Jocko Podcast
Hosted by Jocko Willink
Original podcast
"Waiting for the Blessed Light on Dawn", by Ted Hofsiss. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content
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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
This is Jocko Podcast number 425 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.
"I've gotta go." "My voice is hoarse with dread and sorrow." "Why can't they just leave us alone? "Why can't we just be left alone?" she asked no one. "Her voice is tight with fear." "Fear is growing in me as well." "Wild ideas flash through my mind. "We could run away, hide in some mountains, or even somewhere in the Texas Canyon country, "anywhere to relieve this feeling of having lost all control over our lives." "The knot just below my stomach is getting bigger, harder." "I open my mouth to speak, then close it and swallow. "My throat is dry. "This is madness."
"But to run would be greater madness." "I clench my teeth as I push those crazy thoughts from my mind and struggle to accept "what is happening to us." "Control of our lives, our future, is caught up in a wild storm of war in a small Asian "country. "A storm of fire, shrapnel, and death."
"I put my hand on her shoulder. "Please," I beg, "kiss me, then drive away."
"We kiss. "Strength seems to pass between us as she grips my hand and smiles through her tears."
"I can let her go now." "I turn toward the barrack." "I hear the station wagon turn the corner." "First Sergeant Fisk blows his whistle." "Time for us to put on our combat gear, shoulder our weapons, and find our places "in the company formation."
And that right there is from the opening of a book called Waiting for the Blessed Light of Dawn. A Diary of the Korean War, which was written by Ted Hofsis. And I received this book in the mail some time ago from a woman down in Texas. A woman named Nina, she wrote me a nice note and explained that she had gotten a copy of this book. And although she did not know Mr. Ted Hofsis directly, she, Nina attends church with Mr. Hofsis's daughter,
Mary Lou. And that's how I got this book. I looked on the internet. There is one other copy out there. So I don't think you'll be able to get a copy of it, or maybe they'll print some more. But the book details the Korean War incredibly well. It's a, it's a harrowing read. And of course, the Korean War was a nightmare, like all wars. And for the soldiers out there on the front lines, it was hell. And for soldiers like Ted Hofsis, this is very unexpected because this is 1950. World War II had been over for, what, five years at that time?
And after World War II was over, Korea, which had been liberated from the Japanese, who had, you know, kind of occupied and held Korea as a colony for 35 years. Once World War II was over, Korea had been liberated by the Allies. But the Allies at that time included America and also included the Soviet Union.
So it was split in half. Korea was split in half, divided at the 38th parallel. And the north of Korea, North Korea, became a communist state. And the south, South Korea, became a capitalist state.
And both North and South Korea claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea. And there was some, you know, there were some hostilities and some clashes along the border. But no one expected the north to invade the south, full on, which they did on the 25th of June, 1950. After that happened, the United Nations denounced this aggression. And put together a, a force of 21 countries to repel this invasion.
And of course, 90% of that force was American men. And in the first couple of months of fighting, the UN forces, which again was mostly Korean and American forces, they were pushed back, retreating into the Pusan perimeter, which is where they kind of ended up. And then shortly thereafter in September, there was an amphibious landing, famous amphibious landing at Incheon, and the fighting escalated. And that was the situation that Ted Hofsiss found himself in August of 1950. So to get a little bit, a little bit of background on him and how he got there
and go through this story, we're gonna go back to the book. So here's what he says. "I was just a skinny, four-eyed kid who was lucky enough to get out of Brooklyn and into the dairy country of the Catskill Mountains for four summers. When I found out there was something in this world besides concrete and cockroaches, I decided I want to live in the country. I loved the idea of spending my life as a farmer. I hated the city so much, I joined the army to get away, permanently. The recruiter said I would be sent to heavy equipment school. Ha. I was really dumb, but everything has turned out just right. I met Laura," and that's who he's talking about in that opening that I read.
"I met Laura and fell in love with her beauty, her Texas drawl, and her smile that makes me, makes my knees weak and softens my heart. She has a confident way of approaching almost every situation, not to mention she loves me." We had already begun to dream about buying a farm in Texas. There were only eight months left on my enlistment when we married. We planned to go back to Texas and eventually find a farm to build a home for us and the family we would have. We felt we were on our honeymoon. We felt we were still on our honeymoon until the lousy Korean Reds started this war.
To add to our misery, President Truman added a year to my enlistment. So this, this war was completely unexpected and, and I might be reading into that a little bit, but by all accounts, and when you talk, when we, when I read history books about the Korean War, people had no idea that it was going to kick off like it did. I would say it's probably similar to when Russia invaded Ukraine. Like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I could, but it could happen, but no one actually thought it was going to happen. I thought it was going to happen, but most people didn't think it was going to happen. Um, an interesting thing about this book is it's a journal. It's, it's written in journal, so it's very cool to read. Um, and the journal picks up and starts in August.
So again, um, they, the, the North Korea invaded in June, so this picks up in August. And what is a couple of months later, two months later, it picks up. And we'll take it to that section where it kicks off. So fast forward a little bit, we're crowded into the USS General Pope, a World War II transport. The crew tells us that we're, we are twice as many as the ship was built to carry three battalions and several smaller outfits are squeezed like sardines into the holds. And then he goes on to detail what it's like when a bunch of army guys that aren't used to being at sea, get out and there's eight foot swells and everyone's throwing up.
It's pretty nasty. And, and it says, the ship's newspaper informs us that the North Koreans have boxed the South Korean Army and US Army units into the southeast corner of Korea. That's what I talked about earlier, the Busan perimeter. And think about this, even when I, when I went on my first deployment on a Navy ship, it was 1994.
There was no email. There was no internet. There was none of that. It didn't exist. Didn't have it. So now you go back to 1950, there is just completely limited information that you're going off of. I mean, you're just completely cut off. So they hear the ship's newspaper, reports that they're surrounded. Fast forward a little bit. The third platoon of King Company, so he's in King Company, usually gathers on the forward hatch. There are six of us who have been spending most of our time together on the ship. There's Vincent, Ike, Iya Colono, Colano,
George Malul, William Willie Garrity, George Sorensen, Muriel Brown, and me. Four of us are from the Northeast. In fact, Ike, Malul, and I come from Brooklyn. Willie is from Jersey City. We four speak nearly the same language. Sorensen is from Blue Earth, Minnesota. Brown is from Arkansas. They're real nice guys and get along with everybody. I sometimes wonder how they can understand us, but they do. We have a good time hanging around together and kidding each other. Nothing has been said, but I believe we'll make it a point to check on on each other whenever we can. We have, after all, been spending most of our waking hours together.
We slept near each other in the barrack and in the field for many months. So those are his friends. Those are his bros. Ike, George Malul, Garrity, Sorensen, and Muriel Brown. That's his boys. Fast forward a little bit. We're, we're still in our teens. By the way, he's 18 when he's writing this. We're still in our, we're in our teens, but we've been in the Army no more than 21 months. So that the longest of them has been in for 21 months. We are trained to move any terrain and to fight in cold or heat. Nearly every day has been spent slogging through mud, snow, dust, climbing or rappelling down Colorado's red cliffs and maneuvering in mock battles. In spite of our young age, we feel we've learned our craft, at least as much as we can learn from lectures and exercises. Most important, we've learned discipline.
And duty, the few young men who didn't have pretty well been weeded out. Some went the hard way through the stockade. A few others were discharged as unfit for military service. The rest of us are proud of our regiment, of our officers and of ourselves. The 14th Regimental Combat Team is trained to climb mountains and ski, and then to fight as infantry in any country or weather.
18 years old, bro. That's what's happening. 22 August, 1950. No more rumors. We land in Pusan tomorrow. So imagine that. America and the Koreans are surrounded in the Pusan Peninsula. That's where you're going. That's what's happening. We all know that no one is going to get through this by himself. All of our training has been about teamwork. Everybody needs to have someone looking out for him. We know that each of us will watch out for the other five. The unspoken pact will have a few problems. Malul.
Malul is in the second squad. Garrity, Brown and I are in the first squad. Ike is a bazooka gunner in the fourth squad. Sorensen is a runner for our platoon headquarters section. So he's basically saying even though they're all bros, they're, they're in different squads. So there's going to be a little distance between them. Muriel Brown is my assistant gunner on the BAR. The B A R. The Browning Automatic Rifle. We'll be watching out for each other all the time. So that's his, that's his bro right there.
Got his crew. Uh, they offloaded it again.
I would tell you to get the book. It's going to be hard to get this book, but and who knows? Maybe they'll do a reprinting of it or I'll, I'll talk to the, the daughter or something. Maybe we can get some version of this out there. But fast forward a little bit, they, they disembarked the ship. We carry our packs, weapons, field gear and change of underwear, nothing else. I can carry everything I need. Water, cigarettes, lighter, writing paper and Laura's picture. Most of us have at least one meal left in our sea rations. We march off the wharf to the cadence count of First Sergeant Fisk. King Company's CO, barrel chested. Captain Ralph Kirfman marches several paces in front of the first rank of four platoon leaders. Sergeant Finner is in that spot for our platoon. We came to Korea without an officer for for platoon leader.
The rest of the formation is ranks of 16 men, four from each platoon of King Company. We march facing straight ahead, trying to look grim and purposeful. All the while, looking out of the corner of our eyes at this strange place and the people we're here to help. The Koreans watch us as we pass, but make no move or sound to cheer us on. I have very little understanding of our situation. Doubts and fears flit in and out of my mind. I know that all those games and exercises in Colorado and other places were meant to prepare us for this moment. As I march shoulder to shoulder with my fellow soldiers, I begin to feel stronger. I'm surrounded by men, however, young and untested, who I know better than I know my own family. Our company CEO is a man I trust completely.
Maybe we'll be able to carry out this police action without too many of us getting hurt.
They march for a little while and they get to a rail station and they jump onto passenger cars. Fast forward a little bit, soon after we unload all of our gear, including ammunition, we march along the track towards the Nae Tong River. There are no roads, no buildings, only hills that are terraced near the bottom and barren, rocky near the top. Foot trails are everywhere. As we form up to walk on either side of the track, ammunition cases are open and each man is given a bandolier. Five clips of eight rounds, 40 rounds total. Brown and I are given five additional bandoliers for the bar clips. This must be war. We weren't, we aren't told to keep a written record of ammo received, nor are we told to carry the ammo cases with us to collect brass cartridges.
It was, it's just that lack of information and the transition of going from a training environment where there's no thought in your mind that you're going to war. And then you fast forward a month and you're in war. That's, that's, that's a radical mental transition you gotta make. And even he's picking it up like every time he signed out ammunition back in Colorado for training, it was like, all right, sign this piece of paper with how much ammunition you have and then how much, how much of the brass you gotta get back. And here they're like, there's none of that, obviously.
Now we'll fast forward a little bit. King Company is responsible for more than a mile of the front line. Even I know tactics better than that. So now all of a sudden getting put on the line and getting told, "All right, you've got a mile worth of line that you have to cover." And they go out and they start doing some patrolling, not much contact. He says, "We thought we were becoming veterans as we patrolled the hills around the battery perimeter. We saw and fired at North Korean patrols, but couldn't tell if we hit anyone. They always disappeared as we tried to close with them. The best part of the day was the end of a long patrol. We usually had to wade the creek to enter the perimeter of the artillery battery. The cool water soaked our hot, tired feet."
So again, this is September and all he's talking about, when you read the whole book, he's talking about how hot it is. It's drenched with sweat the whole time. "Only our officers know that King Company is about to make its first attack." Fast forward, so there's a planning for them to do an assault. "We are still amateurs, but we're well-trained and trust our CO. Captain Kervman has been our CO and father-figure to most of us for more than 18 months. He's a Mustang. He was an enlisted man in the Pacific in World War II. During the fighting, he received a field commission." Hell yeah. "He was our CO for the whole period we were at Camp Carson. I worked for him as mail clerk
for about six months and as company clerk for about a month when our regular clerk was on leave. I know I was the lousiest company clerk he had ever seen, but he was patient and never raised his voice to me, even when he told me to redo the daily morning report for the fourth or fifth time." Again, very important to note, this guy's a World War II enlisted guy, gets a field commission, veteran, combat veteran Mustang, never raises his voice.
I was privileged to hear his reason for sending three King Company soldiers to be court martialed. The three soldiers had been caught stealing gas from cars in the company parking lot. Captain Kervman had the men in his office. I was in the outer office. He was telling them why they were being court martialed. They had stolen from their fellow soldiers. The men who would have put their trust in them if they were in combat. He would have punished them with the severest company punishment allowed if they had been caught stealing from anyone else. He was, in effect, throwing the book at them because they had committed the most serious of crimes. They had stolen from their own comrades. He would not stand for that.
He doesn't stand for any nonsense, but isn't afraid to stand up to a superior officer if he knows the position he is taking is right. Boom, there you go. That holds for a single GI in trouble unfairly or for the whole battalion. He approaches every situation with the long and short consequences in mind. I will follow him into hell or go in first if he orders me. So, there you go. He's thinking tactically, but he's also importantly thinking about the big picture, thinking about the long term, thinking about the strategic outcomes. Now we're gonna get into this assault. And again, there's more details in here, but I'm gonna get right into it.
We reach the ridge line just as the company mortars begin to fire. Now, everybody up on the ridge, fire slow, fire steady, Finner yells over the hollow sound of the mortar shells hitting the bottom of their tubes. The deadly blast of those same exploding shells landing on the hill across the valley makes us duck. It's the first time I've heard the sounds of a mortar shell from the funk as it hits the bottom of the tube to the whisper as it passes overhead, ending in a blast as it explodes on the hill where the North Koreans are dug in. It's hard to find individual targets through the smoke and even more difficult to hit them as my hands shake with fear and excitement. As the assault platoons charge up the hill trying to run and fire at the same time, our mortars stop.
Individual enemy soldiers stand in their holes and fire their rifles or throw grenades down the hill at our guys. We have targets. A whistle blast blown by North Korean officer or noncom starts their withdrawal from the hill. We fire rapidly as smoke from the mortars and grenades clear, then the enemy begins to retreat. As they leave their holes to flee westward, we kill more of them. “Cease fire, hold your fire,” Lieutenant Brown yells. Lieutenant Brown is our new platoon leader. He came to us while we were in the artillery battery. His command is repeated along the line until everyone in 3rd Platoon has stopped firing. The men of 1st and 2nd Platoon keep firing even after they charge over the crest of the hill. Some of the men stop to check foxholes and bodies lying around. Several of our men are down.
GIs are waving at medics to get them to come to help their buddies. We can hear the shouts of our men and the crack of individual rifles fired at the retreating North Koreans. They are running across an open field, heading for the safety of a large mountain 600 or 700 yards away. Ike gives me a wave. He hasn’t been ordered to fire his bazooka. I used several clips of my bar. That’s the first time I had fired my weapon at anyone. I hand the empty clips to Brown. He lays on his back staring at the sky, blowing out air out of his lungs, trying to relax. Garrity is on his stomach staring at the captured hill. Within minutes, we are ordered down the hill, across the dry steambed, streambed, and up the captured hill to join the rest of the company. Close up, the aftermath of the attack is sickening.
Dead Koreans lay as they fell. Some have parts of their bodies missing. All are covered with blood and gore. Several GIs are being helped by medics. A couple of our men are seriously wounded, their faces gray with pain and loss of blood. One man is held down by two GIs. He’s thrashing his arms and screaming for them to kill him. An exploding grenade has blown away most of his legs and his genitals. I don’t know him by name. He transferred from another unit only days before we left Camp Carson. He was married five days before we shipped out. I look at him as I pass by, thinking I will never forget this sight. I’m sickened by what I’m seeing, fearful and grateful that it isn’t me. He dies on the way to the aid station.
The third platoon is placed on the forward slope facing the field and the mountain where the North Koreans have fled. Platoon Sergeant Finner walks up and down the perimeter, above the foxholes we inherited from the original owners. Two men to a hole. Make sure you have it the way you want it before dark. They'll be back to try and take this hill tonight. Do you really think so, Sarge? Bergstrom asks. Count on it. Get everything together in your hole. No one leaves his hole after dark. Finner's style is exactly the opposite of Sergeant Quimby's and the guy, that's another guy he had. Sure wish he hadn't transferred, but at least he's out of this mess. Finner's style consists of, he speaks, you do, no questions, no discussion.
My hands shake as I set the bar on its bipod and put an extra clip beside it. I'm nervous and about half sick. Even though I wasn't in the actual assault on the hill and our platoon suffered no casualties, the sight of the dead and torn bodies and wounded men makes me realize that we are only now getting into combat. Besides, my naive sense of fairness makes me question if I should be shooting at people who aren't shooting at me. I adjust the sights for 600 yards, see movement, and fire. Finner is standing behind me, binoculars pressed to his eyes, way low. Raise it up a couple clicks. I nod. We got any tracers? I could see how I am shooting if I had tracers.
