Old soldiers remember miracle

Jace Radke

Wednesday, April 10, 2002 | 9:28 a.m.

Hunkered down behind his machine gun on a Korean beach with a full moon illuminating North Korean soldiers on a distant ridge line, 20-year-old Cpl. Pat Shows needed a miracle, though he didn't yet know it.

As enemy fire sparked in the night, Shows didn't hear the order to retreat as the rest of the Raiders, a 120-man Army commando unit, were withdrawing back to their rubber boats.

"A sergeant finally came and told me to get the hell out of there, but when I turned around all I could see was the shadow of my boat," Shows said. "I picked up my 35-pound machine gun and started running. I ran a long time and the water was only coming up to my knees.

"It seemed like I walked on water that night."

Shows' sprint across shallows of the Yellow Sea and the hasty retreat of the rest of his unit was just one of many miracles that 17 of the Raiders are recalling this week at their third annual reunion at The Orleans.

The group will be presented with a Presidential Unit Citation, one of the highest military awards, for carrying out the dangerous raid designed as a feint to draw North Korean defenders away from the true invasion point at Inchon, Korea.

The unit lost three men in the raid, which was deemed a success. The Raiders then joined up with a Marine unit and fought in Korea for eight months.

The members of the all-volunteer unit went from the back lines of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Far East Command headquarters in Tokyo to the front lines in Korea in a matter of weeks during the summer of 1950.

"We were typists, honor guards, drivers and engineers," said 71-year-old former Pvt. John Connor at a cocktail party at The Orleans Tuesday night. "HQ was really one of the most coveted assignments in the Far East Command.

"Everyone at HQ had to be at least 6 feet tall, with perfect vision and a high IQ. I think MacArthur wanted to impress the Japanese with all these tall soldiers walking around."

All the volunteers were told is that they would need to be in good shape, a good swimmer and would be going on dangerous missions. More than 400 men volunteered.

Shows, 72, who now has trouble hearing because of the firing of his machine gun, said he is always amazed by the number of soldiers who volunteered for the unit.

"I guess I was pretty stupid back then at age 20," Shows said. "You have all these people working at headquarters with these high IQs and we volunteer for something like this.

"I think a lot of us just thought it was the right thing to do."

Cecil Kimrey, 71, was a 19-year-old driver ferrying a general around when he volunteered for the Raiders. He became a forward scout.

"You didn't really appreciate the duty you had in Japan until you got into combat," said Kimrey, a former sergeant. "We were living in the lap of luxury, and we traded that for running up and down some damn mountains and getting shot at."

The Raiders estimate that they crammed about six months of training into six weeks to prepare for their new duties. They learned underwater demolition, hand-to-hand combat, submarine deployment and night landings.

"It was the toughest training I ever did," Kimrey said. "Everytime you got into bed it seemed like they were getting you up for two hours of calisthenics."

No amount of training could prepare the mostly combat-green troops for their Sept. 13 raid that would result in the North Koreans transferring a portion of their strength away from the intended targets of Inchon and Kimpo Airfield.

"We had trained to listen for the waves hitting the beach, so we'd know when we were close, but there was no surf," Connor said. "It was totally still out there. Making things worse was the glow coming from the millions of little sea creatures, it was almost phosphorescent.

"It looked like there was a galaxy just under the water's surface."

The raid lasted only an hour, but the tension was enough to exhaust the commandos. Two days later the Raiders were attached to a Marine unit and fought together as a unit for the next eight months.

The unique nature of the Raiders almost cost them the recognition that they earned, Connor said.

"We only just found out about the citation at our first reunion three years ago," Connor said. "We were only a unit for a short time and we had people from all over the country in the group because it was made up of volunteers. We didn't have any clerks with us, so I guess it got lost in a pile of papers somewhere."

The unit will be presented the citation, which is the equivalent of the individual honor of a Distinguished Service Cross, at a banquet tonight at The Orleans.

"It's an honor to be recognized with such an amazing group of people," Connor said.