By Erwin H. Lerner
Not very many of us truly can Remember Pearl Harbor, or even recall the Korean War for that matter. We might be aware of Gregory Peck’s Academy Award winning performance in the film Pork Chop Hill, a clump of land located above the Chorwon Valley in west-central Korea.
Not far to the west of Pork Chop Hill lies a hill called Old Baldy, which endured a series of five engagements during ten months in 1952–1953. Old Baldy earned its nickname after artillery and mortar fire destroyed all the trees on its crest.
An observation post attached to Old Baldy is described as being an area of machine gun and rifle positions atop a sheer, low lime rock battlement. Its crown, a bald knob connected to Old Baldy by a saddle ridge, was only large enough to accommodate a platoon of the 31st Infantry Regiment (nicknamed “the Polar Bears”). There barely was room for one log-walled lime rock battlement, insufficient to cover a full squad. The Chinese were obsessed with taking it, and three nights before the July 26-27 cease fire they came charging up the hill, lugging huge boxes of ammunition and rations, determined to take the outpost and keep it. Wave after wave poured uphill, and took half the outpost. But, L company counter attacked and drove the enemy back down the trench line in close quarters combat with grenades, small arms, bayonets, and occasional rifle butts. When the Chinese lost grip on their last section of trench, survivors scurried across two-hundred barren yards to the safety of Chinese Communist lines on Old Baldy. They were chopped to pieces there by American artillery.
On Sunday, July 26, 1953, night fighting resumed at the outpost and raged for four and a half hours, until shortly after midnight when the Reds had been stopped. Another wave hit early Monday morning and fighting continued for another hour before the enemy fell back. At 9:45 p.m. a cease fire order came down from U.N. Command Headquarters. A minute later, an outpost lookout sounded like Paul Revere: “The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!” What followed was an absence of weapons fire and shouting. There was no jubilation; only well-meant handshakes between adversaries. Both sides had seen too much slaughter. Suddenly there was peace.
The above history pertains to an Old Baldy outpost by the name of West View. Presently, fortunately for us, this monthly publication, WestView News, overlooks Greenwich Village and areas to the north, south, east and west, peacefully spreading awareness and enlightenment in the democratically free confines of America.
Erwin H. Lerner has long approached his life with a keen inner sense of skepsis. Born on Simpson Street in the East Bronx, raised in the West Bronx, in 1952 he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for four years of active duty during the Korean Conflict, serving out of the range of fire on Crete, in Germany and at the Pentagon, primarily assigned as a teletype and cryptography operator. He returned to New York City in 1956 and took residence in Greenwich Village to further his higher education at New York University and the New School for Social Research. Having found his calling as a playwright, four of his works have been presented Off-Off-Broadway and two short plays were aired on WBAI Public Radio.
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