Memoir of a Cold War Soldier

Richard E. Mack

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781612772585
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Fifty years after America's involvement in the Korean War began, Richard E. Mack's memories of his time spent on the front lines are still strong and clear. In Memoir of a Cold War Soldier, he recalls his service in front-line combat infantry units in Korea and Vietnam as rifle platoon leader, adviser, and battalion commander. His accounts, perceptions, and observations of the military culture are incisive and candid.

He discusses the tasks and challenges army platoon leaders faced in Korea, the problems and concerns battalion commanders confronted in Vietnam, and the uncertainty facing all soldiers during the Cold War.

This book will be of special interest to those who served in Korea and Vietnam, but anyone with an interest in military culture and history will find Memoir of a Cold War Soldier a valuable source.

1	Reflections on Early Experiences

It is June 1930, the day before classes ended for the summer at Margaret Park elementary school in Akron, Ohio; my mother, Elizabeth Giblin Mack, arrived at Mrs. Smith’s first-grade classroom with my grandfather, Albert Eugene Mack, to attend the class skit, “A Day at the Circus.” My grandfather lived with us in a bungalow that my father, Harold A. Mack, was buying on time. It was common to have grandparents living with their children during the Depression. My sister, Gertrude Helen, married Tom Wheeler in 1949; they later moved to San Diego, California. I had no other brothers or sisters. My father worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company as a production supervisor. He had an eighth-grade education; my mother, however, had attended Cornell for two years.

But now back to the circus. I remember telling my mother how nice it was that they had selected me to play the role of the elephant. I believe my mother and grandfather were anxiously looking forward to see me acting in my first play. I remember that following the skit I was asked, “Which part of the elephant did you play, Dick?”

When I responded that I had been the back legs and the tail, I remember, my grandfather said that I had done a fine job and that next year maybe they would let me be the head and trunk. My grandfather reminded me that it was at that end the elephant had his large memory. My second-grade teacher didn’t have a circus play, but I don’t believe being relegated to the hindquarters of an elephant at that early age contributed to any developmental regression.

On the other hand, I cannot remember anyone accusing me of being a bright child. I can recall, though, hearing people say in so many words that I was persistent, to the point that I would pester people to get answers to my questions or would find my own solutions. I am sure that on occasion I was referred to simply as a “pain in the ass.”

During my formative years, I was impressed with the fact that a penny was something of value—a symptom of the Depression. Nowadays, people drop their pennies in the bowl at the cash register—a symptom of affluence. My normal routine was distributed between Margaret Park School, Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, the YMCA, Boy Scouts, and the “Fulton Street Gang,” all tempered by the strict guidance of my result-oriented parents.

Of those who made great impressions on me, Mrs. Cora L. Covey, the principal of Margaret Park School, stands tall. She had a firm yet understanding manner. A disciplinarian, she had the knack of achieving good deportment with the least amount of effort and pain. An example that strikes me as characteristic of her influence was the three-foot piece of garden hose we “learned” she kept in her office. Students truly tried to avoid a trip to her inner sanctum. There were tales galore describing the hose in detail and how she wielded it on the bottoms of the incorrigible. However, I never met anyone who had actually experienced Mrs. Covey’s hose or had ever seen it. Her ploy would conjure up thoughts of child abuse by not a few parents today.

The influence of Saint Peter’s certainly left an impression on me. The weekly catechism conducted between masses gave me a foundation in the world of right and wrong. This foundation, coupled with what I learned at my mother’s knee, provided me a compass for maintaining moral direction over a lifetime. It also left me with a belief that little can be done to instill the oft-repeated military code of Duty, Honor, and Country, in the absence of the earlier moral direction.

I always felt that I was especially fortunate to have had friends among the Lithuanian families at Saint Peter’s. It forever amazed me how industrious and well ordered these families were. The fact that few of my Lithuanian friends’ mothers could speak English, forcing the children to learn both English and Lithuanian, impressed me. I remember my mother’s saying that to be bilingual as a child was a gift from God; my mother herself had studied German and could speak the language fluently. She often said that it was a shame that the study of foreign languages in our high schools seldom produced the ability to speak them. During and after World War II, the armed forces and the State Department had to provide language training in order to meet operational needs.

My other friends lived on Fulton Street, and although they were known as the Fulton Street Gang, they were not of a violent nature. Each year the sixth through eighth-grade boys in the gang met on the Manchester Road side of Summit Lake for their annual swim across the lake, most without suits or shorts. Naturally, our parents didn’t know about the swim. At the time the lake was befouled by the drainage from the local Goodrich and Firestone plants, and we were lucky never to come down with an illness, let alone drown.

I believe my first struggle with maturity came when I was a seventh-grader: my father told me that I had better knuckle down and get better grades if I wanted ever to get ahead in the world. He had never attended high school but had worked as a tire builder and a supervisor at Goodyear, and later as an insurance salesman for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Strikes in the 1930s, often violent, would require him and other supervisors and foremen to remain in the factory to continue tire production. I believe he had deep sympathy for the workers, who during strikes would surround the plant, preventing all entry and departure. At the same time, many of his friends were unemployed or were engaged in Works Progress Administration projects, earning a subsistence living. I believe that the empathy I had for soldiers was ingrained in me by my father.

