Andrew Jackson's triumph at the Battle of New Orleans turned a potential defeat into a defining victory in the War of 1812, thanks to bold strategy and diverse allies. This is the second part of Bill Rutledge's look back at the Battle of New Orleans.
Announcer
00:00 – 00:43
♪♪ World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and her other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.
Kim Monson
00:48 – 01:36
And welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And this show began because of a trip that I took to Normandy, France in 2016 with a group that accompanied 4 D-Day veterans to Normandy for the 73rd anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944 and World War II, and returned stateside realizing that each story is important. It needs to be heard. It needs to be broadcast. It needs to be archived. And hence, America’s Veterans Stories. I am so excited to have on the line with me Marine veteran Marty Letelier.
Kim Monson
01:36 – 01:55
And he fought in the Korean War. And the Korean War is many times referred to as the Forgotten War. And But it should not be forgotten at all. But it was fought just a few years after World War II. And Marty Letelier, welcome to the show.
Marty Letelier
01:55 – 01:57
Marty Letelier, Jr. Oh, okay. Thank you.
Kim Monson
01:58 – 02:35
It’s great to have you. Let’s Talk a little bit now. I had the great honor to interview you a few years ago, and so I’m very excited again to interview you because you participated in a very important battle in Korea in fact in marine Lore It is 1 of the most famous battles of the Marines. There’s the, I think, the Battle of Belleau Wood. Of course, there’s Iwo Jima. But the Chosin Reservoir is something that all Marines really know as well. So, Marty, it’s great to have you here. But let’s start at the beginning. Tell us a bit about you.
Kim Monson
02:35 – 02:39
Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?
Marty Letelier
02:44 – 03:08
I grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. It’s on the Missouri River. And a childhood that’s a real good 1, you know. From the Midwest, the childhoods are very nice. I’m trying to think now what would be interesting.
Kim Monson
03:09 – 03:10
Well it seems like
Marty Letelier
03:10 – 04:35
my grandfather, my great-great-grandfather grew up in Quebec, Canada, right across the river from Quebec City, a little village. He had a very interesting childhood and particularly his later life. When about the age of 17 or 18, he went down to New York City, worked there shortly. And then finally he goes down to St. Louis. And that was about 1850. And he went to work with the American Fur Company. He was a trapper and an Indian fighter too, really. And he wrote an autobiography about his adventures up the river, up the Missouri. And he was stationed at Fort Union, which is right on the border of Montana and North Dakota.
Marty Letelier
04:36 – 04:40
And a very, very interesting autobiography.
Kim Monson
04:42 – 04:43
Can people still get it?
Marty Letelier
04:44 – 04:47
Oh yeah, it’s for sale up there at the Union, at Fort Union.
Kim Monson
04:48 – 04:51
Wow. And what’s the title?
Marty Letelier
04:52 – 04:59
What’s the title, Mama? Do you know? I’ll get it. She’s going to get it.
Kim Monson
04:59 – 05:01
Okay. Sounds good.
Marty Letelier
05:02 – 05:57
And he married a Blackfoot woman. Okay. And a daughter. And by that time, he was, after a few years, he got real tired of that country and dealing with the Indians and it was getting very tiresome. So he kidnapped the daughter because his wife didn’t want to, she was a real Indian and she wanted her daughter to be raised as an Indian. And so he raised her, he kidnapped the daughter, Went back down the river and at the junction of the Big Sioux and the Missouri River, he stopped and said, we have a good place to stay.
Marty Letelier
05:58 – 06:27
So he and a couple of his friends, French Canadian friends, kind of homesteaded there. And he set up a fur trading post. Very, very, very interesting. But he was, the name of it is Adventures on the Upper Missouri. That’s the name of the book. Okay. And Louis Dossier-Lefouriez, that was him.
Speaker 4
06:27 – 06:28
Wow.
Marty Letelier
06:28 – 06:40
That’s his name. And oh, it’s a hair-raising tone, the things in there. The grizzly bears chasing them into the river. And it’s very, very interesting.
Kim Monson
06:41 – 06:42
But anyway. It sounds fascinating.
Marty Letelier
06:43 – 06:44
Where are we?
Kim Monson
06:44 – 07:00
Okay, well, I asked you about your childhood and I remember a little bit of the story that you’d mentioned about your great-great-grandfather. So good childhood. What about though, you were a child during World War II. What do you remember about that, Marty?
