Valleys of Death (15 page)

It looked like Fourth of July fireworks as the tracers skipped off the concrete, but I soon realized some of the fire was coming from our left flank. Jesus Christ, it was our own company firing on us.

I screamed at my men to keep down, don't return that fire. “Anyone see Mac?”

One of Mac's men hollered to me that there was someone coming.

“Mac, is that you?”

“It's me and I'm hit,” he groaned. “Somebody help me.”

“Keep moving. I am coming to get you.”

There were tracers everywhere; everybody seemed to be firing. The only thing I knew for sure was that we were in trouble. I ran to Mac and helped him back into our position.

“Where are you hit?” I asked.

“My legs and I think my shoulder. Shit, Sarge, I'm not sure what's going on,” he said, his eyes wide with fear. “I'm sorry I never got near the company. The Koreans were all over the place.”

Mac was hit worse than he thought. I could feel his back. It was drenched in blood. He started to choke. I talked to him, but he didn't answer. I laid him down and at the same time hollered to the rest of the men to pull in tighter around the road. I had four men left. Our two jeeps were shot up. One was on fire.

I knew at this point we could not hold the bridge.

“Get the breech block from the 57 and throw it in the river,” I yelled to my guys.

They scrambled off toward the gun. I took a waterproof bag that I carried in my pocket and placed my wallet, watch and all the information on the weapons platoon in it and buried it by the bridge abutment. I was not sure what was going through my mind at that point. I did know that I did not want the North Koreans to get any information off me.

The Koreans attacked again and got within twenty feet before we stopped them. I rushed to the other side of the road and got slammed to the ground from an explosion. Confused, I stumbled into a nearby ditch. My head was ringing. I checked Mac. He was dead, and so were the two other men on his side of the road. With only two men left, we had to leave the bridge. I shoved a grenade in the breech of the 57. The grenade exploded, destroying the gun. And we started pushing up the ditch away from the bridge. I couldn't see or hear anything.

We had not gone very far when the point man told me someone was coming down the ditch toward us. I took a knee and readied my rifle.

“Hold your fire until they get closer,” I whispered.

The point man quickly yelled back.

“Sarge, they're our own guys. Two of them from battalion.”

“Come over here. What's going on?” I barked to them.

The men look crazed. Both were talking a mile a minute and I tried to settle them down.

“Look, take it easy,” I told them. “Slowly tell me what you know.”

“The battalion got hit. They were in the headquarters before we knew it. The whole damn place was a mess,” one of the soldiers said. “There were dead and wounded all over. Everything was shot up. It looked like an artillery barrage made a direct hit. It was total chaos.”

“What are you two trying to do?” I asked.

They said they were trying to make contact with someone.

“Sarge, I'm Taylor, one of Walsh's men. The other guy is from battalion.”

In the dark, I didn't recognize him. “Where's Walsh?”

“They're all dead, Sarge,” Taylor said.

“Are you sure they are all dead?” I asked.

“I was taking a leak when all hell broke loose. The Koreans shot the guys right there in the hole they were lying in. It was really bad.”

I had five men total. No heavy weapons and no idea what had just rolled over us. The firing slacked off but was still coming from all directions. I gathered the men up and made a quick decision.

“Listen up. We're going to move back toward battalion and hole up around the headquarters.”

We got fifty yards down the road when one of the men saw movement.

“Sarge, there are some guys moving on the other side of the road.”

I could not believe it. There were men walking in a column of twos. They were marching along like they were on a parade field. At first I thought they must be ours. They were coming from the area that the artillery unit had moved out of, but when they got close enough I could see their silhouettes. I knew they were not Americans. They had quilted jackets on and winter hats with flaps that covered their ears.

“Quiet. Get down,” I hissed. “Stay down. When they get a little closer, fire when I do.”

I took a deep breath and shouldered my rifle. All of a sudden everything was in slow motion and deadly quiet. I fired and put the first guy down. Seconds later we were all firing. Ten or twelve men fell to the ground. They never knew what hit them. Staring into the dark, we waited for movement. Any kind of movement. But it never came. The familiar rattle of an American machine gun spitting rounds down the road finally broke the silence.

“Let me up front, let's move fast, come on, follow me,” I barked.

Now we were in a trot. I knew we were getting close to battalion. Christ, there were bodies all over the place. I could see some men in the distance and someone yelled out.

“Over here to your left, come straight forward.” It was a Corporal Jones hollering to us from behind a machine gun.

We stumbled into the battalion headquarters area and I introduced myself and asked Jones what the situation was. It was not good.

“There were thirty or forty wounded or dead. Doc Anderson and the chaplain are in the command post trying to take care of the wounded.”

Jones thought the battalion commander was dead.

“They just walked in on them and shot up the whole damn place.”

“How many men do you think you have?” I asked.

“Five or six.”

“You got contact with anyone else?”

“No.”

“Have the Koreans tried to get back in here?”

“Yeah, but we kept them away with the machine gun. They acted like they were just as confused as we were.”

“I'm going to try to make contact with my company,” I told Jones.

The company command post was dug into a nearby tree line, a quick walk from the command post before the attack. But now we had to make it through an open field with enemy soldiers all around.

“You're crazy, you won't make it across the open area.”

I knew we had no choice. This position couldn't be held without help. And the only help was in that tree line.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRAPPED

I checked my ammo and looked at my four guys. They looked nervous. I thought about leaving them, but I didn't know what I might find. For all I knew the company might have been overrun.

