Hilltop Doc: A Marine Corpsman Fighting Through the Mud and Blood of the Korean War

by Leonard Adreon

Overview

As a Marine corpsman, Leonard Adreon saw some of the worst of the Korean War’s carnage and the best of its humanity. His gripping description brings to life the war between the Chinese army and the U.S. Marines as they battled to take the high ground. You will feel the anguish, the frustration and the terror endured by Marines on the hillsides of Korea, and how U.S. troops fought with valor and esprit de corps under adverse conditions and against massive Chinese forces. As a corpsman, Adreon tells the story from the unique perspective of a young man from St. Louis, with no medical background, thrown into the role of saving lives amid the war’s violence. He leavens the grim, emotional, and sometimes ironic battlefield scenes with his background story – of how his own mistakes and the military’s bumbling landed him at Korea’s 38th Parallel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996022569
Publisher:	LaVidaCo LLC
Publication date:	05/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	244
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

After returning from Korea, Leonard Adreon spent 36 years as the executive vice president of The Siteman Organization, a real estate management and development company, based in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, Mo. In 1979, he was elected president of the Building Owners and Managers Association International in Washington D. C., which represents the office building industry in the United States and across the globe. He represented the industry before a number of Senate and House committees, and earned a citation from the General Services Administration for advice on leasing and managing facilities throughout the world. A highlight was meeting President Ronald Reagan and working with his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Murray Weidenbaum. St. Louis city and county leaders appointed Adreon to numerous committees and commissions serving his community. Adreon also took a leadership role in several major charities devoted to the welfare of children. Upon his retirement from The Siteman Organization, he worked for two decades as a consultant, real estate broker, arbitrator and mediator. Today, Adreon volunteers as a facilitator of writing classes at the Lifelong Learning Institute of Washington University in St. Louis. It is that work that encouraged him to tell his own story. Adreon met his wife, Audrey, a year after his return from Korea. They have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Table of Contents

We Paid Too Much vii

Prologue ix

Corpsman!

Chapter 1 They called us Doc 1

Chapter 2 Bugles and whistles 7

Chapter 3 The wounds of war 11

Chapter 4 Esprit de Corps 17

Chapter 5 Gotta pen? 21

Chapter 6 A deadly Dead Time 25

Chapter 7 Payback 33

Chapter 8 The bet 39

Chapter 9 Dodging mortars 45

Pathway to Wars

Chapter 10 Direct hit 51

Chapter 11 Sink or swim 55

Chapter 12 P for Protestant 61

Chapter 13 The hill we lost 65

Chapter 14 Final duty WWII 71

Chapter 15 We paid too much 77

Chapter 16 My college years 83

Chapter 17 Big Mike 89

Sailor, Civilian, Marine

Chapter 18 The recall 95

Chapter 19 From swabby to Marine 99

Chapter 20 Steady hands 107

Chapter 21 My Pacific cruise 113

Chapter 22 A gift unexpected 117

Chapter 23 Last liberty 123

Chapter 24 Stench to stalemate 127

Chapter 25 Korean kindness 131

Chapter 26 City of orphans 135

Chapter 27 Dodging a bullet 139

Chapter 28 To the 38th 145

Confusion and Consequences

Chapter 29 Mistakes happen 153

Chapter 30 What took so long? 159

Chapter 31 Confusion in San Francisco 165

Chapter 32 Smoking kills 169

Chapter 33 Dilemma at Newport 175

Chapter 34 Final decision 179

Chapter 35 Invisible wounds 183

Chapter 36 The diary 189

Chapter 37 Vacationing home 195

Chapter 38 Another ending 199

Epilogue 205

Poems 213

History 221

About the author 229