Wisconsin Korean War Stories

Part 2: Stalemate

Wisconsin Korean War Stories is a partnership of the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television in association with the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

Rich Hemlin:
I don’t think there was ever an American that said, “thank you.”

Cliff Borden:
It takes time to evaluate history. It takes decades to put things in proper perspective. In 1954, when I came back to my home town, that perspective was not there. There was apathy. And apathy hurts.

Rich Hemlin:
When you send somebody to war, you’re giving them 50 years and maybe a lifetime of memories, you’d better have a good cause. You’d better have a good cause. When the North Koreans invaded, nobody said: Are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? Are you a liberal? Nobody said a damn thing. Are you a Catholic? Are you Jewish? I mean, we were too busy. We were all Americans.

Cliff Borden:
We lived under the shadow of the greatest generation, the World War II guys we looked up to, a “popular war” the citizenry from all walks of life backed it. This was absent in Korea. So, we got home, it was thankless at best, to drop your life and go and serve and be in harm’s way, and maybe come home dead in a box.

Narrator:
For most of a year, they had fought the North Koreans and then the Chinese up and down Korea. Now, the war was right back where it had started, along the 38th parallel. That’s where everything changed as our young men and women discovered that war was holding a line. And it wouldn’t end with a victory parade. Wisconsin Korean War Stories.

Major funding for Wisconsin Korean War Stories was provided by the John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation; the Krause Foundation; Joseph and Patricia Okray; John and Sherry Stilin, in honor of her father, Robert Kossoris; Duard and Dorothea Walker; the Okray Family Foundation; and the Wisconsin History Fund, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Heartbreak

Stan Smith:
You feel kind of like an obligation. My father was in World War I. My brother was in World War II. And I felt that I should do my share, or the Communists were going to overrun the whole country, which I still think they maybe would’ve some day if we hadn’t intervened. I like to think we did it for a reason, anyway.

Elroy Roeder:
In January, I got drafted, like everybody else was at that time. I took all engineering training in my Basic. I laid mines and demolitions, and stuff like that, you know, build bridges. I got overseas and didn’t need any. They needed infantrymen. That’s where they put me.

Stan Smith:
They tried to put me in heavy weapons. I was not trained in heavy weapons. I requested a rifle squad. The Sergeant said, “You’re crazy,” but they let me go. See, they were pretty much in fixed positions at that time in the 5th. It was a night combat unit. We specialized in ambush patrol. Then, during the days, sometimes we’d go out and do what were called probing attacks. The probing didn’t make much sense. We’d go out, engage the enemy, basically, I guess, to see how strong they were. We might try and take a hill, push them off a hill, get the hill, pull back off and leave it.

Elroy Roeder:
I think also three-quarter of us guys were at Heartbreak Ridge. It was an important hill to take at the time. I call it a mountain. They weren’t hills. You’d take it, they’d chase you off. You’d take it and they took it. We took it three times before we could take the hill. Every time you’d come down, you’d reorganize. And then you’d start going back up again. We just got to do it. You go up there, and you know it’s going to be rough. The first time, it was at nighttime. We got chased off right way. The second time, we went up a ridge. That one, I won’t forget. We was going up kind of a draw and we looked to our right and our left, and we see guys running up on top there, we knew they were Chinese. We told our company commander, pass the word down. You could see them up there waiting for us. You know you’re not going to take the hill if they’re waiting for you. We kept on walking, kept on walking, kept on walking. Finally, we come to a dead end, you might say, the end of the draw. And all hell let loose. They really poured into us guys.

Stan Smith:
Flopped onto my belly an started shooting, and everybody started shooting. There were burp guns going off. Next thing I knew, I thought my rifle had blown up. I assume I was unconscious for a while, I don’t really know. I could see myself laying on the ground, just like I was in the air floating over it. I could see me, my body laying there. And then, I came to enough to realize where I was and that I was hurt. I tried to holler, I couldn’t holler. So, I dragged my rifle back with me, back to an aid station.

Elroy Roeder:
Then another one on Heartbreak Ridge, that one we took. We all dug in, and then they started giving it. We could see the mortars coming in. You look up there and all you see is shells coming in. You know you’re lucky to get out of it alive. You’re lucky, that’s it. Two of my buddies, right next to me, they got a direct hit. I could see the shell go right in them. They were laughing once, and then after that, they were dead. I never got a scratch. When we walked off that hill, I betcha 12 of us walked off, the rest all were carried or dead.

Stan Smith:
Got hit at the base of the neck, on the left. It came out the middle of my right shoulder blade. But it was only one round. I always figured maybe I got him when he got me. One lucky guy to have a bullet pass through and not do any damage.

Elroy Roeder:
We know they’re going to counter attack, the Chinese. They were coming, hollering and screaming like crazy. But we held them. The only time we slept was at daytime. The nighttime, you were awake, all night. Christmas eve, I was there. And all night long, the enemy had loudspeakers up, they were playing Christmas carols.

Stan Smith:
They played Christmas carols to us. And they were our Christmas carols.

