Marine Dwayne L. Boice (Kansas City), 3rd Battalion 5th US Marines, burns out a weapons emplacement.
North Korean gunpit, Wolmi-do island, Inchon. 15 September 1950.
This sandbagged gun pit was dug into rear of a slit trench. Table, bench and other items show how completely the sudden bombardment and assault came, for the defenders.
This 351' peak dominated the other major assault beaches, Red Beach to the North and Blue Beach to the South, which was why the capture of Wolmi-Do was the key to the entire Inchon invasion.
3/5's assault companies G and H, landed by LCVPs from the APDs (Attack Transports), quickly overwhelmed most of the North Korean defenders. But not all. Once the remnants partly recovered, they showered grenades down on I Company, 3/5's reserves, who came in the 3rd Wave and were mopping up in support.
Unfortunately for the NK, Comstock (LSD 19) and Fort Marion (LSD 22) had also landed 6-M26 tanks and this flame thrower team, and they killed all NK who would not clearly surrender.
On this day Wolmi-do, with its 200-yard "beach" of sand and rocks, its low-revetment and supporting ridge, its dominating peak and stubborn defenders fell. Seoul was 25 miles further inland. Ten bloody days of fighting remained before MacArthur would claim the capitol as again free. Seoul changed hands two times again during the next several months.
The M2-2 Flame thrower had a fuel capacity of 4 gallons and weighed approximately 70 pounds, fully loaded. The resultant stream of liquid flame could carry over 50 yards.
The napalm-gasoline fuel was propelled by a gas system of pressurized nitrogen, flow rate controlled by the rear hand grip. Leaving the nozzle the fuel was spark-lit by a battery-powered pyrotechnic ignition system controlled by the trigger in the front hand grip.
“After we got to Korea, I was a bazooka gunner (like a rocket launcher — knocks out tanks) and a flamer-thrower operator.” “They picked the littlest guy to carry the meanest weapons because they’re harder to hit, they make a smaller target. Your life expectancy for a flame-thrower operator was two minutes!” I asked if he knew that fact. He chuckled, “Nooo…not ‘til after I got hit! That’s a very dangerous position. That’s where I got hit – the first time in Inchon, I was carrying a flame-thrower. I didn’t use the bazooka over there at all, it was mainly the flame-thrower.”
I asked if he chose to be a flame-thrower, he emphatically replied, “Hell no I didn’t! You don’t have a say-so. Unless you refuse – then you’ll be court-martialed. When I first got hit, I was hit in my left leg! It was very painful and it knocked me down, and when I got up, I felt something running down my leg, I wasn’t sure if it was urine or blood. Low and behold it was blood.
They got me aboard a ship and got me all patched up in September 1950. I was on the ship about week and a half when the ship went up to Won Son, up the Yalu River. By then winter set it, and by the time we got to where we wanted to go, the temperature was 20 to 30 below. That’s when I got hit again! It was around the first of December. That was a bad hit — that’s the one that knocked out two inches from my leg — and it was the same leg!”
I was curious how it knocked out two inches from his leg. He explained, “I was hit by three machine gun bullets. The bottom bone and top bone of my leg were pulled together to mend — they were going to let it mend, grow back, break it again and put a metal plate in it — but by then I was in a Navy hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois. I was in a body cast for 10 months. It was ‘terrible! I was 20 years old and had nothing to do but read books. It was a spica cast that went from my waste all the way down my left leg and halfway down my right leg. I finally got to come home after 30 days, and then I was discharged.”
For both of his injuries that my father endured during the war, he received two separate purple hearts.
(By courtesy of his Korean adopted daughter MeeSun Boice)
Dwayne L. Boice, 81, of Kansas City, Kansas passed away February 22, 2012.
Colourised by Paul Reynolds.