No, keep shooting. Let them know we're here. Finner turns and walks away. Conversations dwindle between hole partners. If you have to smoke, you do it under your poncho. Our eyes alternately water and dry out as we strain to see without light. Every few minutes, someone hisses for quiet. It's dark now. I'm afraid. Time drags. It's so dark, we can't see any features of the hill or anything outside our hole. The word has been passed to quit smoking. Even smoke can direct enemy to our positions. Suddenly, they're here. I think I hear the harsh grunting sounds of Korean just before someone fires.
In seconds, everyone is firing. M1s, BARs, machine guns, grenades, and finally, the company mortars from the reverse slope. The only light is the strobe-like muzzle flashes or light from the explosions of grenades and mortar shells. In spite of the constant blast of sound, I think I hear shouting directly below us. "Throw a grenade!" I yell in Brown's ear, pointing out and down from our hole. Instead of whispering, now I have to shout at the top of my voice. He pulls the pin on a fragmentation grenade and flips it up and out. The explosion and screams seem to come at the same time. "Good throw!" I yell again. We fire mostly at sounds. A North Korean officer or non-com shouts and several Americans' guns blast away in that direction of his voice.
Firing brings return fire. A whistle sounds anywhere, somewhere, out in the field, and the invisible enemy still shouting and screaming moves away. A magnesium flare, the first fired in this firefight, exposes a scene of running, stumbling men, in its blue-white light. Finally, mortar shells escort the enemy across the field. My legs are shaking. I don't know when it started, but I'm losing control. I reach down and grip my knees hard. As I press, the trembling eases. I relax a little against the back of our hole. "Stay in your hole! Nobody gets out of his hole! They'll be back!" Sergeant Kraus puts himself in danger by yelling, but he can tell that we're relaxing, getting careless as we begin talking like frightened magpies.
They do come again. Shouting, firing, throwing grenades. We return fire, sometimes firing a full clip at a sound. It seems to Brown and me that the whole effort of the enemy is to knock us out. They're below, they're below our hole, firing, yelling, throwing grenades. We run out of grenades and have to expose ourselves to fire into that bowl-like depression below us. Enemy mortar shells begin falling inside the perimeter. Our own mortars walk shells up the hill toward our positions in an effort to break up the attack. Shrapnel buzzes through the air in front and behind us. We fire and yell curses as if, as if the filthy words will kill where our bullets can't.
They're so close, the silhouettes creep up the sky as they climb toward our holes. We can actually smell the garlic they eat. The enemy penetrates our perimeter on the rear slope, putting us in danger of being overrun. We don't dare fire behind us. We have to trust our men inside the perimeter to protect themselves and our backs. A few bayonets are bloodied as several of the enemy try to take the company CP. The fight continues into the early morning. Before dawn, they retreat again. The screams of wounded and dying take the place of gunfire and exploding shells. It seems an eternity before there's enough light to see.
A blanket of fog forms as dawn breaks, adding to the horror of the scene. GIs leave their holes in spite of the danger. Buddies need help and there aren't enough medics. They look at the wounds, retch and vomit at the sight. Then they do what they can for their comrades.
So that's just pure mayhem. And, um, this guy Ted, he, he's very, and you're gonna see a lot of this, you know, he's talking about how scared he is. He's so scared, he's shaking and he has to physically grab his legs to stop them from shaking. So this is horrifying. 7 September 1951, the sun burns off the fog. The enemy is gone, except for those who died or are still dying on the hill and in the field. The rest of us leave our holes, coughing, stretching, groaning as adrenaline stiffened muscles move grudgingly. The air begins to heat, creating a smell, many smells.
The odor of gunpowder and cordite is as sharp in the nostrils. We have sweated in spite of the cool night air. Our fear adds its distinct odor. Most of us have urinated in our clothes. Some of us lost control of their bowels. Blood is adding to the mixture of odors as it soaks into the ground. From the bodies of our enemies are added the pungent, peculiar odors of unwashed body and garlic. The national body odor of Korea, North and South. Brown and I stretch out on the ground above our hole. We're exhausted. Shudders rattle our limbs as we try to relax. "God, I hope that's the last time we do that." "I don't think I could," Brown groans.
His mind seems unwilling to form the rest of his thought. "I close my eyes. I feel sick. I don't know what I expected, but not this." I croak from a throat still dried by fear and excitement.
A few minutes later, we are moving like old men, checking on our comrades in the holes around us. "We've lost a few more wounded. How long can this company last at this rate?" "I don't know the exact numbers, but I can count. We won't last long if we lose ten or fifteen men every night. The wounded are just as lost to us as the dead." "God, listen to me. These guys are my friends, some I've known for two years. There were a few less than two hundred in King Company when we got here. At this rate, the company will be whittled down pretty fast."
Massive reality check.
And the thing that's really horrifying is the way that the Chinese and the North Koreans attack over and over and over again. And they don't care about casualties. They just keep coming.
8 September 1950.
We peel off our dirty clothes to allow a little air and sun to reach our skin. Washing consists of pouring a cupful of water into a helmet and wetting the corner of a towel to scrub face and hands. It doesn't get rid of much dirt, but it's a great morale booster. "Your legs look awful." Brown shakes his head at the sight of my legs. "They are covered from knee to foot with bloody, pus-filled ulcers. They're getting worse." "I know. Medics call it the crud, the Korean crud." I peel a stained sock from my foot. "They gave me a penicillin shot the other day, but I can't tell if it did any good. Two weeks in this country, it's eaten me from the feet up. It's from too much sweat, having my feet too wet too long and not changing socks often enough.
That's what they tell me. You know how I sweat. I don't think I'll ever be dry." "They ought to send you to the rear until you get rid of them." "Nope. No one leaves the line unless they have battle wounds," I say as I scrub the sores with my filthy socks. "Besides, I don't think there's much rear left."
Two weeks been on the ground.
Just open ulcers on his legs. Again, from the heat. And the reason I emphasize that heat a little bit, because most of the time when people think of the Korean War, they think of the freezing cold.
Which is how they showed up ready to fight in heat.
I'm gonna fast forward here. "My stomach is in a knot all the time. My hands shake, and I want to smoke every chance I get. This awful feeling that a bullet is going to blow my brains out at any second, or worse, a shell will blow me to pieces, never leaves me." "I thought I might just be borrowing trouble until this afternoon. Oh, how I wish I were home with Laura. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember what she looks like, every detail about her. I don't want to take her picture out of its cellophane wrapper. It's almost an insult to expose her to this horrible place. She said in her latest letter that she's probably pregnant." What a wonderful and terrible thing for us. I'll just have to be as careful as I can.
Several hours after dark, the North Koreans come again. We think we hear people moving in the field, bending the bushes below. We're sure it isn't our imagination when we hear the guttural sounds of Korean, probably coming from non-comms ordering their group of men up the hill. As the night before, a group gathers below our position. Someone fires and the fight is on. We fire and they fire. We throw grenades and they throw grenades. Men yell in pain, anger, and fear.
Our company mortars begin firing from the rear slope. We can see the enemy only in the flash of exploding shells and grenades. There seems to be more of them than last night. And they seem to be pressing harder. The piercing whistle blasts and angry shouts and Koreans seem to be orders urging the enemy soldiers up the hill. Over the noise, someone yells for me to fire in front of their position. I can't fire fast enough. I move from one of the end of our hole to the other, firing at sounds. Every few minutes, Brown throws a grenade into a pocket of brush below our foxhole. It's quiet for a short period, then another group gathers below our hole. I think they're trying to find a way to get us. We yell for flares, but none come.
I move to the right side of my hole, firing to my right, across the front of Garry's hole. I'm right-handed, so I put my weight against the front wall, leaning out of the hole more than usual. A figure suddenly fills the sky in front of me. He's only a few feet from my face when he sees me. He swings the barrel of his rifle toward me. He's too close for me to raise my bar without stepping back. All the weight of my, all my weight is against the front wall and my feet are out of position. I let go of the bar trigger and reach for the pistol on my hip. I shove it in the direction and fire. The dark form flies backward down the hill, slinging his rifle away as he disappears in the blackness. My hands shake so hard, I have to use both hands to put the 45 back in its holster.
We curse and yell and fire. Again, the whistles blow and the North Koreans retreat. As they flee across the field, dragging some of their dead and wounded, flares blossom in the sky as if to help them find their way in the darkness. We pray that daylight will come before the enemy tries again. The rule to stay in our foxholes is modified. Medics are quietly announced from hole to hole to treat the wounded. It's dangerous, but that's what these brave men do.
Some of the wounded are easy to find as they scream for help or groan in pain. There are groans and screams coming from the field, too.
The gray light of dawn allows the exhausted men of King Company to see only the dead and dying on the hill and scattered below us on the field. I pull myself out of the hole and scoot along it in a tight squat to make a small target as possible for to any sniper or straggler. I have to see the man I shot with my .45. I've been told that the power of a .45 bullet will throw a charging man backward, even if he's struck in the arm. The dead North Korean lays several yards below Garrity's hole. His head is downhill, arms and legs splayed. There's a black and brown stain in the middle of his sand-colored jacket. His mouth is open in a silent plea, or shout, or curse. I turn him over. The hole in his back is almost as big as my fist.
I stare at the hole and blood oozing up his back. "Good shot," Garrity smiles, a small smile as he crawls from his hole. "Couldn't miss," I turn to my friend. I could well say I didn't dare miss.
One man has been shot at point-blank range by someone in the headquarters section. The wounded trooper had probably left his hole during the firefight and in panic ran toward the crest of the hill. So there's a little blue-on-blue activity. They were super strict about getting out of your hole.
And that's why. Many of the tactics we learned in training are useless. But it's obvious if we haven't learned discipline, we had better learn it soon. None of the training, none of the classes taught anything about fear. That we should expect to lose control of our bladders and bowels, that we would shake all over uncontrollably before, during, and after a firefight. We were told that fear was to be our constant companion, or, sorry, we weren't told that fear was to be our constant companion, a part of each of us, every minute of the day and night. We weren't told that adrenaline would keep us going during the firefight, but leave us aching all over, almost too stiff to move when it stops flowing.
No one ever told us that we were going to have, that we weren't going to have time to grieve for our dead comrades or for ourselves. Yeah, this is like a next level of fear. And horror. Is that you know, you're here, you're stuck on this hill, and you're gonna stay on this hill, and tonight, the Koreans are gonna come, and they're gonna attack. And they're gonna try and kill you and try and overrun your position. And if we make it through tonight, we're doing the same thing the next night. And if we make it through that night, we're doing the same thing that night. This is next level.
I realize there's no time or place when I'll be safe. That's the point. You know, I deploy to Iraq, you come back to base.
Right.
Come back to base, guys are literally playing Halo. Like the video game.
Yeah.
Eating food. There's bunkers. Like you're, you're safe.
Yeah, it's, there's such a massive difference when there's kind of that rest.
Whether it be, you know, I call it rest between sets, you know, where it's like, there's no like light at the end of the tunnel, even for a temporary kind of scenario. It's like night and day as far as the experience goes. So you can't even imagine like in that scenario where it's like the most extreme of scenarios.
Yeah, and even, you know, I've, I've talked about the fact of when, when guys have combat trauma. If guys are on the line for two, three, four days and you start to see it. If you pull them back off the line, they'll recover, they'll be okay.
They, like you're saying, like they just need a little rest between sets.
But when there's no rest between sets.
And it's just redlined, the engine is just redlined, redlined, redlined. This is how you saw World War One guys coming back with shell shock. There's just no relief. You're just gonna sit in this trench. You're exposed to overhead fire when you're in the trench. And by the way, if you make it through the day and avoid getting blown up by artillery, tomorrow morning, you're gonna charge across no man's land into a machine gun nest. Horror.
Yeah, and you're, and every situation, I mean, you know, the fear that he describes where like literally you lose control of yourself physically.
You're literally shitting yourself.
Yeah, and that is what you don't have a rest from that scenario. Yeah, that is, that is next level.
It's next level.
I realize there's no time or place where I'll be safe. I'm gonna have to watch my step, look in all directions at once and never drop my guard. Can I watch where I put my feet while watching every brush, every bush, bush, rock and patty for the enemy? Can I be ready for every shell before it hits with will, will all that be enough? Will I ever get back to Laura? I'm going to have to keep her in a special corner of my memory. I can't let thoughts of her distract me. I will have to pick up the moments carefully so that one misstep that might kill me doesn't happen because I'm dreaming of her. Now all I have to do is figure out how to do that.
That's why I also like the acceptance of death in these situations is very imp. I, I, I guess I use the word important, right? If you're worried that you're gonna die. It's, this is why you're shaking, this is why you're freaking out.
If you kind of say, yeah, you know what? I'm here, I volunteered for this. And I'm, there's, I'm probably gonna die. And that's a huge, I mean, imagine like, um, I'll try and think of, okay, let's say you were gonna take a test in college.
And it was a test that it was gonna be very important for your grade. And you weren't really ready for it.
And you just, one day you go, you know what? I'm just gonna fail this class, I just have to retake it. Like imagine how much that stress is relieved.
Right? When you, when you have something that you're supposed to do and then finally you're like, I can't get it done, it's over. And I'm not doing it.
It's, it's relief.
So when you say, hey, you know what? I, I'm, I'm probably gonna die.
That's okay. That's a, it's, it might sound, it might sound negative, it might sound pessimistic, but man, I'm telling you, for me, it's the solution to this level of fear.
Is just, yep, I'm gonna die.
Do you think that it kind of play, it's this weird kind of dance that your mind would do? I would think, I don't know, then actually is the question where.
Doesn't that? So like, you know, the discomfort that a lot of times these older wars like provide just daily discomfort guys has has lesions and ulcers on his, you know?
You know, and not to mention like, I don't know their food scenario or the hunger, the heat.
He doesn't, he doesn't talk about it much, but I like the food, this is the hunger situation sucks. They do get, because there is like a line, there's a front line. So they do get some meals delivered up to the front. But, you know, it's not great. Let's put it that way.
So you're living in a moment to moment physically uncomfortable scenario, like almost to the point of just living in pain. Essentially.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And then, so wouldn't, if you feared death, wouldn't you be able to, I don't, follow me because I'm trying to figure this out right now. We're in an extreme situation like that where the fear of death will kind of help you push through that pain because you want to live. But if you're like, I'm gonna die anyway, wouldn't it almost like?
Kind of like, hey? Like, almost like not, it's not giving up, but in a way, kind of giving up.
You're right. And he's gonna get into that. He's gonna get into situations where he is like, you know what? It's, I would rather just die right now.
Yeah, because it sucks.
And, and we'll get to, in those moments, the only thing that makes him say, you know what, I'm gonna take one more step is thinking about Laura.
No.
That's the, if he didn't have Laura, he'd be like, well, giving up.
Quitters eyes. You, you, you think about like going through SEAL training? You see guys when they're gonna quit, you see their eyes, they're, they're not gonna do this anymore, whatever the thing is.
Yeah, yeah.
They're not gonna be cold anymore, they're not gonna be wet anymore. Now just imagine that you're, you're so petrified with fear. And like you said, you're suffering physically and you know, their food situation, like I said, it wasn't great. But they did, he talks about sometimes they get hot meals. But I mean, they'll get like one hot meal every two weeks or something like this. I mean, I'm, I don't want to make it sound like it was a comfortable gig. Like they had, you know, good food. No, they're getting junk food, junk, totally physically uncomfortable.
I mean, being in a foxhole is not comfortable. You can't really get comfortable. These guys didn't have ground pads, like even right now. I mean, my whole career, I always had a ground pad with me. I put it, it was, it was in my pack. I could survive for a long time and be with a ground pad. Ground pad's nice. Guys do, they don't have modern, they don't have Gore-Tex. They don't have wicking, uh, wicking PolyPro socks. Yeah.
So yes, they're completely suffering and there are times. And we've, we've covered this with POWs too, where it's like, there's POWs that they're suffering and they'll, they give up and they die because of it. Baton death march. The guy's like looking at people like, oh, he's, he doesn't want to live anymore. He's gonna give up and you're gonna get there. So yes, to your point, I think you have to accept the fact that, oh, yeah, I can be killed. And then at the same time, I'm gonna win and I'm gonna live. You see what I'm saying? It's like, yep, you, and part of the accepting that you can die is, is just accepting that there's things that you're out of, out of your control. Like you might just get shot by a sniper. You might just get hit a roadside bomb and you're dead. You, those things can happen.
