Over the last year, we have been hearing a lot from our president about how the Army never leaves a soldier behind. That is a bunch of baloney. The president knows nothing about the Army.
I am an old soldier, a veteran of World War II and the Korean war. I served in the Army for 20 years. In 1950 and 1951 the situation was such that we sometimes had to leave whole units behind. To explain what I mean … I was in the 1st Cavalry Division 8th Regiment when Army intelligence told Gen. Douglas MacArthur that the Chinese were moving their whole army into North Korea. MacArthur would not listen. Well, we found out they were there on the night of Nov. 1, 1950. They hit my regiment by the thousands. We were surrounded, cut off, overrun, you name it. A division has three or sometimes four regiments. If you were wounded and couldn’t walk, it was a death sentence as our main forces could not get to us. The Chinese shot the wounded. Our 3rd Battalion (900 men were lost) plus hundreds in the other battalions were killed or went to prison camps where many of them died.
Sometimes the Army has to leave soldiers behind.
Wendell Heim
Washougal
