Call Sign: Purple Three: Patrolling the US Sector of the Korean DMZ

By Mark Heathco

Although a cease-fire agreement was signed in Panmunjeom on July 27, 1953, fighting between North and South Korea never stopped. The hot war was replaced by a low-intensity war. Terrorism, assassinations, infiltration of spies, and the like replaced tank battles and artillery duels. Until 1993, the United States patrolled its sector of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) in South Korea. In Call Sign: Purple Three, author Mark Heathco, who pulled 385 missions inside the DMZ during his military career, describes the preparation for a dangerous patrol in August 1985. This memoir follows the soldiers as they arrive at Warrior Base, refit for war, and finally execute the patrol itself. With great detail, Call Sign: Purple Three provides keen insight into the Korean DMZ at a time when the world thought all was well in Korea, but in reality chaos was just a hair trigger away. This insider’s memoir offers an understanding of what these soldiers did and the sacrifices they made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: May 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483483672

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HEATHCO

Copyright © 2018 Mark Heathco.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8368-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8367-2 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:   04/10/2018

This book is dedicated to the DMZ vets who patrolled inside the Z, manned Guard Post Collier and Guard Post Ouellette, and performed the mission. To all of you who chewed the same piece of dirt I did and left your footprints in the mud and rice dikes of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, welcome home from a job well done on freedom’s frontier in the land of the morning calm. With little or no recognition, you pulled your duty with the utmost excellence. Stand tall and be proud of what you did on the Z, putting your life on the line to protect the freedoms of South Korea. No Second Division soldiers will ever do the DMZ mission again.

Make no mistake, my brothers—your story will be told. Like mystical warriors on the field of battle, you have fought and spilled your blood. There are none like you, nor will there be any like you again.

Keep the faith, brothers, least we be forgotten.

—Mark Heathco

Preface

I was inspired to write this book for the vets who have served up on DMZ, and especially those who pulled patrol duty. Those men were the best at what they did, with little or no recognition for it. They put their lives on the line every time they went out on a mission. Most people in the United States didn’t know what our soldiers were doing over in the DMZ. There were no CNN reporters embedded with them to report what was going on inside the DMZ on a daily basis. The actions these men performed were strictly covered up by the Second Infantry Division in which they served.

We were told nothing ever happened on the DMZ. Our officers and senior noncommissioned officers just laughed at the reports that the patrols brought back. We were fully loaded for combat when we went out on patrol, but our hands were tied when it came to engaging the North Koreans. It was as if the chain of command was afraid to let us pull the trigger when the trigger needed to be pulled. Now these same DMZ vets are having trouble getting benefits through the Veteran’s Administration and other agencies because the government says nothing ever happened on the DMZ.

I served in South Korea from 1978 to 1991 as part of the Second Infantry Division. I served with Eco Thirty-Eighth TOW Company, Camp Howze; CSC Company First Thirty-First (M) Infantry, Camp Howze; Aco First Seventeenth (M) Infantry Weapons Platoon, Camp Casey; First Thirty-Eighth CSC Company Third TOW Platoon, Camp Hovey; First of the Fifth (M) Infantry, Camp Howze; First 506th CSC Company, Camp Greaves; and the Second Infantry Division G-3, Camp Casey.

I also worked in the Third Brigade tactical operation center (TOC) from 1986 to 1990 as a shift leader. Our job was to take reports from the DMZ TOC, process them, and file them on a need-to-know basis. Some reports went to the Second Division TOC. From there, I have no idea where those reports went. But there wasn’t a day that went by without some kind of incident happening inside the DMZ and involving US patrols.

I’ve pulled a lot of DMZ missions and had 385 patrols inside the DMZ, on most of which I was a patrol leader. I have nine DMZ certificates and have been awarded for my action while on patrol. My personal knowledge of the US sector of the DMZ is extensive. I wrote this book on the basis of that experience, using pictures and notes I took while serving as a patrol leader. This book is about just one of the many patrols I pulled in the mid-1980s. I hope you find it as fascinating as I did.

