DID YOU KNOW?

• More than 100,000 Americans were wounded in the Korean War, 34,000 were killed and 131 were awarded Medals of Honor.

• The war was the first to use mobile surgical units, made famous by the “MASH” film and show.

• It was the first war to use helicopters.

• It was the first war for the U.S. Air Force as a separate service.

Pat Murphy's memories

I was sworn into the Army for 3 years on Dec. 21, 1948, as an enlistee. I was sure to be drafted (that was in force at the time), so when I heard of a special program for information specialists, I signed up for a longer term, rather than a shorter term in which I had no choice of what I’d be doing. Only 100 enlistees were accepted for the program, and had to have some experience in radio, newspapers, magazines or advertising agencies (no TV in those days). I’d finished one year at the University of Miami and had been working in the Miami office of Platt Forbes, a New York City ad agency, on the National Airlines account. National later was merged with Pan Am.

I weighed 137 pounds when I enlisted, and was told I’d have to weigh 140 by the time I took the oath. So I pigged out for days. Oh, to be that thin again. When I was discharged 3 years later, I weighed 170.

The Korean War began in June 1950. Several times I was ordered to Korea, but the Infantry Center commander, Maj. Gen. Burgess, intervened – he said I was too valuable to the post newspaper to be sent overseas. I was just a Private First Class. But I finally was ordered to Korea in early Sept. 1950. We flew to Camp Stoneman, Calif., where we were issued combat gear and rifles, loaded on a DC-7 four-engine prop and flew off to Anchorage, Alaska. In Japan, we spent three days at Camp Drake firing weapons, filling out our last Will and Testament.

We then took a train to a port down south, where we boarded an old Japanese cargo ship for an overnight trip to Pusan, South Korea. I remember a grizzled old sergeant telling us most of us would be dead in 48 hours. U.S. forces had been pushed by the Communist Koreans down into a pocket known as the Pusan Perimeter, with their backs to the sea, when we arrived. I’ll never forget then boarding a troop train for a brief trip to the front – and seeing cattle cars on the tracks alongside us filled with wounded and dead GIs.

From this day and for the next 13 months that I was in Korea, it is almost a blur. I was immediately assigned to Task Force 777 under the command of Col. William (Wild Bill) Harris, of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, made up of infantry, artillery, tanks – and we took off up through the North Korean enemy lines in the first United Nations offensive. Except for stopping for fire fights with enemy soldiers, the long task force kept moving right through enemy lines, finally linking up with 7th Army in Suwon, after they’d landed on the West coast of Korea at Inchon. This pincer movement left tens of thousands of enemy soldiers cut off and then captured. We then plowed ahead to Seoul, the first unit into the South Korean capital, then the first units across the 38th Parallel and then the first units into the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, then on up the peninsula to just south of the Yalu River and the Chinese border, where we were attacked by Chinese and had to begin our retreat back south.

We moved so fast, we got ahead of our supply lines and ran low on fuel, ammunition, food.

Unlike the war in Europe in World War II, there was nothing in Korea. Primitive mud homes and their straw thatched roofs were burned. Roads were unpaved. When it rained, nothing but mud. The smell of burning flesh was everywhere. Our napalm bombs left crisp corpses everywhere, human and animal.

In that first winter, temperatures dropped to sub-zero – and many of us up front had only summer gear. This infuriated President Truman, who sent a personal investigator, a Gen. Allen, to find out why. He found that most good winter clothing was scavenged by troops in the rear before they got to the front. So, many casualties were severe frostbite – feet and hands frozen black requiring amputation.

Because some American GIs had been bayoneted in their sleeping bags by enemy raiding parties, the Army designed a new sleeping bag with a quick release zipper. But it was still awfully cold – so cold, that the operating mechanisms on weapons would freeze. So the Army issued a winter manual – urinate on guns to unfreeze bolt action.

My assignment was to go the front everyday, look for human stories of GIs, return to wherever our headquarters company was bivouacked, write stories, then give them to the civilian correspondents and stick them in the mail to hometown newspapers of the GIs involved. I had an old Smith Corona portable manual typewriter I carried, along with my M-1 Carbine and a Russian pistol taken from a Chinese soldier. I occasionally fired my carbine (it was .30 caliber, with two 30-round banana magazines taped together). I also had a canteen, first aid kit, a knife, a small bayonet for the carbine, a steel helmet with plastic liner, a soft cap I could wear when not at the front.

