The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War Read Online Free PDF Page B

arranged as if they had no enemies to fear.
    Lieutenant Hewlett (Reb) Rainer joined the regiment immediately after the Unsan battle, and one thing he decided to do was put together in his own mind what had happened. He was shocked at the way the regiment had been positioned: “The first thing was that the battalions could not really support each other. They were not properly linked up. The second thing was that you could drive a division or maybe two divisions of Chinese soldiers through them and the people spending the night there might not even know it. And that was the way the enemy fought—he came up and moved along the flanks, then encircled you, and then squeezed you,” Rainer said. “I know Regiment hadn’t gotten the word from higher headquarters about the Chinese, but still, they were very far north; it was Indian country; something was clearly up; and there was no point at all in being positioned as if you’re back in the States on some kind of war game. To say it was careless—that was an understatement.”
    Sergeant Bill Richardson, who had a recoilless rifle section of a heavy weapons platoon in Love Company, remembered October 31, 1950, exceptionally well. His section had drawn duty at the south end of the Third Battalion’s position, near a place called the Camel’s Head Bend, part of a unit guarding a bridge where a small road crossed the Nammyon River. The day before, they had finally received a shipment of what the supply people claimed were winter clothes: some field jackets, fresh socks, and nothing much else. Richardson had told one of his men to distribute the jackets as best he could and skip the sergeants because there just weren’t enough to go around. Years later, it infuriatedhim when he read that the men in his company had been caught asleep in their sleeping bags. It had been bad enough the way they were hit, but they sure as hell weren’t in their sleeping bags, because they didn’t have any. They had to create do-it-yourself sleeping bags as best they could, wrapping their blankets and shelter halves together.
    That day, Richardson had been on duty at the bridge when Lieutenant Colonel Johnson stopped on his way back from the battalion command post. Johnson had wanted to talk, but he was also being somewhat guarded. “Look,” he said, “we’ve had reports of a few minor roadblocks in the area. We think they’re remnants of the North Korean Army, and they may be coming up the river bend heading towards you, going north.” Richardson was not bothered by the news. He told Johnson (“my famous last words”), “Colonel, if they come up the river bend, they’ve had it.” Then Johnson warned him to be careful and they shook hands. Johnson wished him good luck and Richardson thought to himself—because Johnson was driving through the countryside virtually alone—Colonel, sir, you’re the one who needs the luck.
    They had been together since training at Fort Devens back in Massachusetts. Richardson had served in Europe at the tail end of World War II, arriving in that war too late to see combat, only the devastation it had wrought. But in Korea, he would eventually be battle-tested far beyond the norm, in combat as difficult and dangerous as any American force had ever been exposed to. He had grown up in Philadelphia and his parents had been entertainers. He was a less than diligent student, and was sent in time to the local industrial school, which was the system’s way of telling him to forget about college, in the unlikely event that the idea had ever entered his mind. His formal schooling ended in the ninth grade, and he joined the Army and found he liked it. He had been trained by skilled professionals, men who had been through the worst of World War II and passed on the little things that were most likely to save your life. In the early spring of 1950, Richardson was on the third extension of his enlistment in a period of post–World War II downsizing, and the Army had