The Volunteer

Sandbag Castle is a rocky knob on Korea's eastern front held by the U.S. 25th Infantry Division. One day last September, the Reds attacked Sandbag Castle and every man of the 27th (Wolfhound) Regiment was on his toes. Among them: wiry little Corporal Lee ("Korean Joe") Yong Suk.

Strictly speaking, Joe Suk shouldn't have been on the front at all. After almost two years of continuous fighting he had just got his first ten-day furlough ticket so that he could go back to his village to marry a childhood sweetheart. Charlie Company had sent the hat round and collected $250 for Joe, and issued him a mock-formal order: "Have a good time." A Katusa (Korean attached to U.S. troops) and thereby not eligible for rotation, he had been up to the Yalu and back again with the Wolfhounds, fighting, said one G.I., "with the guts of a wild Indian." He had volunteered for every patrol Charlie Company ever put out.

As the Reds began shooting up Sandbag Castle, Joe canceled his own furlough, volunteered to stay and help build bunkers. He was standing in a shallow trench, filling bags with sand, when five mortar shells came in. Joe was hit from head to foot by fragments, thrown on his back. He called to his Katusa Pal Choi ("Jacky") Chang Moon: "Where are my legs? Where are my hands?" They were dangling. He was rushed to the R.O.K. hospital in Pusan, where surgeons amputated all four limbs, and he became the fourth quadruple amputee of the Korean War.*

On Charlie Company's next payday, his buddies dropped $1,800 in a helmet for him, just about all the pay they got. Then the regiment began chipping in, boosted the fund to $4,327, including $900 from regimental members in the U.S. who had known Joe. Last week in Pusan, Joe was being fitted with a Korean-made set of artificial limbs. He still hadn't told his wife-to-be. Said he: "Maybe when she sees me after I get my new arms and legs, she won't be so surprised."

* Two of them Americans. The U.S. had only two quadruple amputees in World War II.

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