By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff , 06/25/99
AEGWAN, South Korea -
Forty-nine
years ago, Private Frederick M. Ryan and 41
other American prisoners
of war were gunned down on a Korean hillside, their
hands tied behind their
backs, and left for dead.
A priest with the American
unit that found the men kissed the wounded Ryan's
forehead, administered
last rites and draped a cross and a Purple Heart
around his neck. But
even though Ryan's side had been shattered by five
bullets, he was one of
five soldiers who miraculously survived the Aug. 17,
1950 massacre, their
bodies shielded by those of their dead buddies.
Ryan has returned to Hill
303 to find the massacre site and to say goodbye
to the ghosts of the
past. Today, on the 49th anniversary of the outbreak of
the Korean War, Ryan
and his fellow soldiers from a mortar platoon of the
Army's 1st Cavalry Division
are being recognized for their sacrifice, half a
century late - thanks
to an amateur military historian from New Hampshire.
''I've got to say goodbye
to my friends. Their bodies might not be there,
but their spirits are,''
said Ryan, 67, a retired railway conductor,
mechanic, and gas station
attendant from Cincinnati. ''If I could, I'd bring
them back in a minute,
but they died that day cussing out the other side ...
and I know they'd die
again just as they did for peace in this country.''
The 1950-53 Korean conflict
is often called the ''forgotten war,'' and the
massacre of American
POWs at Hill 303 is one of many largely forgotten
incidents from the chaotic
early months when communist troops pushed South
Korean and United Nations
forces into a 100-mile-by-50-mile tip of the
peninsula.
There was never a full
accounting of what happened, nor a recognition of all
the POWs. All these decades,
the five survivors themselves did not know how
many had made it out
alive.
Enter Army Captain David
Kangas of Greenville, N.H., a graduate of Fitchburg
State College, who heard
about the mass execution in 1985 when he was posted
at Camp Carroll near
Hill 303. Kangas asked around the base, and then at the
Korean War Museum in
town, and found that no one knew anything about it. The
few historical accounts
were sketchy.
He began a ''needle-in-a-haystack''
search through historical accounts,
contemporary news reports,
and the National Archives, hoping to find clues.
The massacre had prompted
General Douglas MacArthur to drop leaflets over
North Korean territory
warning that soldiers would be held accountable for
war crimes. But later
it was all but forgotten.
''When I finally found
the area of the execution site, I said, `Someday, I
will find the survivors
- someday.' It was an act of faith,'' recalled
Kangas, 42.
Official records of the
massacre were incomplete. Ryan, for one, was
declared dead at the
hill, and those accounts were never corrected when the
18-year-old recruit recovered.
A government documents building in St. Louis
burned down in the 1960s,
taking records of that day with it. The survivors
never knew how to correct
the record or even that they could. Once Kangas
found the men he launched
a campaign to get them recognized for POW benefits
and medals.
But first, he had to find
them. Nearly a decade after Kangas began his
search, another war history
enthusiast read an interview with him in a New
Jersey newspaper and
linked him up with Ryan and the two other remaining
survivors, re-uniting
the men for the first time.
''They told me Fred was
dead. They told me I was the sole survivor,'' said
former private first
class Roy Manring, 67, a retired maintenance worker
from New Albany, Ind.
Manring was shot 13 times
and spent 18 months in hospitals in Korea, Japan,
and the United States.
''I tried to forget about it. ... I didn't want to talk to anyone
about it except my wife.
My kids knew I was an ex-POW, but they didn't know
what I had been through.''
The time for forgetting
ended when Manring met up again with Ryan and former
private James M. Rudd
of Salyerville, Ky. First they were awarded the POW
medal and other honors.
This year, they were invited and sponsored by South
Korean veterans and US
soldiers at Camp Carroll to come back to identify the
massacre site for a memorial.
Rudd was too ill to make the journey. Ryan,
who fears flying, had
vowed never to board a plane again after leaving
Korea - except if it
was to come back.
Ryan and Manring spent
the day trudging around the forgotten hillside, now
covered with vineyards
and partly dug up for a tunnel under construction.
After hours in the sun
comparing the much-changed terrain to their memories
of mortar emplacements
and lookout points, Manring froze, fell to his knees
on a rock and said he
knew this was it.
''I was laying right here
after they shot me,'' he said with a shudder. His
grandfather appeared
to him and ''put his arm on my shoulder and said,
`They're coming back,
get out of here.''' When Manring struggled up, he was
shot five more times
by an approaching American unit that couldn't identify
his ragged uniform. The
victims had been 15 minutes shy of being saved.
The massacre was the culmination
of three days of captivity for 67
Americans, Manring and
Ryan say, during which the North Koreans tied them
together and moved them
constantly. The first night, 10 of the POWs were
taken away with shovels
- presumably to dig their own graves - and never
returned. A few escaped
overnight, but the second day, when one soldier
slipped on the hillside
and briefly separated from the others, the angry
captors decapitated him
with a trench-digging tool.
After taking some minutes
by himself in the gulley, Manring whispered, ''I
talked to the boys. I
hope I'm at peace now. I begged their forgiveness. I
have dreams about them
all the time. I feel guilty that I survived.''
Ryan, trying to locate
the spot where he was shot, recalled being shielded
by the body of a 6-foot-3,
280-pound fellow soldier.
''As soon as the North
Koreans turned around, I shook the guy on top of me,
but he didn't respond.
Then I got up and lifted my friend Hernandez. He told
me to get down, they
were coming back. I didn't talk to him 30 seconds
before he died in my
arms, and I started crying,'' he said.
Ryan said he stayed alive
by thinking of his mother, his girlfriend, and the
chocolate malts at his
favorite soda shop in his hometown of Dayton, Ky.
The emotion of being in
the spot where he almost died finally overtook
Manring. ''I'm going
to tell you something I've hardly told anyone,'' he
began softly. ''I shot
a little Korean girl. She was maybe 8 or 10 years
old.''
Manring recounted that
his platoon was approached one day by a group of
refugees, but when he
took out his binoculars, he saw a girl holding a
grenade in her hands,
and no pin in it, headed their way. Before she had a
chance to throw it, ''I
put a bullet in between her eyes,'' he said, sobbing.
''She bothers me to this
day.
''I don't know who that
little girl was or who put a grenade in her hands,
but the communists will
do anything. That's why if I had to fight all over
again, I'd do it.''
This story ran on page A2 of the Boston Globe on 06/25/99.
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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