Media

Transcript

[00:00:05] Liza Mason: And now, I'm going to do a little sound test. I'm gonna do the sound of a red light. Today is Wednesday, July 28, 2004, and this is the start of an interview with Mr. Ed Taylor at the Center. My name is Liza Mason, and I'll be the interviewer. This interview is done in connection with the Asian-American History Project under what kind of media I need to work with me. And, Taylor, can you start off with telling me where you were born and where you came from? [00:00:36][31.4]

[00:00:37] Ed Taylor: I was born in a small village called the Tifton, about 15 miles west of Salisbury in 1932, February, and there was two feet of snow on the ground. [00:00:52][14.9]

[00:00:54] Liza Mason: And what was your challenge with that? [00:00:55][1.4]

[00:00:56] Ed Taylor: It was a very strong, timely visit. There were 10 children who were very close. I had to go to church every Sunday. And we had a mother and a father. Very strong, family visit. We grew up in a very, very strict environment, and we did have to do a lot of work and lived on a farm. We produced most of our food, we had our own pigs, chickens, cows, anything we needed from the fields. I'm very rural, I'm not used to it, but it's one tool in life. [00:01:42][46.6]

[00:01:46] Liza Mason: And then, I know you attended so many high schools, we talked a little bit about your experience in there, as well as the education. [00:01:53][7.3]

[00:01:55] Ed Taylor: Sure, we are. We travel by the bus from the Chippewa, and the bus will wind through several rural communities like Avery. On Hader Creek, Quantico, picking up students as it went. And it took an hour and a half each day to get to Salisbury High School, located on Lake Street. But the education that we got there was good, because the teachers were very strict. First of all, let's check where we became. It's well known in this area that every student can learn. We didn't have the facilities that were in the all white schools at that time, but we did have the teachers who were dedicated to making us learn, and those who didn't want to follow the advice of the principal or the students, which was school, because there was no law that kept you in school. Many of the young guys who did not want to adhere to a very strict protocol would leave and go get a job working in the fields. You could get a a job in the field at any age. So a lot of our youngsters did prefer to leave school, but those who remained, such as me, I was in the academic section. I took advantage of everything that was put in front of me. And when I left Salter High School, I really felt prepared to go to any institution on the planet. Everything was there for me, except money. So I didn't go to college at that time. I was 16 years old. My parents did not have the finances to send me, because we already had two sisters in college at the time. So we made a deal that I would work until I was at least 20 years old, that meant that I worked four years. Well, by the time I got out at 19, I was seeded. An induction notice on his jacket to the military. So I had to put my college education on hold. And I did fear that it would be to my advantage that possibly I could go to college on a PR kill. And that was the good news. Because I wasn't making up any money. I worked three years as a lumberjack. The only good thing that came from that was that by the time I was in the Army, I ended up being the strongest recruit in the Schofield barracks of Hawaii. It took us three years working in a swamp, about the temperature, that made a man out of me. And then... I was drafted to stop over at 4th lane and set straight to Stoke Riverax, Hawaii. And the shock of this was almost too overwhelming for a person who had never been beyond Salisbury. I had never gone beyond Salisbury at age 19. But, uh, when I got to Hawaii, I was so glad that I was one of the lucky ones. The Hawaii was fantastic. And for the first week over there they allowed us to both were a period of orientation, and that meant they trapped us, took us all over the island, for one week, all over that island, and then they got down to some serious business. One of the best training facilities that I had ever encountered. Of course, that was my first one, but according to everybody, if you were training in Smoke Hill faculty or anything, OZMA HALL ,The Baracks were even big, beautiful buildings, not little wooden huts, but