"What's a North Korean 152 Look Like"

Hagren, my driver, and I had been back at the battalion CP for a meeting and now were headed forward to the company CP. I decided that a trail showing on the map would get us there, and we left the MSR to find and follow it. We felt our way slowly and were doing pretty well when we heard the shriek of an incoming artillery round. We had heard our share, but this was bigger and lasted longer than any that we had ever heard before. I looked at him; he looked at me. It seemed to last forever (probably 5 - 6 seconds) and finally splashed about a hundred feet to our left in an abandoned rice paddy, throwing dirt and shards everywhere, but missing us. I held up my hand. "Stop? Here? HERE, sir?

I motioned him toward slight cover as I leaped out of the jeep and ran for the crater. I knew what it had to be, but would need shards to prove it. I dug and groped, gathering many into my steel pot. I called in a shell rep for a Soviet 152-mm gun. After a minute or two, I called in again, asking, "How'd they greet THAT news?" The answer came back: "With laughter." Obviously, our artillery guys thought that I had "... gone around the bend."

I knew that the enemy had this gun in his inventory and the shards told me that, even though we had never had this gun fired against us, I was right. I also figured that, the firing probably was being adjusted by an enemy observer who had crossed to our side of the lines, that he had to have "lost" the round. (After all, no friendly unit was anywhere near the splash.)   It would take him 15 or 20 minutes to adjust the firing of another round.

We arrived at the artillery CP located behind the ridge behind our CP and drove to the ops center. "Now, about that 152 gun," I said. The ops sergeant could not avoid his smirk. "Oh, YOU're the one…." I up-ended the helmet's worth of shards on his table, telling him to get out his measure.

He measured, turned with a stunned look as he reached for his phone. "Hot damn! He was RIGHT! It IS a 152!" "What was he firing at back THERE, sir?"

"Don't you know? He was firing at YOU!" I turned on my heel and left. It was, after all, time for that next round. It splashed just as my driver and I reached the trail. Closer to his target this time, but still a distant miss.

I sensed that the enemy had acquired this new piece and was playing with it, but, not wishing to risk his new toy to our own counter fire, would take a long time before the third round. It was, in fact, over an hour for the third round to arrive. That was it for the day.

The enemy's wariness continued until the armistice. Trying to block our artillery from getting a good fix on their new game piece, they would fire from one to three well-spaced rounds during any given day, but not every day.

Our artillery guys really wanted to get that gun, but, to my knowledge, we never located it. It was well dug-in and camouflaged even to air photos. The enemy never hit anything with this gun. In fact, the closest they ever came was with that very first round: our jeep!