in either world war, leaving some of us engaged in firing positions somewhere across the 150-mile front until fatigues gave in to the moldy rot of bunkers.
The Korean War is forgotten because it was only five years after the largest, most costly war in history and, for a frightful year after our entire Pacific Navy was sunk at Pearl Harbor, a seemingly unwinnable war. Who, having lived through that trying period, can forget how emotionally drained, how involved everyone was, dragged right into your home, hundreds of deaths on newspaper pages daily, strict rationing, buying war bonds, saving grease from your frying pan, tinfoil from gum wrappers.
Following that impossible-to-forget war by only a few years occurred a tankled blitzkrieg invasion on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning into the southern half of a small politically divided country in Asia. One must not ever forget this war still going on, especially when the aggressor still threatens with the fifth largest Army in the world, with short supply routes, brought up-to-date with the latest armament, most probably nuclear.
Korea was already forgotten when the highly publicized, bitterly denounced Vietnam War took over the news. When the Korean War broke out less than a fourth of Americans had television. Eighty percent had sets during the dragged-out Vietnam War, bringing the fury of combat into living rooms everywhere by the latest broadcasting news device. Of even greater sustained fear and interest, brought right to the homefront, was the stealthy terror of the up-and-down Cold War with constant threats of worldwide destruction, individual gas masks, backyard bomb shelters, Soviet missiles ninety miles from Miami, intercontinental ballistic missiles prepared to blast the Nation s Capitol. Korea? What s that?
What follows is not about nations at war. It is a down-to-earth rifle platoon leader s journal, faction, fact and fiction, fiction only in the minor shuffling of places and happenings that occurred; use of pseudonyms for some officers and the consolidation of a few sergeants to shorten the narrative while covering more action and enhancing readability. Facts are facts and they come forth uncontrived, only by the angle of delivery, sometimes altered a little. Except for composites for readability, I need not substitute pseudonyms for enlisted men I knew who served magnificently, at times maligned, some I have renewed acquaintance with over the telephone after all these years. I apologize for the confusion it might cause other ancient buddies, but for narrative pace, it has to be shortened and simplified.
This rifle platoon leader, me, began this journal in 1952 while memory was still exciting but put it away for what I felt was need for collaboration. In truth I had not been able to settle my troubled mind nor had I learned to write. That was half a century ago when I decided this must not be a one-sided, impersonal account as others of infantry combat I ve read. For instance, it was embarrassing and seemingly conceited to state, as I found myself doing, even though justified by enormous pride, that I took Fool s Mountain (Hill 1179) on the Punchbowl in the south of North Korea. Although no other officer can boast of having been there that day, artillery and Air softened the objective to the extent that the press nicknamed it the Five-million Dollar Hill, before my men and I overran it.
Having since 1994 located survivors of that uphill battle, nameless they need no longer be. Together we conquered 1179 on the Punchbowl, and another one even more difficult.
Pride it rightfully is, for this platoon leader, dudley c gould, had the responsibility as acting company commander to line up attackers to make the assault; direct supporting artillery, mortars, heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles, large and small, whatever could be thrown against it, positioning himself close behind the lead platoon where I could inspire and control upward progress and momentum and assess continually the whole ever moving operation, stopping occasionally to humor the battalion commander trying to follow us with his powerful BC, battalion commander s scope.
On this particular attack on Hill 1179, alias Taeusan, Gateway to the Orient, on the early morning of 29 July 1951 Korean time, in desperation I doubled and wrapped a bright red air panel around my helmet and tied it with commo wire for there was some confusion as to whether or not we would be getting an air strike whether we wanted one or not. In May 1952, it was my word alone that this unusual event occurred, but since 1994 men who recall my bright red hat are resurrected by name.
Already a member of the 450th Bomb Squadron Association with a year s training and adventures as a B26 B tailgunner at the beginning of World WAR II, commissioned in the Queen of Battles later in the ETO, European Theater of Operations, assigned to the Yankee Division, in 1994 I discovered by accident the Second Division Association and its Korean War Veterans Alliance with a roster of survivors. Although WWII vets like me are dropped every printing or so, others, via telephone-tracking computer were being located. Only then, when I contacted more than a dozen buddies who shared memories of combat with me was I confident to sit again at a typewriter and arrange what we all recalled, as accurately as we can after half a century of forgetting.
Some veterans were of no help since they spent the intervening years trying to forget; others had little to relate because they had simply outlived their memories. A minority, like me, nurtured memories over time with great pride and retained good, often vivid, memories of the bulk of what transpired.
Example of the former: John W Glisson, Andrews, South Carolina, who packed a SCR (Signal Corps Radio) 300 in February 1951 for F Company at Hoengsong, being overrun by chinks in the terrible cold; later, hit bad on Heartbreak, spent time in the 278th US Army Osaka General Hospital before being reassigned to artillery. John got out of the Army just as soon as the duration allowed and went to work for the International Paper Company until retiring in 1988. He told me how anxiously he examines each new Morning Report survivor roster from the Korean War Alliance, searching for a name he can recall. So far, he says he s sad not to recognize any of the buddies he suffered so much with and would I mind, when contacting Fox Company men of 1951, ask if any remember Johnny Glisson who packed the company 300. I don t remember Johnny myself but I was in Fox a very short while and the only company radioman I remember there was killed early one morning with Captain Poston.
The survivor list grew slowly and also shrank as I was forced to commiserate with new widows, learning sorrowfully of buddies during the dying years of sixties and seventies succumbing to cancer, strokes, or overtired hearts, pining to hear from comrades in arms. We, all of us hoary veterans near to life s ending, are being reacquainted with Death, who once needed no introduction.
At least two buddies died at Audy Murphy VA Hospital unknown to me, although only a few miles from where I live. I cry for them belatedly, in vain and apologize over and over. We just didn t know how near we were to one another and so reachable. None of us knew how to find the sequence of numbers that could bring us together again.
How Johnny would have loved to hear your voice, Mrs Warnock of Kansas City remarked one painful night over the phone. I wish you d called a month sooner, before Johnny s stroke; he often talked about you, Lieutenant Gould.... I m so awfully sorry.
No, I m so sorry, Mrs. Warnock.
I was in much better shape in 1994 than 1952 to write this chronicle, for I am retired from the Army and