[explosion sound effect] ♪ [with vocals] [gunfire effects] ♪ [with vocals] [gunfire effects] ♪ [with vocals] [gunfire effects] ♪ [with vocals] ♪ [with vocals] ♪ Charles: Mr.

Truman, our President, announced that he was going to start the draft again.

So, I assumed I would be drafted.

I enlisted June 28th, 1948 and I was 20 years old.

Charles: On June 25th 1950, the North Koreans started the invasion of South Korea.

I was not sure that I knew anything about Korea.

Korea was a totally foreign subject with me.

Didn't know it existed, even.

And, we got there in the first week of August, and the temperatures were getting up to 115 degrees during the day.

So, I was a little surprised by that with the ocean being so close.

And, the stench because they used human excrement for fertilizing, and they have for centuries.

The stench is everywhere, and then as vehicles roll by, they create dust.

And then, you inhale the dust along with the stench.

We landed in Pusan, the very tip of Korea, which was described as the Pusan perimeter.

The North Koreans had pushed everybody to within 35 miles of Pusan.

And at the time when we got there, we had a lot of children that were living on the street.

We had a lot of people living on the street, and we had many refugees there.

Everything is new to us.

We're going into war.

We were preoccupied with many different things, and I really didn't have a chance to notice that much.

But, everything was in turmoil.

And it's hard to distance yourself, especially with the kids.

Charles: We got there, and everything was in turmoil.

We didn't really know what was going on.

I knew that I was in a tank, and I was assigned to tank number 45, which is the last tank in the fourth platoon.

And I talked to the platoon leader, a second lieutenant, and I asked him 'what am I supposed to do?'

His reply was "don't worry about it.

"We'll give you on-the-job training".

And later on, the position of driver is what I did most.

Charles: There are five men in a tank.

Your tank commander is on the right side of the tank, up on top of the turret.

He has a seat where he can sit down with his head showing, or he can sit on the hatch lid.

And, across from him is the loader.

This is the fellow that pulls the shells out of the floor, and puts them into the breechblock of the cannon.

And then, the gunner looks through the sight reticle and pulls the trigger to fire the cannon.

He also has a 30-caliber machine gun, and when he aims the cannon, the machine gun is aimed to the same location.

Then below the gunner, you have the assistant driver which is also the bow gunner.

He has a 30-caliber machine gun sticking out the nose of the tank.

And on the left of the assistant driver, sits the driver.

The position of driver is what I did most.

And, you learn to love that tank.

They are beautiful, especially when they're yours!

(dry) If it's an enemy tank, it doesn't look so good!

We were facing the Russian T-34 tank, diesel engine.

It is built a lot like our tank.

Their workmanship is very rough, compared to ours.

And, they do build a good tank.

However our 'General Shermans', which is the M-4 tank with a 76-millimeter cannon, could knock them out without any trouble.

Charles: I joined the company, which is about 125 men.

And two of the guys that I did make friends with instantly, the second day of combat one of them was killed.

He was about, oh, 30 yards away from me.

And, I made a mental thought 'I will not get 'too close to anyone again'.

And, I tried not to because you never know how long you, or they, will be there.

And yet, the service is very different.

You form a lot of good friendships when you are out there fighting.

And, the fellows that you fight with- you want to run.

You want to get out of there, and you don't want to stay there.

Those bullets are bouncing all around you, and you don't really know what to do.

But even though your feet want to go, your feet are planted.

And, you keep doing whatever you're doing.

And if a buddy is hit, you will expose yourself to get that buddy over to where he's safe, if he is alive.

So you depend on each other out there, and you do get close.

But at the same time, it hurts when you lose a buddy.

When you lose any of the men, it hurts.

But especially when you lose a close friend.

Charles: The first time I had to fire at a person, or a man, we were in a river bed.

We were new.

We had not been committed.

And, the tanks were in a semi-circle.

Our chow truck, the truck that fixes our food, was in the center.

And, another fellow who I was with the entire time there was John McCallman.

He and I were walking back from breakfast air drying our mess kit.

