Reader's Digest Soldier Stories Read online

  When war broke out in Korea, Takeyama was less than three months from his discharge. Then President Truman extended enlistments one year. Takeyama got married on Thanksgiving Day, but he and his wife, Fumiko, had a short honeymoon. The following week he left for cold-weather training, and then Korea.

  In August 1951, when he had long lost count of the hills he had assaulted, he was shipped home. After all the mud and heat and cold and filth and fear, “All I wanted to do was take hot showers, drink milk and eat green vegetables.”

  Today he and Fumiko live in Torrance, California, where he works for an aerospace firm. Their five children are grown, three with their own families.

  Every month or so Takeyama gets together with some old Baker Company buddies for lunch. They talk more about their health and grandchildren than the dry-mouth nights and bloody days of 40 years ago.

  But sometimes Frank Takeyama remembers rare, peaceful evenings when deep shadows hid the scars of war on the earth, and he looked across purple hills with the waning light reflected in the rice paddies. He felt South Korea was a beautiful place that deserved peace. “We were right to be there,” he says quietly. “They’re free, and we helped.”

  • • •

  Luther Weaver, a short, unassuming man from Jackson, Georgia, had fought the Germans all the way across France with the 319th Infantry Regiment in 1944-45. He came home with a battlefield commission as second lieutenant, shrapnel scars on his face and the sound of artillery still pounding in his ears.

  Weaver was a property officer for Georgia reserve units when Korea broke out. By September 1950 he was back in combat. Soon promoted to captain, he took command of Love Company, 35th Infantry Regiment, not long after the men had come through the devastating and demoralizing retreat from the Yalu River in sub-zero weather. Weaver was their fourth commander in less than two months. His predecessors had spent most of their time in the command post. The first night Weavers troops came under attack, they were surprised to find him among them, coolly directing the defense. The men marveled that the “Old Man” could move so fast on such short legs.

  Weaver led Love Company through battle after battle. Then in June 1951, after almost 600 days in combat in two wars, he was posted to battalion headquarters.

  The relative calm for Weaver was short-lived. Having traveled with relief troops to visit his old company one night in early September, he found himself in the middle of an attack on their hill position. Weaver grabbed an old shotgun and brought down three communist soldiers before it jammed. He fought with his pistol until daybreak, when the Chinese finally broke off the attack.

  Weaver began organizing litter teams and walking wounded. Getting them under cover in a valley below, he heard reports of many more wounded on the hill. Returning at dusk to search for them, he ran into a Chinese patrol.

  Weaver spent a night eluding the Chinese, then made his way through a minefield back inside his lines. The next day he watched as the bodies of his comrades from Love Company were brought off the hill. “I had known these men,” he says, “known them by their first names.”

  Weaver stayed in the Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He hunts, fishes and lives quietly with his wife in Macon, Georgia. Of all his citations and mementos, Weaver treasures most a handwritten letter dated June 1951. It is from the men of Love Company thanking the “Old Man” for being “the best damned commander in the U.S. Army.”

  • • •

  War was the last thing on his mind when Victor Fox, 17, joined the peacetime Army in 1949. A year later, as the Canadian-born Detroiter’s troopship sailed out from Oakland past Alcatraz, prisoners shouted from the yard, “You’ll be sorry!”

  Fox was assigned to Item Company, which was ordered to assault Hill 174. He found himself charging the hill with fixed bayonet as grenades and mortar shells exploded around him. All night he threw grenades at the enemy while his buddy Bill Haltom batted incoming ones away. North Korean bodies piled up around their position. By the second day, Fox could eat his rations nonchalandy under the grotesque stares of the corpses.

  When Item was driven off the hill, Fox stumbled down a creek bed dragging a wounded GI. Later, near a stone wall, he sensed a rush of air and a flash of light, and then nothing. He came to on a stretcher. Dazed and not sure of the extent of his wounds, Fox got up and returned to duty. He took part in another assault on Hill 174 the next day before he was taken to an aid station and treated for shrapnel wounds.

  Fox would battle up and down the Korean peninsula with Item Company. He fought in Chipyong-ni, the battle in which American firepower ended the myth of Chinese invincibility. But Hill 174 would stay with him more than anything else.

