Crosby recalls Korean War service

By Pat Caldwell
Argus Observer
Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:02 PM PDT

Ontario resident Glen Crosby looks through memorabilia from the Korean War in this early October pho

Ontario — Ontario’s Glen Crosby carries around a lot of memories now.

Memories of a coastal town on a foreign shore silhouetted by flames and smoke.

Memories of a good friend killed in action on a lonely river in South Korea.

Recollections of a stark, cold time when an entire Marine division fought its way out of a colossal trap set by the Communist Red Chinese.

Through it all, though, he has carried a haunting, difficult question as he moved through life as a teacher for the Ontario School District.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Why not me?” he asked regarding his survival. “Why not me? I have no idea. I count my lucky stars.”

Crosby joined the United States Marine Corps in 1948 and eventually ended up in Korea. He took part in one of the most famous amphibious landings of all time — the surprise assault on Inchon — and then participated in the famous winter battles known as the Chosin Reservoir campaign.

“I’m lucky I’m still alive,” Crosby said. He is an old man now, pushing 80, and he carts around a lifetime of memories — some of them good, some of them bad but all shadowed by his stint serving in the Korean War.

Small town Marine

Crosby said he joined up on a lark. Mainly, he said, to get out of Payette.

“All I wanted was to get out. The draft was on. This buddy and I decided to go to Boise and join up. Get it over with,” Crosby said.

The duo traveled to Boise and stopped in at the first recruiting office they came to — The United States Maine Corps.

“We came out an hour later in dress blues and tennis shoes,” Crosby joked.

Crosby said he was glad he was in the Marine Corps. His mother, however, was not so pleased.

“She was very unhappy with me because I didn’t go to college,” he said.

When Crosby reached boot camp, his military career came to a sudden halt.

“I broke my arm in the first two weeks. They sent me to a naval hospital for two months,” he said.

That meant when Crosby recovered he had to start basic training all over.

And that turned out to be a bad thing.

“This time, we got some DIs (drill instructors) that kicked our butts. They put us through the mill,” Crosby said.

That experience at Marine Corps basic training, though, forged the recruits into a team and the lessons they learned — difficult precepts learned the hard way — would pay off down the road on the battlefields of Korea, Crosby said.

“Boot camp was hell on earth. The idea was to rely on the guy next to you. I always thought about why they did it, why it was so hard. But I know they did it to see if you would break,” Crosby said.

Crosby didn’t break, and after boot camp he became a clerk typist, a potentially safe, secure job.

That job didn’t last. When he reported to the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Crosby was sent to a combat services battalion and became an ordinance technician.

That meant, instead of sitting behind a typewriter, Crosby helped service weapons such as machine guns or rifles or bazookas.

It was a job Crosby said he liked.

“You might say I had a pretty good job,” he said.

Off to war

In the early summer of 1950, Crosby said he returned home on leave. On Sunday, June 25, 1950, 90,000 North Korean soldiers plunged across a line on the map called the demilitarized zone in the first phase of a broad scale invasion of South Korea.

Crosby said, while at home, he wasn’t paying much attention to the news. Then friends and acquaintances began to ask him questions.

“They asked me ‘When are you going to Korea?’ I said, ‘What Korea?’ I had no clue where it was,” he said.

Crosby stayed on leave until early July.

“On 8 July, I got a telegram that said my leave was canceled. By the time I got back, they already had put together the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade,” Crosby said.

Meanwhile, the North Korean Army was rampaging across the southern portion of that tiny Asian nation.

By mid-July, the U.S. Army had deployed three divisions to South Korea to stop the communist tide. American forces, though, encountered a number of minor defeats that July, and, by early August, Marines and GIs were tucked into a wide semicircle around the South Korean port city of Pusan.

The semicircle — dubbed the Pusan Perimeter — became the focal point of a number of bloody battles as the North Korean People’s Army struggled to break out to the sea and American units fought to keep them back.

One of the early themes of the Korean War revolved around the unprepared nature of the American Army. The U.S. Army units, part of the occupation force of Japan, sent into the conflict in its early days suffered from lack of equipment, poor training and confusion that haunted them on the battlefield.

The Marine Corps — reduced in strength after the end of World War II — faced its own unique set of hurdles when it was tasked to send reinforcements to South Korea.