Introduction

W elcome to the DMZ. Although a cease-fire agreement was signed in Panmunjeom on July 27, 1953, fighting between North and South Korea has never stopped. The hot war has merely been replaced by a low-intensity war. Terrorism, assassinations, infiltration of spies, and the like have replaced tank battles and artillery duels.

This book tells the real story about one of the 385 patrols I pulled inside the DMZ. The time of the patrol was fall 1985. You will join the patrol as they arrive at Warrior Base, refit for war, move to the tent area, prep their gear, receive a patrol operations order, study the patrol information, rehearse, undergo inspection, and finally execute the patrol itself. They encounter many dangers and obstacles—even a North Korean or two—as well as navigating the minefields that lace the patrol sector.

The Second Infantry Division patrolled the US sector of the DMZ until OCT 1 1991, when we turned that responsibility over to the Republic of Korea’s (ROK, or South Korean) army. (Joint Security Area [JSA] personnel still patrol a sector inside the DMZ, but that’s another story.) What you are about to read is the untold reality experienced by many Second Infantry Division soldiers. Folks in the United States have never heard about these patrols. Events were hushed up to make it look like nothing ever happened in the DMZ. All the reports were localized to battalion, brigade, or division intelligence offices. Today in 2013, there is no paper trail that I know of showing that we ever patrolled the DMZ.

I wrote this book hoping to give the people in the United States a better understanding of what these soldiers did and the sacrifices they made. These men suffer today from many forms of combat problems. Though the DMZ was not considered a hot environment of battle, the soldiers who served there still suffer. I hope my book sheds some light on their dark road.

Mark Heathco

Day One

Chapter 1

THE ARRIVAL

I t all starts August 29, 1985, at about 0430 hours. This is what we have been training the last three months for; all the problems we’ve solved and mock patrols we’ve done in the field are now going to be put to use. Our mission is to patrol the US sector of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and to deter any aggression or infiltration that may occur, to the extent of engaging the North Koreans with deadly force. I think, We’re finally here on the DMZ.

The convoy of jeeps passes under a tank trap, weaving its way through the yellow-and-black-striped metal road barriers blocking the road north to Freedom Bridge. We’re on the main attack route used during the war by the North Koreans, now known as Main Supply Route One, or MSR1 for short. The road leads straight to the capital city of Seoul if you take it south. It becomes a four-lane highway right after you cross Freedom Bridge: two lanes south and two lanes going north to the Imjingak. Go any farther north and it narrows to two lanes. Once you cross Freedom Bridge going north, the highway leads to a check point at the joint security area (JSA) Camp Kittyhawk. Then to a tank trap, tank wall and a mine field, the southern barrier fence, the US sector of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), and on to the Bridge of No Return at Panmunjeom. They say if you keep following it north, you will drive right into Kaesong, North Korea.

I can see the little red, triangular, blackout marker lights of the jeeps in front of my jeep as we come to a stop. The lights flash off the rear taillights like cats’ eyes in the dark. The convoy is stopping in a herringbone formation—one gun jeep taking the left side of the convoy, pointing its TOW weapon system to the left side of the formation, the other gun jeep taking the right side of the convoy. We are in open terrain with lots of rice paddies that roll down to the river. There are mountains in the distance to the right of the convoy.

We’re a heavy antitank platoon. The acronym for our unit is TOW. That stands for tube-launched, optical-tracked, wire-guided missile system. The range on the TOW system is about three thousand meters, or just short of two miles. The missile arms itself at sixty-five meters. We’re highly trained and effective tank killers.

My name is Sergeant Mark Heathco. My life expectancy, if war was to break out, would be about twelve seconds. That’s because it is our job to stop the North Korean tank threat, and we are outgunned by a ratio of twelve to one. Each American TOW system would have to kill, on average, twelve North Korean tanks to survive on the battlefield.