Elroy Roeder:
All night long, they played them things, them old loudspeakers blaring away. We never tried to silence them, either. You think they would have sent out shells over that and they never did.

Stan Smith:
They dropped Christmas cards to us that were nicer Christmas cards than we were given to send home.

Elroy Roeder:
Then, every once and a while a gal would get on, she’d tell you you’d surrender, you know, we’d be home for New Years, all that kind of stuff. But that was really nice. We really got a kick out of that. The sound of Christmas carols. Of course, you never know, they might attack, too.

Stan Smith:
They had cloth handkerchiefs that were tied in little bundles with candy. They’d hang them in the barbed wire. You’d find them in the morning. Yet, you wouldn’t hear them. You didn’t know they were there at night, or you’d have been shooting at them.

Elroy Roeder:
Christmas day, we had a nice hot turkey meal for us, and ice cream, even ice cream. Boy, that was a treat. And the best part of it, we’re all eating and vroom, there come the shells. But they were laying way behind us. We never quit eating. We just sat there.

Stan Smith:
You never questioned. You know, if they said we’re taking out a trail tonight, you never questioned, you just did it. You’re in the Army, so you do what you’re told. Ours is not to question why, ours but to do or die was the motto, so. It was your choice.

Jets

John Hotvedt:
I always wanted to fly a fighter. And I was fortunate. I got into flying Hellcats in World War II. I was a photo pilot then, also. I got hurt pretty bad. On that day they signed the peace on the Missouri, I was flying a photo plane taking pictures of all this going on, you know, right over all the wheels down there on the Missouri. By the time I got back to the ship, it was pitching 70 feet from top to bottom, wiped out the barriers and over on my back. I got out and in ’46 and back in in ’50, the beginning of the Korean War. They said, “Can you fly jets?” And I said, “As well as the next guy.”

Art Gale:
I lucked out. I went down to the Navy, they were full. The Marines were full. Oh, God, and I knew the Army was on my tail. And so, I got into the Air Force. And the day that I was supposed to go down and be sworn in, I got my draft notice. I asked the guy, “What do I do?” He said, “Send it back.” And so, that’s when I got my jet training. I loved that. It was different. It was new. And it was something very few people even knew the principle of how it worked. I mean, you know, by today’s standards, it was like a Model T, I’m sure, but at that time, it was a Cadillac.

Valedda Wilson:
I had just finished six-month post-graduate work in operating room technique and management. And one of my classmates had been a Navy nurse. She said, “Oh, why don’t you join one of the branches of service?” So, I applied to get a commission in the Air Force. I was hoping to travel. I didn’t care whether it was Europe, Far East or what, but the Korean War was going on, so obviously, that was where we were going to be going.

John Hotvedt:
And Herb Tompkins, he said, “I think I’m going to take that next detachment out, and it’s going to be jets.” Well, I don’t want to sit around here forever, how about going along. He says, we’ll work out the handbook exam, and meet me here tomorrow morning and we’ll get you checked out. It ended up, he got up on the wing and showed me how to start it, and taxi’d out to the end of the runway with him standing on the wing, checked it all out, 100 percent power, and then he got off, “Go.” And so, I did. Then, I came back in the afternoon and did the same thing again, and on Sunday, one flight. So, by Monday there, I’m a pro, I’ve got three flights in already.

Art Gale:
Flew over to Korea, just brand spanking new, just green as grass. And we’re going to go down and watch the airplanes take off, you know. And of course, I’m eager beaver, I’m right up in front. I’m the point guard. I’m out there watching everything. Something falls off this airplane as it’s taking off. It bounces down the runway in front of us. I turn around, what the heck is that? Everybody’s laying down on the ground. It was a 1,000-pound bomb. If it had gone off, that would’ve been the end of everybody.

Valedda Wilson:
Got off the plane, and they handed me a .45. And I looked at them and I says, “Well, if I’ve got to carry this thing, someone is going to have to teach me how to use it.” And so, I learned to shoot a .45 quite efficiently. We did not have red crosses on our helmets, because they said, for the guerrillas, that was just a bullseye. If they could get rid of the medical people, they figured that a lot of other people wouldn’t survive.

John Hotvedt:
We set up our own little lab on the carrier, and we’d do a lot of stuff ourselves. As soon as we came down, pre-strike and post-strike, damage assessment, was what it was mostly about. Sometimes, we’d do it on the same flight, go in there ahead, do the pre-strike, bombing bridges. It wouldn’t take long to go in and do the post-strike at the same time. That was always interesting, to see if there was anything left to go for. They were ingenious. They could rebuild a bridge overnight. It was something or other.

Art Gale:
You made sure your airplane was ready to go when it was supposed to. Anywhere from three to four flights a day. We had different pilots. I mean, hey, if they flew once a day, that was too much. Three flights to four flights a day, you don’t ask a guy to do that. You can’t. But you got to know these guys. While you’re strapping them in, you’re getting them ready, talking with them a little bit. Where you going today? Well, a milk run. Aw, great. You know, hey, good. And if he was quiet, and really concerned and worried, it wasn’t a milk run.

