Edward L. Posey

by Last;Only All-Black Rangers US Army's First

  Shortly after that we were relieved from duty around the 7th Division Medical Evacuation. We moved to the town of Tanyang itself. We set up defensive positions on the mountains in and around Tanyang. We had a chance to get some hot food, some rest, and at the same time we were patrolling, just keeping an eye on things in the mountains.

  This incident happened while we were in Tanyang. We moved into those huts. Not being familiar with the way Koreans lived, we moved into those huts with all our equipment. We had lots of ammo, .45 and .30 caliber ammo, including hand grenades. The way you heat Korean houses, a fire is built on the outside in something like a small fireplace. The smoke from this fire goes under the house and comes out from a chimney on the other side of the house; the heating is done by heating the floor. Very little fire is needed to warm the house, but we put too much fire in the fireplace, and under the floor. Our ammo was in musette bags. The floor got so doggone hot the ammo was cooking off in those bags, which woke us up. We were lucky those hand grenades didn’t explode.

  We remained around there (Tanyang) getting some rest, patrolling, keeping an eye on things. After that, we moved to Chechon. This is where we were training replacements. This is where 7th Division put them off on us. We didn’t mind at all. We had a chance to pull some good men out of that group, they joined the 2d Ranger Company. I remember after we trained them for a few days, things got hot up on the front line. Some ROK soldiers broke and we were sent to plug a gap in the line up there.

  I’d like to mention that I had been hospitalized for having hepatitis. I was returning to the 2d Ranger Company. Traveling on the train Lieutenant Anthony and I happened to run into each other. Lieutenant Anthony was on his way to 2d Ranger Company. We were thinking the company was located at Chechon. Arriving at Chechon, we found out that the company had moved to Taegu. Lieutenant Anthony and I caught a train for Taegu, where we joined the company. When we reached Taegu, we went to the area where the company had been, but they had moved to a marshalling area, adjacent to the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team. The company had been assigned to the 187th ARCT for a combat parachute jump. When we arrived, we didn’t know where the parachute assault would be. But I knew that when the day came, we would have all the information about the drop.

  Lieutenant Anthony and I joined up with the Rangers in the marshalling area, located in an apple orchard, adjacent to K-2 Airfield, Taegu, Korea, to prepare for the parachute assault. We had a chance to get passes to Taegu, do some shopping at the Post Exchange, have a few drinks and some fun. We knew the day was coming soon when we would be returning to the front lines. The day did come for our briefing for the parachute drop. In the meantime, we had gotten a couple of replacements. Some of our old friends who were in the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the 3d Battalion, 505th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, had been transferred to Korea to join the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team for this operation. It was a relief to see the guys from the old days, go into combat along with the 2d Ranger Company, being assigned to the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team.

  When we were briefed for the airborne assault, I remember Weathersbee had made a sand table. We were briefed thoroughly on our mission. The initial drop was to be the town of Chechon. Anyway, we were briefed, we went to the airfield, packed our crew-served weapons, and made up a section that would handle 60mm mortars. I was placed in that section, because of my experience with mortars. Before joining the paratroopers, and during the time I was assigned to the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, I was in the 81mm mortar section. We packed our bundles, marked them with blue ribbon so that when we hit the ground, we knew how to find our bundles quickly.

  The next morning we were scheduled to head back to the front lines. We loaded up on those planes. The planes 2d Ranger Company were jumping were C-46’s. We called it the old ass kicker. It was always a good plane to jump from. The unit flying our company was a National Guard outfit. I clearly remember the crew chief on the plane I was in was black. We loaded up and took off. We headed north, flew out over the ocean, made a turn, and came inland over the city of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Then we headed for the drop zone.

  When we made our turn, we were given the red light. When you get the red light, paratroopers know you will be exiting the aircraft in approximately ten minutes. The next thing you will see will be the green light. When the green light comes on, it is time to un-ass, or get out of that aircraft. The stick I was in was the left stick. To determine the right stick from the left of the aircraft, you face the cockpit of the aircraft, the door on your right would be the right door, and the door on your left would be the left door. My stick was jumping the left door.

