- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of William LeRoy Bates, Jr.
- Creator:
- Lowance, Lynn
Bates, William LeRoy, Jr., 1921-2013 - Date of Original:
- 2004-01-21
- Subject:
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Lexington (Aircraft carrier : 1943-1991)
V-J Day, 1945
Landing craft
Bates, William Leroy, Sr., 1895-1970
Schmuck, Donald M., 1915-2004
Davis, Raymond Gilbert, 1915-2003
Puller, Chesty, 1898-1971
Halsey, William F. (William Frederick), 1882-1959
Masterpool, William Jerome, 1925-1988
Smith, Oliver Prince, 1893-1977
Lavoie, Leon F., 1913-1985
Ridgway, Matthew Bunker, 1895-1993
Murray, Raymond Leroy, 1913-2004
United States. Marine Corps. Marine Division, 1st
United States. Marine Corps. Defense Battalion, 1st
United States. Coast Guard
Emory University
University of Pennsylvania - Location:
- Australia, Victoria, Melbourne, -37.814, 144.96332
France, Versailles, 48.8035403, 2.1266886
Germany, Frankfurt am Main, 50.110922, 8.682127
India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, 18.9387711, 72.8353355
Ireland, 53.0, -8.0
Japan, Kobe-shi, 34.6932379, 135.1943764
Japan, Tokyo, 35.709026, 139.731992
Japan, Volcano Islands, Iwo Jima
Korea, Inchon, 37.456, 126.7052
Korea, Pusan, 35.1799528, 129.0752365
Korea, Wonju-si, 37.3420996, 127.9197603
Marshall Islands, Enewetak Atoll, 11.5141037, 162.06439324194528
Morocco, Casablanca, 33.5950627, -7.6187768
Panama, Panama Canal, 8.99797, -79.59269
Philippines, 13.40882, 122.56155
Solomon Islands, -9.7354344, 162.8288542
South Korea, Seoul, 37.5666791, 126.9782914
United Kingdom, England, Liverpool, 53.408371, -2.991573
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Maryland, Calvert County, Solomons, 38.31846, -76.45412
United States, New Jersey, Ocean County, Lakehurst, 40.01456, -74.31126
United States, South Carolina, Beaufort County, Parris Island, 32.3352, -80.69233
United States, South Carolina, Richland County, Columbia, 34.00071, -81.03481
United States, Virginia, City of Norfolk, 36.89126, -76.26188
United States, Virginia, Stafford County, Marine Corps Base Quantico, 38.48959, -77.46688
United States, Washington, King County, Seattle, 47.60621, -122.33207 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- MovingImage
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, William Bates describes his career as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. His service began in World War II with battles in the Pacific and continued into Korea, where he participated in the Inchon Landing and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. He also spent time post-World War II in Europe with the headquarters of the U.S. European Command. He describes in detail the Inchon Landing and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, including Marine Corps strategy and mortar rounds. He recounts working with the Army of the Republic of Korea against the North Korean Army and the arrival of the Chinese Army.
Bill Bates was a Marine officer during World War II and the Korean War.