Swinging it over our side when two shots rang out.

We both hit the ground.

We both were carrying 'car beams', and started looking for something to shoot at.

Yes, I was scared.

In fact, I was scared the whole time I was over there.

But we did start firing.

And after I pulled the trigger the first time, that I was very calm, relaxed, and had no problem.

I didn't have to think.

All I had to do was just aim and pull the trigger.

You will do things in certain conditions, you would not do otherwise.

You are mentally already adjusted for shooting.

That's what you were there for.

And it was either them, or you.

If you come in second place, you got a custom-fit body bag.

And, you are mentally adjusted to this.

When someone starts shooting at you, you shoot back.

And when you see the bodies, at first, it is a little bit shocking.

But almost immediately, you adapt to it.

And, it is war.

You're there to fight.

You're there to shoot.

You're there to kill, and you proceed to do what you have to do to stay alive and come back home.

Charles: 'Company C'- we had 22 tanks in a company.

And, one tank retriever, one half-track, kitchen truck and supply truck.

That's what we consist of.

And, I also was in the tank retriever.

The tank retriever is basically a tank.

It is the old M-4 'General Sherman' tank.

But the retriever, they take the cannon off.

So, you have only a 50-caliber and a 30-caliber machine gun, and they replace it with a wench.

The wench will hold 100 yards of one inch steel cable.

And, it is designed for retrieving.

But, it's still a tank body on it, with tracks.

And, it's very powerful.

It has an aircraft engine.

Nine cylinder aircraft engine in it.

And, we would swim out in the river with the cable, hook it on to the tank, pull them out of the river.

We would pull them up hills.

It was not too unusual for a tank to fall through a bridge.

Even though we were given strict orders 'do not use the bridge', some guys were in a hurry and they would go across the bridge.

They would fall through.

Whenever the tanks would run over mines, usually it would blow the tracks off.

We would have to replace four or five sections of track.

It was not too unusual for us to hook on to the tank and the tank is still fighting, but they can't move.

So, we pull them backwards.

We stayed very close to our tanks that were on line.

And the reason for this is if anything happened, we would hook onto them and pull them back.

And quite often, the other tanks will close in, forming an arc to give you cover.

So you can jump out, hook onto it, and pull it back.

If we are advancing, then we just leave it for 'ordinance' to take care of.

If we're retreating, we may have to destroy it.

And then, the crew will get out and jump in the retriever.

And then, we get them back to safety.

If we're not there, the crew will go out through the escape hatch which is under the assistant driver, and then they become infantry.

Our first mission was to make sure the men were safe.

Then, we tried to get the tank out.

And, sometimes we could; sometimes we couldn't.

Charles: I was in a retriever and we had a 50-caliber machine gun in the top of it.

And, there were always two of us operating that machine gun.

Usually the commander was firing it; I was assisting it.

And, a bullet came in from the back, and exploded the ammunition box.

I'm the only one that was hit with the explosion.

And, I had shrapnel on my left side and the left side of my head, and was bleeding profusely.

But, I grabbed another box of ammunition, raised up out of the floor and as the belt traveled up, he ripped out the old box, I dropped the new one in, he grabbed the belt, put it in the receiver.

I think we lost about four or five seconds from continual fire.

And, this is just the way you do!

You may not even know you're hit.

I did not feel pain.

And yet, mine was bad enough to where the medic thought I needed morphine.

So, there are quite a few close calls like that.

Just before I left, this one fellow, McCallman, and I were sitting on top of a turret with our feet hanging inside the machine gun ring.

I was taking pictures of the enemy running down the hill behind a mortar barrage, and they were about 50 yards away from us.

A bullet hit that ring, traveled around the ring twice, and then dropped to the floor of the retriever.

So, that's just a couple of the close calls.

When you're on line, I assume everything is a close call because the bullets bounce.

They dig up the dirt around you.

And, you don't have time to stop and worry.

You're busy.

You don't have time to think, most of the time.

You do what you have to do, and keep going.

♪ Jim: I joined at 15.

