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[Assistant] The war had been over. So he missed the world war two and he turned 17, right? Cool.


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[Assistant] Sorry, we ain't got nothing for you. So he gets told by the Marine Corps recruiter, sorry, nothing for you. And then at that moment, a man wearing the U.S. Army's 11th airborne patch on his shoulder sauntered into the Marine's office and noticed my quandary. Hey kid, you want to be a paratrooper? He asked. What's that? I inquired. You jump out of planes and fight, he said. And I joined. Period. End of story. We got you. A week later.


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[Assistant] of his life except Sundays was sitting at the kitchen table when I came downstairs already dressed and ready to leave. My mother was puttering quietly around the stove and the large white enamel cabinet preparing lunch for my father to take to the mine.


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[Assistant] I sat down and poured a cup of coffee into a metal cup. I suppose my father felt it was absolutely necessary that he give me some parting advice, although he like I had no idea what being a paratrooper meant.


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[Assistant] But it was good advice. As I recall, it went something like this. The uniform doesn't mean you're a soldier.


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[Assistant] Whatever you do, don't get disgusted. Stick with it. Like you stick with it here at home. Remember what your brothers did. Nobody ever quit.


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[Assistant] It won't be any harder than hunting, than wading in the creek in the wintertime.


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[Assistant] It's like in the coal mines, every step takes care of itself. Then we walked out together.


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[Assistant] My mother didn't cry, I wouldn't have expected her to. Stoicism is a virtue that a coal miner's wife develops.


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[Assistant] I never remember my mother as a young woman. Not that day or any other. And when my wife is 60 years old, she will be younger than my mother was at 30. My mother waved from the porch as my father and I descended the 20 steps to the road.


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[Assistant] His ride to the mine came by and they disappeared into the darkness. I walked to the Eureka store, caught a bus to Irwin, took a train to Pittsburgh, and then on the morning of May 10th, 1947 I arrived at Fort Dix, New Jersey,


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[Assistant] I recall that moment as among the happiest in my life. The moment I stepped off that train.


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[Assistant] And knew I was on my way to my dream. I was going to be a soldier.


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[Assistant] We're gonna go back to this other book. So, we're gonna go back to the other book, The Making of a Soldier. And, what's, what's...


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[Assistant] What's interesting about this is he originally wrote this book, um,


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[Assistant] He originally wrote this book, so the big book, the soldier book came out in I think 19, I think he wrote it, came out in 1973 or something like that. Maybe a little bit later. But this other book, he had written it, he had originally written a book called Conquest to Nowhere. It was just about his experience in Korea. And he wrote that in 1954.


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[Assistant] And he was young when he wrote it, and he, he explains this in the, kind of in the, in the preface to this book. He explains he was young, he had a co-author, the co-author kind of,


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[Assistant] And I kept asking for it. I was advised each time that only an idiot would want to go infantry.


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[Assistant] But there's no way to discourage me, although I got pretty mad at being told that a soldier who wanted to fight was crazy. One day I was about to tell the captain and a couple of lieutenants just what I thought of leaders who attempted to sell men on every profession in the army except the one it had been created for when my friend Bob Heisey took me aside. Look Herb, don't let the bastards get to you.


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[Assistant] If you don't accept a school, they're gonna have to let you go infantry.


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[Assistant] But frankly, I think you're nuts. He was right. Not that I was nuts, but that if I held out, they would have to let me go infantry. I did, and they did.


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[Assistant] It goes through basic training some stories about that in here and obviously I'm fast forwarding through a bunch of this stuff You have to get these books to get the full details after basic I cooled my heels for a couple weeks with the second infantry division Fort Lewis Washington till my papers were processed Then I was sent to jump school and was graduated as an infantryman


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[Assistant] And a paratrooper. I served a year and a half, was discharged and returned to finish school


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[Assistant] Secwickly Township High in her mini.


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[Assistant] No one went anywhere in the U.S. Army without a high school diploma, so I earned mine, then re-enlisted in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Brak.


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[Assistant] Four months later, while I was studying radio repair at Fort Monmouth, the North Koreans invaded South Korea.


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[Assistant] I was shaving when my friend Harry burst into the latrine with news that the United States was going to provide combat assistance to South Korea. My head whipped around and I sliced a notch on my chin that passed for a dimple for a good two years. Harry and I talked it over. We made our decision. Then we made our pitch. We asked to be released from school early to go to Korea.


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[Assistant] I wasn't going to be cheated again. I tried to go over his head. It was useless. I tried to flunk out of the course. It was impossible. The only way was to graduate. So I bore down. I took night classes. I applied myself. I was going to get out. I was going to get out of the signal core completely.


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[Assistant] I was gonna get out of the 82nd. I was gonna get out of the United States. I was gonna get to Korea. And I was going to get back into infantry as an infantryman and to fight in the war.


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[Assistant] Refused to pull it and got busted from private first class back to private. It didn't matter. I was on my way to war and I wasn't about to arrive with dish pan hands. Besides who the hell cared whether I got there as a PFC or private.


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[Assistant] By some of the evacuated veterans of Korea who were being used to give us the real scoop before we went in. Some of it was bullshit, most of it was true. A sergeant, a vet of both World War II and Korea told it best. Winners coming, he informed us.


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[Assistant] Most likely you will find it more severe than any winter you have ever seen. It's high, rugged country and bitter cold and you'll be out there in the weather 24 hours a day for months. He explained how the enemy were.


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[Assistant] They were not cowards, he said. They were well armed and they could fight.


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[Assistant] Yeah, sure Sarge, some smart ass heckled from the back of the auditorium. Tell us a war story.


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[Assistant] His glance swept over us. I'm not gonna tell you any war stories. You'll have your own soon enough. And some of you won't live long enough to tell them.


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[Assistant] Three days later, I was sitting ashore with orders assigning me to the 20th Air Ground Signal Liaison in Pusan, as far south as you could go.


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[Assistant] But I hadn't come to Korea to repair radios, and I wasn't about to sit out the war in Busan.


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[Assistant] There had, there were plenty of guys around who'd be happy with those orders. They didn't need me. I went up to see the captain and explained that I was an infantry paratrooper and I expected to go to the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team or back to the 2nd Infantry Division. Both were in country. He scarcely heard me.


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[Assistant] He said what I'd been hearing ever since I had joined the army. Impossible.


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[Assistant] I was humiliated and furious and stormed back to where my gear lay piled on the wet ground. I was surrounded by troops who had been wounded and who were now returning to their units. Artillery pounded to the north. I wasn't going south.


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[Assistant] The next day, when they loaded trucks aimed north, I picked one with second division on its bumper and leaped aboard. I was AWOL in Korea.


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[Assistant] You think that's like, you go, okay, that's, that's kinda crazy. Well look, get this. The truck was a mixed bag of vets and replacements from a half a dozen different countries. A Korean was driving.


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[Assistant] I soon discovered that I was the only American aboard. I also learned from one of the Koreans who spoke English better than I did that the truck belonged not to the U.S. Second Infantry Division, but to the Republic of Korea Army Second Infantry Division. So I first saw combat in a Korean division. But at least I was in battle. And look, there's, I could...


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[Assistant] I could have easily just turned this into an audiobook and read the entire freaking thing.


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[Assistant] You, you, you kind of have to read it yourself and I apologize. I just don't want to do a full audio book of this because he,


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[Assistant] No. Like, I mean, I guess, I guess it kind of could. It kind of could actually. It kind of could.


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[Assistant] You could, you could get away with a lot. You could get away with a lot because they don't have...


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[Assistant] They don't have, you know, you could kind of make things happen, right? Just like, you know, you're sneaking into a concert. You kind of act like you know what you're doing and you kind of walk past the doorman like you're going to, you got some task that you're supposed to do. No one says anything to you.


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[Assistant] I, I was, uh, my kid was sick and I got here late and I'm just trying to get up with my unit and they're like,


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[Assistant] It was either tilt or it was, it might have been Dick Thompson, who was like,


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[Assistant] If you volunteered to go to Vietnam, I was like, yeah, cool. Yeah, you're good. You're in. It wasn't like, hey, can I please go? It was like, oh yeah, you want to go to NOM? Cool. Oh, you want to go to Special Forces? Cool. You want to, you want to go to, you want to go to SOC? Cool. No problem.


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[Assistant] Hey man, you know what, you know how you, you know, you know how you know what someone's rank is?


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[Assistant] They have a little patch that's velcroed onto their thing. So yeah, freaking Andy Stumpf talking about that. Andy Stumpf would like, make himself a, make himself a lieutenant commander. And he's a, he'd make himself four ranks above what he actually was.


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[Assistant] He's AWOL this whole tour, just, and he does exactly what you said. He kinda shows up and gets with the company and starts working.


