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I enlisted in the Army in January 1947. After completing basic training at North Fort Lewis, Washington I went to Japan and was assigned to "B" Troop, First Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2d Brigade, First Cavalry Division. I was assigned to a rifle platoon as a rifleman and assistant Browning Automatic rifleman in the spring of 1947. In the fall of 1947 I was assigned to the Personnel Section of the Second Brigade Headquarters. In April 1948 I was assigned to the Brigade Intelligence Section, where Captain Jeff Clay III, a West Point graduate, was in charge. I remained there until March 1949 when the First Cavalry Division was converted from a "square" Cavalry Division(two battalions per regiment, two regiments per brigade and two brigades to a division) toa standard "triangular" infantry configuration (three battalions per regiment and three regiments to a division).
In the process, with the deactivation of the Brigade, Brigadier General Herren was left without a position. As a result, General MacArthur created the "Tokyo Area Military Headquarters" with General Herren in command. My old boss, now a Lieutenant Colonel, was assigned as the General's Adjutant and I was their clerical support. I was actually assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 8th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry) and assigned on temporary duty with the Tokyo Area Military Headquarters. When General Herren returned to the United States, I went back to my unit, and in mid-May parts of the 8th Cavalry Regiment moved to the maneuver area at Camp McNair on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji for combat maneuvers. We were told that if the North Koreans had not invaded by then, sometime in January 1950 we would begin amphibious training at the 8th Army Amphibious Training Facility at Camp McGill near the old Japanese naval base at Yokusuka. I remained at Camp McNair until mid-November when I returned to the barracks in Tokyo and got all of my belongings which had been locked up there while I was at Camp McNair. I boarded the U.S. Army Transport General O'Hara bound for Seattle and was discharged in December 1949 after 2 years, 10 months and 29 days of active duty.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
My first book "The Korean War- Fiction Versus Fact" was written primarily to correct the over 300 errors in David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter, America and the Korean War". In the process of writing the book and verifying the information, I discovered that many of the errors apparently occurred because David Halberstam took much information in his references at face value, without independently verifying the information.
Of the over 20 books written about the Korean War which I have reviewed, all have errors, especially Roy Appleman's "South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu".
The cost of my book in hardcover is $6.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling. The softcover edition is $4.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling.
I am convinced, however, that Mr. Halberstam deliberately made some alterations to the facts to make his book more sensational. One specific example is in the last paragraph on page 18 of his book where he wrote that one of the last things Johnson (Lt. Colonel Johnson, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment) had done before they left Pyongyang was to hold a memorial service for the some four hundred men of the Third Battalion who had been lost since the war began. The 8th Cavalry Regiment War Diary for the last day of October showed that total casualties for the entire regiment since entering combat on July 21, 1950 were 251 killed, 1318 wounded and 164 missing. Since the 3d Battalion did not even arrive in South Korea until August 25th and did not enter into combat until September 1, it is not possible that 400 of the combined number of 415 killed and missing for the entire regiment would have been from the 3d Battalion, which only had 600 men in it when it arrived.
There are a number of places where he contradicts himself in his own book and almost 300 places where his writings do not agree with the official records on file at the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland.
I began my research in early 2008, primarily at the NARA II facility at College Park, Maryland with emphasis on Unit Histories and Unit War Diaries. I have over 17,000 images of original documents on file there.
I also performed research at the Military History Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania and have over 1,500 images of documents on file there. I also have obtained full size copies of Army Map Service topographic maps produced between 1947 and 1950 in the 1 to 50,000 inch scale (which is about 5/6th of an inch per mile. I have over 120 paper copies and another 75 on a compact disc. These maps make it easier to visualize terrain features where battles occurred.
I published an article on "The Battle at Osan-Task Force Smith Revisited". It appeared in the March-April, 2012 issue of "Korea Veterans, The Graybeards". Because of that article, I have made contact with one survivor, a 2d Lieutenant Macaulay, who commanded a rifle platoon and have to date gotten copies of narratives of nine members of that task force. I have also used the data base which lists all of the Army Casualties of the Korean War (approximately 109,000) as well as the data base of repatriated Prisoners of War during the Korean War, which includes ALL Americans regardless of branch of service.