Marty Letelier
07:03 – 07:32
Well I had a brother, well 2 brothers, 1 brother was in the army and he was in the Pacific. He won a bronze star and finally after the war he came home and he had malaria. I remember going to the hospital with him and trying to get treated for it.
Speaker 4
07:35 – 07:35
But I
Marty Letelier
07:35 – 08:06
think in the later years, that kind of got better. So I remember, you know, not too long ago, well, you know, he died about 10 years ago. But by then, it didn’t bother him too much. And the other brother was in Europe, and he pounded the typewriter over there. Towards the end of the war, yeah.
Kim Monson
08:07 – 08:17
Okay. Well, all jobs are super important, for sure. Did your brother that was awarded the Bronze Star, did he ever talk about why he received that award?
Marty Letelier
08:17 – 08:20
No, he never did say much about it, no.
Kim Monson
08:20 – 08:21
Isn’t that interesting?
Marty Letelier
08:21 – 08:22
I know.
Kim Monson
08:22 – 08:49
It is just really interesting. And now, I wish that I had gotten more stories of many of the people from my family. I didn’t really realize, you know, just what they were holding there. But let’s talk about you now, Marty. So we’ve gone through World War II, and the Korean War starts. Where were you? How did it end up that you joined the Marines?
Marty Letelier
08:50 – 09:50
I was a student at Trinity High School in Sioux Area. And I played football. And I had dreams of playing for Notre Dame someday. But that 1, the first year there, the first fall, it was, I got hit right on my left thigh. And I had some, I had a block of softball, huge thing. And we couldn’t get rid of it. I went to the YMCA, nobody knew anything about stuff in those days. And the movement, of course, the uniforms were bad, they didn’t fit right, which is why I got hurt. But anyway, So finally I said, you know, this is baloney, I can’t, I won’t be able to play.
Marty Letelier
09:50 – 10:36
God knows when I will be able to play. So I kind of thought about my great-grandfather and I said, well, you know, he was an adventurer. And I kind of had, you know, when you’re young, you know, you know, let’s just see the world. So I was going to join the Navy. And my dad said, well, if you made up your mind you’re gonna do this, then why don’t you join the Marines? You’re the best, you know, you can’t go wrong. So I said, okay, I didn’t care. So I joined the Marine Corps then. I was 17 years old.
Marty Letelier
10:38 – 10:53
And I started off in Omaha, Nebraska with the physicals, then took a train to San Diego, boot camp in San Diego, and then I started, you know.
Speaker 4
10:53 – 10:54
Amy Turek
Kim Monson
10:54 – 10:55
What year was that, Marty?
Marty Letelier
10:55 – 10:58
Martin Luther King 1948. Amy
Kim Monson
10:58 – 11:10
Turek Okay, 1948. World War II is over. The Korean War then starts in 1950. You’re in the Marines. Tell us just a little bit about boot camp, though.
Marty Letelier
11:11 – 11:31
Boot camp? Yes. That’s great fun. At the time, I didn’t think it was fun. They treat you pretty bad. That was their philosophy in those days, anyway. They treat you bad. Toughen you up.
Kim Monson
11:32 – 11:39
Do you feel that that happened? Did you feel like you were toughened up for battle or what do you think? DR.
Marty Letelier
11:39 – 11:44
SATTERWHITE Well, yeah, I’m sure it’s helped. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kim Monson
11:45 – 11:46
NAOMI Okay. DR.
Marty Letelier
11:46 – 12:13
SATTERWHITE Yeah. NAOMI Okay. DR. SATTERWHITE But I think they’ve changed their philosophy a little bit in boot camp. And then it was really, oh God, I tell you, they treated you like dirt. But now I think it’s better. But maybe that’s a little good, treat you like dirt, you know? Toughen you up.
Kim Monson
12:13 – 12:31
I remember I’d been talking to 1 of World War II veteran, a Marine, and he said something along the line and his mother said to him, I did my best to teach you discipline and now the Marines are going to finish it. And I thought that was always A great quote.
Marty Letelier
12:32 – 12:33
Yeah, they will, man.
Kim Monson
12:35 – 12:46
So Marty, those 2, couple of years, so you joined in 1948, the Korean War breaks out in 1950. What did you do during those 2 kind of peacetime years?
Marty Letelier
12:47 – 13:21
That I went, I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. On the ocean side is a little town there on the coast. And right outside the gate is I can’t tell and so I spent 2 years, about 2 years there and you know, there’s wonderful weather and all. He kind of likes the weather.
Kim Monson
13:21 – 13:21
Right.
