"We Didn't Ask Why"

Corporal Robert Davis, a big, serious-faced Negro BAR man from the 24th Infantry Regiment, and his buddy, Jimmy Wright, spent most of last week in a foxhole on a hilltop near Masan. They didn't remember all of what had happened to them, but they did remember some things. Davis told TIME Correspondent Jim Bell about them.

"My buddy and I seen this snake wrigglin' into the hole; it was a little green snake, and they'd tole us it was real poisonous. We couldn't get out of the hole. They woulda got us for sure. So Jimmy he reaches over real careful and grabs the snake by the neck and he squeezes him until he is dead and then we start shootin' at the gooks again."

Bob Davis and Jimmy Wright had been told where to dig their foxhole, and where and when to fire their weapons. Their task was to protect a supply road between Masan and Chindong. Their captain had placed them on a rocky crag 1,000 feet above the road, on the road's right flank. They stayed there a long time.

One night the Reds attacked steadily from dusk until dawn. "They don't make sense," said Davis. "We kill 'em and kill 'em and they still keep coming. We captured one that night and he was drunk. They must all be drunk."

The next order Davis and Wright received from their captain was to come back down from the hilltop foxhole. It was a steep hill. Earlier, 30 men had taken seven hours to get two wounded G.I.s down to the road. Bob Davis and Jimmy Wright made it in 45 minutes.

When they reached the floor of the valley, they stopped to eat their breakfast rations. Almost instantly they were under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. An MP sergeant driving a jeep along the road was hit in the back; his vehicle careened off the road into a bank. Davis and Wright dashed across a green paddy field. When they were safely out of range of the enemy's fire, they looked up at the crag they had just left; it was now occupied by a Communist machine-gun crew.

Davis and Wright watched while other Red units began lobbing white phosphorus shells along the road and lacing it with heavy automatic fire. Then three U.S. tanks rumbled down the road and began blasting away at the same crag lately tenanted by Bob Davis, Jimmy Wright and the green snake.

A lieutenant came up to Davis and Wright and told them they were going to have to go up the hill again. Said Davis: "We didn't ask him why, because we never know about those things." Davis and Wright fought their way back up the hill; it was straight up. They reached the top after dark and settled in their old hole. This time, they said, they found no green snake.

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