Mortar shell comes in, there's, if you get hit with a random mortar shell, there, there's like, that's it. You're walking down the street, you didn't, look, there's times when mortars are close. I've been, I've been mortared where I could, what he's talking about. I heard the mortars going off. You could hear them, and you, I've been where that you could see the sparks from the mortars. And then you go, okay. I was with my buddy Johnny, we're on a rooftop and, and the mortars come, actually I wasn't with him, he was in a different spot, but the, the mortars, we hear the thong, thong, thong, and Johnny comes up on the radio goes, that's three boys, count them out. I, he was freaking out, but because you wanna, you hear them get launched and now when three
explosions go, okay, now I can check and see what's going on, but he, I, I'll never forget him coming on the radio going, that's three boys, count them out. He's all freaking out, Johnny, Johnny was getting after it, but. Having that, yep, yep, I can get killed by a random thing. And I gotta accept that, but I'm gonna do what I can to, and I think you really kinda have to just focus on the mission. Cause if you focus on your own safety.
Part of your safety is the mission, but if you're like, I don't wanna move right now because I might step on a landmine. Well, that could be at any single step that you take. So therefore you're now not moving. So you have to be like, look, I'm gonna carry out the mission, but I'm going to accept the, the fact that I may die. Very strange place.
I know, I know for me, like I just thought, yep, I can die. That can happen. That's, that's one of those things. And it, and if it is, it's gonna be random. It's gonna be random. Like it's gonna be a roadside bomb. It's gonna be a sniper. Just gonna, I'm just gonna be dead. And that's the way it is. But I'm gonna fight and I wanna pay attention and I'm gonna do my best to carry out my mission. And we'll see what happens.
If you get in that mode of like kinda what he talks about, like a full survival mode. I believe that's very tough to deal with in combat. If you're, if your primary mission is your personal safety. It's, I, I believe that's very difficult to deal with in combat because nothing makes sense. When it comes to personal safety, like you're going outside the wire, that doesn't make sense for your personal safety. You're, you're doing something that doesn't make sense for you to live.
So speaking of comfort. It is so hot, back to the book. It is so hot. There is no cooling from the rain. Just clinging clothes and wetness. Everything is wet after two days of rain. Our boots are beginning to mold inside. It's hard to save anything, especially cigarettes, matches, paper. I'm losing Laura's letters almost as fast as I get them. They turned to mush in a few days.
Fast forward a little bit. A short metallic scream from directly overhead announces the arrival of the first enemy mortar shell to drop on our hill. Brown and I dive into our hole and squat there. Every shell lands nearby, makes us flinch as we try to grind our bodies into the earth. Dirt and shrapnel strike one side of the hole, then the other. Pieces of hot steel bounce off the side of our hole, dropping on our fatigues and on the back of our hands, scorching our clothes and skin. So think about that, you're getting mortared and hot shrapnel is landing on you and burning you. A close hit makes a buzzing sound like a swarm of angry bees as shrapnel flies over our heads.
At the explosion of every shell, I know, even as I try to squeeze myself into nothing, I know I'm going to be hit. I alternate between praying, "Get it with, oh, get it quick, get it over with quick with a direct hit and please let it be a million dollar wound and get me out of here." Even as I will the next shell to land somewhere else. As I try to control my bladder and my bowels, I have to control my panic too. The urge to get away from the screaming crack of death that accompanies each exploding shell, followed by buzzing knives of shrapnel, is almost uncontrollable. Time is our worst enemy. As the barrage continues, it becomes harder not to jump out of the hole and run. The pressure gets unbearable.
Logic and panic say, "Run, get away from here and hide somewhere by yourself where the shells can't find you." We shout, we curse, we whimper. Brown and I grab and hold on to each other. Our helmets are solidly clamped together as we shout to each other and curse everyone and everything. There is no false bravery between us. We don't mind sharing our fear. In some ways, I'm closer to Brown than anyone. We are closer than blood brothers. How many shells and grenades can land near us without ever landing in our hole? When the shelling finally ends, we sit up. The first thing we do is get ready to smoke. Once again, my adrenaline and fear leave us weak. My hands shake as I light my, my pipe. He smokes a pipe.
I forgot to mention that. I didn't read that section. Names are shouted from one hole to another as we check on each other. Shells continue to fall, often enough to harass us and keep us in our holes. Every few minutes, one of us raises up to check the area for a possible attack.
So this indirect fire thing. A mortar or artillery. What it does is it shoots. Very high into the air. So it's a high angle. So it shoots, you know, sixty, seventy, eighty degrees up. So when it's coming down, it's for all practical purposes, it's coming straight down. Which me and then when it hits the ground and explodes.
The blast goes up and away from the point of impact, up and away. So if you're in a hole. And the if you and I were in a hole, in a foxhole, like a like, let's say a five by five little hole, six by six little hole. The the mortar can hit one foot away from it and we're fine. Well, it makes noise. We're rattled. If it goes in the hole, we're dead. So it's like you're either fine or you're dead.
You're either fine or you're dead. So and by the way, the way they shoot mortars, they're not a.
They're not a a a point accuracy weapon. They're meant to you can it's it's more like shooting a shotgun. Like you're gonna shoot ten, twenty, thirty. In these cases, hundreds of rounds of artillery and mortars. So you're sitting in there. And all you can do. Is hope. That one of these doesn't land exactly in your hole. And if none of them land in your hole, you're fine. You're a hundred percent fine. And if one of them lands in your hole, you're dead. Or you're gravely wounded, gravely wounded. And those, depending on the size of the mortar. A lot of times when people think of fragmentation, maybe it's because the word we think of fragments, right?
We think of little tiny things, think a little tiny things like the size of your your your maybe like your pinky nail. Like your your fingernail on your pinky. Think of that's what you think of a fragment, right?
I saw pieces of fragmentation. That were they're like the size of a freaking subway sandwich. And all gnarly and sharp and evil.
Metal.
So it's not these little like fragmentation when you get up to 120 millimeter mortar. That thing is throwing out giant knives, like thick evil knives in all directions.
Yeah, I remember one time you told me that and I could, I imagine like something that kind of the density of like a big hammer. Like you get to like a steel hammer, but sharp and probably hot too, I would imagine.
Totally hot and sharp. The weird part is sharp, but then again, it's like metal is ripped apart. It's not melted apart, it's ripped apart. So when you rip apart metal, it's jagged.
Like you, you ever been working with sheet metal and you just cut yourself while you're working with sheet metal? It's just super sharp.
Well, mine was more of an aluminum can, but yeah, yeah, sure. Same thing though. You ever, and I'm not gonna do it, but there's this trick we used to do when we were little. And you do this thing, you go with aluminum can. Anyway, you press it and then you can kind of take out, take off the top of an aluminum can. If you don't do it right, you'll slip or maybe cut or it'll like puncture too quickly and you'll just cut deep cut. I have it's happened a few times, but anyway, to your point, yes, but not aluminum. We're talking big steel hammer size. Like five, five pounds.
Just hucking through the air. It's a freaking nightmare and that's what these guys are putting up with. And it's, it's just hoping that this thing, and by the way, you wake up in the morning and you know, you had nine holes and two of them got hit. And you lost six guys or whatever. You lost four guys. That's what happened. And by the way, we're gonna do that again tonight.
Back to the book. Daylight comes slowly. I thought I was going to be, I thought it was going to be an ordinary day. Even though I've been shot at, shelled, and I've killed a man up close, I thought I was still a young man with a bright future. Today I became an old man. Today I began to die.
Lieutenant Brown is sitting, and there's a little bit of confusion in this book because he's got Muriel Brown, who's a corporal, who's his buddy, and then there's a Lieutenant Brown. And he calls him Brown. I'll try and remember to call them either Lieutenant Brown or Corporal Brown. But back to the book here. Lieutenant Brown is sitting near his hole at the platoon CP. Eight other men are standing close by. Malou is one of them. We exchange nods and squat together waiting. Love Company is gonna take that hill. Lieutenant Brown points towards hill 174. You're gonna provide supporting fire from that hill. He points to another hill, actually a knob on top of a hill several hundred yards to our north of our position. The two hills are connected by a saddle. This is a classic cover move. So you got one element,
Love Company is gonna actually go up the hill to assault it, and their company is going to be on another hill, another knoll, and provide cover fire as they go in. This is cover move.
So now, fast forward a little bit, they get set up. We get a glimpse of Love Company in the valley. They're forming long skirmish lines in the creek bed screened from us, screened from the North Koreans by trees and bushes. The shelling of hill 174 ends abruptly. So that's what, that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna hit him with artillery. Hill 174, you hit it with artillery and mortars. So that gets the, the enemy's heads down. That allows these guys to get in position, Love Company get in position to start to assault the hill. And these guys are, are doing this from the supporting position, the base position, watching and getting ready to put down gunfire. On Sergeant Larson's command, the machine gun and my BAR begin a
tattoo of short bursts. We can't see the enemy troops, so we fire in the places where they've been digging near the crest of the hill. We lose sight of Love Company as they move through the trees and start to climb. Machine guns and BARs on King's Company's hill join in. Mortar rounds begin falling on the enemy. Smoke makes it hard to find targets. We've been firing for a few minutes when suddenly a mortar shell lands just below our position. Within a few seconds, another lands above us near the top of the knob. Two shells and the North Korean mortar men have our range. Have I explained that to you? Have I explained how you, how you, how you bracket somebody? Okay, so like I said, mortars are not a pinpoint accuracy weapon.
So what you do is something called bracketing and it's, it's math. It's basically math. So I shoot one and the first one goes long. And then I'll overcompensate a little bit. The second one will go short and the third one's gonna get you. Yeah, what's it called bracketing? Bracketing. Bracketing. And so what he says right here. Within a few seconds, so suddenly a mortar shell lands just below our position. On the hill. Within a few seconds, another lands above us. Yeah. So you know. This is a freaking nightmare. Two shells in the North Korean mortar men have us, have our range. And by the way, a lot of times. They'll range, like you'll set a mortar up and you'll, you'll make down a range card. We're like, okay, the mortar in this position.
To hit the top of that hill right there, here's the settings. Yeah, yeah, it's like a. Pre-designated fire positions. You ever play Battleship back in the day? Wait, I think it's called Battleship, right? That's like E4. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. Same deal. Yep. It's crazy.
Bracketing in Battleship. The next round will almost certainly land somewhere in between where bracketed. It takes a good mortar squad, squad to find the range that quickly. Shells are landing faster than I can count. The noise blasts our ears and our nerves. The angry buzz of shrapnel is everywhere. And what's scary about this is. You're not supposed to be in the fight. When you're in a supporting position like this, the goal is. You're just kinda out of the fight, putting down suppressive fire on the enemy while the assault team moves in. This shouldn't even be happening.
There's no way we can give support to Love Company now. We can't even raise our heads to look. Somehow the North Korean mortar men have zeroed in on our five foxholes with pinpoint accuracy. I'll bet the enemy mortar men registered this knob as a possible target. That's exactly what I just said. Every shell is falling within a few feet of our shallow holes. We can only crouch down and wait to die. Sergeant Larson is in a hole at the center of our position. Get out, behind the hill, he screams over the roar of exploding shells. The men in the hole on my left scramble out and race behind the hill. Brown and I are next. We jump up and run full out behind the knob and fall to the ground, sucking gulps of great air. Malul and Sergeant Larson should be next. The last four men run for us. One is slightly wounded.
Sergeant Kraus, my squad leader, is the ranking NCO until Sergeant Larson can get away from the mortar barrage. I guess they waited to be last. Go, back to the company, move, Kraus waves his arm to include everybody. I turn in the direction where I expect Malul and Sergeant Larson to come from. Maybe they're waiting for a lull in the shelling. Kraus gives me a push and I trot toward our hill and the platoon CP. I drop to the ground again and unhook my ammunition belt. I'm exhausted and still trying to catch my breath. I watch for Malul. The shelling stops. Malul and Larson should be in sight. Sergeant Kraus squats in front of me. He knows that Malul and I are friends. Malul and Larson won't be coming. They're dead. That's silly, I squeal. I saw them when I jumped from my hole.
They should have started right behind Brown and me. I try and stand. Kraus puts his hand to my chest to hold me back. Kraus's hand is shaking and his voice quivers as he leans against my chest. A shell must have landed right in front of them as they stood up. There's nothing left. My brain seems to explode. I jump to my feet. I have to get him. We can't leave him out there. Sorson and Garrity grab me. Their arms tighten and a hard embrace as I struggle. Both of them shout something in my ears, but I don't know what it is. I roar, my anger and grief from deep in my soul as I slip toward the edge of madness. They hold me until I quit struggling. Malul, my friend. I don't know when the firing on Hill 174 stops.
I sit on the ground surrounded by Garrity, Brown, and Old Man. Old Man is a South Korean soldier that's with them.
I don't know what I feel, other than my chest hurts and my throat is dry. Just before dark, a detail is sent to get Malul and Sergeant Larson. I get up to help. Garrity and Brown hold me again. Malul is gone. He was a hard-nosed eighteen-year-old kid molded by the streets. He wanted everyone to believe he was tough. He was somber and pessimistic most of the time, but he had bloomed like a rose this spring when he fell in love with a girl from Pueblo, named Wanda. Laura and I had double-dated with them. We had even introduced that city boy to horseback riding. It's getting dark. It's raining.
Artie is shelling the gooks on Hill 174. Damn you, Malul. What am I going to tell your mother?
Fifteen September, nineteen fifty. Love Company's attack failed. They had heavy casualties. I don't remember much about last night, except that Malul is dead. I think I was in some kind of shock. I feel different. I feel as if I'll never laugh again.
Or maybe I feel as if there will never be anything to laugh about.
Malul, Ike, Garrity, and I have been in the same platoon since we joined the Army.
I think he felt about his girl in Pueblo the way I feel about my Laura. And oh, how he loved his mother. Now he's gone. Sergeant Finner reminds us to clean our weapons and get more ammo and grenades at the CP. This afternoon, King Company will get its turn trying to take Hill 174.
So you watch Love Company. You see them take massive casualties. You see them fail to take the hill. And what are you doing the next night? You're gonna go try and take that hill.
We move and fast forward. They move towards this, uh, starting point. Same thing. Heading to the hill. The artillery stops. The hill is just mud from the rain.
And they get there. There is no sign of life at the top of the hill. There's still hope. Maybe the enemy has been hurt enough in the bombardments and fighting for this hill that they have just given up. Maybe the artillery and mortars have killed most of them. Then the first enemy mortar shell lands about halfway down the hill and I know it's gonna be a fight. Shells fall faster. The explosions shake the ground and shrapnel buzzes around us. Some bigger pieces zip by. They ping on rockets and helmets and splat in the flesh and mud. A piece of, a piece ricochets off my helmet and rings like a high pitched bell in my ears. Our skirmish line disappears. I lose Brown and Old Man.
We soon become small clusters of men trying to stay alive by staying close to someone else who is still alive. Every time we rush forward to a tree or rock, we leave behind men. Some are dead and some are wounded. A few just quit and decide to stay where they are. The South Koreans fall behind, confused and totally out of it. We keep slipping and falling. Mud jams our weapons. Oh God, I'm scared. Don't go too fast. Stay in line so we get together. I hear whoever is near. I yell to whoever is near. I know I'm going to die. The knot in my stomach is going to drag me down to the ground. There's the first grenade. Did it, did it get anybody? Our mortars have quit.
Now they're gonna come out of their holes and spray us like bugs. There's one, he's throwing a grenade. Shoot, kill him. My God, look at them. Fire, fire, fire. Hit the dirt. The only part of the enemy we can see is their arms as they loft grenades up and away from their positions. They throw them as soon as they have armed them. By the time the grenade rolls down the hill, it explodes among us. Machine gun fire. Hand grenades exploding. I wet myself. Bullets zipping. A thump. The guy on my left is hit. Stay down.
I can't find most of the squad. Somehow, a few of us are way off to the right, separated from the rest of the company. The South Koreans with us are scared worse than we are. They've quit climbing and are laying nearly at the bottom of the hill. They began shooting over our heads. "What are those crazy gooks doing? They'll kill us all. Get up here and fight. Get up here!" I shout as I wave my arm. They ignore me. Shrapnel buzzes. Bullets zip. My BAR jams. I've let mud get in the receiver. I lay on my side, kicking the bolt with the side of my foot. Garrity is having to do the same with his M1. Kick the bolt, fire, kick, fire. I dig my pouch for a grenade. I have to stand so I can get enough power in my throw to
get it past the mound of rocks and dirt that is the enemy's breastwork. We don't want it to come rolling back down on us. I pull the pin, release the handle, and push myself up on one knee. The grenade has a seven-second delay fuse. After I count four seconds, I put all my strength into the straight arm throw that seems to work best for me. If I don't get it past the breastwork, maybe it'll explode before it gets back to us. It lands behind the North Koreans' bank of earth. We crawl toward that spot. A grenade comes rolling down toward our group of GIs to our left. Bam! Screaming, another man hit. Garrity's on my right. Sorensen lays behind him. A couple yards farther to the right are Sergeant Finner and Lieutenant Brown. I reach over Garrity and hit Sorensen's leg.
