The Five Days of Osan

By Jim Dietz

July, 1950.

The start of the Korean War and the first battle between Communists and American soldiers, the men of Task Force Smith and the 24th Infantry Division. It was a battle that caught the U.S. Army by surprise, a stinging defeat, forgotten in the mists of history.

The Five Days of Osan is a fictional story taking place during the initial battle between Task Force Smith and their communist opponents, a tale of mistakes and incompetence, as well as integrity and courage under impossible circumstances, a tale that hearkens to the Spartans of Thermopylae, where there is victory even in the face of complete defeat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Dietz
• Release date: Jun 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781370652723

Book preview

THE FIVE DAYS OF OSAN

By Jim Dietz

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

The Five Days of Osan

Copyright © 2013 by Jim Dietz

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Samshwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. Although based on real events, and utilizing actual historical figures, this work is entirely of the author’s creation.

*****

My thanks to all who have served their countries in times of peace and in times of war, and made sacrifices the rest of us cannot begin to understand.

FOREWARD

I’ve been interested in history for as long as I can remember. I read every book, watched every film I could, especially about about World War One and World War Two, ranging from Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to watching a young Mel Gibson in Gallipoli. I always got lost, imagining I was there, that I was part of the story.

I get that now. They were the ‘big’ wars, epic in sweep and scale with battles taking place on almost every continent. World War Two was as close as the world will ever get to seeing good vs. pure evil fight. Even the memories of those wars helped, keeping people from worrying about their current problems like OPEC, Watergate, stagflation, and the ‘death’ of America as a superpower (one of my first vivid, lasting memories of ‘real’ events was the final departure of American helicopters from Saigon in 1975). I was too young then to realize what war is really like or that death is constant and permanent. It never crossed my mind. War was ‘cool’, something to play with a Guns of Navarone set or in the back yard with friends.‘Cowboys and Indians’ wasn't any different; you just had to get different guns out of the toybox.

It will probably sound funny to admit, but as a child, I thought the Nazis were cool. They had cool weapons, black uniforms, and I knew they took on the rest of the industrialized world on their own. I knew Germany was no bigger than Texas and I was impressed; so small a country, yet so much power. Oh and those wonder weapons—the first rocket planes (the Me-163), the first jet used in combat (the Me-262), and the first ballistic missile (the V2) which, twenty-five years later, was the basic technology which helped put a man on the moon.

My parents didn’t care if I played war or read books about World War Two. I think they were happy that I didn’t bother them and was content on my own, but they did care about me having my plastic planes and tanks out whenever Grandpa was around. With Grandpa around, all of that stuff was off limits. I was a child and didn’t understand the rule, but it was okay. Children are easily distracted and have lots of interests—the world is a big place when you are eight or nine—I was happy spending my time with Grandpa fishing on Shasta Lake, hitting whiffleballs, and then later, him teaching me how to play cribbage, euchre, and mahjong.

But we don’t stay eight forever. As I got older, I asked more questions, pressing on when my father answered ‘Just Because’. I needed to know why everyone was so touchy about war when Grandpa was around. My mom explained, said that Grandpa was in the army and saw combat; she told me that she remembered when she was young, hearing him screaming in the night, something we associate now only with Vietnam or Iraqi and Afghan vets. I didn’t doubt my mom’s answer; she was sincere, but the thing is—I know my math. Grandpa was born in 1929, too young for World War Two and too old for Vietnam.

You mean Grandpa served in Korea? I knew very little about the war.

Mom’s response to my deductive logic was simple: Yes, Korea, but really, don’t bring it up. Promise, Robbie?

I promised—what else can you do with your mom in a situation like that?

I never did bring it up. I wasn’t going to break a promise to my mom—I was and remain a good son. Then again, I didn’t have to break that promise. One Saturday, back in the summer of 1994, I went fishing with Grandpa out at Clair Eagle Lake. It was a great time, a beautiful day even if the fish refused to bite. The sky was blue, no clouds, and Grandpa snuck a box of Twinkies along—my favorite, though Mom would have read him the riot act for doing that. Those Twinkies were our secret.

That’s when Grandpa brought it up. I’m not sure why and I didn’t ask. He talked about Korea, the communists, a lot of different things with no real connection except each triggered the next memory. He talked and I listened out on the lake and on the drive back to my parents’ house. There wasn’t much I could say, but when he was done, I understood why he always kept silent and didn’t like talking about war. I told him that he needed to write everything down, so that others could learn what happened —maybe then historians would pay attention to Korea and that war's veterans would get their due, instead of being overlooked in favor of World War Two or Vietnam vets—make no mistake, Korea is the forgotten war. He shrugged, put his arm around me as we reached the driveway, We’ll see, Robert. We’ll talk about it next time. Who knows? More importantly, maybe we’ll catch something.

