When Chic Pellegrini first showed me the trench picture he had, it didn't
look familiar to me. Now after having time to piece things
together, I
realize I probably was not blind, but at the wrong angle to view it.
The
few glimpses I got of star in daylight I was working in a hole located
down
the hill toward star and I would say it wasn't far from where Bob Brandon
took those two pictures. ( Now one good panorama ).
I and another man were digging away when we heard 2 or 3 mortar rounds
(61mm). stair-stepping up the hill. There was a 12 x 12 timber lying
in the
hole and I briefly thought about whether that would offer much protection
in
case a round came in the hole. Our gut feeling was we should
get out and
find a bunker to wait it out.
We went up the hill and crawled in one. We planned to stay until the
rounds
stopped. By this time it was getting dark and the platoon sergeant, Dewey
Gosnell came by and told us to go with him. Since we went back
another way,
by a trench, I was never real sure that we were taken back to the same
hole
where we had been. Sgt Gosnell was talking to a Puerto Rican,
Francisco
Negron-Perez, who was digging in the hole when I remember a flash and both
those guys were hit. I was stunned enough that I figured something
totally
different happened. I had seen three 3.5 Bazooka rounds on top
of a shelf
in the trench as we came up earlier. My first thought was they had
been set
off. I had thought about such a thing happening when I saw them.
Years later I realized that this happened on 7 May 53.
(General Orders
Number 3, dated 10 May 53, Purple Heart Awarded to sixteen men from
Co C,
10th Engineer Combat Battalion). I got my copy from Chic
Pellegrini, who
was wounded along with several others, 9 May 53 while on the Napalm
Detail.
I had earlier been on the Napalm Detail and had taken part in digging in
the
55 gal. drums. I also helped to transfer napalm from 5 gal. cans to
the
drums. These were placed over to the right front and down some
distance
from the front trench and past the concertina wire. My next
visit to the
napalm job was in daylight, (o/a 6 Jun 53) when Lt. Alan Lichtenberg
asked
me to help find the drums so they could be armed. I and another man
accompanied Lt. Eugene Markle in his jeep. We stopped at the 65th
Reg. HQ
Bunker as Lt. Markle spoke with a Major, as I recall. We viewed a 3
dimensional map like I never saw before or after. ( In talking with
Gene
many years later he said there was a change in units on that day).
Records
indicate the 15th took over in place of the 65th Reg. in anticipation
of an
expected CCF attack.
We finished locating and arming the drums, running electrical wires to a
bunker with a battery placed there so the infantry could fire any drum it
desired. ( Gene also remembered going back and telling Lt.
Lichtenberg that
he had reservations about the way they should be fired ).
According to Alan Lichtenberg many years later, he and Lt. Francis X.
Riley
took some men up on 10 Jun 53 and improved the firing method by connecting
to
a telephone. He told of them finishing up and getting their guys off
the
hill before the trumpets were heard and the infantry set off the napalm.
Two other men I know say they witnessed it, Jerry Cunningham and John
Rohrig,
both from the 15th Reg. I had wondered for years, so had Gene Markle,
if
the installation worked as planned.
