The Good Life – July-August 2020

LOCAL HERO | WILBERT SCHEFFLER
kept the
radio going,
guys loved the
music. It helped us all.
I carried the radio on my
backpack. I made a case
big enough for six flashlight
batteries and made it go 24
hours a day so that the guys had
music. Music was just a lifesaver.”
One time Wilbert left his radio at the
prison camp he was guarding. When
he got back to his unit, it was gone, and
he figured it was lost forever. Then Jim
Cunningham said, “Did you know they
shipped your radio, it’s in supply?” Wilbert
explained, “Getting that radio back was a
lifesaver for me. It was a Zenith. It was high
quality.”
Another person whose intervention perhaps saved
Wilbert’s life was the officer who decided to send
him to the rear of the line during the Pork Chop
Hill battle. Wilbert emotionally explained, "My best
friend in the Army, Jim Cunningham, died on that hill.
Somebody was looking out for me."
He described the battle: “The last battle – out of the clear
blue sky – I had about 40 points and I was supposed to go
home. The guys with that many points went back in the
rear. The Chinese hit Pork Chop and they were bound to
take it, they just swarmed into battle. And then, us guys in
the rear, we heard that we were going to counter-attack.
They lined us up. So many guys were so afraid, they just
collapsed. They did not even have enough officers to make
a company. We went to Hill 200, and they had decided to
abandon Pork Chop.”
way to say ‘stay another day?’ He was kind of like Alan
Alda from M.A.S.H., a young guy. I don’t know his name. I
think he saved my life.”
Coming back from the war, he lived his life as a farmer
and a television repairman on the side: “Back in the stone
age, I fixed everyone’s television.”
Wilbert misses Jim Cunningham and communicates with
a relative of Jim’s via email and letters. After the war, he
became friends with fellow veteran, Dick Mosca, who was
an officer in the Navy and a Minnesota highway patrolman
who died a week before the October 2016 WDAY Honor
Flight: “He accepted me for what I was. We would go to
veteran’s funerals together. I really miss him.” A major
reason Wilbert went on the Honor Flight was to honor
Dick.
Wilbert has been married to Mary Ann since 1976.
They have two children. Their son, Bill, works in the IT
department at MSUM and who Wilbert encouraged with
computers. His daughter, Peggy, lives in Carrington.
She has given him two grandchildren. Evidence of his
pride in his children and grandchildren are in the many
photos in their Barnesville home. Mary Ann and Wilbert
are active in the Barnesville VFW chapter, where he is a
Quartermaster.
Wilbert’s son, Bill said this of his dad: “I think the war
affected him in some pretty profound ways. He values
all life and living and, consequently, none of our family
members are hunters, which is unusual for this area. He
often feels guilty eating meat. We grew up on a farm with
pet cats, dogs, a pet chicken that lived in the house for a
while, even a pet calf that roamed our farm yard at one
point that he had to bottle feed to keep alive. He values
home and hearth above all else and was never much for
travel or similar excitement that most people crave after
And finally, there was a doctor at the M.A.S.H unit where he
was recovering from a very bad fever. Wilbert remembered
that the doctor asserted, “Stay another day. It’s really bad
out there.” Wilbert thinks his chances of survival were
greatly increased by that kind doctor: “My company went
into it. It was really bad, but I stayed another day or two,
and was saved.” He asked, “Why did a doctor go out of his
26 / THE GOOD LIFE