A hill called White Horse
A Korean War story
by
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A shot rings out loud and clear, and the report is instantaneous “CRACK!” In one fluid second and motion, a bullet smacks the back of Lieutenant Adam’s helmet, creases his scalp, and exits through the front. The bullet hit forces his helmet to go flying, his face suddenly contorts in pain, knocking his whole body forward and down instantly, and he goes sprawling in the bottom of the trench. Momentarily unconscious, his jaw is open as he hits the ground face first, and his mouth fills with dirt. Somewhere in his subconscious, Joe Adam’s mind wonders “What happened? Am I dead? Is this what it feels like?” Coughing, spitting out dirt, he starts to regain his wits. “JESUS CHRIST” is all that he can mutter, but his mind is going a mile a minute. “That frigging hurts” and “I gotta move or I’m dead” and “damn this dirt tastes like crap” randomly go through his subconscious. Shaking his head and looking up as he spits out more dirt, his helmet has come to rest directly in front of him. Rising off the bottom of the trench, now onto his hands and knees, he scrambles forward a few feet and grabs his helmet, and in one motion flops it onto his aching head and like a track runner starts up the trench line towards their bunker. As soon as he starts running, yelling erupts above and behind him, he can’t make out what is being said, nor does he care to, he just knows it’s about him and directed to him. Almost instantaneously with the yelling, rifle fire punctuates the air “CRACK CRACK CRACK!!! BBBRRRUPPP!! BBBRRRUPPP!!” As long bursts from Chinese ‘burp guns’ fire overlaps all other sounds. Dirt goes flying; the air is suddenly filled with noise “ZIP! ZIP! THUMP! ZIP!” One minute he’s looking over the trench line, the next, from what Lieutenant Adams thinks, there’s a whole Chinese Army shooting at him. Instinctively he glances over his shoulder – his thoughts race in a split second “There’s the guy who shot me! Jesus, he’s behind me!” The Chinese soldier who fired the initial round that went through Lieutenant Adam’s helmet is no more than fifty yards away above the trench line. He’s now firing from the shoulder, full auto, right at Joe Adams and the part of trench he’s in “BBBRRRUPPP!!! BBBRRRUPPP!!!” “God that sound is evil!” somewhere in Joe Adam’s mind he’s saying. Other Chinese soldiers, alerted now and aware of a live enemy in the trench they overran, begin firing at him with their rifles and burp-guns. The trench, all thirty yards or so of it that Adams has to cover, is filled anew with disturbed dirt and the sound of bullets zipping past him and thudding into the walls of the trench and surrounding area. “DAMNIT!!! THEY’RE BEHIND US!!!” he blurts out, as he’s moving, partly his mind operating on its own and partly to try and warn his team members in the bunker. Fifteen more yards… Ten more yards “Five yards I’m almost there! AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!” He instinctively yells out and he literally dives toward the outer bunker entrance just as a ripple of burp-gun rounds splatter against the sandbags near the entrance. “I MADE IT, Jesus Christ, I MADE IT…” His mind is reeling as he sprawls on the outer bunker floor, now with some cover between him and the Chinese bullets. Sergeant Oxendale is there, just as Lieutenant Adams flies through the entrance, and he swings partly around the sandbags and fires a full clip from his Garand, not even pointing it, just to get some American noise out there. Corporal Augustyn grabs his lieutenant by the back of his jacket and drags him the rest of the way into the inner bunker. Bullets are hitting everywhere it seems, and Sergeant Oxendale jumps inside right on top of both men. Another sound is now heard - a hand grenade goes off in the trench where
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About the Book
The battle of White Horse lasted ten days, with many lives lost. This story concentrates on the first two days of the battle, as recounted by Joe Adams, Jack Callaway, and the rest from the 213th Field Artillery Battalion who were there. These two days coincide with the letters and personal remembrances of these men and this story is based on their real life experiences. The events and people are real, coming from those personal interviews, declassified documents and historical reference. What they went through is real, documented history. This is a ‘story’ in that their actual minute-by-minute interactions and words have been interpreted, all with the spirit and intent of their every word. Not one of them has ever bragged about what they did or thought of themselves as some great warrior soldier. Everyone simply did what they had to do, and that there was no glory in it.
Not just another war story, this is an attempt to put the reader ‘there’ in the thick it, to be a participant in battle and to feel what it was like to be in the Forgotten War. Exploding artillery shells, bullets striking targets, the eeriness of flares drifting down over a battlefield, breathing the dust of trenches on a hill in the middle of a far off place. Taking the reader out of their seat and putting a rifle in their hands, this story transports you a thousand miles away from your surroundings to an artillery battery receiving ‘incoming mail’, trench lines where death is around every corner, and a bunker on a hill where some of the most violent combat takes place. This book lets you feel, taste and smell it like it was, brutal, unforgiving, and above all, a cold hard reality for those that were there.
About the Author
Tony Sobieski wears a few ‘hats’ working for the U. S. Air Force. A Department of Defense civilian employee, he also is in the USAF reserves. Following the success of his first two books FIRE