My Last Days in Korea, December 1951
Noll wins the Lottery The army gave points for your time in Korea. You got 4 points for combat or high-risk areas. You got 2 points for time in the rear areas. The problem was that the Company had gone to Korea together and almost all had 64 points. You were supposed to go home after 36 points, but they couldn't allow so many people to go home all at once. So they held a lottery of sorts to decide who would go home first and so forth. I was chosen the first to go from my relay station. I was excited and prepared to go home. My first trip was to Company Headquarters. From there I would get transportation bound for home.Assigned Guard Duty I arrived at the company headquarters and that very night they put me on guard duty. I had turned in my rifle, the one that was charged out to me. That is standard procedure. So they had to give me some weapon to stand guard duty. They gave me some kind of 45-caliber weapon that I had never seen before. It had a stock that was just a wire frame. This weapon was given to me about 10 minutes before I was to stand duty. We all lined up in formation to be inspected by the Officer in Charge. Now for the last 16 months I had had my Class A uniform washed in streams by native Korean ladies where they beat it with sticks to clean it.
A Sorry Sight The other GIs had fancy uniforms pressed to a fine degree. They even had creases sewn in the pants. Their helmets were chromed, as were their belts and all metal fittings. There was not a single inch in my uniform that did not have a wrinkle. But I had one thing they didn't. I was going home. The Lt. saw me and declared that I was the sorriest soldier he had ever seen. All too true. But I was going home. He stopped in front of me and asked what was the serial number of my weapon, something any good soldier would know. I told him I didn't know, that they had just handed it to me a few minutes ago. He then asked me what the muzzle velocity was. I laughed and said that I didn't even know what kind of weapon it was. He looked most disgusted and walked on.
The Trip Home The next day I got aboard a train for Pusan. When I looked around the train I noticed a number of bullet holes in the train car. Someone said that on the way people sometimes took pot shots at the train. Shortly after arriving in Pusan I boarded a Japanese ferry to Japan. We slept on rice mats in little cubicles. We arrived in Sasebo and from there took a boat to the USA with a stop in Hawaii. We stayed in Hawaii for about 2 hours to let some GIs off. I eventually got home on December 24th about 20:00 hours.