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The Fickle Gods of War

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Contributed by: Dave Hughes on 9/26/2007

PBS is running a 15 hour series called 'War' about World War II.

But there was another war, that never gets attention. Here is a little attention.

THE FICKLE GODS OF WAR

Recently I encountered a piece of my long lost past that filled me with pain, and pride. My daughter helped me organize and file my 79 years of books, papers, orations, photographs, tapes, certificates, awards, and all the panoply of things a West Pointer produces or collects over a lifetime.

There, utterly forgotten by me for 55 years, were 22 tissue-thin paper copies of sworn statements I made in Korea clear back in 1951, supporting recommendations for awards and commendations for 21 of my men and 1 officer from the extreme fighting our Company K, 7th United States Cavalry went through in September and October, 1951, two years before the Truce was signed.

Because the Headquarters of the 7th Cavalry burned down when it was moved back to Japan , just after I left it, a fact I did not learn about until years later, most of the written recommendations themselves were lost forever before being acted upon by higher authority. The Fickle Gods of War denied these men their much deserved recognition for their bravery and sacrifices in that Forgotten War, where 34,000 Americans died in its 3 years of fighting.

Only one citation caught up with me. It was for a Private Lloyd Beltz, who died on October 5th doing incredible, brave things on the most horrific day of our campaign. In my letter home to his parents, which I wrote for all of my men who died, and as his company commander who saw him die, I mentioned that I was recommending him for the Distinguished Service Cross - the nation's second highest decoration. When years passed and they heard nothing, they communicated that to the Army in Washington, who tracked me down in a remote post, and said they had learned that his commendation was lost in the fire, would I submit it again? I did, and a letter came back in 1956 telling me he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously, with a ceremony in Washington DC, where the father of this buck Private was given the medal personally by the Secretary of the Army, William Brucker.

At least Private Beltz got what he, and his family deserved.

But as I read through the 21 others, and the events I described, and names I named, the whole scene came flooding back to me. I was reduced to tears as I read on..

..."I searched the bunkers and found Cpl. Frank Hagen Jr dead in his bunker clutching his own bayonet, fourteen empty rifle clips in the bottom of his bunker, his empty rifle discolored from the heat of fire. In the immediate vicinity of the hole were eighteen dead enemy..."..."Pvt Edward Escalante...after the officer platoon leader was killed...without orders...personally led the platoon up the hill until the enemy guns were silenced..."..."Sgt Malloy was knocked down by a bullet through his shoulder ...without hesitation and without medical attention manned the machine gun himself...the rest of the night and would not leave the hill until the enemy had withdrawn ..." ..."Cpl Hall without further orders ran down the slope fully exposed to the enemy small arms fire and the intense mortar barrage...past a group of enemy in the dark, bluffing them...reached the gun post, and gave my order to withdraw ...covering them as they shot their way to the hilltop ..." ...Cpl. Jamison was awaiting transfer at the company rear after 14 months of combat when he heard of the great number of casualties in his outfit...volunteered to go back up, and acted as a rifleman for three days...was then severely wounded by six bullets across his torso in the last attack as two other men were hit near him. Still conscious but unable to speak Cpl. Jamison shook his head when a man attempted to pull him back and turned his eyes toward one of his fallen comrades...three times he resisted evacuation until others were saved, and he had passed out..."..." Pfc. Collins, machine gunner, knowing the only way to relieve his platoon from the deadly enemy fire was to stand and cradle the barrel in his arm and assault ...in spite of severe burns to his arm and grenade wounds to his face...he drove the enemy off so the platoon could withdraw...He died when his machine gun ran out of ammunition" ..."Only after being wounded three times over 6 hours... and after the hill was secure did Master Sergeant McKenzie allow himself to be helped off the hill ..."..."I sent Sgt. Petrik with a group of Katusa [quasi-military Koreans]...with ammunition...he saw a large group of enemy clambering over a hill to flank one of our beleaguered platoons ...he turned his group around instead of hiding,began to attack the enemy from their flank. Even though half of his party ran off, he pressed the attack with five men against a much larger force ..."..."the enemy overran the right and left flank of our company...got within 40 yards of our 60mm mortars...Pfc. Dennis Mostad remained fully exposed in the flare light...jumped up on the parapet to see the action and shout commands directly back to the guns ...called in fire to a scant 15 yards in front of our positions...and in twenty furious minutes placed 150 rounds on the lead enemy troops without a single errorin judgment...while the tubes were sinking deeper into the ground"..."Sgt Oliver Carraway... platoon sergeant - the fire was so intense that half his platoon became casualties in less than five minutes, including his officer platoon leader...he rallied three men and led a vicious charge up the hill...the enemy withdrew into bunkers and threw out grenades...he ordered the other two to pull the wounded back down while he, alone, kept the Communist Chinese forces inside the bunkers, until the wounded were out of danger, and then made a fighting withdrawal...until being wounded in the head and had to be evacuated unconscious...having saved the lives of the greater portion of his platoon...

