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Cover: The Markhams
Hell's Fury
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The Dauntless Demolitioneers
Remembering Limey
Recollections—a distant war
UDT-SEAL
Stories of the 1960s
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Remembering Limey
by George Atcheson
When the UDT-SEAL Directory came the other day, I thumbed through it
looking for familiar names. Since TAD orders had taken me away from
UDT-3 right after Inchon in 1950 and I had left the Navy in 1956, much
time had passed. I didn’t expect to find many. But right away there was
Austin, Charles, Limey. I knew him all right.
Spring of 1948, Limey was already an old-timer in Team 3 when I, a green
Ensign fresh off a plane guard destroyer out of Pensacola, arrived in
Coronado, eager to become a frogman. A plane guard DD was good duty, but
UDT sounded better.
The years flew by, the next I saw Limey was about 1968, when he was the
recruiting officer in Van Nuys. He was a chief, a fully qualified
SEAL, EOD, et cetera, Recruiting was an up hill job in those days, but
he would have been good at it.
I knew he was somewhere in L.A., and over the years I must have thought
about calling a hundred times, but I never did. Not until I got that
directory, and then this nice voice told me that: “Limey had died last
autumn”. The moral is obvious: DON’T WAIT! Time races by, suddenly it’s
too late. It’s been said that this not a dress rehearsal, this thing
we’re in. You only get to do it once.
Not that Limey and I were ever
buddies. He was in my platoon, cheerful, capable, funny, reliable: he
knew what to do, and always did it right…not at all unusual in the
Teams, but that was what made demolition duty so special. And I was
whatever I was. I would like to think he rated me a pretty good officer,
but who knows?
What I do know is that events just happened to forge a special
relationship between us…for me anyway. It happened this way. In the
spring of 1950, I was lucky enough to get orders to take a 10-man unit
to Japan to do beach recons. Besides me there was Chief Lewis, and
Adams, Nelson, McCormick, Johnson, Atkinson, Carrico, Ledbetter, Warren
Foley, and Limey Austin. In Japan, we were billeted at a small Army base
next to the beaches we were to survey. The weather was fine, the water
was warm, the Japanese were friendly, and our recon was going well, when
the NK’s crossed the 38th Parallel in great force. And the Korean was
on. Immediately it began to go badly, a top priority quickly became
anything to divert NK attention from the front, to ease the pressure. By
then our piece of South Korea was called the Pusan Perimeter, in other
words, things look very bad.
Then the word came down: our part of
the diversion was a small RR bridge near Yosu, 20 miles behind the
front. We packed our gear and a PBM flew us to Sasebo.. We had barely
boarded the Diachenko when she was steaming at flank speed for Korea. At
midnight under what at any other time would have been a glorious full
moon, we got our first glimpse of our target, which in binoculars
appeared serene and empty. Our LCR was towed within a mile, we paddled
to 500 yards, and Foley and I swam in for a look-see. It was a hard swim
against the tide. (And I had already made a big mistake: no flotation
for weapons.) So we arrived at the beach somewhat winded and armed only
with our knives, two grenades and a .45 pistol, But for the moment,
besides the moonlight, our only problem seemed to be the fact that our
bridge was beyond an unexpected 20 foot seawall. But there was a way to
scramble up. A hundred yards down the track was our little bridge and
the black mouth of a tunnel.
No sight or sound of life. We signaled the LCR to come in. Foley
returned to the beach to show the way, and I settled down to wait. A
piece of cake!
Continue
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Cont-
Chuck Austin EN1/C and Hal Mingus QM1/C at awards
ceremony at Camp McGill in Japan.. (both are from Glendale CA.).
Not quite, for our plan at once fell to pieces as handcar clanked out of
the tunnel, loaded with about ten guys with rifles. Instinct sent me
ducking under bridge…my second mistake. Hearing the handcar, Foley
grabbed a Tommy gun out of the LCR and headed back up to me. Dumb
founded by the scene before them the NK’s ground to a halt a little ways
away. And what a scene it was: like daylight, the APD lying to on a
glassy sea among a scattering of islands, the landing craft 500 yards
away. No wonder they milled and chattered uncertainly.
These rapid changes
had me confused and close to panic. Failing to recognize Foley running
toward me along the seawall, I am embarrassed to say I fired at him. And
the NK’s did too, for a volley of rifle shots sent him over the wall.
And brought me back to reality, and I at last mustered the wit to throw
my grenades at the gang around the handcar.
Two incredibly loud explosions, then absolute silence!
A bit steadier, although far from a John Wayne calm, I knew it was time
we got out of there. But first, I stuck my head over the seawall for a
quick look. My third mistake: I should have said something. Limey, ever
alert, had been waiting
In the moonlight, my
head must have looked quite North Korean, for he let me have a short
burst. What a breeze those .45 slugs make when they pass by real close!
The first one sent my cap back into the ditch. And I went back for it.
That could have been my fourth mistake, but my luck was holding. By the
time I identified myself and slithered down the wall, the guys had Foley
in the LCR and were ready to go. So we went.
Our return to the APD was accompanied by silence from the NK’s : not a
shot, not a shout. My grenades? I’ll never know. As I climbed to the
bridge to tell the captain what a mess I had made of things, the ship’s
bow was already swinging around. The engineers were cranking on turns
and we were headed out of those cramped and inhospitable waters.
Soon I learned to my relief that I had missed Foley and that, while
badly hurt he was going to be okay. And that Limey was the one who had
ruined my cap…and almost ruined my head. Months later someone figured
out that Foley was the first Naval casualty of the Korean War. I could
have been the second.
Over time, the event has changed me in ways I still don’t understand.
It’s not a “charmed life” thing, or the mystical notion that somehow
I’ve been living on “borrowed time”, or anything like that. But who can
deny that, for a moment there, I was the luckiest man on the face of the
earth…and it was Limey who demonstrated that extraordinary luck to me.
All the more reason to remember him. I won’t let it go to my head, but
thanks anyway, Limey.
Editor’s Note: A similar version of George’s story has appeared
in an earlier issue. I gave this a replay for a special reason. For all
you frogs out there, we have fallen into the same category as the WWII
with respect due to our ages now. So if you have old teammates you
should have called or haven’t called, now’s the time to do it. There are
many frogs who told me how dumb it was not to keep up with old teammates
and how great it was when united once again with longtime buddies. As
George says: The moral is obvious, DON’T WAIT! Time races by…suddenly,
it’s too late. Thanks, and give a teammate a call.
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