I think he had a premonition or something. A couple weeks later, two days before our next fishing trip, Grandpa had a heart attack. They got him to the hospital, but the doctors couldn’t do anything. We never had that next talk and he never wrote anything down; all his memories were gone, irrecoverable. That is what drove me into becoming a historian. I owed it to him and everyone else that fought there, as well as the men who guard the 38th parallel today. Korea was a hard-fought war.

Was it worth it? Today, Osan, the city in this manuscript’s title, is a thriving community of one hundred thousand, no different from cities of similar size in a dozen different countries. It’s almost a suburb of Pyeongtaek and a few miles further south, a U.S. airbase remains. Fifty years later after the fighting ended, Osan is fifty miles from a ceasefire line fortified and on constant alert against a resumption of hostilities by the Communist North. How can Americans or Europeans, twenty years after the end of the Cold War, understand what it’s like to live so close to a war zone?

Was it worth it? The history books suggest it wasn’t, that the Korean War was a hiccup in geopolitical affairs, but history is always being revised. That ‘hiccup’ started South Korea’s modernization and today it is one of the most prosperous nations on Earth, home of many of the world’s leading industrial giants.

Was it worth it? For Grandpa, I think he’d shake his head at the question. Korea wasn’t about worth; Korea was about sadness and loss. Stalin once noted that a single death is a tragedy while a million dead are nothing more than a statistic. For politicians and generals, and for historians as well, Korea is about statistics. Grandpa, God bless his soul, understood — and made me understand how wrong that is — Korea wasn’t about statistics. It was a collection of tragedies, almost three million of them, many forgotten. Rather than write a history tome, I wanted to tell a story that brought these men to life since none of them left behind memoirs or letters home. Some of this is fiction and I readily admit that up front. But there is truth in fiction, sometimes a higher truth than what facts and statistics provide. It’s something to keep in mind for this and many other war stories.

Robert Yow

UCLA, 2009

THE FIVE DAYS OF OSAN

Jim Dietz

CHAPTER ONE

Itazuke to Pusan

July 1, 1950

Lieutenant James Christopher knew his newly-assigned NCO, Sergeant Michael Wing, was unhappy. He sat on his field pack staring straight ahead at the dull chrome interior sheeting of the C-54 Skymaster, clenching and unclenching his hands. His tension and intensity were obvious, enough that none of the other soldiers dared approach him or sit near him, preferring to be cramped against one another and their personal gear. Gut instincts told them it was safer to keep some distance.

Besides the unhappy NCO, twelve other men were on board near the cabin exit. The rest of the cargo, including several hundred rifles were at the rear of the plane. None of it made sense, but there had been no plan, so it wasn’t surprising. The ground crews at the Itazuke airfield shoved everything on board as fast as they could, said ‘To hell with it,’ and away the planes went.

Christopher stood and stretched, looking at the men who were now part of his command: 1st Platoon of Company A, 1st Battalion, 21st Regiment of the 24th Infantry Division. The rest of his 1st Platoon was following on the next C-54, just as cramped; they were carrying food and medical supplies. If Christopher had done the planning, he would’ve put the platoon on one plane and gear in the others. It would have given men a chance to sit in actual seats rather than the floor of the cargo bay and made loading and unloading easier in the other planes, but, alas, he wasn’t in charge. No one was in charge. The whole U.S. army was flailing like a chicken with its head cut off. If the Russians only knew….

It wasn’t what Christopher expected military life would be like when he accepted an appointment to West Point in the summer of ‘41. Watching the Nazis roll over Poland, France, and then start their way through the Balkans, he knew there was no way the U.S. would stand by and let Hitler’s Nazis overrun the rest of Europe. Christopher smiled and sat back down, brief enough that anyone watching would’ve thought it a tic, not a grin. It was easy to say he went to West Point because he wanted to stop the Nazis, but his motivations were not all altruistic. He went to the Academy because it was a free education and it gave him the opportunity to play football as well.

For Christopher, the issue was whether to remain in the Army when the mandatory eight years of service ended. It was a hard question. He was a West Point grad and that put him on the fast-track for promotion if he stayed in, but West Point taught him the importance of discipline and details, and nothing he had experienced since his assignment to the 24th Infantry, the primary garrison unit occupying Kyushu, showed that discipline mattered in the post-war Army. That didn't even change after General Walker assumed command of the division.

Christopher ran his hand over his buzz-cut and sighed. No matter, he was a long way away from New York Mills and the golden fields of western Minnesota. Maybe he would feel different if he had been one year older and made it to the frontlines against the Nazis or the Japs because there was no doubt they were heading into combat now and he was scared, regretting the second helping of biscuits and gravy in the officer’s mess pre-flight. Rationally, he knew almost everyone was in the same situation; few men in the regiment, let alone the platoon, had seen ‘real’ combat in World War Two. Sergeant Wing was one of them; maybe that explained his grumpiness. The other one with a ton of experience was Corporal Wesley. Christopher had been warned about the corporal—his disciplinary file was an inch-thick, but Christopher read it cover to cover anyways. He was always thorough with his work.