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[Assistant] A fish, you know, not official maneuvers. You know, my, my CBs, so I had CBs that, which is construction battalion. So they're Navy guys that do construction and they've got a really awesome historical, um,


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[Assistant] CBs are CBs, the CBs that work for me.


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[Assistant] Let's say authorized, right? For instance, we need a piece of equipment. We need a piece of gear. We need a bunch of lumber to build something.


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[Assistant] It takes a little while for the administrative things to catch up. So when it's, when you're waiting for administrative things to catch up, there's some shady activities happening. You're making some things happen.


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[Assistant] That's why they call it a con man, right? Cause you have to have this confidence level of confidence. So he's got a level of confidence here just to jump on with a bunch of North Koreans. The reason that I went off on this tangent about not reading everything is cause


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[Assistant] Uh, the first guy I was sure that I had shot bounded into the air then dropped over a ledge before us.


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[Assistant] Everyone else on my side had already taken off, so I picked up a wounded Korean and helped him back to where I had joined the unit. Now look what happens. He, he, he finds a jeep with four American GIs. And just kind of rolls with them because he doesn't want to be, he's with Koreans. He's with people that aren't speaking, there's a few people that speak English, but most of them aren't.


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[Assistant] And then he jumps in with them, uhm, ends up going to this replacement depot and load, he gets loaded onto a boxcar that's, that's heading south.


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[Assistant] And then a couple days later, he ends up where he's supposed to be. Okay, so a couple days later, we were near enough for me to make my move. Oh, he gets to Busan. So he gets back to Busan because he's with the Korean unit. He doesn't want to be with the Korean unit. So he goes back to Busan to figure out like, okay, how can I get with some Americans? He gets back there.


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[Assistant] And drove over to the 23rd. They were preparing for, to jump off for the Yalu River, a push north


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[Assistant] Designed to end the war. Headed home was the motto. Home by Christmas, MacArthur promised. Rumor had it that the 7th Infantry Division and the Marines were already rolling north. The rocks already have more men on the Yalu than the Chinese on the mainland to put it together.


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[Assistant] Someone swore, hell it's as good as over. I felt a pang in my heart. But what the hell, a short war is better than none. Besides, life is full of surprises. So he steals a jeep to go and again, right, this guy's just getting after it. Uh, the temperature plummeted to 20 below.


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[Assistant] Again, I'm trying to figure out what to read, but you read, you see that the temperature is 20 below, like let's make sure everybody knows. Extra equipment and ammunition were issued. We began to feel a fever for conquest. We were going to end it. The big attack was on.


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[Assistant] Not by us, but by the Chinese. One million strong, they came at us across the Yalu River, out of Manchuria, surrounded by more than 30 full divisions. Our attack turned into a rout.


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[Assistant] So then this happens. So he's, this, they're, they're starting to kind of get beat up and sergeant comes off and says, we got to get more troops up here. The Turks are somewhere off close to the East. Do you know where they are? Sarge? I don't even know where we are.


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[Assistant] He ignored it, well I know where they're supposed to be.


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[Assistant] But I'd hope maybe you know for sure. He dropped a finger on my shoulder. I've got to send you after them.


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[Assistant] I don't have anyone to spare. It's another lesson of war. If you don't belong to the unit, you can be spared. So he's just tagging along with these guys. And so the sergeant's like, okay, well I need somebody to go do something to you. Sure, I'll go. I heard myself volunteer. That was all.


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[Assistant] He didn't know anymore about the Turks than I did. If I found them okay, if I didn't, that was okay too. Two hours later, I located their lead element. They were still heading north, looking for more Chinese, which said just about all there is to say about them.


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[Assistant] I couldn't talk to the Turks, and they couldn't talk to me. I tried to get across what I wanted, but it was useless. They had their orders. Attack north. Night closed in, and I stayed.


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[Assistant] So he's supposed to go figure out what they're doing and, and he can't even communicate with them to get them to do what he needed them to do. So he stays with them for a while. Then he decides I'm fast forward. He decides he's got to leave and go back and at least tell him, Hey, this is where the Turks are. I don't speak their language. And what do you want me to do next?


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[Assistant] And in order to leave, he heads off to the north. He thinks it's going to be the best way to go. And here we go back to the book. I looked ahead and spotted about 200 Chinese coming across the valley.


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[Assistant] Not more than a hundred yards out. I dropped down behind some rocks and fallen timbers and stretched out on my belly in the snow. Recalling the dead captain, that's what I opened up with.


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[Assistant] I eased my rifle off safe. I wasn't about to be taken alive.


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[Assistant] The finger toward me and passed. I was safe. I was ready to move again. I put my hands down to push myself up when all hell broke loose.


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[Assistant] Running and milling around in confusion, some headed back up the hill, and the Turks opened up again. When they came back down, I dropped another couple dozen. Suddenly it fell silent. It was no time for me to move, I got back down and waited.


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[Assistant] My foxhole buddy convinced them that I had gone out after the entire group alone and I became an archidouche, their brother.


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[Assistant] Later, when I stood before their president, the only foreign soldier ever to receive the Turkish equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.


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[Assistant] So now, now he's in position with the Turks.


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[Assistant] But not a sound from the Turks. A Turk private who I came to know well and who later died slashed across the faces of three Chinese with one great sweep of his blade. Another a master sergeant who would later visit my home in the States as a hero of his nation and as an honored guest of ours gutted two more at my side. They loved it.


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[Assistant] But the Chinese I saw already had no stomach for it. They routed quickly and fell back abandoning their dead and wounded. The wounded the Turks finished off. They gave no quarter and asked none.


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[Assistant] By the way, just FYI, just so everyone knows, we're talking about bayonet battles.


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[Assistant] They've kinda been roughed up, and even though they've done some hard fighting, they're heading south. They got lots of casualties, they're in rough shape. He's back with Americans now. As Dark descended, we saw Chinese troops perch like buzzards on the heights around us.


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[Assistant] Our column froze to a halt. Ammo was low. There was no ration handout. The few men who had Sea Rats mostly passed them to the wounded. With no wire for setting up a defense, the column had to move. A truck passed close to me and I fell behind it.


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[Assistant] I remembered running behind my brother's ice delivery truck as a kid watching water drip out.


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[Assistant] As the ice melted in the summer sun, what a waste of water, then it hit me. War, what a waste of blood. Glancing back into the darkness,


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[Assistant] At the hills crawling with Chinese, I realized that sometimes the alternatives were worse. So I straightened myself up.


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[Assistant] 14 miles wasn't that far. Two men came beside me in the darkness. One of them had one arm gone, the other both. They needed space in one of the trucks. Myself and another soldier climbed aboard and sifted through the wounded for the dead. We unloaded eight bodies and laid them at the side of the road.


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[Assistant] Word came back again, keep the column moving, or stop in place and die.


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[Assistant] So like I said, they are, they're in tough shape as they're, as they're extracting in this situation. And again, he explains how they end up there, but I can't, I'm not gonna read, not reading the whole book.


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[Assistant] I'd make it. And so would most of the others if they'd fight. We were breaking through. Some men were beginning to rally. One, when one truck driver bought the farm, someone else jumped in to take up the slack. The column was moving. It was make contact, pull back, regroup, fight again and again. But we were moving. Many died needlessly.


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[Assistant] Tanks and trucks plowed over them in the dark and confusion, crushing dozens beneath wheels and tracks. The sounds of battle and the powerful roar of engines drowned out the screams. In the light of a flare, I saw a man's face frozen in horror, his mouth open in a soundless scream as he went under the treads of a patent tank. It was unavoidable. And it was ghastly.


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[Assistant] Three men were stretched out beside the road, white phosphorous searing into their dead flesh. An incoming round struck halfway between us and I hit the dirt when I raised up.


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[Assistant] They had disappeared, and a small crater hollowed the snow where they had been. More artillery followed, and I dove into a hole made by an earlier round. There was another guy in there. Go ahead, you yellow bastard, shoot me, he screamed.


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[Assistant] I still had dirt in my eyes, I'm not a yellow bastard I fired back, and I'm not gonna shoot you. He was an asshole, I figured.


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[Assistant] Still brushing dirt from my eyes. Look! I said carelessly. Meaning god damn it can't you see? I can't.


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[Assistant] I can't, he sobbed. I can't see anything. My eyes cleared and I saw his face. A massive searing, white phosphorus.


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[Assistant] He might have been one of the three I had thought was dead or someone else who'd been hit in the same- by the same round. I scooped up chunks of ice and snow and tried to clea- clean his face. I led him out of the hole and over to a medic.


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[Assistant] I was still watching and wishing him well when the truck took a direct hit and disappeared.


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[Assistant] I reached out and broke off an icicle from a passing truck. I stuck the end in my mouth and sucked on it


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[Assistant] Just before first light, I ambled toward the head of the column and attached myself to the lead unit. We came upon a unit that had gone before us, all of them dead. And many disemboweled, like the men in the village.


