I Almost Stay in North Korea in Korea -- December, 1950
X Corps is Evacuated from Hungnam Harbor After the Marines had successfully fought their way out of the Chosin Reservoir my Signal Unit was released from our duty at Jade Relay #2 and we worked our way south to the City of Hamhung. We stayed there for a short while and eventually we were ordered to proceed to Hungnam a few miles away to be put aboard ships going south to Pusan. Because I was a truck driver for our team I was assigned to travel with my truck aboard a freighter. When we arrived at the pier where the boarding was taking place there were, seemingly to me, thousands of troops waiting for boarding instructions. The pier was covered with perhaps a foot of snow and the snow was still falling lightly. I had not had much sleep in the past week and I was dead tired. I crawled into my sleeping bag and went to sleep in the midst of all those people. I just didn't care anymore.Bright Lights and a Siren Wake Me Sometime later, I had no idea of the passing time; I was awakened by some extremely bright lights and deafening noise. I stuck my head out of the sleeping bag to discover I was the only one still on the pier. No one except me. Wow! Where were everybody and why the light that blinded me? The freighter on the pier had its spotlight trained on me and its siren was wailing with much vigor. I finally figured that they wanted me aboard the ship. I staggered half asleep over to the ship dragging my equipment. There was just a cargo net to climb up. Fortunately the ship lowered a crane that I hooked my bag and stuff to and I climbed up the net. The ship got under way immediately. No one said anything to me but I sensed some people were not too happy with me.