  When Fox came home, he tried school and held various factory jobs around Chicago for 14 years before moving with his wife, Lillian, to San Francisco. Today, he works as a night auditor for an athletic club.

  Fox had pretty much put aside all thoughts of Korea until he was asked to contribute to Donald Knox’s The Korean War: An Oral History. Reflecting on those years, Fox says, “I don’t regret one minute of it. We went to help the Korean people, and we did it.”

  He is not the kind of man to keep reliving the war. But sometimes if he’s walking outside on a rainy day, automobile tires hissing on the wet pavement sound like an incoming mortar round, and he winces.

  • • •

  Patrick T. “Paddy” McGahn, Jr., graduated from Mt. Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in June 1950 with a reserve commission as a Marine second lieutenant. He planned to go to law school in the fall. He was enjoying his last summer along Atlantic City’s boardwalk when he heard about Korea. “I had to study a map to see where it was.”

  Called to active duty, McGahn arrived in Korea in March 1951 and within three weeks was wounded by mortar fire. Then, on the night of April 22, he led a platoon up a ridge vital to the protection of the 1st Marine Division’s right flank near the town of Hwachon.

  Ten yards from the ridge line a grenade exploded, tearing into his face. Moments later he was grazed by machine-gun fire. When he turned to see if his men were still with him, an enemy soldier fired a burst that hit him in the back of the head. McGahn refused to be treated until the rest of his men had received attention. The platoon held the hill, and he was evacuated to a hospital.

  McGahn returned to his unit May 9. Within a week, he was wounded again by mortar fragments. He stayed on the line. Two weeks after that, an enemy grenade went off near his feet, and he felt something pierce his back. He kept fighting for another five days, wondering why his back hurt so much. There were shell fragments near his spine.

  McGahn was sent back to the United States, where he would spend the next six months in military hospitals. After only three months in Korea, he had won four Purple Hearts, the Navy Cross and the Bronze Star Medal.

  Today, McGahn is a successful lawyer in New Jersey. You can see the scars on his face and the “railroad tracks” made by bullets on the back of his head. He shakes your hand with his left. He’s gradually losing the use of the right, because of the damage to his spine.

  Public indifference to returning veterans had bothered McGahn for a long time. Last year he did something about it. When Marine veterans gathered in Atlantic City, McGahn arranged for the Marine Band to come up from Quantico, Virginia. It assembled on the dock while the veterans were on a cruise. When they returned, the band was playing “The Marine’s Hymn” to greet them. Paddy McGahn cried. Everybody cried.

  The Long Way Home

  BY JOHN G. HUBBELL

  “Kaylor,” said the lieutenant, “tomorrow morning at 0600, when the Regiment moves up, you report to S-I. Your dependency discharge has come through and you’re going back to Casual Company at Hamhung.”

  Bud Kaylor, Marine machine gunner, was stunned, then elated. This was no foxhole rumor, this was for real. He was getting out of this frozen hell and going home. He’d be there in time for Christmas with his wife, Dorothy, and their family.


  Early the next morning, Kaylor said quick good-byes to his buddies. The First Marine Division and the Army’s Seventh Infantry were moving north for an assault on the Chosin Reservoir. But for Bud Kaylor the war was over, or so he thought. This, however, was the morning of November 28, 1950, and no one knew that the stage was set for the attack by the Chinese Reds.

  At S-I the personnel officer told Kaylor he’d have to get back to Hamhung on his own. So he and Art Foley, a mail clerk, hitched a ride in the lead truck of a five-truck convoy. There were two other Marine passengers in the back of their truck, and another riding shotgun with the driver. Thus Bud Kaylor started the first leg of his journey out of Korea, and home.

  The home he was headed for was near Hopkins, Minnesota, where Gladys and Charley Kaylor, Bud’s parents, live. It was there that the telegram was to arrive on January 5, 1951. It came from Marine Headquarters, with deep regrets: Pfc. Charles Martin Kaylor had been missing in action since November 28, 1950.

  “The telegram said ‘missing,’ ” Charley Kaylor relates. “Bud is a little guy, but he’s tough, cool and a quick thinker. He had always been an athlete. I figured he was still alive somewhere.”

