Free Valleys of Death by Bill Richardson Page B

stayed in the center. We set up behind rocks and holes dug from artillery rounds. We were lying there no more than thirty or forty yards from the North Koreans and nobody was behind us. Every once in a while we would receive sporadic small arms fire.
    â€œHey, Sarge, how long are we going to be here?” Walsh first.
    â€œSarge, we’re getting out of here by dark, right?” Hall second.
    I knew the other men wouldn’t speak up, but I could look in their eyes and see they were scared. I just hoped they couldn’t see the fear in my eyes.
    â€œWe’re staying until we get orders,” I said, finally answering Walsh and Hall.
    I spoke up loud enough for the whole section to hear. Farther down the hill, mortar and artillery fire was very heavy. We could see the North Korean positions and they could see us. I was hoping we were out of grenade range and too close to their position for them to put mortar fire on us. Soon, instead of mortars, the North Korean soldiers started sending down taunts. We didn’t speak the language, but each word had a charge.
    â€œSilence. No one talks back,” I whispered and put my finger to my lips. Not that we knew what they were saying.
    As the minutes and then hours ticked off, I realized that slowly but surely we were moving back a foot at a time. A guy would reposition and then the rest of the section would go off of him. At this rate, we might be off the hill by the end of the war. I knew one thing, there was no way we were staying overnight.
    I didn’t know how long we were there, but finally I heard someone coming. It was Vaillancourt. He signaled me to withdraw. I told Walsh and Hall to fire one 57 round each on my order and for everyone to immediately start moving down the hill. Everyone got ready.
    I raised my hand, dropped it and shouted, “Fire!”
    They fired simultaneously, and immediately we started running down the hill. What seemed like only a few seconds later we started receiving small arms fire. I was hoping all the way that we wouldn’t receive any mortar fire.
    â€œWhere’s the executive officer?” I asked Vaillancourt when I caught up with him.
    â€œHe was killed along with one of the platoon leaders. The company had regrouped and tried to come back up the hill but was ripped apart by heavy mortar and artillery fire. We lost the two lieutenants and two platoons took heavy losses.”
    â€œHow did you know we were still up there?”
    â€œLieutenant Brown and the first platoon were moving into position to continue the attack when the battalion commander issued the order to withdraw. That’s when Captain McAbee told me you were on the hill and for me to get you down.”
    Back on the road, we started to take mortar fire from the hill. The road had deep culverts that ran from one side to the other. The ditches were big enough for a man to go through standing up. I quickly ushered my men down into one of them. We got three quarters of the way through the culvert and ran into two dead North Koreans and an American soldier. The Koreans were lying in a heap, and the soldier, a lieutenant, was holding his head and moaning in pain. When I got there, Vaillancourt had him by his collar and was dragging him to the other end of the culvert.
    The lieutenant was Vaillancourt’s friend from Pusan, the one that needed the large magazines. We drug him out of the culvert and got a medic to take care of him. I found out years later that he’d been withdrawing down the culvert when he stumbled into the North Koreans. Luckily, he’d been able to get two shots off, but they had too. One North Korean bullet struck him in the chest, but a near fatal shot was deflected by the magazine. He was lucky.
    As we got farther down the road, men from the battalion sat along both sides of the road. None of the companies had succeeded in securing their objective. We were a sad-looking bunch as we moved to what looked like an