the training was really rough, and the reason they had selected Stokeville, because in the fields, the mountains were very much like where 9% of the younger folks would be going, and that was Coal I never heard of Coal And it was really amazing. One day, a general got in front of us, an Italian gatherer, and he told us, we are going to come here, 90% of us are going. And one recruit said, he said, do you have any questions? One recruit, sir. Sir? Where is Korea? And he explained where it was, okay, in the bars, et cetera, et cetera. And I wasn't going to ask that question, but I was listening. I was ashamed to speak out in public. And then another recruit said, So, why are we going to Korea? And said to the thorns, young man, the thorn there to fight communist aggression. Here's a funny part. A third one raised his hand and said, yes. He said, sir, what in the hell is communist aggression? And everybody just laughed, even the general laughed. Nobody really had heard of anything that we were being trained for. Nobody knew what it was all about. This was in 1951. In 1951 we went to go. We began our training in scope of that, so it impacted training and we were sent to Korea. Oh, the military was integrated the first week. The first week I was there. At first, the integration took place, actually, importantly. The first week, I was in the military. I wasn't going to skip that part. And we were in Fort Meade just to get prepared to be sent to Hawaii. Fort Mead is a stopover, such as Camp Stone. We also stopped over in Camp Stone in California for two weeks. But in Fort Meade, we first went to the black bags. And we thought that that was it. That's the way it's going to be. The black bags and the white bags. It will be over there approximately two days. Well, let me tell you that there was a lot of problems between guys going to the PX and they would encounter white and black, and they were off to fight. There was a pooling role. In the PX and they would often fight over cages and things of that nature. There was always conflict between the guys from the white barracks and the guys from the black barracks. And then when the order came to integrate, it was like magic. These guys had learned that they had to follow military rules. They were told that they would Which is great, but I'm trying to invest what they do. And they were smart enough to know, we can't fight anymore now, we are one. That's exactly what happened in the military. I saw this. We became friends. It was no longer black fairies, white fairies. It was Barrett, support me, and when we got to Tocqueville Barrett naturally we counted people from all over the world. And most of them had already experienced integration. We were a minority coming from America. So, Schofield Barracks had no race or problems while I was there and I was there a long time because I did stay for an extra eight weeks for advanced ranger training. That was supposed to be something special if you were selected for the rangers, energy ranges that are supposed to be some expression. And everybody said you were selected. Well naturally I was much older. At 19, I was much older than a lot of the young kids. Most of them came straight from high school and they were 17, 18 years old. But by the time I could be completed facing I was 20. And that was so effectively a category just to step on either the average or the group. When we got there, the Chinese had taken over most of the peninsula of Phu Dinh. So, we got here just at the right time. We all formed the perimeter, and we fought and pushed the Chinese back. We pushed them back as far as the 38th parallel. And that line is still there today. North Korea separates, is separated from South Korea by the 38 parallel. So for the first line, well, for six months it was. But I was over there, and we spent that time regaining a portion of Korea that is called South Korea. Some of the battles were very nasty. We lost a lot of men. And all 53,000 men died. In a place that small, the size of Florida, that's a lot men died in World War II. They were dying everywhere. They were died in different countries. And they lost many more than they did in Korea. But Korea was a nasty little world. I really can't explain it i can't go into detail unless there's something specific you want to ask about what took place on those battlefields anything special you want me to elaborate on i can do that [00:13:59][723.9]

