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Baptism by Fire I guess not one forgets his "Baptism by Fire". Not the kind of fire, which is directed in the general direction of you but the real personal type. The following is my experience along with a couple of other guys. The Gunny had seen action in WW II so it was not new to him but probably served as a refresher course. This was not the case for the others. It was late September 1950 and North of Seoul. The company had made contact with the enemy a few times but for the most part they were fleeing in the face of overwhelming fire power. On this particular morning Sgt. Hartman, the Company Gunnery Sergeant, called to me and said get your gear and come with me we are going on a motorized patrol, meet me at the jeep. On arriving at the jeep noticed a machine gun had been mounted on the right side, the gunner was sitting next to the driver and manning the gun. Sgt. Hartman got in behind the gunner and I sat behind the driver. It was fairly early in the day; the country side was quiet and peaceful with an occasional wisp of fog. Very few Koreans were moving about. All in all quite peaceful almost like taking an early morning ride in a rural part of America. The small built up areas we observed were not near then road we were on so we just bypassed them. We had driven a bit and were heading for a fairly good sized village just beyond some railroad tracks which ran perpendicular to the road we were on. The village was built on a small elongated hill and extended down to the rice paddies bellow. I would assume the distance from the railway crossing, which we were approaching, and across the rice paddies to the village was probably 300 to 400 yards. As we were crossing the railroad tracks, we were suddenly taken under automatic fire from the village. The jeep screeched to a stop and we all piled out. The gunner bailed to the right with Gunny Hartman behind him. The driver bailed out to the left side lying almost parallel to the jeep with me behind him. Fire continued for what seemed like long time but in actuality probably lasted no more than a couple of minutes. Much of the fire went over our heads, the snap of the bullets as they passed by was scary but they landed some place to our rear without damaging us or anyone else. Suddenly a string of rounds drew a line of sandy puffs on the dirt road about eighteen inches away from the driver and myself. This was now getting personal, no longer were the rounds directed at "to whom it may concern" but were directed at us individually and collectively, hoping to put our names on one or more of the rounds. This initial string was followed by a couple more "strings" throwing up dust a foot or so from the driver and me. I watched these bullets striking the ground; each burst brought the strings of dust "puffs" closer and closer, now only inches away from both of us. It became obvious he had us in his sights and soon the rounds would be right on top of us, with very unpleasant results. I yelled across to the gunny "Let's get the F--- out of here". He said
OK and, we slowly crawled backwards so that all four of us had some
protection provided by the jeep. We all took crouching positions then, on
a given signal high tailed (ran like hell) to an area behind the railroad
embankment, which provided shelter from the fire. *********** I have no idea who the driver of the jeep was or who the machine gunner was. If you are out there and read this how about dropping me a line. It would be interesting to again review that small incident. - Mac McKellar
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