You're watching a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

And we spent 156 days in an area called Sandbag Castle.

If we got shot at, we didn't know it or we didn't want to know it.

And.

I just grabbed him, hugged the ground tight.

Well, we took that round about eight feet from us.

Those fragments hit me.

I felt that concussion more than what entered my mind.

The Korean War was fought from 1950 to 1953, and pitted the United States, South Korea, and their U.N.

allies against North Korea and the Chinese Communists.

An estimated 25,000 South Dakotans served in the armed forces during the Korean War.

And 160 died during the conflict.

For some, the Korean War was their first wartime experience and their last for others.

Just another chapter in a military career.

But for all who served, Korea was an experience unlike any other in their lives.

Here are some of their stories.

My name is Ron Morrow, and I served in the United States Marines from 1951 to 1953.

My dad said, you know, you got a letter from the president of the United States.

That's a draft notice.

We at that time, we went to Sioux Falls and, a marine came walking into the area and he said, I need eight guys for the Marine Corps today.

I really liked his uniform better than the Army uniforms.

So I put my hand up and actually eight of us and we were in the Marine Corps.

My name is, Dwight Dewey Monroe.

They call me.

And I served over in Korea with the third Infantry Division Heavy Mortar Company.

I was drafted, and, at the time, I'd went to Yankton College one year.

And when that broke out and I wanted to join the Marines and dad wouldn't let me, and he wanted me to work in the the cream stations.

We ran a cream and egg station and, little guy, I think back in those days.

And that was hard work.

And, we bought a lot of cream and eggs, a lot of feed, and I wanted to get out of there and try something different.

You know?

My name is Edward Cholesky, and I'm from armor, South Dakota.

Let's first ship I was on with the Valley Forge.

A bunch of us fellers decided to join the Navy because the Korean War was going on.

And so we thought, well, we didn't want to be in the Army.

My dad was in the Navy.

So I said, well, let us join the Navy.

So we all got together, and quite a few of us that day from Arma went to here and joined the Navy.

Philip connection.

And I was in the Army.

I was assigned to a 105 howitzer battalion, the triple nickel, which was quite well known in Korea.

Inducted in 52, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

And being a kid, there was never away from home.

I spent from then until the first part of January in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, Camp Bradbury, Indiana, everybody was gone over the holidays and I was to Christmas all by myself.

A couple, three other fellows away from home for the first time that was pretty tough.

My name is Jerry Teachout.

I was the, World War two.

Really?

I was the second lieutenant, promoted to first lieutenant before I came home.

We knew we were going to be recalled for the Korean War.

And in my case, I was already an instructor pilot in in a type of airplane that we knew they were using in Korea, which was the C 46.

And so when I went over there, they didn't there weren't enough C 46 just to go around.

We flew C-47 and then finally we got enough.

C 46 is literally out of the junkyard.

And we had pretty good planes when we left.

But then the Marines needed some good planes, so they gave us some older planes, and I took the better corsairs, and they gave us a bunch of old planes and but we got by.

But we had a lot of tough luck with somebody playing, and some of them were just bad, you know, and, and, and during this nine months, we lost, Bernard every plane we had.

And because some of them just, you know, crashed and, but a lot of them got shot down, like with small arms fire, you know, full, real low ground support for the Marines.

I, was assigned to the motor pool because I was quite mechanically, mechanically inclined.

And that's what my test showed, that I was a good, pretty good mechanic.

So they put me in motor pool.

So I drove the motor pool NCO around six jeeps and trucks and stuff for the 105 Field Artillery Battalion for the triple nickel.

And I ended up over in Korea and they asked me what my MOS was.

My military occupation.

I said, well, I'm an intermediate speed radio operator.

Well, the guy taking care of me said, well, we don't need any radio operators.

We got all kinds of them.

You know, what else can you do?

Well, I said, I've driven a truck.

We got more than enough truck drivers.

And he looked at some papers around you.

I want to send you up with a heavy mortar company, I says.

I never had any training during my, basic training on mortars.

Well, you'll learn, you know, it doesn't take long to learn.

So I got to be in the mortar company with.

My name is Earl boxer, and my rank was the sergeant first class in the 45th Division.

Company if over in Korea, the boundary in the middle are we called the main line of resistance.

That it went something like an S. It was higher in the east and a little lower in the west.

So the straight line was kind of violated.

So we landed right in there, and we spent 156 days in an area called Sandbag Castle.

That's that spot was only about 35 yards apart where the enemy was and where we were at Sandbag Castle.

But at that time we had a few assignments to try to go out and catch a prisoner on a patrol, but that never we never were successful to catch anybody.

