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The Korean DMZ War (1966-69)By Mark HartfordThis Veterans Day, November 11, 2006, at 10:30 AM, former soldiers who served in Korea after 1953 will gather at the Korean War Memorial to place a temporary plaque that recognizes the sacrifices of those soldiers that served, fought, and sometimes were wounded or killed in combat with the North Korean Army. The majority of those who were killed or wounded after 1953 died during the "DMZ War," which occurred between 1966 and 1969. Senate bill S2914 has been introduced by Senator Mike DeWine from Ohio; it calls for placing a permanent plaque on or near the Korean War Memorial honoring the sacrifice of these men. Members of VVAW and their supporters in or near Washington DC are invited to attend this memorial service to show support for these forgotten veterans and their unknown war. You are also asked to contact your congressional representatives and senators to support the passage of this bill. I served in Korea at the start of this war. Here is part of the story. Forty years ago, in June 1966, I stepped off the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck to start a thirteen-month tour of duty with Company B 1/23rd, 2nd Infantry Division, in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. I became part of a contingent of American soldiers who were tasked with defending a nineteen-mile stretch of the DMZ from infiltration, sabotage, and assaults from North Korean Army (NKA) forces. Before my tour of duty was complete, I would walk endless miles of rice paddies (swampy in the summer, frozen over in the winter), around (and sometimes through) minefields placed when the DMZ was first created, and up and down the sides of steep hills grown back to their natural state, covered with brush and trees, in search of the enemy. I carried a "basic load": M-14 rifle, 100 rounds of ammunition in five clips (one locked and loaded, the other four in pouches), four grenades, a bayonet, a flak vest, a helmet, a canteen of water, and usually a poncho. Occasionally, I would trade my M-14 for a shotgun or an M-79 grenade launcher. On constant alert for any sudden noise or movement that might pose a threat, we would search "spider holes" that had been made by twisting the overgrown rice and other vegetation into a compact, insulated, and nearly invisible hiding place for NKA infiltrators. We "cleared" old bunkers and other artifacts left from the Korean War throughout the DMZ, expecting to die each time we threw ourselves into them. We walked through decayed villages and cemeteries left by families forced to move when the DMZ was first designated as part of the armistice agreement (the "temporary" halt of hostilities most people associated with the end of the Korean War). We would spend three to four days rotating up onto guard posts (ours was "GP Dort") set up in the DMZ to watch for any movement of forces by the North into or closer to the DMZ. We lived on stale water and C rations. And of course, there was the NKA speaker system, each big as a house, blaring everything from rock and roll to Korean folk music, day and night, to harass us and provide cover for the infiltrators moving north and south through the zone. I experienced the tedium of long nights, fighting off fatigue, waiting in the dark for opportunities to kill the enemy, then the sudden terrifying moment when the night would split open with loud explosions and flashes of tracer rounds as sudden movement in the dark unleashed the firepower of our waiting force. I saw for the first time a dead NKA soldier, an infiltrator, killed in the heat of the fight—killed within inches of releasing a grenade meant to kill our forces. I felt the loss of my own comrades, ROK and US soldiers killed by ambush, blown up in their barracks at night as they slept, all sent home to a country totally unaware of their death and our small war in faraway northeast Asia. We won this low-intensity guerilla war, which had been started by North Korea. It officially started on November 2, 1966, when a unit of US soldiers and one KATUSA ("Korean Augmenting The United States Army") were ambushed by an NKA squad, killing all but one American, who was badly wounded. The wounded soldier was seventeen years old at the time. Private Reynolds, the only American who was able to fight back after the first assault, died where he fought. He was nineteen years old and had been in-country for only seventeen days. I found out recently that he was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for valor. When I first arrived in Korea, all of the units that operated in the DMZ were undermanned. This resulted in us patrolling night after night, after night shift to day patrol, and then immediately leaving for a four-day stint on GP Dort, with little or no downtime. We would patrol with as few as four or five men to a squad authorized for nine men. Often it was just myself as the squad leader, two KATUSAs, and one other US soldier. Our equipment was not the newest—by then, M-16s were in use in Vietnam, but ours were still the older, heavier M-14 rifles. Okay, that was a benefit, given the reports from the field in Vietnam that the M-16 had a tendency to jam. The M-14 was a solid weapon. If kept clean, it would work anytime you called on it—accuracy was up to the shooter. Our radios were not of the latest generation either, and this was a real problem. They often did not work at all, leaving us in the zone without a way to call for backup if we needed it. It was quite a boon when the first PRC-25 radios came into use. Then we had much better communication in the field, and they were lighter and more compact in size. Sometimes we would become frustrated by our inability to strike back after our soldiers were killed and wounded. Like soldiers everywhere, we would look for ways to retaliate. It was this attitude that led to my personal incursion into North Korea to attack the huge speaker system that blared propaganda at us every night, and hopefully to kill those protecting it. Our action had the objective of retaliation for the ambush of our soldiers on November 2, 1966. Before the DMZ War was over in 1969, over fifty of our soldiers were killed by hostile fire or other actions (half the casualties since 1953 to the present), and over a hundred more were wounded. Near the middle of the war, the Army finally caught up with reality and began paying hazardous-duty pay to those operating in the DMZ. After I left, Agent Orange was used to defoliate both sides of the fence. Soldiers who served in the DMZ from 1968 and later were often exposed to Agent Orange and have suffered the same medical problems as those exposed to it in Vietnam. It is just recently that veterans from Korea have been accepted to be assessed for compensation for the ill effects of Agent Orange. These are the soldiers I know about who were killed along the DMZ during my tour:
Hensley, Sgt. James: 23rd Rgt., 2nd ID, d. 11/02/66
I honor and remember them every day. When it came time to return to "the world," I rode out to the replacement center with the other two soldiers with whom I had arrived in-country. We boarded a plane full of soldiers going home. I finally ended my trip many hours later in the Los Angeles airport. At that moment, I was transformed from a stressed, well-tested infantry soldier back into a nineteen-year-old kid. I was too young to vote, buy beer, or get married, but I was a veteran of a foreign war. Mark Hartford, US Army, RA19875883 - 1/66-12/69 Korea DMZ Vet 1966-1967 Co. B, 1/23rd Inf. 2nd Infantry Division. California Coordinator, VVAW, 1971. Participated in Dewey Canyon III. Helped organize 30+ chapters in CA. VVAW Contact, Columbus, OH - present.
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