The Korean DMZ Was Once Called “Freedom’s Frontier”, by Scipio

What few knew was that freedom’s frontier was held by Imjin Scouts of the US Army’s Infantry 2^nd  Infantry Division. Imjin Scouts held the line from 1965 when hostilities with the North escalated until 1990 when the 2^nd ID withdrew all operational troops from the DMZ.

I was an Imjin Scout from 1966-1967.

To become an Imjin Scout, there were two ways to qualify.  One was to attend five-weeks of training at the Advanced Combat Training Academy (ACTA).  ACTA was commanded by Medal of Honor recipient, Major Roger Donlon. The cadre were mostly Ranger instructors.  They told us the Academy was a modified version of the Ranger School training they went through.  I do not in any way mean to imply it was the same.  It wasn’t.   It was however, demanding and tailored to asymmetric warfare on the DMZ. It did not require Ranger School qualifications like being airborne, escape and evasion skills, or certain other training modules.  It was geared specifically for mostly cold weather DMZ operations.

Anyone who served during that time knows the military was led by a bunch of the uneducated, leading the unwilling, for an ungrateful nation, for nothing! Yes, it was FUBAR!

My AIT training was in air defense artillery at Ft Bliss Tx (See my articlehttps://www.americanpartisan.org/2022/04/history-maker-i-am-legend-by-scipio/  ).

We trained and qualified on two crew weapons: the M-55 Quad Fifty caliber machine guns and the M-42 Duster with twin 40 mm antiaircraft cannons mounted on an open turret tracked vehicle configuration. We were going to Nam to provide camp perimeter support with the 50s and/or mechanized assault with the M-42s. My entire training cycle shipped out to Ft. Lewis Washington Oct 31^st (yeah Halloween, that was scary) 1966 to process for Vietnam. During processing, our orders were changed to the DMZ Korea.  We would be going to North Asia, not South Asia.

Apparently, some dunderhead in the Pentagon noticed all Army personnel for the last ten months had gone to Vietnam. The 2^nd ID was severely undermanned. Meanwhile, 80% of the forces on the DMZ were going to rotate out within three months.  So, the Army did what it always did when the lack of planning is exposed, you learned to “Jump Through Your Ass”. This skill would be very helpful during the rest of my tour of duty.

We were being sent to be untrained infantryman on an increasingly dangerous DMZ! I have sympathy to today seeing those poor Ukrainian men being sent to Bakhmut with virtually no training.  That is what I faced when landing on the DMZ, and the knot in my stomach was huge.

Fortunately, there were smarter heads then at the Pentagon at 2^nd ID headquarters in Korea.  They decided to send us to ACTA for a crash course in infantry training.  Keep in mind, we didn’t know basic infantry training.  Now we were being sent to learn “advanced” infantry training.  It was just a Catch-22 FUBAR situation.  To say the learning curve was steep is an understatement.

It didn’t help that artillery AIT had no PT.  So, we were not in the peak physical shape we were when we graduated from Basic.  We had become soft.  ACTA rectified that shortcoming. The physical part almost killed me.

Some stuff was cool, however. We unofficially qualified on several weapons; the M-60 and the M-79 grenade launcher. M-79 training was so different from firing at direct targets. Instead, you targeted indirectly, dropping rounds in foxholes, bunker entrances, behind a log walls, or various old military vehicles.  Course qualification was scored like a pinball game. You got more points depending on the difficulty of the shot, unlike a typical rifle range where direct fire was used at various popping up targets at different distances. A shot in a APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) hatch was the top single point value target.  It was worth five points, and you needed twenty points to qualify.  My first shot went in a APC hatch. My instructor, who was at my side, turned to me wide- eyed and said, “Well, you probably won’t have to worry about qualifying!”

We familiarized ourselves with using Chinese SKS and Soviet AK-47s. We learned to fire LAAWs (Light Anti Armor Weapons) Cool! We learned how-to blow-up stuff with C4. (how cool!) All our classes were outside in the elements. (Not cool).  There were no shelters with bleachers like Basic and AIT. We acclimatized. We learned how to “move” on trails.  We learned how to analyze situations like Mike VonSteuben’s TDGs.  (Take his classes BTW) One morning we had to step over an antipersonnel mine that had washed out the night before.

There were lots of leftover mines from the Korean War. Because of the hostile nature of the of environment at the Z at the end of the war, mine mitigation had not been thorough.  We literally had to watch every step we took after a rain.  The first night we were there, North Koreans attacked the camp entrance, wounding several guards.  We were sound asleep in tents at the time and told to hit the ground.  We heard more shooting and then it was over.  The gate was about 300 yards from where we slept.  Welcome to ACTA! Since we were so close to North Korea, at all times during our training we always had or M-14s with us and a full hundred round load of 7.62.

The last ten days of training was spent in the field where we practiced over and over and over fire team movement and fire team maneuvers up steep Korean hills.  (Not cool). My tongue was dragging.  BTW did I tell you they had got us back into shape at this point. We practiced night time tactical withdrawals.  We practiced using Starlite Scopes (first gen night vision) at night time target practice.  I officially qualified with the 1911 45 at this time. We ate C-Rations the whole ten days in the field. You think MREs are bad, they are gourmet comparatively. We finished the 10^th day with a forced 12 mile march within some ridiculous time period with full equipment, including our heavy sleeping bags and “Mickies”. (Not cool at all).

There was another week of training left at this point, where we were supposed to do supervised patrols on the DMZ. However, our assigned based commanders overruled the final week of ACTA training, opting instead to bring us back to do “OJT” patrol training on the Z.  I never officially graduated from ACTA, so I never got an Imjin Scout Certificate or an Imjin Scout insignia patch, nor could I call myself an Imjin Scout.  There were about a hundred of us in same situation.

Soon after returning to our units, the North Koreans were clearly stepping up their attacks along the Z with a special emphasis on sending infiltrators to the South.  We turned back, caught, captured, and killed many.  Later we found out those infiltrators that did get through executed a well-prepared plan to assassinate the President of Korea, President Pak.  They got so close to him they were stopped inside the Presidential palace, The Blue House. These actions opened a second avenue to become an Imjin Scout.

After returning from ACTA, we were given a new mission: stop North Korean infiltration.  A special operation was set up, (SCOSI), Subversive and Counter Operations South of Imjin.  By performing twenty operational missions on the Z during any SCOSI opperation, you were award the Imjin Scout certificate with the letters DMZ at the bottom of the Imjin Scout patch.  I have two certificates, covering forty missions, and I had fourteen toward a third certificate when my tour of duty ended. I was (am) officially an Imjin Scout.

For more Imjin Scout information see:

Imjinscout.org

Stars and Strips Archives “Medal of Honor recipient heads training academy in Korea

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=a+rare+US+Army+award%3A+the+Imjin+Scout+Badge&t=h_&ia=web