WILLIAM L. BATES, JR. VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW Atlanta History Center January 21, 2003 Interviewer: Lynn Lowance Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell Lynn Lowance: [This is] January 21, 2004, and this is the beginning of an interview with William L. Bates, Jr., at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Bates is, how old are you? Bill Bates: 82. Int: 82 years old, having been born on March 8, 1921. My name is Lynn Lowance, and I'll be the interviewer. Mr. Bates, could you state for the recording what war and branch of the services you were in, your rank, and where you served. BB: That's a long history. I was in World War II. I enlisted as a private first class in 1942. And I served in the .Marine Corps until July 1965. I was in World War II and Korean War. The places where I served are numerous of course. I can get to them later on as we, as we pass through this interview. LL: Could you tell me a little bit about your early life, where you were born? BB: I was born in Columbia, South Carolina. My parents moved to Atlanta when I was just an infant, and I grew up in Atlanta. We lived in Ansley Park, and I went to Tenth Street School on Juniper Street for a while. I went to Tenth Street School then O'Keefe Junior High and then Boys' High School and then Emory University. Then I went to University of Pennsylvania to do graduate work. LL: What field? BB: It was a scholarship, a _____ given by the ____ Foundation. And I was there in Philadelphia when World War II broke out. LL: Were you drafted or did you enlist? BB: No I was still just 20 years old, so I was not subject to the draft when it broke out. Since, matter of fact, I came back to Atlanta and tried to get in the Army Air Corps because I had a pilot's license. But anyhow I couldn't, I had some problems with my eyes. I tried the Navy and they said I had problems with my eyes. Then this friend of mine from the Marine Corps came down, Jack Mc_____ a fellow from Savannah. He said the Marine Corps didn't care whether I could see or not, I couldn't fly but I went ahead and joined the Corps. Shortly thereafter, I went to Quantico for officer training. While there, I was offered and accepted a regular commission in the Marine Corps. I stayed at Quantico in the schools there as an officer instructor for some time and then went to sea school and then went to the USS Lexington. Well first I went to the USS General William Mitchell, a transport where I had a small detachment of I think myself and twenty eight men. LL: Tell me about your boot camp and training experiences, what was that like? BB: Well of course, we had some of the finest NCOs in the world as our instructors and very competent officers as well. LL: Do you remember any of their names? BB: Oh, there's Felix Daniel was a gunnery sergeant, fellow by the name of ________ was one of our sergeants. Berryhill was another one. Eubanks was a platoon leader, Stout was a platoon leader. LL: What makes them stand out in your mind? BB: You know it's hard to say, probably the fact that they were, they had some complete integrity as individuals. They were all very hard on us physically and mentally but only to toughen us I think. And it was a very rewarding experience because you did leave behind civilian practices and come into a different culture, which is what the whole thing is about. LL: What would a typical day have been like? BB: Well we got up I think probably about five o'clock. We'd go out for the morning run which was generally a couple miles. Then we'd come in for breakfast. Then we'd have classes in various military subjects all throughout the day and then secure at night around I guess 5:30 or 6 and have supper and go to bed. LL: So you said you went on from there to, what was the first ship you were on? BB: It was the Gen. William Mitchell, AP114. It was a troop ship, it was one of a class of ship that were built, this particular ship was manned by the Coast Guard. It had a Marine detachment and had a small Army troop detachment on it, Navy doctors, Navy chaplain. It was everything except the U.S. Air Force and that hadn't been invented then. LL: How many people? BB: Hm? LL: How many people would you say were on the ship? BB: Ship's _____ probably a couple hundred, but it would carry 3,000 troops, and it was fast, so it usually almost always traveled alone, depending on good information and speed to keep it out of the way of submarines. Traveled a couple of times to Casa Blanca and then a couple of times to, one time to Ireland, then a couple of times into Liverpool. When we came back to Norfolk and went through a canal out to Melbourne and then to Bombay. Then came back and picked up a bunch of Marines at _______ including General Ray Davis who recently died, medal of honor winner, wonderful man, first rate Marine. And came on back to the states and I was transferred from the Mitchell to the Lexington which is a Sealey 16 aircraft carrier, one of that, at that time they were largest carriers that we had. It had 104 planes on board, it had a Marine detachment of myself and two officers and about sixty men. We, I joined the ship in Atok, which is an atoll out in the middle of