Valedda Wilson:
Could be a very emotional time. We’d be talking to someone right before they went out on a flight. And the next morning, you’d see their name on the board, missing in action, or didn’t return home. One time, we had a faulty bomb explode on the flight line. By the time I got there, they were in the operating room. One was a young man who had just had a newborn son. He was a football player and he was talking about getting home to teach this boy how to play football. And he lost both legs in this accident.

John Hotvedt:
The big thing we ran into at low altitude was small arms fire and guns, that’s what we were looking for, too, anti-aircraft. Green Six, he called that trail that went through there and they were well-fortified with guns. Everybody was tested going down Green Six for anything.

Art Gale:
They talk about the bridges. We lost a lot of planes there. A lot of them. Not the whole squadron, but getting the planes. They’d go in there, just keep pummeling. You’d drop your bomb, then you’d strafe, got to get out of there. It was tough. My airplane, the 537, the guy got it in the cockpit, didn’t even know what hit him. I talked to his wing man, and it was just one big puff, and that was the end of it.

Valedda Wilson:
You remember mostly the good part of being there, not the bad. The bad gives you nightmares.

Night Patrol

Robert Kimbrough:
The two major motivating things for me was one, getting in the Marine Corps. I didn’t know the Korean War would break out to assist me on my mission. And also, fight for the cause of the United Nations. I was very excited by all that kind of thing. I really looked at the Korean War, that this was the first time the United Nations was able to express itself to maintain boundaries. And so, I really felt that my blue and white campaign ribbon for the United Nations forces was really one I was very proud of.

Don Arne:
I thought it would be very interesting if I could get into the Navy Band. And quite frankly, I just failed the test. Having some pride, I didn’t want to go back to Oshkosh as a failure, so I decided what the heck, I’ll just stay in the Navy anyway. So, I joined the Navy in January, 1951. They give you an aptitude test to see what you might be qualified to do. And for some reason, my testing came out a Medical Corpsman. So, they sent me to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. And while I was there, of course, a lot of the Marines were coming back from Korea. They’d be saying, I’d feel better if I was where the action was. So, I asked to be transferred into the Fleet Marines for Corpsmen.

Robert Kimbrough:
The most vulnerable casualty in active war is the Lieutenant Platoon leader in the infantry. And actually, I was flown over to Korea to be a replenishment for the tremendous casualties that were taken. The Panmunjom corridor was already in operation as a kind of communications line between North and South, and there was Armistice negotiations going on. The Army, which was protecting that corridor, was really getting beat up by the Chinese. So, the Marine Corps came over, regained a lot of territory. And all the time I was there, I could see the big search lights marking the Panmunjom center where the treaties were going on at the same time I’m out on patrol with my guys, and guns are being shot and grenades are being thrown. It was a little weird.

Don Arne:
It was an entirely different kind of warfare. They called 1952 and 1953 the outpost war. Holding your position across Korea. It meant a lot of going out on patrols at night, and trying to secure prisoners, which were still causing a lot of casualties. I tell you, those nights seemed blacker than any other I’ve ever seen in my life. I guess that’s maybe just the situation, because you know, it’s the unknown. Your senses really get sharp when you realize what you’re walking into. You know, it’s not like a stroll through the park.

Robert Kimbrough:
We would read in Stars and Stripes, and we would get news from the States that nothing happened on the main line of resistance, or MLR, last night. Well, any time you go across into no-man’s land, and you’re making a raid, or setting up ambushes, you are in danger. And to come back, you couldn’t just roll over and get in your sleeping bag. You had to come down, work it out. And it was like that every time we went out. And then, to read in the paper, “Nothing happened last night.”

Don Arne:
There’s a bond between a Marine and a Corpsman that is something that can never be broken. We never knew, as Corpsmen, what we were going into, stomach wounds, chest wounds. It’s hard to explain, but you go in there feeling confident that everything is going to be fine. And yet, down deep inside, you know there’s going to be losses. And so, you live with that.

Robert Kimbrough:
Part of a platoon leader’s unwritten code is to take care of his troops. We would get our orders down from higher above, people charting things on a drawing board, without any appreciation of what they were really asking. I mean, it was madness, some of it. We wouldn’t do it, but we didn’t say we weren’t going to do it. >>Don Arne:I met a Marine by the name of Don, and I became real close to him. This one particular night, we were on a patrol. I heard a loud explosion. They said, “Corpsman.” And I went up, and pitch black, it turned out that it was Don, who had stepped on a mine. And it pretty much split him open. It wasn’t anything I could really do. I administered morphine. And his last words to me were, “Don, I don’t want to die.” And I said, “You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” But I think within 20 minutes, he was deceased. And I still have that memory implanted in my brain.

