" As I Recall.........."


THE 160TH BEFORE KOREA


September 1950 to March 1951




As I recall, nothing particularly special went on for us at the Armory in September 1950, as we prepared to depart Los Angeles for somewhere called Camp Cooke. All I remember is one day we hugged our families bye-bye and rode the ancient Vermont Avenue streetcar down to the Armory at Exposition Park, boarded a train in the street outside (or maybe it was a truck), and headed north.

The Camp (now Vandenberg AFBase) seemed like a ghost of WWII, the big two-story barracks a little worn from much use, and fading from the sun and fog and ocean winds.

We Guardsmen, now mainly just a cadre of squad-leaders, etc., became acquainted with our barracks, the beer hall across the street, the daily routine of reveille and mess call -- and awaited the arrival of the draftees who would fill out our empty platoons.

Then late one afternoon, there they were. Large groups of them, in brand-new fatigues and boots, were herded thru the barren parade grounds and barracks, wide-eyed, curious, and wary of these strange surroundings and the men and boys looking them over and ordering them around.

Word spread thru the Weapons Platoon NCO's that we would have first choice of these bewildered souls, and that we should be sure to pick big guys, to carry the 57s and mortars. We happily went to work roping out the big guys and the smarter-looking ones, and their pals, if it seemed important to them.

We soon got to know them, and they got to know us-- for better or worse. Sitting on our bunks at night we learned about where they came from, and what they had been doing before Korea hit the fan. There were college boys from New York, tough cases from Red Hook, street guys from Chicago, Texas cowboys and Iowa farmers.

We ate messhall meals with them and put them thru close-order drill, PRI, and shared with them our minimal knowledge of the 57s and mortars. They also learned the bitter-sweet joys of KP duty, and we all sat thru hours of old training films on the likes of Military Courtesy, Scouting and Patrolling, Using the Compass, the horrors of VD, etc.

There were cautionary lectures by the Chaplain, and more fairly repetitious lectures by officers and senior NCOs out in the sandy dry-weed fields, where the Easterners discovered the sadistic pleasure of piling up stacks of evil-looking vinagaroons and covertly setting them on fire.

Soon the college boys were exploring possible ways out of infantry line companies; the shrewder souls were casting about for lighter duty than Weapons Platoon, and the Salt of the Earth, with a slightly bitter determination to survive this and whatever was to come, settled in with the Guardsmen -- for better or for worse.

Friday nights were sometimes spent in G.I. Parties: sweeping, scrubbing and preparing the old barracks for Saturday morning inspection. If this went well, there were weekend passes allowing the Guardsmen to visit their families, and the draftees to explore the offerings of such places as Lompoc, Solvang, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. New Yorkers tended to complain that even Los Angeles and Hollywood "rolled up their sidewalks" too early in the evening.

Young soldiers training to kill discovered that, uniform or no uniform, Police-Action or no Police-Action, it was still against the law for a bar to serve them alcohol.

When there were no passes, there was the Beer Hall with its 3.2 beer, the PX, movies, and a close-up glimpse now and then of nurses with gleaming officer's bars on their shoulders, and a scattering of somewhat fairly tough-looking WACS.

One of the most valuable bits of in-barracks training were the sessions where we practiced timed field-stripping of our M1s and carbines, while blindfolded. Outside, for a while, we did team log-lifting calisthenics. We could have used a lot more of that kind of conditioning, and less time spent sitting on the barracks steps in the cold gray mornings listening to less-than-stimulating lectures. In fact, I don't recall being in the field at all during bad weather, which of course is exactly when we should have been out there-- though I'm sure, in our innocence, we were grateful at the time.

One thing that did get a thorough professional treatment was gas-mask drill. This was done by a training-cadre, and not company NCOs or officers. We had instruction out between the barracks next to the old boxing ring (which we never used), and then a long session of timed drill. It concluded with being put into rooms where tear-gas was set off, and we learned how effective the masks were when applied quickly and properly. We were then shown what it was like without the mask, and how to clear your pained tear-streaming eyes.

Somewhere along the line we were given a battery of tests, to see where we could best serve the Army's needs. My results indicated Signal Corps, which made sense. I had scored high on the Morse-code signalling, and was very fond of photography. But there was no further discussion of this option, and I remained in my capacity as a somewhat-qualified mortar-squad leader. Since no one explained the actual possibilities, I rejected the idea because, in my youthful ignorance, all I pictured was myself running around with one of those big radios on my back. Obviously, Army aptitude tests need serious follow-up.

