During the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, most Americans were unaware that the U.S. military was fighting on two fronts in Asia—in Vietnam and, some 2,000 miles north, along the Demilitarized Zone in Korea.

What is sometimes now labeled the “DMZ War” refers to the military conflict that raged along the DMZ from 1966 to 1969, exploding briefly again in the summer of 1970 before finally subsiding.

Fearful that events in Korea would jeopardize public support for Vietnam, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara gave orders that nothing be done in Korea that would adversely affect U.S. efforts in Vietnam.

All reports of the military conflict unfolding on the DMZ were promptly classified, keeping both the American public and the media in the dark. Only North Korea’s seizure of the U.S. Navy intelligence vessel the USS Pueblo in January 1968 emerged in the press.

Orders Change

During this period, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam rapidly increased to half a million, where it stood at the time I was drafted in February 1969. And so it was that I found myself deposited at the U.S. Army Oakland Army Terminal in California a year later, with orders for Vietnam.

I was a young infantry sergeant, fresh out of Jump School, and I don’t recall much about Oakland beyond the long hours standing in formation as we waited for our names to be called. On my third day in Oakland, during the last formation of the day, I heard my name echoing over the loudspeakers, along with the names of several of the other NCOs. We promptly fell out and shepherded a large group toward the gigantic air terminal, everybody’s heart going like a trip-hammer.

When our plane arrived, we moved out onto the tarmac and watched as the giant C-141 Starlifter taxied to a stop. The ground crew strolled out to service the plane, mingling with those at the front of the line, and word suddenly spread that we weren’t going to Vietnam. The NCOs were at the back of the line, and we were the last to hear this. My first impulse was to dismiss it—wild, unsubstantiated rumors being the waters we swam in.

“Hey, check this out,” one of the other sergeants said, and we turned to see a captain walking briskly toward us from the tower, holding a large manila envelope. He halted in front of our group, eyed us briefly, then handed the manila envelope to a master sergeant—the senior NCO present.

“Do NOT open this until the plane lifts off,” he said.

Destination, Interrupted

No one else among the enlisted men had heard this exchange, but everybody had witnessed the manila envelope being passed to the master sergeant. The line buzzed wildly as the doors were thrown open and we began to board the plane.

The NCOs were the last to board, and, hence, we occupied the front of the airplane.

“OPEN THE ORDERS!” somebody yelled, and suddenly everybody was yelling as the doors of the plane were shut and locked.

The C-141 engines began to roar, the big jet transport began to move, and we found ourselves taxiing into a takeoff position—no waiting at a military airfield.

Inside the plane, the din was now deafening: “OPEN THE F---ING ORDERS!”

The shouting was replaced by the sound of the engines building to a shriek; the brakes released, and the plane began to hurtle down the runway. Everybody felt the wheels come off the tarmac, and the yelling immediately recommenced.

The master sergeant stood up, fumbled with the seal on the manila envelope and extracted the orders—then stood frozen as he stared numbly at the mimeographed page thick with military acronyms.

An auditory wall of abuse hit us like a physical blow and, being seated on the aisle nearest to him, I stood up.

“Let me,” I said, and he handed the orders to me. I quickly skimmed to the bottom of the page and spotted the APO number. “KIMPO AIR BASE ... REPUBLIC OF KOREA,” I read aloud.

There was a sudden and absolute silence inside the C-141—then a lone voice spoke up from the back of the plane: “KOREA! Where in the f--- is KOREA?” 

Struggling Country

We landed at Kimpo Air Base 19 hours after lifting off. A freezing fog blanketed the Korean peninsula as the C-141 touched down at the military airfield outside of Seoul.

This was a different Korea from the affluent, economic juggernaut that sits astride the world today. In the early months of 1970, South Korea was a struggling Third World country with a bare subsistence economy and no industry, still recovering from the wholesale destruction wrought by the Korean War, halted 17 years earlier by a U.N.-brokered armistice agreement that established a buffer between North and South by way of a thin, neutral no man’s land known as the DMZ.

Military buses ferried us from Kimpo Air Base to Yongsan, and we watched through the windows as workers carrying construction materials on bicycles labored to rebuild Seoul by hand. We were transported to the headquarters of the U.S. Eighth Army Command, where they fed us and reshuffled our orders, assigning us to specific units.

Heading North

Shortly thereafter, a group of 60 of us were loaded into a pair of 2½-ton trucks, and, the trucks’ diesel stacks belching smoke, we roared out of the compound, heading north toward the DMZ.

This was our first real look at Korea, and it was an eye-opener. We rolled through villages where wooden carts drawn by swaybacked oxen competed with miniature three-wheeled trucks whose ability to stay upright seemed to defy the laws of physics.

