He joined the national guard to pay for college in 1949, and was activated with his artillery unit six months later - talk about bad timing!

1. He said he loved fighting side by side with the Turks. Other nationalities would ‘run away’ in the night, but the Turks never ran away. The Turks would also immediately kill any thief, UN or Chinese, they apprehended in their camp.

2. One night the Turks blasted their artillery for no apparent reason. This was supposedly a bad thing to do, because it would alert the Chinese to your position. Sure enough, the Chinese artillery responded. Then a contingent of Turks left the area since they now knew where the Chinese were. They sustained 50% casualties, and returned to camp with no prisoners.

3. The Chinese Army’s leadership was shockingly indifferent to their own troops’ lives. My grandpa said that large troop movements would march in the open and get hit by his artillery unit and US planes for hours, and the Chinese troops would just continue marching. He also mentioned that the Chinese would frequently attempt human wave attacks against US positions that had artillery and machine guns. The outcomes were predictable, but they would constantly perform such attacks.

Such a nightmare conflict. The Korean War deserves better recognition than it has received.