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[Assistant] A couple of hours later I found him alongside the road with a bullet between his eyes. The back of his head was gone and his brains were splattered all over his vest.


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[Assistant] We attacked some more, took some more casualties, took our wounded and mostly left our dead behind us.


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[Assistant] We had lost 3,000 men in one day of the 7,000 remaining in the division.


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[Assistant] Like no, I want to go to a frontline unit, and what do they say? They say that's impossible. So he waited two days, slung his rifle, and went back on AWOL.


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[Assistant] And reported to a replacement unit handling hospital returnees. I teamed up with a couple of men from the 38th and returned to the unit then.


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[Assistant] On down to its second battalion. At battalion headquarters, we were asked which company we were from. This is what you're talking about. So he gets to battalion headquarters, not a battalion that he's even a part of, and they say, which company are you from? And he says, E company.


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[Assistant] I said and was loaded on the back of a deuce and a half and delivered. At company headquarters, I was assumed to be a replacement from stateside and was turned over to Dave Bernstein. A wonder from Brooklyn.


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[Assistant] Whom I came to cherish. You see that bridge up there we're gonna have to cross? He asked, yes.


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[Assistant] Well we've crossed it at least four times already. Two times south, two times north. I noticed him studying me out of the corner of his eye.


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[Assistant] They'll more than likely shoot us back across it again tonight. He glanced at his watch. Usually the shit hits the fan at about 1030.


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[Assistant] They lay on the artillery for about 15 minutes and then follow up with takasan chinks. Takasan, that means a lot. He studied me when he said it.


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[Assistant] I felt myself flush. Come off it, man. I'm no damn rookie. I made it to Coonery with this outfit.


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[Assistant] You brought me up short. You were at Coonery? That's right. What outfit? Who the hell knows? I was a radio man. I was a radio repairman. I lied. I didn't have time to explain being AWOL.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he meets these guys, this, this easy company here. Uh, Bernstein signaled again. Now he's, now he's with these guys. And this scene, as you read this, it just, uh, gives you that. I had to read this part, just so you get a kind of a, a, a sense of, sense of, of who he's with and who these guys are. So he shows up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, uh, Bernstein signaled and I stood up and followed him into one of the huts. Inside it was a little casino.


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[Assistant] The mud walls were covered with tapstries and silk blankets e-company had liberated when they moved into the town. There was a small fire burning in the fireplace. The mud fireplace.


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[Assistant] There were three-fifths of whiskey on a small shelf and five half-empty bottles in front of five soldiers playing poker on a silk-covered table in the middle of the room. One of the men, a sergeant, kept calling for bug.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's Bugs Hoover. He's always calling for the bug, aces, straights, and flushes, Bernstein explained. He introduced me to the, to the men with whom I would serve until I left Korea or until they died or captured. Some stood up and shook hands, others just nodded. We watched for a bit, then left. What are their jobs? I asked. Call me Dave, he said.


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[Assistant] Fearsons, the platoon sergeant used to be an 82nd airborne, I think we kid him about the time he went AWOL came back and the old man said he'd never be a soldier. That was in the States.


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[Assistant] In four months he's been here, he's gone from PFC to Master. He was the same old man who promoted him. Mac's tough, but he's a hell of a good guy. Crandall's a squad leader. He hates war, and he hates the army, but he fights.


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[Assistant] Billy Joe Buchholz is a rifleman, a PFC from Atlanta.


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[Assistant] He's kinda new here too. Brinson's a draftee. He's got kids. One of them signed some of his letters, though I don't believe he's even old enough for school. Brinson's a bar man.


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[Assistant] Bugs is a goddamn tiger. He does anything and everything that needs doing. Sometimes he's a squad leader, sometimes he's a platoon sergeant. He's everywhere and anywhere, wherever there's gooks. If you're a fighter, you'll like him, and he'll like you. If you're not, stay the hell out of his way.


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[Assistant] Who's got the squad I'm assigned to, I asked. King. Forgot to mention.


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[Assistant] He's a good Joe too. Hell, they all are, he said, flinging up his arms. No sense in trying to say who is and who isn't.


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[Assistant] He looked thoughtful. The amazing thing is the age. Average is less than 21. And that's including the World War II vets. So there's a little introduction to the guys.


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[Assistant] Says the Chinese didn't attack that night, but neither did we. Bugs lost his ass at poker. Ten years after Errol Flynn and Burma, I was an honest-to-god infantryman. I felt damn good. I slept well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know the, uhm, you ever heard that adage, I'm sure I've said it here before, that war is a lot of waiting. There is not waiting in this book. There's very little, cause every time he seems like he's gonna have to wait, he just goes AWOL and finds out.


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[Assistant] Yeah, late the next afternoon we were briefed by the company commander.


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[Assistant] Still later we were briefed by our platoon leader, Lieutenant Malinowski.


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[Assistant] I was to go on patrol. He said he was sorry to have to send me out on my first full day in the platoon, but no sweat, no real sweat. He assured me it was only a listening post at 1800 hours, Dave Sowers, Crandall Tate, a guy called self propelled. That's, that's one of the top nicknames I've ever heard in my life.


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[Assistant] The guy's name is D-E Self-Propelled. Freakin' legit. Uh, he had come to E-Company from an artillery self-propelled gun unit. So his name was Self-Propelled. And myself were briefed by King, who would lead. We're gonna, we're going a bit north for tonight to LP5.


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[Assistant] Nothing big. There shouldn't be any trouble. We'll lay low and listen. We've all been out here before except for Herbert. He glanced at me. All you have to do, Herbert, is listen and watch for unannounced company, okay? Okay, I replied. He continued briefing and made it simple, clear and complete.


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[Assistant] Kind of crazy, right? Simple, clear and complete. That's, that's my definition. My definition is simple, clear and concise. And this one is simple, clear and complete.


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[Assistant] We moved out later, each of us knew exactly what was expected of him and everyone else in the patrol. So there you go, that's just a beautiful briefing. Everybody knew what was expected of themselves and of everyone else in the patrol. These men were all business, he goes out in the field now, all these men were all business, no scuffing about, no talk, no bullshit.


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[Assistant] So these guys are squared away and fast forward a little bit. These patrols continue. He briefs on some of these patrols, what they're like, what's going on. Uh, the weather's getting even colder.


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[Assistant] And fast forward to a point, they're on e-company, easy company is in a position, they're on like the knob of a hill.


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[Assistant] And we'll go to the book. The moon rose full and bright, and the hills to the north glowed in sharp relief.


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[Assistant] A trip flare rocketed into the sky from the base of the hill before us and burst like a bomb of light across the heavens. We could see the enemy, a line of grey-white ghosts floating.


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[Assistant] Forward, over the snow about 250 yards away. The flare drifted in its chute across our entire front, shadows climbing back around us as it disappeared then went out. Hold fire.


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[Assistant] Hey, easy company, why don't you go home? This is home, you fucker, go back to China. Someone yelled right back. Still neither side fired.


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[Assistant] That's freaking crazy, right? They're calling you by your company name. Come down and fight. Someone on the other side blew a bugle.


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[Assistant] A few muffled chinks. Our weapons were frozen, firing pins immo- immovable.


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[Assistant] Piss on them, someone said and word came down the line. We pissed on them and it worked.


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[Assistant] The urine melted the ice and the troops all along the line began to fire. Men shifted positions to fill where individual weapons had not been pissed on yet.


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[Assistant] A second later he dropped down beside me and jerked two quick shots into advancing troops. Good, he said. Now let's drive the little bastards back to China. I didn't know where Johns was from or where he was going, but he had style.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I said, let's do that. The other men in the line apparently felt the same way. We broke the assault at more than 50 yards and drove them back down the hill to lick their wounds.


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[Assistant] A kid to our right clambered out of his hole and started down the backside of the hill. McPherson was on him like a cat. Where in the hell you think you're going, he asked.


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[Assistant] To the aid station, the guy answered, I've got the chills. Kid, Mac told him, it's 30 below zero. We've all got the chills. Get back in that hole. I'm going back to battalion. The kid shouted, almost crying. I'm freezing. Mac leveled his carbine. Get back in your hole. I don't have time to argue.


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[Assistant] His finger squeezed the slack from the trigger. Get back in that fucking hole. Now.


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[Assistant] The kid turned and with head hanging, moved off in the dark.


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[Assistant] We heard the thud of his boots as he jumped back down into his hole. The bugles sounded again. This time they came up the hill in battalion strength, but this time all of our weapons worked. Whoever had come up with a piss technique deserved a congressional medal of honor. We piled the bodies on top of one another all along the front. My bar began to overheat.


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[Assistant] And the smell of cordite and urine seared my nostrils. Flares popped overhead again, lighting up the slope below and the valley beyond. The Chinese were everywhere. Like ants, they were coming in in waves.