Robert Kimbrough:
You don’t come back the same person as you went. People will be rotated back by the month. So, after you served 12 months, you’d be rotated back to the states. Short-timers were people who, their month was coming up. We wouldn’t let them go out on patrols. We didn’t want anything to happen to them. They were close enough. Somebody would be getting ready to go home, they’d say, and when they ask you about the boys in Korea, what are you going to say? I’ll tell you what I’m going to say, “[no audio] the boys in Korea,” which was our cynical way of saying the civilians didn’t give a damn what we were doing.

Don Arne:
You’d go out at night with 18 guys that you know and come back the next morning and there’d only be 12. It can happen so fast, that you tend to look at life a little differently. You appreciate every day. I still do. Appreciate every day.

United Nations

Lee Haspl:
It started for me in Prague, which is now the Czech Republic. This was in the ’30s. I was eight years old when the Germans marched into Prague. It lasted for six years. And when you’re a young fellow, six years is a long, it’s a lifetime. So, that was a pretty scary time. My cousins, when I came to the United States, my own age, they seemed to me like they were ten years younger than I am. Six years of war kind of ages you. So, I thought, well, that was the end of wars for me. No more wars. It’s over with. Five years later, I get this letter from my friends and neighbors. And I was being drafted.

Jim Mendyke:
Upon graduation, I was commissioned. The U.S. Army is smart enough to know, don’t take people who are right out of college, through ROTC, give them some real training. So, we went to the infantry school. I had to go to a doctor for my medical. He said, “I can’t approve you because of your polio.” I had one foot way smaller than the other. And I begged him. I said, “How can I play two sports in college, and you’re telling me I can’t be in the Army?” He said, “You really want to go in?” I said, “Yes.” And so he said, “Okay, I’ll pass you.”

Lee Haspl:
The first job was putting gun powder bags in the 105mm Howitzer shell. Actually, I went from the lowest job in that outfit to being in charge of all six units in our battery, Sergeant First Class, in one year. My mother and father didn’t know that I was in the Army. I mean, they were living in Prague. That’s when the Iron Curtain fell. I felt that my family was stuck over there because of the Communists. They couldn’t get out. I couldn’t go over there to see them. And I felt bitter about it. Every time I shot that thing going against the North Koreans, or even the Chinese, today they’re our friends, I felt good about it. I felt like I was doing a little bit to get even.

Jim Mendyke:
There was attacks made by our regiment all along the line. And two of the officers and one of the companies, I don’t know if they couldn’t handle it anymore or what, but instead of continuing the fight we were in, they ran back to the line. So, they were promptly discharged. So, I was at the regimental headquarters, from having what I considered a plush job, I ended up being a platoon leader right on the front line. So, I called myself the United Nations platoon, because I had four Guamanians, four Puerto Ricans, 16 South Koreans, four or five, what I would call American soldiers. I didn’t have an interpreter. And that is not easy, to have soldiers and they can’t understand me or me them. But we made it.

Lee Haspl:
The U.N. troops, we had a Turkish regiment right next to us. And quite often, I liked to go over there, because these fellows knew how to prepare food. Oh, my goodness, with the spices of the Middle East, just loved the Turks. Except, they used to complain, you know, you people don’t get close enough to the enemy. They did. They’d sometimes come back with well, I don’t know if I should say it, but a piece of an ear or something. That’s how close they would get.

Jim Mendyke:
There were fierce battles on one hill, it was called Old Baldy. I never ended up on Old Baldy, but I was at a check point maybe 200 yards towards our line, and there were many troops that went through our point. I think the Turks went through there on one occasion, Filipinos, everybody was taking a shot at trying to capture Old Baldy. And if they did, they were counter attacked unmercifully. There was like a two-squad attack, and the Filipinos wiped them out. The enemy was not happy about that, and they sent a company. Filipinos wiped them out. But they got to the point where they were actually attacked by a battalion, and the Filipinos were running out of ammunition, and whatnot. And they stayed there, they fought hand-to-hand, and the whole works. A short time thereafter, they came through our checkpoint. I thought they’re the bravest people in the world. There were hundreds and hundreds of casualties on that one stupid hill. And I, as a young officer, kept saying to myself, even if we have it, what good does it do? Because there’s a hill right behind it that’s even higher. So, even if you’re on it, your enemy’s looking right down your throat anyway.

Lee Haspl:
You know, I think something like World War II, which was such a tremendous undertaking, certainly demanded much more attention than what we got, but it’s true, they called it a police action. Well, my gosh, it was no police action. It was a war. And we lost a lot of people.

Swift Care

Julius Ptaszynski:
I had worked for Woolworth Company and they were going to transfer me. They decided they wanted my draft status, so I checked with my local draft board. And 30 days later, I got a notice that I was going in the service. It was kind of rewarding work. I kind of enjoyed it. I’ve always liked to help people out, and that’s maybe why I got into the medical field. Maybe they knew I liked to help people, so they put me in the medics. I was sent to an Army Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. And I was graduated out of there as a medical technician. After a two-week stay at home, I was sent over to Korea.

