When the first wounded Marines arrived from Korea in the fall of 1950, Charles Hughes was a Navy hospital corpsman working on the wards at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was gripped by the stories those young men told. Too young for World War II and having missed that opportunity, Hughes now discovered in himself a strong desire to escape routine ward duties and travel to the country whose existence he had just recently learned about and find out what combat is really like. He and his friend Ollie Langston decided to volunteer for the Fleet Marine Force. Just days after they submitted their request they found themselves undergoing combat training at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base at Oceanside, California. Their desire to see what combat was like was more than satisfied in the months that followed.
Accordion War: Korea 1951 - Life and Death in a Marine Rifle Company is a detailed personal account of combat in the Korean War during its most violent "blitzkrieg" phase, the first third of the three-year war. While the descriptions of battles are up close and graphic, the conflict is also viewed from the perspective of the 21st century, from a keen awareness of the wars since —Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. Interwoven into the narrative is a meditation on life, death and war —on the question of why men spend so much treasure and blood fighting one another. The setting is the Republic of Korea, a beautiful country whose citizens fought for their freedom alongside United Nations forces, a people who have, since the war, emerged from the shadows of history to become cultural and technological leaders in the modern world. But Accordion War is first of all the story of a band of brothers and the battles they fought half way round the world in the rugged mountains of the country known as "the Land of the Morning Calm".
Fifty years before all America and the world were horror-struck by images of exploding planes and falling towers, September 11 was seared into the memories of the men in How Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment, First Marine Division. There is a connection between those two days exactly a half-century apart. That connection can be found not far from Ground Zero in the village of Stewart Manor on Long Island inscribed on a memorial plaque dedicated to victims of 9/11 — and in this book.
(from Chapter 1, SUNFLOWER HOW)
Now here on our first night out, weary from the long march and climb up the
mountain, I had fallen asleep promptly even though two rocks like spear points
were poking me in the back and my head was below the level of my feet because
I had tied the strings at the bottom of my sleeping bag to the roots of a tree so I
wouldn’t roll down the mountain.
I couldn’t have been in my goose down sleeping bag much more than an
hour, just long enough to get warm in the only place I would ever get warm that
winter, when someone kicked my feet and yelled, “Get up! We’ve got patrol!” I
couldn’t believe it.
After being jolted out of my deep sleep I crawled reluctantly out of my warm
sleeping bag and pulled on my boots and laced them up. I slept in my shirt and
pants and socks, so dressing was not that much of a chore. There was no snow
on the ground but it was bitter cold. I rolled up my gear, donned my parka and
mittens, and picked up my aid kit and my M2 carbine and fell in with the squad
members who were gathering around Lt. Lowe. When a squad patrol went out
like this often the platoon leader and his runner and the hospital corpsman
went along while the other two thirds of the platoon would be exempt. Leaving
our gear under the protection of the rest of the platoon, we moved out following
a trail down the mountain in the moonlight.
The descent to the valley was not difficult and before long we found ourselves
moving along a white dirt road with dry frozen rice paddies on our left
and a spur of the mountain we had just descended rising to our right. We
moved along the road in two columns keeping our interval in the moonlight.
Lt. Lowe told the runner to contact the company CP on the walkie-talkie radio.
Once the contact had been made, the lieutenant took the radio and reported
on our position and progress. There was considerable static in the communication
but I could hear the voice from How Company confirming receipt of Lt.
Lowe’s report.
We continued down the road as it curved to our right around the mountain
spur and then began to angle away from the mountain and leave it behind. We
had now been on the road for thirty or forty minutes. The bright moon was
past its zenith, and we could see off to our left across the frozen stubble of the
rice paddy a dark line of trees that marked a creek or a dry creek bed perhaps a
hundred yards away. We had been making an effort to be quiet; when we spoke
we spoke in whispers and were careful to avoid the clanking of arms and gear.
We were moving along to the sound only of the shuffle of our boots in the dry
dirt when we heard voices. They came from the line of trees to our left, and
the words were not English. We all heard them, and as a man, we stopped for
perhaps three seconds and looked toward the tree line.
At once a line of fire broke out from all along the creek bed. Just as suddenly
fifteen Marines hit the ditch closest to the source of the gunfire and hunkered
down to get the maximum benefit of the twelve to sixteen inch embankment
the ditch offered. I propped the tip of my carbine over the rim of the ditch and
rolled over on my back and turned my face from left to right. I could see the
Marines on either side of me, and, inches above our heads, a steady lacing of
orange tracer bullets. The deafening explosions of rifle and machine-gun fire
engulfed us.
After a minute some Marine several down from me yelled out, “Is anyone
hit?”
