Fred Barber wrote on 2006-01-20 19:38:36.0
Comments: I held a special secret clearance during most of the Korean War. One Tuesday morning (my one day off a week) I was shaken roughly awake. "You have just volunteered. Pack enough stuff for three days."
The Captain picked three of us.
I was taken in a truck to the flight line an put aboard a C-124 out of Castle AFB, CA. The plane was loaded with pastboard boxes.
We sat on a pile of old blankets and packing cloth. We landed at Hickham Field to refule and eat. Our final landing was at Pusan, Korea.
Our job was to unload the Secret boxes and then to guard them. We had M 1 Garands and they gave us Army helmets.
The second day a truck came and we loaded the boxes in the truck, put away the M 1 rifles and climbed aboard the C-124 to re-trace our steps back to Travis AFB.
So I spent 62 hours in Korea in the spring of 1952 only because I had a Secret clearance.
40 years later I found out what was in the boxes. A transmitter/receiver tracking device. The GIs would take a unit out at night and hide it in the brush. The exact bush had been surveyed in somehow during the day. When the Chinese or N. Koreans fired a cannon, it would trip the two boxes. That gave the guys back behind the lines a triangel -- from the angles and the hypotenuse they could figure out exatly were the enemy cannon was and blow it up.
The GIs would retrieve the boxes and move them to a new spot that night.
I got an extra 100 bucks mustering out pay for being "overseas" and I got the UN Korean medal as well. Weird huh!
Former Staff Sgt F. E. Barber
Keywords: SAC 15th Air Force, Travis AFB, CA
|
