Ambush

There was some, even the South Koreans that . . . we didn't know, like . . . it was so hard to tell if you're North Korean, South Korean. There was no difference in the, in them. Some of the South Koreans, what we thought were South Koreans, were soldiers by day, or farmers by day, soldiers by night. But they were North Koreans. Walking up the road, all of a sudden, a guy bend over and "tik". Somebody behind him would pull the trigger, and if you were fortunate enough to be out of the road of that, well, you did ok. But we were under a couple of ambushes, where we had crossed the Incheon River and I just happened to mention, mention to one of the guys, I said, "Wouldn't this be a great place for an ambush? " We come back across the river. The next day, we went across the river again and sure enough, right there where I said, was a cornfield and it just stood up, and these were all Chinese and North Korean. Fear is, is, is something that we all have. We all have fear of something. But the fear of losing your life, or when you know that you're in an ambush, the fear of losing your life gives you more, oh, I don't know what you call it, but whatever it is, it gives you more sense of ability to protect yourself. So, you do what you have to do, and if you get down on the ground and, and you pray to God that, that you're gonna make it through this, yeah. Some of the North Koreans or Chinese, or whatever, they hollered and screamed and what have you, because they knew they were under fire, being, being the same as we were, under fire but our training was that much better, that we kind of didn't let these people know that we were panicking and, where, where they did. They, they felt the same as we did. I, it was them or us, so . . . Well, we had guys that were radio operators, you know, like, signalmen and they'd call in air support or other support, tanks, whatever, to protect us at that certain spot. Now, there was a lot of American air support, which was a great thing. We even called our own artillery to fire right above us, right where we were, because this is something that, you know, that you could depend on, your artillery. There was some shortfalls at times, but you hear of people being killed by friendly fire. Well, it does happen. That's some of your own. It does happen. There's, there's shortfalls, but it's something that, that if it does happen that way, if there is . . . It only happened once, and your signalmen and what have you, they tell you that ,tell them that they're not firing high enough, or whatever, and . . . But with, with support like that, it makes life a whole lot easier for you.