In any case, I can remember the evening when my father told me, as I was reading the sports page in the Akron Beacon Journal, that I wouldn’t “start growing up” until I began reading the front page and the business section. From then on at the dinner table, I had a daily quiz on the important news of the day, as well as the business news. When the topic of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini came up in dinner-table conversation, which was most of the time, my parents expected me to enter into the discussion.

In 1939, when I was fourteen and a sophomore, we moved, and I enrolled in Buchtel High School, in a more affluent section of Akron. My mother believed that the change in schools would prompt me to set higher goals. She was probably right; she knew the value of education. There were three teachers at Buchtel High who provided me with lasting motivation: Mr. MacDonald, my geometry teacher; Mrs. Ruth, my German teacher; and Mrs. (Dr.) Reidinger, my English literature teacher.

I had a dreadful time in geometry during the first grading period in 1939. Mr. MacDonald rightfully gave me an F, which was not well received at home. During the next period I studied my rear end off and on the final examination received an A. Mr. MacDonald wrote on the examination paper, “Dick, I knew you could do it; you have intestinal fortitude.” When I showed the examination to my mother, I asked her what intestinal fortitude meant. She responded that was what you need to survive when everything and everybody seems to be against you; then she told me it was another way of saying, “You have guts.” That episode I never forgot.

I was in no way enamored with English literature. To Dr. Reidinger, English literature and her students were her world; she was a well spoken woman with uncommon common sense. I knew she had pinpointed me as not having great interest in Beowulf, “Evangeline,” and the readings we were assigned nightly. She would require us to write a short synopsis of our nightly readings, no longer than eight short sentences.

About two weeks into the course, I composed a poem as the synopsis of my reading assignment. When she returned my homework, she had appended a note saying that this would be a boring world if there weren’t people who responded to it in an unorthodox manner. I had done that by expressing myself in poetry, and for that received an A. I learned something about what the “boss” wanted and continued with the poetry synopses throughout the year.

Mrs. Ruth had a map of Europe and Africa in her classroom, and each day for about five minutes she gave us a presentation in German (and then in translation) of what was happening in Europe and Africa. Her motive, as far as I knew, was to connect the German we were studying with world events. As a soldier in Europe a few years later, I appreciated the insight I had gained from her in the classroom.

My mother was a lover of classical music and the classics in general. As a result my sister and I were more familiar with Sir Lancelot, Guenevier, and King Arthur and the Round Table than with Red Riding Hood, Little Miss Muffet, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Perhaps I saw something of my mother in Dr. Reidinger.

Akron high schools were organized into morning and afternoon sessions. Freshmen and sophomores went to school in the afternoon, juniors and seniors in the morning. Each session was four and a half hours, as I recall.

By the time I was a junior in high school, I was working at a drive-in steak station on Copley Road, called the Farmerette. My hours daily were from 6 P.M. to midnight, Saturdays from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. I earned twenty-five cents an hour. The owner spent his evenings at a bar across the street, so I had early experience of managing a small enterprise.

My job fit in well with my school schedule, as I could study during the afternoon. Being on the high school cross-country team, I could also attend the practice sessions in the afternoons, and also the meets, which were always early on Saturday mornings. I was encouraged by my “save and have” parents to open a savings account and thus learned another lesson: being prepared for the “rainy day” was an important aspect of my father’s job as a life insurance salesman.

By the time I had graduated from high school in 1942, there was no question in the minds of most American males that they had an obligation to serve in the armed forces. That is not to say that everyone was pleased to receive a “greetings” from the selective service board. Patriotism comes forward at an early age, enhanced by community, church, school, and even politics, and should be continued in tune with the times in succeeding decades. Patriotism in 1942 was defined in the simple statement, “To serve in the country’s defense.”

I enrolled at the University of Akron in June 1942, where in addition to the academic subjects I took ROTC (the Reserve Officers Training Corps), my very first experience with the Army. I immediately felt a sense of pride when I put on the uniform. Close-order drill and lectures on varied aspects of Army life were the centerpieces of ROTC training for freshmen. I was never impressed by instruction, which was conducted by a lieutenant who rambled. It appeared to many freshman that we were guinea pigs who provided a means for the Advanced Class students to exercise their leadership abilities.

I received my induction notice in December 1942, a scant four weeks after my eighteenth birthday. The draft board delayed my induction until I finished the semester, and then I found myself on a train bound for Fort Hayes, in Columbus, Ohio. It was on a rainy March 8 that I sat, in an old railway car clouded with cigarette smoke and anxiety, listening to the train’s wheels clicking along the track. The only one in my car who had the foggiest notion of the adventure we were on was a draftee who had spent time in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Most of us listened as he explained in a loud voice what we should expect when we reached Forts Hayes. The anxiety continued, regardless.

