Battlefield Korea

I Just Wanted the GI Bill

Sergeant Ian Slater had just made sergeant when the war in Russia started. He was thankful he was stationed in Korea, away from the fighting. All he wanted from the Army was the GI Bill to pay for college. He wanted to get his degree in automotive mechanical engineering like his brother Marcus had and get a decent paying job. Marcus had started working for Tesla two years ago, and all he talked about was how cool it was to be part of a design team that was helping to change the future of the automotive industry. Ian wanted to be like his brother, but he didn’t have the same stellar grades Marcus did in high school, so he was unable to get a full-ride scholarship to any of the colleges that specialized in his major.

His dad (who wanted to help pay for college, but was financially unable to do so) suggested that he look at the Army for help with paying for tuition. Their grandma had dementia and needed constant care, and that was costly; since his dad was an only child, all the financial responsibility fell on him. Ian knew that his father was making the right decision, but it didn’t make his own path any easier. Ian hated violence, and the last thing he wanted to do was be placed in a situation where he might have to kill someone.

When he spoke with the army recruiter, they told him that if he joined for four years, with two of them being in Korea, he could not only get the GI Bill, he could also get a $25,000 signing bonus. He immediately jumped at the opportunity. Two and a half years later, he was sitting in a Bradley fighting vehicle, slowly moving across the DMZ in the second Korean war.

The first day of the ground war had been horrific. The fighting was brutal, often devolving to hand-to-hand combat as they fought with their South Korean counterparts to penetrate the North’s defenses. The Air Force and their own artillery had hit the North’s positions hard, there was hardly a part of the North’s positions that were not bombed out or cratered; even still, the soldiers they encountered fought on like men possessed.

As Sergeant Slater sat in the vehicle, reloading an empty magazine for his M4, he saw one of the privates across from him drawing yet another dark line in his journal, denoting a kill. Slater told the private, “It’s a bit morbid to keep track of death like that.”

The young 19-year-old shrugged; he did not seem to care.

“I hope this guy doesn’t turn out to become some kind of serial killer when he leaves the Army,” reflected Slater as he placed the newly loaded magazine back into his front ammo pouch.

While their Bradley continued to move forward, an explosion rocked their vehicle slightly. It was probably a near-miss from an artillery round. They heard pieces of shrapnel slap against the armored walls.

“Dear God, I hate that sound,” thought Slater.

The Bradley’s gunner fired off a short burst from the turret’s 25mm chain gun, aimed at some unseen target. The vehicle commander then called out to the soldiers in the back, “Another enemy troop position has been identified-we are going to rush the position.”

The Bradley lurched forward as the tracks began to pick up speed. The gunner fired the chain gun a few more times as they got closer to the enemy positions. A series of bullets bounced loudly off their armored walls before the gunner managed to silence the attack.

“RPG!” screamed the gunner.

A second later, their vehicle was jolted by a forceful thud as the RPG slammed into their front right track, bringing the Bradley to an abrupt halt. Everyone inside grabbed onto something to steady themselves and keep from being thrown around like ragdolls.

“Gunner, give us some covering fire! Everyone else, dismount!” yelled the vehicle commander.

The vehicle commander and his driver also got out of the Bradley; he wanted to examine where they had been hit and see if they could repair it themselves, or if they would have to call for a wrecker vehicle to tow them back to the rear for maintenance.

“Fan out on the left side,” the vehicle commander directed. This would give him the space he needed to go and assess the full extent of the damage.

As soon as they exited the vehicle, however, they came under immediate ground fire from several enemy positions. Bullets started whipping through the air, kicking up dirt and rocks near his soldiers, and ricocheting off the armored body of their Bradley. His men began to scatter, looking for cover and praying they wouldn’t get hit by one of the hot pieces of lead flying through the air.

As sergeant Slater ran to a bomb crater for cover, the smell of cordite and death hung in the air all around them. Then as he looked down below his feet, he saw several dead and rotting enemy soldiers and it startled him just a little bit. Many of the deceased remains were missing limbs.

He pushed the horrific sight out of his mind and looked up over the edge of the crater. Ian spotted several enemy soldiers popping up and down from two foxholes, firing at his squad, probably no more than 100 yards from their position. He squinted and rubbed his eyes…

“Ugh, I was right,” Ian realized. “That is a machine gun bunker about 200 yards away, spitting out hundreds of rounds a minute at us.”

Just as he was trying to figure out how they were going to deal with the machine gun bunker, the 25mm gun from the Bradley fired a string of rounds into it, silencing it quickly. Then the Bradley’s gunner fired two rounds at the enemy soldiers in the foxholes before Slater heard the gun jam.

“Alpha team, lay down covering fire! Bravo team advance!” he yelled to his soldiers as he jumped up from the edge of the bomb crater he was leaning against. He raised his M4 to his shoulder and began to fire single round shots at the group of enemy soldiers who were firing at his team, attempting to shoot at his soldiers. As he and the rest of Bravo team made it to their next set of covering positions, Alpha team bounded beyond their position while it was Bravo team’s turn to lay down covering fire.

As they got closer to the enemy positions, several of the soldiers in his squad began to throw some hand grenades at the enemy soldiers. A couple of booms shook the earth in the distance, and then there was silence. His two fire teams began to advance towards the enemy positions cautiously, making sure they had their weapons trained on where the North Korean soldiers had been. When they approached the foxholes, they discovered six dead enemy soldiers. One of his men poked at each of the bodies with the barrel of his rifle, just to make sure they were dead. Then they moved on towards the enemy machine gun bunker, which had remained silent since the Bradley lit it up.

As they made it over the lip of the bunker, they encountered the remains of five dead enemy soldiers before them. Before moving on, they made sure to spike the barrel of the gun, so it couldn’t be used again.

Slater turned to look back at the Bradley. There was a wrecker vehicle, maybe a mile back, and it was very slowly making its way towards their disabled vehicle. It looked like his squad would be moving forward on foot for a while.

Now that they had disabled the machine gun bunker and neutralized the threats, several columns of light infantry soldiers steadily began to move towards them. Sergeant Slater reached for his radio and let his platoon sergeant know about their situation and told him that they would link up with the rest of the platoon when they could. For the time being, his eleven-man squad would continue to move forward on foot to the company’s main objective and hope to meet up with the rest of their comrades there.