I was activated at 17.

When they said "we don't take anybody under "the age of 18.

Everybody put up your hands".

No one did.

I was NOT the youngest man in the unit, but I turned 18 just before going over.

My dad was frequently traveling, and I told my mom it's just like the Boy Scouts!

So, I don't know what magnitude, seriousness that they attached to it.

Probably not much.

They didn't come down to see me off.

Just 'okay.

See ya next week'!

[he chuckles] So, I got in Korea at Wonsan in November of 1950, and I had gone to the first Koreans after they moved us up towards Chosin.

We started receiving mortar fire, and it got progressively heavier.

And, I didn't know zip but you're so afraid of showing any emotion, particularly fear, with your friends.

You just don't want to look uncool.

And yeah, we got some incoming but usually in a mortar, the only thing that's going to get you is another mortar.

(chuckles) And, there's just no defense for that!

It comes out of the sky.

The full import of 'hey, this is serious business', is when you see your first dead Marine.

You can look at the enemy; it's immaterial, it's a movie.

When you see you first- the man in the same uniform you're wearing, that sinks in.

Jim: You start out as last ammo carrier.

Therefore, you do all the functioning, the work, that no one else wants to do!

(laughs) That was the low, you were the low man!

And, you carried the ammo (chuckles) which is not exactly comfortable!

So, you do that until something moves.

Meaning, people rotate out.

People get wounded, and openings occur up the chain.

The 'third gunner', he carried the base plate and he wore that on his back.

After that, you become the 'second gunner'.

And, the second gunner carries the tube- 45 pounds.

The second gunner is also the one that drops the shell in.

And the 'gunner' carries the bi-pod and he's the one who aims the gun.

So, you get into a squad and there's all these different characters.

And, you've seen the full spectrum in any movie.

It shows you the full spectrum of a 'loudmouth' to the fear, the guys who's afraid.

And, they're all characters, manifest there.

They're all there.

So without them, I wouldn't have been able to learn!

Cause we certainly didn't know- I certainly didn't know much going in.

And one of the regulars, Bill Stackman, now deceased, God bless him, a crusty guy but he saw fit to teach me how to gun, and I'm pretty much the youngest guy on the whole squad.

Teach me how to gun?

That means I'm no longer ammo carrier!

In fact, if I may, I was a gunner.

I learned how to gun, and that's a tight group.

Everybody depends upon everybody else.

So when you lost people, you do feel it.

But things are usually happening quickly enough that you don't dwell on it.

Life moves on.

You're going too fast to concern yourself.

But yes, you do- you naturally do feel it.

Jim: I guess the most prominent memory I have of Korea is cold!

It was cold, windy; flat miserable!

And the further north we got of the Chosin Reservoir, was colder and colder, and colder.

And, the winds came out of the north.

It started to dust snow when we got up north.

The deck was frozen.

You had an engineering feat in trying to dig a foxhole.

How do you dig a foxhole in frozen ground?

And, the little entrenching tools we had weren't gonna do it!

So, we had the 'platoon pick', a real pick.

So, when you came- when it came your turn, you went up, got the pick, dug your hole.

And, we lost a couple of new ammo carriers.

They didn't dig in.

They got hurt.

In any case, it's rough.

It's rough.

It's not something you're used to.

Jim: You visit a lot of these things in retrospect.

Remember you're talking to an individual who went over there, just turned 18, doesn't know which end is up.

'Yes, by George, that's a North Korean', and I thought I was doing well to be able to tell a North Korean from a Chinese.

Of course, hard to tell their age.

But, you look at them, particularly the way they're dressed and you say 'he's freezing, 'the same as I am'.

And they become human, not de-humanizing.

When you see them 'my god, he doesn't hate me.

And here, this bastard- this individual's been trying to kill me all this time (chuckles), and I've been trying to do him, and there's no animosity.

And, in some cases, I did get close to them.

You look at them and actually, to me, it was humanizing as opposed to- alienation.

Jim: We had- no opportunity to leave until mid-November of 1951.

