Happy New Year everyone!  Here is a holiday story from the Korean War in 1951 for everyone to read as you enjoy the start of yet another new decade:

Korea, Punchbowl 1951

The prospect  of feasting on fresh pheasant for Christmas led to a lapse in our attention to details such as those existing in combat zones. Eli Walker and I, along with our orphaned Korean  “mascot,” Mike, walked slowly over eroded furrows of a battered-down cornfield. We were sure pheasants were lurking in the stubble of brown and broken stalks. We also knew that this deep river valley had been a battleground less than six months earlier.

It was Sunday, December 23rd, and we were determined to serve up a big batch of  chicken- fried pheasant on Christmas night back in the squad tent. Artillerymen of the 11th Regiment occupied positions above the valley. They assured us an hour earlier that the valley   had been cleared of landmines.

With Mike shouldering our M-1s and Eli and I with our shotguns we made our way down the precipitous slope toward the river valley. We came upon a wire stretched across our path. It was connected to a live trip-flare conveying the news that the valley had not been as cleared as presumed.

But flushing up pheasants was our reason for being there. We detonated the trip-flare then walked out on a plateau alongside the river. Here, farmers some months earlier had forfeited their greening crops to rampaging killers pouring southward early in the Korean War. Now the area was known as “the Punchbowl.”

Overviewing the cornfield were remnants of  bunkers and connecting trenches. Communication wires crisscrossed the ground. The plateau that summer had been an infantry defense position and the cornfield was its field-of-fire. Eli was on the edge of the field nearest the river; I was on the opposite edge and Mike walked midway between us.

A pheasant cock flushed a few feet ahead of Mike and flew back over his head. Eli and I whirled at the same instant and brought it down, my shot hitting it in the wing and Eli’s in the head. Mike retrieved it and we resumed our slow, quiet coverage of the cornfield. It was high adrenalin time. The only thing on our minds was nailing more pheasants so everyone in our tent would get their fill of a Christmas feast. Even Eli, a wily Nevadan raised on a ranch, forgot to keep an eye on the ground just ahead of his feet.

The explosion I heard caused me to duck so violently it sprained my neck. I dropped to the ground, shouting at Mike to get down as I looked around trying to determine what had happened. My first thought was that it was a mortar round, but it wasn’t loud enough to be one. I flinched when I heard a “pop” overhead. A parachute flare, burning red, drifted down above Eli, who was lying on his side.

“Trip-flare!” he yelled, his voice rasping with distress. “I stepped on the sonofabitch! My foot’s shot!”  [The Veteran's Voice]

You can read the rest of this holiday hunting story at the link.  By the way you can see pictures I took of the Punchbowl today here and unfortunately I didn’t see any pheasants.