"Ask Lieutenant what we should do!" I yell. "He's dead!" Sorensen screams. I can barely hear it above the noise. I yell even louder. "Where's Finner?" "He's dead too!" Sorensen screams again. I push my voice to the limit. "You sure?" He doesn't answer me. I reach over Garrity and shake Sorensen's boot. He doesn't move. I shout again, this time to Garrity. "Garrity, tell Sorensen..." Garrity is cursing his rifle as he pushes it down towards his foot so he can cook the bolt. "You..." I hear a pop and the sight of Garrity's head erupts.
It erupts all over me. His brains and blood cover my face and glasses. I can't see anything. I pull my glasses off. There are pink and red splotches all over my glasses and my shoulder. I wipe with my, I wipe my face with my hand. It's all over me. Oh God, no, Garrett is dead. I'm next. Lieutenant Brown, Sergeant Finner, Sorson, all dead. I don't dare raise up to throw another grenade. More North Korean grenades roll down the hill. Bam, bam, kick the bolt, fire, kick, fire, kick, fire. Where is everybody? They're bugging out. I could see men to my left running down the hill toward the stream and the trees. I raise up to take one more look around. I know Garrett is dead. No one near me is
moving. I start down the hill, angling to the left to find the company. I find Ike and Brown in the woods. Let's go, I yell. They're all dead up there.
Now we're going back. Now we're going to get it in the back. Bullets splat, splat, near my feet. They're getting our range. Ike and I are passing on the other side of a man shot through the neck. We don't see a word as we scoop him up and drank, drape his arms over our shoulders. Into the gully, run, there's a big drop. We jump off a six foot drop and land on the run and keep going toward the creek. We hide behind the bank. Bullets make small eruptions in the wet earth or sing off rocks in the air. Branches fall. We run down the stream bed. Several GIs stop us under a bridge and relieve us of the wounded man. A bridge. We, we ran all the way to the road we left several days ago to walk into our first firefight.
I can't get my breath. My heart's going to pound out of my chest. My head hurts. I fall into grass growing in the stream bed. I'm too tired to move. I think I'm gonna be sick. Oh God, am I still alive? Was I a coward? Would the rest of state if I did?
The sun sets behind Hill 174. I sit in a hole in the forward slope of the hill we started from. I don't remember how I got here. I have my BAR and a few grenades. My homie is the old man. My mind slows slowly works through a fog of exhaustion. I hope I'm dreaming. King Company didn't take Hill 174. I know of two dead and at least two wounded in our squad of nine.
Three of five close friends are dead. Everyone in the headquarters section of our platoon is dead. Casualties are so heavy, only the front flanks of our hill are manned. Most of our new South Korean fellow soldiers survived. Each GI is paired with a South Korean for the night. My position is at the left end of the forward slope. The hole to my left is empty. All the holes on the backside of the hill are empty. There just aren't enough men to cover the backside of that hill. I think nearly half of the company is gone. If the North Koreans get behind us tonight, we'll just have to fight back to back.
I'm angry and afraid. I'm about to lose my mind. The men I trusted have been taken from me.
I grieve for our men and for myself. How many more of my friends are gone? I shiver with cold fatigue and fear. I don't expect any of us to live through the night. It will be the longest night of my life.
I think about Laura. I have to. I said I wouldn't unless I was safe, but I must concentrate on her now or I'll lose my mind.
Fear and despair nearly overcome me. There's nothing I can do to save myself. Shivering with cold and fear, I begin shaking all over. I'm sure that I'll be dead before morning. I don't think I can stay awake and I'm convinced the North Koreans will attack or infiltrate our positions and cut our throats.
That's one of those situations where
you
you really want to,
you know, from a leadership perspective,
look at the scenario. And if we sent a company up to take that hill and it didn't work, what are we gonna do different? Because it didn't work what we just did. Just doing it again, doesn't seem like the greatest call.
And obviously, it doesn't work out well. And now they've lost even more guys. And now here they are. Going back to the book, the night has been so long, it has been, it has to be near dawn. And by the way, the name of this book is Waiting for the Blessed Light of Dawn. The way this war went, the the communists would attack at night and the Americans would attack in the day. That's the way the war was. I think I actually messed that up when I said, we're gonna attack the hill tonight.
The Americans are doing daytime attack and the enemy is doing nighttime attack. So going back to the book, the night has been so long, it has to be near dawn. I chew tobacco and rub the juice into my eyes. The pain is terrible. I hope it will keep me awake. It won't matter if I ruin my eyes, especially if I'm dead. I spend much of the night figuring out a way to get off the hill and home. I pray. I make a bargain with God. It's a bargain I repeat over and over again. Lord, please let me live. If you let me live through this night, I'll do anything. I'll be good for the rest of my life. I know I'm praying like a child, but I have nothing else to offer God.
Even though I think that the prayer many times, even though I think that prayer many times, I'm convinced I'm going to have to shoot myself in the foot to help God save me. I will claim an accident and be taken away from this forever. Even as I make that decision, I worry that I might cut an artery and not be able to stop the bleeding. There's little chance for a medic to come to me in the dark, but how else am I going to get out of here? Other men have done it. I don't know for certain which were accidents and which were deliberate. One of my friends walked into a bayonet. His leg was cut so badly, he was sent home. A G.I. in another platoon shot himself through both legs with
his 45 caliber pistol. If that wasn't accident, wasn't an accident, he was real stupid. He's going to be a cripple, maybe even an amputee. Another guy dropped a large rock on his foot. I'm sure he did it on purpose because he told me when we, when we were still aboard the ship on the day I made corporal, that as soon as he made corporal, he was going to figure out a way to get home. He made corporal a few days before he crushed his foot. I thought of another person who was a friend. Bergstrom and I had been together since basic training, two years. We were in the same squad. As we lined up in the creek bed, ready to attack Hill 174, he fell on his knees. He cried. He claimed he couldn't
climb. He couldn't even stand. I watched with disgust and fear as Sergeant Finner demanded that he stand and do his duty. Bergstrom hunkered lower and lower. His helmet touched the ground as he cried and rocked on his knees, begging Sergeant Finner not to make him climb the hill. For a few seconds, I thought Sergeant Finner was going to shoot him. The attack was starting. Lieutenant Brown was supposed to lead the platoon and Finner was supposed to push from the rear. Our platoon leader started up the hill. The rest of us, except for Bergstrom, followed him. In the hell of that afternoon and evening, I forgot Bergstrom. Brown came to my hole just before dark to check if I was all right. He told me that Bergstrom had been taken to Captain Kirfman. He begged the captain
not to put him back on the hill. He was sent to work with the mess crew.
I hate Bergstrom for his cowardice and betrayal of us. It makes all the fun we had together and all the work we did together seem fake, a show, useless somehow. He wasn't really our buddy, he wasn't even our friend. All that passed between us is no longer has any value. All those men dead, every one of them better than Bergstrom. I trusted him. He was included in all of the platoon's activities, on duty and off. He was one of us, trained to fight and taught to protect his buddies. But when the chips were down, he had failed, me and everyone in the platoon. He broke the cord that binds us together.
He broke the cord when it had to be its strongest in combat. Why can't I do that? I'll just tell Captain I can't take it anymore, I'm going crazy. Look at the friends I've lost, Bergstrom got away with it, maybe I can. Ideas race in and out of my head, as fast as one forms, I reject it, another one takes place. I point the barrel of my BAR at my foot. I know better than to use my .45, it will blow most of my foot away. Just before I pull the trigger, I decide to wait awhile, until more time has passed and it's closer to dawn. I watch and listen, old man sleeps on the corner of his hole. Occasional shells fall on Hill 174.
They're meant to harass the North Koreans, but they're probably more successful at keeping us, keeping me jumping awake. I stand in my hole, turning this way and that, as it sounds real and imagined. I set my BAR in front of me, prepared to fight. Then as fear blots out reason, I rest it on my foot, determined that I've got a round through my foot, that a round through my foot is my only chance to live. I decide to wait until sunrise, when I know I can be evacuated.
Fog comes with the dawn.
For some reason, the dawn, or the brain jarring noise, or my own inability to hurt myself, causing me to forget about deliberately shooting myself. Maybe it's all those dead men. I can't be like Bergstrom. I have to go on like my buddies would have if I were dead, and they weren't. Of nine men in my squad, only four left.
I'm still miserable. I still think I'm going to die. In fact, I believe we are all going to die. We'll be sent uphill 174 again and again, until every one of us is dead in the mud.
Just...
That's the level. And, and you know what's interesting is, there's a whole section in About Face where Hackworth's thinking about doing the same thing. Like, "I just want to get out of here." I think Hackworth was digging a hole to toss a grenade into so he could partially wound himself. And he spends all night digging this hole, in his foxhole, like a little, a little depression that he's carving into his foxhole, so he can wound himself and not kill himself, but get out of there. Spends all night doing it. It's the same, it's, it's almost the exact same story. Because in the morning, when the sun comes up, he's like, "Alright." It's like, the, the moment of weakness has passed.
But where are you at when you're getting ready to shoot yourself with a B A R in the leg?
It's also, I, I found it very interesting, the way he spends, whatever, two paragraphs talking about hating Bergstrom. And, and then he's like, "Well, maybe I can do it too." That's, that's where his mind's at. Think about where your mind's at when that's going on. Like, you're, you're saying you hate this person, and you're like, "But I'll do it too." "Maybe I should do that. I can just go tell the boss I'm, I'm going crazy."
Back to the book. Sometime during the late afternoon, noon, shelling stops and P-51 Mustangs strafe the hill. Then they napalm it. Then artillery strikes takes over again. We watch in awe and fear as the pounding continues hour after hour. As night falls, there's no let up. Brown and I have decided to take turns standing guard. He will be awake in his hole at the same time. My whole mate is supposed to be on guard. He had trouble keeping his Korean buddy awake, too. Every time I wake, I find old man sleeping. Hitting or kicking him awake is the routine now. I don't enjoy it a bit. I'm not even angry anymore, but I can't let him or the rest of the Koreans think that they can sleep on guard at any other time like they feel like. I pound him awake again.
The Korean soldiers are not doing great.
Seventeen September, nineteen fifty. The blessed light of dawn has finally come. I pray for the dawn so we can stop killing and dying for a few hours. I'm beginning to have mixed feelings about the rest of the day, though. The North Koreans usually come out us after dark, so the night is a continuous terror even as we wait for them. We attack in the daytime, so that's when we prepare to die. If we're lucky enough to live through the day, we have to prepare once again for the night with its terror. The shelling of Hill 174 continues. We move around with our heads between our shoulders, waiting for the next explosion. A short round in the valley or on the holes of the forward slope of our hill sends us scrambling for our holes. It's about noon.
We've just been told to pack up. We're moving out. I knew it. We're going to join our dead friends on that steep, bloody hill. Item Company tried it. Love Company lost half its men on Hill 174. We tried it and failed. There have been at least seven separate Company assaults. Now King Company is going to try again. Six green kids lay on that cargo hatch a few days from war. Three weeks and four firefights later, three of the six are dead. What chance have the survivors got? This attack may finish the rest of the Company. I close my combat pack and roll my poncho on top. I fill my pockets with essentials: candy, C rations, letters from Laura, pipe, tobacco.
Most important is a pair of dry socks in my pocket. My gas match, my gas mask pouch is filled with fragmentation grenades.
We form up in the creek bed with the rest of King Company and get ready to assault Hill 174 again.
Fast forward.
I climb, bathed in sweat, while my teeth chatter as if I'm freezing. There's no sound or movement from the crest of the hill. All I can hear is our labored breathing and occasional curse from someone losing his footing in the mud. Fifteen minutes later, we're on top of Hill 174. As I climb over the bank of dirt and rock the enemy built, I enter a world of unbelievable slaughter. Bodies of North Korean soldiers, most or only parts of bodies are scattered everywhere. Limbs have been torn and severed from men and flung in all directions. Torsos are split and their contents strung on the ground. Over boxes and destroyed weapons, heads are crushed or blown apart as if they've exploded. Much of the flesh on the body parts is burned.
The sickly sweet smell of roasted human flesh fills my nostrils.
The scene is too horrible for words. How much more are we going to live through before we go mad? Our brains have trouble accepting the way what our eyes see, but we're unable to look away. We stand and stare.
I begin to feel lightheaded as I get close to the bodies of my friends and our platoon sergeant. I think I'm going to be sick. All three bodies have been stripped of some of their clothing. Their weapons and boots are gone. I take a deep breath and look closer. Maggots are working their wounds.
Our platoon leader isn't with the rest of the dead. Where's Lieutenant Brown? I croak. He was right over there. I point with a shaking finger. He's alive. He was found when they were checking the bodies, Sergeant Fisk says quietly. Oh, no, another mistake. I was the ranking unwounded man in the area and I panicked. I should have crawled over Sorensen and checked Sergeant Finner and Lieutenant Brown. I should have checked each man before I bugged out. A wounded man was left alive on that hill for two days. He'd lived through that terrible bombardment, the shells and the flames. Had some of the others been alive when I ran down the hill to safety? Sergeant Fisk continues, "We don't know who these other are's." "Who these other are." "Their dog tags are gone."
"My legs feel rubbery, so I squat down a few feet uphill from Garrity and Sorensen." "Most of Garrity's face is gone." "I can tell that the other body is gray." "The other body with the gray face is Sorensen." "That's Sergeant Finner," I explained patiently, pointing to the body on the left. "That's Sorensen in the middle, that's Garrity."
"I point to each body in turn, it's hard to breathe." "Something sour and green is rising up deep inside me." "I feel like light-headed again." "They'll all have to be listed as missing." "They can't be identified," Sergeant Fisk turns away. "I can identify them Sergeant," I cry as he turns back and starts up the hill. "He turns again, putting his hands on his hips." "No, only an officer can identify bodies without dog tags or other ID."
"I begin pleading as if I'm begging for their lives." "I point at the sickening body without a face that had been my friend." "Sergeant, I can identify Garrity." "He was talking to me when he got hit." "This is his blood all over my jacket." "I pull at my brown-spouted lapel." "I want to say 'brains,' but it won't come out." "My voice is rising, I'm breathing faster." "I want to grab First Sergeant and shake him." "I want to make him believe me for my sake as much as theirs." "I was there when they died." "Sergeant, this is PFC Garrity." "We were together a long time, we were buddies." "My voice is nearly burned away by the raw juices that rise from my stomach and spill over into my throat." "His hands drop to his side." "If you can get an officer to identify the bodies that'll be listed as killed in action." "Otherwise, they're missing."
When Lo- he's still having thoughts, obviously, about his wife. "When Laura and I married, I thought life was going to be great. We had finished my service in the Army and enjoyed being with our friends until I was discharged. Then to Texas and our wonderful future. Now we're separated by a half a world and I'm no longer an insecure boy. Now, I'm a frightened, tired, filthy, soul-sick killer who's been seen, who has seen most of his friends die and is convinced that he is going to die too. Even the news of the Marines landing at Incheon doesn't raise my spirit."
So I mentioned that, or when we started, that landing at Incheon took place and he was obviously in the midst of that and starts hearing rumors of that happening. And, um, they start to, they start to move. Thankfully, once they take that hill and they've taken all those casualties, they start to move. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. He says, "We are now part of a flying column racing towards Seoul to link up with the Marines and the 7th Division pushing south from Seoul. A layer of filth is accumulating on my body. My skin is dried and cracked. Every crevice is filled with dirt. Not just dust, but black dirt mixed with body oil and sweat. I don't shave or wash very often. Water's too precious. Sores have appeared wherever my clothes or equipment rubs against my skin.
My feet are blistered. I change socks as often as I can, but I have to use the same two pair over and over. They are stiff and dirty because I can't wash them. When it rains, both pair get wet. Finally, the socks begin to disintegrate. The ulcer on my right ankle has eaten its way down to the bone. I pack it with toilet paper. Dust now adds to my misery." Yeah, you talked about comfort. I mean, bro, we wash our clothes every day.
Yes.
Like, I have, since I retired from the military, I have only worn a pair of socks for one day. And by the way, wa- and when I'm wearing socks, I'm like going to the airport, talking to someone. He's got, he's got two pairs of socks. He's two months deep right now.
Fast forward during this column, but I'm gonna fast forward a bit. The column stops for a break. Flank guards are sent out both sides of the road. Someone finds bodies of 15 or 20 Americans lying in a roadside ditch. They have probably been there for two months or more. They are nearly reduced to clothed skeletons. I walk over to look. Curiosity and I hope caring bring me and the others to the edge of the ditch. None of the bodies have boots or dog tags. They are lying close to each other and even on top of one another. Someone leans down as he realized these are not ordinary casualties. My God, these guys have their hands tied behind their backs.