Drunkenness, and its often unhappy aftereffects, were also things we more inexperienced lads learned during this period. Instruction began in the Mess Hall in something called a Company Party: no girls unfortunately, but all the cheap beer you could drink. The highlight of the evening was one of L.A.'s Own, up on a table doing a kind of dance he called "La Tarantula." The low point of the evening was me down in a construction-pit outside the barracks wretchedly swearing off liquor for life.

On another evening I discovered La Tarantula and some of his companeros sitting in the darkened Rec. Room, wrapped in blankets, silently smoking. The more worldly in our platoon informed me that what they were doing was smoking "pot," which I understood was some kind of dope. That was the only time I ever witnessed such strange and nefarious activity in our company. But obviously there was a great deal I did not witness in those distant days.

Foxhole-digging was another bit of instruction that was well done. Although I don't remember ever doing much of it in the field during our Camp Cooke days, not even slit-trenches. We were taught by a WWII veteran NCO in a euculyptus-bordered field across the street. He showed us how deep the foxhole needed to be to survive a tank rolling over it, and how to make a little platform in the bottom to keep your feet out of water, and to allow you to stand up after being buried in crushed earth. He motivated our digging by telling us that at the end of our lesson a tank was going to roll over our foxholes, with us in the holes. These were the most seriously dug foxholes I saw during my time in the military. When the tank showed up, it thankfully demonstrated its foxhole-crushing ability on a hole with no one in it. But we certainly got the picture.

This same Non-com made a point of sharing more of his combat experiences with us greenhorns as we sat around waiting to march back for lunch. He described how we had better get used to the idea of eating our meals surrounded by "stinking stiffs," and grinned happily as he developed his point in revolting detail. At the time, I'm afraid most of us failed to appreciate his concern for our mental readiness. But like many of the combat vets in the 160th, he soon disappeared from our ranks, headed for points west.

We had another practical demonstration of hole-digging by a very young, very tense, and very serious veteran just back from the front-lines in Korea. He showed us how to construct a bunker, using criss-crossed eucalyptus branches and sand bags. There were lots of other things we could have learned from him, but that was the only day he was with us.

L.A.'s Own Californians, Texans, Midwesterners and New Yorkers wondered why we were never given the chance to listen to or talk with any of the hundreds of Korean War veterans returning home. Maybe the officers heard from them, but if so they never saw fit to share with us what they learned of the war in Korea from those who had just been there. This was the time when Chinese Communist armies were rolling over and around Eighth Army and X Corps in Korea, but many of us knew nothing about these events until the War was over.It was not even suggested that we ignorant youth read Stars and Stripes, a publication most of us associated only with WWII.

One night on CQ duty at Battalion HQ I was studying the plastic covered map of Korea, and wondering why we were never shown a big blowup of this map, and the situation explained to us, or why no one ever talked to us about NK or Chinese tactics and equipment, etc.

But training, such as it was, did go on, and did become more demanding. We were taught the difference between Cover and Concealment, and spent a sunny day marching along noting possible hiding spots among the desert bushes alongside the dirt road; and when the small spotter-plane (with the Colonel in it?) appeared, we would hastily head for same, hoping a rattlesnake had not made the same choice.

There were longer and faster marches, both day and night. The night marches especially grew more demanding. I can remember seeing men sleep-walking right out of the moving column and falling into ditches. But seldom were our hikes uphill-- a serious oversight for troops headed for Japan and Korea. Also, almost never did we eat in the field or stay out overnight. C-rations were practically an unknown commodity until we reached Japan.

There was one memorable overnight stay. We marched out to a low valley somewhere between Lompoc and the sea, pitched our pup-tents, and were required to dig slit trenches-- an unusual demand. Then sometime after most of us had fallen into peaceful slumber, we were awakened by the rushing sound of freight trains overhead, followed by the startling flash and slam of artillery rounds landing just over the nearby hills. Whoever thought that one up gave us a much-needed taste of reality, and a new-found fondness for our entrenching tools.

This was followed, next day as I remember, by being marched up to a wide flat area with a sign saying something like "Danger. Artillery Range." Instead of stopping we were instructed to run across this by squads, in hundred yard dashes, hitting the dirt, and after a moment, up again and another dash, until we were clear of the area. If rounds came in, we were told, hit the dirt; but do not stay flat after the explosion: get up quickly and run another dash. I imagine whoever thought this one up knew for sure that there would be no artillery landing in that pasture on that day, but after our night's experience with live shells rumbling over our unprotected heads, we were ready to believe the worst.