I am no stranger to the threat. This is not my first tour of duty in South Korea, nor is it my first time on the DMZ mission. I like the tour here in Korea; heck, you might say I love it. I am no warmonger, though. I feel that the mission we pull on the DMZ is a worthy cause. Some say I stay in Korea because I like the tour, and that’s true. But there is more to it than that. The DMZ mission is unlike anything in the world. You pull the mission for the guy standing next to you—the same guy who has your back while on patrol in no-man’s-land. It’s the camaraderie that makes this mission appealing to me.

I am in charge of a TOW section comprised of two gun jeeps and two carrier jeeps. We’re part of the third platoon, which has three sections—six gun jeeps, six carrier jeeps, and one command jeep. That’s just one platoon. There are two other platoons, the first and the second, as well as a scout platoon, a mortar platoon, and a headquarters platoon. All of us are part of combat support company (CSC), which in turn is part of an infantry battalion called First Thirty-Eighth Infantry. There are three other infantry companies and a headquarters company in this battalion.

We’ve halted because of the checkpoint at the south end of Freedom Bridge. As we stop, I signal my squad leader two jeeps behind me three times with a green-lens flashlight. He flashes back, two red, which tells me we haven’t lost any vehicles from our section on the way up. We’re on radio silence during our movement until we get to Warrior Base. The base is on the other side of the Imjin River, and just north two and a half miles before the JSA so that the North Koreans shouldn’t realize that a new battalion is moving in and taking over the DMZ mission—but somehow they do.

We start moving, slowly. There are about twenty-five meters between vehicles, and we try to maintain that distance as we crawl toward the Imjin River and Freedom Bridge. As my jeep approaches the checkpoint, I can look to the left and see the war monuments at the Imjingak. It’s a big, white war memorial building with some T-34 tanks and other vehicles used in the conflict positioned at the rear. It’s like a tourist attraction; a lot of people visit here every day. Inside the building is a terrain map of the area north of Freedom Bridge and the DMZ, and other information about the demilitarized zone. You can get coffee and something to eat. On the far side of the building is a replica of the last train ever to go north back in the 1950s. The real train still sits inside the demilitarized zone on the very tracks where it was blown up.

As the convoy comes to the end of the road, my vehicle makes a left turn in front of the Imjingak. To my right is the remnant of a road used during the war. A decaying, blue Korean guard shack sits there untouched, like a ghost from the war. The old road bridge, whose dirty brown-and-white columns were chewed up in the war, still spans the Imjin River like a monument. This bridge was not destroyed by North Koreans, but by a United States officer who called in an air strike on the wrong bridge. He should have blown up the train trestle bridge beside it. Now you have to cross the Imjin River on the train trestle bridge, called Freedom Bridge.

We make a right turn and weave between the yellow-and-black-striped steel road barriers that block the main entrance on the south side of Freedom Bridge, passing a guard shack on the right. The bridge platoon guards stand and look at us, and a South Korean soldier snaps to attention as we roll by. It’s a fortified bunker with sandbag-reinforced walls and communication equipment inside.

All the soldiers on duty are armed with live ammo. They don’t play games here. Just like we do in the DMZ, they’re looking for infiltrators, scanning the Imjin River with spotlights from below Freedom Bridge. The road going across the bridge is made out of wooden railroad ties. It’s set up for one-way traffic, which means that if traffic is going north, all traffic coming south has to stop and wait. The bridge is just wide enough for a jeep. I can hear the railroad ties creak and crack as we move across.

In the metal of the pale blue train trestle, I can still see machine-gun holes. There must have been some fierce fighting here.

Below the bridge on the south side is a dirt road that runs as far as I can see from east to west. There is a fence on the northern side of the dirt road with fifteen fist-size stones in each section of the fence. On the south side of the fence and the dirt road is a minefield. Every morning the Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers take a jeep with a big rake attached to its rear fender to check the dirt on the south side of the fence for footprints. The rake smooths the ground after their check, so that footprints made later will be clear. The soldiers also count the stones in each section of fence to make sure no one has broken through the fence line. If a defector had climbed the fence, the stones would have fallen out onto the sand.

