15 Jan, 2011, Colonel's Korean War memoir honors his men

FayObersver: Colonel's Korean War memoir honors his men
By Mike Hixenbaugh

The old soldier scribbled his memories from The Forgotten War on four yellow pages, and there they remained, untouched, for the better part of 25 years.

Retired Col. Bill Richardson always knew he wanted to write about his experiences during the Korean War. And so, on a rainy day the week after he retired from the Army in 1985, Richardson jotted some of the highlights into a legal tablet while on vacation with his wife.

She looked up from a book and asked her husband what he was doing.

"I told her I was writing about my men, and at that moment, she knew," Richardson said. "After that, I put it away and didn't touch it again for more than 20 years."

Those four pages - faded after years in storage - were the starting point for Richardson's memoir, "Valleys of Death," which hit bookshelves nationwide last month. The 81-year-old Fayetteville resident wrote the book with the assistance of Kevin Maurer, a former military reporter for The Fayetteville Observer.

Both men will sign copies of the book at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Glensford Drive.

"I was initially attracted to the story because there is a kind of universal appeal to Bill's story that goes beyond the Korean War," Maurer said. "Some of his actions during that period of his life go beyond your normal war story."

The memoir spans Richardson's experiences during the Korean War, first as a corporal charged with leading a 57 mm recoilless rifle unit. Soon after, he was promoted to master sergeant during the defense of the Pusan perimeter. A month later, his unit was caught in the bloody North Korean counterattack on Unsan, where Richardson recalls reactions of both fear and heroism amid explosions, flying shrapnel and mass slaughter.

"We were on our own," Richardson wrote of the battle. "No relief column was on its way ... and if we stayed in this hellhole, we would all die."

Richardson sent his remaining men back to the safety of the allied lines, but he was captured by the Chinese and turned over to the North Koreans. The final third of the memoir details Richardson's fight to survive during 34 months as a prisoner of war in the notorious Death Valley torture camp.

Richardson said he struggled to recall a few names from the battlefields, but otherwise he had no trouble remembering the vivid details of the war and his detainment nearly 60 years ago.

"It's just like a movie in my head," Richardson said. "I've always had a good recall of things ... and this isn't something that you forget easily."

After only a month in print, Richardson's memoir has generated positive reviews nationally. Publisher's Weekly writes of the book, "Richardson never pulls his punches" during his descriptions of bloody combat, interrupted by occasional flashbacks to his youth on the streets of Philadelphia.

"We've had very good reactions so far," Richardson said.

Family members of slain soldiers Richardson served with during the war have called him in recent weeks, thanking him for documenting the lives of their fathers and grandfathers in print. Some of those conversations have been emotional, Richardson said.

It's why he wrote the book, he said.

"My goal was to tell the story of the men I was with, which I think is very important," Richardson said. "We send people off to war, then when it's done, it's done. There are people who have lost loves, people who have suffered for this country, and they're not always recognized."