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Posted on 10/16/2005 10:47:48 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Combat Engineers are builders by trade, but in Korea they also served as infantrymen. Three of them earned the Medal of Honor posthumously - Korean War In Korea, one side or the other seemed always in forceful advance--or hasty retreat. Roads, bridges and other infrastructure that one day served an attacking U.S. Army might the next day merit destruction to slow a pursuing enemy. Building, demolition and rebuilding became daily routine, and invariably these tasks fell to the Army's combat engineers.  But these men were much more than contractors in uniform. Never far from their bulldozers and blasting caps were the rifles and grenades that might at any moment turn them from engineers into infantrymen. Over and over, combat conditions led engineers to fight bravely, hit the enemy hard and pay the ultimate price. No fewer than three engineers received the Medal of Honor for battlefield heroism. Engineers in Korea had two main tasks--get American troops and materiel to where they were needed and frustrate similar enemy movements whenever possible. Combat engineers built roads through rice paddies and over mountain passes, often under extreme weather conditions and enemy fire.  "One road we built over a mountain took so much dynamite that we called it Demolition Drive," recalls Dan Teoro of the 2nd Engineers. They also constructed scores of bridges over the largest rivers in Korea--including five separate spannings of the Han and a 2,400-foot railroad-ready crossing of the Taedong.  More than once, engineers built roads and bridges to facilitate an American advance only to destroy those same structures later during a withdrawal. "It didn't always seem to make much sense, but that's what the Army needed" says Ray Miller of the 62nd Engineers. In their "spare" time, the engineers built airstrips and training facilities, assisted with the landing at Inchon, created sewage and drainage systems, rehabilitated war-torn railroads and buildings, and set up water towers and POW camps. One engineering unit established a telephone exchange. Another built a 500-bed, 62-building hospital campus. Yet another constructed a Korean "Boys Town" for war orphans. And for Christmas 1953, engineers even built a nativity scene. Ready to Fight But these men were trained for combat as well as construction. "We were always ready to fight" says Teoro. "When a big bunch of Chinese would come in, the infantry needed all the help they could get."  In July 1950, the 2nd Engineers helped defend Yongsan, not far from Pusan. In August, the 14th Engineers fought as infantry on the Naktong River line. When the push north came in September, the 3rd Engineers were in the thick of the fighting. And so it went throughout the war--engineers building one moment and fighting the next. In September 1950, Pfc. Melvin Brown (8th Engineers) showed just how good an engineer could be at fighting. Under attack by North Korean troops at Kasan, Brown found himself atop a 50-foot wall that protected the American position. With an automatic rifle, he raked the attackers with deadly accuracy. When his ammunition ran out, he lobbed grenades into the advancing enemy at the base of the wall, and when his own grenades were gone, other GIs began tossing him theirs. With the grenade supply exhausted and the attackers still trying to come over the wall, Brown held his position, smashing each enemy in turn with a shovel as the attacker climbed to the top of the wall. Eventually, however, a shovel was no match for bullets, and Brown was killed. Sometimes engineers served as the final rear guard, holding a road or bridge open in the face of advancing enemy while other GIs and artillery withdrew. In July 1950, the 3rd Engineers were the last U.S. soldiers to cross the Kum River during the brief Allied defense of that line. And in November, the 2nd Engineers held off attacking Chinese troops while elements of the U.S. 8th Army withdrew from the Pyongyang region of North Korea. Once the last American artillery units had passed safely southward, the engineers pulled out, too, but with tremendous casualties. When the battalion eventually regrouped, only 266 of its original 977 men remained. Fighting Withdrawal During another American withdrawal--from Taejon in July 1950--Sgt. George Libby (3rd Engineers) became the sole uninjured survivor of an enemy attack on a troop truck. Hailing a passing artillery tractor, Libby helped several wounded aboard. Then, as this makeshift ambulance lumbered down the road--stopping repeatedly to load more wounded--he positioned himself between the driver and the intense enemy fire. Though wounded almost immediately, Libby continued to blaze away at the enemy as the vehicle broke through hostile roadblocks. When multiple wounds made it impossible for him to fire any longer, he used his body to shield the driver. Eventually, the