My Benton County Hero
by
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The next edition of the Stars and Stripes contained the rest of the story. The Americans fought their way back up to the top of Old Baldy that afternoon. They found that the Chinese had killed all the wounded soldiers left on the mountain by shooting them or stabbing them with a bayonet. Their bodies, along with those of the Chinese dead, were scattered all over the mountain.
Amazingly, when the wounded soldier that we had helped returned to his collapsed bunker, he found his buddy unharmed, trapped under the collapsed roof. The man had survived being overrun by the Chinese, as well as the massive amount of ordinance that we had dropped on the mountain in the process of losing and then regaining it.
The newspaper contained a picture of both of them, standing next to each other and grinning. I realized that I had never gotten the name of the wounded man, and I've forgotten the names that appeared in the paper, but I remember that stranded buddy being quoted as saying, “I could hear the enemy shooting and stabbing our wounded. There was a lot of shouting and celebrating going on. After daylight, an enemy soldier stood on top of our collapsed bunker. I saw his feet within eighteen inches of my nose through a crack in the logs. That’s how close I came to being discovered. I didn’t know if they might find me and kill me or if one of our own artillery shells would hit my bunker.”
During that battle, A Battery shot in excess of a hundred illuminating rounds. Afterwards Capt. Lierly was told that because we had run low on them, there would be no more illuminating shells issued until November.
That was three months away. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I wondered what would happen if there was another big battle that took place at night. Maybe the army could come up with some candles, I thought bitterly.
The people supplying the 936th were continuing to fail us. They could get a man, Clyde Wood, here in twenty-six hours but couldn’t get ammunition to the front line to fight the war. New replacements from the States told me that the Army had new hydramatic drive 6X6 trucks all over the place back home, with transmissions that shifted automatically. This was the first time that we had heard about such an innovation. None had been sent to the troops in
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About the Book
The Korean Police Action caused the 936th Field Artillery Battalion, Arkansas National Guard, to join the meat-grinder of war. Led by Captain Douglas E. Morrow, my hero, a bunch of raw
Doug Morrow, however, a WW II veteran, trained us to fight and taught us how to be men. The author exchanged 425 letters with his future wife, and the story of that burgeoning relationship captures what motivated the men to fight bravely when hell rained down. The only thing we had to keep ourselves going was the promise that some day we would have peaceful lives with the women we loved, that some day we would sink into the tranquility of
I have finished My Benton County Hero and I thank you for writing it. It is an excellent running history of our miserable time in Korea. I think it is accurate. There were lots of events that I either didn't remember or never knew about. And I am sure that would be true of every man in A Battery from Bentonville, Arkansas, who will read the book. We all have our own experiences, and no one knows every thing that happened to any one else over there, but you have sure as hell captured a lot of my memories and experience. I know that it took a lot of research and just plain dam hard work to set it to paper. I don't have the patience for that. You have told your story and you have done a good job of it. It must be very therapeutic for you. Not many people attempt it, or want to. Or even have a story.
About the Author
Jim Rakes joined the National Guard at age fifteen (1947) for extra income to support his dating activities. The dating came to a screeching halt when the Korean Police Action caused him to be called to active duty in August 1950, shortly after high school graduation, and landed him in the fighting with his unit that saw 300 days of combat without a day in reserve. He was promoted to Master Sergeant, Chief of Detail Section, "A" Battery, 936th Field Artillery Battalion, and Arkansas National Guard, two months following his nineteenth birthday. He might have been the youngest Master Sergeant in
Jim's bonus for service to his country was a college education paid for by the G I Bill of Rights, otherwise, out of the question. And, he was paid $54 per month foxhole bonus for ten months or $540. He has been a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of