We would get in firefights and have firefights with them, but we never could bring one home alive.

So we can say we had a prisoner war or somebody we could visit with and check out and see what the intelligence would let us know.

I had a job I didn't like, kind of, you know, I was kind of small and skinny.

So they would, they sometimes they just had come in and have a hydraulic leak down in there by the engine.

And I would sit down the duck, the air duck, but they'd have to put me in there when the engine was running and said, I go in there headfirst.

They have to go in there with your hands in front of, because there was no room to turn.

And it was downhill in this tube, and you'd slide right down in there towards the motor and use about 20in from the pots there, there at Burnham, where that jet was run, and you had to run it about 20%.

So if there was a hydraulic leak you could see where it's leaking in there.

See.

And I didn't like that job.

Well then, you know, you had to make sure the guy that was in the cockpit couldn't turn it up over 20%, because if it did, it collapse your lungs, they're going through they're so fast, you know, and then when you want to get out of there, you had to bag up like a fish at the back.

And some guy would sometimes stand back there and put their hands against your feet just for the heck of it, you know, and you couldn't get out and you want to get out of so bad, you know.

And I of course, I was guilty.

I did that to my buddy once, you know, that was it was so funny because when it came out, it I was gone, you know, I knew he was going to.

He got so mad because you want to get out of there so bad, you know, it.

They made me the for observer.

And a lot of times I'd have to go out and, un the point they call it with, Belgium troops and they had a, what they called a listening post about 2 or 304 hundred yards out in front of the front of the infantry, and you sat there all night listening for the Chinese to come toward us, you know, and you could hear them a lot of times, you know, and then they'd call fire missions and and then we'd skedaddle back before, before dawn, get back in our positions.

You know?

And so did the Chinese.

Just kind of a game with with both of us, you know.

But it could be a deadly game, too, you know, there was a couple of guys killed while I was there.

And with fire from the Chinese, too, you know, they were doing the same thing.

We would have a turn at outpost, which is, just like listening post.

You go out there and be real quiet and listen and see if you hear anybody coming.

And if they did, of course you.

We had the telephones out there.

We could call back in and report.

We did have good communication line.

There was commo wire, communication wire all over that valley.

We got so good at it, we could take a wire at night and feel it with our hands, and then we could strip it bare and tie another line on it so we could go further in the dark, just without having the light to do it.

We could just do it by feel.

Robert Fick barbed wire dog outfit attached to Third Division, a volunteer outfit night reconnaissance with the German Shepherd hassle HHS.

Oh, a good German name for a German Shepherd.

What he was trained for was to go out there and lead this patrol through this route and keep them from getting ambushed, because the Chinese were famous for their ambushing on patrol, they were smooth at night.

They were soft shoes.

They didn't wear helmets.

They were padded suits, and they were good night fighters.

And the GIS come stumbling around in big boots and helmets in the distance.

And that, you know, was a no match for them.

We got dogs and then we reversed it.

The dog could pick them up at 200 yards, probably.

And the patrol leader says, what do we do now?

I said, well, we got three options.

We can sit down and wait for them to come out or we can back up.

We'd call in the artillery.

Yeah.

And or we can wait and see what how many there are, which is what our patrol usually called for us to find out what the Chinese are doing.

How many are there, whether they're how many if they're bunched in for an attack.

That's our main objectives.

Find out if they're bunched in for an attack.

That's the reason you're out there at night.

So you can give early warning to the lion.

I believe I was the last.

See, 46 in and out of temple on the night of January 3rd of 1951.

I had been on a mission in down in South Korea, and I did not know.

Nobody briefed us on what was going on, around the home base, which was Camp Hill.

And I came back, oh, it was, I suppose, 12:00 at night or something like this.

We've been flying all, all day, and we were just dog tired, but, I canceled, instrument flight rules coming in from the South.

Well, over the south part of Korea was relatively, it was safe, a safe area.

And, we had a, a we knew this little tower operator's name was Mickey, and I'd give anything if I'd had this tape, but we had a, a jingle, went something like this.

I'm turning on the base with my boots down.

At least give me the nod.

I'll put her on the side.

Well, now, who would know what that meant?

Except a tower operator to a pilot.

I'm turning on the base leg.

My boots are down and my gears down and lock.

Which you had to report anyway.

Give me the nod.

You had to get the tower approval.

Give me the nod.

Give me the approval, and I'll put her on the side.

I'll put her on the deck.

Well, the Chinese wouldn't understand that, but he came back to me.

And in this lingo.

And I was about 50 miles south of of temple, and I just broken out in the clear, and I could see that the whole base was on fire.

I didn't know what was burning.