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[Assistant] It was a standard tactic with them. The first wave was light. It was meant to draw fire so they could note and pinpoint our positions of our automatic weapons. The second wave was to knock out our automatic weapons and to overrun us or at least wear us down so the third wave could finish us off. This time however, three waves couldn't be enough. And they seemed to know it as well as we did.


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[Assistant] They'd come prepared, their leaders were pros, and seldom underestimated who they were up against. They knew that any unit prepared to pay the price could overrun any position.


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[Assistant] These guys always came ready to pay that price. Johns was killed in the third assault.


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[Assistant] I laid his rifle and ammunition beside my own on the edge of the position. Then as an altered, as an afterthought, I extracted his bayonet from his scabbard and fixed it to his rifle. I was ready. I tucked my boots beneath his body to keep, to keep them warm, but he was already cold. It was gonna be a long night. By the fifth wave, the Chinese had paid the price.


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[Assistant] The hillside before us was littered with their dead and wounded.


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[Assistant] We had sustained about 40% casualties ourselves. Ammunition was almost non-existent. The artillery had ceased to fire in our support. The last of our wounded were already on their way toward the rear, walking wounded, carrying the dead and incapacitated.


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[Assistant] The sixth wave hit and the order came down to fall back to cover the wounded.


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[Assistant] I leaped out of my position, no one had come by to pick up John's. I checked his body, the rounded caught him smacking the forehead above his left eye.


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[Assistant] The back of his head was gone. I slung his rifle over my shoulder, locked his cartridge belt above my own, and joined the rest of the men. At the base of the hill, we came to a road, which led back across the bridge. Our battalion commander, Colonel Skeldon,


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[Assistant] Was rounding up units and reorganizing them for a counter attack. His driver was besides a trailer, tagged onto his jeep, passing out ammo. When we were ready, Skelton led us back up the hill.


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[Assistant] He had done so efficiently and so quickly that we caught the 6th wave not yet ready to defend. Within minutes we were back in our positions consolidated and ready. First light was breaking and the Chinese pulled back. We gathered up the rest of our dead.


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[Assistant] Johns went back down the hill in a mattress cover. Sours and Tate, dead, went along with him.


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[Assistant] The Chinese had outnumbered us at least ten to one. They had weapons and guts. They had been willing to pay the price. But so had we.


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[Assistant] You know when they get to wave number five, you're thinking, wow, and that's not it. Here comes wave number six.


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[Assistant] And the reason that you can't stay there is because you're out of ammunition.


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[Assistant] 40% loss had cut us down far below combat strength. We were ordered into reserve.


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[Assistant] Reserve. It's a powerful word in the combat zone. It's a full night's sleep in a couple days. You're almost certain to live through.


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[Assistant] And a time to find out how the war is going for the rest of the division, for the rest of the army.


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[Assistant] We reviewed attack formations and procedures, defenses, withdrawals, marches, and counterattack. We practiced until every one of them understood what was expected of them under all conditions. We laid down the standard operating procedures which would work for us in the conditions of this war.


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[Assistant] Good training cuts losses and we intended to cut our losses to a minimum. We trained and we trained hard.


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[Assistant] We got a few supplies by AirDrop. Sometimes those came in with mail from home.


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[Assistant] And all training would grind to a halt. Mail was considered a morale builder. Personally, I disagreed. I didn't write much and didn't expect to get a letter


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[Assistant] I got them of course, but they didn't mean much to me. Home was too far away. What happened in Easy Company 38th Infantry Regiment was more important. If you kept your mind on where you were, the war was easier.


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[Assistant] If you let your thoughts drift to things that no longer existed for you, then you are in trouble.


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[Assistant] Letters I read quickly, sometimes skipping entire paragraphs, and I got rid of them.


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[Assistant] Packages I broke open immediately and shared their contents on the spot. I consumed my portions on the on the hoof and Forgot them. It's good advice, man. It's good advice I was like, you know


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[Assistant] Then suddenly and simply Malinowski notified us that 1st and 3rd battalions were caught in a pocket and we were moving up north to give them a hand.


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[Assistant] The good news is, this time we ride. He signed us trucks by squad.


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[Assistant] We topped the ridge and descended toward the valley that separated us from the burning smoking mass that was Hill 554, our objective. The planes banked off and away as we started across the valley.


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[Assistant] Chinese artillery came alive now, and the ground beneath my feet rolled and heaved like the deck of a ship on a raging sea. Smoke, fire, and steel split the air like a tornado, and the kabrack of heavy artillery pounded my ears. Suddenly I was through it, and on the height of the near bank of a small stream, facing a 40 foot drop to the far side. A machine gun opened up from the hill ahead,


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[Assistant] The ground heaved, the ground sloped steeply upward. I had reached the base of hill 554. I shoved my BAR selector to automatic. Finger on the trigger, my eyes straining to pierce the smoke.


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[Assistant] My finger tightened and I damn near dropped him. It was Dave. Without a glance toward me, he crossed in front of me and disappeared into the smoke. The cloud blew away for a second and I saw him clearly. Both sides called off artillery and shouts came along the hill to keep it moving and keep going forward. I hadn't fired a shot yet. Someone yelled, grenades!


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[Assistant] I squeezed off one shot, then waited. Firing blind, went against the grain. My father had taught me too well. I held fire, but then I saw that the tactic was sound. We were driving them back. Bodies tumbled out of the smoke above, down the hill below, past me. I switched the selector to automatic, rapid.


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[Assistant] Little puffs of smoke and dust billowed from his uniform and drove his body back against the hillside. The weapon he carried flew from his hands past me down the hill. Chinese voices above were screaming in the smoke.


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[Assistant] I continued forward and picked up the pace. As I stepped past the body, I had just dropped that glance down. He was dead alright. I had emptied an entire magazine into him. I wasn't as cool.


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[Assistant] As I had figured, I released the empty magazine and was inserting a new one when one of his buddies broke through the right front. I swung around, he was a kid. He dropped his rifle, then changed his mind and made a dive for it.


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[Assistant] But he was too late. I seated the magazine with a crack on my palm, slammed the bolt forward and squeezed the trigger. His head disintegrated. I grabbed his rifle, pointed it up the hill and emptied it into the smoke.


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[Assistant] This time, I knew I had fired four rounds. There were still 16 in the magazine. I had calmed down. Another body broke out of the smoke above me.


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[Assistant] My finger tightened on the trigger. It was bugs. Let's go, he shouted. We're almost there. I caught up with him. King had been hit. Who else didn't know? Who else he didn't know yet? There were about six of us still on the line, but the enemy was pulling out. The hill was ours. Shoulder to shoulder, we marched those last few yards. We were the first two to reach the top.


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[Assistant] Within minutes, the remainder of the platoon moved up alongside. Our squad had been cut down to four men. Not a major action.


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[Assistant] It was just another hill for which we had paid the price.


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[Assistant] But it cost the Chinese dearly too. Their dead lay scouted all around. We had done well. We had won.


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[Assistant] Then, suddenly, as if turned by the hand of fate, our own artillery seemed to bounce back in flight and began falling onto our own positions. It was impossible for the Chinese to have spotted and called in counter fire so quickly.


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[Assistant] But ours are theirs. Death was the same in a world of lightning bolts and thunder clapping around us. The earth


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[Assistant] Like a doll in a hurricane and came down hard, and that was it. As suddenly as it began, it was over. I crawled over to Mac, chunks of ice and debris raining down on us, and my mouth tasted like copper pennies. Bastards, he grimaced.


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[Assistant] Dumb stupid asshole bastards. Those were our tanks. He was shakin'.


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[Assistant] But his only real wound was a chunk of shrapnel behind his right knee. He was out of it. He was stateside for sure. Carboni, and Carboni's the medic, came up and we tied a compress around the wound. With the shrapnel still inside, you're going home, Mac, Carboni said softly.


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[Assistant] I lifted him across my shoulder, careful of the knee, and we made it back to the platoon. There'd be no evacuation until their artillery let up. And we already had eight wounded besides Mack.


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[Assistant] And the incoming stuff lifted. We said our so longs, told Mac that he had made it and was headed home for parades and kisses.


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[Assistant] Just to get home to see the family will be enough. You guys have my address. See ya.


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[Assistant] Two of the walking wounded picked up his litter and fell behind the others headed down the slope. We sat down and watched them wind away towards the trail in the valley below. Six walking wounded. Mack and the other guys on litters.


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[Assistant] It was all we could spare. In November, even the walking wounded would have had to stay on and fight. So things were improving a little. They disappeared in the rocks below and into a minefield.


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[Assistant] Seconds later, Mack and three others came running out of the rocks and back up the hill. Men ran to help them. The other five were dead.


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[Assistant] They left the bodies and brought Mac and the others back up to the ridge. The wind picked up again and it began to snow.


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[Assistant] Everyone was too tired to waste energy digging in. We shielded the wounded with our bodies to keep them warm.


