Star Beacon
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The front license plate on Dick’s van says “Korean veteran,” as does the hat he wears, but Dick doesn’t like to talk about Korea.
Dick is an usher at the church I attend. Two weeks ago, I told him about the Korean War stories I was doing and asked whether he’d be willing to share his experiences. He cautiously agreed to share some of his story, as long as I did not use his full name.
We met on a Wednesday morning, and for 50 minutes, he shared things no other person — not even his wife, pastor or buddies down at the VFW Post — had heard about his service in Korea.
A lifetime resident of the East Springfield, Pa., area, Dick was 20 when the draft board decided he was good material for a soldier. He went into the U.S. Army in early October 1952, and by late spring of the following year was on a ship bound from Japan to Korea.
Dick says his regiment, the 15th of the 3rd Division, was put on a train that same morning and sent to the front, a hill known as Outpost Harry, north of the 38th Parallel and in enemy territory. It was a strategic outpost, 1,280 feet tall, in the Iron Triangle region. The communist Chinese forces saw the hill as a bargaining chip in the armistice talks. The American and Greek forces who were assigned to defend it were told to “hold (it) at all costs.”
There were five American and Greek companies on the outpost, between 500 and 700 men. The Chinese had between 13,000 and 15,000 troops in position to advance upon the hill.
“That first night, when I left the train, I figured I was going to go into the tank company,” Dick says, tears welling up in his eyes. “They handed us M-1s (rifles), the whole train load of men. Cooks, everybody, we were handed M-1s, and they sent us to the front line up on the hill.”
Dick pauses, talks about his Bronze Star, awarded for bravery in battle, and says, “That’s as far as I go.” Then he shares a sliver of the horror of that night, and the six others that followed, as he and the other men “held at all cost” Hill 412.
“The (communists) tried to take that hill en masse,” he says. “My first night there, at about 11 o’clock, the horns, bugles and drums started blowing on the other side of the hill. They shot a flare up in the air, and it looked like this whole hill was moving.”
Hours of battle ensued, often hand to hand, as wave after wave of Chinese soldiers attacked the U.N. forces. Some had guns, some had bayonets, and some had clubs. Dick reserves the details for his nightmares.
“There are things that if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says.
Dick stood and fought back to back with the black soldier in his foxhole. He credits that man for saving his life that night, on at least three occasions.
“There was barbed wire all around our position,” Dick says. “When it was all over, the barbed wire was covered with a mass of bodies. (The Chinese) just kept coming and going over it. Two-thirds of the men were lost that night, over a full company.”
“That’s it. I can’t say no more,” Dick says and goes silent, fighting the tears.
Homecoming
As a result of growing up next to the church and attending services and Sunday school as a child, Dick had become a believer in Jesus Christ at an early age. He says there is no other explanation for his survival other than God’s protection. “When the guy on this side of you is killed, and the one on the other side of you, and the one in front and in back, what else can it be?” Dick says. “I didn’t get a scratch.”
The battle for Outpost Harry lasted from June 10 to June 18, 1953. The following month, an armistice was signed.
In the interim, Dick was assigned to a tank company as a crew member on a personnel carrier. Their assignment was to haul in supplies to the hills in the Iron Triangle and bring down the dead and wounded. The carriers were targets for the communist forces, and Dick was shot at and twice had the carrier blown out from under him. Divine protection remained his companion on those dangerous runs.
After the armistice was signed, Dick was reassigned to a stateside assignment.
“I was getting ready to get on a boat to come home, and they pulled me off and said because of my rank (staff sergeant), I was being assigned to a motor pool.”
The assignment gave Dick a lot of free time, too much of it. Haunted by what he had seen and experienced on Outpost Harry, he started drinking. By the time he finally got to go home a year later, he was an alcoholic.
On the ship, Dick realized he had to change before he got home to his family.
“When I got off the ship, I made up my mind I’d never do that again,” he says.
Dick could not leave Korea behind, however. He nearly killed his wife the first night they were together after he fell asleep and started reliving Outpost Harry. The nightmares continued for a decade.
A few months after Dick came home from Korea, he assisted his father with construction of a new septic system at their home. As they took a break from their toil, a neighborhood prankster sneaked up behind them and lighted a firecracker.
“My dad was in the hole, and I hit the ground, digging at the ground with my hands until they stopped me,” Dick says. “He looked at my hands, and all my fingers were bleeding, and I had probably dug a 3 or 4-inch hole for myself.”
Dick spoke at the Memorial Day service in East Springfield last month. He didn’t talk about Korea specifically; he spoke about the principles that have motivated American soldiers to climb the hills of Gettysburg, San Juan, Normandy and Korea: duty, courage, honor.
“A veteran is one who at one point in their life writes a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including their life,” Dick said during that service. “That is honor, and there are many people in this country today who no longer understand that.”
That said, Dick questions the need for the Korean War. “It was about death. A lot of young men just starting their lives, lost their lives over something that never should have happened in the first place. It was a war because the U.S. was down and out, and war brings on money,” he says.
From his own experience, it was a journey into a place of terror he never wants to visit again, in this life or the one to come.
“When I got home (from Korea) and was just getting out of the car, (the pastor of his church) saw me and came over. The first thing I said to him was ‘Doc, I got something over on you.’ I said, ‘Doc, I’ve been to hell. And I don’t have to go there no more.’”