During our short stay at Fort Hayes we had a crash course on the Army. Then we boarded the train (its destination a military secret), wearing wrinkled field uniforms and three-quarter boots and leggings, carrying duffel bags full of clothing on our shoulders. Our arms ached from inoculations.

We now knew that officers wore bars on their collars and that enlisted men wore stripes on their sleeves. We knew we should salute officers and that the sergeants with the most stripes seemed to be the ones running everything. We had taken aptitude tests and had our first “kitchen police” (KP) experiences. A private first class, or PFC, who had interviewed me had said that my classification test score made me eligible for aviation cadet training and that I should so inform the First Sergeant at my first unit. He also had me sign a paper acknowledging that I had taken the loyalty oath required of all recruits.

Now here we were, entering one of a long line of railroad coaches with straight-back seats, soot stained inside and out. For the next three days, we would ride the rails to Camp Bowie, Texas, near Brownwood, where we would take basic training in the 652d Tank Destroyer Battalion. The officers and non-commissioned officers of the battalion were already there. As we passed through the gates of the Tank Destroyer (TD) Training Center, we couldn’t help but notice the large mural of a tiger’s head with its jaws tightly clamped around a tank. We would soon find this was the TD shoulder patch we would be wearing. Next we saw the barren stretch of land and the patchwork of tar paper–covered buildings where we would be living and training for the next two months. Here and there were more substantial, yet bleak, buildings used for headquarters, logistics, and medical purposes.

I soon found myself sitting on my duffel bag with about a hundred other trainees. A captain wearing crossed sabers (the cavalry insignia) on his collar announced that we were now members of the battalion’s reconnaissance company and intimated that we should be proud to serve in it. At the moment, with the temperature over ninety degrees, sweating, covered with soot, and wanting nothing more than a glass of water, we fell far short of being proud of anything. After the first days’ training, however, we sensed the first bit of esprit forming.

The training included drill, map reading, marksmanship, first aid, and the like. We also applied sticky grenades to the underbellies of tanks; received greater than normal communications training, including Morse code; received daily training in armored car (M-8) maintenance; and spent many hours in nighttime reconnaissance patrols. Considerable time was devoted to 57 mm and 37 mm antitank gunnery.

The focus of our training was primarily on what had been learned during the North African campaign. Several of the officers and noncommissioned officers had served in North Africa, and they played an important role in the training. We were reminded that what applied to desert warfare might not be applicable elsewhere, but the doctrine was still to hit enemy tanks fast and hard and then maneuver out of range. Speed was essential!

The eighth week of basic training consisted of a forced march from Camp Bowie to Fort Hood, Texas; it took five days. Fort Hood had been developed to an extent far beyond Camp Bowie, especially the troop facilities, motor parks, and ranges. The battalion was issued the new M-36 Slugger tank destroyer and commenced training with it on the ranges. The M-36 contained a 90 mm gun, mounted in a light, open turret on a tank chassis. What it lacked in crew protection it made up in firepower, speed, and mobility, compared to its predecessor, the M-10A1, which mounted a 76 mm gun. There were thirty-six tank destroyers assigned to each TD battalion. Without question, tank destroyer training was challenging. It was very intensive, requiring considerable physical stamina, and the officers and NCOS were top notch.

While at Fort Hood I applied for the aviation cadet program. I spent two days at Kelly Army Air Corps Field taking tests, which I passed. As was the case with thousands of eighteen-year-olds, my urge to become a pilot was partly the work of the Air Corps’s first-class public relations campaign. A few days after I returned to Fort Hood, ten of us were told to report to the orderly room at six in the morning. The next night I was in Camp Maxey, near Paris, Texas, awaiting transfer to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), which had been established to ensure an adequate number of trained engineers after the war.

A week later I was at North Texas State Teacher’s College in Denton. One of the first things I did was to tell the detachment commander that I thought a mistake had been made, since I had applied to the Aviation Cadet Program and not ASTP. To my surprise I was reassigned to Shepard Army Air Field, near Wichita Falls, to await assignment. I spent several weeks there, watching P-51S taking off and landing, hoping that eventually I would be in the cockpit of a fighter plane. Finally I was assigned to the Army Air Corps Student Training Detachment at Texas A&M, in College Station. My fellow students and I, designated as Aviation Students (A/S), commenced a five-month college program, which included a month of ground and flight training in Piper Cubs at nearby Bryan Airfield.

All of this came to an end in late March 1944, on a Saturday morning, when we were assembled in Guidon Hall to view a filmed presentation by Gen. Hap Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He notifi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Reflections on Early Experiences
• 2. The Pusan Perimeter
• 3. Withdraw and Attack
• 4. The Final Thrust
• 5. Between Wars
• 6. Assassination and Struggle
• 7. The Holding Pattern
• 8. America’s War
• 9. The Cold War Continues
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Chronology of Military Service
• Notes
• References
• Index