Court Martials in Korea and Fort Dix

More of my Father-in-law's stories of his time in the Korean War, and stateside. All in his own words.

Serving on Court Martials gives you a strange feeling of responsibility over a stranger’s life.

In one of my cases in Korea, I was called off the front line during heavy shelling to serve in a Regimental Court Martial. No question the guy was guilty of going AWOL in time of war. The only question was how much time in federal prison he got before Dishonorable Discharge.

 

My ears were ringing from recent very loud combat noise and I could hardly hear the choices of sentence.  The trial moderator spoke in near whisper voice level. As the lowest ranking officer there, I didn't feel it was my place to ask him to speak louder.  He mumbled,  "two months”,  no hands went up, “three, four",  etc.  When he got to over a year or so I realized what he was saying and raised my hand. The other two officers followed, ending the trial.

 

The poor dumb bastard probably had to serve a few extra months thanks to my hearing loss.

 

In another case I was a key witness at a Regimental Court Martial while assigned to Ft. Dix, NJ.

I was the 47th Infantry Regiment Heavy Weapons Instructor, but in my spare time I built a training range for .45 automatic pistols. Regiment was pleased with the training aid and let me be the first to instruct a trainee class on it even though .45 pistol was small arms,  not one of my assigned heavy weapons.

 

The course was eight hours, four hours of familiarization on my new training range and four hours of target practice on  a live round range several miles away. 

 

I signed out for 40 pistols from supply, locked them in the trunk of my car and drove to the range.   My cadre [3 noncoms]  placed one pistol on each of the stands that I had built, 20 on each side of the instructor who stood at either end The range was in a mowed field with a line of trees at one end that served as a latrine during break.

 

The company was marched in by a single cadre  and placed on each stand, three trainees to each.  It was a 4-hour class with a 10-minute break after the first two hours.  The first two hours went smoothly,  disassembly, care and cleaning and reassembly.

 

After the break I got into my second two hours of instruction, pistol grip, sight picture,  dry firing target marking, safety habits. While I was talking, I noticed one stand was empty, and recruits crowded around the other stands.  It suddenly occurred to me that a pistol was missing!

 

I stopped the class and put the company back in ranks. All were searched along with field around the range, the trees. The pistol was not found. The company was marched back to their barracks and put on restriction with no weekend passes allowed. The investigation was turned over to Regimental Military Police.

 

Next day I was told that night the culprit must have slipped on a bar of soap, fallen down a flight of stairs and gone through the screen door at the bottom, without bothering to open it. He was well cut up and bleeding. He then told the MP's that he had buried the pistol in the field. The MP's made the Company prod the field with bayonets and the pistol was recovered.

 

In my trial testimony I established the crime: How many pistols I had drawn from supply and how many I returned. I also explained that I missed the gun immediately because I had built the range and knew exactly how many stands were there.

After the investigation, I was relieved of any negligence in the matter.  (So, I would not have had to pay for the lost pistol or get a blot on my military record).

 

The training Co. CO, a Captain, was removed from his CO job and disciplined for negligence by sending his company out with only a corporal in charge, instead of the usual several non-coms to watch over his flock.

 

The private was given a dishonorable discharge for theft of Gov. Property and sent to a Federal Penitentiary, I don't remember for how long.

 

I was relieved to know that this .45 Cal Automatic pistol did not end up on the streets of nearby NYC, and possibly used to kill someone.

 

For training disassembly, the arm has a cloth mat about the size of a large table napkin used to teach nomenclature. It has  a picture of  each part of the 1911 .45 pistol   painted in black. The student  puts each piece on the picture and learns its name. The mats also keep the parts clean.

 

I had drawn 40 of these mats,  and one mat was also missing. I suspected that the pistol was buried in the missing mat, and it was. When the gun was recovered, I kept that mat as a souvenir for many years.

               

I was involved in two other cases of stolen pistols, and handled them differently.

While in a reserve position during the Korean war, we lived in tents about a  mile behind the MLR. (Main Line Of Resistance). In off times there was visiting between troops from a rifle company and my platoon, a heavy weapons platoon. My men were all armed with the  M1911A1 .45 cal.  pistol which left their hands free to use their crew served weapons. The pistols were  the envy of the riflemen, who were armed with the eight pound M-1 Garand.

One morning I was told that a pistol was missing. I got the names of all the visitors and walked over to their company HQ. to question them.  All were out in the field on exercises  except one "on sick call". I found him on his cot and soon recovered the pistol from the lump under his sheets. 

Rather than have him arrested and go through the long court martial procedure in time of war I decided to let his Company Commander handle punishment. 

The second stolen pistol  case, also while in a reserve position, I was approached by a Korean civilian who wanted to sell a .45 pistol. I decided  to set up a sting. Told him to bring all he had so I could look them over.  

When he returned I had the MP's there to arrest him. Turned out that his  pistols were all given to the local Korean police force by the U S Government and I was being asked to buy our own pistols  back!

Please feel free to leave comments below.