nowhere and we went into the Philippines for a little bit and went up and participated in some raids against the Japanese homeland. LL: Do you remember when this was? BB: Oh this would have been in late '44 probably maybe mid '44. Then we came back to the states to get some repairs done, went back out. I forgot which trip we participated in the attack on Iwo Jima. LL: Could you tell me something about that, describe that. BB: Well, I was not ashore, I was on the ship, so I don't really know anything about the physical attack on the land. LL: Did you see any of it from the ship? BB: No, no, the carriers stand out to sea, we need room to launch and recover planes. They don't generally, you don't see much land if you're on an aircraft carrier unless you repair them. But then we came back to Seattle, Puget Sound for refitting, then back out, more raids. Then the war ended. We, I remember that we had just gotten the word that the armistice was being signed and then went over the speaker system that there were some bogies coming in, and Halsey was aboard, and he said are they bogies, and the answer was yes, sir. And he said well shoot them down but do it in a friendly fashion. So… LL: And did you? BB: Yes. When we steamed in Tokyo Bay under the Coast Guard naval base and landed, made up a fleet marine regiment made up of men, us and from the ship's detachments. And went ashore to secure the naval base and naval air station which they had there. And we were ashore for several days. When we came back to the ship they wouldn't let us anywhere beyond the gangway because all of were ridden with lice, so they rigged a fumigation tent, we got on the ship, and went in this fumigation tent, kill all the lice before they'd let us back aboard. LL: Did you have much contact with the Japanese when you were off the ship? BB: No. Not much. They were very peaceable. I went with a bunch of fellows in a JEEP and the JEEP broke down near nightfall, and I sent the others back and one man stayed with me not realizing what was happening, it was, got cold so we went knocking on a couple doors, and this Japanese invited us in and gave us some tea and we were waiting for hopefully some, somebody to come out and rescue the JEEP and us. And this was tough looking Jap walked in, you know and he looked at us, I thought, I think maybe we've got some little trouble brewing here and then he said any one of you from Chicago? He said I'm in this place for three years, I want to go home. He had come over, it was only a few years, he had come over to get his fiancée and the war broke out and they kept him. So, after the Lexington, I went to troop training Atlantic fleet and was there for a while, about a year I guess and then I was sent over to headquarters US/European commands, which at that time was in Frankfort on Meine, supposed to be getting ready to move to London, which never happened. We were there for about eighteen months and then the headquarters moved to _______, a little town near Versailles, just outside of Paris. LL: And what year was this? BB: That would have been in 1950, no, no, it was 1950 was the Korean war. Oh, I left out the Korean War, how could I do that? When I came back from the Lexington, I took command of the Marine barracks at Sullivan's Island, Maryland, and then shortly thereafter I took command of a Marine barracks at Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the _____, and got interested early in helicopters because there was a Navy experimental helicopter squadron there. And they had some Marines attached to that squadron, and the Marine pilots were attached to me, and I made several very good friends in the Marine Corps aviation at that time. LL: At any time had you thought about leaving the military after World War II? BB: No, I loved the Marine Corps, I loved it from the moment they offered me a regular commission. I was thrilled and never changed, haven't changed yet, don't think I will now. But to resume, from the Marine barracks at Lakehurst, went to the junior school at Quantico and from there went to the Second Marine Division where I was put in charge of an outfit that was to develop basic infantry skills and people who had just graduated from boot camp. It was called the USMCV program and later became the unofficial combat training the Marine Corps used and still uses. And then I became staff ______ of the divisions, then went into the Second Battalion, Second Marines as weapons company commander. Shortly thereafter, the whole, most of the division got on trains and went out to the west coast and 2nd Battalion 2nd Marines became 1st Battalion 1st Marines. And I still was weapons company commander. We were out on the west coast for just a couple of weeks, later then the USS Naval NAPA which was attack transport, and we sailed to _____. In Covy (?) we had to, it was real interesting. Everything was done in such a terrible hurry that we had a mixture of loads in that amphibious operation. You've got to load ships in a very special way because if you want ammunition you can't go digging up from the bottom of the hold –the ammunition's got to be up here, so does medical supplies, so does water. So it is combat loaded and with some due