Tag: Military

  • Art Fettig: Operation Feint

    It was mid October 1952 and I was an officer’s records clerk in the 99th Field Artillery, a private first class on a Landing Ship Troops (LST)  headed towards North Korea. I didn’t even suspect that we were taking part in a big U.N.task force of warships, planes, landing craft and troops making a feint attack in North Korea far behind the enemy lines. I didn’t learn this much about it until just last Thursday, over 67 years later. I did know that something unusual was going on at a port in Hokkaido,Northern Japan when we boarded the ship at one end wearing our full field packs, walked on through the ship below deck, came out the other end, went through a warehouse and boarded the ship again. The rumor was that we were being spied on and we wanted the enemy to believe we had twice as many aboard. We were also told not to be concerned that we had no training for this mission and would certainly not be called upon to use our rifles or do anything but go for the ride.  When they told me that the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I’d been in combat in Korea late in 1951. I had experienced how things go wrong in war. 

    We were ordered to stay below deck and most of us consoled ourselves with a 24 hour penny ante black jack card game. After a long long time my curiosity got the best of me and I worked my way on deck.  I saw that we had two small landng craft there in the water waiting and a third was jammed up on the device that puts the landing boats into the water. There seemed to be land just a few football fields away. Then I was ordered back below deck.  

    There was a rumor that a single MIG had strafed our ship one time but it was a complete miss. 

    Years later, every now and then I used to make a quick effort to learn more about what went on that day, with little success.  Well recently, at a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner I attended I was led by an attendee to this site Trove: National Library of Australia. It was a front page article of The Sydney Morning Herald dated October 16, 1952. It said a lot. You won’t find much else at other sources. Weird, isn’t it?  So little information on such a large military operation?

    The plan was to draw reserve troops away from the front lines so attacks could be made on a few troublesome hills. That article says attacks were made and a couple of hills were taken but then lost again. The game of seesaw continued as it had on the hills I was earlier involved with when I was in the infantry. Ours, yours, ours, yours. The Korean war made no sense to me and still doesn’t.  

    I guess the reports on that mass attack were written in the wind and landed in Sydney, Australia. Just maybe they are still a secret here in the U.S. 

    Please don’t rely on me for being accurate about this. I have my memories of my time below deck and above and I am happy to report that I recall winning $10 in that Black Jack game. At a penny at a time that is a lot of money. 1

  • April 10, 1970 – F4 Jet Crash Claims Nine Lives

    As a member of a small group of broadcasters that served in Thailand with the American Forces Thailand Network (AFTN), we remember those who lost their lives on April 10, 1970, at Udorn RTAFB, Thailand, when a F-4 Jet crashed into the broadcast center.

    • TSgt Jack A. Hawley (37), Wakeman, OH
    • SSgt James T. Howard (27), Denver, CO
    • A1C Andrew C. McCartney (20), Lakewood, OH
    • SSgt Alfred N. Potter (27), Forest Grove, OR
    • Sgt John Charles Rose ( 25), Bloomfield, NJ
    • TSgt Frank D. Ryan, Jr. (41), Mercer Island, WA
    • SSgt Edward Wm. Strain (24), Myrtle Beach, SC
    • TSgt Roy Walker (40), Albuquerque, NM
    • A1C Thomas L. Waterman (25), Roanoke, VA

    The jet was an RF-4C Phantom which crashed while trying to land.  In addition to the nine that died, thirty other military personnel were injured.  The pilot and copilot bailed out.

    John C. Rose

    Roy Walker
    Roy Walker

    Thomas L. Waterman

    References:

  • Dog Company: A True Story of American Soldiers Abandoned by Their High Command by Lynn Vincent

    Dog Company
    Available from Amazon.com

    The Army does not want you to read this book. It does not want to advertise its detention system that coddles enemy fighters while putting American soldiers at risk. It does not want to reveal the new lawyered-up Pentagon war ethic that prosecutes U.S. soldiers and Marines while setting free spies who kill Americans.

    This very system ambushed Captain Roger Hill and his men. Hill, a West Point grad and decorated combat veteran, was a rising young officer who had always followed the letter of the military law. In 2007, Hill got his dream job: infantry commander in the storied 101st Airborne. His new unit, Dog Company, 1-506th, had just returned stateside from the hell of Ramadi. The men were brilliant in combat but unpolished at home, where paperwork and inspections filled their days.

    With tough love, Hill and his First Sergeant, an old-school former drill instructor named Tommy Scott, turned the company into the top performers in the battalion. Hill and Scott then led Dog Company into combat in Afghanistan, where a third of their men became battlefield casualties after just six months. Meanwhile, Hill found himself at war with his own battalion commander, a charismatic but difficult man who threatened to relieve Hill at every turn. After two of his men died on a routine patrol, Hill and a counterintelligence team busted a dozen enemy infiltrators on their base in the violent province of Wardak. Abandoned by his high command, Hill suddenly faced an excruciating choice: follow Army rules the way he always had, or damn the rules to his own destruction and protect the men he’d grown to love.

    About the Author:

    LYNN VINCENT is a New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist. She lives in San Diego, California. ROGER HILL is an advocate for military veterans and first responders, and is active in the fight against human trafficking. Roger lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works in the security industry as a systems engineer.