Alice Dorn:
The wonderful part about air evacuation was that we could get the patients to the hospitals quickly. I was in high school during all of World War II, and I used to read the magazines and follow the Army nurses and what they did. You know, that was wonderful for me. It sort of moved me into nursing. And then, when the Korean War began, I was assigned to March Field in California. And at that time, we used to get all of these soldiers, who had frostbites. And they were air evac’d back. They came by air. And I sort of thought, gee, flight nursing is something I’ve never done. And I went to the school to learn about taking care of people in planes.

Robert Strand:
I was 4-F to begin with because I had really bad eyes. My eyes are like 2200. And, which I didn’t pass for World War II, that’s why I’m a little older than a lot of them were that went to the Korean War. But the Korean War, as long as it was correctable with glasses, then you were okay. With my bad eyes, we had bayonet practice. And I was jabbing my bag with the bayonet, and I caught my glasses on a limb of a tree, threw them off my face. And I was next to blind. I was down crawling around, and the Sergeant came up and he says, “Stram, what are you doing?” He used stronger words than that, but anyway. I told him I was looking for my glasses. And he said, “My God, what they don’t send us.”

Julius Ptaszynski:
As soon as we arrived, pushes were being made, ambulances were coming in, helicopters were coming in. We didn’t have much time to think of home. I remember one time we had, I think it was like 93, or so, wounded come in and they had 128 wounds on them. But some were very serious and others were a couple days rest and medication, and they would be back on the line. Those that were more extensive would probably be air lifted out to a hospital ship or to Japan. We had an air strip just a short distance away from our evacuation hospital.

Alice Dorn:
The helicopters brought them from the front because the terrain was terrible. Then, they would land them at the first aid or the MASH hospitals and we would pick them up from there after they’d been treated. And usually, it was always a full load from Korea back to Japan. We would do whatever we needed to, change dressings or plasma, some of them were on IVs. I had one load, I remember, that was all head injuries, and I don’t think many of them responded. They were really critically ill.

Robert Strand:
One morning, I woke up and I just couldn’t get out of bed. I was in really pain, and a high fever. And after they finally realized I was sick, they got an ambulance and I just passed out. I was out for a week. Anyway, they got me to the hospital. When I came to, I couldn’t get up. I just couldn’t. I was too weak to do it.

Julius Ptaszynski:
There was an illness beginning, hemorrhagic fever, we had patients and no one knew what it was.

Alice Dorn:
I worked with hemorrhagic fever patients, which was a disease that was carried by the mite that would get into the patient’s blood streams that would cause bad hemorrhages and high fevers. There were quite a few patients that died.

Robert Strand:
They called it rat fever over there, because it was spread by rats. In Korea, you’d sleep, there are holes in the ground and there are rats all over the place. It was not real unusual to wake up with one crawling over your face or your body.

Julius Ptaszynski:
While we were there, there was nothing, no medication that could be used to prevent it. They did use DDT. Uniforms would be dipped in a barrel of DDT to prevent the mites from getting into the skin by killing them.

Alice Dorn:
We were required to DDT the plane load before we left on every flight. And I think about that today. I even worry about it a little bit.

Robert Strand:
I got eight shots a day of penicillin in my butt. You’d get so weak, that it included pneumonia. My lungs were practically filled with fluid. Finally, they tried something they had never tried before, they put a tube in there through my back and drained out my right lung. They took the stuff out of there and that started feeling better then. Up until that time, I think that I was about gone, you know. A lot of them that contracted that hemorrhagic fever didn’t make it through. Things like that you remember, but you don’t, you know. It can make you pretty teary-eyed, just that you got through that.

Julius Ptaszynski:
You’ve got to hold it back yourself, sometimes, you know, to give those people courage. You’ve got to care for people. If you don’t care for people, then that’s not a good job to be in.

Alice Dorn:
Everybody was subdued. It was a war. You know, it was difficult at times. You’ve been hearing about the peace talks and hoping, hoping it would end soon. I think of those boys. I think of that loss. Gosh, these guys were 18 years old. Some were even 17 and a half, and they’re laying there and missing limbs. That was a real tragedy for them and their families. I often wonder where they are now.

Armistice

Dick Nooe:
I was what was referred to in the service as a Pinkie. A Pinkie works in an office. We were reassigning Marines that were coming back on rotation from Korea. I was never real, real happy with doing that. It just was not exciting enough. And I kept putting pressure on the Sergeant Major to get out of there. I said, “I want to go to Korea.” Finally, he got tired of listening to me.

John Breske:
We had a hill that overlooked that Panmunjom. And with binoculars, you could watch it real plain, The North side would come in helicopters. The Koreans, why they’d come in some black cars, I don’t know what kind they were, but they were a good-sized black car. They’d come to this, you’d see them pull in there. They’d meet and sometimes they were in there five minutes and sometimes they were ten minutes, and out they’d all come and away they’d go again. Then we’d get the Stars and Stripes paper and they’d tell us what was going on at Panmunjom. Well, we knew what was going on better than they did, because we were watching it.