Men soon lie in the ditch. Each of the skeletons has communication wire tied around his wrists. They've been shot in various places. Some probably died slowly. Damn them. I'll get an officer. Brown growls as he turns away. As we drive northward, many American dead are found. There are many. There may have been hundreds who surrendered and were shot after being tied. We bounce along on our tanks or trucks and curse the enemy. How could they do that? That's cold blooded murder. They didn't have a chance. They must have thought they were safe with their hands tied. It didn't look like any of them even tried to run. One by one, we offer an opinion and even try to devise reasons for what we've seen. I guess they couldn't decide what to do with our guys.
Maybe there was only one gook on guard and he panicked. Sure, sure. Those guys were real dangerous like that, tied up. They don't plan to take prisoners. Well, I'm not taking prisoners either. No prisoners? Hell, no.
Classic escalation of war. You execute a bunch of our soldiers. It's not gonna go well for you either.
27 September, 1950. One day at a time, I'm becoming a different person.
I'm no longer moved by much of anything. Then today dawned, the miracle of miracles. It's been a month since we landed at Pusan, except for a few dips in the creek near the artillery battery. We've, we have seldom washed ourselves. We dismount our trucks in the middle of a regular camp. Our company mess crew has set up the kitchen. Huge shower tents are waiting for us. We line up in platoon formation and wait. This time, we don't mind. We lay against our packs, smoke, write letters, nap, do nothing, and try to believe we don't have to worry about mortars, snipers, or attacks. I can't believe what I'm seeing. I'm under a roof for the first time in weeks. So what if it's canvas? Pipes are tied just above head height and showerheads placed at intervals in the pipe. I shed all my clothes near the door. I look at my body and get the shock of my life.
I've lost a lot of weight, but more frightening is the condition of my skin. My feet are covered with blisters. My right ankle has a large infected ulcer, oozing pus. I can see the white of my bone. Both legs are covered with open ulcers between my ankles and knees. The rest of this, my skin is layered with crust of dirt, body oils, and sweat. Every crack and crevice is filled with oil filth. Oily filth. There are raw spots wherever my clothes or harness rub against my skin. My broken glasses are gouging a hole in my nose. The sun has blackened my head, neck, and hands. I wait in line with my fellow scarecrows, clutching my razor and soap, soap. Standing behind and in front of men, in front of me
are men who look enough like me to be my twin. Once I get used to the sting of soap and water on my skin, I scrub with my rough hands until most of the dirt has flowed from my body and through the pallet floor. I allow enough, enough hot water, yes, hot water, to wash away some of the fatigue, fear, and grief. On leaving the shower tent, we enter another tent where we are allowed to choose clothes and replace the rotting mess we dropped when we entered. Clean clothes, new clothes, two pair of clean socks. What more could we ask for? Before this day of miracles ends, we have mail call, sick call, and two hot meals.
Heading back out into the field. They're back out in the field now. I'm fast forwarding. Somehow a few replacements catch up with us. So as you're losing guys, you're getting replacements. These are new guys. I have no idea what's going on. I'm given fourth squad. I'm promoted to sergeant. Or I'll be promoted sergeant. I'm glad for the promotion, but I'm happy, but I'm not too happy about the added responsibility. I'll miss living with Brown. So he's not talking about Lieutenant Brown. He's talking about his buddy Brown. We were a good team. Brown and I found that we could depend on each other no matter what's happening. It's going to be tough not to have Brown's strong back and heart to help me through the tough times. And he's also no longer a BAR gunner. I loved my BAR like she was a woman.
When possible, I cleaned her morning and evening. I kept her muzzle covered and sheltered from hot weather or from the weather. I slept with one hand on her stock or held her in my arms. I can disassemble and assemble her in the dark. As the most essential things I carry, I have a pocket, I have in my pocket, small pieces of rag and a can of oil to keep her bright and oiled the inside and out. She was always ready to do her duty when I needed her. The only time she failed me was when I allowed mud to get into her receiver. I vowed never again to let any of my weapons malfunction because of dirt. Even though my 45 saved my life, I never felt the same way I did about my BAR. Brown will take good care of her. So Brown used to be his assistant gunner. Now Brown's the, the main gunner.
They do an assault across a river. And again, there's a bunch of other really good stuff. And maybe we can get some kind of a situation going with this book to get some copies made or something. So people can read it, the rest of it. So they do this assault across the river. Boats bump into each other. Men curse. Now and then there's yelling as a boat capsizes. We're wet, cold and scared. There's nothing to do but keep paddling and praying. As soon as we feel the boat hit the bank on the other north side of the river, we leap into the water and slam into a bluff. No shooting greets us. We set up the machine gun and wait for dawn. As usual, dawn and ground fog came at the same time. When the fog lifts and we find that platoons and even companies are mixed together.
Some GIs never made it to shore. We had no life jackets. Most of the men who were thrown into the water were pulled down by the weight of their equipment and drowned in the flooding river.
9 October 1950. I don't believe it, I don't believe it, but I know it's true. We're in North Korea. The 1st Cavalry Division has crossed the 38th parallel.
Just giving you a little, and there's more details in the book of exactly where they are, um, what they're doing.
17 October 1950. I spent most of today, my birthday, huddled in the corner of a truck. I'm 19 now, going on 69. If I can stay out of any more firefights, I might make it home. The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting much colder. We roar northward in a single column of tanks and trucks. The cold air is enough that we have to take turns sitting on the floor of the truck out of the full force of the wind. When we rotate to ride the tanks, we take turns riding, riding over the engine in the rear. And again, we always hear about the Korean cold and it's starting to come. It's now October.
Fast forward a little bit more, 25 October 1950. We've been in this war for only two months, but it seems like I've been here all my life. Today, the 3rd Battalion will have a memorial service for all the men who have been killed or are missing. We stand in a block in company front formation as our battalion commander, Colonel Tracy, speaks of the men we have lost. The mimeographed program for the service has the full names of all the men killed or missing since we went on the line 25 August. We have lost 52 men killed and missing of approximately 900 who boarded the General Pope in early August. Colonel Tracy reads the name of everyone. I'm glad to hear the names of Garrity, Malul, and Sorensen.
At least they are being counted as having been in the fight, but I'm still mad at them listed as missing when I know they're dead. Someone must have identified Sergeant Finner. He is now listed as dead. At least his wife won't have to spend her years wondering if her husband is dead or a prisoner.
King Company has lost 13 killed and three men missing. Just looking around at the company, I guess we have 60 to 80 wounded men. That's 35 to 45% of casualties for King Company alone. That's what two months of war has done to us.
The major rumor for a week or so has been Tokyo by Thanksgiving, home by Christmas. We even heard that they, that there were troop ships waiting to take us to Japan.
Oh, one November, nineteen fifty. All of our hopes have suddenly come cra- and by the way, I didn't fast forward at all. It just says like, today we're getting a rumor that we're gonna be home by Christmas, the next day? You have one day of good rumors. Next day, all of our hopes have suddenly come crashing down. Rumors have made a complete about-face. We are hearing that divisions of Chinese troops are hitting the rocks on the right flank. These aren't worn-out survivors of the North Korean army or small bands of Chinese people volunteers. These are full divisions of fresh Chinese Communist troops, at least one full field army attacking with plenty of artillery and mortar support. They rolled right over the rock divisions.
We have suddenly been rushed to mount trucks for a fast trip to the north.
One day you think you're gonna be home by Thanksgiving. The next day, you don't even know when the end is coming. Fast forward, so they go, they head up north and they're back in the fight. This is our second night on this hill. We've had time to dig in past the frost line. Our holes are deep. We even found rice stalks in some sheds near the road. They make good insulation. Suddenly, we hear a few notes from a bugle. It's late enough that we're beginning to feel the cold. We're fifty percent alert. Some of the men who aren't on guard have crawled into their sacks. One of our strict rules that no one fights while he's in his sack, I whisper up and down the perimeter for everyone to crawl out of his sack. We hear another bugle call. Those few notes, which we begin to hear from several points of the compass, raises the hair on my necks, on my neck.
The call sounds exactly like the first notes of taps. The echoes from the surrounding hills don't help. They seem to be calling each other. I grip my weapon tighter. All the trembling of my knees isn't from the cold. Then we see our new enemy. They come on foot over the bridge and on both sides of the road. Some of them wade across the river into the white field below the hill. At first, there's only one rank. They aren't in a perfect line of skirmishers, but pretty much one line of men. Whistles are used to direct the men in line. Then a second line appears 10 or 15 yards behind the first. As they partially dress their ranks after scrambling out of the river and crossing the
bridge, a third rank appears. There are still only dark shapes moving at a rapid walk across the snow-dusted paddy toward our hill. Their NOMCOMs blow whistles and they break into a trot. "Hold your fire!" Lieutenant Hopkins yells. No fear in his voice will let them know that we are here, where we are. No fear in his voice will let them know where we are. This is definitely not a probe or a patrol. They are coming for us. Yeah, so you got Lieutenant Hopkins like telling them, "Don't fire." And he doesn't even care that they can hear him because they're coming. Some of our squad's holes face the road and some face the field and the river.
All the men in my squad can hear me, but I yell for the new men. I yell several times, "Hold it, wait." "Sarge, we can't wait, they're almost here, wait." Rank after rank of the enemy appears out of the darkness of the riverbed. They trot across the bridge and spread out across the road and ditches. "Oh, how I wish I had my BAR." "How long, how long will we wait?" "Thank God for the company mortars, someone has called for an artillery fire mission, too." A few trotting figures fall out of the enemy ranks as shrapnel from the first mortar and artillery shells cut the enemy down. As the howitzers and mortars fire, for effect, larger gaps appear in their ranks. The recently quiet night erupts into sound. It's impossible not to flinch. Suddenly, we're peppered with grenades. The lieutenant let them get too close. Everyone is yelling.
The first rank of Chinese melts into the snow as every gun on the hill fires and they walk into our hand grenade zone. Our machine gun cuts through the second rank. Thinning it out. Whirlwind, that's a guy's name. Whirlwind tries to keep his bursts to a few seconds, but when he does, several of them get close enough to pitch grenades. He bursts, his bursts get longer and longer. He has plenty of ammo, but I know the machine gun barrel must be getting hot. Riley's gonna have to rub the barrel with snow. He'll have to expose himself, and I'm sure the snow isn't good for the temper of the barrel. We have a replacement barrel, but this is obviously not the time to change it. I wish somebody else had these responsibilities. I try to match the rhythm of firing to my, to the time of burst between the machine gun. It
doesn't work. I simply have to fire as fast as I can at any upright chink in front of me. Something strange is happening out on the killing field. The survivors in the second rank of Chinese stopped to pick up grenades still in hands of dead or wounded men in the first rank. We are cutting them down even as they pick up grenades. They sometimes have to run to two or three of the downed Chinese to find a grenade. Most of the men in the second rank have rifles, but it looks like the first rank is armed only with hand grenades. The enemy soldiers keep coming, yelling, throwing grenades, firing rifles. I can tell you now that most of the third rank is unarmed. At least they don't have rifles. It's crazy. The third rank stops to pick up the rifles and grenades from the dead and wounded of the
first two ranks. Scattered in every rank are men with burp guns. These may be non-coms. I make a special effort to kill them. Maybe it's not a nice thing to do, but we are going to have to use every trick we can to keep from being overrun. Our mortar shells begin to creep up the hill toward us as our mortar men adjusted their fire as close to our positions as they dare. Every once in a while, shrapnel zings off past me or splats in the dirt around my hole. As our mortar shells begin landing among the fourth and fifth ranks, the enemy breaks. Whistles blow and the surviving Chinese turn and run down the hill through the exploding mortar and artillery shells. We keep firing until our only targets are dark shadows lying
on the snow. The artillery concentrates on the bridge as the enemy survivors are funneled into the road where they make a juicy target. Bodies begin to pile up where the road and bridge meet. A few more minutes and the bridge is jammed full of dead and dying Chinese. I cringe as I watch the slaughter. I pull my gaze away. I have to warn my men to watch the bodies of the Chi coms lying in front of us. I want to make sure none of them are shot by wounded Chinese. Suddenly, everyone is talking. Many of our men have just been in their first firefight. They can't shut up as the adrenaline and tension drains from their muscles. And the stiffness and pain hits their joints. I suddenly realize I'm cold. I shiver, making my teeth chatter.
I want a cigarette, but I've already already yelled at Collins to douse that match. And it wouldn't look good if I light up.
So that's the first time that he sees the legitimate Chinese army coming in, the Red Army. And they're coming in with ranks and the first guys don't even, they just have grenades. And the second guys, some of them have machine guns. But they're basically just picking up the weapons of the guys in front of them that they know are gonna die. Which is crazy. And I know there's some, uh, some language in there. He's, you know, he's the term gooks. I know I've talked about that term before. And you're gonna hear the term chinks. These are the words that they use to describe the enemy in the book. I understand they're not the most politically correct terminology. But that's what, that's what, that's the way it's written and that's why I'm reading it.
Thirteen November, nineteen fifty. Day after day, we move from hill to hill. We are thrown into areas where the rock troops have retreated or have been wiped out. Leveing roads from the west and northwest open all the way.
Night after night, we wait for the Chinese to come, charging out of the dark frozen mist. The Chinese hit us again and again. They use the same tactics as they did at the bridge. They hit at night with rank after rank of men, charging our positions, trying to overwhelm our firepower, leaving bodies that have to be stopped before they get close enough to crush us with their numbers. When their human waves are stopped short of our holes and we are cutting into their fifth, sixth, or seventh rank, they retreat into the bitter cold night. Imagine that, fifth, sixth, or seventh rank. Tonight, probably the coldest so far, we are preparing for another human wave attack. I've been preparing like this every night for about two weeks.
I try to make sure all the men in my squad carry as much ammo as possible. I have always worried about the possibility of running out of ammo. We've heard stories of firefights ending with bayonets and even sticks and rocks. It starts with bugles. They might quite, quite a production as bugles answer bugle over and over. That's, that sounds like freaking scary, right? You hear, start hearing the whistles and the bugles.
Tan figures walk onto the ice of the river, frozen river and trot across the field. Our mortars don't wait until the enemy is coming up the hill. They hit them as they come out of the river. I don't hear artillery tonight. Fire missions elsewhere, I guess. Our mortar men drop shells down on the tubes as fast as they can. I hope they have plenty of shells. It sounds as if the entire perimeter is being hit. The chinks are really determined to break through tonight. We all began screaming. Hard as we try, they aren't, there aren't enough of us to out scream the Chinese. It's hard not to give in to the impulse to crouch in a corner and cry for someone to save us. There is no let up. As soon as one group or a part of a rank is cut down, another rank takes its place. I get down on my knees, resting my elbows on the snow. I'm shaking from cold fear and excitement.
Their coming is so fast, we can't get them all. As a clip empties and flies out of the chamber of my M1, I grab a grenade and stand up. I make sure I throw it far enough so there's no chance of it hitting our men. I lean against the back of my hole and push another clip into the chamber. The bolt flies shut. As I lean forward, I see a red nearly even with the hole on my right. I fire, sending him spinning away. He comes within inches of falling into Collins and Harris's hole before he rolls down the hill. I look back to my left, the Chinese soldier armed with a rifle is already past the machine gun hole and is turning to get behind it. I can't fire. I might hit Whirlwind or Riley. I jump up on the seat I dug in one end of my hole. I'm a good runner and a good jumper.
I can clear fences high as my waist without touching them. It's easy to jump out of my hole. I easily clear the dirt and snow piled around it. I land exactly right. My bayonet is pointed at his back. I have the butt of my M1 braced against my right side, but I'm about two feet short for a full thrust. I want to stab him in the back and dive back into my hole where I won't be such a good target. It isn't working that way. I make a short hop to be sure I can put the full strength of my arms and shoulders behind my thrust. He is about to shoot Riley at point blank range. He must have caught my movement out of the corner of his eye. He turns toward me. I hit him just below his breast between the two of us. We drive the bayonet to the hilt. I step back, but the bayonet doesn't pull free.
My feet are slipping in the snow, teetering on the edge of panic. I lean back as the ChiCom drops his rifle and reaches for the bayonet with both hands. I pull the trigger. The bayonet comes free with the rifle's recoil. I drop to the ground. After looking at him long enough to be sure he's dead, I roll over in the snow and slide into my hole. Whatever rank is being cut down, it must be the one the attackers decide is enough. One more grenade from me and they're out of my arm range. We keep firing as long as we can see their dark forms moving on the snow. I no longer have the feeling that it is quite sporting to kill, that it isn't quite sporting to kill the enemy. After he breaks off action, the mortars put another curtain of steel between the survivors and the safety of the riverbed.
