SIGNALED OUT

Kenneth J. Popp

NGY Sgt. USMC Ret.
Mike Btry, 4^th Bn.
11^th Marines, 1^st Marine Div.
Korea Sept. 1950 

On the night of Dec.1, 1950. Sixteen of us Marines were signaled out to leave the main Division column and return to the Udam-ni Valley as rear guard. We were organized into four machine gun crews and told to hold off the Chinese as long as possible. The crew, which I led, went into position first and as we got our gun into situated, we heard a shot off to our right. Of course, we became apprehensive as to possible Chinese infiltration and we all got into our firing positions.

Nothing happened for about four minutes, and then we heard voices approaching us. We all knew by the curse words that it had to be a Marine and sure enough we soon heard this voice mouthing the words, ILL never be able to work again. Over and over. I recognized the voice of Cpl. James Peek, from Texarkana, Arkansas. James was seating his machine gun into position with his right trigger finger over the barrel opening and the gun cranked of a round and shot off the end of his finger.

It so happened that James was a checker at the Piggy Wiggly Store in Texarkana and he thought his working days were over as a checker. James returned home and not only went back to work, but ended up owning his own Supermarket back in Midway Texas.

On the morning of Dec. 2,1950, after a night of heavy fighting all around us and the temperatures of –48 degrees, my gun crew had some C-ration cardboard and made a small fire. We also found a quart can of pork and beans, which was frozen, of course, so we cut the ends off the can and stuck a bayonet into the beans, and began to try and thaw them over the fire. As all good Marines do, each of us had a plastic spoon and as a few of the beans would thaw, we would scoop them up with our spoons. While we were doing this, a Chinese sniper began firing at us. His first four or five shots hit about five yards away from us, but none of us moved because we so tired, cold and hungry that we weren’t to excited. However his sixth round hit about three feet away from the Marine that was holding the beans on the fire, putting it out. I jumped up and shook my fist in the general direction of the sniper and screamed, You Chinese son of a bitch! It was turn next for some beans. About that time, someone from the 5^th Marines killed the sniper.