Sgt. Reckless wears a campaign hat—she later ate it—while Navy Hospital Corpsman George “Doc” Mitchell holds her lead in Korea, about 1953. A tank sits in the background. U.S. Marine Corps photograph, as published in Andrew Geer’s Reckless: Pride of the Marines (1955); public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The United States Marine Corps once promoted a chestnut mare named Sgt. Reckless to staff sergeant, and her Korean War record still makes the rank look light. She learned a supply route after being shown it once or twice, walked it alone under fire, and packed nearly five tons of ammunition up a steep hill in a single day. She also found the mess tent without help.
The Wartime Record of Sgt. Reckless
A $250 mare at the Seoul racecourse
In October 1952, First Lt. Eric Pedersen needed a pack animal. He commanded the Recoilless Rifle Platoon, Anti-Tank Company, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. The platoon’s 75 mm recoilless rifle, which Marines called the “reckless” rifle, threw shells that weighed about 24 pounds each. Trucks could not get those rounds up the ridges. Men packing them uphill were wearing out.
On October 26, Pedersen paid $250 of his own money at the Seoul Racecourse for a small chestnut with a white blaze. Her Korean name was Ah-Chim-Hai, Flame of the Morning. She had been bred to race, but the war had ended that career before it started. Her owner, a young horseman named Kim Huk Moon, sold her because he needed the money for an artificial leg for his older sister, Chung Soon, who had lost a leg after stepping on a land mine. Robin Hutton, in Sgt. Reckless: America’s War Horse, records the purchase that way, and official Marine Corps accounts agree on the price, the date, and why Kim sold her.
The Marines named her Reckless, after the gun, and set her to work as a Korean War horse packing ammunition.
Hoof camp, coffee, and thirty dollars in poker chips
Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Latham put Sgt. Reckless through what the platoon called hoof camp. He taught her to step over communication wire and barbed wire, to lie down when fire came in, and to run for a bunker when someone yelled “Incoming!” Private First Class Monroe Coleman looked after her day to day. Navy Hospital Corpsman George “Doc” Mitchell treated her when she was hurt. After a handler had led her over a new route a time or two, she would make the trip alone.
She also learned where the food was. Reckless wandered the tents, slept beside the stove on cold nights, and ate like a Marine who had missed chow. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and bacon with coffee. She drank beer with the platoon, accepted Coca-Cola and candy, and, when she was being ignored, a hat or a blanket. She once ate about $30 of Gunny Latham’s poker chips. At the 2013 unveiling of her statue at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, retired Sgt. Harold Wadley, who had served with her in Korea, recalled that Latham said she still owed him the thirty dollars.
Outpost Vegas, March 1953
In late March 1953, Chinese forces hit the so-called Nevada Complex, including Outpost Vegas. Period Marine accounts, later quoted by the PDSA when it honored her, said the savagery of that fight had not been equaled in the Corps’ history, and that 28 tons of bombs and heavy shells turned the crest of Vegas into “smoking, death-pocked rubble.” Incoming fire came in at a rate of about 500 rounds a minute.
On one day of that battle, Sgt. Reckless made 51 trips from the ammunition supply point to the guns, about 95 percent of them with no one leading her. She carried 386 recoilless-rifle rounds that day, more than 9,000 pounds, almost five tons, over more than 35 miles of open paddy and a 45-degree climb. On the way down she packed wounded Marines. She was hit twice, once by shrapnel over her left eye and once in the left flank, and she kept walking.
Wadley, who saw her come back through the smoke, later said he could hardly believe his eyes. “Surely, an angel had to have been riding that mare.” Sgt. Maj. James E. Bobbitt remembered “the elation and the boost in morale that little white-faced mare gave Marines as she outfoxed the enemy bringing vitally needed ammunition up the mountain.” When the fire was heaviest, Marines pulled off their own flak jackets and covered her with them.
Corporal in the field, sergeant after the war
For what she did at Vegas, the Marines promoted her to corporal. That was the battlefield promotion. They did not make Sergeant Reckless a sergeant in the field.