And when I got closer, I could see across the river there was a whole bunch of little tiny I know now.

They were cooking fire, but those were the Chinese just across the river.

And he told me to land on the short runway, not the long runway, to keep it low and tight and don't go across the river.

So they were shooting at us.

It all came through clear in this lingo.

I'd give anything today if I had that on.

That's exactly what I did.

I rolled it out level.

And right at that time, I touched down.

Well, I wouldn't do that anymore in a big airplane than a man.

The moon, because it's it's it's I guess it was safe in the, in the, in the day, but it was dark and, it's something that you did and, and, I guess you forgot about it, but, they asked me.

I remember seeing the little fires over there.

There were several airplanes that they were burning up.

There were tents and piles of this, that and the other thing on fire.

And I, rolled up in front of the operation to chop the engine.

They said, what the hell are you doing here?

And, I said, well, I just got back to come back here from someplace I'd been down.

Well, crank them things up and get it out of here.

It's still flyable, isn't it?

I said probably said yes.

So I cranked the thing up in a way.

I got no clearance or anything.

Just.

Just get away from there.

And the next day, of course, while the Chinese came across the river and just decimated the the base one time I remember a guy came in and he couldn't get his landing gear down.

And, they have emergency air bottles on them.

So if the hydraulic don't work, they can pull a cable and it'll blow the gear down.

Well, no, somebody forgot to put air in the emergency bottle, and it didn't blow the gear down.

So it was in the winter time and the pilot came flying by and he said, I can't get my gear.

He called on the ship and he said, I can't get my gear down.

But he said, the captain says, what should I do?

Well, the captain says, you put it in the water right by the ship and we'll get you out.

And the pilot says, it's too cold.

He said, I'm not going to do it.

He said, I'm going to come on that ship.

And the captain says, you come on a ship, you're going to lose your wings.

He said, we're going to bust a well.

He said, I got enough fuel to make about two more passes.

He said, when I come in that second time, I'm coming in on that ship.

And he did.

He come right down the center without no landing gear, and he just tore it up.

Airplane, all the pieces underneath.

But and he hit that Davis barrier in front, a big nylon catcher.

And he hit that and he got out of the airplane.

He said, I'm alive.

And I never heard if he got court martialed, and I never heard the results of that.

But it probably didn't do nothing to him because they tried to get him back, you know.

But that's one time he didn't follow orders, you know.

He didn't.

He said, I seen too many pilots in this cold water.

They don't last five minutes, you know, and jets go down so fast.

So I don't blame him.

You know.

There was a position out in front of us called Sugarloaf.

It was a little hill.

It was said to be well fortified with Chinese troops.

Well, they were going to bomb that.

The Navy was going to bomb the tanks, going to fire point blank at it.

And they were down.

And they ended up that morning down in the valley over on our left, there was probably 10 or 12 tanks in the Navy come in about dawn with, jets.

I think they were Navy jets.

Anyway, it came swooping in and they were shooting the rockets and and machine guns at this we call it Sugarloaf Island.

They were shooting all this stuff at the island and the tanks were shooting at it.

And, one of the planes made a big swoop up and we come back again.

And the the Chinese gunners shot him down.

Well, all the the Belgium troops and the for the Germans and stuff, we were standing up at the top before trench line here on the hill there, and all of a sudden a jet came from behind us, and I seen it coming, and I could see the 50 calibers coming out of the out of the wings and striking close to us.

And I yelled at the top of my lungs to hit it in a couple of the other guy seen it just into and we all dropped into this trench, but it was him.

Line with the plane coming down the well.

It was one of our planes and he got a kid right next to me.

A Belgian kid went right through his back and out here.

It hit his arm and his arm was just hanging in there.

In the hole out here was about this big.

And we grabbed, I took my, first aid kit and, the Belgium, Belgium sergeant and a couple other guys.

We wrapped him up with and hold it down at the bottom of the hill.

And the guy before he we the helicopter and my name is, setbacks.

When I was in the US Army, I was in the second division, the, Indian Head Division.

We were in the mountains of Korea.

I was the assistant gunner on a 50 caliber machine gun.

And my job and a 50 caliber machine gun was to carry the extra barrel, which weighed, like, about 50 pounds.

So, you know, at first you think, well, ain't bad, but when you start carrying it up and down, know it gets pretty heavy.

The hills in Korea are quite the like.

The black Hills.

They're very steep hills.

So you do a lot of climbing up and down and, I was in fun.

That part of, Korea was very mountainous, much like the Black Hills.

You go up one hill, go down, you go up another hill.

Same, same kind of stuff.

Perfect timing.

You ain't gonna tell anybody that.