Night after night after night. Seventeen November nineteen fifty, I receive a letter from Laura. She says she is definitely pregnant. She has mentioned the possibility before, but now she is sure. I've spread the news all through the company. I can't stop talking and thinking about it. I've got to keep on my toes. I'm determined to make it out of this mess. I can't let myself get so low, I lose the drive to live, like when I nearly froze in the rain. I can't do some fool thing and get shot or let myself be captured. But I know there are so many things I can't control. I've got to keep being as careful as I can. Fast forward, we ride day after day toward the south, leapfrogging through other units.
Most nights, we stop, set up a perimeter across the road or on one side. Units north of us move through us the next day. We mount up and move again. We make the refugees stay out of our perimeter, no exception. So again, there's a bunch of stuff in the book where it's kind of explaining where they are. Right now, they're heading south. Twenty-four December nineteen fifty. Christmas is truly a time for miracle. Our platoon doesn't have to be on the line tonight. And we have also been given the great luxury of sleeping in a house. Lieutenant Hopkins somehow saved the bottle of whiskey. The lieutenant proposes a toast. Here is to our mothers and fathers, our wives and children, to those who got them and those who ain't, but wish they had. Then he pauses and adds, here's to us. Here's to victory.
Kind of feels like a feel-good toast, but that's what we're here for. We need some Christmas cheer. I didn't know the feel-good toast was a was a thing back then.
To cap off this warm glow of a special evening, Lieutenant Hopkins reads a letter he has from Lieutenant Brown. Hopkins and Brown were classmates at West Point. And again, now this is the lieutenant. This is the guy that he thought was killed on the attack of the hill and left him there. And then it turns out that he had been medevaced. Lieutenant Brown says he is doing well. Doctors saved his leg. The doctors decided that maggots eating the dead flesh of his wounds almost certainly saved his leg and possibly his life from gangrene.
Lieutenant Brown writes that he thought I was KIA on Hill 174.
My tears flow as I think about that terrible day and the mistake I held on I made on Hill 174. I can't tell the lieutenant, I can't tell Lieutenant Hopkins about it. Then I wonder, would either of us have gotten off that hill if I tried to take him with me? There's just too much to think about and too much to be sorry for. I don't think any of us can bear to think about all that, not now, maybe not ever.
Few days go by, 10 days go by, fast forward. For January 1951, the Chinese started their New Year offensive several days ago for some reason unknown to us. At the bottom of the regimental information ladder, our battalion was taken lock, stock and winter underwear to a mountain pass southeast of Seoul. I don't know what the elevation is, but I'm certain these are the highest mountains we've been on. The evening we arrived at the summit of the pass, the temperature as registered on a long thermometer attached to a Jeep was minus 42 degrees.
Now, last year at Christmas, I had the luxury of being in Montana and experiencing, it was like between negative thirty and negative forty.
Fahrenheit?
Yeah, so like a very similar temperature.
It is so cold.
Like it's freezing.
It's it's it's it's like a next level of cold, though.
You can't really, it's a new thing. Negative forty and and mind you, I'm like going outside for seven minutes, you know, to go and grab something and come back inside. I'm not living in it.
There's a certain point, too, when you're not active. I don't, let me make an estimate here, there's a certain level of cold where it doesn't matter what you're wearing, it it your body heat's gonna run out and it's gonna start to like go backwards, you know?
Like you go into negative forty, if you don't have some kind of shelter of some kind, like if you're just in clothes.
If you're just in clothes, and I guess you could, maybe there's some extreme, you know, but it's going backwards, you're losing the war.
Of body temperature.
In those scenarios.
Yeah, fully and take it from me, the most, one of the more sensitive people to, for real cold, you know, my my standard for coldness is very low, you know? Um, not temperature wise, obviously, so when we went to Big Bear, the, or actually, no, when we went to Utah for FTX a long time ago.
Leif was like, oh, yeah, it's gonna be nineteen degrees. I was like, that's pretty cold. It wasn't snowy or nothing like that, so I was like, oh, yeah, this is probably, and we're all right.
No factor, you thought?
Yeah, you know, we're in the car, you know, and we're going, I think, up the mountain slowly, slowly dropping temperature. And and then when we got out there, clear day, nineteen degrees. I was like, oh, but that was something I never felt before.
Yeah. My point in saying like nineteen degrees is a normal temperature. Like it's a normal thing. And you can, you can, if you put on warm clothes, you can probably exist in nineteen degree. Kind of indefinitely.
Like you, you can, you can win.
Yep. Yeah.
Negative forty? Negative forty-two? I don't, and again, we're probably gonna hear from some, uh, experts on this. But negative forty-two. Look, now if you're moving, you, you can probably keep a temperature, but if you're stuck, standing or sitting or lying down in a foxhole. And it's negative forty-two. That, you're losing body heat the whole time.
And your temperature is like, the temperature's going down.
Yeah, and it's the kind where you're, you have, it's literal pain.
Yeah, oh yeah.
So you have like the discomfort of freezing, oh, I'm cold. You know, that thing, sure, of course, that's gonna exist, but it's like the pain. Actual pain. Yeah, that's rough.
Yeah, not to mention actual frostbite, actual damage.
Yeah, and hey, listen, you might be able to get a layering system on your body with polypropylene and then down and then stealth wool.
Oh, like nowadays?
Yeah, like now.
Okay.
And you go Nylak, like there's a bunch of things you can put on. And you might be able to keep your body, but your feet? Like, I don't believe there's boots.
That are gonna be okay at negative forty-two. And listen, I get it, you can go if you're walking, like there's thirty, I'm saying if you're sitting, standing in a foxhole, you're not allowed to move in this negative forty-two, it's gonna be a problem.
That's my opinion.
I don't even know, like to me, anything past like, like nineteen degrees. I, I don't know what happens. Unknown, yeah.
Uh, well, it's happening psychologically as well, going back to the book. I, I find I'm withdrawing into myself more every day. I want to lash out someone or something. I'm tired, cold, dirty and sick of war. Nothing goes right. Someday we will have to face the Chinese again. There seems to be no way out. I have to keep doing the best I can because I have enough brains to know that my best chance to make it back to Laura and our baby. She says she is all right, but I'm sure the strain on her is getting worse. She goes for weeks not knowing if I'm dead or alive. The news doesn't help. All she hears is that the army is in retreat, units are being wiped out and men are freezing to death.
18 February 1950 or 1951. We move today to some higher hills in the southeast of the town as we push through the knee-deep snow. We find ourselves stumbling over the body of Chinese soldiers butchered in every possible way, then gently covered by a blanket of white. They've been bombed, napalmed, shot, some with tracers, others torn apart by artillery shells. Not a few of the bodies are still burning, even under the snow.
Fast forward a little bit. They're in another position. Off to our front right. Someone sees a group of men with a machine gun moving towards us up one of the many ridges. Our CO
who is new to King Company and new to combat thinks the men are from Item Company. They are supposed to be on our right side. He thinks they may have secured their sector of the mountain and are trying to make contact with us. No matter what he thinks, the CO shouldn't have done what he did next. He stands up and shouts into the rain and fog. "Are you men from Item Company?"
Those guys out there in the fog aren't new to combat. They knew what to do. They disappear like ghosts. If our CO had waited quietly, they would have walked right up to us and we would have bagged an enemy machine gun and crew, or we would have made contact with Item Company. A few minutes of waiting wouldn't have made any difference, except that the CO might still be alive. In minutes, we are receiving heavy fire from the right front. Soon, several machine guns are firing. Bullets ricochet off the rocks. We have our machine gun set up and firing. Between bursts, we hear the enemy calling back and forth. That may be the strangest sound I've heard in combat. I guess not being familiar with their language makes it seem so strange. The shouts of the Chinese and the Koreans to each other always end on a high note. The thickening fog adds to the eeriness of the situation.
They're getting ready to mount a serious counterattack. The whole mountain erupts in fire. They know where we are, but we can't see them except for occasional muzzle blasts. It's hard to play roulette for that long. When chips of rock start to sting your cheeks, you duck no matter what. I try to use my grenades sparingly. I throw them where I think I hear several voices. I don't know if I make a kill, but I do silence the shouting for a while. I saw the CO drop to the ground after he had shouted and the first rounds came out of the fog. Suddenly, he stands up to full height. Drawing his forty-five, he looks up and down the ridge, raises his arm, and screams, "Let's get the sons of a..."
His words are cut off by the round that hits his forehead just below his helmet.
Fast forward, twenty-two, February nineteen fifty-one. Now they're assaulting another hill.
When we reach the bunker, someone throws a grenade in, same as yesterday. Four or five of us are standing around, ready to make the final rush to the ridge. We are standing several yards apart. That probably saves our lives. The grenade thrown into the bunker comes flying back out and explodes in the middle of our group. Before I can move, something slams into my chest. My rifle flies out of my hand as I go on a wild slide on my back through the mud and crash into a tree. Ike slides down the hill to me. Blood is streaming down his right hand. I hear several shots. Someone is finishing off the chink in the bunker. "Hofsister, you hit!" Ike yells. I point at his bloody hand and yell back, "You're hit! Get out of here!" He ignores me and begins searching my clothes for a wound. We can't find a hole or any blood. My chest hurts. Must have been a rock. I rub my chest as I start uphill to get my M1.
Then I hear puffing behind me. I turn around and scream as loud as I can, "Get off this hill! Find a medic and get out of here!"
Tears come to my eyes as I realize I've just screamed in order to my friend. It's the first time I've ever given him an order. God help me, what's happening to me? Ike hands his bazooka to his assistant. I can't think of anything else to say. I watch his back as he slides downhill. His blood is soaking into the sleeve of my jacket. I'm tired, so tired. Now there's only me and Brown. The odds are finally catching up with us. Brown and I are the last of the six.
The platoon is ordered to set up a perimeter on the north point of the mountain.
It's the middle of the afternoon when I start my hole. I, I put myself just back of and to one side of the machine gun hole like I usually do. I hack at about six inches of frozen earth before I hit rock. I keep widening the hole, looking, looking for an edge to the rock.
The first enemy mortar shell lands below us on the forward slope. After they drop a couple more around us, they fire for effect.
These are big mortars, maybe 120. Several of them are zeroed in on our part of the mountain. There is no way to count the shells. The roar of the explosions and the whiz of flying shrapnel are continuous. I roll over the crest and slide a little way down the reverse slope. I dig some more. I can't run around looking for a hole big enough for me and whoever is already in it. I can't run and start a bug out. It's tough chopping at the frozen ground. I crouch in a tight ball, but I try. The fat shell, the shells fall with a steady rhythm of screeches as they approach the ground, a blast as they finally explode, followed by the zip of shrapnel. Finally, I pull my arms and legs under me and make like a turtle. I grip my teeth, ball my hands into fists,
and will the shells to stay away from me.
A shell lands a few feet above me. The blast lifts me out of my shallow hole and slams me face down on the ground. I look around. Several men of our company and mortar squad yell to me. What did they say? I raise to a kneeling position on one knee, shaking my head to throw off the concussion of the blast. I look up as someone yells, "Come on!" My helmet, where's my helmet? My glasses stayed on, but my helmet's gone. Two shells explode, one to my left, the other to my right. I go down flat as sledgehammers hit both of my legs, knocking them out from under me. I scream. All I can do is raise up my hands. Raise up on my hands. Something has burned its way through my gut.
My whole insides feel like they're on fire. A warm stream is running down my chest. I clamp my hand over my neck. In the twilight, I can see blood running through my fingers. I wonder how much of my neck is gone. I scream in pain. I try to stand, both legs crumble. I scream once more. The only answer I get is more blasts of noise and flying shrapnel. I almost pass out from the pain.
I can't see anyone. Everyone who has a hole is in it.
There is no one to help me.
I figure I'm as good as dead, but until I'm sure, I only have one objective, to get to safety. If I'm going to die, it will be trying to get off this mountain. I roll over on my stomach, I turn my legs one at a time. Another scream bursts from my throat. I know they are there, but I dare not look. The pain tells me better than my eyes could. I plant my elbows on either side of my head. I lever my body forward with my arms, I try not to scream. I know I have to save my energy if I'm going to make it off this mountain. The warm blood running down my chest and back is not a good sign.
It would be so easy to lie here.
Maybe I could catch up on my sleep. No, as long as I've got a chance to get off this mountain and back to Laura, I've gotta try. I reach as far as I can, stick my elbows in the mud and pull. I don't know how far, I've squirmed. Daylight is nearly gone, I raise my head enough to see where I'm going. I figure as long as I'm going downhill, I can't go wrong. Through the twilight and smoke, I see directly in front of me, someone squatting on the ground, leaning over another man. I squirm a little further. "Wait up, pal," he yells. His voice is loud but calm. Here in the middle of hell is a medic. He has blood all over him. Obviously, all of it, or most of it, is from someone else. Shell after shell after shell shakes the ground and bangs on my eardrums. I'm sure one of those shells is gonna hit him and me.
Is there a place on this mountain that isn't covered by flying shrapnel? "I'll help you in a minute," he yells. He could be squatting in front of campfire, offering me a cup of coffee. His head jerks down to his chest every time a shell lands close. That's the only attention he gives the storm of shrapnel and the pounding noise. "Like hell," I scream. "I'm getting out of here." The gentle pressure of his hand on my back stops me for the moment. I whimper, "But wait." He yells something to the wounded man he's working on. He turns to me, rolls me on my back, and squats over me. I scream again. It doesn't take him long to open four aid packets and place them over the wounds he can find. I'm grateful for that, especially if I'm going to belly crawl off this all the way to the aid station.
It isn't quite dark, but his face inside his helmet is in shadow. I'm not surprised that I don't recognize his voice. Medics seldom last any longer on the line than a second lieutenant, and they don't last long at all. I can hear his voice and feel his hands as he ties my bandages. He's calm and sure. He doesn't seem to be afraid at all. I marvel now at his bravery. Even as I yelled then for him to let me go so I could squirm down the mountain, he tried to calm me by telling me that the stretcher bears would show up soon. As he crawled off to help another man, I turned over on my belly, screamed as I turned my legs, and went back to squirming. That medic may well have saved my life, or at least my sanity.
I don't know how much time passes. I make some progress. I'm in the trees now, but the shells follow me there. Some trees are still standing. They will soon be shattered by Chinese mortars. The next thing I see is a group of men, each carrying two cases of machine gun ammunition. At least two of them, I can't stand to see me crawling on my belly. They set their cases down and yell at the other ammunition bearers to come back for them. I don't recognize them either, but there has been quite a turnover in King Company in these last few months. They lift me, put arms around my shoulders, even as Ike and I had done with another GI six months and a lifetime ago on Hill 174. By way of thanks, I scream in their ears. We make more progress this way, but I finally yell for them to stop. Every time either foot brushes against a rock or clod of dirt,
it spins around, and my friends get another scream in their ears for their trouble. I can't go any further. The pain is costing me more than my life is worth.
One man stays with me while the other runs off. In a minute, in minutes, he's back with a wooden door from a woodcutter's shack. Smart fellas, they lay me on the door and carry me on the trail on the, into the side of the mountain. This is the second time for me to get off this mountain. And both times I haven't been sure that I'd reached the bottom alive. About halfway down, we meet several medics with a crew of stretcher bearers. They stop long enough to give me a shot of morphine and transfer me to another stretcher. In total darkness, we wait for a Jeep. I can hear the mortars and see the flashes from exploding shells flickering on the low hanging clouds. Finally, I hear the whine and rattle of a four wheel drive in low gear as a Jeep bounces off the Rocky Creek bed.
The medic and Jeep driver strap me onto the Jeep and put one other man next to me. He seems to be unconscious. And the flashlights beam, I can see why. He's riddled with shrapnel from head to foot. There are wounds in his face and cuts all over his clothes. Blood is oozing from most of them. I can hear him wheezing. He must have punctured a lung.
The Jeep winds in low gear as we move down the creek bed. It rocks along, throwing us against the straps. I can't hear the other man wheezing anymore. When we get to the battalion aid station, medics unstrap us from the stretchers. I ask, how is he? I don't know my fellow passenger, but we're buddies now, united by the blood we left on the stones of that creek bed and on that mountain. He didn't make it. A medic continues to unstrap my stretcher. I wonder if I'm gonna make it. They carry me into a large heated tent. I stare at the bright light overhead until I'm forced to close my eyes. I can't understand what the doctor is saying.
Yeah. You're out there when one of these. Do you know that I went on a little soliloquy talking about getting mortared and sitting in a hole and hoping that it doesn't hit? Sure. And here he is in that exact same situation, except he has no hole to be in. And he does get hit.
And somehow makes it out of there. And what is, what is as devastating and horrifying as indirect fire is? It's also.
