I was a boy of the suburbs, never hunted, never saw a real gun. I’d had my share of fights, but fists were the only weapons I could ever imagine using. So, when I entered the Army, firearms were all new to me.
I went about learning to shoot the same way I thought about everything we were required to learn. I had to master it as quickly as I could to avoid the wrath of the drill instructors who seemed to be in competition as to who was the best at intimidating and breaking down recruits.
It became a mechanical exercise--loading, positioning, acquiring the target, squeezing the trigger, absorbing the recoil, readjusting the sights, do it all again. Put those bullets into the pasteboard targets.
By the time I arrived in Korea in my first posting as an infantry officer, I had fired M-14 and M-16 rifles, M-60 and .50-caliber machine guns, a 3.5-inch rocket launcher, a .45-caliber handgun and had learned how to call in artillery fire. Those things, in my mind, were far different and divorced from actually destroying living creatures.
Each evening we manned what was known as “The Barrier,” a line of foxholes that stretched completely across the Korean peninsula. It was designed to prevent North Korean agents from infiltrating through the Demilitarized Zone and into South Korea. To accomplish their mission, they did what they could to get around us and avoid detection. But they had changed tactics, aggressively attacking American troops. In the early morning of July 16, 1967, three young men in my company were killed by the North Koreans.
I was not on The Barrier that morning; we had four officers who rotated the responsibility. But I was in charge of the troops that evening. My command post, in which I would spend the next twelve or so hours, was situated atop a hill about 100 meters behind the line in an M-113 armored personnel carrier. Accompanying me was a platoon sergeant and two radio/telephone operators. Once I was certain that communications had been established with all my positions, as darkness descended I took up a post for awhile on the perimeter. The objective of all my weapons training, hoping to intercept, shoot and kill a human being, was foremost in my thoughts.