  The red light came on, we knew it was about ten minutes before exiting the aircraft. We went through the usual procedure before jumping: stand up, hook up, and check equipment. We were ready to go. All hooked up, we watched the red light. I remember Lieutenant Cliette was the jumpmaster of this particular stick. I cannot remember the number two man in the stick behind Lieutenant Cliette to help with our door bundles. When the green light came on, a bundle was crossed in the door. As you know, the 555th, the black paratroopers, were famous for exiting an aircraft on time. I mean, getting out of there, un-assing the aircraft. Well, this bundle got crossed up in the door. When the bundle got crossed, the right stick had completely cleared the aircraft and we had not even started jumping. That creates a real problem: you are either going to land on a hill occupied by the enemy, or you will land way down the field somewhere. What I did, I completely unhooked my static line from the anchor line cable, and was moving over to re-hook and jump from the right door. When I crossed over, the left door stick finally began to move. When the stick started moving, I was completely unhooked. So I moved toward the door, re-hooked, but didn’t have time to insert the safety pin in the static line fastener. I moved to the door and jumped out. Behind me was Adell Allen. He was the twelfth man in the stick. Anthony Andrade was behind Allen. I believe David Lesure was behind the third or fourth in the aircraft, in this portion of the stick.

  So I moved toward the door, not even hooked up, and exited the aircraft. I had a fairly good body position. If you have a bad body position, especially in the C-46, you will feel it when the parachute opens. I could have had a good or bad position when that chute popped open, but I felt good about it. I’m descending, and I’ve got a couple bullet holes in my chute. I’m thinking, “people are shooting at us because we were late getting out of the aircraft.”

  I landed in either an apple or peach orchard—some kind of fruit tree orchard. My chute got tangled in the small trees. I landed beside a small shack and heard a couple of shots. They were firing at us, so I crawled into the shack and was able to get out of my harness while in the shack. After removing my parachute, I had to go down field to get our mortars. Along the way I picked up the men who jumped behind me: Adell Allen, Anthony Andrade, David Lesure, and I cannot remember the others who were in the stick. We started looking for the bundles marked with the blue ribbon and couldn’t find them. We found two bundles with machine guns in them, though.

  We headed to the assembly area with the two machine guns and the ammo that was dropped with the guns. When we reached the assembly area, the company had dropped their rounds of ammo. Every man in the 2d Ranger Company parachuted into combat with 60mm mortar rounds in their packs. That was unusual. But if you load every man down with a single mortar round, it is a good way of getting ammo into the Drop Zone. When we reached the assembly area, we put the machine guns down and found our mortars. Second Company had taken our mortars off the DZ. At the assembly area we still had the machine guns. We left the machine guns and picked up our mortars. The 2d Ranger Company had dropped all those mortar rounds in the assembly area, so we had plenty of mortar ammo. We loaded up.

  I met Hargrove, I think he was platoon sergeant of third platoon. [Hargrove was a squad leader in 2d platoon.] They had knocked out a Russian 82mm mortar, dropped
an incendiary grenade in the tube to destroy it, and kept the sight, which he handed to me. Anyway, the 1st and 2d platoons of the 2d Ranger Company were fighting their way to the top of Hill 151. We (the weapons platoon) fell in behind our reserve platoon, which I think was the 3d platoon. When we reached the first ridge, the moving command post (CP), Captain Allen and Lieutenant Anthony were there behind 3d platoon.

  The 3d platoon crossed two rice paddies to get to the upgrade on Hill 151. Third platoon was hitting the rear of Hill 151, while the 1st and 2d platoons were fighting on top of Hill 151. Second Ranger Company was hitting the top and the rear of Hill 151 at the same time. This was good. The 3d platoon, I think it was the 3d platoon, where Van Dunk was killed out there.

  When we reached this ridge, along where the moving CP was located, Captain Allen said, “Get those mortars in action to support the 3d platoon going across those fields!” We mounted our 60mm mortars quickly. The range was about four hundred yards. It couldn’t have been more than four to five hundred yards. What I did, I had them strip all the powder off the mortar rounds, you know they carry six charges. I had them remove all the charges except one, and started firing. We were dropping our fire directly in front of the 3d platoon. It was pretty close to them. I am sure they thought when those rounds started coming in, that we didn’t know what we were doing, and thought we would drop them right on their heads. But we were watching from our position on the hill, and could see every round hit the ground. We fired a round from each mortar. We walked that fire in front of 3d platoon, step by step up that mountain.