[00:14:09] Liza Mason: Well, only if you have a specific battle story to tell about in your mind. [00:14:14][4.8]

[00:14:16] Ed Taylor: When we first arrived it was chaotic and as we were moving one day towards our destination This is before I had fired a shot. We saw a truck coming down the hill. We stepped aside as it passed and what we saw caused a lot of guys to start throwing up. This truck is an Armistice 6x with a 10 wheel drive. Was loaded with bodies like a truck loaded with cars They were just thrown in there. And the blood was actually dripping. I thought it was an ice truck. They'd seen an ice trough with water dripping. That hit me worse than anything I'd ever seen. That was the worst I'd every seen. But that was the first I ever seen. I hadn't even been in battle when I had to see this. It made me sick. I didn't throw up, but a lot of guys did. We released our destination. I was assigned to a half track, an infantry half track. I'll have a picture of it. Could I get it? [00:15:45][88.6]

[00:15:49] Liza Mason: Sure. [00:15:49][0.0]

[00:15:51] Ed Taylor: Well, these are some pictures I'll show you. Okay, I don't have the half track, I'll have to describe it. The half track is, the back wheels are like a tank, and the front wheels are like a truck, and on the back is a machine gun turret that whirls around. It's called firepower and mobility. The truck travels right along with the As a matter of fact, only one or two of us ride on the track. The rest of us, as we moved along, had our infantry rifles and travel beside the track, four of us had to do that. This big half track had four 50 caliber machine guns mounted on it, which gave support fire as we advanced through the pack. Once we got to our destination, we would dig in and make the half-track machine gun nests. And it would stay that way as long as we would hold that position. I'll give you an example. We were one of the most strategic positions we were ordered to protect and recapture That structure was a large gap. Between two mountains that lead to the city of Seoul. The enemy wanted to get through that area. They wanted that to control the Charlie Company Cut. That's what we called it. Charlie Company cut. But we got there, and we set off. We dug in. And our job was to keep the enemy from coming through solid on this track and all in false. Well, we did. And, one day, we were hit so hard, where they were trying to come through the truck, that out of 250 who were guarding that truck, only 6 of us were left. That was scary. I didn't even know it until I read it in the paper. All I know is that we were given an order to retreat. Without a knowledge of each other, the reason is everybody was... Also So we lost, we lost that battle, but we did regroup and I have no idea how many men we lost, but a lot of men died, just to see that. It was a strategic point, and it had to be saved. Yeah. [00:18:55][183.9]

[00:18:56] Ed Taylor: So now, now we need to do the same and make them together be important. We we had so many different roles for instance once we got half track in place we had to go on controls controls were varied we had combat controls where I saw it was to go out and make contact with the enemy it's a form of harassment keep them looking up to make sure that uh they don't get too well-organized. You can't go over there and keep harassing, fighting, just go over and start shoveling. That's exactly what it was. That's the combat patrol. We're going out for the purpose of finding the enemy and fighting. We had a recon patrol, and all these were very special assignments. We go out on recon patrols to gain information which would be helpful for our force. Just a recon, a reconnaissance patrol, and there were other patrols he had to go out to bring back, alive, prisoners for the purpose of interrogation. Those were the kind of special things that were handed down to combat MQA. And we had to leave our unit and go support We gave support to other United Nations groups that were starting from time to time. We supported the Battalion of the British, the Battalions of the Ethiopians, maybe a week at a time, a battalion of Thailanders. I never said that like Thailanders from Thailand. And we supported those rock soldiers, the public up in the area. So there were times when we were off for a week or whatever. Whatever was needed. That's where the rangers went. And they were a tiny train. I think they might be called the Green Range or something like that. It's called a special train unit, and that was part of our design. [00:21:35][159.6]

[00:21:37] Liza Mason: I'm going to call my team and tell them that they're ready for this, and they can go out there. [00:21:41][4.3]

[00:21:41] Ed Taylor: Yeah yeah and to this day I wonder if I if I- you know they always want it the students always want show me how i said look I- I can't show you i don't know how to do it easy That takes somebody special. I can't take a chance on a replacement of the nose or something like that. But I would explain to them how it was done, how the shoreline was done. There were 19 places where you could actually kill, even you could do it. I'll give you an example. If you hit the nose at a certain angle with this part of your hand, coming off just like this. You can actually push this foam back into your plane. [00:22:32][51.1]

[00:22:34] Liza Mason: And that's what that party was right there? [00:22:35][1.8]

[00:22:36] Ed Taylor: Oh yeah, they train you, they teach you how to do it, and they have kind of, some of them have dummies, it's a dummy street. It was 19, when I was back into... When I came back to this country, we had a facility right down to the University of Maryland on Calvert Road, and that was my assignment to teach the guerrilla warfare. But I want to get back to some of these 1980s. I'm not going to try to do all of them. I can't even remember. You'll feel the wind fight, but you've got to be trained to feel exactly what you're doing, you're tight and full, and you'll separate the wind fights where it makes the roof of your mouth. For real, there was a lot of diversity in Korea. They allowed those soldiers who made contact with the enemy to come home early. And they had created what we call a zone system. Four part zone, three part zone. Two part zone and then a one part zone The four-part zone is where all the action took place. That would be the combat infantry soldiers, the ones who actually dug in, slept in bunkers, traveled in tunnels. We had tunnels and trails all through the tops of the mountains. And they're the ones that fought on a daily basis, hand-to-hand combat. They got four points a month in their desert because they're ones who died, mostly. And you only need 36 points to go home. So if you're in a four-point zone and you're lucky enough to be alive, stay alive, you can go home in nine months. Then you move back. You have the heavy artillery, the mortar companies, all of the support groups. They got three points a month. They experienced some infiltration of enemies coming back and doing damage, cutting a few boats, and they experienced damage from long-range artillery coming back to their area, too. So they weren't completely safe, but they had to stay 12 months. They got three parts a month, three times 12, 30 days. It's a very simple form. Now, if you go back a little farther, it's much safer. They had to mash in us. [00:22:36][0.0] [1319.7]