 This story is hard to tell, painful. Because our outfit was in training a few weeks ago. Some of the boys who were with us aren't around anymore. They were good men, good soldiers. They had learned to fight, and they had the guts for fighting. But when it came, it was like a sock on the back of their head. Korea started rough. The first 40 days were a battle for time, with a handful of men against an army. Yes, they were good men, good soldiers. And no story of the Korean War can be told without saying first how well they fought, against great odds. In the beginning, there were only a couple of companies from the 24th Division. No brass bands at the airport. A few days before, some of us had been in cities, spending leave time at Fuji, something like that. We weren't scared. We didn't know. We got stuff out of the planes. We moved out. Nobody said, this is it. Nobody said you have arrived in Korea to beat back five North Korean Communist divisions. Somebody did say, we're here to delay the Reds. Okay, let's go. About 10% of us were veterans. Few roads looked like France, somewhere between Paris and Metz. Mostly the soldiers were young. No battle experience. They smiled a lot. They made the whole lot of us look like good-natured yanks, glad to see a new town. Some of these boys enlisted to travel. But whoever sees travel posters about Korea, relax, come to the land of the morning calm. The towns look like any town in this part of the world. The South Korean troops, like any soldiers, you know, they worry about the same things and get tired. They don't want to ask, what was it like up there? What kind of fighting, terrain, tactics, guns? As far as we were concerned, those Koreans couldn't talk. We were in a completely foreign country with no time to get acquainted. They emptied a town, hardly a thing left. You couldn't buy anything, even if you had the time, which we didn't have. There were two ways of getting to know the terrain, walking over it, and feeling how it was underneath. Underneath it was caked and sticky. The tools of a soldier's trade, a shovel and a gun. We had small stuff with us, machine guns and howitzers. It was hard to believe. One, two, three, we were smack in the middle of a war. Guns ready, aimed north, against an enemy that would look exactly like our friends, the South Koreans. These troops had seen action. They didn't have to speak. Their clothes spoke, their eyes spoke. We got set. Like I said, when it came, it was fast and it was all around us. They threw everything at us. We answered. We went ahead. It was like D-Day, with no warning. Those kids, they became veterans overnight. They moved as if they'd been with us all through Germany. There were too many North Koreans with too much heavy equipment, especially tanks. What can men with guts do against tanks? A bazooka was some defense, but there were too many tanks and too few bazookas. Day after day, it was pulled back and fight again. There were too many of them. You wouldn't know where they'd come from. Rice patties would lie quiet. We'd hide in the shadows, trying to look like a hut or a cornfield or a rice patty. And sealment was one of our weapons. There were too many of them. The boys pulled back, tired as dogs. Because whenever they'd meet the Reds head on, the Reds had enough men to fight us on the front and on our flanks, too. We knew it was hard to face. Kids would drag back so beat up, they couldn't be expected to fight for at least several days. Instead of a week at a rest area, we grabbed an hour anywhere. Took a shower. Seemed like the greatest pleasure in life was to give the feed a chance to breathe. We fell back to new positions. If you looked around at some of the foxholes, you could see a deep respect for those red mortars. We were short on men. South Koreans carried our ammo. But we didn't know what some of the others were carrying. Turned out that many of the silent refugees filing along the South Korean roads were North Korean communists in disguise. They'd sneak through our lines and fight us from behind. We caught some, but infiltration caused plenty of casualties. We were going to watch the refugees more carefully from now on. This was a big police job in Korea, the biggest. The attack was full size, had to be stopped. The United States Army, a small part of it, was here to help. There'd be men in other uniforms fighting with us soon. The whole world had seen this. They knew what to score. Up near the guns, the score was against the enemy. They were losing points, losing time. There were tough decisions, but we had leaders who could make them. General Walker and General Dean. Yes, our outfits were winning. They were holding back the enemy until help could arrive. We didn't feel it yet, but reinforcements were on the way. It takes time to pour a defense program into a small country with almost nothing. Not all the stuff can get there overnight. Even in an age when we're used to things traveling four or five hundred miles an hour. We needed tanks. And jeep soon. If some of the boys at the front could have heard the winches grind at the port, that would have been sweet music. And if something, television maybe, could have shown us the soldiers who were going to fight with us soon, maybe it would have been easier. As it was, the outfits and the foxholes needed every half-track and howitzer and tank they could get and more. And the men to go with them. Yes, our mission and the lines was delay. Delay the red drive in Korea. Delay it so we could get jeeps. Delay it so we could get weapons carriers and weapons and more ammo. Get it to us, men and equipment. Wet or dry. Yes, it was still rough going for us. It would stay that way for months, maybe longer. Until enough men would be in Korea to strike back. Yes, it was operation, delay. It was precious. One field artillery battalion against 40 tanks. We'd hold them off for a few hours in a blasting frontal attack. Reds would envelop us on both flanks. Always trouble up ahead. Trouble on the sides. We drew back south of the Kome River. Burned our bridges behind us. People in big cities like Pittsburgh are bothered by smoke. Now this smoke was black, but it didn't bother us a bit. Yes, smoke can look good where you want it. There were plenty of times when the smoke was too close. It got in your eyes. So you couldn't see anything. You can take a lot. But when your buddies get hit, it hits you inside. Nobody says much. Just so-and-so got it. Or so-and-so has been evacuated. He'll be okay. Or so-and-so has been evacuated. Back of us, units from the 25th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division we're unloading now with baggage. All of it first-class, urgent. The tanks were light jobs. They sped north where they were most needed. Smaller than the Russian