The river is a natural barrier with sheer, cliff-like banks as high as sixty feet. There are only a few places where the ground is low enough for tanks to cross, and where there is low ground, there are mines.

Freedom Bridge has a lower level that is patrolled by armed guards from the bridge platoon. The spotlights on the lower level scan the water for infiltrators, defectors, or dead bodies.

The bridge is rigged to blow and heavily fortified with minefields underneath it and on both banks. Rolls of concertina wire are stretched between its columns from the south bank to the north bank, forming an underwater barrier.

My driver looks white as a ghost. I ask, You okay, dude?

He answers, Yeah.

We talk about what must have happened up here during the war. He says he sure is glad he wasn’t here and that they must have caught hell. We also talk about his girlfriend back home in the States, and his mom and dad. He tells me that they are not going to believe what he is doing. I reply, Sure they will. Send them pictures from Warrior Base and of the patrol.

I turn around in my seat and look at the gun jeep behind me, thinking I’ve got some pretty brave souls who are trusting me to keep them safe. I turn forward again as we continue to cross the bridge.

The Imjin River connects with the Han River a couple of miles southwest of Freedom Bridge and is controlled by high and low tides from the Yellow Sea. One of the spotlights turns on, panning the water below for a few moments, going dark as my vehicle passes by. The guard looks forward, and I follow his gaze to see that we’re getting near the end of the bridge.

The north-side guard house looks like a small castle, round and faded blue. It’s just a two-man shack with no fortifications, situated in a one-way, controlled traffic loop.

We leave the bridge, the wheels of the jeep grabbing the road again.

The olive-drab Quonset hut to the right is the bridge platoon’s barracks. We’re at the end of the traffic loop—the road goes either straight or to the right. The convoy goes right, taking the road that leads up a very steep hill. We can’t go straight. That’s the old train route. It’s controlled by the first division of the South Korean army and leads straight into the ROK sector of the DMZ. That is, it will lead you there if they don’t shoot you first.

The road gets even steeper as the convoy continues. Off to my left is the Fifth ROK Marines compound. The constant propaganda music being played by the North Koreans gets louder as we pass by. They always turn it up when a new DMZ battalion takes over. Don’t ask me how they know. They just do.

The road north of the Imjin River is only a two-lane road, but at least it’s black-topped. As we reach the top of the hill and head toward Warrior Base, we pass Camp Greaves, which appears on the right-hand side of the road.

Camp Greaves is home to the First of the Ninth Infantry Battalion, which has the same components as our battalion, except they live within a few hundred yards of the DMZ. I don’t envy these guys. They live up here twenty-four/seven and stay at 90 percent strength at all times, meaning they don’t get a free pass very often. They do, however, have an NCO club called the Manchu Club. The club is a green building that can probably seat as many as thirty people and is situated directly across from Camp Greaves’s main gate.

The convoy slows as we drive past the camp. To my left is the only village north of the Imjin River that is not inside the DMZ. Its name is Freedom Village, and it’s off-limits to all US military. Some GI killed a girl there—that’s the story, at least. I’m not sure it’s true.

As we pass the village, we go down a little hill and through a tank trap. A tank trap is a structure made out of concrete rigged with demolition charges. Once blown, the concrete blocks the road at a choke point. These tank traps are all along the main road.

The road bends back to the left, hugging the side of the hill. To my right are five hundred meters of rice paddies going all the way down to the river. The terrain, for the time being, is vibrantly green. The paddies are full of growing rice and water. The mountains are tall, steep, rugged, and scarred from the war, sparse in vegetation in places and thick in others. There aren’t many trees but a whole lot of bushes.

The road straightens out. To the right and north of me,