Korea's No Man's Land

There was no-man’s-land, and it was called the Chamason Valley (sp). And they had a creek that run through it, you see. And what we would do at nighttime is go on patrols, to go out there and see what the enemy was doing and what they were coming around, see what they could do to us. So, that way, we have an idea who was out there, and what they were doing. It wasn’t easy, because you had to walk through a swamp. You went out there when it was dark, and you came in just when it was turning light, and that’s a long time. And you had running shoes on. Your feet were wet all night and all that. And when you walked, you could hear ‘swish, swish, swish’. Water in the running shoes, you know. And there was nothing stupid about those North Koreans. We said, if you turned around, they’d put one of them mortars in your back pocket. They could, you know. But we used to go out in no-man’s-land, and we’d go across that area on their territory, and go up the hills to see how far we could get up and see what was up there. And that’s where we used to come under the fire all the time. And they used to do the same thing to us. And we were always nervous. There’s no good, a guy telling me he wasn’t nervous. I was nervous there at nighttime, because you hear a little tingle down there, you’re looking around wondering if somebody’s down there. But when you got back, you felt a little bit relieved, and said, “Well, I’m safe now.” And sometimes you had to go, if they didn’t have enough men, you got, maybe, stuck the next night, or the third night, to go back out again. Which nobody liked, because it’s like, pushing your luck, you know, going out there.