Marty Letelier
13:25 – 14:31
And I had a brother, my second brother, who had an administration in Europe. He got out and he went to school at the University of Southern California. So I would, on weekends when we had liberty, I would go up and we’d fool around up there with my brother and we’d watch him wait and we had he lived in a boarding house just close to the campus. And the back door, the back of the boarding house had an area where you could store weights, bar bills. So we got some bar bills and we went to work on that.
Marty Letelier
14:34 – 14:44
We also went to, once in a while, we’d go to Muscle Beach in Santa Monica on the coast.
Speaker 4
14:46 – 14:46
Amy Quinton
Kim Monson
14:46 – 14:50
Well, it’s probably good you had those weights so that you could go to Muscle Beach there, huh?
Marty Letelier
14:51 – 14:56
Yeah, right. You know, when you do weights, you feel a little out of, out of, out of…
Kim Monson
14:56 – 15:30
Right, right. Well, Marty Letelier, We’re going to go to break. This is Kim Monson, America’s Veterans Stories Show. We’re talking with Marty LaTellier. He is a Korean veteran, a Marine veteran. And before we go to break, though, I want to give a shout out to 1 of my great partners, and that is Kirsch Insurance Group. They are specialists in the Medicare arena and they work with a lot of different companies so that they can actually help you find the best plan that works for your individual needs. And so be sure to reach out to them.
Kim Monson
15:30 – 15:42
Their website is iKirsch.com. That’s iKirsch.com. And we’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’ll continue the conversation with Marty Letelier.
Speaker 5
15:43 – 16:21
REMAC’s Realtor, Karen Levine, helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home. Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
Speaker 6
16:25 – 16:44
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, Kim Monson dot com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
Kim Monson
16:56 – 17:45
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out the website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. On the line with me is Marty Letelier, and he is a Korean War veteran, a Marine veteran, and the Korean War is many times referred to as the Forgotten War. And it was, it’s per the Eisenhower Library, it says that the Korean War began after 5 years of simmering tensions on the Korean Peninsula. And it began on June 25th, 1950, when the North Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea in a coordinated general attack at several strategic points along the 38th parallel, which is the line dividing communist North Korea from non-communist Republic of Korea.
Kim Monson
17:46 – 17:51
So you’re in the Marines. Did you expect that this was going to happen, Marty?
Marty Letelier
17:53 – 17:55
MF. That I would end up there?
Kim Monson
17:55 – 17:57
AMT. Yeah. Did you think that we were
Speaker 4
17:59 – 17:59
going
Kim Monson
17:59 – 18:01
to be involved in a war in Korea?
Marty Letelier
18:01 – 18:04
MF. Who knows? That’s too quick after the Second World War.
Kim Monson
18:04 – 18:05
Sure.
Marty Letelier
18:05 – 18:31
I figured it was going to be nice and I just joined the Marines and spent 4 years and you know, see California, go swimming up in the ocean, Great fun. But it didn’t work out that way. That war started and that sure messed things up out there.
Kim Monson
18:33 – 18:41
So once the war started, did training change? Did the things that you were working on, your duties, did that change?
Marty Letelier
18:42 – 18:52
MB. No, no. Well, it started and We immediately were called up and sent to Korea.
Kim Monson
18:54 – 18:56
So when did you arrive in Korea?
Marty Letelier
18:56 – 19:06
Nothing changed. Let’s see, I think it was August 2nd of 1950.
Kim Monson
19:07 – 19:11
So you were there really for all of it, weren’t you, Marty?
Marty Letelier
19:11 – 19:14
Yes, all you had for it. The whole day.
Kim Monson
19:15 – 19:19
Okay. So you arrive, and what happens then?
Marty Letelier
19:20 – 20:31
Okay, then I had a map, let me think. There’s an area in South Korea that’s where we called the Pusan perimeter. This included Pusan, the big town, Pusan. Now they changed the name to Busan, I think. I’m always doing that, changing things. But anyway, that went up about, oh, I don’t know, 23 miles. Kind of a little rectangle down there. And the North Koreans had the whole island, the whole peninsula, except for that little spot on the floor, right around the town of Pusan. And that’s why the ship is there so quick, because they’re just about ready to lose South Korea.
Kim Monson
20:31 – 20:39
So you’re saying that the North Koreans had everything on the Korean peninsula except for this little square?
Marty Letelier
20:39 – 20:40
Right. Right.
Kim Monson
20:40 – 20:42
And they send you guys in?
