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A Sacred Place Where We Fought

In a memoir I wrote years ago, The Coldest War, I said I would never go back to Korea, never sign up for an old-soldiers' tour, that "I didn't want to see the hills again or feel the cold or hear the wind out of Siberia, moaning. I didn't want to disturb the dead."

The Korean War in which I fought as a young Marine began on June 25, 1950, when the Soviet-backed North invaded the democratic South in overwhelming force. In Tokyo, General MacArthur dismissed the news. "A border incident,'' he sniffed. "The Koreans can handle it." Before it was over, the war had finished the great career of MacArthur, helped elect Ike President, saved Korea and maybe Japan. It ended on July 27, 1953, in an uneasy, often violent truce, with 37,000 Americans dead, 8100 still MIA. I did not want to disturb them.

But now, 50 years later, my editor in New York said, "Why don't you go back? Climb that Hill 749 you're always talking about. Tell us about it, then and now.'' And, he said, "take Eddie with you," referring to Eddie Adams, Parade's Pulitzer Prize-winning combat photographer.

The prospect of returning to 749 — to that nasty little hardscrabble hill, hardly a half-mile high — unsettled me. Hill 749 was a sacred place. A lot of Americans had died there — brave young Americans whose memory had haunted me for more than five decades.

But the idea of going with Eddie made me a bit less hesitant. Also, with the war in Iraq winding down, Korea was back in the headlines. Like millions of Americans, I wondered: Is this where we would fight the war after Iraq? Up on the Korean ridgelines? Again?

With April coming on, Eddie and I take off for Seoul. For the next 10 days, we trek across a nation roiled by nuclear threats from the Communist North and by anti-American rioting from students in the South.

In Seoul, our guide, Maj. Holly Pierce from Star Lake, N.M., takes us to meet with U.S. 8th Army Gen. Leon LaPorte — the Tommy Franks of northeast Asia — and Republic of Korea (ROK) Army chief of staff Gen. Nam Jae-joon. La- Porte, a short, compact career soldier from Providence, R.I., with a Ranger tab on his shoulder and parachute wings on his chest, commands not only the GIs but also all other UN and South Korean forces. Why, I ask him, are American troops still in Korea, 50 years after the war? "We're here because we signed a mutual defense treaty with South Korea in 1953, he te"lls me. "Our goal is to maintain the peace in Korea and to ensure stability in northeast Asia."

What about North Korea, the old enemy? Says General LaPorte, "The North has a 1.2 million man standing establishment [larger than the entire U.S. Army]. They also have 120,000 special-operations forces. They've invested in missiles and underground caves that can hold a regiment of tanks. All of Seoul, a metropolitan area with 21 million people, is under their artillery range. They could cause tremendous damage and casualties." And that's without their growing nuclear capability.

General Nam says he supports the presence of U.S. troops: "We don't believe we are fully able yet to defend our country alone," he explains.

The next day, Eddie and I head for the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. The DMZ, called by President Bill Clinton "the scariest place in the world, snakes" for 151 miles across the peninsula and is 4000 meters wide. I was aware there were 37,000 American troops in Korea, but I am stunned by General LaPorte's revelation that it is the South Korean military that covers nearly the entire DMZ. "Only 240 Americans actually man the [DMZ] line," LaPorte tells us.

I'm also surprised to discover that the threat doesn't only come from the North. Col. Michael A. Malachowsky, the deputy commander of U.S. Marine forces in Korea, tells me of being spit at in Seoul and of cold, hostile looks. "We don't take the subway anymore," he says. "Too many 18- and 19-year-old South Koreans believe the U.S. started the Korean War." Lt. Col. Steven Boylan of Astoria, N.Y., tells me he was stabbed during recent demonstrations.

This while the older generation who fought in the war write letters to the Seoul papers, hailing the U.S. for our wartime sacrifices.

We travel north to Camp Bonifas. The camp, near Panmunjom, was named for an American officer hacked to death in 1976 by North Koreans. There, Spec. Robert Hernandez, 20, from Los Angeles, tells us how GIs are hand-picked for their one-year tour. "They have to be above average in performance and potential," he says. "This is the most heavily guarded border in the world." The ROK scouts, he adds, "have to be tall, have gone to college and know tae kwan do."