This was almost a year after the Chosin Reservoir campaign.

And, we used to look around to see who was left that had more time than you.

And, those people got awful few.

Most were gone.

Well, my 'one year' was expiring, and that is what promulgated my departure.

And I knew, oh- maybe three or four days prior 'yeah.

You made it, Anderson.

You're in'.

And, uh- 'Whew!

Thank you'!

I grabbed my helmet, went down to the creek to clean up.

Can't leave here looking bad.

So I went down, got the razor and went down to the creek to get some water, freezing water, to shave.

And I'm on the path heading down, my foot's caught!

And I was 'what's that down there?'

It's a 'Bouncing Betty'.

I'm pulling against the trigger on a Bouncing Betty.

A Bouncing Betty is a grenade that's fixed on a spring, and it comes up to about shoulder height, and blows!

And, the reason I'm talking to you is whoever put it there, forgot to crimp it!

Cause I didn't spend much time looking at it.

I looked at it, fell flat on my face, thought 'now, why didn't that go off?'

They forgot to crimp the Cotter pin!

Or otherwise, the Cotter pin would've slipped right out, activating the Bouncing Betty!

I didn't shave.

Went home dirty.

Just left.

That's the end!

You know, the day before I leave!

(laughs) No justice!

♪ Samson: I only knew that there was a conflict.

I knew that Communism was not a good thing.

I, I knew that because my mother came from a Russian background and they spoke about it quite often in the family.

And, I knew that Communism was bad and it was- they were trying to overrun Korea.

That's all I knew about it.

Samson: I'd graduated high school and was rather aimless at that point, and my parents wanted me to go to college, stay at home.

I wanted to be on my own.

And so, I went into an Army Enlistment Office in Los Angeles, and enlisted in the Army.

And, we went directly from- directly from (pauses) California to- (heavy sigh) directly to Korea.

To Pusan, Korea.

The southern tip of Korea.

And, I assumed because the military trained me first of all as a combat photographer, that I would be a combat photographer.

And getting off the ship on the dock, they needed infantrymen!

They needed riflemen, desperately.

We were, I understood, in great trouble.

The Chinese had come across the border and we were losing a lot of troops, and that was my initial assignment.

Was put on a train and sent up north as a rifleman.

But anyway, I did not have an opportunity to engage the people until I was on the train going north, as they approached the trains when they were stopped to try to sell things to the G-I's that were hanging out the windows.

At that point in time, I did not think of the Korean people.

I just felt that I was in the military.

I was in the Army.

This was my assignment.

I would did it as best I thought I could.

And no, I did not think of the Korean people at that point in time.

The trains themselves were- they were not heated.

They were very, very, very, very cold!

This was winter time in Korea.

Korea, yep.

It is just something- I'd never experienced anything like that.

I get cold thinking about it!

But anyway, I was to be attached to the 31st Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division, as a rifleman at that point.

I still felt impervious to any enemy action.

I was aware that it could happen but I didn't think it would get to me, personally.

I was sure there's going to be shooting.

Sure, there's- you know, I was trained around guns and shooting, and all of that.

Uh, no- I was invincible.

However , my very first assignment gave me some pause.

I was led through the snow to this foxhole that I guess may have been six feet across, to watch out for infiltrators- Chinese or North Korean infiltrators.

In any event, my shift turned into something god-awful.

I still hadn't been relieved and finally somebody walked up and told me he was my relief.

And I tried to, I pulled myself up out of the foxhole and I tried to stand, and I couldn't stand.

And I told the guy, I said "I can't walk!

"My feet are frozen, I guess".

And, he told me where the medic tent was and what direction.

And I crawled in that direction, and I got to the medic tent, explained to them.

And fortunately , they thawed me out!

I didn't need any- any real recuperation.

But if you were an infantryman out in the weather, it was most unpleasant.

Ugh!

(chuckles) I'm cold thinking about it!

Yeah!

Samson: I was assigned to a light machine gun, 30-caliber machine gun which was mounted in a bunker between our units which were behind my bunker, and the enemy line which was in front of my bunker.

