Word: wolmi
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...Save Us a Little." Then, like the sound of a slammed door, the forward battery on the nearest destroyer opened fire on Wolmi. Other ships stepped up their salvos accordingly, and everything began to concentrate on the island...
...early morning of Sept. 15, when our LSD slipped into the channel leading to Wolmi, the atmosphere had grown tight. Shortly before 3 a.m. we saw bright, distant flashes of gunfire. The naval bombardment had begun. By 4:30 a tongue of flame was licking upward from the direction of Inchon. Aboard the LSD two lines of marines groped their way from troops' compartments to the three LSUs. A young marine said wistfully: "Three months ago I was so happy...
When dawn came, the marines seemed to draw encouragement from the sight of the three high-speed transports which had accompanied us, the two destroyers which stood in close to Wolmi, and the three rocket craft resting in a half-moon formation. "Lower the stern gate," barked a loudspeaker. The marines scrambled back to the landing craft; the low barrier separating the LSD's welldeck from the sea outside was cranked down. Slowly the tankand troop-laden LSUs backed stern first into the open...
Meanwhile, the rocket boats had gone into action. Clouds of smoke and earth billowed on Wolmi; the land at water's edge was no longer visible. At 6:05 the Corsairs came. They flashed down over the island to drop their bombs, and cylinders of smoke pillared up from Wolmi's hills and the shattered remnant of the resort hotel. In the LSUs a marine shouted happily: "Save us a little of that island...
...Help Me!" As I dashed up the slope of the beach, I got my first look at Wolmi Island's defenders. Three or four half-naked North Korean soldiers, hands held rigid over their pinched, scared faces, stumbled into one of their old shallow trenches at the command of a marine. I talked to them in Japanese. "Are you going to kill us?" stammered one. When I said we wouldn't, he chattered to the others and a little of the fear went out of their eyes...