William J White

Triangle Hill: Memoirs of the War That Wasn't William J White

Triangle Hill tells the story of the Korean Police Action during 1951-52. The book takes a young office from the first landing in Japan, through Pusan and up the pipeline to the fighting. There was the famous ?Pork Chop Hill?, a horrible firefight, but by no means the worst. That distinction belongs to a three-week battle over one three-quarter mile wide combined area known as ?Sniper?s Ridge? and ?Triangle Hill?.
The comparison of combat intensity for Triangle can best be told in the numbers. In 33 months of fighting from the dreary days of December 1950 up to the time of Triangle Hill, the whole Eighth Army had only 12,000 casualties. In the subsequent three weeks of intense combat for Triangle, 9,600 casualties had been counted.
Not since the American drive against the Germans in the Hürtgen Forest in 1945 had so many shells been hurled at an enemy. The height of the hill was cut down by two feet and at the end of the battle, the army of the Republic of Korea counted 6,600 casualties and the U. S. 7th Division reported more than 3000. Triangle Hill is a young officer?s look at the strategy and the battle, infantry politics and the rawness of death and a burning hope for the future.