attention to what the shoreline is like and what your needs would be. The ship had left in such a hurry that it didn't have time to do that. So it was commercial loaded, that is everything went in. When we went to Covy, we had a, I think about a week there, and we had to unload the ship and then reload it combat loaded. It was complicated by the fact that a big storm came up during that time, everything got wet and blown around, it was really sort of a mess. My dad was in Tokyo and my mother, and they came down to see me during that time. LL: ____________ BB: My father was a colonel in the army, he was ________ and he was in MacArthur's headquarters there. LL: What was his name? BB: Well I was junior, so he was William Bernard Bates. In the pictures, you know when I was talking, I should have mentioned there was this picture. This was the way that I looked as a young fresh cut Marine. And I've got another picture here that shows what the years did to me, when I retired, I was a little older. LL: You had two pictures with your father? BB: Yeah, and I'll get to those in a minute. We then sailed for ________ and made the ____ landing. It was real interesting because the landing was made primarily at night. Oh gosh, a good friend of mine landed on ____ which was a little island that stuck out in the middle of the harbor during the day. I can't remember his name, but then our regiment was due to land on the southern part of the beach. Whole thing was complicated by the fact that they have a terrible tide there, I think about 21 feet. And the bottom is mud, so if you get stuck in the mud, you're there. So you've got to take advantage of the tide at its height. My battalion was to go in reserve and we were to go in about 5:30 but we didn't get started until about 6:00 and it was getting dark. We, the boat wave commander apparently didn't have good instructions because we went in and I could see two islands on our right, they should have been on our left. So I told him to come about because I was in the fifth wave. The first waves went on in and they were landed on the wrong place, landed in some salt _______ and had a terrible time. We came up, went around the islands and found the _____ and instead of being the fifth wave, we were not only the first wave, we were the only wave. But we ran into very moderate resistance, a couple shots around. We had one guy who was hurt a little bit. And then some other people came down there, some of those people managed to work their way down the coast. We were finally managed to get most of the battalion together. Then we, from there, we went on into the attack toward Yongongpo which is a town on the other side of the Hon river from Seoul and moved pretty rapidly there. We had a wonderful bunch of people in our battalion that—Able company was commanded by Bob Barrow who later became commandant of the Marine Corps, Becker company was commanded by Wes ____, ended up a colonel, Charlie company was commanded by Bob Ray, tall thin drink of water. There's funny, people always seem to think that the thing they do worst is the thing that they do best. Ray would always tell me that they were the most cut up, put together company in the world, that they always were not only on time but ahead of schedule, they were never on time, they were always late. But you know you can talk to _____ and Ray wouldn't believe a watch, good man, first rate man. My executive officer was a guy named McIntire who was a cool stiff drink of water, he was alright but I was not particularly fond of him. I had a machine gun platoon leader named Bill Masterpool who was absolutely fantastic, just first rate. My mortar platoon leader was Eugene Paradey, a Yankee, a Maine fellow. _____, he devised a way to increase our mortar support, a little battalion at that time and still pretty much so. He had some internal fire support weapons. The companies have real mortars, 60mm mortars. The battalion has 81mm mortars, has a range of about three miles. And it has six, the idea being two to support each rifle company. Well Paradey said let's not do that, let's steal two more mortars, which we did, and we had instead of having three sections of two mortars each, we had two platoons of four mortars each, and the mortars then were able to displace one after another. Paradey also said let's don't fool around with the old fashioned way of calling fires which was forward observer would estimate the azimuth, the line between the gun and the target. Let's say that the observer's here, and the gun is here, and the target is there, he would put an imaginary line here and when the gun fired, he would try to correct that fire based on the imaginary line. We're pretty skillful, but Paradey says let's just go the artillery way, cause it isn't that complex. So the artillery way is that you have a line between you and the target and the gun as a line between itself and the target, you tell the gun where the shot fires according to your line and they use their tables to move it to their line. Well, it increases your effectiveness and speed tremendously. This was Paradey's doing. Paradey and Masterpool were two of the finest young officers I had ever seen, both of them really