By Terri Moon Cronk
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 24, 2012 - When infantryman David Mills joined the Army on
his 17th birthday and was sent to fight in the Korean War, his mission was to
hold Outpost Harry "at all costs."
David Mills, 76, holds his certificate for the Purple Heart,
which he received 57 years after he was repatriated by the Chinese in 1953 as a
prisoner during the Korean War. DOD photo by Terri Moon
Cronk
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image
available.
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Mills,
now 76, says those orders came from 8th Army on April 2, 1953, to stave off
enemy Chinese troops from the strategically placed outpost in the Iron Triangle,
about 50 miles from Seoul at the 38th parallel, which divided North and South
Korea. The outpost was close to Chinese lines.
The Chinese had "an affinity" for Outpost Harry, said Mills, a member of
Company F, 15th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division.
"They came to 'visit' us often and fought ferociously," he said. "They tried
[several times] to take it. Had it fallen, with its high elevation, it would've
made it difficult for the main line of resistance to remain where it was. [We]
perhaps would've had to withdraw as far back as Seoul, which no doubt would have
extended the war for quite some time."
It was unlikely the United States would have accepted a cease fire with the
capital of South Korea under Chinese control at that time, he added, so it was
important for American troops to hold the outpost's position.
But on April 24, Chinese troops nearly took Outpost Harry.
"We had 88 men holding the outpost," he said. "The attack was ferocious. We
were overrun. Hand-to-hand fighting occurred in all of the trenches, and very
heavy losses were suffered on both sides."
The forward observer from the 39th Field Artillery called for backup
artillery to stop the attack, which was successful, he said.
But things didn't turn out as well that day for Mills, who received nine
wounds -- two in the head, six in the leg and one in the left arm.
During what Mills described as very close fighting with hand grenades and
bayonets, his weapon overheated and became inoperable. While searching for
another, he crawled on his stomach to the entrance of a bunker about 30 yards
away.
"Nobody was in there," he said. "I reached in to grab a rifle, and I felt
something poke me in my back. I backed out very slowly and turned over, and was
looking at the muzzle of a Russian-made submachine gun."
Three Chinese soldiers stood over him, Mills said. One held the gun, and the
other two carried six grenades each, three on each side of their chests, he
said.
"I thought I was going to die," Mills recalled reciting a short prayer as he
looked up at the barrel of the weapon.
"I was ready to die," he said. "Then I had an immediate second thought. I was
17 years old, and I thought, 'How are my parents going to take this?' And I
thought, maybe, I could get the weapon away from that soldier, and kill all
three of them. Then I had a rational thought: He had his finger on the trigger
and the likelihood of me being successful was rather slim. I lay there until
they picked me up."
As the captors walked him to a Chinese camp, Mills saw the dead everywhere.
"There were many Americans, but many more Chinese," he said.
As the soldiers roughed him up and forced him down hilly terrain, Mills said
he felt no pain and wasn't aware he was wounded.
"Each time we got to the top of a rise, they'd hit me between the shoulder
blades with the butt of the weapon, and I'd go tumbling down the hill. After the
third time, my leg felt funny and I had difficulty maintaining balance," Mills
recalled. It was when he felt blood running down his neck that he knew he'd been
hit.
"Eventually, I half-crawled and was half-dragged to a cave, in which I spent
the first night of my captivity," he said.
Mills found himself next to a Chinese soldier who had three bullet holes in
his stomach.
"I could hear bubbles as the air escaped [from his wounds]," he said. "He
died during the night."
The next morning, the Chinese soldiers took Mills from the cave and
repeatedly prodded him with a rifle to make him walk up a road, but by then he
was in such pain from his injuries, he couldn't walk.
"They pointed to a rock for me to sit down on, went around the corner," Mills
said. "I thought I was going to be executed."
Instead, he said, four Chinese soldiers came around the corner with a
stretcher, put him on it and carried him for seven days to a place Mills
estimated to be 30 to 50 miles behind the lines.
"I was placed in a dungeon not high enough for me to stand, or long enough
for me to stretch out straight," he said. He couldn't eat for two weeks. Knowing
he would die of starvation otherwise, Mills said he forced himself to eat.
Rain poured into the dungeon. "I spent a lot of my time snapping the backs
off lice," Mills said of his confinement. "My leg hurt so bad, I asked them to
cut it off. They sent someone to look at it. I don't know if he was a doctor ...
he just looked at it, and [now] I'm glad they didn't acquiesce to my
request."
After enough prisoners of war to fill an army truck were brought in, they
were taken to a prisoner camp, Mills said. Still not treated for his wounds,
with bullets and shrapnel intact, Mills said he was not made to do hard labor
like the other prisoners.
During his four-month captivity "the 15th Infantry Regiment with its
company-sized outpost decimated the entire 74th Chinese Infantry Division,
killing more than 5,000 of them," Mills said. "There were very heavy American
losses, but we held that hill."
Four months to the day after he was taken prisoner, the Chinese repatriated
Mills and the other POWs on Aug. 24, 1953. His family didn't know he was alive,
Mills said, and initially were told he was killed in action. Mills said he has
copies of his two published obituaries.
Reflecting on that April day in 1953 when the outpost was attacked, Mills
said he was the last soldier, U.S. or Chinese, on the hill firing a weapon.
"I've often wondered if I was captured with an empty gun," he said.
He also thought he was likely the only survivor of the attack, until decades
later when he found the Outpost Harry Survivors Association and similar
groups.
For being wounded during combat Mills received the Purple Heart, but it took
57 years, because of omissions in his paperwork, he said. Mills said his initial
discharge papers indicated he'd served overseas, but they didn't say where, and
didn't note that he'd been wounded, had served in combat, or been taken as a
POW.
Knowing he was eligible for the Purple Heart, Mills' daughter set out to find
and correct her father's records.
After hearing his records likely had burned in a fire in a St. Louis military
repository, Mills' papers were found archived in Philadelphia.
The paperwork was corrected, and the award was approved in nine short days,
Mills said. Then-Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli
presented Mills with his Purple Heart in 2010.
"To receive [the Purple Heart] from General Chiarelli was worth the wait,"
Mills said.
Although the Korean War is sometimes called "The Forgotten War," Mills said
that was not his experience. Upon his enlistment in the Army, Mills recalled
that he "wanted to see the world."
"And I did. A small part of it," he said.