And, I was to check units going out on patrol past my bunker, and check them back in and make sure the enemy didn't attack us.

And [ahem] when I was assigned this light machine gun, I was used to that.

I'd fired one of those.

But, I was not familiar with everything else that was going on in this bunker!

And, I asked the guy that was there with me.

I said 'what, why are all of these wires?'

All of these- they're called 'commo wires', communication wires.

We didn't have wireless communications much in those years.

They were all wired telephones.

And, they use these wires to go out beyond our bunker to where there was barbed wire.

And further on, beyond that, were buried 30-caliber machine gun ammunition boxes.

Incendiary grenade was put inside.

The ammunition box was filled with napalm.

It was sealed and buried, and the wire attached to the firing pins.

Now, there were about perhaps 8 or 10 of these coming into the bunker.

And, the idea was that when the enemy approached if we didn't see them at night, we might hear them because on the barbed wire were tin cans that had little rocks in them.

And, they would rattle the rocks which would alert us to the fact that the enemy was there.

We would then pull the 'commo wire', the communications wire, triggering the incendiary grenades which would then blow up the napalm.

And, light up the area as well as the enemy, hopefully, and give us a chance to use a machine gun effectively.

When I pulled a trigger for the first time, it was like I was at the target range.

There was my target.

It was too far away to see any expression.

Uh, it was an 'enemy'.

It was a 'target'.

It was a non-entity.

And, I don't recall feeling any emotional, real response.

At the same time, there were telephones behind which [chuckles] we were supposed to grab and notify everybody up above us that we were being attacked, if they didn't already know it!

In any event, one of these- one of those telephones rang and I was told I was going to be replaced, and to report to headquarters.

I reported to headquarters, and they told me I was being assigned to a combat photography unit, finally.

But, I was there and I earned my combat infantry badge while being a rifleman and machine gunner.

Samson: When I was in high school, I was 'high school photographer', and worked part time for a camera store, a local camera store.

And, built a dark room in my basement, and etcetera, etcetera.

Learned the art of photography, and that's one of the jobs I ended up with in the military.

And, we carried Colt pistols, semi-automatic pistols, 45-caliber.

That was our armament.

I, in fact, because we traveled quite often in jeeps, and if you carried the 45 in your holster, it was very difficult to get to.

Especially while wearing your winter parkas, so I had a shoulder holster that I used.

That was my armament.

We had press cameras, speed graphics, press type cameras and being a photographer, you take pictures of everything and anything!

That's what you're there for.

Samson: And, as far as being up on line, sometimes- sometimes to get the picture, you have to be in front of our troops as they were advancing to get the picture of them advancing!

There was no other way to do that.

So, you put your back to the enemy, and you put your front to your fellow G-I's and you got 'the picture'!

I was sent on a tank shoot.

The tank I was in got stuck in the midst of this tank shoot.

So, our machine gunner up on top is trying to keep the enemy at bay, fellow tankers are trying to pull up their tanks to hook up these huge cables to help pull us out.

And so, I took pictures of this entire sequence and ultimately when it got a little too heavy when they started putting mortar rounds in on us, I got in underneath our tank that was stuck, and on an angle!

I got underneath that tank for protection .

And, was shooting pictures from inside, underneath the tank treads which you can see in one or two of the pictures, there.

But anyway, in my unit- in combat in my unit was this man, Carl Marks.

And, as I understood it, he was running along a trench during one of the battles.

And, coming at him around a bend I guess, a Chinese soldier or North Korean.

Carl picks up the camera.

Chinese soldier throws a hand grenade at him.

Blows him out of the trench, destroys the camera.

Carl got a Purple Heart.

Carl survived.

I took pictures of him getting his medal.

'Pictures'- that's what we're there for.

That's what you're there for.

♪ Samson: There was one- one that made me very angry.

Made me really upset.

The Army rotated units from the front lines [ahem] to a slightly rearward position, perhaps a half a mile back of the front lines for relief.