More artillery experiences were on the way. One sunny morning we were marched up to a firing area where a big tank squatted. It had a very long gun, and a big fixture on the end of the barrel that made it look like one of those German tanks. Suddenly with a flash of flame out of both sides of the barrel and a deafening explosion it fired one round, which shook the ground under us and raised dust like a small earthquake. That, we were told, was the new tank and its 90mm gun. We were impressed.

We were then herded over to another area for 57mm RR familiarization-firing and shown, by means of orange crates, what happens to objects that are in back of a recoilless rifle when it is fired. We were allowed to fire three rounds at some kind of target. I know it was three, because after the first round I was so angry that I just got rid of the other two while loudly cursing the dumb son-of-a-bitch who had given us nothing but a rifle cleaning-patch for an ear plug while having us lay our heads up against the barrel of a cannon. My numbed ear rang for two days, and my faith in officers suffered the same permanent damage as my eardrum. We innocents upon whom this nameless idiot had inflicted pain and loss referred to our condition as "57 ear." It must have been a common malady, at least in our battalion.

Further undermining of my boyish faith in officers resulted from being assigned to put them thru familiarization firing on the mortar. There was a large group of them, probably most of the junior officers in 1st Battalion. They were seated a short distance from us on a low rise of ground, and carried on their college-boy antics to such an extent that they were angrily chewed out by the senior officer in charge. They knelt at our mortars one at a time and dropped in one or two rounds, with us reseating and re-leveling the mortars for them. Already scornful of their behavior as a group, I was surprised and a little uneasy to see how nervous they were dropping in the rounds, and how most of them had to be reminded to slide their hand down away from the muzzle. We also resented the fact that they were using up more HE rounds than we had ever seen, let alone got to use. Still, it was good for us to experience how the base-plate reacted to repeated firing on soft ground, and to get to adjust, level and remove increments for live fire.

After the officers had left, a mountain-lion broke cover and went loping across the big plowed field into which we had been firing. One of the NCOs grabbed a mortar and fired one round before being firmly discouraged by the rest of the group. Needless to say, the puma loped off unscathed. There followed a discussion by the college boys on using trigonometry to find ranges. I remember wishing I knew more about what they were discussing, and wondering why the Army did not teach us such things.

On one other occasion we went out to a range set up at the end of an open field surrounded by eucalyptus trees. Each of the squad leaders got to call fire-missions for about three rounds, while a group of officers watched.

They were a little more generous with M1 ammo than mortar rounds. I think we went to the range once for target firing at various distances, and then for qualification. Company NCOs acted as range instructors for the draftees. I remember the trembling nervousness of the New York City guys especially, most of whom had never been close to a rifle, especially one that sounded like a stick of dynamite going off next to them. It was a constant struggle to remind them to keep their thumbs down away from their eyes, and to aim with both eyes open, to breathe properly and squeeze, not jerk, the trigger. Somewhere in all this, we actually got to shoot a full clip, rapid-fire. Everyone got a turn or two at working the pits, hearing the ringing crack of the bullets overhead and thru the targets, and the ominous whine of ricochets. Then finally the fun of the transition range, firing at targets that popped up and down, and moved sideways.

There was another valuable live-ammo exercise where we climbed a road up a hill, firing at targets that popped up, and then walked down a tree-lined road where other targets popped up at the sound of a loud bang. The officers and NCOs worked hard at seeing that no one brought ammo from the range, or still had one left in the chamber. But we did hear that one man in another battalion was shot while in the barracks after coming back from the range.

I qualified Expert, and found out by accident while on duty as CQ that I was the best shot in the 1st Battalion. But no one had bothered to mention it to me. A little recognition by company officers is a good thing for a young man's morale.

One nerve-racking day we found ourselves, just like the movies, at the place where you crawled along while machine guns fired over your heads. And so we did, crawling as flat as humanly possible, half-choking in the thick dust, trying to ignore the deafening charges that exploded nearby and hearing the bullets cracking overhead.

My Texas pal and I also gave ourselves a little extra "under fire" experience. One day we were detailed to work pits at a small range for officers. As they were firing at the targets we had set for them, we got the bright idea of climbing up behind a large bank of earth to see what it felt like when bullets hit the bank. We lay there feeling the thud of rounds. Then we noticed that not all the ricochets were going up. Some of them were whining off at right-angles into the trees on either side of the pits! Following this observation we beat a careful withdrawal back below ground level.

