ARTICLE FROM EUFAULA, OKLAHOMA NEWSPAPER.

A NEWSPAPER CLIP ABOUT MY DAD PLATOON SARGEANT PENDERGRAfT.

"Once, when his company and another unit of the Fifth 
Cavalry regiment were battling for ground against North 
Koreans, 27-year-old Pendergraft's platoon was pinned down 
by heavy enemy fire serveral hours.  Three days straight 
his unit with drew and re-attacked enemy-held mountainsides.
On the final day of operation against the Red force, 
Pendergraft let his men up the hillsides in walking fire, 
oblivous to heavy enemy artillery fire and grenades dropped
around the group.  For this action Sergeant Pendergraft was 
awarded the Bronze Star Medal.  "After three days of 
fighting," Sergeant Pendergraft said, "I thought the best 
thing to do was bluff the enemy troops.  This walking fire 
tactic worked and the mountainside was secured late in the 
afternoon."  When United Nations units began their push 
north for the second time, Sergeant Pendergraft's regiment 
was given a position near Kumyangjang-ni.  When his platoon 
entered this bomb-smashed village he was directly 
responsible for for bringing the unit from a Chinese trap 
when he launched a single handed attack against the 
entrenched forces.  After his platoon had reached the lip 
of Hill 312 north of the village, it was temporarily 
stopped by atuomatic weapons and small arms fire.  Here, 
Sergeant Pendergraft moved ahead of his unit and began 
flinging grenades at the enemy gun positions.  The Red 
troop released a volley of machine gun fire toward the 
platoon sergeant while other Red infantrymen heaved 
grenades toward his men.  After destroying the two of the 
Eommunist entrenchments, an enemy grenade exploded at his 
feet.  Members of his unit said he rolled some 50 feet 
downhill from the blast.  Sergeant Pendergraft pulled 
himself up by a tree and gave the order for his men to begin
their advance again.  The Hill was taken. "That was 
probably the tightest spot I've been caught in during the 
war, but that was the only way to destroy the gun nests 
without sacrificing the lives of men in the platoon," he 
concluded.  More that 200 enemy soldiers were kIlled on 
this particular hill and a jeepload of Red equipment picked 
up for study."   



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