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[Assistant] Halfway through the night, a Chinese unit passed us by. By morning, we were surrounded again. By afternoon, the tanks had gotten through to us, and we were able to evacuate the wounded. So Mack was on his way once more.


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[Assistant] There was no escape. At least for Mack. He had survived the shrapnel.


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[Assistant] One light piece behind the knee from a hit close enough to destroy a tank. He'd escaped the minefield. We were no longer trapped. He was on his way again, and home was but a short way off.


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[Assistant] Then our tanks made another one of those errors so common in war that most people never hear about. One tank had not received the word.


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[Assistant] And fired one shot by mistake into the small band of wounded men.


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[Assistant] The other three wounded and the two we had sent to carry the litter were blown to bits.


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[Assistant] Bitterness swept through me. I sat down in the snow and stared numbly into the distance. The hills here still white and blue, but they looked dirty.


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[Assistant] The sky was a swirl of muddy clouds. I let my head hang for a second or two and just stared at the frozen ground between my boots.


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[Assistant] Just little ridges of frozen mud with a light dirty snow coating the edges.


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[Assistant] Vader, at the base of the hill, I raised hell with the tank commander out of frustration and grief. It had been a legitimate mistake on his part.


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[Assistant] Something that everyone in the military, everyone in the police should think about all the time. I promise you, when things get crazy,


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[Assistant] Individuals with time could go home, replaced by new men, quote, starting their tours.


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[Assistant] There was a reward before the end of the rainbow. A way out of war, short of winning.


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[Assistant] It was the worst plan the army had ever put into effect.


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[Assistant] Men became cautious. They did their time and stayed alive. Soldiers no longer belonged to a unit. They served in one until they completed a tour, then served in another. It was the beginning of the end.


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[Assistant] The purpose of all living is death. I had read once.


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[Assistant] Loyalty, courage, and comradeship lent nobility to that purpose.


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[Assistant] In a very short time, our army and our country would come to reap the fruits of depriving their soldiers of that nobility of purpose.


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[Assistant] Who were stuck with the old principles began to view ourselves as different and counted each rotation as a loss.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. You know, in World War II, you know when you came home from war? When we won. And some guys were 2, 3, 4 years. And, I mean, just think about what that does to your mindset. Just think about what that does, oh my god, only got 4 more months, only got 8 more months.


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[Assistant] Fast forward a little bit, a couple of days later I got nicked in the wrist. Six of us were on patrol down along the bank of a river.


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[Assistant] Mal, the officer, wanted me to go back to the mash for a couple days to make sure I was okay. We compromised. If complications set in or I began hurting, I'd go back. That was that. He's just getting wounded and just doesn't care.


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[Assistant] Uhm, this is a little later. I was going to, I was going to do, get some shot eye.


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[Assistant] But I never had the chance. Heavy stuff whistled in right on us. In the middle of my sentence. I...


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[Assistant] So we both spent the rest of the day packing my arm with cold mud to prevent the phosphorus from getting oxygen while we dug out chunks with our knives.


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[Assistant] Then I went to the aid station to have the wound cleaned and sewed. Getting wounded was becoming an annoying habit. The good news was that I got another night at the old aid station.


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[Assistant] It was almost worth getting hit for a night of uninterrupted sleep. No posting of outposts.


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[Assistant] No taking turns. War has a way of reducing life to the basics and bringing home what the true comforts in life are. Uninterrupted sleep is one hell of a comfort. Cool water to drink is another. A dry bed, a hot cup of coffee, a cigarette if you're a smoker, I guess.


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[Assistant] I'd seen enough dying men ask for one to make me believe it was. For some, a shot of whiskey.


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[Assistant] Fast forward, Chinese troops were reported massing about 2,000 yards north of our permit. Positions and armed recon patrol is needed to check it out.


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[Assistant] Approximately 1500 yards out, a sniper's bullet caught me in the upper right arm. Slug went in, wrapped around the bone, it buzzed like a hammer blow to the funny bone, but it didn't do much damage. The medic put a compress on it, we dropped down off the hill to put it between us and the sniper.


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[Assistant] Carbone's replacement, a medic named Ryan, had been assigned to the platoon, and Pickens, a new sergeant, had joined us. Again, I was like, well, you know, you get to these points, you're saying, oh, I really need to go over the-


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[Assistant] And I figured he must have had something on the ball that made to make rank. I went to meet him. He looked like a sergeant. Neat, trim, and in shape. He wore his uniform well and his gear was in order. He talked like a sergeant. No bullshit. And he gave orders like a man who knew his stuff. Dave didn't like him. One more gun is one more gun, I told him. Not always Herb.


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[Assistant] He replied, then changed the subject. He didn't want to talk about it. It was an odd remark.


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[Assistant] Everything he did just seemed to confirm it. He had bearing, command presence, intelligence, training, the works. He was going to be a real asset to the company.


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[Assistant] Dave was wrong. Anyone could make a mistake. Pickens and I supervised the digging in and the preparation of the defense.


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[Assistant] That could throw up a wall of steel on command.


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[Assistant] Something big was brewing on the Chinese side. Pickens decided we needed more tactical wire to our front. He went to the rear himself to go pick it up. It was dusk and the sky was calm and beautiful. Isn't that kind of interesting?


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[Assistant] Right? Like you feel something brewing on the Chinese side and this guy decides he's gonna go to the rear?


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[Assistant] Little while later, Jennings whistled to me, Hey Herb, Mal wants you on the sound power. I went over and took the phone from Jennings, Sergeant Herbert.


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[Assistant] Sir? Herb, get the troops back in their holes, all hell is going to break loose in a minute.


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[Assistant] I watched the canisters tumble down through the sky out over our heads and crashing through the trees only a few hundred yards before us. Malinowski was still talking. The valley is loaded with gooks. He was saying, get the men ready.


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[Assistant] Full alert. Notify the OP to be ready to pull in fast when they get the word. Where's Pickens? Wilco.


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[Assistant] Pickens went back for wire and hasn't returned yet, I said. Okay, it's your baby. Stay in contact. Roger that. Out.


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[Assistant] This time we had the men and ammunition.


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[Assistant] We had wire and we had landmines and booby traps out. Our fire sectors overlapped along the entire front. This time they wouldn't be able to afford the price. I looked up at the planes. Lay off guys, I muttered to myself. Let them come in and give us a chance.


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[Assistant] I felt good. I went along the line briefing in each position. Dude, I just like underline this section here.


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[Assistant] This is his brief to the troops. Nobody moves out of position unless I give the word. Know who's on your right and left. Keep all gear on. Fix bayonets.


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[Assistant] No one throws grenades until you're certain they're in range. Remember, you can hear a lot further than you can toss a frag. Make shots count. Don't waste ammo. Keep up a good rate of fire.


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[Assistant] If word comes down to fire, each man lays his rifle against a stake and we put it in and fire steady at a rapid rate on that line. All fires interlocking until I password to fire at will across the entire sector. Don't forget the tendency at night is to fire too high. Keep aim low.


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[Assistant] We'll cream em. We have fast resupply from the rear. When ammo starts to get low, don't panic. There'll be more coming. Tonight belongs to Easy Company.


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[Assistant] We would have done the same for the 6th, 7th, or 10th. Except that some asshole back at company rear hadn't done his job. Ammunition was running low by the 5th wave.


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[Assistant] More was supposed to be on the way, but King called back to Malinowski and learned that the company headquarters had withdrawn. There'd be no resupply tonight. The Chinese had broken through on the right flank where the Dutch, who had been tied in with us, had already pulled out. We were on our own. Then the phone went dead. A round had severed the wire or had been cut.


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[Assistant] I told King to alert the platoon to be ready to pull out back down the hill to the point where we had previously designated in case we were overrun. I picked up bugs from my, from the hole to my left and we moved east along the back of the ridge to make contact with Malinowski.


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[Assistant] Or to find out what had happened to the wire, we were still moving when all hell broke loose as the sixth wave hit and came in over the wire and over their dead.


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[Assistant] Next thing I knew I was fighting hand to hand for my life. The little mothers were everywhere. Bugs and I killed about 12 of them before, between us before we got enough opening to get the hell out. Let's go, he shouted.


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[Assistant] We were bound, we, and we bounded down back the side of the hill like two fat bears toward where our company command post had been.


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[Assistant] There was nothing but fog. Either we were the last ones or the first. We dropped down behind a log and tried to assess the situation.


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[Assistant] From here on, we'd play it safe. There was no telling who was behind us. Even our own troops would be edgy. And friendly fire kills the same as enemy. The rest of the platoon had either gotten out, or they were dead or captured. Let's get going, said Bugs. The Chinese had pretty well halted the ridge.


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[Assistant] It was unlike their previous attacks when they had to be stopped by fire.