Rich Hamlin:
You just had to stay awake. The worst was when the word would spread we were going up on the Chop, the nerves would start to get to you a little bit. When they set up the main line of resistance, running 155 miles, east to west, Porkchop, then, if you looked on the map, was the key thing. Because if they broke through Porkchop, then, the mountains and everything that went that way, switched and they went this way. And they’d be able to run, it’s only 33 miles to Seoul. So, that was a key area. And toward the end, coming up with peace negotiations at Panmunjom, nobody was expecting that. They thought it was all going to be the truce. And then they, that one hit. That was a tough one. That was like the finale.

Dick Nooe:
We knew all about the talks. You know, we were just waiting, waiting and waiting for the Armistice. That warfare was trench warfare, a little like the first World War, really. Our company, essentially, was in charge of an outpost right out in front of us, it was called Esther. I was the Sergeant in charge out there. The evening of July 24, this is like three days before the Armistice, we had more incoming than I had seen for a long, long time. Mortars, mortars, mortars.

John Breske:
Everybody was getting rid of their ammunition. They knew the war was going to end. So, the Chinese and the Koreans were throwing everything out, and so was the Americans. I don’t think I seen any darkness into the last three days. The sky was just completely, if you’ve ever seen fireworks, there was fireworks. I thought it was kind of stupid, because why, I mean, they knew it was going to end. Why throw all this stuff out there, and more guys are getting hit, wounded and killed.

Rich Hamlin:
We lost Baldy on the west side of Porkchop. That was a very important thing. That loss gave the Chinese an observation post, so that when our troops went up, they could call in fire. Then, when you went up this road, it had to make a turn, you were wide open. And we nicknamed it clobber corner. I mean, that was it. They either hit you, or it went short, went right over your head. And when you got there, then they would put in mortars on you, and you went out and you had to sprint down the road to a trench and duck in the trench and you were relatively safe for a while.

Dick Nooe:
At that point, there’s a mass of humanity coming down the trench line screaming and yelling. There were hundreds of them all over the place. I had a machine gun. We keep the things half loaded. I full loaded, it didn’t work. I full loaded again, two or three times, and it didn’t work. And I just slung it. We had a string of grenades that we started throwing. We just threw ’em, threw ’em, threw ’em, threw ’em, and the explosions going. I tell you, war is absolute chaos. This is where I think I began to realize it isn’t all that exciting.

John Breske:
They’d come in one bunch and then another bunch. They’d come in waves. There’s no strategy about it. They just figured they’d keep coming and you’d run out of bullets pretty damn quick and they’d overrun you, which would happen a lot of times, they’d overrun you. In fact, at the outpost, what we did when it got so bad, we had a big bunker that we could all run and scramble into and call artillery and let them know our position. Artillery and mortars, as soon as we got in that hole, and just pound the hell out of it for a while, and everybody comes out. Five minutes of that and you come out. And it worked, especially if they threw that Willy Peter, that was white phosphorous. You’d throw that in, even if you’re laying in a hole, the stuff comes down like this, and it gets on you, you’ve got a problem.

Rich Hamlin:
If found over there, I was very calm, as calm as you can get. But then, it all fell apart. And you remember some things. I remember the sergeant coming in and he asked if we had a cigarette, I smoked. I gave him a cigarette. And I can remember all the smoke coming out of his lungs, and his neck, he was hit with Willy Peter, and it was burning holes in him. What we saw was like a freak movie.

Dick Nooe:
I got hit in the back of the legs and the flank. It felt to me like my leg was cut off. I thought it was gone. Fortunately, as it turned out, they were all flesh wounds. I got out of the bunker and I got hit in the face. And I’ll never know for sure with what. It could have been what’s called a potato masher, that’s just a slang expression for the kind of grenades that the Chinese used.

John Breske:
I was wounded the last night. In fact, I was wounded twice that night. I was hit about 11:00 at night. I got bandaged up, I went back and got hit again that last night of the war. When I got hit in my right arm and right shoulder, that hurt. When I first got hit, I thought the arm was gone. When I found she was still dangling, or something, I thought it was pretty good.

Rich Hamlin:
Go up, get this to Major Noble and bring it back, you know, communications had been wiped out. It’s got to be me to carry it. I said okay, but we’re going along, and then we come around this clobber corner and ba-ba-boom, ba-boom, I can feel it, as close as I’ve ever heard it. Then we stopped. And there’s this African American up there, I say, “I’m up here to see Major Noble.” And he says, “There are no more officers on the hill.” Every officer was killed.

Dick Nooe:
I remember getting severe blows to my face. I mean, it was just horrible. Painful, just one after another. And as a result of all this, now, this eye is a prosthesis, that’s not an official eye. This is my own, but I’ve just got a little bit of light perception. I can’t see. Then, I’ve got a fracture. I’ve got a fracture here, a fracture here, a fracture on top of my head. And that’s where I think they were knocking me with rifle butts or boots, or something. Then I remember, probably being in a chopper helicopter.