On April 10, 1954, months after the armistice, Gen. Randolph M. Pate, then commanding the 1st Marine Division, promoted her to sergeant in a formal ceremony in Korea. A week later, on April 17, Lt. Col. Andrew Geer’s profile, “Reckless, the Pride of the Marines,” ran in the Saturday Evening Post and, as later accounts of her service note, helped bring her to the United States. She arrived in November 1954 and went to Camp Pendleton, California.
In 1959, at Camp Pendleton, Pate, by then Commandant of the Marine Corps, promoted her again. Sgt. Reckless left that ceremony a staff sergeant. She retired on November 10, 1960, with a paddock at the base stables. She had four foals there; three survived: Fearless, Dauntless, and Chesty. She died on May 13, 1968, after a fall, and was buried at Camp Pendleton with full military honors.
The decorations awarded to Sgt. Reckless included two Purple Hearts, the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a Presidential Unit Citation with bronze star, a Navy Unit Commendation, the National Defense Service Medal, a Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, and a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. On July 27, 2016, the anniversary of the Korean War armistice, she was posthumously awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal, often called the animals’ Victoria Cross, in a ceremony in London.
The statues, and a hat she ate
A bronze statue of Staff Sgt. Reckless, sculpted by Jocelyn Russell, was dedicated at the National Museum of the Marine Corps on July 26, 2013. A second Sgt. Reckless statue was unveiled at Camp Pendleton on October 26, 2016. A third went up at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington on May 12, 2018. Other monuments have been placed since, but those three are the ones the 1st Marine Division lists in her official unit history. The National Archives still holds a file of official Marine Corps photographs of her, filed under her own name, in with the people.
The photograph with this story shows Sgt. Reckless in Korea, about 1953, in that campaign hat she later ate, with Doc Mitchell holding the lead and a tank behind them. It appeared in Geer’s 1955 book, Reckless: Pride of the Marines, and is in the public domain.
Sgt. Reckless had only needed to be shown the job twice. After that she did it alone, under artillery, and still beat most recruits to the mess tent.
Resources
- “About Reckless.” Sgt. Reckless Memorial. https://sgtreckless.com/about-reckless.
- “Animal VC for heroic US Marine horse.” PDSA, July 27, 2016. https://www.pdsa.org.uk/press-office/latest-news/animal-vc-for-heroic-us-marine-horse.
- “Camp Pendleton unveils Staff Sgt Reckless monument.” U.S. Marine Corps Forces Korea, October 26, 2016. https://www.marfork.marines.mil/Media-Room/Stories/Article/Article/1017048/camp-pendleton-unveils-staff-sgt-reckless-monument/.
- DiCicco, Mike. “Museum memorial park’s first four-legged war hero unveiled.” Marine Corps Base Quantico, July 26, 2013. https://www.quantico.marines.mil/News/Article/517974/museum-memorial-parks-first-four-legged-war-hero-unveiled/.
- Geer, Andrew. “Reckless, the Pride of the Marines.” Saturday Evening Post, April 17, 1954.
- Geer, Andrew. Reckless: Pride of the Marines. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1955.
- Hutton, Robin L. Sgt. Reckless: America’s War Horse. New York: Regnery History, 2014.
- Klein, Christopher. “The Four-Legged Marine Who Became a Korean War Hero.” HISTORY, December 27, 2017. https://www.history.com/articles/the-four-legged-marine-who-became-a-korean-war-hero.
- Lytle, Alan. “Kentucky Horse Park Unveils Statue Honoring War Hero Sergeant Reckless.” WUKY, May 12, 2018. https://www.wuky.org/local-regional-news/2018-05-12/kentucky-horse-park-unveils-statue-honoring-war-hero-sergeant-reckless.
- Quinn, K. “Hold Your Horses.” National Archives, The Unwritten Record, January 14, 2020. https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2020/01/14/hold-your-horses/.
- “Reckless with hat.jpeg.” Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reckless_with_hat.jpeg.
- “SSgt Reckless.” 1st Marine Division, 5th Marine Regiment History. https://www.1stmardiv.marines.mil/Units/5TH-MARINE-REGT/History/SSgt-Reckless/.
