Sergeant Reckless

Lieutenant Eric Pedersen bought her at the Seoul racetrack in October 1952 for two hundred and fifty dollars of his own money. The boy selling her, Kim Huk Moon, was selling his racehorse to buy his sister an artificial leg after she lost hers to a landmine. Pedersen wanted a packhorse for the Recoilless Rifle Platoon of the 5th Marines, whose ammunition weighed twenty-four pounds a round and had to go up hills. She learned the routes after being led over them once or twice, and after that she went alone. At the Battle for Outpost Vegas, over five days in March 1953, she made fifty-one round trips in a single day, most of them unaccompanied, through open ground under artillery and small-arms fire: 386 rounds carried, more than nine thousand pounds, over about thirty-five miles. On the way down she carried wounded Marines. She was wounded twice and kept going, and men used her as cover on the exposed stretches. She ate scrambled eggs, drank Coca-Cola and occasionally beer, and once ate a poker player's chips. She was promoted to sergeant in 1954 in a ceremony in front of the regiment, to staff sergeant in 1959 by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and retired at Camp Pendleton with a stall, full rations and a blanket with her decorations on it. She died there in 1968.

Loved by · Eric Pedersen

Honours

• 1953Fifty-one trips up Outpost Vegas in one day, mostly unled: 386 rounds, over 9,000 pounds
• 1953Two Purple Hearts
• 1954Promoted to sergeant in front of the regiment; staff sergeant in 1959
• 1997Named by Life magazine among America's greatest heroes, the only animal on the list
• 2013Bronze unveiled at the National Museum of the Marine Corps

Their kind

The steppe horse: small, thick-coated, self-feeding and famously hard to exhaust, bred by people who measured a horse by the distance it covered.

A life in seasons