Massacre at Hill 303

“Can you tell us about it, son?” the bald-headed colonel asked gently. “Do you feel good enough for that?”

“Yes, sir,” said the redheaded young private.

At a medical clearing station in South Korea last week, Pfc. Roy Manring, 18, of Chicago, sat up in his litter and told the colonel from the U.S. Army’s judge advocate general’s department about the things that had happened to him and his buddies at Hill 303. A small audience of newsmen, including TIME’S James Bell, listened to his story.

“They Like Girls’ Pictures.” Roy Manring and his platoon were defending a position near Hill 303, a bleak bump in the terrain east of the Naktong River, a few miles northeast of battered Waegwan, when the enemy began to infiltrate the U.S. lines. Roy’s platoon leader asked battalion headquarters for reinforcements, and was told that 60 South Korean soldiers would move up shortly.

Soon afterwards, Korean soldiers appeared from a nearby apple orchard; Roy and his platoon assumed that they were the reinforcements. Not until the newcomers were almost on top of the U.S. foxholes did the G.I.s realize their mistake: the men were heavily armed Red troops. Seeing his men outnumbered 10 to 1, the lieutenant in charge of the platoon ordered the G.I.s to climb out of their holes with their hands up.

Said Manring: “They come up and stick their burp guns in our stomachs with one hand and with the other they reached out like to shake hands, but they grabbed our rifles. One jerked on mine and I jerked back. Then he jerked again. I said to myself, ‘This ain’t no time to argue,’ and let go. They stripped us down and took our helmets. They took my watch and billfold that had $11.81 in it. My girl’s picture was in it, too. They took that out and looked at it and kept it. They like girls’ pictures . . .”

After that, they marched Roy’s platoon to a nearby cemetery. “The first night they give us some water. They give us a couple of apples, too. There were four men to each apple. They brought us some pears and they give us some cigarettes and told us to tell each man to take a couple of drags and pass it around.”

The next morning the Reds got scared when U.S. mortar fire started dropping near their position. “They made us take off our boots, and they tied our wrists with the shoestring,” said Roy. “A couple of guys raised a fuss. I think they beat ’em to death.”

That night the North Koreans tried to march their prisoners across the Naktong, but U.S. fire stopped them. “If you slipped they kicked you,” said Pfc. Manring. “We started calling ‘Mizu, mizu!’ That’s Jap for water. But they said ‘No, no, American planes go tatatata.’ Boy! Are they afraid of airplanes! When our planes come over they kept real quiet and gave us branches to put over our heads.”

“Please, Lord, Don’t Let ’em . . .”

“About 3 or 4 in the afternoon, they got us up and moved us again down near a ditch. There was 20 of them on this side of us, and 20 over here. I heard the Reds’ weapons going off and I heard our boys groaning and grunting. I said to myself: ‘Please, Lord, don’t let ’em get us with these burp guns.’

“The Reds walked up & down the line of prisoners, shooting. I was hit in the leg. I reached down to my leg and got some blood and smeared it on my head and I laid down under a dead man. I didn’t move a muscle. When they came back along the line I got shot in the arm but I didn’t yell.”

Then, as U.S. troops advanced up the slope of Hill 303, the North Koreans retreated. “When they were gone,” Roy continued, “I got up and took off. I could hear the BARs and see the G.I.s coming. I ran toward them. I didn’t have no helmet on and no shoes and I guess they thought I was a Red, because they started shooting at me. I saw this BAR cutting across the grass, and I flopped down. It hit me in this hand . . .” Roy Manring feebly lifted his right hand and continued: “I yelled: ‘Don’t shoot! I’m a G.I.!”‘

At last recognizing him as one of their own, the Americans gave Roy Manring first aid and got him to the rear.

“I’m Almost Positive.” In the action that followed, U.S. troops captured North Korean soldiers suspected of having taken part in the massacre. The colonel asked Roy and two other survivors—Corporal Roy L. Day of El Paso, and Corporal James M. Rudd of Salyersville, Ky.— if they could identify any of the prisoners. Manring pointed out one North Korean soldier as one of the enlisted men who had killed his buddies. Then Manring turned to another enemy prisoner: “I can’t see that one’s face,” he said.

“Turn your head,” snarled a U.S. corporal. Manring said tensely: “I’m almost positive this one is the guy who gave the firing order.”

The prisoner sat impassively. Meanwhile, on Hill 303, U.S. medics were still busy removing the bodies of those who had not been as lucky as Roy Manring, Jimmy Rudd and Roy Day. Of the 31 men who surrendered in Roy’s platoon, 26 had been killed and four wounded. Another estimated 10 to 15 U.S. soldiers, who had been captured by the Reds before Roy’s platoon surrendered, had also been murdered. From Tokyo a few days later General MacArthur issued a stern warning to North Korean Premier Kim II Sung, which was broadcast by radio and dropped by leaflets over enemy lines. “These crimes are not only against the victims themselves but against humanity as well,” said MacArthur. “I shall hold you and your commanders criminally accountable under the rules and precedents of war.”