A friend asked me to send some pics of me at 18 years old.
I think, but am not sure that this one of the crew fixing a broken track pin captured the blown off top of Pork Chop Hill.
This was 1971 or 72 but I can not remember exactly where it was taken.
Do any Korean War vets recognize that flat top hill?

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Please someone tell me how to flip pictures.

As for location, we were based out of Camp MacKenzie on the south bank of the Imjin River. Operated from there to the east/ northeast along the river for the most part.
If my memory serves me well, It was between Freedom and Libby bridges and along the DMZ.
Was Pork Chop Hill in that area?

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Thanks Rusty!

Rusty beat me to it. Here they are working on the other side.

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Funny that we all did it simultaneously.

You know, looking at that picture there is a dark haired white guy, a red haired white guy, a black guy, a Puerto Rican guy, a Korean guy, and you know what? They are all smiling and having a great time even though their track is broken.
This was all before being politically correct. Guess what? We all got along
and got the job done! Imagine that!

Those pics remind me of Isandlhwana. But that's in South Africa, not in Korea.

Who here knows what happened there in January, 1879?
Both mountains have seen a lot of spilled blood...

Great minds and all that.....

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I had not heard of that place, but the movie about the Battle of Rourke's Drift which took place the same day is one of my favorites.


Speaking of "DRIFT".

Digging around a bit. There is little about MacKenzie readily available. Two different sites called it "75". This map legend Cross-references MacKenzie with the number 75. Here is the map plate with that camp in the upper left.



Here is the link to the maps. The one with "75" is four over to the right and four down from the top.

Korea Map

Seems to match up with the landmarks you mention, maybe you can find the hill on the map.

Camp MacKenzie shut down before I even left Korea. I think that camp reverted to hillside.

I put the military map and Google map side-by-side and where the 75 is, there is Google Satellite and Street View showing the hillside notched with numerous semi-circular earthworks. Maybe remains of fighting positions.

Where was the flattop hill from there?



Street view in front of 75. Earthworks on side of hill.

Google Maps

There's a helipad a few hundred feet behind those earthworks, still guarded.

Munsan is a familiar name. The bridge straight up from the town should be Freedom Bridge. I'm not sure of the one to the left of that, if it was even there then. I don't think so.

Libby bridge was a little cement nothing bridge at the time. But at that time it was only the second bridge across the Imjin River for a long ways.

Correct spelling of the little fort/mission is Rorke's Drift.

You have seen Isandhlwana in the film. Richard Burton narrated about the battle there before the Zulu impis (regiments) carried on to attack the much smaller garrison at Rorke's Drift.

I have a book about the Second Zulu War and have read, The Washing of the Spears, by Donald R. Morris. I wrote a college paper on the Zulu, BTW. The Afrikaaner officer in the film explained their battle tactics well.

The mountain is in the opening scenes of the film. There's a feature on YouTube where historians dissect the real battles and probably explain why the much larger British force on the mountain was slaughtered, while the little fort held.

The real Pvt. Hook, VC was NOT the miscreant he was portrayed to be, and his heirs sued the film producers for defamation and were awarded a pretty large sum.

Rorke's Drift resulted in the award of 11 Victoria Crosses, although the movie, made by anti-war elements, didn't detail many of the the VC feats. Lt. Bromhead's bayonet attack on the Zulus firing into the hospital from the roof is probably the most valiant action shown.

The version of, Men of Harlech sung in the movie has differences from the traditional words. You can hear the traditional form on YouTube, one example being sung by Charlotte Church, another by the Welsh Guards.

Thanks for posting. There's a new HD version of the film now on YouTube. I played it recently and in full screen mode, had the best resolution of the film I've seen. I did see it in a theater in 1965.

Hard to believe that was meant to be an anti-war movie. Seemed to me more like a recruiting poster in motion.

Not really. Look at how Surgeon Major Reynolds, Bromhead, Addendorff, and even Chard, played by Stanley Baker, criticized the battle. (Addendorff mainly at the last, just before the Zulu left. He would have known better, the Zulu being enemies of the Dutch/Afrikaaner people since the Retief massacre of 1838.

I don't think the real men did that whining. They were soldiers and knew that if they didn't kill, they'd be killed and mutilated.

The Swedish preacher and his cute daughter railed against the coming battle, too, until Chard sent them on their way. He tried to demoralize the troops.

How could you miss all of that posturing, in a film made as the USA was becoming heavily involved in Vietnam?

Thanks for the history lesson. I never knew about Mackenzie until now. I recognized Sonyu-Ri as "Sonjuri" which was the back door to Camp Giant. I was there 1995-1996. Our BN headquarters was Camp Greaves, North of the Imjin. Just as Jesse pointed out...we all got along. Brothers, common cause......miss those days

I saw it as adding a refreshing dose of reality to a genre that lacked it in those days. Similar to another favorite movie from that era, "Sand Pebbles", the conflicts add historical context.

In the end, an engineer, professional officer, and colour sergeant rallied the heroic troops to victory against overwhelming odds, like the crew of the U.S.S. San Pablo. The warts give it character, like honest holster wear.

Geez, that was a sloppy drift.
I like the guy in front's improvised method of rinsing off the sprocket.
Hope the OP gets an answer.

That's the correct side. It was the left track.

Thanks. That picture was taken somewhere while we were out on maneuvers. I THINK it was a ways north and east of camp, but I can't remember exactly where.
I checked a military map from my time there and can't find it on there either.

If that hill is Pork Chop, it's about 25 miles NE of camp, and off that set of maps. Camp Alamo is in that vicinity. I don't see many photos of the border from that area.

That area is where we went often. If that is Pork Chop Hill, it's across the river. The map has it in North Korea's side of the DMZ.
Does that hill in the pic look 255' high? Looks higher to me but not knowing it's distance away, it's hard to tell.

Yes, google maps has it just the other side of the border, though features visible from satellite make it look like the South Korean fence runs right across it's ridge. There is a dirt track running across a flat area just east of Pork Chop that could be where the photo was taken, but it would have been very close to the wire. The picture does look higher than that. Given the sensitivity of that area, I'd question any of these "Facts".

255 is the hill's number. Topo maps have Pork Chop at approx 200 meters high. If you were in that flat area to the east, it is only about 60 meters lower than Pork Chop.

Wiki has a blurry distant photo purporting to be Pork Chop (upper left corner) and it looks taller than the topo suggests, only 60-80 meters above the surrounding flat land.

The hills number is usually it's elevation, also.
Looking at the buildings at the base of the hill indicate that it's probably twice as tall.
Now, if that 255 is meters, which it may well be, then that would put it closer to 700' which appears closer.