For just to get the tension off and continue with a little bit of training, a little bit of relief, a little bit of shaving, a little bit of eating something other than C-rations.

And anyway, this unit rotated back from the front lines.

The guy had been up on the front lines, and he was- (heavy sigh) bayonet practicing.

Had a bayonet on the end of his M-1 Grand.

He was bayonet practicing maneuvers with a 'ROK' soldier who also had an M-1 with a bayonet.

And while they're maneuvering and attempting to out-maneuver each other in this bayonet practice attack, the Korean soldier, for whatever reason, didn't know I guess that he had a round in his rifle, and shot the G-I.

And, killed him.

And, uh- just the waste that was.

Had he been killed by a North Korean or a Chinese soldier, I wouldn't have felt- I never did feel anything about those that got killed in action like that.

But, this was such a waste.

Such a- I, I- (gasps) (exhales shakily) Samson: I had to shoot the- take pictures of the entry wound of course, and the exit wound.

And, I shot many pictures but this was such a waste.

Such a shame.

Anyway, that's- that was the only one that ever made me really angry.

(heavy sigh) Samson: Although I've read about the entire battles, I was only privy to a very, very small portion of it.

And, that was strictly voluntary.

I was photo section chief at the time, and went out to shoot this great last battle of the Korean War.

The Chinese were trying to get as much land as they could before the armistice was signed.

We were trying to hold as best we could.

And this was a terrible, terrible battle.

And, the only way we could out there because it was isolated and under attack constantly, the only vehicles that weren't already out there that were allowed to get out there, were stretcher-bearing jeeps.

These were regular jeeps that were rigged with two stretchers.

One running from the passenger side front to the rear, and one starting at the head of the driver.

At the top of his seat back going to the rear, they were fastened in, somehow.

And so, Carl and I lie on these stretchers.

The driver's job was to get the jeep there to get the wounded back to a MASH unit.

And so, on the way out to Pork Chop, we rode out on the empty stretchers.

But, my helmet kept falling off my head and hitting the driver (chuckles) in the head which annoyed the hell out of him because it sounded like incoming rounds to him!

But, we got out there and (breathes deeply)- and took a series of pictures of as much as we could from where we were.

Prisoners, G-I's, wounded, both Chinese and Americans.

And, we returned as I remember, with a jeep pulling a trailer full of prisoners.

That was the only returning jeeps that were not ambulance-related or not stretcher-bearing.

The wounded, whether they were enemy or ours, were being treated right on the spot.

Just, just behind Pork Chop- just at the base of Pork Chop.

In very emergency situations, they were being bandaged there.

They were being treated there.

And, in one of these cases, just for P-I-O, 'for public information', I thought it would be a good thing to show a G-I handing one of the wounded Koreans who had just been bandaged up, a cigarette from a pack that he- that the G-I was holding.

He did that.

I took the picture.

The Korean got the cigarette, and smoked it.

And, P-I-O was happy.

Everybody was happy with that shot at the time.

They were no more to me than a part of the job.

I, I don't remember- I really don't remember having any- any feelings.

I needed to be there to do a job!

You take the pictures, you take the pictures.

You shoot the job.

If you- you just do it!

(sighs) Samson: When I was flying- I flew some aerial jobs, some aerial assignments and they were done from very low level, in light aircraft the Army designated as L-19's.

But, we'd fly over the treetops just at treetop level where there were trees, into the North Korean positions.

And by doing so, we could get there over their positions before they even knew we were there!

Although, we were flying pretty slow I guess.

I don't think the things went over a hundred miles an hour.

They might have, but it didn't seem like it.

But they couldn't see or hear us coming because we'd come in so low.

We didn't have any armament.

And, these were for me to take pictures of their position so that our commanders could make their judgment calls.

But after I would shoot the pictures, I'd get the job done, and then I would drop hand grenades out the window!

That was (laughs)- that was my way of attempting to 'fight the battle', as we escaped and flew back!

Anyway, that's- my feelings were still not- I didn't have any feelings except they were the enemy, they were the targets.

Get rid of the targets, and- do the job.

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