Cold Ground’S Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir

By Daniel Wolfe

This is not a history of the Korean War. It is for anyone who would like to read a memoir rich in dialogue, replete with humor, and the horror we faced as infantrymen. The reader will get a personal view of what it is for a young man to go to war. It reaches to the soul of an infantry company. It demonstrates the dictum of the infantry that no casualty will be left behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491790397

Daniel Wolfe

Daniel Wolfe had no recollection of his combat in Korea. Through a reunion with his army buddies forty-five years later, they recalled the terror and the humor that enveloped them. Shortly after, he began recording his memories of the Korean War. Cold Grounds Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir was the result. Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir, then Coming Home: A Soldier Returns From Korea followed.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Daniel Wolfe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The events in this memoir, and the names are true to the best of the author’s recollection and research.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9038-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9039-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903624

iUniverse rev. date: 10/03/2016

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

An Atypical Physical

Take One Step

Indiantown Gap

Hygiene in the Barracks

Ref-you-jee Bucky

A Holiday in Harrisburg

An Outing to the Mountains

Tools of Our Trade

A Crawl through the Mud

Frozen in Bivouac

Last Home Leave

Dinner in the Diner

Level One, Section Three

Korea: Land of the Morning Harm

Will I Ever Walk on Asphalt Again?

Tour of the Line

Listening Post

Life on the Line

A Few Days in May

We Came, We Fought, We Became Entangled

The Lister Bag

Pancake Revenge

Don’t Play with Him

Unlisted Casualties

Replacements

Bent Pots, Bent Lids

A Bale of Hay

In the Line of Duty

The Naked Maja

Paradise Lost

Let Me Entertain You

A Room with a View

Dulce et Decorum Est

Where’s Wayne?

Wiorek’s Helmet

Baptism and Resurrection

Assignment: Big Nori

Killed in Action

Frozen in Chosin

Good-bye, Company L

It Was Beautiful

The Clarion Call of Testosterone

I Don’t Chew

War Games, Ball Games

Nearly Home

Back to the Old Neighborhood

Afterword

Forty-Three Years Later

Reunion

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my late and loving son, David. Unfortunately he was not aware of my experience in Korea. I am sure he would have ingested, digested, and then cross-examined me about each incident. With the injection of his humor, it would have made this book a national treasure.

Prologue

The men who fought in WWII were called the greatest generation, yet the men who were facing the same bullets, the same grenades, and the same shrapnel were called participants in a forgotten war (the Korean War).

I can assure you that as a draftee in the Forgotten War, the men of Company L, Fifteenth Regiment, Third Infantry Division faced the same perils and the same heartbreak as the greatest generation.

As a draftee, my story begins with a report for a physical in order to determine whether I was fit to serve. All 126 pounds of me at 5' 7" was on the James Monroe High School varsity football team. I competed in speed skating, and a major part of my physical conditioning took place on the asphalt streets of the Bronx. Of course I was fit to serve. I was breathing.

Basic training, conducted by a cadre of callous Korean vets, was an ordeal of rigor, harassment, and laughs. The laughs kept us going.

When basic training was over, our sadistic master sergeant, Nokel Roach, extended congratulations to our men by handing us mimeographed sheets with Far East Command (FECOM) orders.

I arrived in Korea early in March 1952. Although I heard sounds in the distance from artillery, war for me was still in the movies. How did I go to war? A truck dropped me off about a mile from the main line of resistance (MLR). I was handed a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) by my sergeant and was introduced to a six-by-eight-foot hole in a hill called a bunker. This was my home for six months.

On the front line, I witnessed numerous incidents of misjudgment and errors of officers who were safely ensconced in tents and trailers far behind the MLR. We were outnumbered and outgunned by the Chinese infantrymen. There were endless periods of boredom broken up by nights of sheer terror. Oh yes, there were laughs too—plenty of them—especially when we went into reserve, where raids and patrols were placed temporarily on hold.

So here we were, Company L on the front line, looking at the powerful beacons from Panmunjom, where peace talks had been taking place since 1951. The beams were mocking us as we went out on our nightly patrols or raids and then returned with our casualties.