“Let's go.”

They hesitated for a minute.

“Sarge, I want to stay here.” It was the guy from headquarters. He was totally shaken and was looking at me with a blank stare.

I nodded and moved out. The other three followed. We'd barely made it into the field when the shooting started. We all bolted for the tree line. Jones was right. We were going to get shot up trying to get across this field. God, I hoped the company was there and not overrun like the rest of us.

“Richardson. Sergeant Richardson, we're coming in,” I started screaming at the top of my lungs. “We're from the weapons platoon. We're coming in.”

We got into the wood line and threw ourselves to the ground, completely exhausted.

“Where's the command post?” I asked between breaths.

“This is it, we are all here, the executive officer is right over there.”

“Who's that?” First Lieutenant Frederick Giroux yelled.

Giroux had only been with the company for six days. A World War II veteran and experienced airborne infantry officer, he had taken control of what was left of the company.

“It's Richardson, sir, weapons platoon.”

“How'd you get here?”

“Up the road to the battalion command post then straight across the field. The battalion command post is torn up, dead and wounded all over the place. I think the commander may be dead. I know the chaplain, doctor and about eight to ten men are still alive.”

“Things aren't much better here,” Giroux said. “The company commander is hit. We had a full-scale attack across our entire front, and before we knew what happened they were inside our position. It was total chaos. The best I can figure, we have twenty to thirty men.”

Giroux asked if we could get out to the south. I thought a second and then shook my head no.

“We'd have to move past the bridge on this side for a good distance and then turn south. They have machine guns on the hills south of the bridge,” I said. “We don't stand a fart's chance in hell of crossing anywhere near the bridge.”

“How about east of the bridge?” he asked.

“I received a lot of fire from that direction, and later we shot up ten to twelve enemy coming from that direction, they were just walking in a column of twos,” I said. “From what I understood that's the way they entered the battalion command post. A corporal at battalion told me that once they got into the command post they seemed as confused as our own people.”

Giroux told me that once they got into the company position they got screwed up in the dark too. We were all running around in the dark, it seemed.

Giroux went off to tell Bromser about the bridge. I'd barely knelt down when some of the men, it was too dark to see faces, gathered around me. They were rattling off names of guys they knew were dead. The attack had run right through them and only 25 of the company's 180 men were left. Costello, the supply sergeant who'd just delivered field jackets to my section, was also dead. It was just yesterday he'd told me how he was going to live to a ripe old age.

Giroux called me over. He was sitting with Bromser, who had been badly shot up. There were no radios, and it didn't seem like the company had any communications with battalion or any higher units. The only information on the immediate situation was my report.

“We need to try to get out of here before daylight and move south,” Giroux said. “Can you lead us across the field?”

“Yeah, I can. But we've got to watch that bridge and the machine guns on the hill,” I said. “I've already been on the wrong side of those bastards.”

Giroux looked at Bromser. It was clear he was taking on more of the leadership role since Bromser was wounded.

“We've got to go,” Giroux said.

Bromser shook his head giving the ok to go. Giroux and I got everybody together.

“We're going to move out,” Giroux said. “Take all the ammunition you can and take the machine guns. We move in five minutes. Sergeant Richardson is going to lead us out.”

When everybody was ready, Giroux gave me the nod and I led us out of the wood line. I was confident I could lead them to the road, but I damn sure didn't know what we were in for when we crossed the river.

A thick smoke and fog hung over us, concealing our movements. I could barely see the hills. No one talked, but you could feel the nervous energy. After being run over, the last thing we wanted to see was the enemy. We'd made it halfway to the road when I saw two men walking toward us. Their weapons were slung across their chests and they didn't have helmets.

They were not Americans.

One of them saw us and reached into a bag hung over his shoulder and pulled out a grenade. I leveled my M-1 rifle and fired. The enemy soldier fell in a pink mist and dropped the grenade. It exploded, cutting down the second man, and shattering the silence. The explosion and flash alerted the machine guns on the hill. With deadly accuracy, the gunners started raking the formation. I tried to get the men moving, but panic set in. There was yelling and men running in every direction.

I could hear the roar of a tank engine and looked toward the battalion command post. It was two M4A3 Sherman tanks coming our way. I could see the green hulks moving toward us, a bright white star painted on their sloped armored fronts and the long barrel sticking out of the turret.

The men ran for them instantly. Where the hell did they come from? I thought as I ran toward them. I never saw them earlier as I moved through the battalion command post, and Jones, the machine gunner guarding the battalion command post, never mentioned them.

The first few men got to the tanks and climbed aboard. They saw the tanks as salvation. As Americans, we clung to our tanks for safety, a rock in the storm of machine gun rounds crashing around us. They figured the tanks could drive them to safety, but the men on top made it impossible to rotate and fire the machine guns on the turret.

The enemy machine gunners quickly zeroed in and raked the tanks with fire. I ran to the side near the track and started grabbing the men and pulling them to the ground. It took every ounce of energy I had to get the men off the tanks.

With nowhere to go, we started to dig in. The field was sandy loam that made it easy to dig trenches and foxholes. By daylight, we were dug into a perimeter 250 yards in diameter. Sergeant Elmer Miller, one of the tank commanders, moved his three tanks into the perimeter. I positioned the few machine guns we had at critical points along the trenches. We'd made it through the night, and the enemy rarely attacked during the day.

I was standing in a trench putting a machine gun in place when Chaplain Kapaun came along and asked me how I was doing.