PFC James McGinty* posted posted:

There really isn’t much of a story. After basic training I arrived in Korea at Inchon in june ’51. That’s where Gen, MacArthur invaded South Korea after the North Korean Army surged down to Pusan at the southern tip of South Korea. That invasion cut off most of the North Korean Army from any supplies or route of escape. After arriving in Inchon. that night

we were greeted by someone from N.K. flying in a small plane drooping hand grenades The next morning I went south on a train top Tague and was assigned to the Tague Military Command.. When I wen to Korea my MOS (Military Occupation Code) was for Graves Registration which involves identifying the dead. Fortunately, I never did that. I was assigned to a Quonset hut along with a tech sgt. Our job was to receive and ship anything coming to or leaving TMC.

As for activities , when a train arrive ,we had a crew of 3 Korean men who did al the work, of loading and unloading. All I did was supervise Then it was my job to notify the units that they had some freight and come pick it up. We also accepted freight from the units to be shipped else where.

We had our meals with the railroad troops who came mostly out of Pennsylvania worked for the Pennsylvania a Railroaded and were members of the Pennsylvania National Guard..

I met a guy from Queens NY and his job was to build machine gun mounts in empty coal cars, Meeting someone from the next door county was like meeting a next door neighbor when your half way around the world.. Every American operated had a sand loaded coal car up front, , to take the shock of a ground explosion, the 2nd car was the machine gun car to repell any ground attack.. All American trains were pulled by what we used at that time as switch engines., used to switch trains in a rail yard..F We were notified in advance when a train was due to arrive so we basically worked around the clock.

As for free time, o we didn’t have much but with2 of us on duty all the time

One would cover for the other. I went to a USO shoe one time, hitching a ride with the rail rid detachment and another time I was invited ti the British detachment for a farewell party for some of there members that we regularly did business with but that’s about all. In the nice weather we’ would just sit outside enjoying the movement of anything that was going on. In the cold weather we would mainly stay indoors except when we hsd to meet a train. One Christmas eve a Lieutenant went down to Pusan and brought back various amounts of alcohol, depending on what you ordered and we had a Very Merry Christmas..

A week later on December 31st I was on a ship pulling out of Pusan South Korea. I didn’t arrive home until Jan. 26th and I was out of the Army.

My Mother died while I was in Kprea and my younger sister moved in with my elder sister and my elder sister found a room for me to rent Six months and 6 days later I married your grandmother and thus started the happiest part of ny life.



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