  Actually, as I said before, the portion we were attacking was the rear of Hill 151. The 2d Ranger Company was fighting on the flank and rear of Hill 151 the same time. After we captured part of Hill 151, the mortars displaced forward to Hill 151. We went almost to the top of Hill 151. I saw Weathersbee with a bunch of prisoners. Prisoners were running all over trying to surrender. We were also getting a lot of sniper fire and whatnot. The 1st and 2d platoons pushed over Hill 151 and received a lot of rifle fire. We advanced forward to Hill 151 and supported the 3d platoon.

  It was then that artillery fire started falling around us. Whatever size weapon they were firing, it was very large. They fired a barrage of five or six rounds, and then it stopped. The enemy had seen this big cloud of dust in the vicinity of Seoul. That cloud of dust was the movement of armor: tanks breaking through, coming to our Drop Zone, linking up with the paratroopers. Those were our tanks that were breaking through the enemy lines, giving us some support and relief. The enemy shifted their fire from us, the 2d Ranger Company, to the tanks.

  We moved the mortars to the top of Hill 151 and dug in for the night. I had given up on the carbine long ago and started carrying an M-1 rifle. I was the only man in 2d Ranger Company who jumped with an engineer tool. I jumped into Munsan-ni with a D-handle shovel. The shovel was cumbersome, but I knew when we hit the ground that shovel would be needed to prepare our mortar positions.

  We remained on Hill 151 and received continuous artillery fire. We also were getting rifle fire. But Hill 151 fell to 2d Ranger Company in record time. The next day, the tanks had a perimeter formed around the DZ. The heavy drop came in on the day we parachuted in, dropping supplies from the air to the troops. The pack howitzers that were dropped to the 187th Airborne RCT were positioned adjacent to 2d Ranger Company; they really cut loose.

  The next day everything had been secured in that area, so we moved toward the DZ, where we boarded tanks and headed south. We were close to the Imjin River. We got to a point where we had to cross the river. Before crossing we approached some people who had been assigned to the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. They had been assigned to Mortar Battery, 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team. (The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was an all-black parachute unit.) I saw Charles Bagley, a good friend of mine. They were firing 4.2mm mortars. Second Company crossed the river and headed north. When we crossed the river the enemy started dropping artillery in that area, so we crossed under fire. On the other side was a railroad and a surface road. We headed north, where elements of the 187th were fighting just ahead of us. The reached a place called Tonguchon. (On my return to Korea, I was assigned to the 32d Infantry Regiment. This unit was part of the 7th Infantry Division, and its main area was Tonguchon.)

  When we arrived in Tonguchon the 187th ARCT was fighting on our right, attacking a mountain range there. The 4th Ranger Company (Airborne) was attacking a hill, and we were the only unit in position to give them supporting fire from our mortars. Captain Allen gave the order to support 4th Company with mortar fire. I remember 4th Ranger Company’s attack. On top of the high ground was a huge hole full of Chinese. We gave the Rangers support, and when they got to the top of the hill, it appeared as if every Chinese soldier in Korea threw grenades at them—and then ran as fast as they could.

  I would like to mention the 4th Ranger Company objective during the Munsan-ni operation: this hill was in front of the 7th Infantry Division Medical Clearing Company—the same one we defended in Tanyang pass.

  The 4th Ranger Company took that doggone hill, that mountain. I saw one Ranger going across that mountain by himself. Fourth Company took that hill. I want to mention the 64th Tank Battalion also. This was an all-black tank battalion. I remember the 64th from way back. It had been the 758th Heavy Tank Battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (they were billeted next to us at Bragg). They maneuvered against us at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. That whole area we were fighting in later became Camp Hovey, 7th Infantry Division, after the war. The main gate was at Tonguchon, where we fired our mortars.