Marty Letelier
20:43 – 21:23
That’s right. They got the Marines over there. The Army was there and they were not having much luck. They, well, they weren’t trained. They, you know, they emptied out Japan where there were, you know, Pound type riders and chasing those pretty Japanese girls. And they didn’t know anything about fighting. So the only troops really that were ready at that time were the Marines. So they got us over there and threw us into the battle.
Kim Monson
21:24 – 21:32
So and how did you come on to Korea? You didn’t have to do an amphibious landing then, did you?
Marty Letelier
21:32 – 22:11
No, no. Because they had Pusan. They still had Pusan. And so the ship landed there. Got it, got it. Okay. And then we went from, like, we take trucks. Trucks. See, the first battle we took on trucks went to the, let’s see, where were we? The the west, I think it would be west, around the west part of that little area that we still had.
Kim Monson
22:11 – 22:12
Okay.
Marty Letelier
22:15 – 22:51
And So then they threw us into a battle there and we kicked the hell out of them and then they shipped us by truck again to another area on the Myeoryang River and we did the same thing there. So we saved Korea from the North Koreans with this small bunch of Marines because it was just the fifth Marines.
Kim Monson
22:51 – 22:52
Wow.
Marty Letelier
22:54 – 23:51
And we did a good job. Some of the Navy Army officers just raved about us because they couldn’t control these troops. They couldn’t talk to them. They couldn’t make them do anything. First thing they do is turn around and run. You know, you can’t blame them really because they didn’t have any training. They didn’t know. They just, they were just kind of criminals, the way they treated the army, you know. They had to go over there and supposedly stop the invasion by the North Koreans. But how are they going to do it? They don’t have anything.
Kim Monson
23:51 – 24:06
Okay, Marty, a question then. I’ve heard, as I’ve talked to so many veterans, training. What do you think that training is? It’s physical, it’s mental, it’s preparation for battle, is that what it is?
Marty Letelier
24:06 – 25:21
That’s right. And it’s mainly, it’s not physical so much. There’s some, you know, but it’s mental. The spirit of the Corps, spirit of the Corps. You take, you go and study the history of the Marine Corps. And in many cohorts you’ve got all these Marines, the NCOs, non-commissioned officers still in the Corps And they knew what they were doing. They’d been, they’d fought the Japanese for a couple, 3 years. And they, you know, and that didn’t bother them too much. The North Koreans, because they would, you know, they’d come in there and yell at the Marines, they were, Marines, you son of a bitch, we’re going to kill you, we’re going to cut your, whatchamacallit, called.
Marty Letelier
25:25 – 25:35
But that didn’t bother them. And because it didn’t bother them, it didn’t bother us, the kids. I was 19 then.
Kim Monson
25:35 – 25:35
Wow.
Marty Letelier
25:40 – 26:13
We figured they knew what was going on, and they did though, They knew how to fight. And it surprised the North Koreans. They said, what the hell happened here? Because they had such an easy time with these poor army troops. They just didn’t know what they were doing. They had poor leadership. It was terrible. Okay.
Kim Monson
26:13 – 26:53
Okay. Well, Marty, We’re going to go to break. I’m talking with Marty Letelier. He is a Marine veteran of the Korean War. The Korean War was fought 1950 to 1953 and it began in June and he was shipped over in August. He was there for all of it. And before we go to break, these shows come to you because I have such great partners. 1 of those is Castlegate Knife and Tool, family-owned business located right here in Sedalia, Colorado. And whether or not you are looking for a gift for a chef or a sportsman or a collector, Castlegate Knife and Tool is the place for you and they’re adding in all kinds of specialty items as well.
Kim Monson
26:53 – 26:59
So be sure and check out their website. That is castlegate.com. Castlegate.com, we’ll be right back with Marty Letelier.
Speaker 7
27:01 – 27:45
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Speaker 8
27:47 – 28:27
Eyes peeled and moving quickly, Lance Corporal Jack Swan led 164 of his fellow US Marines from Mike Company 3rd Battalion 5th Marines over the face of a bare rocky knoll to rescue an isolated company of fellow Leathernecks besieged by the communist North Vietnamese army. Then all hell broke loose. Instead of rescuing their fellow comrades, the Marines now faced complete annihilation. Author Doyle Glass tells their story in Swift Sword, a true Vietnam War story of epic courage and brotherhood in the face of insurmountable odds. Order Swift Sword by Doyle Glass now. They never gave up. We should never forget.
