The news stories of the past week of Korea and the U.S. spy plane stirred my thoughts of 18 years ago when I was wearing Navy blues and serving in Japan and Korea.
In the spring of 1951, I was assigned for a brief time toduty aboard what sailors called a "reefer," a food supply ship.
Our assignment was simply, replenish at sea.
As the map illustrates, the war was to be fought in South Korea. As far as the Americans were concerned North Korea belonged to the communists and that was that. General Douglas MacArthur had other ideas and as you will remember, former President Truman recalled or "fired" the general.
The fighting did stay pretty much along the 38th parallel. At least most Americans beleived so. We were about 200 miles north of the 38th near Hungnam along with the bettleship Missouri and heavy cruiser Manchester.
(Later, they were relieved by the New Jersey and the cruiser Los Angeles).
I dusted off a stack of old pictures and notes about my two trips overseas and came up with many memories.
One was about the minesweeper Thompson which took the worse of a gun battle with shore batteries.
"About 120 miles south of the Russian border on the east coast, the modified destroyer drew fire Thursday from twin-mounted three-inch enemy guns. The Thompson was working close to the beach, trying to knock out a bridge on the highway leading from Songjin to Vladivostok, (see map), the great Russian Far East military base.
"Within a few minutes, the shore batteries bracketed in the Thompson and scored 10 hits. Among the sailors killed was Boilerman John Dreith of Lincoln, Nebraska."
Other notes included:
Just like the situation faced by the Pueblo, the crew of the U.S.S. Polaris had the same problem — ice.
"It snowed for two days and we had a lot of ice on our decks when we arrived in Wonsan (March 1951) . . . shelled shore batteries hitting fuel depots . . . we covered 2,042 miles in nine and a half days this trip . . . never changed clothes and took off my shoes only a couple of times . . . Someone goofed — there are 65 of us and only the usual gripes about GI chow — but . . . we had 70 pounds of fried rabbit and black coffee . . . wonder where in the hell that came from."
One day at sea on board another ship, we were all at our battle stations for gunnery practice.
Although the Navy rated me an expert marksman with a rifle in boot training, my job on board this ship was setting fuses electrically for the four different five-inch gun mounts on board ship.
It was my first day at the station and I was taking instruction from another sailor.
Gunnery practice for sailors was firing at a sleeve, similar to the wind socks flying over airports. The sleeve was pulled on a long tow cable at certain distances by a Navy plane.
Our job was to fill it full of holes . . . If that was possible.
Someone got in a few lucky shots, shredded the sleeve and cut the cable.
But the real basher came on the fuse mounts.
Settings were ordered by the gunnery officer who determined when the shell would burst in space based on the number of yards from the target.
The order was wrong and the fuse instructor followed it blindly — the shell exploded barely after it was fired from the mount spewing cork from the casing and metal all over the bridge.
There was a lot of checking and rechecking after that little trinket was settled.
About the sleekest vessel on the high seas in those years was the Bon Homme Richard, an aircraft carrier. She sported Navy Corsairs, the prop-driven planes and Panther jets, the airplane we all decided must be the ultimate in design.
I boarded the Bon Homme Richard only one time and that was only briefly.
My trip ended up almost as a homecoming — I met Jim McKay, Lincoln, Nebraska. Jim was best man at my wedding.
(In later years Jim returned to Nebraska City to help Bob Berger of Lincoln with the floor covering job at St. Mary's Episcopal church addition).
We were anchored in Sasebo, Japan, as probably the most homesick sailors in the world when the first soldiers were rotated (whoever thought they'd send in a relief column) to the States.
My notes were quite flowery:
"Flanked by fire boats shooting streams of water hundreds of feet into the air and sailing under a thunderous salute by sleek jets of the U.S. and British, the first Army men to be rotated from the Korean war sailed home today from Sasebo.
"Most of the men had nearly 10 months of combat duty."
There was one who did not return. Corporal Jay Weckrley, my cousin from Washington, Kansas, was killed February 9, 1951, a day after I arrived.