Over in Korea, as I learned much later, a lot of "cold steel" was beginning to be used. Some of our Company were sent for special schooling where they learned somebody's bright idea on bayonet training. This resulted in a couple of days of fairly useful but highly irritating instruction in the Short Stroke, Long Stroke and Butt Stroke series. We were anxious to learn the drill, but most of the time consisted of standing frozen in thrust position until your arms trembled, and you cursed the newly-enlightened "instructors" and their smirking arrogance. If the snarls and curses became too obvious these new-born "tough guys" would send you running around the group with your rifle over your head. This by-the-numbers, frozen-in-place exercise was not followed by slow-motion routines, or real-speed training. There was very little, if anything, on defensive techniques.

Marching along one day, we saw one of the classic old bayonet-training courses with the straw-dummies (just like in the movies), and wondered why we never got to run thru that a few times.

The same ex-Company amateur instructors also held a session or two out behind the barracks demonstrating some techniques of hand-to-hand judo fighting. It was mainly just watching the demonstrator and his selected victim go thru the motions. There was no real down-and-dirty group participation.

Then there was our one experience with a live grenade. We went out to a training range, were told how to throw them, how many seconds before they went off, and encouraged to quickly return grenades thrown at us. It was also pointed out how a man might save his comrades if he were inclined to throw himself on an enemy grenade. (We were not shown enemy grenades, or told how many seconds they had, or how to use them.) We were allowed to toss a few blue practice-grenades; then one man was chosen to go up to a dugout in front of us and throw a live grenade. The rest of us lay down and watched. After a moment the grenade arched out of the dugout, smoking slightly, landed, and after the prescribed number of seconds exploded with a flat wham.

We stood up, wishing we could throw one, dusted ourselves off, and discovered that one of the draftees had taken a small piece of shrapnel thru his helmet liner, which is the headgear we were wearing that day. He stared around pale-faced and a bit frightened. That was the end of our training with the real thing.

Somewhere towards the end of our training we did run a live-ammo problem thru a mock-village, where squad leaders walked their squads in a skirmish line, experiencing the hazards of trying to keep nervous, armed young men in a moving line with their weapons pointed to the front, and not at each other. I remember the frustrating impossibility of being heard by all of them, especially when they were firing. It occurred to me that perhaps the Army should issue NCO's small canvas megaphones.

The squad-leaders each had a blue practice-grenade filled with blackpowder, and when the squad was close to the little log building, we got to run up beside the window and throw the grenade in. The muffled bang inside made it seem like this was real training for the real thing. Although it would have been even better if someone had told us things like the best way to deploy our squad while approaching the window.

During this period there were other good experiences, though short-lived. We got to fire a round or two with the .45 automatic, and a few rounds on the light machine-gun; and one evening just before dark, down by the sand dunes along the ocean, we were allowed to touch off two or three rounds of .50 caliber, watching the tracers bounce off the hills, beautiful against the sunset sky.

I don't remember our permanent Company commander, if we had one; but I remember one who only lasted about a week. His brief sojourn with Charlie Company ended when he fell out the Company one moonlit night and proceeded to harangue us about something as he stood there in his dress uniform, swaying slightly, one pant leg hanging out of the top of his Wellington boot.

I do remember our Executive Officer at the time, a young dark-haired, olive-skinned West Pointer, energetic and competent, and fond of trying to teach "object lessons" to half-baked young soldiers like myself.

Then there was our Platoon Sergeant, a veteran of WWII. He had been a mortarman in Italy. One day he went missing, and did not turn up for two or three days. Finally he was located, ensconced with a companion and a plentiful supply of refreshment over in the lesser known regions of the NCO Club. But he was so respected as an old combat soldier by the Battalion officers that nothing came of it, and he returned quietly, if a little sheepishly, to our Weapons Platoon.

Our Top Sergeant looked and acted very much like a Top Sergeant in a war movie. He was lean and mean, and also a veteran of The Big One. I remember him berating us one day, just before we shipped out, informing us in his caustic way that better men than us had threatened to throw him overboard, and he would like to see the sorry son-of-a-bitch who tried it. I am not aware that anyone ever tried.

There were a couple of occasions when he used a traditional method of punishment: digging a 6x6' hole in which to bury an offending cigarette-butt. But word had it that he was discouraged from on high in continuing such cherished old traditions.

Our field-problems grew a little more extended, and the marches longer, but they were almost always on flat or rolling terrain, and did not include significant hill climbing. There were more long night marches, but no field camps. One of the things NCOs learned was the tricky unreliability of communicating by walkie-talkie (handy-talkie) radios.

Retreats were instituted. We would come in hot and dirty from the field and change immediately into wool ODs, then fall out for a Retreat Parade where we stood and listened as the bugle played and the flag was lowered. Unfortunately this did not turn out to be the morale booster that someone in HQ imagined it might be, or perhaps could have been -- done differently.