Christopher was first stunned, then impressed, and in the end, intimidated. Wesley spent three years fighting the Japanese, picking up every award and citation possible except for the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart. Christopher read that twice to make sure—in all of his combat, Wesley was never hit. As for the Medal of Honor, Wesley deserved it, but a week after his heroism and before any awards paperwork had been processed, he was busted a rank. Most likely, that was the reason he ‘only’ received a Distinguished Service Cross.

How do you command men like that? What was there in combat that Christopher could tell Wesley or Wing to convince them to do as he ordered? Christopher rubbed his eyes. Crap, he thought, I’m worrying about the wrong guys. It’s the young guys that I need to worry about.

On garrison duty, the army was lax in maintaining marksmanship skills. How many of the men in his command were up to speed on their marksmanship? Five years after Japan surrendered, the higher-ups didn’t worry about weapons training and field exercises, actively discouraging subordinate officers from pursuing such practice. Instead, they worried about paperwork and staying under budget. The U.S. Army in Japan was a symbolic garrison, not a prepared military force.

The restrictions imposed from ‘on-high’ left Christopher with nothing but hope that his men remembered their rifle training and machine gun support tactics. The problem was it was just that—hope. Taking men who barely knew one another, had no training together, and sending them into the field was not the formula for good results. It went against everything West Point taught, but still didn’t get to the core of his angst.

When all the other problems and excuses were stripped away, there remained the big question: Will I be all right if we see combat? Christopher didn’t want to wet his pants under fire, and he feared giving an order and watching as his NCOs disregard the order. Worse, what if they followed his commands and everyone wound up dead because of the stupidity? What then?

Christopher knew better, but every jostle of turbulence made him think of flak. War, they were heading to war, for better or worse. Wing was a career NCO, trust him. Trust the NCOs…. If he gave bad orders, it wouldn’t be the first time in military history. Don’t look scared, don’t be a hero, stay in between.

Christopher looked at his watch. ETA: four hours. Five minutes less than the last time he checked. He took a deep breath, stared straight ahead, and cycled through his worries all over again.

Richard Heilige didn’t smoke. His friends back in high school did, but Richard hated how his clothes absorbed the smell. They smelled sour. More importantly, inhaling smoke shortened his breath, made him sick, and that wasn’t his ticket away from the scant houses and grain silos known as Colony, a small town in southeastern Kansas. Staying home was expected. His friends there and in nearby Iola had no big plans for life. They wanted out of school, planned to work at the chocolates and candies factory or maybe at M & W making brake hoses for Boeing’s assembly plant in Wichita. Some intended to farm. They all wanted to live in the same small town and stay until they died. No one wanted to get out or make it big—except Richard.

Richard had that desire and God graced him with the talent to match, too. His high school baseball coach said he looked like Joe DiMaggio or maybe Tris Speaker, patrolling centerfield. Coach Mastensen knew, too, since he played with Speaker for a season in the ‘20s. Coach backed his opinion up, contacted a friend of a friend who convinced a few scouts to drive out to Iola for some high school games, reminiscing that in their youths, southeastern Kansas was the hotbed for professional baseball talent in America. Richard hit .700 with nine homers, even won six games pitching when he wasn’t in center. As soon as his last game concluded, Richard had a contract offer from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Son, the leathery scout with the limp fedora told Richard, I’m looking forward to seeing you in the National League in a couple years.

Richard signed the contract right away. It included a two thousand dollar bonus. Two. Thousand. Dollars. He was going to get out, and when he got to the National League, he intended to buy Dad a Cadillac, maybe a second Caddie for his mom. The same night he gave Pittsburgh his John Hancock, he drove down to Moran, the collection of houses and silos east of Iola, got on one knee and asked Miss Alice Watson for her hand in marriage; they’d been sweethearts since eighth grade, and he wanted it to be permanent. Alice said ‘yes’ in tears, squeezed his neck as she bounced up and down, a full head shorter than Richard. The euphoria of the contract and his engagement lasted three days. That was when the notice arrived: he’d been drafted, scheduled for medical examination the following Wednesday.

He was doomed—how could he say he wasn’t physically fit? He’d just signed a professional baseball contract. It didn’t change his feelings towards Alice, so they went in to the Iola courthouse and got married then and there, just her, him, and their parents as witnesses. Some of their ‘friends’ whispered that Alice was pregnant. They were just jealous; it wasn’t true. You can’t get pregnant if you don’t do anything, and they hadn’t, not until that night anyways, and then in the blink of an eye, four weeks were gone and he was on a train to Georgia for basic training instead of heading to Charleston and the Pirates’ Class-A team.

That was eighteen months ago. Now he was counting down the days until he was free, heading home