You ever been in the war.

If they weren't scared.

They're telling you a lie because you're scared when you're in them positions.

I think it was July 1st part of July that I got captured.

We've put up right on the front lines, which should have never been for a one on five outfit and that was an awful night.

Talk about fireworks.

They had all these flares and everything and talk about droves of Chinese come.

And they just they never kept coming.

We just kept knocking them down and just piled piles of them.

Unbelievable.

Unless you've been there, it's hard to hard to visualize that.

Then we seen we couldn't hold them anymore.

We were supporting a rocket division, which infantry division?

Which pulled out which.

Then the Chinese come right at us.

Well, there wasn't enough of US manpower, so we had to leave because then 105 started.

Stop, blow big hole into a line of them.

But they just come in droves.

One fleet right after another.

We run out of 50 caliber or truckload of 50 caliber.

Ammunition on a machine gun, on a truck.

And then we took off and I got down behind that truck and around.

Come in.

It was a chunk that come right over the top of my head, because the dinner plate went right through the side of the truck, and I was just below it.

Well, then we took off up mount, up the hill, and we thought we were going to be able to get away and.

We got surrounded and then around come in and knocked me out.

And I guess I was all the way down the hill, I don't remember, but the other boys helped me a lot.

A carrier is a very dangerous place to work on fight day, because that's all you got to keep your eyes open all the time.

You know you can't make a mistake up there.

You know, we had guys, you know, these propellers were dangerous.

There was.

Sometimes they'd step into the jet blast and get burnt badly.

And, when they catapulted these planes one day, a fella got his arm caught.

When they shot the plane off, it tore his arm out right up here.

And he didn't even know it till five seconds later when he passed out.

You know.

And then I did it just like that, you know, it tore it right out.

Yeah, it was hot.

It was July.

It was hot.

We were sweating one day at chow, the captain of the company said, I think we'll send trucks to the shower.

Boy.

So of course, everybody got on trucks and they sent a second truck.

We got to the shower point, and as we were unloading at the shower point, something went boom on the truck that I was on.

When that that those fragments hit me.

I felt the concussion more than what entered my legs.

I mean, that sounds funny, but I the concussion on the bottom of my my my boot and I just jumped.

You know what I thought?

I didn't know what happened.

I thought somebody had shot in a mortar round from some position.

So when I hit the ground, I just crawled to get away from the truck.

My first thought was to hit that truck.

That truck's going to explode.

So I just crawled.

And then later we determined that no work, no mortar or something on the truck.

And then I thought, and I thought, you know.

Well, yeah, I saw that sandbag.

And, you know, at the point in time, I didn't realize grenades were in there, but that's what happened, and I just crawled and get out of there.

Well, they took us, and we were lucky that we were right across the road from this shower point, the Marsh station.

Just like what you see on TV and any doctors were working on people as fast as they could.

And I know I, I got on the table and they worked on me.

I think they just cut me open to try to take out as much as they could and stuff me full of gauze.

Stop the bleeding.

It was interesting, you know, just to realize how they handled you and kept moving.

You kept moving.

You and the doctor in Pusan said, well, he took that gauze out again, and he said, well, we'll let the guys in Japan decide whether they want to dig deeper because you get fragments in there.

And, they're going to come out naturally, you know, later on.

And they did, you know, for 2 or 3 years later, every once in a while, you'd feel your leg and sure enough, a little, little piece would be coming out.

I couldn't walk hardly, because I had that trap on my knee for 30 days.

And when it came out, we didn't have no medical attention but a Band-Aid.

That's all they'd give us.

Well, when it started sticking out, they got old with a pair of pliers, and it was diamond shaped about the size of a quarter and all.

It was just a little bit sticking out, I guess I passed out when they pulled it out, but I wanted that piece and they throw it away for me.

I would like to add that for a souvenir, but.

The flying schedule was 12 on, 12 off, but that's ours.

And if your flight went in the next 12 hours, well, that was just tough.

You still showed up to fly your mission, but your 12 hours time came around and we kept that up all the time that we were in Korea.

We had to because there wasn't any other gear left available, but our job was to just stay with that airplane, and go wherever they wanted us to.

And that's exactly what we did.

Yeah.

When you work on an airplane, you have to check out everything you do on a plane.

But we'd have, like, overnight.

We worked day and night.

Oh, we had night crews.

I worked night crew a lot.

And we worked from, like, oh, eight in the afternoon to maybe four in the morning.

And then we had midnight chow.

They had they served four meals on the ship.

And, I always thought the midnight hour was the best.

We had a little bunker.

It was about six by eight.

We made our own stoves.