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[Assistant] The shooting petered out behind us. We moved off into the fog. Approximately 45 minutes later, we tied up with loose troops from other parts of the company who had assembled at the pre-designated spot. I tried to find out about the platoon. The company commander had been hit and evacuated.


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[Assistant] Malinowski had been catching grenades on the right flank and throwing them back at the Chinese when one of them had gone off in his hand. He was in serious condition but alive and had been evacuated. Nobody knew about Dave, Anis, Jennings and the rest except that they had been ordered to pull back.


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[Assistant] That made me the platoon leader and Lieutenant Canning the commanding officer.


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[Assistant] They eventually make a move to get out of there and it goes relatively well, except for the fact that as they're approaching friendly lines again, they realize that they're in a minefield.


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[Assistant] They make it through the minefield and then they end up...


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[Assistant] Going back out and they're in another hill, on another hill, again.


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[Assistant] We sat waiting, silently. Dawn lit up the sky and the sun started up over the hills behind us. Light crept across and down, forward of the slope. Now we could see movement. There were hundreds of them.


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[Assistant] They had evidently come in right behind us when we had been driven from our positions the preceding night. Now,


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[Assistant] They were halted. Regrouping. I tried the sound power to notify 1st Battalion headquarters, but just couldn't raise anybody on the other end. I sent Jennings back as a runner. Some 60mm mortar light stuff started to puff in the air around us. The Chinese suspected that someone was on the hill.


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[Assistant] They might have spotted us, or the men we had relieved. We continued to watch.


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[Assistant] And held our fire. For the next two hours, they dropped 60 millimeters on us, but did no damage.


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[Assistant] Our air came up out of the sun and made one orbit overhead. Jennings must have gotten the message back to battalion. The planes peeled out of orbit, diving one after the other. The Chinese below held formation. Canisters of napalm tumbled down, scattering flame and twisted metal among their ranks. Still, they held.


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[Assistant] A bugle sounded, loud and clear, from the midst of the carnage, and they came charging up the hill.


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[Assistant] Now, I shouted, sighting along the barrel and squeezing the trigger of the AR. Rifle, fire cracked in my ears from both sides as the rest opened up with me. Our planes banked from east to west and the remaining canisters fell, cutting deep swaths in the ranks of the Chinese.


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[Assistant] But they kept on coming. They had manpower and they had guts. We were butchering them, but from their front line, it kept getting closer.


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[Assistant] When one went down, another replaced him. Our planes, empty of ordinance, banked off south. Bugs passed word that ammo was running low. By sight, I measured the distance to the nearest line of Chinese and squeezed the trigger in one last burst before giving the order to move out.


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[Assistant] The teams pulled out from right flank to left on order, each following in, falling in behind the one passing from its right. Crandall and I went last to bring up the rear. My calculations had been accurate. We were able to pull back down the hill across the saddle and up into first bats positions without drawing fire.


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[Assistant] What's more, we had done a lot of damage to the Chinese. As we passed through their lines, the men of first congratulated us and asked our names. I felt like one hell of a tiger.


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[Assistant] The Major congratulated and thanked us. You guys can serve in this battalion anytime.


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[Assistant] It was a top compliment. I shook his hand, saluted, and reminded him we had to get back to our own unit. There was no transportation available as yet, he told us, but tomorrow I said we could huff it.


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[Assistant] And I moved the patrol out behind me without waiting for an answer or looking back.


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[Assistant] Jennings met us down the road and he had been nicked by a piece of shrapnel, but he could walk and he didn't relish staying behind. We hitched a ride with a deuce and a half headed southwest.


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[Assistant] Had I known the outcome for us, I might not have been in such a hurry to get back.


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[Assistant] Canning was the only officer left alive in the company.


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[Assistant] Counting us, he commanded exactly 90 enlisted men. Pickens was gone. This is that sergeant we were talking about. Pickens was gone according to Canning. He had been avoiding combat ever since he had arrived. I was the only one who hadn't noticed. The day after we had come off the hill, Canning forced him to take out a patrol. They were creamed.


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[Assistant] Pickens came back ranting about being thrown needlessly into the jaws of death and sank to the ground babbling. Canning had a, had him evacuated. Combat fatigue, he laughed. Isn't that a pisser? Anyone in the patrol dead, I asked? Eight. Any of my men?


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[Assistant] Third platoon. He ticked them off. Kyle, Fritz, Moonsong, Donovan, Shoemaker, Benson, Condini, and Davis.


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[Assistant] Kyle and Moonsong. The old ranks were cut down by two more. You're the platoon leader of second now. Until an officer gets in I acknowledged.


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[Assistant] I understood it was temporary. As long as I'm here with some say so, he declared.


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[Assistant] We'll see, I thought. I was no officer. Malinowski had told me he was, I was a sergeant, but I had never seen any promotion orders. I led whatever men I was assigned, wherever I was ordered to. I was still an AWOL. And it would be funny as hell if I were still a private.


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[Assistant] There were no paydays for me. My name was never on the payroll. The records were delayed in the rear, they said. I never contested it. What would I have done with money?


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[Assistant] The platoon numbered 18 men, counting me. We had one machine gun operating, no rocket launchers. It amounted to no more than a heavily reinforced rifle squad. But what the hell? 90 men wasn't a company either.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and like replacements are coming in, but they're not getting there fast enough.


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[Assistant] All the chatter on the other side ceased about at the same time. There wasn't a sound for a few minutes. Then rustling and a few whispers. Some rocks broke loose and tumbled down the slope. They were crawling up the hill. No bugles this time.


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[Assistant] Psychological warfare between the second division and the Chinese was over.


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[Assistant] We had become a seasoned unit. They knew it and we knew it. They were determined to get in close and destroy us. We were just as determined to let them get in close so we could destroy them.


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[Assistant] In a very few minutes, both sides would face the moment of truth. This was Burma. And I was better than Harold Flynn. No blanks, no bullshit.


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[Assistant] I was not an actor, but a U.S. infantryman. I could be any enemy that lived. We sat and we waited. I could hear myself breathe as I strained my ears to measure the distance. Then BAM.


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[Assistant] The entire sssslope beneath us was lit up. Beams bounced off the clouds above and ricocheted down the hillside. Artificial moonlight. I glanced


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[Assistant] Hurriedly around and discovered Buck Dixon and myself to be in the keyhole of a long finger leading up from the valley at the crossbar stem of a junction of T. I glanced down the stem and there they were.


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[Assistant] And I didn't see how they landed. A second later we could make out about 10 more, towing a machine gun on wheels. Buck let fly this time, taking out both gun and crew. So far the score was US about 14 or maybe 20, counting the advance element. Chinese nothing. A shutout.


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[Assistant] Which didn't hold for long. But the next group that broke out of the woods to our front wasn't any lead element or single machine gun crew. It was a whole damn army. All along our front.


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[Assistant] Our men opened up all along the line. Bodies tumbled along the entire slope before us. A whistle blew once, and just as suddenly,


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[Assistant] As we had poured it onto them, they returned it to us. A wall of solid steel drove into our own positions now. Two grenades landed in our hole and Buck scooped them up and flung them back down the hill. Three more landed and he did the same.


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[Assistant] This hole's too damn big, Dixon shouted. And they got us spotted. Another grenade came sailing through the air towards us. Bail out, I yelled. And all three of us cleared the position as one. Two seconds later, the grenade went off inside with a loud whoomp.


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[Assistant] Buck and Dixon had gone right, me left. I rolled over on my stomach. Smack up against self-propelled. He had a shelter half stretched out on the ground and was field stripping a machine gun on it methodically and unheardly as if he were giving a demonstration. He hardly glanced at me.


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[Assistant] Keep him off me Herb, until I get this mother working. Three Chinese raced up and emptied their weapons into the hole we had just left. Buck was reloading his carbine.


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[Assistant] Get him Herb, he yelled. But Dixon fired first, blowing the head off the guy on the right. I dropped the other two, then ran my bayonet into one as he tumbled by me.


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[Assistant] A grenade exploded among us and I felt myself flung backward down the hill. Chinese broke over the top of the ridge. A bayonet slashed my upper right arm.


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[Assistant] Hardly raising his voice above a whisper. Visit your ancestors.


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[Assistant] And started back down the valley toward the town. We're heading the wrong way, Ryan argued. Uh, uh, I fired back. This is it. The artificial moonlight went out, suddenly leaving us in darkness with much of our night sight shot.


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[Assistant] I could walk, but my arm was getting a little stiff. I noticed King was limping. You hit, I whispered about three times. No broken bones though. You Ryan? Nothing, he whispered. Halt. A voice snapped sharply in front of us. G.I.'s, I whispered back. Okay, come on in. There were seven of them. That made ten. So, just to debrief what just happened.


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[Assistant] Freaking insane mayhem is what just happened. These guys are getting attacked by the Chinese. They get pretty much overrun. They all bail out of the positions. They kind of fall back in the direction of the last known area that they think they could go to, which is this town. On the way they're getting separated and re-linking up with other guys.