short, used to call them the gold dust twins. Just terrific. Then the AT platoon leader, the anti-tank platoon leader, we had three or four five inch rockets and flame throwers. Platoon leader was a guy by the name of Bill Kohline, a fine young officer. And the battalion commander was Jack Hawkins. Jack Hawkins, he had been a fine commander, but I'll tell you, he was captured by the Japanese on Corrigedor, and it didn't break him but it caused him to become afraid of being captured again. I know at one point, Hawkins and I were going around in the ____, we were trying to get around to come up with the leading elements of the battalion, and a north Korean tank suddenly appeared behind us and started shooting at us. We jumped over into some wrecked buildings and Hawkins said I'm not going to be captured again, if they come in here, why don't you just shoot me. I said I ain't going to shoot you, you shoot those bastards. TAPE 1 SIDE B Well the NK tank kept on going, thank goodness, we made it alright. It happened, the sort of thing happened again at a little town called Kojo up in north Korean, but I'll come to that later. In Seoul, course our regimental commander was the legendary Louie Fuller, _____ Fuller, five Navy Crosses, fantastic guy. Louie Fuller wanted me to be his operations officer. I didn't want to be Louie Fuller's operations officer. His first sergeant says if you pull this operations off, it's very simple, all you need a ruler. We hear _____ draw line. It's pretty much that way. I know at one point, we had just taken a high hill overlooking Seoul, and we were getting our battalion to swing around the hill, which is a very difficult maneuver, you know, advance a company and send a company out and they would go out and, just to make a real swinging movement. We had pretty high price to pay for it. ____ all of the sudden appeared at CP and he's looking and there's nothing to be seen. Our troops were moving, he said what's going on, what's going on, he says how many casualties have you had today. And Hawkins says I haven't had any yet. Fuller says well you ain't fighting then, you've got to have some blood out there. About that time, the tank came up and flashed him with his flame thrower, the building shot up in flames and people running around screaming and hollering, a lot of shooting. And Fuller says well now that's better. Fuller was something. He, Fuller, went to a great deal of trouble to make people think that he was bluff and bluster, he was really a very intelligent guy. He was a Marine's Marine, he was terrific, well he was the regimental commander. Well let's see, we went on into Seoul and took it, we, after that, we got into transports, my company was ordered into what they call a _____ out, it was an LST which is a landing ship tank which had been rented to the Japanese to use as fishing boats. And so they unrented them to use them for invasion craft. Well the Japanese had used this thing as a fishing boat and you could really tell it because it smelled to high heaven. It was worse because when we left Enchon and went around the end of the peninsula and on up to Wonsun. When we got up there we turned around and came back out to sea and then turned around and went back up. They were trying to clear mines out of Wonsun harbor. I think we were, it seemed like we were there for a month, but I guess we were doing this about three days then finally went ashore at Wonsun just the administrative landing. Then we were sent down to Kojo to protect some supplies down there. There was a rock, Republic of Korea, South Korean regiment that was around this little, beautiful little seaport town of just, lovely. We no sooner got there than they hightailed it and we put our dispositions which were far to separated and we got hit by a tough North Korean regiment during the night and lost, lost some people that we shouldn't have lost, in my opinion. Then Hawkins got the wind of it and wanted to go back to Wonsun, and a couple of us said no, we're not going to do that, _____ said let's don't do that. He got on the radio and said we were in deep trouble, so they put us another battalion down for this big fight. Course the other battalion got there and wondered what's happening. Sent a destroyer down ______ and then we were relieved and pulled out and as soon as we got back to Wonsun, Fuller sent Hawkins home, gave us a guy named Buck Schmuck, [one of] the finest combat men I have ever seen in my life, arrogant, egotistical, you know, awful, except the men loved him and so did the officers because he was just plain good and absolutely fearless. You know, when you're in combat, every once in a while you have a chance where you can have a fire and just stand around the fire and talk and stuff. Schmuck, _____ you're familiar to the lie, you can say well I made all A's in college. Nobody will challenge that, but you're not ready to lie too much. Schmuck lied too much. Told us he was an Olympic diver, that he had gone to participate in games in Neurenberg, was hailed by his old hometown just outside of Ennsbrook when he stopped by for a visit, there was a big ranch out in Buffalo Montana, Wyoming. Well, the problem was all these things were