We got our own charcoal from the hoagies that carried it up.

And, the charcoal the last two days to keep the bunker warm.

And we would cook our rations on a charcoal stove, and we had a water, a five gallon bucket of water that we could have water up on the line all the time, and then we'd have one hot meal at noon or supper that would be served anywhere from 2 to 7:00 at night.

We changed the time, hoping that the enemy would know and would shoot any rockets in or drop any artillery grain.

Tomato soup was one thing that they made for us.

The first thing they told us when we got into prison camp at night, don't eat over one biscuit because they don't fully cooked where you get it in your stomach.

And just like bread raising, just bloat.

Yep.

So don't eat over one biscuit.

Or if we were hungry, we were.

We didn't get nothing to eat really.

All the time we would walk and very little.

And they talk about fish heads and rice that no exception.

It was food.

You picked off the fish part of it, and then after a few couple nights before it was going to be exchanged, it was going to be real good to us.

I got some canned duck that was good.

The duck was good, but they forget to take photographs.

Philadelphia.

We had to pull the feathers off first.

The dog did a did save my life.

The last great battle was fought right next to us.

Third Division was in there when we came and second Division, you just coming in when the Chinese attacked this rock division.

And so the Third Division didn't even get into reserve before they put them behind.

The rocks were just starting from running.

They just threw things down the wrong.

Well, when the smoke cleared, kind of like then they wanted a couple of their dog handlers back that they had had for a long time, you know, to see what the Chinese are up to it.

Well, two of us got called on that job and I was one of them.

So we went over there and it it was a mess, I should say.

We had to go through the Third Division where they were dug in there, I got there, they'd been there for six weeks and they hadn't had they had the first hot meal that day, otherwise they'd been on sea Rise for six weeks and they were lean and mean.

Do you had to go through them at night and then you had to go through the rocks, and then you had the Chinese up where you were looking for.

And the ones equally, they're just equally dangerous at night.

And I was up in this mess and we finally got as far as we could go.

There was as a patrol call for it, didn't see any Chinese, nothing going on.

So we stopped.

But we come back in and, we set three guys up on this little hill, lay laying up against the side hill, small hill, and, see if there's anything up over the hill before we move on.

You know, don't move into some and I don't know, the Chinese saw them or they had a listening device or what they had up there, but they were on the other side of the hill.

They probably weren't over 400 yards from us.

You know, that small little round stone come and hit them in the back?

I looked over at this big German shepherd and he's digging.

Well, I had been with him long enough, you know that.

I knew him quite well.

I knew this next round is ours.

I just grabbed him, hugged the ground tight and, well, we took that round about eight feet from us, but little on the uphill side.

So the shrapnel goes like this, you know, we got the dirt, no shrapnel.

Had we been sitting up, it had got us.

The dog knew that round was coming.

That's the sixth sense of the dog.

It's hard to believe, but we have a number of incidents in an outfit.

Or if they listen to the dog, they were all right.

Belgiums were good soldiers.

They had a company commander.

His dad was the minister of War at the time.

And the way I understand it, one of the guys told me that about half of those troops were convicts let out of prison.

And if they served seven years honorably in the Belgium Army, they were got, relieved of their prison time or got honorably discharged from that.

Also.

And there was some pretty nice fellas with the Belgium Army there.

I got to know several of them.

It didn't make any difference if they wanted you to take an airplane and go someplace, haul in fuel or haul in ammunition.

You knew that there was somebody on the other end of that line that needed it, and there wasn't any question about not going.

It was trying to save somebody else because they needed whatever you had on board of that airplane.

We did a lot of air dropping and, of of, fuel and ammunition, two guys that were trapped and, well, if we got shot at, we didn't know it or we didn't want to know it, let's put it that way.

On the other hand, if we were to take a load of ammunition or, or a 55 gallon barrels of gas, it was do the tank division or take a tank unit or somebody that needed that fuel way up north.

And then if we if they had a load of, of something that they wanted to come back, it was usually wounded.

And we, as I said before, we'd take bring it back to Kimble.

Okay.

14 and then they were transferred.

Usually the wounded, were not ac They were walking wounded.

Servicemen were they followed orders back then?

Nobody.

Everybody did their jobs pretty well, you know, and, I don't, you know, law and order meant a lot out there.

And you didn't want to make many mistakes because everybody depends on, you know, the different things, you know, like they depend on us to keep these planes in good shape.

And we worked on them, you know, we did a good job.

We did, you know, best we could.

You know, now your trust level is very high.

You count all of them for your protection.

Make count on you.

I think that the end of the year, the Chinese have lost enough soldiers and daytime battles up to that point.

