But. . . We went by train! The first leg of our journey from Korea to Japan was by truck convoy to Chunchon. (About half way to the coast and Inchon) We were to stay at the 24th division replacement center. After evening chow I reported for guard duty. I would be one of the corporals of the guard. The battery exec. officer said I would have a special post that night. He then picked the three biggest guys from the guard detail and had us wait while the others were assigned their posts. Then the four of us, the three big guys and myself, got our sleeping bags, and along with the exec were driven to a railway yard. Our post, that night, was to guard a boxcar which contained some equipment that would go to Inchon by train rather than by the truck convoy in the morning. Before the exec left he said I should have a guard walking around the boxcar at all times. (Usually each guard is on 2 hours and then off 4 hours.) We had no weapons so he gave us a large piece of pipe and said the guard on duty should carry that as a weapon. He would be back in the morning to pick us up. Being I was in charge I decided the equipment would be much safer we locked ourselves inside and protected the stuff from within. We all decided it was a good plan. We unrolled our sleeping bags and went to sleep. In the morning when we woke up the train was moving, too late to get off. All day the train would stop and start, add cars, then continue on. We would have got off but had no idea where we were. By evening the train pulled into a freight yard. One of the guys went out and found a small army mess hall at the end of the yard. We took turns going over to eat. About that time the exec officer showed up. He was wild, he was livid, he said he spent most of the day trying to find us. He said, "Sexton what the hell do you have to say for yourself" I told him that according to the guard general orders one cannot leave his post without properly being relieved. And we stayed with our post all day. We had no food and we're cold but we stayed with our post. . . He thought about that, then said that we four would be the first to receive 3 day passes when we reached our new camp. I have photos of us in Tokyo on pass. An interesting sidelight of our train ride was that when we woke up one of the guys' shirt was missing. He was sure one of us had taken it. I asked where had he put the shirt. He said he had put it in the corner of the boxcar. No one could have gotten to it except by crawling over him. Besides why would we want his shirt. In the corner of the car was a drain. It was no more than 3 inches across. There was a perforated cover on the drain. We pulled the loose cover off and could see where something was pulled through to clean the sides of the hole. The drain pipe was about 5 inches long. Some small hand had reached up, lifted off the drain cover, pulled the shirt out and then, reached up and put the cover back on! I wondered if that would be considered a combat loss. I suppose not if we were sleeping on guard duty. We didn't report it.   (continued) Photo: Solbach, Sexton and Steve - The sun is going down and we are about to "go on guard duty". The fourth guard took the photo. Back to Photo Index Page