tractor and its precious cargo broke free of the enemy, but Libby later died from his wounds. Cpl. Dan Schoonover was another hero engineer. In July 1953, Schoonover (13th Engineers) was in charge of a demolition squad working with an infantry company to dislodge the enemy from Pork Chop Hill. When hostile fire prevented his men from performing their engineering job, Schoonover led them, as a rifle squad, up the steep hill. For the rest of that day and into the next, he made victory his personal goal, killing an untallied number of enemy with rifle, pistol, grenades and machine gun. Even when the infantry company was relieved, Schoonover remained on the hill to fight. He was eventually killed while mowing down attacking troops with an automatic rifle. Brown, Libby and Schoonover all received the Medal of Honor--posthumously--for their bravery. In all, engineering units in Korea suffered 2,706 battle casualties, including 850 battlefield deaths.  But even when the war ended, the engineers' work did not. In August 1954, the 84th Engineers sculpted two terraces on a hillside just north of the Imjin River, and in two weeks created a miniature city there. With great solemnity, the bodies of American war dead were brought to this lonely place and afforded the respect and dignity they deserved.  The Navy had its own version of combat engineers--the Seabees. Created during World War II, the Seabees became a potent force in Korea, too, as their strength grew from 3,300 to 14,000 men during the war. Although officially called "amphibious construction battalions," the Seabees operated wherever they were needed and quickly became known for their daring, can-do approach to solving problems.  Seabees saw their first Korean action in September 1950 at Inchon, where they succeeded in building a flexible, floating causeway from ship to shore--despite heavy enemy fire, swift currents and 30-foot tides. Then, with American troops and materiel bottlenecked at the port, a handful of Seabees sneaked through enemy lines. They commandeered a pair of locomotives abandoned by the North Koreans and triumphantly braved enemy fire to deliver the engines to the Army for moving men and supplies inland.  Another Seabee specialty was airfield construction and repair. In 1952, waves of Navy planes daily attacked targets inland from the North Korean port of Wonsan. Many of the aircraft took hits, often forcing the pilots to choose between ditching at sea or landing in enemy territory.  In 16 days, the Seabees built an emergency airstrip on Yo Do Island in Wonsan Harbor, under the very nose--and pounding fire--of the enemy. Within hours after the 2,400-foot runway was complete, seven U.S. planes had made emergency landings.      |
Excellent read and another topic that could only be learned in the Foxhole.
God bless . . .
If you get a chance, read "Those Damned Engineers". HArd book to find.
As long as there have been armies, engineers have provided critical support with both construction and demolition.
Beside the Dead Sea in Israel, one can still climb to the mountain redoubt of Masada, where Jewish Zealots made their last stand against Rome in AD 73, and when their fortress was at last breached, chose death over surrender. The fortress still stands as an Israeli monument to the spirit of its defenders.
Alongside the mountain stands another monument in the form of an earthen ramp built by engineers of Roman Legio X--with the help of thousands of laboring prisoners--to allow siege equipment and troops to reach the heights and breach the walls. From the Romans' perspective, the suicide pact at Masada was of secondary importance to their demonstrating to all within the empire that nobody who challenged Rome would escape reprisal. On a more universal military note, the ramp and the remains of the Roman camps beside Masada are among the oldest monuments to a branch of service that has often made the difference between victory and defeat--the engineers.
This issue of Military History includes two articles that deal with engineers. The "Weaponry" department gives a thumbnail history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has left behind a few lasting legacies of its own, including the Alcan Highway and the Panama Canal. The interview focuses on their U.S. Navy cousins, the construction battalions--which my father and a good many other Seabee veterans will undoubtedly greet with cries of "It's about time!"
When Paul Guttman enlisted in the Navy in 1942, the recruiter spoke glowingly of a newly formed elite unit called the Seabees. "That sounds great," Dad said. "What do they do?"
The recruiter hadn't the foggiest idea. "But they're the Seabees," he insisted, as if the very name should speak for them. Hardly the first or last recruit to succumb to a good song and dance, Dad signed up. During the next two years, he saw the Seabees perform feats throughout the Pacific that would ensure that in the future, their very name would speak for them.