An amusing incident: My company commander, Capt. West, was a stickler for hygiene and neatness, something he learned in WW II while serving with Gen. George Patton in Europe as a young sergeant. When we returned to headquarters at night, he insisted we fall into formation for inspection to make sure our weapons were clean, we were shaved and had dry socks (to avoid foot rot). One evening, I rushed to get to formation. When a rifle or carbine is inspected, the routine is to snappily bring it up to the chest, quickly open the chamber where cartridges are inserted and leave it open for the inspecting officer to see, then shut the chamber when he’s finished and pull the trigger. I forgot to remove the magazine. So when I closed the bolt action, it shoved a cartridge into the chamber, which fired when I pulled the trigger. The bullet missed his head by inches. My punishment: to spend hours taking apart the weapon and reading the operating manual.

Most of us were frightened, but fear sort of became secondary because we were preoccupied with simply staying alive and surviving, not just the war but also the gawdawful conditions. A lot of fear stemmed from reports of refugees – old men and women – carrying hand grenades and throwing them into U.S. trucks and Jeeps as they passed. The Chinese were relentless – when they attacked, they came in waves of thousands, bugles blowing, utterly shameless about life. I never endured one of those attacks, but saw the results the morning after – bodies everywhere, some Chinese still live and holding their innards in. Stoic.

Land mines were another fear – wooden box mines that couldn’t be detected, but had to be found by carefully probing and poking the dirt with a bayonet tip inch by inch. One day I was accompanying an advance patrol up a road behind a tank. Suddenly, the tank hit a mine and was disabled. At that moment, Chinese soldiers on a nearby ridge opened fire on all of us – and I dove into the mud and water of a rice paddy.

Close-in fighting was another problem. When we entered Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, snipers were everywhere. I believe the only time I shot someone was during one of those block-by-block advances that involved anyone with a weapon.

Around Christmas of 1950, I had to stand nighttime guard on our perimeter. No lights anywhere, pitch black. Four hours on, four hours off. I was an utter nervous wreck wondering if some enemy soldiers would attack out of the darkness.

Like GIs everywhere, we improvised that Christmas – we found a scrawny old tree, made ornaments out of balls of surgical cotton, gauze bandages, tinfoil from cigarette packs, tops of opened food cans, etc.

During the retreat from the Yalu, I volunteered with some others to go back to Inchon City, pick up a truckload of gasoline and machine gun ammunition and drive back to the front. It was a terrible drive. And when we got back to the front, our company commander ordered us to drive the vehicles and their cargoes off into a field, and set them afire. The roads were so clogged with retreating UN forces and refugees; they had to reduce the number of trucks on those narrow, one-lane dirt roads. The British, on the other hand, never abandoned a piece of equipment if it could still be moved.

Once my commanding officer was given a live pig by some Britishers. He was going to butcher the pig, which I didn’t like. So, to irritate him, I unhitched the pig from a post, and tied it next to his cot, where it promptly crapped. He was so angry he let the pig go.

I never could get accustomed to the sight of dead GIs. Their clothes and their faces always were muddy or dusty. Their skin color was washed out or yellow. They were so still. And I always thought about some mother and father or wife getting the bad news.

I always carried a small Bible in my jacket pocket, sure that this would get me through.

I wrote an article and sent it to The Miami Herald – “Sunday on a Hilltop in Korea” – which led to me getting my job at the Herald when I returned home.

Food was pretty basic. C and K rations that didn’t spoil. Beans and ham, lima beans, hamburger patties in gravy, crackers – everything in small olive drab cans. Sometimes when we spent a few days in any one place, a field kitchen would be set up and hot food served.

When we wanted to heat the beans or burger patties in the field, we’d empty a small can of crackers (size of a small can of niblet corn), dip it into the gas tank of a Jeep (the spout was under the driver’s seat), put some sand or dirt in the can with the gasoline, and set it on fire. Then put the can we wanted to heat on top. Mail delivery was pretty good – the generals insisted on good mail, quick first aid for the wounded, hot turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas. So we’d get cookies and candy from home.

We also used our steel helmet for heating water to shave and a basic bath.

On Valentine’s Day 1951, a four-engine B-29 bomber based in Japan flew over our positions and dropped huge crates of parachutes - boxes filled with combs, soap, tooth brushes, razor blades, stationary, cigarettes, magazines, books, etc. Sort of an I-Love-You from the Air Force. When supply trucks arrived, we also had beer and cigarette rations.

I only once more or less captured an enemy soldier – a severely wounded Chinese who was just lying in a field after being overlooked and abandoned. I also was asked a couple times to lend a hand and escort some POWs from the front back to holding areas. They were pretty beat up – tired, hungry, some were wounded, no fight left. Most of them told interrogators they were farm boys, conscripted for service, given a five-day supply of rice and ammo, and sent to the front as cannon fodder. Pathetic.