The Forgotten War is one that the military would like to forget because of the numerous errors made by high-ranking officers—especially General MacArthur, whose major miscalculation was to go all the way to the Yalu River, ignoring President Truman’s order to go no farther than the thirty-eighth parallel.

General MacArthur refused to believe the evidence that countless numbers of Chinese volunteers were waiting to cross the Yalu and overwhelm a much smaller UN militia.

The war ended with an armistice on July 27, 1953. US battle casualties were 33,651 killed in action, 103,284 wounded in action, and 7,850 missing in action. How many suffered and are suffering from PTSD?

An Atypical Physical

Okay. Bend over and spread your cheeks.

At 39 Whitehall Street, the induction center for the US Army, the proctologist was checking for hemorrhoids. The year was 1951. Draftees were going from station to station to determine whether they were physically fit for the Korean War.

Traffic was moving along smoothly as an amused and densely populated semicircle surrounded the doctor. The doctor was addressing Fridiholtz, a peculiar character we knew from high school.

Let’s try it again, said the frustrated doctor. Stand here and watch how the next fellow does it.

The next draftee dropped his shorts, bent over, and spread his buttocks. With a mirror on his forehead and a tongue depressor in his hand, the doctor searched the interior. Satisfied, he then turned to Fridiholtz.

You saw that, son. Now let’s try it.

With his head making a U-turn, and with an eyeball on the doctor, Fridiholtz hesitantly bent over and spread his cheeks. As soon as the tongue depressor grazed his sphincter, he went into orbit, hurtling forward and scattering the men in the semicircle. The elderly doctor dropped his tongue depressor into a wastebasket, shook his head, and then placed his hands on his knees. Frustrated, he told Fridiholtz to move along to the next station but to return in half an hour.

What a profession! This doctor had seen more assholes than the pond at the bottom of a toilet bowl.

Following that hors d’oeuvre, the next stop, appropriately, was lunch—a harbinger of things to come.

Dave Sohmer, a friend since elementary school, accompanied me to the mess hall. Two corrugated metal garbage pails stood alongside the serving station. Inside one pail, clustered in a circle, were pale tan frankfurters floating like an island in an oily rainbow of a fatty liquid. It wouldn’t have taken a rabbinical scholar to know that these franks answered to no higher authority. A kitchen helper fished out two wieners and slid them effortlessly into the entrée section of my metal tray. From the adjacent garbage pail, an ice-cream scoop of mashed potatoes was removed and plastered alongside the franks. Then some wrinkled and waterlogged pale green peas were added to a smaller section of the tray. A brown liquid they called coffee was accompanied by a square of yellow something for dessert. I later discovered it wasn’t dessert but cornbread for the franks. After consuming this strangeness, we continued with our physical.

Glenn, a classmate, joined us as we approached the next station. Seated behind a bare tan Formica table with chromium legs was a friendly gentleman.

Are you fellows next? he called out.

By this time we were mindlessly following one another. We handed him our papers, he stamped them, and we moved on, chasing the stenciled green arrows on the wall. Glenn stopped and looked at his paper.

Hey, that was the audiologist! he shouted. He spun around and made a dash for the doctor.

But I’m very hard of hearing! we heard. I had problems in school. I have a letter from my uncle, an attorney, declaring that my hearing is defective.

Physicals over, we accompanied a dejected Glenn to the subway station. He ran to a phone booth.

They think I can hear! The doctor said I could hear! There was a pause and then a despondent Yes, I think so.

The subway ride home was not a happy one for Glenn. Dave and I had mixed feelings about being drafted. We would be occupied for the next two years, after being continually rejected for employment as a result of our draft status. On the other hand, who knew what would be in store for us while American troops were under fire in Korea?

Between March 13, 1951, the date of my physical, and September 27, 1951, the date of my induction, I futilely searched for employment, signed for unemployment checks, met friends, went on a rare date, and played softball and stickball on weekends.

On March 29, I received my Certificate of Acceptability: Selective Service number 50 30 30 243 was found acceptable for induction into the armed services. On September 7, I received my Order to Report for Induction at 39 Whitehall Street at 8:00 a.m. on September 27, 1951.

