A young North Korean soldier who was killed by an American bullet that blew off most of his head was clutching a can of ammunition as he crawled. The American soldiers quickly confirmed that the several North Korean soldiers they had shot and killed were indeed killed in action or seriously wounded. Even as guns blazed over the bodies of the lying North Koreans, American troops jumped over them, stood up and charged toward the North Korean fire. in early September 1950, on the flanking hills and fields around Pusan, the North Koreans still mounted machine guns, and the burst of bullets from the ridge ahead echoed to American troops on the road. The American soldiers in the lead continued their invasion, leaning against steel tanks. A chunk of the tank's armor shattered as it passed the road where the North Korean attack was heaviest.
North Korean machine guns were firing, and many young, inexperienced American soldiers were easily sent home as they were shot at by the North Koreans with live ammunition in battle. They jumped into the rice fields along the road and escaped the North Korean fire. The American troops stopped and orders were given to invade the surrounding hills. Instead of digging trenches, the order was given to charge toward the ridge. Concise orders were relayed to the troops from the US command post to charge forward. We were in the tricky position of leading the attack on the North Korean forces ahead of us. The North Korean troops, waiting quietly, were well aware of the area leading up to the bloody summit, which was almost treeless. Hidden behind a few hills and farmhouse ditches, the North Koreans waited for the moment when they would be in sniper range of the American soldiers still moving along the rugged ridge. Instantly, the silence was broken forever. The machine guns of the North Korean troops along the ridge in front of them fired in unison. American soldiers crawled on their bellies to fire, waiting for the order to attack. The storm brought the clouds low over the hills and heavy rain poured down. Visibility was getting worse and worse, and the radio was not working.
The North Korean troops had already begun to run through the valley below and up the slope in front of the hill, aiming for the top. The North Koreans' machine guns and mortars fired everywhere. One by one, American troops crawled on their bellies and threw grenades, firing at the North Koreans who pressed in at their elbows.
The American soldiers got up and fired more grenades into the cotton fields on the mountaintop and over the mountaintop into the valley below. They began a final thrust to take the crest of the hill and were forced into a position where they could not retreat on the order to charge. Gari calmly walked up and down along the crest of the hill, meticulously positioning each of his men.
A machine gun bullet pierced the chest of an American sergeant and knocked him into the mud. He was dragged across the slope and placed on a rough poncho over a dead body. Some were shot in the lower legs and battalion, some in the arms and shoulders, and some in the head, dying instantly. The rain fell harder and harder, the clouds lowered further and further, and it became like night. After the third infantry attack by the Americans, the heavily damaged North Korean troops withdrew. Every discarded weapon was pointed at the top of the hill. Mortars exploded all over the position, and a shot from a North Korean machine gun struck an American soldier in the abdomen, and when he was half-awake, the last shot hit him again in the chest, spinning him into a cotton field, a corpse that could never move again.
As the American troops began to retreat, a bomb from a North Korean mortar fell directly on top of him. The bodies were filled with bomb fragments and the medics covered the wounds with bandages. The wounded were escorted to the ambulance. The war dead were carried to the slope for burial. When the burial was over and they were back on the hill again, they waited to see if they or their comrades were alive or dead. Instead of American troops attacking the North Korean army, they might be ambushed around the next ridge. The Korean War was no longer an issue to be discussed passionately at meal times; it had become mass abuse and genocide.
