Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:58 | At the age of sixteen, Bob Humphery was already in the National Guard and as soon as he was old enough, he went into the Army. At boot camp, he was getting tired on the long marches so he came up with a plan to lighten his load. He was pulling good duty occupying Japan when his unit was called for Korea and soon he was an expert at climbing hills.
Attack and counter attack. Bob Humphery describes two of the see-saw battles in Korea, The Schoolhouse and The Bowling Alley. He remembers wave after wave of Chinese when they joined the fight, many of them unarmed. When he found himself fleeing under fire, there was one thought in his mind, "What would a rabbit do?"
During the early part of the Korean War, Bob Humphery's unit drove all the way to Manchuria and occupied Pyongyang, now the North Korean capital. He was amused at being drilled extensively on using boats for river crossing, then using a footbridge when the time came. Since he never took R&R, he was among the first Americans to return home.
