It’s said that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. But I wouldn’t be disappointed to have met Staff Sergeant Reckless. Staff Sergeant Reckless was a horse and only two years old when the Korean War started. She saw her destiny of racing unravel as a soldier. Her most prestigious honors? Two Purple Hearts. She only lived to be 20, but she survives as a reminder of the costs of war.
She was caught in the maelstrom of war created by the same empire that adorned her with medals and statues after her death. We must remember her deeds, knowing she should never have been sent to war to perform them.
Reckless was born in South Korea in 1948 with the name “Ah-Chim-Hai,” or “Flame of the Morning.” Her owner, Kim Huk Moon, sold her to U.S. Marines for $250 to buy his sister a prosthetic leg. Reckless was a Mongolian breed, which dominated battlefields and race tracks alike, known for its strength and agility. However, Reckless would never see the racetrack.
Reckless became part of the Fifth Marine Regiment’s recoilless rifle platoon in 1952. She completed boot camp, nicknamed “hoof camp,” becoming a pack horse carrying ammunition and medicines to the frontlines. Beloved by all in her company, tales emerged of her entering their tents and sleeping with them, plus her appetite for scrambled eggs, pancakes, Coca-Cola, Hershey bars and beer.
She supported the Battle of Outpost Vegas in 1953 when she made 51 trips with a collective 9 tons of supplies, trudging fearlessly, perhaps recklessly, through a torrent of gunfire. She was wounded twice, but never fell. Marines in her company risked their own lives to protect her with their flak jackets. The First Marine Division documentation states that Reckless was promoted to Corporal thereafter and later to Sergeant when the war ended in 1954
In 1959, she became Staff Sergeant Reckless and foaled a colt named Fearless. Fearless escaped his mother’s fate; no documentation of him exists after his sale from the Marine Corps’ Base Stables.
Reckless died May 13, 1968, after becoming incredibly decorated by the U.S., South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United Nations.
The UN awarded her the United Nations Korea Medal. In 2019, she was posthumously awarded the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery. The UK awarded her the Dickin Medal. The U.S. awarded her a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a National Defense Service Medal, four Korean Service Medals, two Purple Hearts, a Navy Unit Commendation and two Navy Presidential Unit Citations for extraordinary heroism.
These honors immortalize her deeds but are far too often lost to the glorification of imperial violence that military honors entail. She was not a supporter by any means of the violent war machine. She was a survivor of the indiscriminate death it created.
Reckless was just as human as the ones she served with. She did not ask to go to war, and she will never comprehend the honors she was awarded for it. She died remembering only the dangers and traumas of a war she couldn’t possibly understand.
Despite the hand she had been dealt, she used her capabilities to help others.
Humanity’s history has been spent exploiting animals for warfare. The Natural History Museum states horses were first domesticated 4,200 years ago and saw wartime demand shortly after. In World War I, pigeons flew intelligence across battlefields, sharing airspace with warplanes.
Reckless was not among the Korean War’s over 1.25 million armed combatant deaths, but the conflict also produced almost triple as many civilian deaths, according to the National Education Center.
Humans have long encroached upon the safety of the world to the detriment of ourselves and the other inhabitants we share it with. I write about Staff Sergeant Reckless’s heroics not because war is something to be celebrated but rather because the service she was forced into by bloodied human hands must not be forgotten.
I mourn the world our species has created, the one that stripped Ah-Chim-Hai of her chance to roam free and stripped Kim Huk Moon of his best friend.
Her story implores us to reconsider the costs of armed conflicts beyond ourselves. She gives us a chance to see the ways we treat fellow human beings like animals by pitting them against one another for political interests.
Jack Solon is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Jack about their column? Email them at js573521@ohio.edu