Announcer
28:30 – 28:41
♪♪ God bless America Land that I love
Kim Monson
28:43 – 29:13
Welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. On the line with me is Marine veteran, Korean War veteran, and that is Marty Letelier. And we were talking about when the Marines arrived in Korea, things changed. The North Koreans realized that we were serious and you were having success. We just talked about the battle at the Maryang River. What happens after that, Marty?
Marty Letelier
29:15 – 29:29
See, a couple more battles. Then come, let me think, I think it was in August.
Speaker 4
29:33 – 29:33
They pull us out.
Marty Letelier
29:33 – 30:12
They pull us out, and MacArthur has this brilliant idea that we’re going to go on the offense and go have a landing further up the coast in Korea and go to Seoul, which is right there, and take that, retake it, and maybe then we can kick North Koreans out of Korea. So it makes sense.
Kim Monson
30:16 – 30:19
This is not the Inchon landing, is
Marty Letelier
30:19 – 30:20
it? That’s it.
Kim Monson
30:20 – 30:21
Is it? Okay.
Marty Letelier
30:22 – 31:14
The Inchon landing, right. And that really caught them, caught them with their pants down. They didn’t know what the hell to do. We weren’t supposed to be there. We weren’t supposed to land there. And nobody wanted to except for Frank Reicher. He had some good ideas. There are other times that I wonder about the guy But he had good ideas and he said He figured out a little go away them back there in the in the rear end and they won’t know what the hell hit them. They’ll go to Korea, I mean to Seoul, and kick them out of there and sing the big over.
Marty Letelier
31:16 – 32:00
So that’s what happened. We had a hell of a battle going down in the Pusan perimeter down there. And that’s when McArthur said, let’s go up and have a nativious landing at Inchon. So right in the middle of a battle, we were winning. We were pulled out and we boarded ship and went up and made the landing at Inchon.
Kim Monson
32:02 – 32:16
And… That’s pretty aggressive. And I say that not necessarily in a great way to open up another battle when you’re involved in this 1. Did he do it because he wanted to surprise them or what do you think, Marty?
Marty Letelier
32:16 – 32:51
Ebert Oh yeah, I think so, yeah. He wanted the Marines to do, to take, because by this time, the 7th Marines had been landed there, and we housed with the 5th, so the 7th Marines had landed and the 1st Marines, These were the regiments. So now we had a full division. Okay. Inchon. Before it was just 1 regiment with this. So…
Kim Monson
32:52 – 32:56
So, and I’m looking at this, the Battle of Inchon was in September of 1950.
Marty Letelier
32:57 – 33:00
Yeah. Okay. That sounds right.
Kim Monson
33:00 – 33:00
Okay.
Marty Letelier
33:00 – 33:56
Yeah. And I remember we had bacon and eggs for breakfast and we had to go in on landing craft and the only time we could go in was later on in the day. The tides were just crazier. And the tides were wrong, were bad. So We had to wait until about 05:00 to go in. So come 05:00 we boarded the landing craft. It went down the nest, you know. Your rifles around your neck and God, it’s just, it’s not, I hate it at this point. Wow. And
Kim Monson
33:56 – 34:03
then, and then to get to the landing craft also if, if the water’s rough. I mean, it’s not easy to do that.
Marty Letelier
34:16 – 35:18
You’ve got to really jump. The last, I don’t know how many feet are involved, quite a few. And you’ve got this rifle around your neck and it’s just miserable. And finally, anyway, it worked out okay. But not much fun. But anyway, so We did a rendezvous. You go around in circles until all the landing craft are down and going and running. And then you peel off and you head for shore. And we went to hit the shore. And it’s not like in the Second World War where it was a sandy beach. This was, it had a wall.
Marty Letelier
35:20 – 35:48
It was a stone wall. I suppose this was because of the tides. But anyway, there was a stone wall, and we rammed into that, and we had homemade ladders. And we threw those up against the wall and then we climbed the ladder And finally we’re on the beach.
Kim Monson
35:56 – 36:05
Was that pretty fortified by the North Koreans or Did MacArthur choose that because there was that wall and that you wouldn’t be expected? What do you think?
Marty Letelier
36:05 – 36:11
Exactly right. Okay. The North Koreans, nobody’s dumb enough or crazy
Kim Monson
36:12 – 36:14
enough. Except the Americans.
Marty Letelier
36:15 – 36:31
Yeah, right. So we landed and that’s where the first Marine to get the Medal of Honor was there. It was a Spanish.
