Fall to Winter

MK comments: This is Fred Hofheinz (Entry #14) on his way to Korea in August of 1951. If he had waited and took the same ship I did, he could have had a good(?) Thanksgiving dinner on a rolling old tub whose deck was splashed here and there with the turkey and trimmings which some non-sailors had not managed to keep down.

If he was on an WWII "Liberty Ship" (and he probably was) his trip took about 9-10 days. The ship that took me there took ten days (eleven on the calendar because of the IDL) to travel from Seattle to Inchon.

I wonder if Fred got the same welcome we did. First, as we neared Korea we picked up a destroyer escort which was the first time I realized that we were exiting a friendly environment. Then, as we silently disembarked, single file, at night, along a very long pier leading to shore, we received a hearty welcome from the single file of GIs going the other way on the pier.

The welcome consisted of cheerful greetings such as, "You'll be sorry!" and other assorted hoots and hollers. Well, I was one of the lucky ones who got to reverse the rolls in an identical scene only eleven months later.

Fred doesn't remember the names of the Company A guys in this photo and neither do Poe or I. But, it is almost a certainty that I lived, at some time or the other, in the bunker that Poe identifies as "Home Sweet Home on the banks of the Imjin, in the winter of 1951-1952".

Heck, the "home" looks so much like one of the machine gun bunker "homes" that Snyder and I lived in, it could on the left by the entrenching tool - known to civilians as a shovel).

Fred does remember that this photo is of Bill Sullivan, who was in Fred's squad, and that he was last known to be living in Houston, Texas. I'm gonna call the about 20 William Sullivan's in my phone book - sometimes I get lucky.

Nah, I didn't. MK.

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