"At Camp Bradford, the amphibious Marine base at Little Creek, Va., I took my training," Dad recalled, "and I was in an eight-man tent." There were also Marines at the base, mostly teenagers, their heads shaved nearly bald, and they referred to Guttman--then 22 years old--as the "Old Man." Most of the Seabees, in contrast, were men of the world, at least five years Dad's senior. "Some were in their 50s or even 60s," he recalled, "and these guys all called me 'Kid.'"
Trained as a camouflage specialist, Dad entered combat with the 59th Construction Battalion, but by early 1944 he had taken on a new task as a combat photographer. Whenever he was assigned to an island, however, Dad sought out the Seabees. "If I wanted a good night's sleep or a good meal or a shower or some booze, they were the guys to hook up with. They were the greatest dog-robbers in the world. They'd rig a windmill to work a pump to provide hot and cold running water. They'd steal inner tubes from trucks, cut them into strips and stretch them across a framework to make a pretty good mattress. There was always someone from West Virginia who knew how to build a still--practically anything that fermented would go into it."
Beside those prosaic accomplishments, the Seabees left behind monuments throughout the Pacific in the form of bases, installations and airfields, including the mammoth Boeing B-29 air base on Tinian. They could also fight when they had to--and their underwater demolition teams, which saved many a Marine landing from slaughter by eliminating countless beach obstacles, later evolved into the sea-air-land or "Seal" teams of today.
As for the Seabees' U.S. Army engineer colleagues' ability to be destructive as well as creative, arguably the best testimonial came during the Battle of the Bulge on December 18, 1944, when German SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper's armored spearhead closed on Trois-Ponts, only to see its bridges--and his hopes of driving on to Liège and Antwerp--blow up in his face one by one. Peiper was heard to mutter, "Those damned engineers!" The 291st Combat Engineer Battalion, to be exact.
Add their names, and many more, to the men who built the castles and forts, and the sappers who devised ways to penetrate them. From the Persians who laid a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont for King Xerxes, to the Viet Cong who dug their underground tunnel complex right under the U.S. base at Cu Chi; from Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban to Thaddeusz Kosciuszko to Captain Robert E. Lee (during the Mexican War in 1847), engineers have played a role in warfare that is too often taken for granted by other fighting men, who might often have quipped, like wartime cartoonist Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe: "Yer lucky--yer learnin' a trade."
IIRC, The hull of one of the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor was used to build a dock.
:-)
Thank you Don W. You are very sweet and kind.
Well you don't have to get snippy about it! LOL. You poor thing. I wake up like this lots of mornings. Grrrr.
Good morning Iris. Trying to get any job done while trying to stay alive in a war zone has got to be tough.
Good morning EGC.
Thanks alfa6. I've got to head out of here too. I'll check back in when I get to work.
We took our dog out to the lake yesterday. He had a great time. He really loves the water.
We've had to take him off of the bones last week. He'd been having problems digesting some food. Vets recmommend not giving dogs bones.
Weather's been nice here. Storms in the forecast for later this week.
This issue of Military History includes two articles that deal with engineers. The "Weaponry" department gives a thumbnail history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The latest issue?
In some book somewhere in my dusty collection of tomes, there is a pic from the Korean War where either the Seabees or Army Corps of Engineers used a 'sunk previously' freighter as a harbor expedient jetty to build on.
Now I just have to find the book!
Also has pics of pilots whose helmets barely stopped rifle rounds (Mustang pilots in Korea early on, double layer K-Pot style helmet) and one guy stuck a cleaning rod straight through the holes.
Going through a photo album, I discovered he had been in Korea during that war. His uniform colar had LT bars and one of these:
After that Msdrby pulled a display case out of the closet which had a bunch of pins, devices etc. all surrounding one of these:
I'm sensing some interesting family history here. ;-)
hi miss Feather
Bittygirl has been up to about 100.5. She has some kind of cold or virus. ;-(
Good morning Gail. How's the dating going?
Oh shoot, so sorry!!
HUGS to Bittygirl.
Good morning tex. You're welcome.
Oops I sent too fast.
Yesterday BG fell asleep during breakfast. She was eating freedom toast with syrup. When I woke her up, her cheek and hair was stuck to the plate. She was less than happy.
Thank you Mayor.
Ewwwwwwwwww, poor tiker. She has my sympathy.
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