monsters, but still a wonderful sight. Nothing was too good for a tank in this territory. The boys treated them like babies. They went over them from top to bottom, called them pet names. They cleaned them up better than for inspection. That's cleaning. Their tanks had heavier armor. In a duel, that was their advantage. But our advantage was some fine sharpshooter. They had giants. We had giant giants. Tejon was the worst. Ask anyone where he felt at the worst, and maybe you'll hear a few other names, because it was bad all over, but most guys will say Tejon. Some places we were just outnumbered. But in Tejon we were outnumbered, outgunned, out tanked and outflanked. We pushed out trying to poke a hole in their lines. No go. We tried another direction. But at the end of every road leading out of Tejon, there were thousands of North Korean troops. Plenty of T-34 tanks. It got kind of confusing. There was one hot day, 100 degrees, but we just sat. There was no place to go, not the way it is in the movie. We were all tired, including General Dean. Flank attacks had cut every escape route. We gassed up, ready for a move. We were supposed to hold this hot town for two days. We held it for three. It was get out or be trapped in Tejon. We got out. We fought our way out. General Dean stayed behind, it was a bad road out of Tejon. Some guys didn't make it. Tejon was burning. A dead town. The men who got out were heroes. The men who didn't get out were... they were heroes. There's no better word. By this time, the new outfits were in the lines. Fresh, ready to shoot. Everything set, just right. Nice to hear the steady trump of your own mourners. Even nicer to hear the howitzers slamming them out. Together, they're terrific. Our morale went up 5,000%. We had some pressure now. We turned it on and forced a victory. At a time like this, front-line chow tasted better than pheasant under glass. One outfit might do okay for a day, but on that same day, five other sections of the front line would be feeling the enemy's hard blows. The envelopments, the infiltrations. Some of our strongest attacks were by patrols, small groups battered by the enemy, beaten by the mountains, falling down tires. After climbing over half a dozen mountains, it made you more tired just to look at them. Felt like the bear who went over the mountain and saw another mountain. Getting anywhere in Korea was back-breaking work. You did it the Korean way, slowly. You were the bulldozer. No push-pull-click-click up here to throw a bridge across a stream in four or five hours. Every rock added up, even the little ones. You worked two, three days to put an outfit on the other side of a stream. The rainy season and the Korean super highways didn't help us get around. Wherever we went, we built our way. It was no good having any drag with the engineers. They had their own troubles. You were the engineer. In this battle, you did everything. Build, fight, hold, pull back, and destroy. Whenever we were about to leave a place, we planted it carefully. TNT. Planted it not deep. Just deep enough so it would come up the way we wanted it to. The better you plant it, the better it comes up. A second story, John. This kind of gardening went on quite frequently. Very relaxing work. We were going to stall them up and down the whole front, and someday there'd be a turnabout that would pay those North Koreans off for what we'd been taking. And then we might have to put back all these bridges. We slowed them, but we couldn't stop them. Fighting is fighting, always rough. But it's rougher when you're forced to pull back. We gave them ground. They gave us time. We used every barrier, every river to make a stand. It was the best way of saving men. They beat us back to the Naktang. We got there early enough to make it across. The Naktang was a pretty useful river. No king ever had a moat around his castle so wide and protected. It felt like a new division was in the line. Plenty of outgoing mail went across the Naktang River. If you've seen combat, you know what it is to have a line, a place to fight from. Well, for the first time in this Korean business, we had something we could call a line. All during the fighting, we had air power. They had had it. We might have been fooled. Air power did plenty of damage to everything the enemy had and wanted to bring up. Those guys flew so low they should have had bayonets on their propellers. In a corner of Korea, a little bigger than a beach head, we dug in, built a village of foxholes. Only here you couldn't dig too deep on account of the rocks. On this beach head, a lot of the boys who flew in at the beginning were still around, still smiling. There's waiting in every war. Time to find out where you were, how you were doing. We faced the enemy. We faced ourselves. Our enemies were fanatics. We were believers in one faith. That men can live together peacefully, thinking, feeling, worshiping each in his own way. You couldn't think about anything for very long when you were planning new moves, new delaying tactics. We pulled down the bridges. We wrecked the roads. The steep hills around us were rugged. We'd made them more rugged than the enemy. Beyond our foxholes, we unwound some vines of our own with thorns. And beyond the tight ring of our perimeter, the enemy closed in, pushing us hard, threatening the death blow that would throw us back into the sea. How long could we hold? How long? A battle hung on the balance. And then swung to us. A great force reached Korea in a new strategy that gave the North Korean Army a battle from three sides at once. Replacements, new units, lively, ready for business. They stole along the hills, slipped up the ridges, looking for a soft spot in the enemy's hard shell. We gave it to them steady, all up and down the line, all at once. The air dusty, smoky. This was what we used to get when we first hit Korea. Victory never comes easily. You have to be in a fight to see how tough it is, see how in an attack, guys stumble back, needing others to look after them. Always plenty of trouble. It takes men and machines to knock out a strong enemy. And as you go forward, you can expect to lose some of those who start out with you. Yes, some went back, their feet heavy, their steps slow. Kids who became men, men whose hollow-faced looks show that they'd been in the line too long. You can't count on a straight road to victory. Sometimes it winds, goes down, goes up. Sometimes you're forced to detour. You could pick out the new troops, they walk different. Another outfit. But if you gave them the once-over, they were like the fellas in our outfit when we landed. The same smiling acts, making the best of everything. And a little better than that. We battled for time in Korea, and won. We had the right men. Good men. Good soldiers.