Heroes were everywhere. One I remember more than others was Major James Webel, of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. When his infantry unit encountered some Russian tanks (manned by North Koreans), he personally knocked out three of them – two by firing a bazooka at point blank range, the third when he poured a can of gasoline into the engine pit on the back of the tank and it exploded, burning him badly. The first Medal of Honor in the war was given to one of our First Cavalry Division GIs early in the war – Melvin Brown, of the 8th Engineers: after running out of ammunition and hand grenades, he stood on a 50-foot-high wall fighting off North Koreans and killing dozens with a small trenching tool until he was shot and killed.

One of the happiest wounded soldiers I saw was a young guy who’d been in action, shot through his butt with a machinegun bullet – the so-called “Million Dollar Wound.” He was headed home, and smiling and shouting with joy as he was carried off on a stretcher, lying on his stomach.

We had to keep the Greek and Turkish soldiers separated because of their historical, ages-old blood feuds. When they went into reserve at the rear, they often got into shooting matches with each other.

The Turks also were notorious for chopping off the heads of enemy soldiers they killed.

One of the oddest sights I saw involved the British. One morning when it was foggy, we heard the shrill squeal of bagpipes – and out of the fog came a Brit unit (Black Guards or Highlanders, can’t remember which) marching up the road with a bagpiper in kilts out front. We were told that the bagpiper not only was tradition, but also scared the beejabbers out of the enemy.

I shot a roll of film on an old reflex camera and sold a story to Look magazine for an issue in November 1950 – about a South Korean orphan named Henry who was adopted by one of our units and outfitted with a mini-uniform. I ran across a copy of the story the other day. It was my first free lance job – for $150.

Homecoming was a bummer. We were camped south of the 38th Parallel in October 1951 when it was time for me to go home. We’d got all the way almost to the Chinese border, then retreated back to where the war began. I caught a ship out of Inchon harbor, back to Osaka, Japan, where all my war trophies were seized (a Russian burp submachine gun, my Russian P-38 pistol, knife, etc.). We were powdered for delicing, given crisp new uniforms and stuck on a troop transport, the USS William Weigel, We spent 16 days (!) crossing the Pacific in the worst storm in a century.

There were 4,400 troops in space for 2,200 – most of us upchucking all the way. We had to line up for breakfast at 3 a.m. because there were so many of us – but only two meals a day. I swore I was going to write a book exposing the Army’s cruelty. But I was so glad when we reached San Francisco, and boarded a train for Fort Jackson, S.C., I forgot all about it.

And this postscript about my father: the day I left the house for Korea, it was one of the few times I saw him weep. He’d experienced war. He knew. He told me, “I’d rather have you come home a live coward than a dead hero.”

After I returned home, he took my Bronze Star medal in its leather case and showed it wherever he went.

BRONZE STAR RECIPIENT CHRONICLED THE WAR

Journalist Pat Murphy’s six decades as a journalist began when he became a combat correspondent in the Korean War.

Murphy ended his career — which included time as publisher of The Arizona Republic — at the Idaho Mountain Express in Ketchum. The Miami native died last fall at age 82.

He was with the first Army units that entered Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. He was awarded the Bronze Star, Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, Korean Service Medal with four battle stars and the United Nations Medal. He left the Army as a sergeant first class.

Here are a few vignettes written by the Miami native and provided by his daughter, Idaho writer Patti Murphy:

• We took a train to a port down south, where we boarded an old Japanese cargo ship for an overnight trip to Pusan, South Korea. I remember a grizzled old sergeant telling us most of us would be dead in 48 hours. U.S. forces had been pushed by the Communist Koreans down into a pocket known as the Pusan Perimeter, with their backs to the sea, when we arrived. I’ll never forget then boarding a troop train for a brief trip to the front — and seeing cattle cars on the tracks alongside us filled with wounded and dead GIs.

• Unlike the war in Europe in World War II, there was nothing in Korea. Primitive mud homes and their straw thatched roofs were burned. Roads were unpaved. When it rained, nothing but mud. The smell of burning flesh was everywhere. Our napalm bombs left crisp corpses everywhere, human and animal.

• In that first winter, temperatures dropped to sub-zero — and many of us up front had only summer gear. This infuriated President Truman, who sent a personal investigator, a Gen. Allen, to find out why. He found that most good winter clothing was scavenged by troops in the rear before they got to the front. So, many casualties were severe frostbite — feet and hands frozen black requiring amputation.

• Because some American GIs had been bayoneted in their sleeping bags by enemy raiding parties, the Army designed a new sleeping bag with a quick release zipper. But it was still awfully cold — so cold, that the operating mechanisms on weapons would freeze. So the Army issued a winter manual – urinate on guns to unfreeze bolt action.

IdahoStatesman.com