No guarantee. And you can see that because how many times do they do pre-fire artillery fire and mortar fire on a target and then when they go get the tar go to actually assault the target, there's all kinds of people that are still alive. So. You can live through these things. It's such a lucky thing, just luck. And I mean, I had that in the in the blue on blue that I talked about in the bidding into the book Extreme Ownership, the. The army put like 150 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun into the building that my guys were in from 30 yards away. 150 rounds of 50 cal.
That is devastating and had one guy catch a little frag in the face, everyone else was okay. Like if you would have, if I had to place bets on that.
And you put whatever, put eight guys in a building and then you put 150 rounds into the building, especially, you know, if you're, you're probably going to shoot at the rooftop of the building or you're going to concentrate in certain areas. It's not like you have spray the whole building. You're going to concentrate where you think someone would be tactically. And I thought if you had, if I had to make a bet before that happened, if I would have had to make a bet 150 rounds into a building, I would have said, you got to, you got maybe one or two guys killed, one or two guys badly wounded. And now it's like, no. Same thing with mortar fire, you can get mortared and everyone can be perfectly fine.
So he got very unlucky and then very, very lucky. Fast forward a little bit, someday yesterday I was put on a litter bus. The hours all run together. We arrive at the evacuation hospital, I sleep. I don't know how long I've slept, but I awaken as two men pick up my stretcher, the same nurses walking beside me. They carry me to a helicopter pad, my stretcher set on the brackets of the waiting helicopter. I don't remember much of that flight. The helicopter stands at an airstrip right next to a C47, a suit. We take off soon after I'm transferred to the plane. I landed in Korea, surrounded by almost 200 friends in exactly six months. I lost most of them in that land of hate and killing.
So now I'm doing a pretty big fast forward through the book. We're going all the way to thirty April nineteen fifty one. This is two months since he got wounded or almost two months since he got wounded. And he goes through some of his recovery. It's just suffering, it's pain, it's agony, he's in there with all these, I mean, it's, it's wretched. But finally, two months later, thirty April nineteen fifty one. This morning, the doctor came by to check up on me. He asked me if I would like to go home. It's what I've been praying for. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get home before our baby was born, but I was still hoping I wouldn't have to go back into fighting. For a few seconds, I feel anger building in me.
That's a pretty cool joke, cruel joke, especially since he should remember that the nurses told him I was expecting to have a child at any day. He smiles broadly and assures me it's no joke. I should, there's another section in the book where the doctors basically saying like, we're gonna get you back, we're gonna get you back into the fight. And you know, you always hear guys that are saying, hey, I just want to get back with my unit. And in this book, he's like, I don't want to go back. He's thinking that to himself, he doesn't want to be a coward, but he's like, dude, I'm gonna die if I go back a hundred percent.
Like I said, he's very honest about his feelings. For my final medical chart, the one that will go on top of my hospital record, records is finished. I weigh a hundred and thirty four pounds. That's after two and a half months of good chow and all the goodies I can eat. I wonder Wade, what I weighed when I came off the line. I thank the nurses, medics and Japanese nurses aides. Ten May nineteen fifty one, the flight to the States is long and tiring. He goes to Tokyo, he goes to Midway Islands, he goes to Hawaii.
And then finally to Travis Air Force Base Hospital in California. Within the hours of being put to bed in Travis, I'm able to make a telephone call to Laura. My heart is about to beat out of my chest as she comes to the phone. Having despaired of ever hearing her lovely voice again, I would like to listen to her for hours, but our time is limited. I wonder what she thinks after talking to me for the first time in nine months. Did I sound like the young man she fell in love with? Or was she talking to a stranger? Our son was born about the time I left Japan. Laura and our son, Dwayne, are well. I told her I was set for a flight to San Antonio and Fort Sam Houston Hospital the very next day.
At last, we said the words we had been waiting to say for months. "I love you, I love you," I told her, "I would be with her as soon as I could."
Fast forward a little bit, less than two hours after arriving in Fort Worth, where I met my, where I'm met by my sister and brother-in-law, I hobble into Laura's arms. I set my crutches aside and fold the woman I love in my arms. This is the woman who, in spirit, sat beside me in my foxhole and kept me from losing my courage during the never-ending attacks. The woman I thought of when I had to drag myself out of my sleeping bag or freeze to death. I remembered the smile of this woman, brought with it the strength to climb a hundred mountains and to live in the ground like an animal without becoming one. The lovely image of this woman in my mind gave me the will to crawl off that mountaintop.
When to stop and lie still would have been so easy, but would have meant my death.
Our love spanned thousands of miles that separated us and has overcome the terrible odds of six months of combat that destroyed most of the men, the original King Company. The love of this beautiful courageous woman gave me the strength to continue when I was so afraid I wanted to give up and shoot myself. When I was so tired that death would have been easier than taking the next step. When I was so terrified during mortar barrages and fire flights that I wanted to curl up in the corner of my foxhole and wait to die.
The worry, the fear that I might never see Laura again is past. We whisper the words we spoke into the wind a thousand times, hoping it would be carried over the world to our soulmate. Three words written over and over in every letter, with tears, or sweat, or snowflakes for punctuation. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Before I lay down to rest, I'm introduced to our son. I missed arriving home for his birth by 12 days. I worried, from the time Laura had written that we were to have a child, that I might be, that I might leave my bride as a widow, and that my son would be fatherless before he was born. Instead, God saw fit to allow me to remain alive, though badly battered. To hold my wife and my son is a long-deferred dream come true. Now we can begin to heal.
And there's some details in there, and I'm gonna close out the book with this, the postscript.
He says this. "I still have nightmares, and what the psychiatrists call night terrors. Once in a while, I have a horrible dream. Many of the experiences, good and bad, will stay with me until I die. Laura and I were blessed with two more boys and two girls. I went to college under the GI Bill,
earned a master's degree, had taught 5th and 6th grade children for 13 years. Then I developed and administered an outdoor learning program to teach the same grade of city children about nature and country life. After seven years of that, I worked for the US Postal Service for 10 years. Laura and I finally got our farm. Neither of us is capable of doing much physical labor anymore, but we enjoy living in the country as we had planned from the very beginning." I've had problems with my right knee and thigh since the day I was wounded. Over the years, I've had five surgeries on that leg and still experience chronic pain. Several pieces of shrapnel migrated close to the surface of my skin and have been removed. Ike got home okay.
Laura and I went to see him in 1951. We had a nice visit with him and his family. We didn't see or hear from each other again until 1997. We talked on the phone, but we didn't seem to connect with each other as we did in Korea. Ike and I composed a letter to Malul's mother soon after he was killed. Laura wrote her too. I'm afraid we were all carrying a pretty heavy load of pain, both physical and emotional. As with Ike and me, we quit writing to Mrs. Malul. Several years ago, I was contacted by William M. Garrity in California. He said he was the record keeper for the Garrity clan in America. He had Willie's name in the clan book, but didn't know he was dead. He thanked me for the information.
He said in an email later that he had tried to contact the part of his clan that lived in New Jersey. He wasn't successful.
Just months before sending this book to the printer, I found out that Corporal Muriel G. Brown listed as KIA on the Korean War Project database. He was killed a week after I was wounded.
All these years, I had thought, or at least hoped, hoped that Brown had made it and had enjoyed a good life. I didn't remember where his home was and had no idea of how to contact him all these years. Wouldn't you think, after all this time, I could look at my friend's name on a list without crying? I can't. Perhaps God kept it from me until I could handle it. Brown was the best foxhole mate I could have asked for.
He was always my trusted friend. I wish I had told him.
So.
There you have it. Waiting for the blessed light of dawn.
And that's war. And that's one story. One story. Out of millions.
And.
Even with all that. We as people, we as human beings, we continue to fight each other.
And I think oftentimes. We do that.
From distance, we, we look at war from a distance, we look at war through the television, we look at war through the media on the news. But a lot of people forget. And don't know, they didn't, maybe they never knew, they don't understand what war is like on the ground. What war is like for the people on the ground, they, that oftentimes they don't even remember that they're people. They don't know that they're people, they don't relate to them as people, they think of them as a soldier, that soldier is a person.
We either don't know. Or we forget. What it's like for the men that fight. For men like Ted Hoffsus.
So I recommend that we use our minds before we use our guns. And people fight. Their own egos before they fight each other.
And if we have to go to war. If there's no other choice, if we must, then. Train the troops. And give them the equipment and the knowledge and the authority. To win.
And then. Take care of them when they get home.
And take care of the families of those that don't come home.
And never forget.
The sacrifice.
And the gift that they gave us.
And that's what I got. So.
Yeah, it's true where especially when you read these journal types. Where you know, especially when they go into those details, like those human details of the like the smells. And I was, you know.
Experiencing this and he compares it to like, you know, the hole is the size of my fist. It's like, this is like a human, these are little human experiences, not like. You know, all this like real official military stuff that you know, maybe you see on whether it be the news or movies or whatever. And just like how you said, like the guys on the movies and the news and stuff, you think, oh yeah, that's just more of like an action figure almost kind of a thing. Oh, we lost an action figure. Yeah, exactly. Not a human being who experienced. Moment to moment, all these things that we just, oh yeah.
Uh, just openly pissing yourself, shitting yourself because you're horrified. And that's by the way, not happening one time, like I got scared once.
It's like over and over again.
Yeah. Yeah. And then even that, like.
I think sometimes. When the people are like, okay, the guy, you know, Korean War vet used shell shock, you're kind of like, okay, shell shock. That's just an official thing that a soldier sort of gets and you know, this is a soldier who's shell shocked now. But really, what is that? It's like, no, that's a human being that went through something so extreme that now like. They haven't fully recovered from it. Now they're different in this very specific way. That's a person, human thing. Not some military thing. I mean, it's military thing, but not how we see it is just like, oh, this a milit- this military checkbox. Oh yeah, yeah, shell shock. Okay, PT, okay, you know. It's like, no, no, no. Yeah, there's some cool official words describing that, but that's a real thing that happened to a real person.
It's like a shell shock or PTSD is, is a euphemism. For. I'm horrified and suffering 24 hours a day right now. This is a nightmare.
Oh, but you can either say that or you say, oh, that person's got shell shock or that person's got PTSD.
And of course, there's, there's various levels, but someone that has a massive case of post-traumatic stress.
Like what are they going through? They're going through that 24 hours a day. And seven days a week and there's no relief.
Yep.
Until they until they get help because there is relief when people are in that situation get help you can get help you can get better.
Yeah, yeah, it is weird to to really understand what because like consider like what would give like a person's stress for a moment, right? I don't know, like some guy runs a red light and almost like hits you and you know that maybe five, 10, 15 seconds of recovery, you know, of that elevated state of like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this just happened and I'm scared and I'm this and I'm that. What if that feeling never went away? Or or it went down just to a certain degree, but but then stayed there for just years and years and years and years. It's like it's essentially that, but obviously way, way worse, you know?
Yeah, not the World War One guys sitting in the trenches was the worst because they had no. And I was reading something the other day. It's actually something I'm probably going to cover on the podcast, but uh, they changed the definition like in World War One, they started saying you're not you don't have instead of saying, hey, your brain for a while, they said, oh, your brain is getting rattled and that's why you're acting this way. And then they started saying, no, it's just because you're a coward. Yeah, they change it so they could keep more guys in the freaking meat grinder. These assholes. Sorry about my language.
That's what they did. And this is like, I think it was the German government was like, oh, no, you actually it doesn't affect you. You're just being you're just a coward. So get back up there. And there are, you know, from the shell, from the actual literal shock of the shells, having your brain. I mean, how'd you feel? Did you get hit a lot playing football? How often do you get a concussion?
I got official concussions.
Unofficial concussion. Oh, unofficial.
Unofficial?
Yeah, where you get your bell rung and things aren't right.
I don't know.
Like 20?
No, maybe not 20, probably, yeah, maybe 10.
Now just imagine how long oh, is that over your career?
Yeah, I played wide receiver, though, these other guys like.
But but okay, so over your career of let's say, what 12 years of football? You had 10 of these. So now imagine getting 10 of those.
In two hours, 24 hours a day for a year. Like, what does that do to your brain? It's not good. That's what if, that's what a guy in the trenches in World War II was just.
Yeah. It's like, and that's like, kinda not even the the half of it, really. Cause you know how like your brain forms this world, you know? Like it understand, like, I don't go too deep into it, but really in a nutshell, it's like you, you put something out, you get something back. You put something out, that's really what you're doing.
And it's like this weird.
Your, your mind is the perception of the world around you.
Yeah. And every action you take, you kinda have this all the way from conscious to subconscious, this, this response, you know, from the outside world. And that, and that can get real weird. It can get real wonky during extreme situations and extended extreme situations. So now that understanding, even to this, on a subconscious, all the way down to the subconscious levels is like, it's wrong. And it's like, there's, I mean, for lack of a better way of putting it, it's like, it's real toxic. So, and just, so it's not even necessarily the world. It's just your relationship with the outside world becomes this weird thing. So I remember when I played football, we'd have, uh, the conditioning was early in the morning and it was very repetitive. So we'd have stations and
I'm not gonna go into the detail, but it was very repetitive. So there was a lot of like calls, you know, they'd be like, ready, set, go. And then whistle, ready, set, go, very repetitive, right? So no matter the drill, there would always be a certain repetitive language, whistle, and then, you know, action.
Operating conditioning.
Yes, oh, big time. So now after, and it happened pretty quick, but after a while it gets worse and worse and worse. Where now, when you go to sleep, you just wake yourself up in the middle of the night with that.
And this is just from regular conditioning.
That's just, that's just freaking football, voluntary football conditioning with a, with like a, a sweatshirt on or whatever, you know? Sneakers.
In Hawaii, by the way.
In Hawaii.
So yeah, so you got PTSD, basically is what you're saying from freaking whistle drills.
I don't know about the.
But that that actually is, that is a good comparison. What you're saying is this minor thing, which is actually a voluntary thing that you enjoy doing.
And you're doing it because you want to do it. And it it's actually a positive thing because you're getting healthier by doing it. That would make you wake up in the middle of the night startled. So yes, so yeah, you want to imagine what it's like when you get mortared, when you're freaking sitting in a foxhole in a artillery barrage for hours. And by the way, the artillery barrage, what you know is going to happen is is what this is what you know, I don't know if I explained this, when the artillery and the mortar barrage is happening and you're sitting in your foxhole waiting to die.
What is also happening that you know is happening is that the enemy is approaching. So that when the artillery barrage stops, what you're going to do then is going to have grenades hucked at you and people trying to jump in your foxhole and kill you. That's so there's this, and then if you make it through that, as they try and withdraw, they're going to hit you with mortars again. Yeah, and artillery. So there's no comfort in any of it.
Oh, yeah. And then not to mention, and we could go on and on about this stuff, but then not to mention all the like dead bodies and body parts and all this stuff that not only did you see and get get kind of the initial, what do you call when the initial shock of it? Now you then you get acclimated to it. Now that's rolling in the back of your head too. So this is all just part of this one big horror that just gets burned into you, you know? So yeah, then you come back.
Yeah. And and what's awesome is, you know, Ted and unfortunately Ted passed away. Uh, but you know, he what an amazing life, had five kids, six kids. Uh, did all kinds of cool stuff, was a teacher, ran outdoor program, worked for the post office, like lived an awesome life. He stayed married to Laura, by the way, his whole time she passed away as well. Just, uh, pretty amazing that he came back from all that. And carried on with the rest of his life.
There was a few parts that I always like feel when they, you know, when they're talking repetitively over and over how like cold it is, how dirty I am, how tell all those this and all that. And then when they go to like the shower, you can kind of feel the relief, you know, like with it when you're just listening to it.
Christmas miracle is the call in it. Like this is a miracle.
I felt it. I felt it. Bro, what is um, fire for effect?
Fire for effect is.
What is that? What's the difference?
So you remember how I was talking about bracketing?
So my first one went long.
My second one went short. My third shot hits you. So now things are dialed in. So now I'm going to pass the word fire for effect. So if I'm the forward observer, and so I can see where the things are impacting and the mortar team can't. So the mortar team, he sends one long, I tell him short three fifty or short three hundred. And then they hit one short and I say add one fifty. Now it's going to hit. They had, they had one fifty. They, now it hits the target. And now I say like on target, fire for effect. And now you just start dropping on that.
Okay. So what does the for effect mean as opposed to?
You're hitting the target. You're hitting the target. Fire for effect. Yep. You're hitting, you're hitting the target. This is the, you're firing for the effect that we want, which is that we want the target to be destroyed.
Okay. Cause there's like.
Cause the first fire is like a rate. You don't call it this, but essentially it's, I give you the coordinates and I tell you to fire. I'm just want to see where it's going to land. Oh, it went long. Drop three hundred. So you, the mortar team drops three hundred. Now it falls three hundred or a hundred and fifty meters short. Cool. Add one fifty. Boom. Hits where I want. On target, fire for effect.