"And then there were Pfc. John Aprile, Sgt Joseph Matta, Sgt. John Bolen, Sgt. Clarence Brown, Lt. Charles Radcliffe, Sgt. Arthur Schuld, Cpl. James Blick, Sgt. Albert Capps, Cpl. Leslie Horne, Pfc. Louis Stefanik...each with their own acts of courage and sacrifice that got to my attention, or I witnessed myself, not to speak of those dead and wounded men whose stories I never knew...

Out of a total of 6 American officers and 197 men, I lost all my officers and only15 enlisted men were left standing during those 16 violent days and nights, while we fought anddefeated 1,200 Chinese soldiers, capturing 192 of them asprisoners, accomplishing all our missions that derived from the determination by a gutty President Truman that the 1950 invasion by North Korea would not stand. I am proud of all that my Company K, 7 th Cavalry accomplished in the face of terrific odds and overwhelming forces. There were few surviving witnesses to how young Americans in that war conducted themselves. But their buddies and we who commanded them up close and personal knew. And the final hill I took on October 7th, 1951 with the final 15 men left - Hill 347 - still stands northwest of Yonchon, in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone, dividing the Dictatorship North Korea, from the Free and Prosperous South Korea.

And these were the American draftees of the Korean War, in standard, not elite, rifle companies in an Army which had been pared to the bone after World War II and was unready for this one... It always gave me pause to think what kind of men this nation produces, to go to war, risking death, to protect a people they barely knew, in a place they never heard of.

On top of the stack was a citation for very young (17, volunteered to enlist concealing his age) Pfc. Mike Verlarde, who, at 70 has helped the 1,000 living survivors of the 7th Cavalry Regiment get the most out of their reunions. I called him up and said 'Mike, get your wife Colleen on the phone." And I read to her...and him...all the heartfelt things I said about him 55 years ago when he was just a brave small, kid, carrying badly wounded men over his shoulder, down bloody Hill 347 while the enemy tried to bring him down..." I hadn't seen him for 45 years. And didn't remember citing him long ago, until I saw those tissue thin papers. But I have sent him the original copy, signed by me on December 10th, 1951 at Yonchon, Korea, and by the Adjutant who swore me in, and the 1st Lt who attested to the copy.

At least he can frame it - its a pretty rare original document.

Yes some say that we West Point graduates were pretty special in that War. We of the Class of 1950 had more killed than any West Point class in that War. I survived, only wounded once, and was fully recognized by others, in that and the other war I fought later - Vietnam. But that was my job. It was what I went 4 years to West Point to learn how to do, and do, by leading men. But a lot of other Americans, on whose shoulders the success of our nation in hurling back those who would have subjugated South Korean and all its peoples came away unheralded. And most all did not stay in the service after Korea. They came back to a nation that soon had just forgotten the war.

Such are the Fickle Gods of War

David R Hughes Colonel, Infantry (Retired)
Class of 1950, West Point

(The story of many of those actions I have cited above are online put up by my children. They can be read at http://oldcolo.com/~dave together with photographs my surviving troopers sent to me over the years.)

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Dave Hughes

Colorado Springs , CO

Dave Hughes has posted 83 stories and 87 comments since joining on 3/1/2007. Dave Hughes 's average story rating is 4.9.

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