You know that.

I went over there.

I think the Marines and they took care of plenty of plenty of Chinese troops and, it just got to be where the if you couldn't see them, you know, they thought, you couldn't kill them, you know, I guess, you know, then all night long, there was some of the companies would send up flares to parachute flares.

And all night long, these little shoots would be coming down with them with a fox with flares, and you get enough of them going.

And it lit the place up like daylight, you know, and everything seemed to move at night when you were moving the position, when one company was coming off and another company was coming on, you'd always do that at night so the enemy couldn't see your troop movement.

They walked us at night, and during the day they'd shove us somewhere where the Air Force couldn't see us.

One night they fired.

Oh, I think each mortar fired a couple hundred rounds.

You know, in our company, you know, there were four mortars in our company.

You.

They probably fired.

Well, maybe not quite that many, but probably 600 rounds during the night.

You know.

And that kept the Chinese back away so they wouldn't overrun us.

You know, and you'd sit up all night and wait for the company commander to call mortar fire or artillery fire and so we got to sleep a lot of times late in the morning, you know, in our bunker, we were all in bunkers, you know.

But one day, a big, tall, lanky captain walked in and he, y'know, if he could get some money and I said, yes, sir, and, and, I, looked over his pay record and I said, well, I can give you $200 right now.

That would be fine.

And he said, sure.

And, so I did.

And that him checked in and and after he walked out, one of the other guys said, you know, who you just waited on?

And I said, yeah, it's, Theodore Williams.

He said, you know, that's a ballplayer.

And it was.

And he, he came in a couple, three times, and then he went to Korea.

And he actually, and I think at one time had to crash land there and jet plane once a week.

We had the privilege of walking down the hill about two miles, and we could tap into the creek, and they had the ability to warm that water up, and we could take a shower and get clean clothes.

And I did that every week because walking two miles down and two miles back, we were in shape to do that anyway.

It wasn't a tiring effort at all, and a matter of fact, it broke up the monotony online.

And you got clean clothes and you couldn't hardly turn that down.

But you didn't have to go if you didn't want to.

And, we had to shave out of a helmet.

That was our bucket.

See the helmet?

It's got two parts to it.

The helmet liner and the steel protection.

Well, the steel protection is what we used as our wash basin.

That's a big thing in your life over there.

Communications.

Because you don't have any recreation.

So if you.

And it was about two things you can do, there's probably the club, the Moon Officer's club, NCO club, you can go down there and drink if you want to that there's we're not inclined to maybe you're going to write letters.

Well I opted to write letters and actually, even though I was engaged that time and I wrote to my fiancé every day, every night, I probably sent a letter every three days.

And he would be like a diary, but then we'd swap different, all these other guys, they had sisters or, cousins or something like that for something to do.

We wrote up some of those.

So at one time I was writing to six different girls.

Besides besides the one I was going to marry.

So this thing like that, to occupy a time, find out what's going on, gets some news and gets letters are important.

You know, my wife was still in high school while I was over there because, when I met her, she was rather immature.

But I found out.

And when I went to her birthday party, which was the second date that she was only 15, I was rather the cradle, you know.

Well, anyway, so that was her 16th birthday.

And so she was in high school all this time.

And if you've been in high school, you know, the temptations that come with it, you know, I'm sure she turned down a lot of dates because I know, I know all of her friends, too, you know, she did.

She turned them down.

She was true blue, loving a soldier.

It's loving a soldier.

The boy you adore.

And hating the world yourself in the war.

And though you know he's far away.

You love him more and more each day.

Loving a soldier is bitterness and tears.

It's loneliness, sadness and well-founded fears.

No, loving a soldier is no fun.

But it's worth the price.

When the battle is won.

And those guys.

Every now and then.

Getting a dear John with you.

Those things are serious.

We had guys that would, volunteer for the most hazardous duty they could get after they'd get a deer.

John.

Or they may go off to go off drinking.

You know, they weren't worth anything, or they may have had a head off or soul ever chance to get to the where the prostitutes are down there.

You know what it's a there's a serious thing to get turned down.

So the girls that changed their mind after they left sometimes creates a big problem.

And they killed a few guys.

You might say you.

Most of the time the guys would drink beer and dance.

They had a big ex guy was a real big navy bay, landing place, and they had a real big beer hall there.

And they have dances right in there.

And they had in there the Japanese girls had come and they danced with you and stuff.

You know, we had a lot of fun as far as that goes, you know.

But I suppose, you know, most of them drank their share beer, you know, so that you can't blame them.

They that they had ten days to have fun.

And then they did that.

They did it to the max, you know.

So most of them were broke about the 30 days that they didn't have.