John Breske:
When they got me back to the aid station, they knew the war was over, so the doctors were celebrating, too. This doctor came in and he said, “Get him ready.” He laid down right alongside me and took a little nap. He woke up, I knew he was drinking. He got up and he operated on my arm, and I had no problems. He did a good job. He did a good job, even if he had a few drinks. Didn’t bother me any.

Rich Hamlin:
It wasn’t a “good war,” but it was a just war. And it did the job, and we paid a very high price, one of the bloodiest wars we’ve ever been in. And you go the rest of your life waiting for people to talk about it, but it was a real silent victory. Their main mission was not accomplished. Their job was to take over the whole peninsula. It was denied, out, finished, kaput, bang. South Korea grows to be as stable as it was. And that’s what I’m proud of, and always will.

Dick Nooe:
You know, I’ve thought a lot about, my God, you know, here it is, three days and four, and I get it. Of course, I have never, I’ve really never, never experienced any resentment because I mean, I wanted to go over there. I wanted the excitement, so I don’t have anything to be resentful about.

Big Switch

Cliff Borden:
We were a year into the war and I was a sophomore. And frankly, I was not too good a student. I didn’t apply myself to my studies. And I was going to college with World War II veterans, and they said, Cliff you’re wasting your father’s money, which of course, I was. So, they said, why don’t you be a man and go and do your part for your country. So, I did.

Dale King:
The Chinese went around behind us. We were virtually in a trap. We got a mortar round right between the trails of our weapon. It killed my gunner and got me as well, the shrapnel in the back. All the trucks were burning. And the ones that had ammunition left were exploding. Then, about 3:00 in the morning, the Chinese formed a ring around us with automatic machine guns and started closing in on us. And we all got up, and were ready to fire at them. The Lieutenant says, “Don’t fire.” That’s the reason I’m here.

Darrell Krenz:
We got turned over to the Chinese, and they weren’t very good, either. They would stick you in a hole in the ground, which if you did something bad, I guess you had to suffer for it. I was in a hole for a couple days, but didn’t do nothing bad, just didn’t suit the guard, that’s all. We were in Mig Alley, they called it. The Russian jets would come in one way, and our jets would come the other way, and they’d have dog fights. You’d be watching them all the time. And then all of a sudden, they’d be gone. And I thought, oh, man, we’re going home now, you know, everything’s done. It’s all over with. But it never happened that way.

Cliff Borden:
Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, he would not give in to the U.S. position. Eisenhower wanted to get us out of the war, in fact, he promised that he would get us out of the war if he was elected president. With the idea that South Korea would remain free, everything south of the 38th parallel. Syngman Rhee wanted to advance and unify Korea on his terms. In other words, go back up and take over North Korea. But these talks went on and on and on. While they were going on and on and on, our troops and their troops were being slaughtered.

Dale King:
I became very ill in that camp and had to go to what they called the hospital. The gentleman next to me was probably even younger than I was, he was on his way out. And in fact, he only lived maybe one day or two days at most before he died. They took off his hat, and his head was all full of lice, massive lice in his head. And it’s just a total unsightly thing. You just cannot believe what he looked like. And they hauled him out.

Darrell Krenz:
It’ll never go away. I mean, it’s been over 50 years, you know, and I still think about it. You’ve just got to say it’s never going away. It was over three years, you know, that we did that. And there’s so much death. I used to dream over there of home. When I got home, I dream over there. It just reversed, I don’t know.

Dale King:
There was one Chinese nurse that one time brought me an egg when I was in the hospital, which I will always remember one act of kindness in two years, four months and four days. It isn’t a lot, but it was a lot to me at that time.

Cliff Borden:
Syngman Rhee came around after a lot of concessions were made. But he refused to sign the Armistice. He would go along with it, but he wouldn’t be a signator to it. Then, we got some time off, and that’s when I had a chance to witness operation big switch, which was the big prisoner exchange, which was a part of the Armistice settlement.

Dale King:
We got notification that there was in fact an Armistice signed and we would be going back home. And it took about a month before we finally moved out to an encampment right next to the 38th parallel.

Cliff Borden:
I went up there and changed places with an MP, grabbed his pistol belt, and his pistol, and his helmet, and went as part of the shotgun guard, because I could then take my camera and shoot pictures of these people coming across, these soldiers, fellow soldiers who had been imprisoned. There was a bombed out bridge that had been repaired. It was called a bridge of no return, and that separated North Korea from South Korea in the middle of the DMZ.

Darrell Krenz:
Got us together and put us on a trucks. It was quite a ways away, overnight and all that. During the morning, we’re going down the road and all of a sudden, the guard lifted up the thing, we’re still going. We’re going across this big bridge, and all kinds of flags across the bridge and all, American flags. Then we knew. Then we knew we were home.

Dale King:
The Chinese went north and Koreans that were prisoners of Americans were disrobing, all their clothes off, the suits that they got from us, and throwing them in the road, proving that they still think that their system is better than ours, and trying to antagonize. It was kind of funny in a way, because we know better.

