| This is Osang San in August, 1954. The name means “Mountain of the Five Saints” and may have been named for some of it peaks. “O” is Korean for “Five”. “Sang” is Korean for “Saints” and “San” is Korean for “Mountain”. In 1954, American soldiers called the mountain “Poppa San”. It was across from the U.S. IX Corps Area on the DMZ.
The ASA unit in the IX Corps area at that time was the 304th Communications Reconnaissance Battalion, which was subordinate the 501st Communications Reconnaissance Group in Seoul. The 304th had a small detachment near the DMZ, with a bunker that was located between the infantry to its front and the artillery to its rear. The detachment was commanded by a 1st Lieutenant William Ascher from Normal, Illinois. A sergeant named Kendall was the detachment sergeant. There were some other support troops, a number of Chinese linguists, who had graduated from the Army Language School in Monterey, and some native Chinese from Taiwan. The Chinese and the linguists manned the bunker, which was up a mountain, in 24 hour shifts. The bunker had a few layers of sandbags as a roof. Inside were PRC 9 radios and perhaps one PRC 10. I arrived in Korea in late July 1954 and was assigned to the 304th’s detachment. In early September, I received orders assigning me back to the 501st, where I worked in operations wrapping packages for a couple weeks, before moving into the translation section to work “low level” with James Fong, Ken Liu and Raleigh Farrell. Fong and Liu soon went back to the United States for discharge. Other linguists were John Arnost, Ray Moffett and Dick Moench. Dewey Haggard and Bob Sherry were the traffic analysts. Don Mustard would arrive later on. Bud Feeley was the cryptographer. A 1st lieutenant named Polo headed the section. He was not a linguist. When he left, a captain named Paul Doster, fresh from the Chinese Mandarin course at Monterey, arrived to take charge. The 304th’s detachment was disbanded in fall of 1954 and the Chinese linguists passed through the 501st to assignments elsewhere in the Far East. I found out later that most of those assignments were not language related. I was the only one of the my group that went from Monterey then to Tokyo, then to Seoul, then to the DMZ, who stayed as a linguist in Korea. Osang San’s designation on U.S. military maps was Hill 1062 and from October 14 to November 18 (November 25th for the Chinese forces), 1952, a bloody battle was fought over two hills in front of the mountain. Most of our Korean War histories do not mention the battle, but the military historian Bevin Alexander mentions it in his book KOREA: THE FIRST WAR WE LOST: “On the battlefront a series of small but bloody engagements had been going on since September as the Reds attempted to improve their positions before winter set in. On October 8, the day General Harrison unilaterally recessed the peace talks, General Clark authorized General Van Fleet to launch Operation Showdown, designed to seize the hills of the Iron Triangle north of Kumhua. Van Fleet predicted he could capture the objective in about five days at a cost of about some two hundred casualties. But the attack by IX Corps, launched October 14, ground on for weeks in gruesome fighting against fierce Red resistance. It cost 9,000 U.S. and ROK and 19,000 communist casualties. When the attacks petered out on November 18, the UN command had achieved only a slight improvement in its position, and the cost had been excessive. Direct assaults on enemy mainlines of resistance to achieve limited objectives were futile.” continued.....................click here |
 |
| OSANG SAN
DMZ
U.S. IX CORPS AREA KOREA - AUGUST, 1954 |
| submitted by ASA Korea member Ellis Melvin |