true, like I say just absolutely fantastic. We had some small combat actions there, my Dad visited us there, and that's another picture that I've got this little teeny one. But my Dad would come over to Korea on business from MacArthur's headquarters and he would go to the army headquarters and of course after his first visit they knew immediately to send, after he did what he needed to do there, to send him to the 10th corps, and the 10th corps would send him to the 1st division, 1st division would send him to our battalion and Dad would spend the night with us. He also generally would bring a couple bottles of whiskey, which made him a very popular figure. But it was, I remember one time, Dad got, was up in the fort, _____, and they said they sent him down in a helicopter the next day but the choppers were all up north, we'd already started the push up towards the reservoir. So, I got the radio message, I thought well hell I'll just go get him. So we were about twenty miles south there, I threw a couple of rifles in a JEEP, and my JEEP driver was somewhere, I couldn't locate him, and night was approaching. I wanted to get Dad and get back because there were guerillas all through the area. So I raced up there and found Dad and got him in the car and checked him out and a rifle and said now look there are some guerillas but let's go. We'll be able to make it back pretty much by nightfall. Dad said let's go, so we got in it. The only bad thing that happened was that we were under attack because Dad and I felt that there was no force in the universe that could possibly beat us, we were damn fools, we were lucky we weren't wiped out, off the face. He was a great guy. Well we then went on up towards the north, the division already had sent the fifth marines were way up near ______, oh this was around the Chosun reservoir area. Now these are high mountains, there are mountains up there around 5,000 feet. And the terrain is very rugged, it's not a nice jut around this _____. The 7th marines were ________ and most of the 1st marines were at Kyoto_____, and we were try again. We had been cleaning up some stuff in the south and we were to try again and went up to a place called Chinhungme (counter 120). We had some probing attacks with Chinese, we set out some ____ patrols and some fires and pretty much pushed them away from us. By enlisting the civilian population, if China man stays in your house, we won't come and burn your house down. So for the ______ why don't you come and tell us and will shoot the China man so he can't stay in your house. Quid pro quo, it was pretty good. We, but then of course the Chinese came in with massive forces and the division was told to retreat, OP Smith said we ain't retreating, we're attacking a different direction. Well it's true, we were attacking because all of us were surrounded, you'd ___ any way you wanted to, you'd be under attack. When they did that, we figured that the one thing that we knew that we could do would be to attack north and take the big hills. There's a road and you've got to use the road to get wounded out, etc… and the road is just a, the road is no wider than these two tables. And you know the drop offs were 1,000 feet here and it's a, road's essential. The road came from Kyoto____ out around this thing with a big mountain here but a distance from the road and we had gone up there a couple of days before and registered artillery including some stuff I think from the 92nd armored field artillery. That's got _____ army ___ great guy, had this 8 inch howitzer battalion and 155's were there. We had registered started blowing the Chinese off that hill but we needed to go off and attack the hill because the road came back and then made a deep switch end and there was a bridge. The engineers had come up and repaired this bridge when Schmuck and I went up to make this reconnaissance. And then they cleared out just as the Chinese were coming to collect Buck and myself and the squad that we had with us. But we figured pretty certain that the Chinese weren't going to let that bridge stay, and they didn't. And of course that was a checkpoint, but if we got up on the hill we could protect the people working on the bridge so they redid the bridge. They dropped bridge sections from aircraft and then muscled them into place so people could get past this. This bridge was at a pin stoke station, the ____ reservoir and another reservoir fell into pin stokes, big tubes that using force gravity turned turbines to produce electricity. They were still functioning. And there was an inclined railroad. But anyway, we went into the, Schmuck and I reconnoitered this place along with Bruce Sigman, AS2, a guy named Tovan who was the artillery forward observer a few days before. So we had a good idea of the terrain and we went into the attack and secured the hill. And then the people started, our men started coming out for _____, Bob Taf____ I think was the Lt. Colonel ______ was one of the first people that made contact with us. And the division, it was cold, and I don't know whether you realize, it's hard to realize how cold, cold really is. Now we were up there I think the temperature was about 15 to 20 degrees below zero