  Neither could Bud’s wife or his mother or his sisters give up. His daughter, Terry Jo, was only four, but she was sure her father would come back. Through the long months that followed, they all lived on the strength of interminable prayer and desperate hope.

  • • •

  Soon after Kavlor’s convoy got underway that morning for the 70-mile trip, they came to a small village. The huts looked uninhabited, but in seconds a crowd of Koreans was streaming out. They shouted and pointed down the road.

  “Poor gooks think the Commies are coming back,” someone said.

  The Marines waved and laughed, and some threw candy and cigarettes. Soon they found out what the Koreans had been trying to tell them. Around a sharp bend they came on a jeep in the middle of the road, with logs piled high on either side of it. The driver of the lead truck couldn’t avoid hitting it. The jeep rolled off the road and the driver bulled his way on.

  Bud Kaylor looked over the edge of the truck. Chinese soldiers were six and seven deep in the ditches, and more were running down the hills on both sides of the road, shooting as they came. Kaylor grabbed his carbine and emptied it into one of the ditches. There wasn’t time to aim, and the Reds were so thick it didn’t make any difference.

  In a matter of seconds his ammunition was gone. He dropped flat on his back and saw two bullets sing past, within an inch of his nose. He saw them go by, because they had come right through the steel side of the truck, and it had slowed them down. Then one came through and got Art Foley, the mail clerk. Kaylor started to reach for Art’s carbine, and he saw something yellow sail by. It was a grenade shaped like a potato masher and he leaped for it, but it wasn’t there so he thought it had bounced out of the truck. But when he lay down again his head hit something hard; he reached back and grabbed it. It was the grenade. He threw it backward, over his head, and heard it go off.

  A minute later the driver was shot in the ear. The Marine riding shotgun with him kept firing at the ditch on the driver’s side of the road, trying to protect him. There were only two tires left, and the truck veered all over the road.

  Kaylor grabbed Foley’s carbine and sat up at the back of the truck. He was just in time to see a Red soldier lob one of those yellow grenades up from the ditch. It was a perfect throw, and Kaylor grabbed it by the handle and slammed it right back at him. It hit at his feet and went off. The Red died with unbelieving surprise on his face.

  Then the truck went off the road into the ditch. Kaylor went over the side and ran to some thin bushes. From there he could see the truck driver and his gunner running toward a frozen river about 500 yards away. The Reds shot at them from a hill and Kaylor watched the bullets kick up the snow around their feet. Suddenly the gunner dropped, but the driver kept right on going across the river, into thick woods.

  A number of Reds showed up, and one threw a grenade that landed about five feet from Kaylor. It went off and knocked him down, and he was conscious of a burning sensation in his leg.

  The Reds came up and stood all around him, looking at him and pointing their rifles. Then one moved in close and frisked him.

  Kaylor saw the red stain come through his pant leg. The blood was running fast. His captors took him to a command post where an officer called two orderlies over and gave them some instructions. Then he turned to Kaylor and made him take his parka off. He pretended that he was searching it, and he motioned to the orderlies to take Kaylor away. As Kaylor left he saw the officer trying on his parka.

  Bud was weak from loss of blood. He kept falling down, and the Reds kept pushing him along. Every step seemed colder than the last. It was 15 degrees below zero, and all Kaylor wore now was his field cap, a shirt, pants, shoes, and long underwear. At a battalion aid station, the Red orderlies dressed his wounds.

  Early the second morning, when they reached a Korean village, one of the Reds walked Kaylor to the door of a house and motioned him inside. Entering, Bud could see three Chinese officers at a table. A single candle illuminated the entire room. In a few seconds another officer came in. He was young and friendly, and his English was flawless. He put out his hand and smiled.

  “I’m Lieutenant Fung,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Fung asked his name, rate and serial number. He translated swiftly to the three officers at the table. Then he asked Kaylor the names of Marine officers in his outfit, how many tanks were there, and what kind of artillery. Kaylor started to say that he wasn’t required to tell, when he felt a sharp kick at his leg. He looked around, and at the end of the bench he saw two Chinese overcoats piled over a body, with only the feet showing. Kaylor moved farther down the bench, away from the body, and told the lieutenant he couldn’t answer him.