Word was passed from man to man and I was relieved to hear that miraculously
no one had been hit. I was disappointed in myself, however, for as corpsman,
I should have been the one to ask that question. But I was glad I didn’t
have to expose myself to that withering fire to get to a wounded Marine.
I could hear Lieutenant Lowe down the line trying to get through on the
radio
“Sunflower How this is Sunflower How patrol, over!”
Static
“Sunflower How, this is Sunflower How patrol. How do you read me?
Over!”
More static
“This goddamn thing! It’s useless. We came around that mountain and this
goddamn thing only works line of sight. Piece of shit. Here! Keep trying to
make contact!” And he gave the radio back to the runner who frantically kept
trying to reach our CP.
Although the gunfire was coming from about a hundred yards distance, it
sounded as though our attackers were only a few feet away. And no Marine was
contributing to the intensity of the roar of battle because none of us had fired
a shot. The fire was so intense and so close that sticking your head above the
ditch seemed a certain way to get it blown off.
I had begun to pray the moment I hit the ditch. My prayers weren’t imagi
native or altruistic or premeditated. They were the basic prayers of man confronted
with momentary extinction, a mindless incantation:
“God, don’t let me die! Oh, please God, don’t let me die!”
I could see clearly the brief notice that would appear in the Daily Times
Herald and the Dallas Morning News. I could see my family reading the telegram
and hear the condolences coming in. I was resentful that I would die in
my very first firefight. And there seemed little doubt that we all would die. Here
we were exposed on a flat road while our more numerous assailants were firing
at us from the cover of the tree-lined creek bed.
After some time Lieutenant Lowe yelled out, “Will someone volunteer to try
to make it back to our CP? We can’t reach them on this goddamn radio and I
don’t see any way we can fight our way out of here outnumbered as we are. Will
someone try to make a run for it?”
There was no answer. No volunteer
The lieutenant was new to his command. I was new. Most of the squad were
new, being replacements for the heavy losses the Marine Corps suffered after
the Chinese entered the war and drove the UN forces back across the 38th
parallel to the southern end of the peninsula. There were a few veterans in the
squad, however, and one of them, a Chicano, called out to the Lieutenant, “I
think they may be friendly forces; they’re all using American weapons.”
Later we would all learn to recognize the accelerating staccato and rising
pitch, the ripping sound of the burp gun and other characteristic sounds of
Chinese and North Korean rifles and machine guns, but for now we were all
grateful for the perception and presence of mind of this one Marine. And the
color of the tracers were further evidence of American firepower. The Chosin
vet had provided us our only hope, so we all began to yell out.
“American Marine! No shoot! OK?”
“No Shoot! No Shoot! American Marine! No Shoot, OK?”
We yelled with the energy and enthusiasm of marooned sailors spotting
an approaching sail. We yelled up into the tracers that were still flying inches
above our heads
“American Marine! No shoot! OK?”
Now the sounds from the road rose and mixed with those from the creek
bed as our voices added to the din of the gunfire coming across the rice paddy.
The roar from the line of trees continued undiminished.
Then slowly but perceptibly the gunfire began to abate. We yelled even
louder with this encouragement and the shooting continued to trail off until it
finally stopped. We too fell silent.
“Whatta we do now?”
“Somebody’s got to stand up!”
“What if it’s a trap?”
“We can’t just lay here.”
“Who’s going to do it?”
Then Lt. Lowe spoke up. His voice cracked as he told us, “I’m going to
stand up. If they shoot me you may as well return fire cause there’s no way in
hell we’re going to get out of here.”
Charles Hughes spent four years in the U.S. Navy enlisting in 1948 at the age of seventeen. During the closing weeks of 1950 while the 1st Marine Division was surrounded and fighting their way out of the Chinese Communist trap at the frozen Chosin Reservoir, he and his friend Ollie Langston volunteered for the Fleet Marine Force to serve as hospital corpsmen in a Marine rifle company. He had missed World War II and wanted to find out what combat was like. Accordion War is the story of his experience.
Today Hughes is professor emeritus of English at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He graduated with a BA in political science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1957 and for the next nine years worked in communication intelligence for the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Maryland, and later the Air Force Security Service as a cryptanalyst (Russian), instructor of cryptanalysis, technical writer (cryptanalysis), technical editor, and finally as the Chief of the Editing and Publications Branch of the USAFSS School at Goodfellow AFB, San Angelo, Texas.
He left that position in 1966 to attend graduate school at Texas Tech University at Lubbock where he received an MA (1968) and a PhD (1971) in literature and linguistics after which he was hired by Henderson State where he taught up to and after his retirement in 1996, serving for five of those years as Chairman of the English and Foreign Languages Department.