and the wind was blowing and with the wind chill it was about 45 below zero. Well, when you're in the ground you don't have any place of heat, ground's cold, you're cold, everything's cold. And we had lots of troubles because our men had been issued these shoepacks, which are designed to be waterproof. Problem is that when you walk in them your feet sweat and then when you stop, your feet freeze so even in the attack you've got to make your men stop, sit down, take off their shoes, socks, and the inner felt and replace them with dry stuff and then start in the attack again. We had over 100 men who were cold casualties although every officer and NCO was trying to get people to protect their ears and protect their feet and protect their hands. It was terrible. I see you looking at your watch, are we running over time? LL: No, we're fine. BB: Am I rambling? LL: No, your details are marvelous, unbelievable. BB: Oh, good. Don't encourage me. Well, we came down from the mountain and were brought back in a transport to Meisan and there we were refitted with equipment and reinforced with replacements. While we were there, I told Buck Schmuck, I said my parents are in Tokyo and we're not doing anything ‘round here, I'd like to go over and see them. He says you've lost your mind. I said, he said if you guys pull, do something stupid like that, he'll eat you alive. I said well you know, right now I want to do that and Fuller don't know that I want to do that and he won't ever know unless I tell him or unless you tell him. Schmuck said I ain't going to tell him a damn thing, if you want to, be my guest. So I went in Fuller's tent, I knocked on the tent pole, Fuller looked up, said what you want Bridges. I said, sir, my name is Bates. I don't give a blankety blank what you name is, what do you want. I thought well this thing's started off real well. I said, I told him that my mother and dad were over in Tokyo and if I could get a ride over there I'd keep touch through MacArthur's headquarters and if the battalion was going to move, I'd be right back. He said you stupid blankety blank blank blank blank, there goes. He said I don't understand how anybody, how anybody would be so blank blank blank stupid as to sit here at Christmas when his mommy and his daddy are only a few miles away in Tokyo, I don't understand. He got a field telephone, cranked it up, said get me the general. ______ he says I got this fellow here, I want to send him to Japan to see his mommy and his daddy. He said his name is Bridges. I said, sir, my name is Bates. He said I don't give a damn what your name is. The next morning I was on the airplane heading for Japan. I got all the way ____ called _____ and they went out there and I called, it was a Navy fellow named Bruce _____, captain, and they were old time friends of ours. I called, talked to his wife, she said your mother and dad are at the Japanese hotel in Tokyo, I can't think of the name of it right now. He said we're going to join them in a few minutes why don't you go there? And I said I'll go there, so I had a JEEP and went found and the manager and said I'd like to get some of the smell off if possible and would you tell my dad that I'm here. So shortly thereafter Dad came steaming down so we had a big reunion and then went up and saw Mother, and I had a couple days with them and went on back to the battalion. We, shortly thereafter, we went off a little bit north of there to an area that the North Koreans had infiltrated, and they were doing a lot of guerilla attacks. We never could figure out quite why, we don't know whether they were cut off or what, but at any rate, they were raising cain with all the little communities around there. Bruce Sigman set up his intelligence network, he went to all the little villages because it was time to ship the rice, and he said look we'll protect you and your rice if you'll just keep us informed about these folks ‘cause if you don't they'll come, they're going to burn your rice. So we started getting pretty good info and we were chasing guerillas and pretty, chased them pretty much all the county I guess. But then Ridgeway came and the tempo of the war changed, and that was a good thing. We went up from this little area where _____ to Wanju. I went off in an ambulance, I had been sick as a dog and the battalion surgeon said I should go to the hospital ship. I had pneumonia, and Buck Schmuck says, he said, Bill, the surgeon says you ought to go to the hospital ship and he said I'm going to just leave it up to you, you know we need you ‘cause we're going to go under the attack, we just need you so you make the choice. I said I want to go to the hospital. He says I'm damned if you want to go to the hospital ship, we'll send you up in an ambulance. And so I had, a couple of days later I got slammed in an ambulance _____ up to Wanju, and I think it was then any day that I really thought maybe I made a mistake in, it was the next day that we went into the attack ‘cause I put on my pack, it was raining and we went slogging down through a puddle of mud then got into a firefight, digging foxholes, it kept raining, and the foxholes kept filling up with water. I've never more miserable in my