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[Assistant] And then finally they link up with 7 other guys, so now we have 10 of them.


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[Assistant] One of them suggested we take off down the riverbed. Ryan wanted a hole up in the brush until daylight. I nixed both suggestions. We'd go into town as a patrol. There had to be other elements of the regiment there. The decision made, I moved up front to take over.


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[Assistant] We had one more contact with a Chinese machine gunner whom we bypassed in the dark either because he was dead, at the gun, asleep, or confused. Three members of the patrol dropped off on their own and headed down the riverbed. Ryan disappeared and showed up three years later as a returned POW.


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[Assistant] The remaining six, so they're just losing guys, guys are just dropping off. The remaining six of us made it into the town out of the frying pan into the fire. We had just broken through to battalion headquarters, which was surrounded.


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[Assistant] A major was in charge. I recognized him as a regular heller. He talked tough, looked tough, and was tough. How many of you are there? He asked crisply. Six.


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[Assistant] It's a help. Not a division, but a help. A radio, crackling nearby, informed us that there was no way to break through to us until daylight. They wanted us to hold. The Major returned. We don't have enough ammo left to last an hour. A flare burst above us, caught.


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[Assistant] Caught us standing there in the open. Here we go again, the Major shouted and rushed past us toward the paddy on our east. For lack of any place better to go, we followed, dropping down into firing positions just in time to catch about three or four hundred enemy crossing the paddy toward us at a trot. Guns spewing.


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[Assistant] We were next to a machine gun, and between us we laid down a field of fire that cut them down like a scythe mowing wheat. Not a single one of them reached the perimeter. How long has this been going on? I asked one of the gunners all night.


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[Assistant] Their names were La Rock and McCloud. Neither one seemed any more distressed or nervous about the situation than I was. They went about their business coolly and professionally, making adjustments in the headspace of their weapon, getting more boxes of ammo ready, and joking with each other and with us.


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[Assistant] Remember the message out of Bataan in World War II, when the, when we were being overrun L'Roc joshed? Send more Japs.


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[Assistant] He made a quick pitch. We can break out and some of us will make it.


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[Assistant] He looked me in the eye. Are you for it? I nodded. The rest of you guys, they nodded too. So there's the plan.


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[Assistant] We can try and get out of here and some of us might be able to make it.


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[Assistant] Okay, Bankowski said, we're gonna muster at the south edge of the village on order.


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[Assistant] When they make the next assault, we'll meet them head on. Got it? Got it. McLeod echoed. The rest of us nodded. He turned and raced away. I sat down to think. I'd always heard that when you're


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[Assistant] Time came to die, your life flashed before your eyes. I tried to summon it but got nowhere.


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[Assistant] My mother, father, all those things were too far away. I thought of some things I should have done differently, but not too many.


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[Assistant] I should have kicked some asses I didn't. And I should have said some words to some people that I didn't. If I made it out, I'd never make those mistakes again. If I made it out.


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[Assistant] If not, then I'd take as many of them with me as I could. My thoughts were interrupted by the word coming down to assemble at the south end of the village.


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[Assistant] No sooner would we there when a flare broke overhead lighting up the entire column. A machine gun opened up from the road directly in front of us. Son of a bitch that Benkowski mumbled. We gotta get that gun. Gotta get that gun. The words echoed through my brain.


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[Assistant] Two, maybe three lousy guys, weighing less than 150 pounds each, holding up the entire U.S. Army. Bullshit.


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[Assistant] Life was okay, but not that okay. I scrambled to my feet and raced forward. Another guy came up with me step for step, and we headed south down the road together, covering for the first 30 yards side by side.


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[Assistant] Then there was this sickening thud of high speed metal whacking into flesh. As I, as my companion went down beside me, at just the moment I spotted the gun position, I was 20 yards off, 20 yards out and slightly off to the right. And I managed to get within 5 yards of the gun before they spotted me.


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[Assistant] They were kids. My bayonet ripped through the chest of the gunner, driving them up against the back wall of the position.


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[Assistant] Pulling it loose, I beat the second man to death with my rifle butt. Bayonetted the third, then took a bayonet in the side myself from the fourth as I drove the butt down into his skull, which jerked the rifle from his hands and snapped the bayonet off inside my chest.


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[Assistant] Bastard, I hissed as I pounded his skull one more time for good measure.


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[Assistant] And the three of us went down Helter Skelter. I bounded back up alone and was off again. Flares burst off above us. Lightning, lighting the sky with flame. Grenades were exploding all around.


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[Assistant] Men were screaming on both sides. Then we were in the midst of the Chinese running parallel to the river. The major tripped in front of me and went down. I reached down to pull him up.


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[Assistant] He was a small man. I yanked him to his feet and threw him across my shoulder. We crossed the river. And we were out of it. Some men lifted the major from my shoulders.


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[Assistant] There were 11 of us. Bankowski's arm hung limply at his side. Only one of us, a sergeant from the 1st Ranger Company, had come through without a scratch.


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[Assistant] Another mile down the road, we met the unit on its way up to break through to us.


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[Assistant] There were men from Easy Company with it. My legs were a little rubbery.


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[Assistant] Young Malchik, another Pennsylvanian, raced with me back to the aid station.


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[Assistant] The doc took one look at me and said the war is over for you soldier. You're on your way to the states.


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[Assistant] Yunk said goodbye, see you back home. I waved my hand at him. See you in a couple days, man.


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[Assistant] The major asked me to write my name down. He was gonna put me in for the Medal of Honor. I picked up a scrap of paper from one of the field clerks and wrote Herbert on it and handed it to one of the medics. I laid down on a litter and fell asleep.


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[Assistant] An ambulance left me at the 11th EVAC hospital unit.


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[Assistant] Where they took out the bayonet, took out the shrapnel, took out the slug, then tagged me for Japan and further evacuation to stateside.


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[Assistant] I begged the docs to let me recuperate where I was. I swore I felt fine, but they said it was impossible. I needed rest, besides there were rules. There had been internal bleeding and I had lost a lot of blood. One of them suggested that I volunteer to come back in a few months. In short, the answer was no.


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[Assistant] I could stay at the 11th long enough to see Jennifer Jones, who has arrived the next day.


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[Assistant] The day after I would be evacuated first to Japan, then to the states.


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[Assistant] Jennifer came in the morning and shook hands with each of us. The doctor told her my story as if I were a hero and she invited me for steak when I got back home. She was beautiful. She was real and down to earth. She was going to have dinner with the wounded men that night, but I missed dinner.


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[Assistant] When she came back, I slipped out a different exit.


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[Assistant] I talked the sergeant at supply into letting me have some fatigues and a rifle. Then I hitched a ride north and returned to my unit. Wounds still draining.


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[Assistant] I told them at Battalion that the docs had to, said to have the medic change the dressings periodically and give me shots when I needed them. The wounds were to be bound and stitched after they had drained. No one questioned it. And I was given a lift down to Easy Company.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah. It is actually AWOL because you're being ordered to do something and then you're not doing it. You're being ordered to go to Japan and you're not going there.


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[Assistant] The company was on a sort of low level reserve, not anything we hadn't been, not anything like what we had been on back in the spring, but rather regimental reserve. We were in defensive positions short of the front, ready to reinforce whatever regiment needed.


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[Assistant] Or to be ready on call to Spearhead. The company had a new CEO.


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[Assistant] Canning was the executive officer again. Three new lieutenants had come into the first


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[Assistant] To get me to bite on any of that bullshit, me and who else, I said. I met Captain West, the new CO.


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[Assistant] And the new, three new lieutenants. Tim's an ex-Marine, Lieutenant Dubois from Dubois Street in Dubois, in Dubois, Pennsylvania. And a lieutenant from the sovereign state of Texas.


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[Assistant] Who wanted to know why if I was such a damn good platoon leader I wasn't an officer. I have poll, I explained.


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[Assistant] Captain West was a down home type. He was tall and lanky and served as a commander in World War II. He had been recalled out of Korea for the reserves. He made it clear that he would fight, but he wouldn't take jackass chances. He talked real clear and plain.


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[Assistant] We also received our first black replacements. There were rumors that battalion headquarters had balked at it.


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[Assistant] When our CO was told there would be no more rotation until we accepted black replacements.


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[Assistant] So the regimental CO, it's softened. We try a couple.


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[Assistant] If things didn't work out after a month, it would be discussed again. Easy Company got one.


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[Assistant] He was a super soldier. Probably one of the finest sergeants in the whole damn army.


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[Assistant] It was the officer corps and the ass-kissing senior NCOs at regimental and battalion headquarters who opposed the idea of integration. Most of the troops didn't care one way or the other.


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[Assistant] Entire tenor of the war had changed and this is fast forward a little bit. Things were much better.