There was famous musical talent available nearby for those educated and cultured enough to have heard of someone named Andre Previn. He could be heard most days across the street in the gymnasium playing the piano. The New Yorkers were astonished and thrilled, but most of us innocent Angelenos had no idea who they were talking about.

But there was one entertaining evening all of us could relate to. We sauntered over to that same gymnasium and sat around chatting; then suddenly the door near the stage swung open, and in came a small party of entertainers led by a strikingly pretty girl who stopped and opened her arms widely, smiling at the roar of cheers and whistles from the uniformed audience. Many of us did not know who she was, but that was of no consequence whatsoever.

With wonderful luck and pluck, my draftee pal, a slick sealing-tape salesman from Nebraska, had maneuvered us into the row right behind the seats roped off for VIPs; and this beautiful, sparkling young blue-eyed girl sat herself right down in front of us. Seldom has a stage show been more enjoyed by two young men. She talked with us as readily and easily as if we had all just graduated high-school together, and we feasted happily upon the sight and sound of her.

It was a great show. The mysterious Andre Previn played beautifully; a stout, rosy-cheeked chap sang one of my Kipling favorites, "On the Road to Mandalay"; James Whitmore marched across the stage doing the Jodie Cadence from Battleground (cursing furiously when he messed it up); and the stunning girl (whom the Fortieth in Review would later identify as "talented film hopeful, Debbie Reynolds") sang like an angel from the City of. She also called upon stage a young soldier she had known seemingly before her movie days, and kissed him to an envious chorus of howls and whistles.

But alas, our magical evening soon ended. Our fairy princess faded away amidst the inevitable phalanx of privileged brass, and we drifted back to our dreary barracks and lonely bunks. But it had been, for many, an evening to remember in the dark days ahead.

Back in our training-cycle we had reached what I suppose are called small-unit problems. One day we found ourselves standing on a hillside of scrub-oaks and poison-oak with a lieutenant whose job it was to inquire of me as squad leader how I would deploy a rifle-platoon in attacking the small pillbox at the top of the ridge across the small valley before us. Being a mortarman, and having never been given a moment of instruction in such small-unit tactics, I had to think how common sense or the movies might dictate such a thing. After a moment or two I ventured that I would have a machine-gun and riflemen lay down a covering fire on the pillbox and its supporting infantry, while my other squads worked their way up the slope at a distance from the pillbox, and then moved in a flank attack on the position. "No, no," said the young shavetail impatiently. "You would lay down a covering fire okay, but you would send the other squads in a skirmish line directly up the hill at the pillbox." And that is what he had us do.

Panting up the steep slope in our little frontal assault, I became convinced that the lieutenant did in fact not know what the hell he was doing. I was converted then and there to the notion that, in this man's Army, there might be times when blind obedience to lieutenants would not be a good thing.

One day word spread that we were headed for Japan. Most of us figured that that was just another way of saying we were headed for Korea. (It was not till years later that I would learn that the President and the Joint Chiefs were persuaded that Korea could just be a diversion, and that the Soviets' real goal might be an invasion of Europe and/or Japan, and that our major role at the moment was in fact the defense of Japan.)

To further the impression that big things were in the wind, there was a parade of the whole Division in early December, where we stood in our thousands and listened to General Hudleson sternly inform us that we were "going to fight on the field of battle."

My main concern at the moment was dodging the fixed bayonets of a soldier or two who collapsed suddenly from standing too stiffly for too long in the hot sun.

Later there was another big review where the famous General Mark Clark took our salute as he rolled past in his star-bedecked jeep.

One painful day we marched down to a building where blase medics stuck dull needles into our arms, two at a time. The same bored lads who had months before slit or punched our finger-tips for the blood-types now punched into our gray metal dog-tags. The last of the shots was for cholera. It caused a strong burning sensation on our already bruised arms, but we strode out the closed door and onto the steps without being too concerned, glad it was over. Then it hit, and we realized why dazed-looking young men were sagging on the railings and sprawled about the wooden steps.

Then training came to a standstill. Our days were now spent in the company of buckets of thick tar, which we generously applied to every piece of equipment to which we were directed. I remember leisurely days sitting with my draftee pal from Texas daubing away happily at the exposed-metal areas of half-tracks and other vehicles while we traded youthful reminiscences of home, and speculation about the realities of combat.

Finally the big day came, and I was assigned to our troopship's Advance Party. Shortly thereafter we headed up the coast towards San Francisco, crossed over the Bay on an old ferry boat, and marched aboard the ship, our heavy dufflebags on our shoulders and excitement in our youthful breasts.


Will Brown


Return to Contents Page