life. We had some good days. A lot of maneuvering, we would form a right flank of the division most of the time so we didn't have to worry about anybody on our right, we would make big envelopments. You know sometimes, and this sounds funny, but sometimes war can right fun. You're dealing with some Chinese who are retreating. So you attack at 8:00 in the morning, five minutes preparation and go into the attack and he shoots a little bit and you shoot a little bit and he retreats. The next day you start at 8:00 in the morning, you fire, the next day you start 8:00 in the morning. The next day you send troops way out at 3:00 in the morning to come home and then you start your attack at 8:00 in the morning. The Chinese start running and you wipe out a company, you just… It, virtually no loss, so it's good. It isn't good but at least it's entertaining I guess. LL: We've got about ten more minutes. BB: Ten more minutes? Well I'll tell you about probably the most difficult battle that we were in. When the Chinese started their spring offensive in April of '51, they broke the sixth rock division on the left flank of our division and there was nothing between the Chinese and _____, no forces. There were large quantities of Chinamen who were coming in on the left flank of the first Marine division. First Marines were in reserve and we were sent out to refuse the flank, to bend the flank back and protect against the Chinese, there were literally thousands and thousands of them. My battalion was the first to go out and the furthest. We were supposed to be married up with a battalion of seventh Marines that were going to come up on our right. The battalion of first Marines were going to come up on our left. Both of them got stopped by the Chinese behind us. And we were out there by ourselves under extremely severe attack. We tied in closely for the night and when we were in reserve, our normal supporting artillery had been diverted and was up firing for the Korean Marine corps regiment. So on the way up, we stopped by and talked to Buzz Winecoff of the artillery regiment, the commander, and he said well if I give you the 155's I'll give you two of them and then we'll put some more of them on there. We brought the 155's, this is a big gun, we brought them in within 50 yards of our position. One of them had been 50 yards short, we would have wiped out a platoon _____. The fighting was that intense. We were knocked off the hill, ___ hill, under very very severe attack. We had 100 casualties. Normally if you've got close to 1000 men, 100 casualties pretty much routs you out. But then we said, ok come on back. Hell we were being fired at from behind. There were Chinese between us. So I, the battalion commander had fallen and hurt his knee, and he went, I sent the battalion exec Bill Bridges and the battalion commander Bob West, we had some tanks and motor transport. We loaded the wounded into the motor transport and sent the tanks along the road with the platoon, Baker company, to run this gauntlet of machine gun fire the Chinese were… TAPE 2 SIDE A …killed and some more wounded. Some of the wounded wounded again. But they made it and then it was up to us to fight our way out. And I devised a plan. We came back by echelons. Chinese were pursuing us all the way, running around screaming surrender, surrender and Masterpool got his machine guns up. Beautiful job. That was great. We, one big disappointment, I was recommended for the Navy Cross for that operation and the Navy Cross was awarded but it was awarded to the battalion commander who wasn't even there. That happens but not very often. I never did have any respect for that regimental commander who did that. But anyway… LL: Tell me about the ribbons that you have on. BB: Well, these are personal decorations. This is a Silver Star, that's a Bronze Star with a combat device. This is the Air Medal. I got the Air Medal for reconnaissance flights, and this is a Navy commendation medal with a combat device. I didn't show this picture did I? Me in combat gear and my retirement. LL: Beautiful. And how about the two with your father? BB: Well, I sort of skipped over those. My dad, when I was promoted to colonel, my dad pinned me on one shoulder with his Army eagle and General Ray Murray put the Marine Corps eagle on the other shoulder. And from then until I retired I wore an Army eagle on one shoulder. LL: And when did you officially retire? BB: Long ago, in 1965. LL: Is there anything else you would like to say to finish up? BB: No, I think I said too much already. No, I didn't mention this book. This book is a description in detail of the operations of the battalion in the Enchon landing, the _____ reservoir operation, and the spring operations in 1951, all in Korea. LL: And the original is in? BB: The original of this is in the Marine Corps at the Navy yard in Washington. That's where. LL: Well, thank you so much, we appreciate you coming and sharing with us. - Metadata URL:
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- Original Collection:
- Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center - Contributing Institution:
- Atlanta History Center
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