  In a few minutes Fung left the room, and the body under the overcoats sat up and unveiled itself. It was the truck driver, 19-year-old Cpl. Fred Holcomb, from Hamden, New York, and he was more than a little indignant at having been captured, and all the Chinamen in Korea could go to hell.

  “We don’t tell them a thing,” he said. “We don’t have to.”

  Kaylor was sorry that Holcomb hadn’t escaped, but glad he was finally in good Marine company. They started talking about the ambush, and then Fung came back into the room. He talked to the two Marines until dawn. He explained that the Chinese were not going to kill them, that they didn’t even want them as prisoners.

  “All we want to do with you guys,” he said, “is get you out of Korea so you can’t fight us any more.” He said they were going to take them to China, put them on a neutral ship, and send them back to the United States. Then he took their home addresses.

  “I’d like to write you fellows after the war and see how things turn out for each of us,” he said. He told them they would be moving out in the morning, shook hands and said good-bye. And he left them with the memory of a warm and friendly person.

  It was snowing heavily when they moved out with a Chinese column and started walking north. After four days they joined a group of 250 other prisoners, including 43 Marines. They moved on north, Kaylor limping along on his wounded leg over the icy mountain trails. And finally, after they had walked for 11 days, and just when Bud thought he couldn’t walk another mile, they stopped moving. They were in the village of Kanggye, near the Yalu River.

  The Chinese divided them into two sections and billeted them in cold Korean houses, where most of them lay on the bare floor in a sleeping stupor for days. When they were strong enough to want to stop sleeping, the Chinese took their clothes and gave them Chinese uniforms. English-speaking Red officers began to interrogate them. It was kept mostly on a personal plane, and the officers kept it up until they got the answers they wanted. If Comrade Kaylor, for instance, said he earned $250 a month at his job in Minneapolis, he was obviously lying. This made the Chinese angry, and they would spend
long hours explaining to him that he was among friends and there was no need for him to lie. Patiently, they would point out to him that his warmongering, capitalistic bosses on Wall Street had duped him into thinking he was well off.

  When the prisoners realized what the Reds wanted to hear, they told them tales of wretched, hungry childhoods that had been lived in anticipation of joining the Marine Corps, where they could at least get some food and clothing. They told of aged parents who lived as best they could on the infrequent and niggardly charity of the Wall Street bosses. The Chinese seemed to like this.

  The indoctrination began in a bleak, cold barn called the Big House. A Chinese “high commander” came out on a stage and made a welcoming speech. They were not, he explained, to think of themselves as prisoners. They were “newly liberated friends,” and would be treated as such. The Chinese people were not angry with them for being in Korea, since they had been duped by their imperialistic bosses. They would be treated with kindness, but they must obey the rules set down for newly liberated friends. If they broke the rules they would undergo severe punishment.

  On Christmas night all the newly liberated friends were herded into the Big House. The Chinese had decorated the place with Christmas trees and candles, wreaths and red paper bells. There was a big sign saying, “Merry Christmas.” Along the walls were signs reading, “If it were not for the Wall Street imperialists, you would be home with your wives and families this Christmas night.” A high commander made a speech that repeated what the signs said, and he threw in a few unkind remarks about Truman, MacArthur, and Dulles.

  By this time the POWs knew what the Chinese wanted of them, and word had spread that the “most promising” prisoners would be released before the war was over. So after the high commander finished speaking, a Marine from Boston named McClean jumped up and shouted, “Down with the Wall Street bosses!” And another named Dickerson pulled his six feet seven inches from the floor and shouted in a Georgia drawl, “Down with the aggressive imperialists!” And a five-foot nine-inch Marine named Kaylor limped over to a toothy interpreter named Lieutenant Pan, looked him squarely in the eye, and cried, “Down with the warmongers!” The newly liberated friends all over the Big House took up the cry, and the happy, smiling Chinese ran around the huge room, patting them on the back and shaking hands with them and giving them presents. Each man received ten pieces of candy, six cigarettes and a Christmas card.