In mid-summer of 1950, the Marine Corps was tasked with sending a division — between 15,000 to 20,000 Marines — to South Korea.

The 1st Marine Division was only a shell of the outfit it was when World War II ended, which forced the Corps to take Marines from other units in the United States, call up a large number of reservists and push recruits into the ranks before they were ready.

Crosby, back at Camp Pendleton, remembered the scene vividly.

“They had kids that hadn’t even been to basic training yet,” he said of the rush to send reinforcements to Korea.

While the 1st Marine Division hurried to prepare for deployment to Korea, another group of Marines moved out for the war-torn nation in early July. The unit — the Provisional Marine Brigade — consisting of the 5th United States Marine Regiment and other units — sailed for Korea and reached that nation at the end of the month.

The Marine outfit fought inside the Pusan Perimeter throughout the rest of the summer and became a “fire brigade,” rushed from one trouble point to another as American forces fought off the North Korean People’s Army.

Meanwhile, the 1st Marine Division began to deploy overseas. Crosby ended up on a transport ship at sea for 26 days.

He said he did not know exactly where they were going, only that there was a war going on in Korea and the Marines were headed into harm’s way.

Crosby said his transport ship reached Japan, and then, in early September, the Marines moved toward Korea.

“About three or four days later, we all came together. Had two rows of ships on this convoy,” Crosby said.

He still didn’t know where he was going. Neither did his fellow Marines.

Inchon

Where Crosby and his fellow Marines were going hardly resonated with anyone in America before the Korean War broke out. After, though, what is known as the Inchon Landing would be considered a prototype risk-taking maneuver when the chips are down.

Inchon is a port town situated halfway up the Korean Peninsula near the capital city of Seoul.

With American forces tied up inside the Pusan Perimeter, the American high command was searching for a way to break out and defeat the North Koreans.

At first glance, the idea for the Inchon landing seemed absurd. American forces were surrounded in the Pusan Perimeter; Inchon was hundreds of miles away and the area was as a poor of a target for an amphibious landing as anywhere on the globe.

The architect of the plan, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, though, felt it would work. He devised the concept months earlier, as American soldiers were pushed down the Korean Peninsula by rampaging North Korean forces.

He wanted to cut the supply lines of the North Korean Army and the best way to do that, he argued, was a landing at Inchon.

It was a risky move. Inchon boasted huge tides, the second deepest in the world, which meant there were really only three days that autumn of 1950 suitable for an amphibious landing.

The channel at Inchon was narrow as well, and a fast current made maneuver very difficult. And, because of the tides, the landing force (Marines and GIs) could land on the shore only at certain times of the day.

Plain and simple, Inchon was a bad place for a brilliant, strategic maneuver. MacArthur took the gamble, though, and won.

On Sept. 15, 1950, the landings kicked off.

Crosby sat on a transport watching the event, and it made a huge impact.

“I watched the whole thing unfold. It was a grand scene. The place was on fire,” Crosby said.

It was at Inchon that Crosby said he had his first close brush with death.

When Crosby’s ordinance unit disembarked at Inchon, it deployed east of the port city, and began to repair weapons, vehicles and make supply runs to the front-line Marines.

One night, Crosby and another man drew guard duty.

“The 1st Sgt. told us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t leave your post,’” Crosby said. On guard duty, both Crosby and the other Marine passed an uneventful night.

At about 2:30 a.m., though, the night erupted around them.

“All of a sudden, and before I heard any noise, I see these busts of red strings,” Crosby said.

The “red strings” were tracer rounds, and they were flying past the two Marines.

“How close did it get? I don’t know because I was on the ground,” Crosby said. Then everything stopped.

The two Marines remained at their post through the night, but the incident left a lasting impression on Crosby.

“Did it scare me? You bet. And I admit it,” he said. Crosby said, to this day he isn’t sure the enemy fired on them.

“I got the feeling it was friendly fire,” he said.

Eventually, Crosby’s unit would depart from Inchon and move to the other side of the Korean Peninsula. For Crosby and his fellow Marines, it was just another move. Yet, Crosby and his friends were going to one of the worst places on earth, and one of the Marine Corps’ most difficult battles, and they didn’t even know it.

Check out the rest of this story Nov. 11 when the Argus Observer publishes its 2009 Salute to Veterans. Along with Crosby’s story, we will offer stories from other area veterans.