Brother Fish Read Free Page B

would make the nigger too big for his boots when he returned home to the South and it would lead to demands for desegregation in institutions and facilities in civilian life.
    In fact, in mid-1950 when things started going wrong for the Americans in Korea, Jimmy’s unit was thrown into battle where on the 10th of July 1950 it recaptured an important road junction at Yechon. But that was to be a one-off victory. Like the rest of the American units committed from the occupational forces in Japan, they were under-trained, under-strength, under-equipped and most certainly under-motivated.
    Some time after coming home I recall reading an account of the early days of the war, and came across this paragraph concerning Jimmy’s unit:
    Defeat and constant retreat lowered their morale and men withdrew
in confusion and haste, often abandoning their dead, their weapons
and their equipment as they struggled in disorder to the rear.
    Although all the regiments committed in those first months were found wanting, the failure of Jimmy’s 24th Infantry Regiment against the North Koreans was put down to it being a Negro unit. The equal failure of the other units was not ascribed to them being Caucasian, but instead was blamed on the fact that they were ill-prepared and poorly equipped.
    As it happened, Jimmy did not take part in the debacle that followed the US Army’s entry into the war or in the ignominious retreat known as the ‘big bug out’. He only arrived in Korea in early 1951 where, shortly after, he took part in a successful skirmish against the enemy rescuing a white unit under difficult circumstances. Nevertheless, he felt the need to defend his regiment. ‘What you expect, Brother Fish, when dem honky units did a bug out to save dey asses, dey say it ’cos da enemy is overwhelming! When we outta der like a jack rabbit wid a pitchfork up his ass, dey say dat because we is cowardly niggers!’
    There is another interesting aspect to the 24th Infantry Regiment and, it is true, it was not a happy outfit and had problems other than poor training. The unit contained both black and white officers but the American army would not allow a black officer to command a white officer. For example, if a white lieutenant was posted to a company with a black captain as 2IC, the black captain had to be posted out and a white captain replace him. As a result, each time this happened it sent a clear message to the Negro troops that they were seen as inferior. It is not difficult to see how this would have affected their fighting morale. In October 1951 the US Army was finally desegregated and the 24th Infantry Regiment was absorbed into racially mixed units and ceased to exist. But by this time Jimmy was in the hands of the Chinese.
    Jimmy Oldcorn’s reason for being with me in Melbourne began in a North Korean field hospital situated in a cave somewhere deep in the mountains that form the inhospitable spine of the Korean peninsula. We’d been chatting together, me talking of home and the island in an attempt to forget our miserable surroundings, when suddenly the idea struck me. ‘Hey, Jimmy, when this is all over why don’t you come home with me, mate?’ I’d repeated the offer on several occasions and did so again when our release looked like being a real possibility, though on that occasion I was quick to add, ‘Mind you, you’ll probably go a bit stir-crazy, there’s bugger-all to do except lie in the sun, fish, surf, dive for crayfish or go duck or roo shooting. But my mum cooks real good cray stew.’ Sounds funny today, but at the time the qualification wasn’t intended to paint a picture of halcyon days spent on an idyllic island. I honestly felt the need to warn him in advance that things were pretty slow-moving back home.
    But, of course, he took it to mean an invitation to paradise. He’d tut-tut and shake his head. ‘I don’t know, Brother Fish, that