When the day arrived, I gathered socks, underwear, and shaving gear and stuffed them into a canvas satchel. I looked around to say good-bye to my uncle (he had come to my parents’ wedding thirty-two years earlier and was still celebrating by living in our apartment). I received no good-bye from him; he had left for work. My parents stood by trying to free words that were wedged in their throats. What could they tell me? Be careful? They knew they weren’t going to see me for a while. I dropped my satchel, we kissed and embraced, and then I left.

Take One Step

Leaving my grieving parents, I closed the apartment door and stepped across the familiar small white octagonal tiles composing the mosaic tenement floor. They surrounded a drab brown number two at the center of our floor that greeted anyone visiting or exiting the second floor of our building. As I looked at these little pieces of close-fitting tiles, I realized that I wasn’t going to leave my footprints on them for quite a while.

Satchel in hand, I rushed down four flights of steps and passed the mailboxes on the ground floor. These were the mailboxes from which I had pulled my sheriff’s badge out of a padded envelope when I was seven years old, and my checkerboard knife and secret decoder in exchange for Ralston box tops. For ten Planter’s Peanuts cellophane wrappers, I had found a free paperback dictionary in that metal rectangle. My brother and I had waited at this mailbox for tickets to see the radio show The Shadow broadcast from a studio above the New Amsterdam Theater on Forty-Second Street in Manhattan.

I’d better get out of here, I thought, before I cry.

Thank God Mr. Tekula, our janitor, wasn’t rolling his barrels to the end of the sidewalk for a Department of Sanitation pickup. He hated the tenants, but I got an occasional grunt acknowledging my presence. Had he been there, I guess I would have said good-bye to his grumble.

I jogged a block to our meeting place—Gitelson’s Deli on Boston Road and East 173rd Street. Behind the wood-framed glass doors, the empty tables were stacked with upturned chairs. Here we boys had wolfed down pastrami on club sandwiches, frankfurters, sodas, and french fries after Sunday stickball games. Without Murray and Gene behind the counter, without the frankfurters sizzling on the grill, and without the aroma of hot pastrami wafting through the deli, it was merely a store like any other waiting to be opened.

Where was Dave? We’d agreed to be here at seven. I leaned against the locked doors, watching workers streaming toward the East 174th Street elevated subway station. I knew they were going to work; they had no idea where I was going. We had passed the physical. Report for induction at 8:00 a.m., said the letter. Dave and I were going to be employed for the next two years. There would be no more papers documenting our attempt to find a job, no more grilling at the unemployment office, no more rejections by potential employers, and no more unemployment checks.

Ah, there was Dave. I could easily recognize him in the distance. His tall, muscular frame was the envy of all the boys in the neighborhood. With satchel in hand and a smile on his face, he crossed Boston Road. We joined the working men and women on their march toward the el station.

There’s the first place I worked, Dave. It was a tiny watch repair store. It was so small and narrow it could only have been a place for watch repairs.

What did you do there?

I was twelve years old. The owner gave me a small envelope of watches, and I roller-skated to a large jewellery store on Prospect Avenue.

Yeah, I know that store. It’s still open.

The big store repaired watches. My boss’s expertise was repairing gold chains.

Now I was on my way to Whitehall Street to add to my employment résumé.

We passed the Dover Bar. The bright blue-and-red flickering neon Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign seemed to be in its death throes. Before my friend Jerry’s sister bought a TV set, we’d watched Friday Night Fights from the street through this sign in the window. Marching on under the marquee of the Dover Theater, I saw the sidewalk’s terra-cotta triangles polka-dotted with tiny black mounds of gum expelled from the mouths of kids waiting for the early morning Saturday cartoons and comedies.

We stopped at the base of the el station where a World War II vet who had lost part of his an arm in Sicily owned a newspaper stand. My father always went out of his way to buy a newspaper from him.

I haven’t seen you since you left your job at the freight yard. What are you up to? he asked.

My friend Dave and I were drafted. We’re on our way.

