The 581st Signal Radio Relay Company

Spitting Cherries by Richard P. Bulik

Our army company - 581 Radio Relay Co. from Camp Gordon, GA. - arrived in Yokohama, Japan, in August 1950. After one week, one team (14 enlisted men and one officer) of which I was a member was immediately assigned to a naval communication ship USS El Dorado in Tokyo. All of our communication equipment was loaded aboard ship. The purpose of this detached service to the Navy, as it turned out, was to provide ship-to-shore communication with a marine company that was to go ashore during the invasion of Inchon. They had compatible equipment the ship did not have.

The ship turned out to be the flagship for the invasion, with General Douglas MacArthur on board.

Following the successful invasion, we were transferred to the El Dorado's sister ship USS Mount McKinley and later onto the battleship USS Missouri for a possible second invasion on the east coast of Korea at Wonson. Because of the rapid success of the South Korean forces moving north along the east coast, this second invasion never came off. We were put ashore at Wonson harbor, made our way to Hamhung, South Korea, and set up a radio relay station in a former S. Korean radio station building. Some time later we rejoined our company and eventually wound up in Hungnam, North Korea.

After the Chinese broke through at the Chosen Reservoir, the retreat of our forces began, with everyone exiting at the port of Hungnam, taking whatever equipment could be loaded aboard ships and destroying the rest. Another team from our company was also up at the Chosen Reservoir with the Marines. Our company was loaded on a freighter and bedded down on top of a hatch cover over the ship's hold. Every conceivable thing was in that hold, from hip boots to all kinds of food. The day we disembarked at Pusan we got a large can of cherries from the hold, and a group of us were sitting in a circle eating cherries and spitting pits on the deck. I often wished I had a picture of that event.