Yeah. So these little additional kind of terms kind of designate or indicate what?
The role of the fire is, you know how the, cause there's like suppressive fire, there's cover fire, there's
Suppressing fire and cover fire, kind of the same.
Yeah, that's what it feels like.
Interchangeably somewhat.
And then what else? There's, um, you know, all the, there's freaking fire for effect.
Yeah, fire for effect. Add it to your, add it to your notes. So, so like where you might use that in everyday terminology is let's say you were arguing with someone and you find that little, that little chink in their armor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fire for effect. You know what I'm saying?
Yes, I do know what you're saying.
So you like try something out, they're really like, ah, this one didn't really land. Oh, you get that look on their face, fire for effect.
Yes, exactly. Okay. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. I mean, I understand. So, yeah. So even, you know, in advertising too, right? You do, you, yeah, I mean, not to get kind of more real boring. No, we went from.
Super boring, yeah.
But still, it's the same thing where it's like you try this ad, yeah, not that much, and then you try, oh wait, this one had a big response. And then so you just flood that.
Fire for effect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.
That's the way it works.
I understand. Um, yeah. Okay. Fire for effect. It's a good one.
So there you go. Um, thank you. Thanks once again to Nina that sent me this book and I, maybe Mary Lou. Um, Ted Hofsiss's daughter perhaps gave her the book, but thank you very much. It was an honor to be able to read and share that story. And just amazing, amazing family and awesome to be able to read it. So thank you. Um, with that, uh, hey, if you want to support the podcast and you want to support yourself at the same time in a, in a kind of a big way.
Huge.
And look, there's luxuries in life.
Yes, there is.
There's luxuries in life. There's times where you don't want to wash the ulcers on your legs because you don't want to waste any water.
Sure.
And then there's drinking a milk, like the other end of the spectrum. Just imagine, imagine what it'd be like if you just got to crack open, like you're in Korea. You just get to crack open a milk.
Oh, yeah.
So good. Uh, we got a bunch of stuff, jockofuel.com. Go and, go and get some supplements, go and get some, some hydration, get some greens. Have you been doing the greens creatine combo?
No, I have not pulled the trigger.
Let me highly recommend that.
Yeah, still, okay.
And you know, K-Dog.
He's been on the creatine, yeah, he's been on creatine train in kind of a big way.
And he's, it's really helping him out. He got the three wheels up.
Three wheels up. Yep. So it's fun. So that in.
I don't know if he was downplaying it. I don't know how how much because he you know said that so okay so he benched just for everyone doesn't know three fifteen. If you lift weights and you say three fifteen, we all know what that is. Three fifteen AKA three wheels, three plates. Now technically it's six plates.
But no one says that.
Exactly right.
That would mean you're twelve.
So three hundred fifteen pounds on the bench. That's usually what it means. Even you say I got if someone just rolls in said I got three fifteen, no context at all. You know he got three fifteen on the bench. You don't know how many times or whatever, but usually it's the first time you got it for whatever the reps usually want. That's it. This happened for K dog for the first time.
First time ever, by the way.
It's a huge, that's a massive, massive deal.
I didn't know that.
Yeah. So yeah, good on him.
But he definitely is crediting. I mean, obviously credit discipline, you credit hard work, but he's throwing some at the creatine.
Yeah, that's what he said.
It's a real thing, man. Creatine is real. It's one of them. It's I think it's actually not one of I think it's the most tested supplements there is. And it's it's not just good for your muscle recovery too. It's like it's good for your cognitive capacity. It's good for everything. So get yourself some creatine, get some I mix it with greens in the morning. That's what I've been doing. Uh, yeah, milk. Hey, the milk coffee scenario. People are way into that. Like it's awesome because we put what we did was we put protein into a delicious coffee. Protein drink. So you get ninety five milligrams of caffeine and thirty milligrams of, or sorry, thirty grams of protein. It's kind of a game changer for a lot of people.
And and I'm talking about coffee lovers. I'm talking about people like Leif Babin. You know what I mean? Leif Babin's like, he's a coffee dude. You know dudes in the Navy drink coffee? Yeah. I mean dudes in all services, but in the Navy, the reason you drink a lot of coffee in the Navy is because you have access to it. Like you're on a ship. You're not in the field. So if you're in the regular Navy, dude, they got you got you're getting coffee.
If you're in the army or the Marine Corps, you might be in the field. You're not getting coffee. That's just the way it is.
Cops like coffee too.
Cops like coffee too, but Leif coffee. And the reason you you'll be with Leif like doing something and he'll he'll do all stop getting coffee. You know what I mean? Like, hey, we got this thing we're doing. Yeah, cool. I'm going to get coffee right now. You could be needing to catch a flight or something.
Hey, we only got this much amount of time. Okay, I'm going to get coffee.
He's getting coffee. So he's a coffee, kind of a connoisseur.
And he, he tried that milk coffee and he was just down for the cause. Everyone's, everyone is. My, my wife, actually.
Yeah. Oddly, I technically, so my wife's from England, so she's technically a tea drinker, but the coffee that she likes, she likes kind of the Americanized kind of coffee.
The delicious coffee, right?
Fully.
This is one of those, like.
You know what? I'm the opposite. Oddly, my daughter's opposite of me, which was like your wife, who, who likes the deliciousness. She likes the coffee flavor, but she's not down for that coffee beef. So like, you know, when you drink, I drink black coffee or like a little bit of chocolate, like flavor or whatever. But I'm like down for that. So I don't drink as much as the, of the milk coffee. I drink the banana and the chocolate, but, but when I taste it, I'm like, yeah, I dig it, man. This is it. This is what everyone has been looking for.
I think if you look at a bell curve.
I think if you look at a bell curve, the one side of the bell curve is extreme coffee, like black coffee, just, I just want, love coffee flavor. Other end of the bell curve is I hate coffee. I think we landed as good as you can possibly land on the flavor.
Where people in the maximum amount of that spectrum are going to be down for the coffee.
This is basically what it is. Most people, I think, I think, most people like coffee flavor, but don't like coffee. Kind of like we all love chocolate, but probably you ever tasted real chocolate?
Without the sugar in the milk.
Even if you get ninety-five plus percent chocolate, it's, it's, it's rough.
Yeah. Try taste the powder. I'm not, I'm not talking about like, uh, the powder for hot chocolate. I'm saying the baking chocolate. Try taste that, bro. It's like, bro. It's almost like
I just got three bros out of you with nothing.
That's how much it impacted you.
What are you guys even doing? But at the same time, it's same thing as coffee where you know, you taste it, you're like, you know what? I taste some good flavor in there. I wish it didn't taste like this. I wish it tasted how I can kind of sense that it could taste like, and then they made chocolate, uh, milk chocolate, right?
Sugar and milk.
Did that with coffee, same exact thing, right? Sugar and milk.
Same idea, we'll say.
Same thing.
It's the same thing, literally.
Yeah. So, so can basically the milk is the healthy version of that. So I see what you did. You're like, this would be, this would be delicious if it wasn't so not delicious. You see what I'm saying? But the flavor is in there. So Pumi just kind of brought it out.
Go to jockofuel.com, get this, get some joint warfare, get what you need, get what you need. You can also go to Wawa, the milk showing up in Wawa, by the way. Uh, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military Commissaries, AFEES, Hannaford, Dash, George, Maryland, Wakeford, Chop Right, HEB, down in Tejas.
People in Tejas are, they're in the game. Meyer, same thing in the game. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. And by the way, if you, if you've got a gym, jiu-jitsu gym, maybe a CrossFit gym, maybe just a, a powerlifting gym, an Olympic lifting gym, a yoga gym. I don't know what kind of gym you got, but if you go to a gym, tell your people there to EF, to email [email protected] so we can get you hooked up. And you can, you can take care of your customers. If you're a customer, you can get taken care of by having the goods. jockofuel.com, get it. Also, you might need clothing, right? You might need clothing, might need more than one pair of socks that you're rotating. And it's, and you're, it's bloody, right? This is, you don't have to live that way. You don't have to live that way. You don't have to live that way with your pants,
with your t-shirts, with your jiu-jitsu gi. Dude, there's times, hey, look, back in the day, having a jiu-jitsu gi was kind of like, having more than one jiu-jitsu gi was a little bit of a luxury.
Big time. So it doesn't have to be that way. And the other thing is, when you, back in the day, if you had one of those old crappy jiu-jitsu gees. Washing it was an evolution.
It was like a, it was like an event. Like the way it was gonna take, you had to put the freaking thing on a heavy load. It was gonna take nine hours to dry. It just sucked. Sometimes it would just off, you ever, you know, on the washing machines, they have like unbalanced load.
You had a 50% chance of having unbalanced load with the gi.
Doesn't have to be like that, cause now you can get an origin gi. Origin gi, you get origin jeans, you can get origin pants, just regular pants. We got these Moab pants that just came out.
You probably can't, yeah.
Oh, well, you know, actually John from Or, uh, you know, John. So he was texting me, he was like, hey, your wife's gonna be kinda mad with how big this load of origin stuff I just sent you. I was like, yes, she's just gonna have to be mad.
Yeah, check. OriginUSA.com, get yourself some stuff. It's American made. Hey, look, by the way, American made. Here we are, we just read a book about fighting the Chinese communists. And go look at North Korea compared to South Korea. And you tell me that freedom is not what we should strive for and what we should protect and what we should embrace. And yet, if you buy most clothing items right now, you know where they're made? They're made in Communist China by slave labor. So don't support that. Don't support that system. Instead, support freedom, support America. Support freedom and democracy around the world. How do you do that? You support that economy. OriginUSA.com.
Fight the war against the communists through purchasing American made products manufactured here. The material is from here. The whole, it's as American as American can get. There's a, a pair of origin jeans cannot be any more American. It's the most American thing. American jeans. By origin. It's the most American thing that you can own.
You, I'm trying to think if there's anything, it's probably not. It's hey, it's definitely it's definitely even with whatever other things might be at the top level.
You can't get you can't get above it.
You can't get above it because because jeans are American. And then these are American cotton. American brass on the on the rivets, American zipper. American thread and American hands. So there's no more American that you could get.
So basically if Origin made an actual American flag, then maybe.
That would be.
Same deal, right?
That would might be one level up because it's an American flag. But let's face it, when you see jeans, do you not think America?
Yeah, it's kind of on the line of synonymous.
OriginUSA.com gets them.
It's true. Also, Jaco has a store called Jaco Store, JacoStore.com. Uh, representing discipline equals freedom. Look, a lot of us like to do that from time to time. I'm doing it right now. It's true.
This is where you can get your stuff, JacoStore.com. Uh, shirts, hats, hoodies, you know, you know, the deal. Um, also there is the shirt locker. If you don't know what that is, some people they don't know. Here's what it is. It's a subscription scenario. You get a new shirt, new new design, we'll say, every month. You know, you got that consistency, but the designs are a little bit different, still on the path, but a little bit different.
Kind of a different way to fly the flag, right? It's a different flag, but it's it's definitely one worth flying.
The discipline.
Yeah. So, you know, okay, so you know, the idea of, I'm gonna give you, kind of, put, what do you call it? Put you on game, I think it's called.
Or wait, wait, put out word.
Word, okay.
Put out word to you, to us, to the people too. So you know, the idea of sugar coated lies, right? I was real struggling with like, how could that look kind of cool?
You figured it out?
I think I figured it out.
What is it?
I can't.
You can't tell.
You're gonna have to see, but I think that's gonna be the March shirt.
And I think it works because you can't just put a donut on there, you know, a donut, sugarwood lies. I mean, cool, maybe, maybe. But I think, you know.
You one upped it.
It didn't feel right. Yeah, actually a couple of levels, I think.
Couple of levels.
I think so, but.
Are there layers?
There are layers to it.
Yes, of course. Okay.
It's a good one. Anyway, JacoStore.com is where you can get it.
Also, get yourself some steak. You don't have to eat sea rations.
You have to eat spoiled sea rations. I even read that part of the book, part of the book, he's, they get done with this big battle.
And he's, it's over and now he's like, great, now I can freaking break into my sea rattens. His sea rattens rations can was hit by shrapnel and was just gone. Just like horrible day.
You don't have to go through that. Get yourself some steak. Go to coloradocraftbeef.com or go to primalbeef.com and get yourself some American steak. That's what we're doing. Awesome companies, awesome people, support America. Primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com.
Do you make your own steak? I forget if you said you do or don't. Do you make your own steak?
I do sometimes, but mostly it's either my wife, my daughter, my son, and not me, most of the time.
Most of the time, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, actually, I do remember that night and you're talking about how Leif is like.
Oh, Leif.
If he's making steak, that's like a three day ordeal.
Three day that he loves every second of it.
Right, right.
You know, like he's into it for three days, by the way. Hey, look, Sean Glass has the technique, you know, for it's what is it? I think, I think my wife might have modified it a little bit, but basically it's you make your hot pan. This is for a pan cooked.
Cast iron pan, hopefully, but three minutes, one side, three minutes, the other side, two, two, one, one. Okay, so that's like a technique.
But Leif will be like, so for me, that's like too much effort. What is that? What's three and three is six plus two and two is, is, is four. So now we're talking 10 and then one on one, we're talking 12 minutes. That to me is kind of excessive effort for me. I'm like, I'd rather just open up a can, get a tin of chicken and just mix it with mayonnaise in one minute and 30 seconds and I'm good and moving on.
Yeah, that's true. But even then, that's like, um, yeah, you gotta be into it. It's an art to it for sure. It's an artisan kind of scenario where, yeah, if you're going three, what is three, three, two, two, then you, now you gotta regulate heat. Now you gotta know like, hey, how hot is this pan? Because you can't just turn it on and be like, okay, the pan's like hot and then be like two, two, one, one.
This is a while ago and like we were gonna, Leif was in town and we were gonna cook, he's gonna cook steak. And I said, cool. And then he, he looked at my grill. He's like, why don't I get you a new grill? My grill at the time, like this is pre Traeger times, you know, this is back in the day. He's like, well, I could just run down and pick up. I'm like, bro, you gotta get a freaking new grill for me. But that's, that's, that's what he's thinking.
He's like, hey, we're gonna do this. Let me just get you.
Do it right.
I don't remember. He may have actually literally gotten me a new grill.
I don't remember. I mean, it wasn't, I probably was just like at the Home Depot gig that you can get for whatever. Two hundred bucks or something. Or maybe you got one of those charcoal ones or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's how, right? Texas, Texas barbecue is like part of the culture.
Obviously he's into it.
I dig it, man. I'm with, I mean, probably not to that depth, but for sure. I'm down.
Well, listen, one thing that's gonna make your steaks taste good. Primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeed.com. Check them out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jockownaground.com. We're about to record a new one of those. Also YouTube, subscribe to the channels. Also Psychological Warfare. Also Flipside Canvas Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Written a bunch of books. This book, like I said, Waiting for the Blessed Light of Dawn. I looked on the internet. There was, I found, I found one copy on Amazon. I found one copy on eBay. I didn't buy either one of them. So whoever hears this first, go get it. Otherwise, you know, who knows what will happen there. But also I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've also written a bunch of kids books. Check those books out if you want to. Echelon Front, we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want to learn about leadership.
You want to gain those skills. We also have an online training protocol. You can go to extremeownership.com and you can learn how to go through life in a better way. Just have advantages at every turn. That's what we're teaching there. Advantages at every turn. I don't care what you're doing. We got you. Go to extremeownership.com. Check that out. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. Really truly helping out veterans. And you know, I said that during the podcast, we should make sure we're taking care of our veterans. Mama Lee does just that.
She gives them medical help that they're not going to get otherwise. So if you want to help out that organization, or you want to volunteer, or you want to donate, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah. He is up there with HeroesAndHorses.org, taking vets up into the mountains so they can find their soul again. He does an awesome job with it. Also Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check that one out as well. If you want to connect with us, I'm at Jaco One, like Echo is at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm, which is, by the way, a psychotic evil thing. Watch out for it. Don't let it get you. And to those of us, to those of us that have served,
but more importantly, to those of people who have served, are serving, if you were a vet, thank you. And especially today, this day, a special, deep thank you to those of you that fought in the Korean War, the so-called forgotten war, we will not forget. Thanks once again to the Hoff Sis family for allowing me to get this book. Nina, thank you for sending it to me. And thanks to those veterans of that war. Thanks also to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders.
Thank you for your service here at home. And to everyone else out there, be thankful. Be thankful. Be thankful for a warm bed, or be thankful for your air conditioning. Be thankful for a hot shower. Be thankful for a hot meal. Be thankful for clean socks. Be thankful for the opportunities that we have, opportunities that were bestowed upon us through suffering and sacrifice. Be thankful for those that gave us this gift. Thankful for men like Ted Hofsiss. Be thankful for your freedom and do not squander it.
And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.
Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