  The 64th Tank Battalion came up and raked those mountains in that area with .50 caliber machine gun fire and knocked out gun positions with 90-mm gun fire. They raked and raked that hill. That evening, just before the sun went down, the tanks pulled back so they could get proper protection that night. When they withdrew, 2d Ranger Company threw a perimeter around the 64th Tank Battalion to keep the enemy from destroying the tanks.

  Hill 581

  We had been on Hill 581 once before. We had been up there, found some ammo and buried it on the hill. We didn’t know that one day we would return and use the ammo we had found on Hill 581.

  We had been patrolling this area, then they decided to give us a rest. They put up these showers, real showers, like we had never seen before in Korea. We had been on the line all this time, so this was our first real rest. When we pulled back, we had a lot of weapons in the supply truck that had to be cleaned. We started cleaning our weapons after we had showered and changed clothes. They had a pile of clothing on the ground, so you could pick out something decent to wear. The clothing we were wearing was torn, filthy and needed to be changed. We had been in the mountains so long we had literally shredded our clothes. It was a relief to get some clean clothing. The sun was out and I recall it was hot. On this particular day, we had put up a supply tent. Several Rangers were cleaning weapons. I remember Captain Allen came into the supply tent and spotted this Korean sitting down cleaning a weapon. He didn’t know this person was a Korean—I am sure he didn’t know. Anyway, this Korean was helping us clean weapons, which wasn’t too strange. Just about every outfit over there had Koreans working in mess halls, or somewhere else doing something useful.

  On this day the sun was bearing down and was really hot. What bugged Captain Allen was that person was sitting in supply tent on a really hot day cleaning weapons with a field jacket on and the hood over his head. The captain asked, “It’s hot. How in the world can you sit there, as hot as it is, wearing a field jacket?” He reached over and pulled the hood down, and all this black hair fell down. He was shocked to see a woman with us! Anyway, he pitched a bitch. We had a big laugh about it later, but the company commander didn’t think this was very funny and he kicked her out.

  We finished cleaning weapons, remained in the area for a few days, then it was time to go back into the hills. Fighting was going on everywhere. On our way back to Hill 581, we c
limbed this mountain and saw some Koreans in the valley below us. We fired on them, but they were out of range and we didn’t hit anything. We pushed toward Hill 581. Our pilots were bombing in the vicinity. We crossed this valley between us and Hill 581 and started up the hill. As soon as we reached the top, we were ordered to make contact with the enemy. We dropped our mortars, with security, and started down the forward slopes of Hill 581, leap-frogging platoons. After we had completed one leap, the 4th platoon went into position, then we ran into heavy rifle fire. We had met the enemy.

  I remember Sutton was with me during this time. He climbed this doggone tree to pull down some limbs to get a clear vision of the enemy situation and was wounded. I was about five yards from him. I had just moved forwarded. I remember yelling, “Let’s get these m______ f______s!” The next thing I remember, I was hit in the stomach, the right thigh, and in the right wrist. When I fell to the ground—it was just a matter of a minute or so—Doc Rabbit (William Thomas) came up. Rabbit said, “Damn Jack, you are hit pretty bad.” He gave me a couple shots of morphine. I think he did not believe I was going to make it and wanted me to die in comfort, or whatever. He cut my cartridge belt off me. I had two pouches of hand grenades and I was carrying an M-1 rifle. Rabbit cut all of that stuff I was carrying off me. Some medics came up and started walking me down the hill to the aid station, where they placed me in an ambulance and drove me to division evacuation. From there, I was moved to a MASH unit.

  I remember that Koreans and Chinese were being treated at the MASH unit when I was there. It seemed odd because they were the enemy, and I remember that thought stuck with me. They operated on me there and eventually moved me to another MASH, and from there to a hospital in Japan, where I remained for some time. They were getting me ready to return to 2d Ranger Company in Korea. We went before a board of medical officers to prove we were fit, and test-fired our weapons to show we could engage again in combat, and were ready to leave. Some sergeant told me and another soldier to hold back. I guess they determined we weren’t fit to return to the front. We turned in our equipment and were told, “You’re going home.”