Kim Monson
36:32 – 36:32
Martinez.
Marty Letelier
36:33 – 36:34
Was that it?
Kim Monson
36:34 – 36:45
I think so. I want to say John, because I interviewed his cousin. TN. Okay. AMT. I’ll take a look at that while you continue on. So tell us what happened. TN.
Marty Letelier
36:45 – 37:32
Okay. So he was there and he was the first or second lieutenant and he was charged up there with his troops And there was an enemy North Korean, or maybe it was still South Korean, but anyway, they had a machine gun nest there. And so he ran up and pulled out a hand grenade. And just as he was throwing it, They shot him in the chest.
Kim Monson
37:32 – 37:36
Okay. And I found it. This 1 is Baldomero Lopez.
Marty Letelier
37:36 – 37:58
That’s him. Yep. Right. And that, of course, when he didn’t drop the hand grenade. And so his troops were right around him there. So he just rolled over and laid on top of that.
Kim Monson
38:01 – 38:03
Wow. And he saved all their lives.
Marty Letelier
38:03 – 38:11
Yeah. Wow. See, I still, it makes me up to talk about it.
Kim Monson
38:12 – 38:16
He was just 25 years old. Amazing. Truly amazing.
Marty Letelier
38:16 – 38:18
That was what he was, 25?
Kim Monson
38:18 – 38:23
Yeah. It says he was born in 1925 and of course he died in 1950. Wow.
Marty Letelier
38:23 – 38:35
Yeah. But anyway, yeah, he was some guy. Right. Yeah.
Kim Monson
38:35 – 38:37
You know, yeah.
Marty Letelier
38:38 – 38:39
Yeah, sure.
Kim Monson
38:40 – 38:44
You know. And Marty, did you witness this?
Marty Letelier
38:45 – 38:46
MR. MASON Yeah, you bet.
Kim Monson
38:47 – 38:48
AMY Oh my gosh.
Marty Letelier
38:49 – 38:52
MR. MASON Yeah. AMY Well. MR.
Speaker 4
38:52 – 38:52
MASON I
Marty Letelier
38:52 – 38:53
did this in college. They were all a
Speaker 4
38:53 – 38:53
bunch together. Yeah, you bet. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well. I’d be different, because
Marty Letelier
38:53 – 38:54
they’re all bunched together.
Kim Monson
38:54 – 39:11
Sure. Okay. Okay. So tell us, I hear I’m losing track of time. I’m getting so interested in this. I need to make sure that I… Because we want to get to the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. We’ve got a couple of minutes left. What else do you want to tell us about Inchon?
Marty Letelier
39:12 – 39:34
That’s… From there we went up to retake Seoul. North Koreans, when they started the war, took Seoul right away. So we… And that was very good. The battle was good. It was okay.
Kim Monson
39:36 – 39:42
Was that battle, was it like door-to-door kind of a battle or what was that like?
Marty Letelier
39:42 – 39:54
It was down the street, yeah. It was here in Philwell. And I got a book with all kinds of pictures of I’m here, the book too.
Speaker 4
39:58 – 39:59
There was a
Marty Letelier
39:59 – 40:08
little correspondent And then he took the magazine. Anyway, he took a bunch of pictures and all that stuff.
Kim Monson
40:08 – 40:23
Okay. Okay. Hagen-Sol, the North Koreans, and you’ve really fought your way up. Now, do you, do we now have all of the territory? Would it be, is there still North Koreans in that area as well?
Marty Letelier
40:24 – 40:33
There may be some, but they’re done. They’re surrendering or hiding in the hills. For all intents and purposes, they’re done.
Kim Monson
40:33 – 41:09
Okay, so for that little piece of real estate, which was the Pusan perimeter, you pushed the North Koreans back. And let’s stop there. We’re going to go to break. I’m talking with Marty Letelier. He is a Korean War veteran, a Marine veteran. And before we do that, though, these stories come to you because I have great partners. And 1 of my great partners is Hooters Restaurants. They have 5 locations, and that is Loveland, Aurora, Westminster, Lone Tree, and Colorado Springs. They have all kinds of specials. Football, kids eat free on Saturdays. Be sure and check that out on my website, which is kimmunson.com.
Kim Monson
41:10 – 41:15
And we’re gonna go to break. When we come back, we’ll continue the conversation with Marty Letelier.
