It was early December 1950, and we were in full retreat from the Yalu River. My jeep was the last of three Jeeps in the column, and there was nothing between China and us. Most of the Chinese had already gotten through our lines at the Yalu River, and we were fighting roadblock every mile or so.
After days of this we came to a very large River. They had bulldozed a road through the River in that almost kept us out of the water which was ice cold as the temperatures were near zero or below. When we were about a mile from the River the convoy bogged down to a standstill. Shortly thereafter a liaison plane circled over us and dropped a message. It said there were American troops on foot on the other side of the River with no weapons. The company commander told his driver, the mortar driver forward observer and myself the artillery forward observer driver to unload our jeeps, and trailers, and see what we could do to help them. We headed cross-country towards the River and came across a raft that was about 15 ft. by 15 ft. in size. It was frozen to the shore, and we started using our rifle butts to free it from the ice. While the other guys busted ice I went up the shore about 100 yards to a house, and found 10-ft. long Poles. By the time I got back they had the raft free from the ice and we started to poll across the river. That was when we first noticed that the 300 Foothill on the other shore was covered with Chinese. We could see the dark blue uniform of the officer and his gold insignias, as that's how close we were to them. We got to the other shore and the GIs jumped aboard and hugged us and one guy tried to give me his wallet. The hill looked like Custards last stand with all the Chinese lined up on it. The trip back was hell waiting for the mortar's that never came to wipe us out. I can just imagine how those troops felt waiting that 20 minutes it took us to get the raft their. They were a brave bunch of soldiers. We got back to the other side and loaded up our jeeps and trailers with the men and returned back to the company. I have never seen or heard from anyone of the group from that moment on, and never got as much as a thank you or nice job from anyone about the troops we brought across. I am sure the company commander got himself a nice recommendations and medal out of it.
