Ralph Tracy Clark, Smithfield, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, September 9, 2006: Saving the Legacy tape nos. 767 & 768

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RALPH TRACY LARK PT B R 9, 2006 Kor a it wa an area with mountains all the way around it and it wa kind f d wn 1n. It was not excavated but it was lower like a punch bowl. [Editor ' note: The Punchbo·wl i a crater-like depres ion a few miles wide surrounded by rugged hillsju t outh of the Demarcation Line in Korea. In the summer of 1951, the battle lines between the combatants in Korea stretched diagonally across the Korean Peninsula from around the 381h parallel on the West Coast to about midway between the North Korean towns of Kosong and Kansong on the East Coast. Ten or twenty miles inland from the East Coast the battle lines sagged south to the northern rim of the Punchbowl. The area is dominated by a tangle of high, hill-studded ridges running generally north and south. Many of the hills along the ridges rise more than 1000 meters above the surrounding countryside. With the truce talks stalled and the war stalemated, both sides tested each other's resolve and struggled to shift the battle lines in order to gain more favorable positions in any eventual truce settlement. Fighting raged all around the ridges, river valleys, and hills near Punchbowl area during the late summer and through the fall. The North Koreans took and held a series of hills and connecting ridges a few miles to the southwest of the Punchbowl. Since these enemy positions, on what became known as Bloody Ridge, threatened the allied lines, the Second Division, augmented by other UN forces, attacked and drove the enemy from these hills in fierce battles during the late summer. Approximately 15,000 North Koreans and 2, 700 UN soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured on Bloody Ridge 's slopes. Unfortunately, the surviving enemy forces, reinforced, simply shifted across a few miles to the north and took up new commanding positions on a ridge due west of the Punchbowl. This seven-mile long ridge was also studded with high hills that served as mutually supporting strong points. In the 60