Speaker 9
41:18 – 41:55
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Speaker 10
41:59 – 42:15
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Announcer
42:17 – 42:21
From the mountains to the prairies…
Kim Monson
42:23 – 42:41
To America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson, check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. I have on the line with me Marty Letelier. He is a Marine War veteran. And Marty, when we stopped from the last segment, the Marines have taken Seoul. What happened after that?
Marty Letelier
42:43 – 43:55
We drove by boat around the peninsula to the other side of Korea. Bob Hope was there. He beat us to it. He beat us to it. And he was there with his, you know, all of his cohorts. But anyway, then we go up toward the reservoir there. Because the reservoir is inside the country, up, you know, I don’t know how far from the coast. Not too far, 23 miles. So then we head up the reservoir, and we stop short of the reservoir and the first marine digs in there. And then we, fifth and seventh marines, go up another 23 miles to the Hageroo, which is at the bottom of the reservoir.
Marty Letelier
43:59 – 44:05
The bottom part of it. And then we’ve been to Funch Church.
Kim Monson
44:07 – 44:09
What was the purpose of sending you guys?
Marty Letelier
44:10 – 44:18
We were all, the MacArthur’s thought we were going to go all the way to the Yalu River and when the war was over.
Kim Monson
44:18 – 44:21
Okay, got it. And you’d be home by Christmas.
Marty Letelier
44:22 – 44:49
Yes, we thought we would, but anyway. We go to the Hague Rue. And then it’s getting colder, it’s colder in the center here now. Before that it was pretty nice in the fall weather, you know, apples around the trees and it was pretty nice really. AMT But
Kim Monson
44:49 – 44:51
this is November now, right?
Marty Letelier
44:51 – 44:52
WRG Yeah, right.
Kim Monson
44:52 – 44:53
AMT Okay.
Marty Letelier
44:53 – 44:59
WRG And, but now it’s getting cold. So, we, oh, I’m dry.
Kim Monson
45:05 – 45:14
AMT And the dates, yeah, the dates on that was November 15th to December 13th, 1950 is when the battle was fought. And yes, it was getting very cold.
Marty Letelier
45:15 – 45:38
Yeah, right. And then, you know, the soldiers, worst enemy of them, other than the enemy you’re fighting. And that, I think I got within Korea and I got
Speaker 4
45:38 – 45:38
high.
Marty Letelier
45:38 – 46:19
Okay. It’s terrible. So I ate through and I got sick. You know, it’s just, it’s terrible. So we had that. And so I trucked to, toward Udamne, another little village. And we’re, you know, you know, an old beach and I just, I don’t know, agony. North Koreans, Chinese, now it’s
Speaker 4
46:20 – 46:20
the Chinese here. North Koreans, Chinese, now
Marty Letelier
46:20 – 46:28
the Chinese here. We undergo tracers. We have, we use red tracers, you know what I’m talking about?
Kim Monson
46:28 – 46:29
I do.
Marty Letelier
46:29 – 46:30
Okay.
Speaker 4
46:30 – 46:30
But maybe
Kim Monson
46:30 – 46:32
you can tell us what they are.
Marty Letelier
46:32 – 46:58
Well, that’s, it’s a part of the cartridge. Maybe every third or fourth 1. And if you fire it, you can see where it’s going. And the Chinese used green ones and we used red. Okay.
Kim Monson
47:01 – 47:03
Do I jump in on this?
Marty Letelier
47:03 – 47:05
Oh yeah. Okay. NAOMI KLEIN-MICHELSON
Speaker 4
47:05 – 47:05
I jumped
Marty Letelier
47:05 – 47:07
in on this? ALAN TURNBULL
Speaker 4
47:07 – 47:08
Oh yeah. NAOMI KLEIN-MICHELSON Okay. ALAN TURNBULL
Marty Letelier
47:09 – 47:33
Yeah. They were, that started, boy I tell you, I always, I still to this day, an article in a medical journal on her dysentery. Because I just like, tracers started going, things were rattling, going off.
Kim Monson
47:37 – 47:41
Oh, boy, that’ll do it, huh?
Marty Letelier
47:41 – 48:28
You bet it’ll do it, boy. We stayed there for about, oh, I don’t know, not just a few days. And Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner there. Then We were trucked over the other side of the reservoir to Udamne, there, when they would hit us. It started and they would—the first battle there, it was dark. It was just as thin as a foxhole because it’s frozen.
Kim Monson
48:29 – 48:33
Right, the temperatures got as cold as negative 36.
Marty Letelier
48:35 – 48:37
And later on, we got to 40, boy.
