Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association

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As a “precaution” he told him, “I’ll
give you the last rites, just in case.” But he
told Osborne to fight harder for his life.
Then he prayed, for about five minutes.
Osborne rallied. This surprised everybody
in that hut.
Most men died quickly when they got
that sick, and a lot of men got sick now.
Some of them had noticed something at
the Easter service: Kapaun looked ill.
****
Shortly after Easter, Kapaun came to
Esensten, looking feeble, hobbling on a
stick, in obvious pain.
Esensten touched Kapaun’s leg. Then
he pulled up Kapaun’s trouser and saw
swelling, blue and black discoloration. He
pressed a finger into a foot; the dent did
not go away.
Esensten stood up angry. You should
have told me, he said. One leg was twice
the size of the other.
Kapaun stood silent.
We need to treat this immediately,
Esensten said. He said he wanted Kapaun
to lie down and stay down.
“No,” Kapaun said.
Funchess awoke one night soon after to
the sound of a man being shoved into his
hut. The guards had transferred Kapaun
here, perhaps to separate him from
McClain, another troublemaker they disliked.
Kapaun was in pain. When Funchess
saw his leg, he knew this would cause
much suffering in a hut where 14 men
slept jammed against each other and
stepped on each other to get to the latrines
at night.
“Would you like my spot next to the
wall?” Funchess asked. Because of his
injured foot, he had taken that spot weeks
before. “The wall will give you protection.”
For once, Kapaun did not argue with a
Good Samaritan; he said yes. Funchess
lay beside him in the dark, warming the
priest’s frail body with his own.
Part 6 in the series: Father Emil Kapaun forgives
guards, welcomes death
Contributing: Travis Heying of The Eagle.
Reach Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or
rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com
60 Years Ago
Korean War vets still remember
It lasted three years and cost more than 36,000 American lives. Those who were
there will never forget it.
By Jim Warren - jwarren@herald-leader.com
A milestone in U.S. history is passing
Friday. Sixty years ago, on June 25, 1950,
Communist North Korean forces invaded
South Korea, kicking off what, at various times,
was called a “police action” or “the forgotten
war,” and is now known as the Korean War.
It lasted three years and cost more than
36,000 American lives.
Those who were there will never forget it.
James McKinney, 78, of Harrodsburg was
18 when he arrived in Korea on Oct. 10, 1950.
“We went into combat six days later,” he
said. “I was scared to death. I kept thinking,
‘What in the world have I gotten myself into?’”
Lexington’s Joseph Brown, 78, an Army
rifleman, fought at a spot in North Korea that
soldiers named Heartbreak Ridge, which later
gave its name to a 1986 Clint Eastwood movie.
Brown remembers the weather and the trenches
on the ridgetop, apparently dug by
Communist Chinese troops. But, he quips, “I
never saw Clint Eastwood.”
“I was scared from the moment I got off the
boat over there,” he said. “But my assessment
is any war is a good war if you walk away from
it in one piece and have any of your mind left.”
Brown, McKinney and other members of
Chapter 219 of the Korean War Veterans
Association gathered at American Legion Post
341 in Lexington on Wednesday to have lunch
and cake and ice cream in honor of the anniversary.
Now they, like the veterans of World War
II, have become old men who still remember
the daring things they did on distant battlefields
as young men.
Korea was unlike any war the United States
had fought before. America had not been
attacked, as in World War II. Instead,
Americans were fighting under a United
Nations flag to help U.S.-supported South
Korea resist the better equipped North Korean
army.
Given the political atmosphere of the early
1950s, Washington saw the invasion as part of
a vast Communist plan for eventual world
domination and moved to block it. But the war
produced no dramatic final victory, and many
Americans never quite gave the Korean conflict
the fervent patriotic support that World War
II received.
McKinney’s war ended in July 1951 with a
mortar round.
“We had set up a temporary motor pool to
work on vehicles, and they mortared us one
morning right after daylight,” he said.
McKinney was treated at a MASH unit —
the kind of medical outfit later made famous in
a movie and television show of the same name
— then shipped to Hawaii, California and finally
Fort Knox. Sixty years later, he wonders how
soldiers in Korea kept going through the heat
and the cold.
Kenneth Colebank, 80, of Lexington can’t
forget the cold. He was a member of the 187th
Airborne Regimental Combat Team, part of the
101st Airborne Division, which parachuted into
North Korea near the capital, Pyongyang, in
late 1950. But when China entered the war a
few weeks later, the outfit was ordered to hurry
back to Seoul, South Korea.
“We had only a few trucks, so we went in
sequence,” Colebank recalled. “You would ride
45 minutes, then get out and walk, and then ride
some more. It took us three days, and it was 40
below zero.”
Earl Buckler, 81, of Lexington was a gunner’s
mate on the Navy destroyer Moale.
Buckler remembers his ship docking at
Pohang, South Korea, in deep fog. He gazed
toward shore, saw black spots through the fog
and realized they were tanks.
“I thought, ‘This is it,’ because our ship was
in shallow water and we couldn’t turn around,”
he said. “But I thought at least I could take one
of them with me.”
Buckler was about to fire when he was told
the tanks were friendlies.
Lexington’s Harry Walsh, 81, was a mess
sergeant in Korea in 1952. People didn’t shoot
at him, but he was constantly moving his cooking
operation as the fighting shifted back and
forth.
“I always tried to get at least one hot meal up
to the boys on the line every day, if possible,”
Walsh said. “But most of the time you couldn’t,
September – October 2010
The Graybeards