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[Assistant] We had broken the Chinese Spring Offensive. The 2nd Division was credited as having destroyed more than 92,000 Chinese regulars, more than 36,000 of whom were dead in that one three-day action. Word was that the North was ready to commence peace talks.


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[Assistant] He was last seen standing on a paddy dike out of ammo, swinging an entrenching tool as he went down under a pile of Chinese. Jennings was missing in action. Most of the replacements we had gained and gone down, and gained and trained, had gone down fighting.


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[Assistant] Some no doubt were at MIA and might show up as POWs later. There were men to be trained. This part of the country was new to me, so I had maps to study. Our unit was not going to sit on its ass for long. We were going to push north.


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[Assistant] This is where you start to see, you know, uhm, a different part of his character. Maybe not a different part, but you start to see.


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[Assistant] Some of, some of his character come through again that defines some of his future. I mean, one of it was him looking at the, the black replacements going like, yeah, no factor, let's do this. And the other one is, well, another good indicator of his


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[Assistant] Let's say his character and his mindset was, uh, they haven't started having some issues with some gorillas. And so the gorillas stepped in again and we started to take sniper fire daily.


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[Assistant] The unit was ordered to burn out some villages to deny them a base of operations. West assigned me the mission and I refused.


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[Assistant] The discussion was getting sticky when Carlson volunteered and got both myself and West off the hook. It was a fatal error for Carlson. He took one through the chest from a sniper and went home in a body bag. I had hardly known the man, yet I felt the same terrible emptiness when he died as I had when Mack had bought the farm. West asked me if I'd like to go out and burn the villages now. No, I said. And he didn't push it.


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[Assistant] What exactly is a gorilla? A gorilla is a non-uniformed fighter. So, if it's a, it's someone that's dressing up like a civilian, and they're maybe acting like a civilian, but they're not in an organized military, so they don't have a uniform, they have a chain of command, but it's, it's,


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[Assistant] But then at night, they have AK-47 hidden and they attack. That's a guerrilla fighter.


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[Assistant] So they're gonna be a little less organized than that just due to the fact that, you know, they're, they're spending some of their time as civilians.


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[Assistant] So the Vietcong has a chain of command and a structure and things like that and their senior Vietcong and their senior gorillas in this situation. Gotcha. But they're not, they're not fully uniformed.


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[Assistant] And I'm sure there's probably a more technical definition than what I'm giving. But that's the general principle. Is a guerrilla fighter is...


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[Assistant] Not in an organized, uniformed situation. And probably is more or less a part-time soldier, even though like Viet Cong, there was professional Viet Cong, meaning they didn't have some other job, but.


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[Assistant] This is, you could say the insurgence in Iraq, same thing.


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[Assistant] And, and you could say that once the insurgents became ISIS and started wearing like black uniforms and flying a big flag, that was, it's almost like they're not gorillas anymore. They're an organized military unit.


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[Assistant] Alright, so uhm, once again, they're on another hill.


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[Assistant] That story of him attacking that machine gun nest where he saves the major and all that, that kind of


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[Assistant] You can kinda say like, okay, that's probably a good place to go home for him and maybe end the book and all that.


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[Assistant] So they're on another hill. I had left a listening post three men above and forward of the original positions. When the Chinese moved in they came around midnight at about company size. The listening post picked them up


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[Assistant] And phoned the word, about a hundred of them, right on positions. Get down in your hole, sit tight, I answered, then I called back to company and radioed two concentration numbers. Roy alerted the patrol to be ready to open fire on the old positions on command, which would be immediately after the first round of artillery exploded. Figuratively must have pulled back.


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[Assistant] The Chinese began to chatter carelessly. Suddenly there was one loud whoosh.


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[Assistant] Fire exploded the entire finger and draw lighting up the night in red, yellow and orange flashes. Silhouettes of bodies shown against the blaze, winging through the sky, smashing up against trees and rocks. I gave the signal and the platoon opened up. When it was over we had destroyed the entire company.


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[Assistant] Or rather, the artillery head. There was no question about it. Artillery destroyed more enemy in combat than all other services combined, including the Air Force. Death was sudden, ripping, ripping violent. Most of the time, however, we used it badly and it was a waste.


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[Assistant] So he could notify battalion. I told him I would do it at first light.


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[Assistant] And signed off. He called back two more times trying to raise me. I whispered for Sykes to turn down the volume.


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[Assistant] Quiet, settled over the area once again at first light.


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[Assistant] At first light, I moved the patrol back across the draw and we verified. Our three men were unscratched. The entire Chinese company, including parts of their officers, were present and accounted for and dead.


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[Assistant] I radioed the results to West. Good, good, he said. Great. And then with a pause, come on in, we'll send a replacement platoon down.


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[Assistant] Not necessary. We don't have any casualties. I'll just send a party back for more ammo.


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[Assistant] Then as an afterthought, we'll have to move though. It's gonna smell pretty bad down here after the sun comes up. Sure, certainly he said, whatever you feel is okay. Just give us your coordinates and we'll, when you get settled in. Wilco, sir, out.


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[Assistant] And I just highlighted that part because you can see even though West was pushing him to kind of go out there and check, but at the end of the day, he trusts what, he trusts what his guy on the front line says.


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[Assistant] We don't need to pull out. May need some more ammo. Have to adjust our position. And it's just a good thing to see.


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[Assistant] Next time we were in reserve, I was to receive what Dave had called that shit pot full of decorations. The colonel commanding the regiment explained that many advantages I would have as an officer and a gentleman.


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[Assistant] While he discussed the possibility of my coming back for a commission when I changed my mind.


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[Assistant] I thanked him for the promotion and the drink again and then went back to the platoon.


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[Assistant] So he almost got the battlefield commission and said no, likes being an e-dog.


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[Assistant] West picked up a piece of Shrek, well actually, the next day Fox Company passed through our lines into the valley. They swung east on a road and meandered through the wide, low, flat farmland to a major terrain feature behind, beyond Hill 868 on the map.


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[Assistant] They fought and died for that peak for the next two days and nights with us just sitting there listening to the battle rage.


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[Assistant] West picked up a piece of shrapnel from an incoming 81 mortar round and we received a replacement for him.


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[Assistant] A tiny, wiry, red-headed Irish man with a waxed handlebar mustache. That was the pride of Korea.


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[Assistant] Any man who can best me at Indian Wrestling is a better man than I and can run the company. He announced.


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[Assistant] None of us knew what the hell Indian wrestling was, so he ran the company, and he ran it well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like put nine stars next to this. Here's a good leader. He joked with the men. He carried more than his share of the load.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He took his turn at watch in the command post bunker. He carried an M1 rifle like the rest of us. He cooked his own rations and shared his water and coffee.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was the best we'd had, canning accepted. There was no difficulty in getting the men to follow him or do their damnedest for him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he sure did his damnedest for us. So there you go, man. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a, there's a part that I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna summarize a little bit of it. So basically what happens is there's these four Chinese deserters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They say that there's going to be a 30-man combat patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a North Korean patrol is going to go down this particular riverbed, due north of the positions at the river. And Canning, the officer, didn't believe him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Herbert does believe the guys. He kind of talks about how he psychologically was trying to figure out, why would these guys do this? They're really surrendering. Like, why would four of them surrender? Why wouldn't you just send one to surrender? Why are you sending four guys to surrender? So he kind of goes through his pro psychological profile with the guys and he believes them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I tried to talk Canning and the new CO into letting me set up an ambush for them, but Canning had prevailed and the best the new CO would do is let me drop one machine gun team down to the valley on the river. Uhm, turns out that the Chinese


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Guys that told the truth. The gun crew, and so now he did get one gun crew down there. The gun crew opened up a couple minutes short of midnight. They had caught the patrol in the riverbed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the patrol was larger than anticipated and now they, the machine gun crew, was under attack. The new CO called me on the sound power. No, I couldn't pull my platoon offline and go back to reinforce the gun crew, but I would take or send six men to do the best they could. I rapidly ticked off the names of my six best men as, uh, to the squad leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I told them to have them on the trail behind the positions and I picked them up one by one and moved toward the junction that led down to the valley below us. We tried to hurry and busted our asses, slipping and falling over each other in the mud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To have Canning notify them that we were on the way and to be on the lookout for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One or the other had failed and their guards opened up with small arms fire without bothering to challenge us. Doomus went down, dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We dropped into a small gully and maneuvered toward the river bed. Our gun crew is still pouring the lead. We broke out of the gully 75 yards east of them caught between their fire and the Chinese patrol. I yelled for the gun crew to hold fire and they did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We spread out and moved ahead slowly. The Chinese were in a panic. They broke out of the niches and crevices in ones and twos and we dropped them with singer file or laced a bayonet through their guts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First light broke and we had the sergeant and the platoon leader trapped. They came out with their hands up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We marched them onto the valley road and had them hunker down with their hands clasped across the tops of their head. I left a man to guard them.