The End is Near

Well, I got taken out. I was sent down to the Norwegians. That was their contribution to the U.N. it was their M.A.S.H., Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, just like that program on television, M.A.S.H. I was taken into the tents and all that sort of stuff. They took the shrapnel out of me. I stayed there for one or two days and then I was sent across about twenty miles or something to the 25th Canadian Field Dressing Station where they sort of nurtured me and waited to make sure gangrene hadn’t set in and then sewed me up. And then they sent me down to Inchon for rest and recuperation, well not real R & R but to recuperate. But I was only there for two days and they decided there was so few people up on the front lines that the fact that I could walk was good enough. So the cast on, as a sniper, they sent me back up and it was under those conditions that I shot those two men. So I sniped for about another three weeks before the battalion pulled out. And the night we pulled out it was supposedly secretive because it could be a bit chaotic on the lines so the Chinese would like to know that. So to avoid that happening that was the 38th unit from the American Army that replaced us. So as those fellows came into the trenches and into the tunnels we would go out two or three at a time as quietly as possible. The Chinese about one o’clock that morning came over a P.A. system and said, “Good bye Canadians, hello Americans!” and then identified who their colonel was. Not only the unit, so much for secret, you know. Anyway, the battalion, there was about 800 of us I guess. We walked ack-ack formation that is single file down the side of the road. Walked back from the lines and the colonel stopped us about, oh I guess eight or so many miles before. As long as we were out of mortar range from the Chinese. And then he said, “Okay fellows, get off the road, dig a hole in the snow which is almost about almost two feet deep I guess and get out of the wind,” because we all had sleeping bags, of course. So we got off the road, we dug a hole and we were climbing, I remember climbing into my sleeping bag and we heard the most eerie, bloody sound. And I remember looking, “What the hell is that? ” And we quickly identified. It was bagpipes echoing through those hills, the mountains. You can imagine.