Pointing to his amputated arm he said, Don’t be a hero.

Onward we scrambled, up the subway steps and onto the platform. We had a job! We were going to work!

The doors opened. We squeezed in and gripped the white ceramic handles pivoting above us. The train was rattling toward 39 Whitehall Street, the launching pad for all New York City recruits heading off to the armed forces.

What did you do for your last night as a civilian? asked Dave.

I met the boys at the bowling alley. We played a couple of games, said our good-byes, and called it a night. What did you do?

I had some beers with my brothers, Lee and Sonny, and then went to sleep. Not the kind of night we usually see in the movies before a draftee leaves for the army.

"No true girlfriends. No wild parties. Neither of us is a hotshot lover.

Our destination stood gray and tall, on time and waiting. Going through the doors and into a large hallway, we met most of the group who had taken their physicals with us six months earlier. A GI directed us to a drab tan room that competed with the building’s depressing exterior. Standing tall, looking starched and military, a sergeant called out names from his roster.

Does this guy ever sit down or bend his elbows? Look at that uniform. There isn’t a wrinkle anywhere, whispered Dave.

Glaring in our direction, the sergeant thundered, I want complete silence! After I read the following, you will raise your right hand and you will swear your allegiance to our country.

With our gym bags on the floor and our right hands in the air, we swore to whatever he rattled off.

Take one step forward, he barked. Congratulations. You’re in the US Army!

I didn’t feel any different after the one-second conversion from civilian to soldier.

We were herded toward another sergeant and four corporals, who lined us up in front of the building. Five empty buses devoured about two hundred recruits. When we settled in our seats, Vinnie Intriglia shouted, How many of you guys are going to Officer Candidate School?

Lenny Silpe stood up to flaunt his military knowledge. What are you, nuts? he asked. My brother told me second lieutenants are cannon fodder in combat.

That put an end to the military talk. Back to reminiscing, attempts at humor, and guessing what was in store for us. Murray Lichtman decided to contribute. I wish they would send us south, where it’s warm.

Do you like sweat, insects, and snakes?

No.

Then stay here and freeze your ass off, advised Vinnie.

An hour’s ride brought our bus full of New Yorkers to the army reception center in Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. Cadre (the personnel at the reception center) escorted us to one-story wooden barracks, where we were assigned beds. Soon the processing began. We were quizzed on our medical history, were given vaccinations, took written tests, had our teeth inspected, and were given a short arm inspection by a medic. He checked for gonorrhea. Each man had to squeeze his penis; if a viscous white liquid emerged, he was sent to the post hospital to determine whether he needed treatment for gonorrhea. Once it was confirmed that we had a heartbeat and were still breathing, we returned to our barracks. Uniforms were to be issued in a few days.

It was October 3, 1951, the day of the shot was heard around the world. With two men on base and the New York Giants losing by two runs in the ninth inning, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca to place the Giants in the World Series. We were a New York crowd cheering or jeering, competing with Russ Hodges, the announcer, who kept repeating, The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! There must be something good about being drafted, I thought.

After dinner, I collapsed on my bunk and didn’t wake up until the following morning, when whistles and shouts reverberated off the windowpanes.

Fall out! Fall out and line up!

What does he mean, line up? I wondered.

No, not like that, you meatballs! I want a line of nine men left to right in four rows. Don’t you eight-balls know anything? This frail corporal, who resembled Woody Allen and depended upon a uniform to identify his masculinity, screeched, When I call your name, shout ‘Here!’ like you got a pair!

Does he have them? I wondered.

If the name was not Smith or Jones, it was certain to be mispronounced. Sohmer was Shummer, Praver was Prohver, Wolfe was Wolfie, and the Italian names were completely macerated. We were to discover that this was the rule for the cadre rather than the exception.

Quiet! Quiet! I want it so quiet I can hear a rat pissing on cotton! A few guys chuckled.

Laughing? If I catch the son of a bitch who’s laughing, I’ll stick my hand down his throat, grab him by his asshole, and turn him inside out! Again there was a snicker.

Laughing? Laughing? Do I hear laughing? The turd that’s laughing is lower than whale shit, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean!