Cliff Borden:
A room where the media, television media, and newspapers, I wasn’t supposed to be in there. I went in there anyhow, and they brought out this young man. He was real cool. He answered all their questions until the last one, when the guy said, “If you had a choice right now, of something you really want, what would it be?” And he said, “I want to go home. I want to go home.” And he just broke down, totally broke down, emotionally. And an officer, a Lieutenant Colonel gently led him away. And the cameras shut down, and that was the end of the interviews for the day. So, you can see that that would have a very emotional, even for a witness, very emotional experience.

Darrell Krenz:
I looked over there and I seen the American flag. And I went over there and I just, I put my arms around that pole. And oh, I couldn’t hardly keep control of myself at all. I just hung onto that thing. And pretty soon, an officer come over and says, “Come on now, son, you’re home now.” I said, “Okay.”

Epilogue

Narrator:
The nature of war itself had changed. Instead of fighting for victory, it was for leverage at the negotiating table. The bravery and sacrifice were the same, but what they accomplished were sometimes difficult to understand. And with a confusing war in a distant land, too many people at home lost interest. Then forgot there was a war at all. Men and women who answered their country’s call, who fight and sometimes die for us, who carry their stories for the rest of their lives, these, our Korean War veterans, deserve to be remembered.

Arthur Braatz:
It was time for me to return to the states. And the highlight of that whole trip coming back was, that at the time the ship I was on was coming under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, it was announced that the truce had been signed in Korea. Quite an exhilarating moment. One that I will never forget. The 27th of July, 1953.

Paul Braatz:
And then the orders came that I was actually being sent to Korea. And I remember that the word went right by me. Then I stopped and went wait a second, Korea, I’m going to Korea. And then I remember in the back of my mind stopping and looking at the orders and thinking, my dad was in Korea. I remember calling him up. I’m going to Korea. There was a slight pause on the phone, and he said, “Tell me what it’s like.”

Arthur Braatz:Even at the time he went into the service, I never thought that would be a possibility. And yet, he went into the service with the idea that he would be military intelligence. And as soon as he was assigned to DLI and studying Korean, I said well maybe you’ll get over there to see some of the country that I didn’t see.

Paul Braatz:I flew in at night, my first trip over there. And I remember looking out the window and it was pitch black. And I went, you know, I’m used to seeing cities, and things like that. And I realized that I was looking out over North Korea, into the North Korean side. Absolutely not a light anywhere.

Arthur Braatz:
I spent quite a bit of time in a bunker that was actually closest to the access to the Panmunjom corridor.

Paul Braatz:
And so, when I had the opportunity to go there, that really put home that that’s where he stood watch while the truce talks were going on. The one thing I do remember him talking about were trees. There weren’t a lot of trees back then at that point, because everything had been blown up. But yeah, it’s starting to really grow back.

Arthur Braatz:
It’s still a truce. There has never been a peace accord. I often wonder, as I read news reports from time to time, I wonder when or will there ever be a peace accord.

Paul Braatz:
The U.N. troops, particularly the United States still man Panmunjom, the DMZ, the entire area across there. At that point, I think the troop strength was approximately 43,000 of U.S. troops, and quite frankly, we always thought of ourselves as a speed bump. If anything did happen, we weren’t going to be in the game very long because we were just there to kind of slow things down until something could be brought in to support us.

Arthur Braatz:
But you hear of all of the financial and starvation wars in North Korea, if eventually, they’re going to get to their knees and finally say, “Okay, we give up.” I would hope that would happen, just for the benefit of the entire world, because it would release a lot of tension that still exists.

Paul Braatz:
As kids growing up, we knew that dad was a Marine. That was cool. But we really didn’t know what he did, where he did it or anything like that, until we were up at Boy Scout camp. We were on the rifle range. You’ve got your .22 set-up. You get like three rounds to put in the paper targets. It was pretty exciting for a 13 or 14-year-old, it was pretty cool stuff. And dad was up there, and he would always kind of stand in the back as a scout master, keeping an eye on things. “Why don’t you go ahead and take your shot?” “Oh, no, that’s okay, I don’t have my glasses.” “Come on, come on.” We’re all kind of egging him on. So, he gets down, without his glasses, and proceeds to put three .22 rounds right in the dead center of the bullseye. And we’re all like wide-eyed. And he goes, well, I spent some time in the Marine Corps as a small arms instructor. We’re kind of like, oh. That’s when the realization hit. And that went together, then, with the fact that I knew that underneath the couch in the family room, there were some pictures of dad in the military, and started putting two and two together. And sure enough, he had fought as a Marine in Korea. So, yeah, string that together a little bit. Not a lot that he spoke about, but when that realization was there, that kind of sends a different perspective on where dad comes from.

Major funding for Wisconsin Korean War Stories was provided by the John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation; the Krause Foundation; Joseph and Patricia Okray; John and Sherry Stilin, in honor of her father, Robert Kossoris; Duard and Dorothea Walker; the Okray Family Foundation; and the Wisconsin History Fund, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.