Sep/Oct 2005 - Korean War Veterans Association

70
There is an adage that
says “an army travels
on its stomach!” Yep,
an army must have food.
Without food it cannot get
very far; but,-an army must
know where it is going to get
that food. For that, they must
have maps. If the army doesn’t
know where it is going
then what can it do?
The 62nd Engineer
Are We There Yet?
TOPO MAPS
By Roland Turley
Topographic Company
(Corp) left Fort Bragg, N.C.
in early September 1950, and
headed for the west coast-
Oakland Army Base. We
were ordered to report to
Korea, since the Korean War
had started on June 25th
1950 when the North Koreans invaded
South Korea. We spent a few days at
Oakland getting the necessary shots and
indoctrination about the war we were
headed for.
For a bunch of “kids,” this was pretty
much a case of the Army’s “hurry-up-andwait”
game. But, we were given some
training in how to get off a troop ship by
way of the rope net ladders, one of the
most miserable devices ever devised by
man. As one steps down toward the next
“rope-rung,” it moves away and causes
one to slip and hang on for dear life. But,
we managed to conquer the device and
moved on to “bigger and better” things.
Our ship, the General Patrick (why
does the merchant marine name its ships
after generals? Ships should be named
after admirals), was loaded with 1,800
troops, most of whom were “greener than
grass.” (I know I was.) We sailed out of
San Francisco Bay and under the Golden
Gate Bridge on September 18th, 1950—
and we were on our way to Korea.
We entered Pusan Harbor on October
3, 1950 and walked down a gangplank
onto Asian soil. From there we were transported
by 6 x 6 GMC trucks to a tent
encampment right on the Pusan Bay.
Between our tents and the bay was barbed
wire on which the squid divers had hung
their little squid to dry. Gad, what a
stink!!! But, as the days moved on we
became acclimated to that odor.
For the next few days we received
instructions on how to behave in that foreign
culture. During our time in Pusan we
attended a few classes designed to inform
us about Asian culture. It was a failure, so
we waited for our trucks and equipment to
arrive at the docks in Pusan.
While waiting, we were assigned to
“native” pushing, i.e., supervising Korean
laborers in the unloading of cargo ships
that came into Pusan Harbor. It was our
job to see that whatever came off those
ships was properly stored in the huge
warehouses on the Pusan docks. After
three weeks of this we were ordered to
Seoul, Korea. We boarded our trucks and
joined a large convoy headed for that city.
As a lowly PFC, I rode in the open
back of one of those 6 x 6s. On our way to
Seoul, we ran into an ambush by North
Korean guerillas. Our convoy was pinned
down for several hours. As we waited—
stalled in the early November sunlight—
we watched as a “shave- tail-lieutenant”
ordered his driver to get ahead of the convoy
by fording a small stream. In the
process, his jeep stalled in the stream. It
was necessary to ask for help from a 6 x 6
on the other side of that stream.
As that 6 x 6 moved down the sandy
bank of that stream, the left front wheel
ran over a large anti-tank mine and blew
two of the soldiers of that vehicle at least
100 feet into the air. Both died instantly!!
They were just young boys trying to do
their job.
We moved on after that traumatic experience,
and headed for Seoul, where we
were billeted in an old school house on the
south side of the city. We set up
our equipment and again began
to produce the Tap MAPS that
every service unit needed.
Now, every GI knows what a
Tap MAP is. It is a depiction of
a portion of the earth’s surface.
It shows roads, streams and
rivers, railroad tracks, little
square dots representing buildings,
little “tufts” of grass representing
swamps, and different
colors representing other
features.
Producing these maps in the
1950s was done primarily by
hand, by following the features
shown on aerial photos, and
then “scaling” those features to
represent accurate distances.
An aerial photo, when taken from the
proper altitude, will pretty much have a
scale whereby an inch on the photo will be
24,000 inches on the ground. Thus, the
scale of 1” = 24 000”
Photographs are on a flat piece of
paper. So, they contain only two dimensions:
length and width. However, the
earth’s surface is in three dimensions:
length, width and depth. By viewing two
photos shot in close sequence through a
pair of stereo lenses, the third dimension
of depth or elevation can be seen and calculated
mathematically. So, from these
things come the beginnings of lines, colors
and symbols on a piece of paper that
we call a map. That was the job of the 62d
Engineer Topographic Company (Corp)
as attached to Eighth Army Hq. during its
time in Korea.
I was one of the cartographers. My job
was to draw those lines on paper to produce
the map. Later, that original was
photographed and made into different
metal plates for the “offset printing” system.
The 62d Engr. Topo. Co. produced
and printed many thousands of maps. In
fact, during the first 6 months of our time
in Korea, we printed and distributed over
400,000 nine-color topographic maps of
the peninsula of Korea. For this, and the
manufacture of a 6 ft. x 8 ft. terrain model
of the area around Pusan, our company
received the Presidential Unit Citation;
the laurel wreath proudly worn on our uniform
sleeve.
We stayed in Seoul for only four or five
September - October 2005
The Graybeards