We didn't have a lot of money, you know, they didn't pay us a lot.

Right?

We we enjoyed ourself, you know, and we took pictures and we had tours.

We go out, you know, and take we couldn't go very far.

But we tour around a little bit and our work rode rickshaws, you know guys and pull them by hand or by foot, you know.

And we got a kick out of that, you know, and, and they were the most of the Japanese people were glad to get pay, you know, just take it home.

I remember one incident where we were downtown and, and we told the boys something.

We call them boys on the phone in this little rickshaw and said, we got to get my boys son right now.

So then he heard it up and he said, faster boys on.

And he was just going for all he was worth, you know, he got down to settle and he said, I gotta go back uptown, boys, you know, and look at you and wonder, what are you guys trying to pull?

You know, it was just, you know, you know, guys are ornery and doubtful stuff like that, you know?

So the charges were the 60 year old and older and the courtesies where the military crew, South Koreans, they were they were their soldiers.

And they worked with us because they had to interpret and they could speak the the Korean language.

And most of us could get by with Edo ship Shaw or Kochi Joshi or, talks on means large or big.

And we could talk a little bit with them to get around, but they knew more English than we knew Korean.

I mentioned that we were quite often mortared about lunchtime when we would get our hot meal.

And those two guys I told you were so helpful they would set up the gear to wash our mess kits.

They'd have a big scalding 20 gallon bucket of water that we could.

Diplomats gets in to make sure they were sterilized.

Well, one time a mortar came in and hit those those, steaming hot mess kit washing containers.

And it also hit this choji in the jaw, a shell of shrapnel and one in his knee.

And it was amazing.

He was dancing on one leg, holding his one leg up and holding his jaw with his other hand.

And he was all the time holler and eat, eat.

I ate the that's how they say ouch.

It hurts.

And I felt so sorry for him because they they exposed themselves to fire all the time.

Those guys, there was such a poor country.

You almost you had to kind of feel sorry for him, but actually the run guys over there kind of took advantage of them.

You know, in, well, you'd hire guys to help you out, you know, Korean, some of them were laborers.

And, they, they hardly gave anything to carry logs up on the front line to make bunkers out of.

And, you kind of made fun of them, you know, that those people were struggling.

I mean, they were they had a bad time of it over there.

Yeah.

I remember coming in on this little rickety train, I'm telling you.

But there was these little orphans running around, and, no shoes on.

Snotty.

No.

They can see rations and we were thrown c rations when we got off the ship because we didn't know the next place we're going to eat, you know, we threw them to them kids.

And then later on, after the war was over, then there was a lot of organizations locally that gathered food for for the Korean people.

And we went down to a school down there and presented those kids with we made cocoa for them and then presented these this clothing, you know, child's clothing and in a way, it was a little discouraging because you you divided it up.

And then after the kids on the way home, the big kids take it away from the little kids settled on the black market.

But we tried.

We tried, but the little kids pathetic.

One time I went into an island off the southwest coast of Japan.

Or a Korea.

The islands was Chad, you know, and the these were orphaned children and the Catholic sisters, their, Korean had agreed to take those orphaned children.

Now, their, their parents were, were Korean, where the parents were.

I have absolutely no idea.

But we hold in food, we all in clothes, we hauled in anything.

And I remember the, the one a 1 or 2 times that I went in there.

Each time the, the, the children would line up along the runway knowing that we were bringing them something to eat or something to wear and, and, and, if we chop the engine, got the engine shut down and started to load the airplane, the kids were all over the place.

Well, yes, you bet they were grateful.

I think the nuns were grateful, too.

However, we were never there long enough to, to receive any personal thanks or anything like it.

We didn't really care.

We knew the kids needed the stuff, and we we were all ready to go back up for another load.

Really.

It was one of those things kind of help your brother, I guess.

I don't know.

And when everything stopped that final day, I mean, like, everybody wanted to get rid of their ammunition, arms, it was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, back and forth.

But at midnight, it just turned quiet.

That was the end of it.

And the last 12 hours before the for the truth.

That the artillery started throwing everything they had at each other.

I mean, they were sound like they were trying to burn them guns up.

And every time they'd fire this battery behind us, a little kid would just go like that, you know, towards the last, we could see the Chinese artillery coming in the incoming stuff down the road, about a mile, and that whole valley.

And there was just utter smoke and noise.

You couldn't imagine the noise, you know, and it didn't look like it was possibly going to be a truce.

It just could never be quiet again.

It looked like it intensified, you know, by the time.

But when it come midnight, all of a sudden it was quiet, just deathly quiet.

Nobody said anything.

