This appeared on the front page of the Daily Journal Newspaper this morning. This is Chance (Jr)'s and my father....better known as "Daddy".
Greenwood veteran recalls service in Korea
BY JOSEPH S. PETE
Staff writer
Chance S. Sr., a Marine Corps veteran, served 14 months during the Korean War.
May 31, 2010
PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSON
THE CHANCE S. FILE
Who: Chance A. S. Sr.
Where: Greenwood; originally hails from southside
Service: Marine Corps combat engineer from 1948-1951, attained the rank of sergeant
Tour of duty: Served or fought in Koto-ri, Chingung-ni, Hungnam, Seoul, Kimpo Airfield and the Chosin Reservoir
Of note: Appeared as an extra in the John Wayne film "The Sands of Iwo Jima" while serving stateside at Camp Pendleton in California
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May 31, 2010
Greenwood resident Chance S. Sr. got a photo of his daughter in a letter nine days after she was born.
Chance, then 20, saw her likeness for the first time while at an airfield near Seoul that he had just helped liberate after two days of fighting North Korean soldiers.
Over the next 14 months, the Korean War veteran watched his daughter, Paula, grow in photos he received in the mail almost every day. He carried the increasingly thick stack of pictures with him in a plastic bag even when his unit traveled light, taking only rice balls to eat while chasing guerilla fighters from village to village.
His wife, Pauline, made two copies of every photo because she didn't know if they'd get there or if he could hold onto them while fighting all across the Korean peninsula.
Chance, 80, still has the pictures today.
The southside native keeps faded photos, yellowed military records, photocopies of newspaper clippings and the service ribbons he earned in a hefty scrapbook embossed with the U.S. Marine Corps emblem.
Chance still thinks of himself as a Marine after serving four years, nine months and four days of duty more than a half-century ago. He carries himself with a military bearing and flies a Marine Corps flag outside his Greenwood home, which has a collection of military memorabilia and a library stocked with books that generals wrote about Korea.
His keepsakes include a school report that Paula did about the war.
"When my kids went to school down here, they didn't know what the Korean War was, and still nobody knows," he said. "It's a lost war. My daughter found out her class didn't know much about it and did a report to bring it to their attention. You just don't hear about it."
Chance told his family about the highlights of his time in the service, such as when he hand-delivered a radio message to a corncob pipe-chewing Gen. Douglas MacArthur on the command deck of a flagship or when he appeared as an extra in a John Wayne film. But he only started to tell the real stories of his time in the war over the past few years, daughter Paula S. said.
"The Marines were always a big part of his life, and he taught us to fold flags that we had at all our houses and taught us other ways to be patriotic," she said. "But he never really talked about his war experience until the last couple years. I think that's normal for veterans, but now I feel that I know him better."
One of the 'Chosin Few'
Much of what he went through he doesn't like to talk about because people can't understand unless they've been there.
Chance survived one of the bloodiest battles in the Korean War, took part in block-to-block urban fighting in Seoul and trudged through rice paddies while rooting guerillas out of the countryside south of the 38th parallel. He saw comrades fall and lost a childhood friend, who was bayoneted his first day in Korea.
He hadn't known if he would even see combat when he enlisted in 1947 after graduating from Manual High School. The former paperboy had been inspired to serve after seeing neighborhood kids return home in uniform from World War II.
While in high school, Chance had been doing well delivering copies of Indianapolis newspapers, signing up enough new subscribers to win trips to Chicago and Coney Island in Cincinnati. Marine recruiters started coming around his neighborhood, and he saw an opportunity to serve his country and maybe go to school.
He signed up for three years, but the Korean War broke out as his enlistment was ending.
"Uncle Harry (Truman) decided to keep us around for longer," he said. "The Marines were so scattered around after (World War II) that they had a heck of a time assembling a force to go over there."
Chance took part in the initial invasion force that stormed through North Korean defenses to recapture Seoul.
Then his unit, the 1st Marine Regiment, marched north into North Korea, where an ambush was waiting during one of the worst winters on record.
Chance was one of the "Chosin Few" who survived a battle in the Chosin Reservoir where Chinese troops surrounded U.S. forces.
"We were attacked by something like 100-to-1," he said. "We were surrounded and outnumbered, and we had to turn around and move south back to our own lines. Very few of us got out of there."
His unit fought for 17 days against Chinese soldiers who rained fire down from the hills that rose over the valley. The Marines had to take cover at the slope of the hills and behind boulders as bullets ripped just overhead.
'One of the luckier ones'
Parka-clad soldiers and Marines already were weakened by temperatures of 30 below zero, winds that gusted up to 50 mph and hunger. Planes had been airdropping rations as the troops marched north, but all the entrees were frozen solid, and they had to subsist on little more than biscuits.
They had no water, so they had to lick frozen chunks of orange juice out of tin cans to stay hydrated. They preferred not to eat or drink much, since the sub-freezing weather made it painful to try to relieve themselves in the reservoir.
"You didn't want to remove anything in that cold," he said. "You were supposed to take the felt liners out of your boots and put them under your armpits to heat them up to get the ice crystals out of them, but no one dared take off their boots."
Chance suffered frostbite on all his toes. He likes to joke that he grew them back, but they healed after being dipped in cold water that was gradually heated, causing him the excruciating pain.
Other Marines he served with lost toes, fingers and feet to the cold.
"I was one of the luckier ones," he said. "I'm one of the luckiest people going for what I lived through. I always considered myself very lucky for having made it out of there."
The 1st Regiment and the rest of the X Corps had to push back south, fighting their way past several roadblocks and Chinese positions on the hills overlooking the road. They got support from planes that dived in and strafed machine gun rounds so low that the Marines had to press down against the frozen ground.
Chance agrees with a general's assessment that you can't retreat when you're surrounded, just advance in a different direction. They marched nonstop for six days under enemy fire, burning their tents, blowing up broken-down vehicles and pushing trucks into ravines if they stalled.
'Just a kid at the time'
The Marines inflicted and suffered heavy casualties as they exchanged fire with Chinese troops that shot down at them from the hills and launched raids on their convoy.
"We had trucks, but they were all filled with the dead that we weren't going to leave behind," he said. "They were dead, and they were frozen, and it was the most gruesome thing to get them up on those trucks."
His unit encountered less resistance during other battles. They launched a surprise amphibious attack on the lightly defended port on Inchon, where Chance landed two days after Paula was born.
The North Koreans had thought it would be impossible to attack Inchon because a severe tide causes the water level to rise and fall by about 30 feet. But the Marines attacked when the tide was low, using wooden ladders to climb from mudflats over a seawall.
"They said it couldn't be done," he said. "And it was tough, but the ladders worked and we did it."
Advance fire from Navy gunships had wiped out most of the North Korean defenses guarding the beach, but bullets zipped over Chance's head as his landing craft neared the shore.
"That really make you think," he said. "I was just a kid at the time."
Paula (says she's the old and most favorite, but the other 3 of us disagree
)
Verna (the middle daughter)
Chance Jr. (the 3rd and the only son)
Lorraine (the youngest brat of Chance and Pauline
)
P.S. Paula is my older sister. Daddy didn't see Mother pregnant with Paula (he got that joy with me
), and he didn't get to see Paula until she was 13 months old. Strange how I came along 10 months later
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