KOREA’S BRUTAL BATTLEFIELDS
Local veteran recalls his harsh indoctrination into the war’s realities as a young officer
Frank Salimbene never planned on a career in the military.
Born in 1929, the youngest of seven children, he grew up in Ohio, near the West Virginia border. His future was supposed to start with a college education; it wasn’t supposed to include Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, seeing bodies stuck in barbed wire, hearing the scream of enemy troops before they charged.
At Ohio State, Salimbene lettered in tennis. He avoided
THREE-PART SERIES: In honor of Veterans Day, the Daily Press shares the stories of veterans who now live in Patriots Colony near Williamsburg.
football because his mother didn’t want him to get hurt.
But college life ended prematurely because the family couldn’t afford it. At the time, he didn’t realize that withdrawing from college made him eligible for the draft. Uncle Sam soon let him know.
“That was an overnight sensation, getting that letter,” he said.
It was 1951. War had broken out in Korea the year before.
Salimbene first trained as a medic, then went to Officer Candidate School. He trained
as a paratrooper and became an Army Ranger. As a member of the 11th Airborne Division, he spent time in Alaska learning to ski under the tutelage of a Norwegian who put straw in the ground.
For someone who never considered a military life, Salimbene dove in, learning all he could and relishing new opportunities.
“It became more of an interesting sort of thing,” he said, “challenging and interesting at the same time.”
The real challenge came when he returned from Alaska. That’s when he received orders to Korea.
‘My knees were knocking’
Salimbene saw his first action at the Battle of Bloody Ridge later in 1951. The back-and-forth struggle was in its final throes.
“We had it, they had it, then we had it,” he said.
He can recall stepping off a 2½-ton truck with his comrades, then climbing a series of wooden steps built into the terrain. The GIs called it the stairway to the stars.
“It was almost like going straight up,” he said. “We couldn’t believe it. It took us about three hours to get to the top.”
A fight had taken place the night before and another was likely that night, he was told. He could see Haean-myon valley, which the Americans called the punch bowl due to its unique depression where fog and mist settled. It was beautiful and it was deep.
Salimbene thought the steep terrain would protect them, but a fellow first lieutenant with more experience assured him the enemy would come. Just wait for nightfall.
Salimbene settled in with his unit, a weapons platoon armed with machine guns and supplemented by Browning Automatic Rifles.
“It was quiet, just quiet, and people weren’t moving around too much,” he said. “Pretty soon we heard the damn bugles and the bugles were just loud and screaming. It scared the hell out of me.”
When the bugles stopped, they knew to get ready.
“I can remember my knees were knocking at one point because I was so damn scared,” he said. “I had only been there one day.”
In the fight that ensued, his unit didn’t lose anyone. The next day, they moved forward and pulled bodies from the barbed wire. Everything seemed to run like clockwork, and Salimbene allowed himself to think that the fight would be easy.
“No, it’s not,” he said.
Days later, they left Bloody Ridge for the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge, where Marines and soldiers needed help.
“Heartbreak was just about the same thing, only worse,” he said. “There were more people — it seemed like masses of people coming at you, shouting and screaming.”
He recalled staying there for about four days before he and his men moved again. They had started in the eastern part of the country and now moved west. Salimbene participated in the Battle of Triangle Hill, which included fights at Sniper Ridge and Jane Russell Hill.
The battle in October-November 1952 saw American and South Korean soldiers make repeated attempts to take control of Triangle Hill and nearby Sniper Ridge. But the attacks were halted after three weeks due to mounting American and South Korean casualties.
That’s the official version, as described by the World History Project. Salimbene’s up-close version is a bit different.
Fighting happened mostly at night, he said. He would lead patrols from Sniper Ridge. Sometimes, he lost men and they had to be brought back.
“That bothered me a lot because that’s the first time I had to do that,” he said.
Fighting went back and forth as both sides fought for territory.
“We might take it,” he said. “Most of the time, we’d get halfway there and get kicked back out.”
Morale was difficult to gauge.
“We just had to do it, so we did it,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you if morale was great or if it was bad. We pretty much knew what we were doing.”
Arrogant, not defeated
Salimbene had amassed a significant amount of combat experience in a relatively short time. But before he left Korea, he’d get an even closer look at the enemy.
He was assigned to help guard prisoners at the noted Koje-do island prison camp.
“We were going to get 30 days of rest and relaxation guarding prisoners,” he said.
Several of the Chinese prisoners could speak excellent English. Salimbene talked with a few and exchanged ideas. As a group, he described them as almost arrogant.
“They did not exhibit a defeated unit,” he said. “It was just the opposite. As far as they were concerned, they were the winners.”
They could get creative, too. One morning, the prisoners assembled and everyone’s hat sported a round disk with a red star. The prisoners had fashioned an aluminum mold and bled out the dye from red paper that made up cigarette packs.
Salimbene left Korea after the peace accords, but he did not leave the Army. He later saw combat in Vietnam. The young man who once pursued a college education at Ohio State spent 33 years in the Army, retiring as a full colonel.
The family perspective
Salimbene’s story, recorded as part of the Patriots Colony oral history project, has been passed down to his children, including Pastor Jodi Lingan of Clifton Presbyterian Church in Fairfax County.
Lingan was only a few years old when her father went to Vietnam. She had heard some details about his experiences there, “but certainly not the way he told them in the video.”
At one point in the video, her father is discussing a particularly rough stretch in Vietnam and starts to cry.
“I have never seen my father cry — ever,” she said.
Even more poignant, she could hear her mother off to the side saying “it’s OK, it’s OK.” Her mother died in 2017 and was suffering from dementia at the time, “but she saw her husband in distress,” Lingan said.
It showed her that what happens in war does not have a beginning or end, but shapes a person over time. When she first saw the video, she was hearing many of his experiences for the first time.
“I don’t even know what to say to you,” she told her father. “This is a gift I wouldn’t have even known to ask for.”
“Heartbreak (Ridge) was just about the same thing, only worse. There were more people — it seemed like masses of people coming at you, shouting and screaming.”
— Frank Salimbene, Korean War veteran