You just looked at one another, you know.

And then in the next week or so, we, started moving all of our equipment back a thousand yards, both sides in, in the talks so that both sides would move their lines back a thousand yards and all of that in between, as it is today, is no man's land.

The next morning, after the truce that the Chinese soldiers and the American soldiers were out swapping cigarets for souvenirs and that sort of thing, can you believe that that they actually kept they were out there to see one another a few, a few days later than the the, people behind it, the big brass, you know, put afraid into him and scared them that that shouldn't do this.

But spontaneously first.

That's what they did until they were warned not to.

And then they were didn't trust one another after that.

But that was the first reaction.

We had quite a party after July 27th back.

We went back, went offline and went back a couple of miles and set up a camp and and then things got what they call chicken, you know.

So.

It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good either.

But, you know, I was lucky I got out of there.

We didn't know the truth.

Was signed until we got into prison camp.

And when I got there, that's where I met this fellow from White Lake.

And then I ran into my second cousin.

He was just a mile from me when he got captured 30 days earlier.

You.

In the meantime, my folks, nobody knew whether I was dead or alive.

I just listed missing in action.

When they found out I was okay.

He could have.

Thrashing grain for all they could.

I was.

But I made a life and a nice family.

And I guess the reason I went into so much when I got home, I always felt if I could help some of them guys, they could be with us today.

But I guess since they got all my.

It's been.

Just put myself in the fire department, EMT and night, Columbus and Legion always trying to help somebody.

Because then they'd help me.

Our unit was deactivated in November of 54, and the dogs were sent to Japan, retrained for sentry dogs.

They weren't abandoned like they were in Vietnam.

That was a terrible, pathetic thing that happened over there.

The Air Force says it will never happen again.

Dogs are not going to be treated like common equipment.

But that was the rules and regulations those days.

But ours were a little more fortunate.

We couldn't bring them home as much as we'd like to and try to do family, but that's where they went.

After they signed the armistice, and probably about or I was in the mortar squad for 5 or 6 months and then I got wind that they wanted somebody in the third Infantry Division band and they came around as their band was looking for guys.

And I used to play the trombone in high school, and by golly, I went down.

I got accepted.

So and that was pretty good duty.

And after the war was over, you know, the time that I was over there, you know, I was concerned about the group I was to look out for in myself and I wasn't pay attention to what was going on in general.

But now after I get into history, I find them actually three different sources that are unrelated that our unit, when it arrived in Korea, cut the reconnaissance casualties by 60%.

And that's a good feeling and feeling like you accomplished something because there's a lot of guys that are alive today because of us.

But there was a lot of little things like that happen every day, you know, little things that just kind of, you know, kind of you kind of don't think I'm so much then, but then when, you know, you think about all that stuff that you went through in Okinawa, you wonder, you know, it was kind of, out there.

You're like one big happy family.

Seemed like all these guys, you know, they work together.

I guess a lot of people don't realize why we were there.

We.

I guess I feel very lucky.

That was one of them that got to come home and have a life.

I had a very understanding family I put up with a lot when we first, when I first got home, I lay down on the floor like when we first got married, you didn't dare touch me or I just come unglued.

Or they had a bayonet in our back all the time.

When they were marching us.

And I guess it took a long time to get over it.

And I couldn't talk about this for years.

It's been few years that I've been able to say a few words to other people about it.

I'm sure we, the United States, did the right thing.

And, try to stop communist aggression because they had a run over South Korea and God knows where they went.

Then, you know, Vietnam would have probably came earlier, you know, and, all those countries would have got run over at the time.

General MacArthur was relieved of the commands in the Far East.

I think the American public, supported him.

You can remember his, return to Congress and and old soldiers never die, you know, they just fade away.

And, but I think probably people now understand that, he was going to get very, very aggressive with the Air Force, and bombing the Chinese.

And he I think politically, politicians knew that, as might possibly set off World War three and probably in retrospect, maybe, maybe President Truman did the right thing.

I didn't think so at the time.

You know, being in the service was fine.

I wouldn't give that up for nothing.

I think everybody should have that experience.

Some could take it, some can't.

But I enjoyed the service life.

I'm glad when it ended.

I was one of those that was ready to retire.

Some did.

Very few, some did.

But it's an interesting way.

It's a good experience of life, and I'm glad I served, and I don't think I'd want to do it again.

But I have no regrets about it.

Yeah, I learned a lot.

And, it kind of makes a man out of you, you know?

And I think a lot of those guys came home and.

And, I don't think they got the recognition that, they should have that I feel real humble that they're honoring the Korean veterans.

Now, I just wish all of them could be here to receive that honor.

That's.