People squatted in doorways in the traditional Korean pose, as the smell of fermenting kimchi (cabbage buried in pots underground and allowed to ferment for months) hit us in an olfactory wave, while troops recoiled and exclaimed violently in the back of the Army trucks.

Secret Station

I arrived at the Blue Lancer Valley compound on the evening of my first day in Korea, the two trucks depositing troops at military installations along the way north. By midnight, with only a handful of us remaining in the truck bed, the deuce-and-a-half made its final stop. We dismounted stiffly and signed in at the headquarters of the 2nd Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division.

The administrative clerk was hauled out of his bunk to process us. He sleepily pushed an official form across the desk at me. “Read this, and sign it,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“You can’t say anything to anyone outside the unit about what’s happening on the DMZ; it’s classified,” he said. “And don’t even THINK about writing home about what’s going on—because they’re censoring our mail.”

In the days that followed, our battalion began preparing to depart Blue Lancer Valley and rotate north to the DMZ, where I was assigned as one of the NCOs whose task was to run the tactical operations center. In short order, I found myself on my way to the DMZ, riding with the reconnaissance platoon, which tore around in jeeps mounted with M60 machine guns.

This was my first time crossing the Imjin River, visible from a distance as we approached it in the recon jeep. The Imjin lay immediately south of the DMZ in this region, acting as the sole natural barrier to a North Korean invading force. Only military personnel were permitted north of the Imjin, and only with special passes.

Untouched Territory

North of the Imjin, the road rose in foothills as we approached the DMZ. The countryside was empty of human habitation. Vivid in my memory is my first glimpse of the DMZ: Ground mist covered the terrain as we approached the barrier fence, where a wan sun broke through the overcast sky. Beyond the concertina wire lay a region of stunted trees and overgrown bushes, sunlight now glimmering off the profusion of wild growth. The DMZ, I suddenly realized, was a nature preserve, untouched since the early 1950s. Beyond the barrier fence, a single winding track disappeared into the undergrowth.

The jeep deposited me at the tactical operations center, the command post for our operation along the DMZ, situated in a bunker adjacent to the barrier fence. The exterior of the bunker was packed with sandbags. The interior of the tactical operations center bunker was papered with topographical maps of our sector and jammed with radio gear.

The days were tedious. We fought to stay awake doing hourly radio checks with the guard towers, the forward bunkers, the rifle company manning the barrier fence and whatever patrols might be in our sector. Nothing stirred during the day.

But the whole place came alive at night—the DMZ, in effect, becoming a free-fire zone. A sudden eruption of distant gunfire off to the east, and you’d know the North Koreans had extended a probe just a little too far and gotten caught—the hand of Kim Il Sung visible in the last year of his effort to push the Americans off the Korean peninsula.

We didn’t patrol the DMZ at night. Instead, the Americans hunkered down along the barrier fence. Not so the North Koreans. At night, they’d send patrols south across the military demarcation line—a blatant provocation and an act of war—penetrating into South Korea’s portion of the DMZ and approaching the barrier fence as close as they dared. There, they would carefully sight in and watch, waiting to see if anybody was idiot enough to light a cigarette in the open.

Not-so-Silent Night

When they were discovered, a deafening light show would erupt: golden streams of tracer rounds from American M16 rifles and M60 machine guns arcing out into the DMZ, and the winking muzzle flash and stuttering rip of North Korean AK-47s emptying banana clips back at our positions.

On one such occasion, in one of the two big firefights that occurred that summer, a buddy of mine from the NCO Academy, now a squad leader in one of the line companies, led a first-light patrol to engage or capture any North Korean troops remaining. He followed a blood trail all the way to the military demarcation line. The North Koreans unfailingly dragged their dead or wounded back north.

After the second firefight of the summer, the rising sun revealed Gen. John Michaelis, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, standing uneasily next to our battalion commanding officer at the barrier fence, gazing north. This was a problem, the Pentagon having been assured that events on the DMZ had already throttled down and were effectively concluded.

After half a century of official silence, the story of the DMZ War—this forgotten chapter of the Vietnam era—at long last is beginning to emerge. This is due in no small part to Congress giving its approval in 2018 for the reengineering and modification of the 2nd Infantry Division Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In part, the modifications will honor the 2nd Infantry Division soldiers who gave their lives in defense of the DMZ during the DMZ War.

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William Winship is an author and filmmaker based in Seattle. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in February 1969 and served as an infantry sergeant on the Demilitarized Zone, Korea, the following year. He is the author of The Canandaigua Letters: A Memoir of the Late ’60s and wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Pioneers In Aviation.