Kim Monson
48:37 – 48:39
Oh my gosh, 40 below.
Marty Letelier
48:39 – 48:56
We had a good, we had a good, we had big parkas and stuff. I can’t complain about that. The shoes were lousy. I got frostbite all these years. I’m getting good money every month with frostbite.
Kim Monson
48:57 – 48:58
And you’re 91?
Marty Letelier
48:59 – 49:04
Yeah, I’ll be 91 in March. But yeah,
Speaker 4
49:06 – 49:06
that’s
Marty Letelier
49:06 – 50:08
a U-damn-knee. And they would, the Chinese word, They come in by the hundreds. And that’s how they always do it. To that time, we went against the troops, the army troops, because it scared them. I was scared too, but we had all these NCOs who had been through Iwo Jima and all those things, Okinawa. They said, because you know, the Chinese would yell, hey you dirty son of a bitch, we’re gonna cut you to pieces. We’re gonna kill ya. And they would just yell back at them, come and get us. Wow. And then we just shoot them by the hundreds.
Marty Letelier
50:09 – 50:33
It was slaughter. Then the Chinese, That’s really the first time the Chinese got acquainted with the Marines. But then, I don’t know where. They couldn’t figure out, God, what was it? These Marines…
Kim Monson
50:35 – 50:37
But you guys were really pretty much.
Marty Letelier
50:37 – 50:38
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Kim Monson
50:41 – 50:43
So how did you get out of there?
Marty Letelier
50:46 – 52:08
Well, we do, we do, we added them up. We’ve got, It’s a division and we’ve got a lot of equipment. So we’ve got trucks and tanks and stuff like that. So we just bulldozed our way through on the road to Haggaroo. So that’s where we headed for, Haggaroo. That’s where the commanding general had his headquarters. So that was the start of the Restore. You saw You know God is It’s a miserable God in existence. I’ll tell you Everybody’s dying. Well, all the Marines are dying. In the morning, you take away, you take the bodies of your friends, your Marines, who died that night, and you throw them in a pile.
Marty Letelier
52:09 – 52:20
And that’s it. So we just kept going. So we got back to Hageroo.
Speaker 4
52:27 – 52:28
And
Marty Letelier
52:29 – 53:16
then our feet were in bad shape. You know, I thought, that’s simple. Were in bad shape. They were at crossbarks. It’s that simple. And so we lined up. When we got back to Agua and the corpsmen would look at our feet and if they were bad enough it could be because they had bulldozed a kind of a landing strip there. And that plane could land. And so if you’re mad enough, they put you on the plane, ship you off to Japan. And…
Kim Monson
53:17 – 53:20
So what happened for you after that, Marty?
Marty Letelier
53:22 – 54:19
MARTY BLAIR I stuck with them all the way until we got to the coast. And when we got to the coast, we had landing craft, And that picked us up and took us out to the bigger ships. And then we were going to go back south. And I remember as the landing, as we got to the big ship that was going to take us back to the South, 1 back
Speaker 4
54:19 – 54:20
to South.
Marty Letelier
54:21 – 55:06
1 of the sailors said, where’s the rest of your company? Because We lost so many men. And somebody piped up 1 of the Marines and said, this is it. There ain’t no more. This is all that’s left. Because we had about, I mean, 50, 60 guys. Should have been 200 or something. Wow. And as poor sailors, they looked at their mouths, were out grumbling, and they treated us real well.
Kim Monson
55:08 – 55:18
Okay. Marty L’Atelier, we’re basically out of time. How would you like to wrap this up for our listeners.
Marty Letelier
55:19 – 55:46
Oh, I don’t know. It’s going to happen again, I’m sure. This time you’re going to be a part of the Russians. I mean, everyone’s crazy. Why in the hell are they killing each other? It doesn’t make any sense.
Kim Monson
55:48 – 56:15
AMT Well, that is for sure. And Marty, I am so appreciative of my freedom and for men like you who have gone through really hell to make sure that we that we have our freedom. And I seriously mean it when I say that we stand on the shoulders of giants. So, Marty Letelier, thank you so much for doing this interview. I really appreciate it.
Marty Letelier
56:15 – 56:16
Oh, you’re welcome.
Kim Monson
56:17 – 56:22
And again, my friends, we do stand on the shoulders of giants and God bless you and God bless America.
Announcer
56:24 – 56:36
Thank you for listening to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. Here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
Speaker 11
56:45 – 56:57
Those are the speaker commentators hosts their guests and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management employees associates or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.