Some Carrico Memories
 

Lucio Delacazada was already in UDT-3 when I arrived in 1948. I could never guess what his age was—but he was the tallest Filipino any of us had ever seen. He stood 6’3"-that was 5 inches over what was normal for Filipinos.

Several things stood out about this fellow as someone who should be remembered. First, the rumors about him were that he had been a guerilla fighter in the Philippines during WW II and had been cutting Japanese throats since he was a baby. Second he was taller than most and one of the best swimmers. Third, Lucio had a mouthful of solid gold teeth.

The amount of gold in the man’s mouth proved to be a constant source of wheeling an dealing, crude jokes and schemes to end all schemes. Team members were constantly trying to take him to the bank, wanting to deposit him. It all came to a head when the Team leaders in Korea were looking for Frog knifeman to ride the security boats.

The knifeman would be required to ride in on the security boat—swim in from the breaker line, sneak onto the beach and in silence kill any posted guard without drawing fire. With Lucio’s background he seemed to be a natural choice. However, to the brass’s surprise, most team members disagreed with this choice. When asked why, they replied, "Lucio is gonnna make some friggin Communist a rich SOB." When asked, "How's that?"-the reply was, "When they catch ‘im, they're gonna find a gold mine. Lucio became a knifeman anyway and never gave up the gold mine.

It was a bright warm and beautiful morning when we pulled into this little cove on the west coast of Korea. A small picturesque village set back from the beach. Little kids were all over the place happily waving at us. Being far south of the action we anticipated a picnic-type of job and all went ashore without a thought of danger. Nobody was armed.

Our mission was to sound out the cove to see if LST’s could beach there to unload supplies. The whole mission reminded us of the early days in Japan, before the war, when my squad from Team 3 had sounded all the beaches for occupation forces maneuvers.

Suddenly all the kids disappeared—someone noticed something was wrong and started yelling, "Hit the water!" At that time 4 or 5 young army-age men in civvies popped up from behind the dunes and started leveling rifles. Some of our guys were still standing there with their mouths open when the men started shooting—then everybody broke for the water.

I happened to be in the water with a flutter board at the time, so I got to the boat in a hurry (the boat was an LCPR, the kind most used by Frogmen units). I did have enough reason about me to go to the seaward side of the boat to be pulled in. In his haste, Satterfield went to shoreward of the boat and as we pulled him in, with his back to the beach, a NK (North Korean) shot him between the shoulders.