Paralysis set in. No one moved. Two years of this? Is there an end to the script? I asked myself.

Okay. Stand tall. Give me a column of ducks; we’re marching to the mess hall.

What the hell is this twerp talking about? What is this column of ducks?

Off we went for breakfast, scrambling about like bumper cars in Coney Island.

•

On the following day, my barracks was assigned KP at the battalion mess hall. Hundreds of men, perhaps a thousand, were to be fed. As KPs, we played a behind-the-scene role in the smooth operation of the mess hall.

image001.jpg

Espresso? Cappuccino? Tea? Or me? (Dan on KP.)

Removing the eyes of the potatoes before they were placed into a peeling machine was my assignment. The mess sergeant cautioned me to remove the peeled potatoes’ eyes with as little of the surrounding potato as possible.

As the hours passed, monotony led to dreariness and dreariness led to fatigue. Consequently, the potatoes became smaller as the eyes with their surrounding areas became larger. The mess sergeant stepped in to critique my surgery. He scrutinized a recently deformed potato. If your work doesn’t improve, I’ll have you peeling these potatoes with your toes!

The potatoes we had for lunch tasted as if they were peeled with someone’s toes, I replied.

Oh, a New York wiseguy!

He left. I continued butchering the potatoes until it was time to quit.

Where are you going? asked the sergeant.

It’s eight o’clock. KP is over.

Not for you, smart-ass!

I worked through the night. At 5:00 a.m. I walked out. I should have done it earlier—it was Saturday. I staggered to my bed and collapsed. My three-inch mattress felt like a top-of-the-line Beautyrest. At about 11:00 a.m., I was awakened by cries of Wolfe! Wolfe! Private Wolfe!

Who wants to see him? I asked.

He’s wanted at the CP [command post].

Anticipating another KP assignment, I replied, He left for the PX about half an hour ago.

The messenger left, and so did I, in the opposite direction. He returned to the command post; I double-timed it for the post library. I leafed through Norman Mailer’s war novel, The Naked and the Dead—not recommended for a draftee. I looked up at the clock. How could I have spent three hours here? I wondered. It seemed as if I had just arrived. That mess sergeant has probably forgotten about me. I can’t take any more of this. I’m going to the barracks.

The boys were still gabbing about Bobby Thomson’s home run. Dave wanted to know where I’d been. I told him I’d been in the library, hiding from the mess sergeant. He seemed completely confused by my explanation, but I was too tired to pursue it.

Two months later, when I was home on my first pass, I related the potato episode. A brief period of silence followed. Then came the revelation: My father had schlepped for hours by subway and bus from the Bronx to Camp Kilmer to visit the day the messenger came looking for me. I felt so sorry for my dear, fragile father. I recalled the rainy days when I waited at the subway station for his return from work with an umbrella in my hand. I watched him rehydrate with a two-cent seltzer at the candy store before he wobbled home with me. I was consumed with guilt for his disappointing trip. I wanted to embrace him and tell him I was sorry. Why didn’t I?

Indiantown Gap

Whenever I reached for the light switch at home, a weary voice would drift through the darkness.

It’s all right; it’s all right. Leave it off; the cockroaches can see in the dark. This was Ma’s attempt to save a few cents.

I was convinced my mother was the lighting consultant for the quartermaster warehouse where our uniforms were being issued. Upon entering the building, I extended an arm to keep from walking up the back of the GI in front of me.

Let’s see your papers, shot a voice out of the semidarkness.

The man behind a long counter checked my vital statistics.

It’s a thirty-eight jacket, a twenty-nine waist and thirty length for the pants, fifteen and a half for the neck, and seven and a quarter for the head.

His assistant threw two woolen Ike jackets, two pairs of matching pants, and two khaki shirts, also with matching pants, at me. I dropped them to the bottom of my empty duffel bag. As I moved along, two pairs of cotton fatigues, two pairs of cement combat boots, three pairs of woolen socks, two overseas caps, and an overcoat were added to my wardrobe. Next, two pairs of itchy long johns were draped over the counter.

Keep them, I