When Pfc. David Mills got the order to “hold at all costs,” he knew what it meant. He and the other men of F Company on Outpost Harry had been told to “prevail or die trying.”

The Lehigh Valley History Project and the Korea and Vietnam Memorial sponsored a visit by Cpl. Mills, a veteran of the Korean War, who spoke of his unit’s harrowing experience to a packed audience Aug. 25 at Zentz Community Center, Fellowship Community, Whitehall.

It was April 1953 in what is now North Korea, when 17-year-old Mills was a soldier in the famous third infantry division. He and his fellow soldiers in F Company would soon find themselves overrun by the enemy.

Outpost Harry was defended in what was called the Iron Triangle. It was considered the Gateway to Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. It was there Mills would see fierce and hand-to-hand fighting and, after suffering nine gunshot wounds, would be captured by soldiers of the Chinese army.

“There were 88 Americans - there were supposed to be 200 - on that hill to defend it,” Mills said. “Our company commander was in Japan on rest and recuperation. Our executive officer was in command of the company.”

A battalion of Chinese soldiers had the same orders: to take the strategic hill at all costs.

“Around 8:30 p.m., the Chinese started zeroing in with their artillery,” Mills said. “Even though we were an outpost, we fought every day.”

When a soldier at the top of the hill was wounded, Mills had orders to get up the hill and take his place.

“A sergeant looked around and picked the dumbest-looking soldier he could find and said, ‘You get up there and take his place,’” Mills said. “I looked behind me to see who he was talking about. Lo and behold, he was talking about me!”

With that, Mills went into combat with a Browning automatic rifle. The automatic rifleman was usually also armed with a 45-caliber pistol, but that pistol had gone down the hill with the wounded man he was replacing.

“I was alone in a bunker,” Mills recalled. “At about 10:30 p.m., we were attacked by a reinforced battalion of more than 1,000 Chinese soldiers.

“Our forward observer (who spots enemy targets and calls in artillery) saw that we were fighting hand to hand. He called in the American artillery on top us,” Mills continued. “They called in T-O-T, or Time-on-Target. You could not hear yourself think.

“When the artillery barrage ended, they came to us,” Mills said. “Their first group had no weapons. We killed them. The ones who came behind them ran over the top of those that just died. You cannot believe how so many men would run right into the face of rapid-fire machine guns, rifles, pistols. It was just unreal.”

He recalled hearing the American .50-caliber machine gun go out and the heavy thirty machine gun stop firing. A Chinese soldier who came up a trench to Mill’s position tossed a hand grenade at him.

“I went out into the trench to face him,” Mills said.

Mills’ rifle was so hot the bolt jammed. While trying to clear the bolt, another Chinese soldier opened fire on Mills from 20 feet away with a submachine gun - but missed. By this time, Mills had got the bolt of his rifle free.

“I killed them all,” he recalled.

Mills continued the fight from another position with a new weapon and was wounded in the leg by another hand grenade.

“I’ve still got some of that grenade in me today,” Mills said.

Mills was shot nine times during that fight and was captured by the Chinese army and held as a prisoner of war.

“Being a prisoner of war was devastating,” Mills said. “Mainly because you have no control over anything that you did. You were completely dependent upon your oppressors to tell you what time to get up, what to do, what not to do, what time to lie down, what time to do everything. You have no control, no freedom. Freedom is so precious, and the slogan for all Korean vets is that freedom is not free.”

Mills was presented the oldest U.S. military award - the Purple Heart - 57 years later.

His talk at Zentz Community Center was marked with a solemn sense of the awesome responsibility the ordinary soldier shoulders in the name of his country. Yet, he leavened the story with a sense of humor and even led the audience in a rendition of the national anthem with credible singing talent.

He was born in Pennsylvania but was raised in New York, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17. Within months, he was on the front lines.