When I arrived in Korea in November of '51, the ROK scouts were short, and I was as "green" as a soldier can be. Capt. John Chafee, the Yale grad who would later become a U.S. Senator, needed anybody he could get as a replacement. But he must have had second thoughts when he saw me — a skinny 2nd lieutenant with a crewcut who smoked a cigar because I thought it made me look older and gave me authority.

My counterpart in today's Korea is Lt. James L. Gleason, 25, who leads a platoon of U.S. scouts patrolling the no-man's land between South and North Korea under hostile North Korean eyes. Gleason has a boxer's broken nose, cuts his own hair into a Mohawk and is a Rhode Islander who graduated from Virginia Military Institute.

He and I trade riflemen's shop talk in his bunker. I was always edgy before going out on a night ambush, I tell him. Not Jim Gleason. With the new night-vision optics, he says, "we own the night." Does he wish he were fighting in Iraq? "I'd like to be there," he says. "But right now my role is here with my men."

Those men are a roll call of America: Calvin Pittman of West Palm Beach, Fla., whose dad is a Ranger at Fort Benning; Charles Hill of Detroit, who was at the police academy when 9/11 happened ("I went downtown and joined the Army," he says. "It was the thing to do."); John De Meritt of Molalla, Ore.; John Mancino of Seattle; Easton Purkiss of Irvington, N.J.; James Martin of Bradley, Maine; and squad leaders William Baker of Greenback, Tenn., Andrew Schultz of Louisville, Ky., and Brian Joyner of Fayetteville, N.C. Their platoon sergeant, Christopher Surtees of Portland, Ore., is the only one of them who has seen combat, in Somalia.

A Black Hawk helicopter — flying low, under hostile radar and sightlinestakes us to our fin — al destination in the southeastern chunk of North Korea. It is the place where, in four days of September in 1951, 90 Marines were killed and 714 wounded taking the lousy, no-name ridge we called (for its height in meters) Hill 749.

As the Black Hawk swoops down through the narrow canyons, I wonder how I'll feel when we touch down. What memories will come back to me? Will I see ghosts?

We land on a dusty soccer field on the floor of an extinct volcano called the Punch Bowl. The ROK troops stationed there issue us helmets, flak jackets and M-4 rifles. We board Jeeps for the last leg of our journey.

The rutted dirt trail — steep cliff to the right, mine fields to the left — doesn't seem to have changed in half a century. When the Jeeps halt within 20 yards of the actual ridgeline, we scramble up muddy steps to the bare and treeless top. The ROKs, charged with protecting us, throw out a skirmish line, with men dropping into shallow firing pits, rifles at the ready.

I am back. To where I'd seen my first Marine dead — three boys lazing in the November sun, hit by a single lethal mortar round; to where I'd stared at my first enemy dead, six men hung on the barbed wire, their blood already turning brown.

The trenchline of memory has eroded, the log and sandbag bunkers have collapsed. Some of the ridge is as alien as a lunar landscape. But far below is the familiar Soyang-Gang River. On the distant bank, the enemy hills rise, snow-capped and as menacing as I remember them.

Had I ever really been down there on the Soyang in a firefight alongside Bob Simonis, my fellow platoon leader? Had it really taken us 13 hours to climb back up under fire and in deep snow with the dead and wounded? Had we really gone 46 days without a hot meal or change of clothes? The memories flood back.

Two days later, as we lift out of Inchon for the 13-hour flight back home, I am still thinking of those Marine casualties on 749 long ago and of today's Jim Gleason and his scouts crossing into no-man's land. I remember all of us who fought in Korea — Army and Marines, Yanks, ROKs and Brits.

Will we have to fight in Korea again? This is a hard country and a deadly foe. I hope the only ghosts disturbed will remain my own.

Parade Contributing Editor James Brady was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V for a firefight in Korea on Memorial Day 1952. He is the author of 15 books, including four about Marines in combat. His latest novel, The Marine, will be published next week by St. Martin's Press. James Brady. May 25, 2003. A Sacred Place Where We Fought. PARADE Magazine. ‹http://www.parade.com/›

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