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Andrew Geer or another member of United States Marine Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sergeant Reckless
Upon their arrival in the mountain village of Panmunjom for the Korean War in 1952, Lieutenant Pedersen and his unit – the 75 mm Recoilless Rifle Platoon, 5th Marines – realized that their traditional strategies weren’t practical. As their name suggests, the platoon relied on recoilless rifles: seven-foot-long, 103-pound guns that required 24-pound shells. Under the best circumstances, they were difficult to transport. As Pedersen and his men quickly found out, lugging the rifles and their ammunition through the rug- ged Korean wilderness was nearly impossible.
After making the discovery, Pedersen wisely asked his commander – Colonel Eustace P. Smoak – for permission to purchase a pack horse that October. Smoak agreed. Later that month, Pedersen and three other members of his platoon drove to Seoul Racetrack in the hopes of finding a suitable horse. After that group had wandered through the backstretch
by Andrew Hanna
for some time, Pederson noticed a filly named Ah Chim Hai, which translates to “Flame-of- the-Morning”. Although she was only 14 hands tall and weighed about 900 pounds, the filly’s robust build made her a promising candidate.
Convinced that the filly would make an ideal pack horse, Pedersen approached her owner – an impoverished stable boy named Kim Huk-moon – and offered to buy her on the spot. Huk-moon was initially hesitant
to sell her. By all accounts, the boy was very attached to the filly. More importantly, how- ever, Huk-moon urgently needed money to buy a prosthetic leg for his younger sister – who had been disabled after stepping on a landmine. Her plight ultimately swayed him. After a brief negotiation, Pedersen purchased the filly for $250 with his own money. Huk-moon was inconsolable and reportedly cried as his horse was led away.
Reckless Carrying Ammunition, 1953
USMC Archives from Quantico, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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