MEMORIES OF MY EARLIEST U.S. ARMY EXPERIENCES KOREAN WAR ERA
By
(Jack) Harold J. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Many people are delighted and downright proud to receive a letter from the President of the United States. I was not! I was 20 years old, a native of Dearborn, Michigan and a graduate of Dearborn’s Fordson High School when I received my letter. President Truman “invited� no “greeted� me into the Army and ordered me to report for processing on October 28, 1952 … which if you historians recall, was during the height of the Korean “Police Action.�
WWII had only been over for five years before the Korean Police Action got underway in 1950. Many of our young men, myself included, didn’t really want to participate in this “Police Action� because there wasn’t the worldwide threat, the evil presence, such as Hitler or Hirohito as there was in WWII. Additionally, there wasn’t a national win attitude as there was in the war we had just won. It seemed like just a holding action that took lives and maimed others. Many of us felt that If you weren’t going to win it, why go in the first place? However, my generation and the one that preceeded mine did not question our government’s authority when it came to such an issue. We were patriots. Our President called and we responded, like it or not. We were needed and we went.
Fortunate for me, many of my fellow “Dearbornites and Fordsonites� and even my best buddy were all called to serve at the same time and in the same place … for a short time anyway. In looking back there was some humor in being processed to serve. A couple of weeks before being bussed out, we collectively reported to Detroit’s Ft. Wayne for physicals and shots before being sworn into the service. Drs. would have groups of 35-40 of us recruits strip down to our birthday suit and have us stand “elbow to elbow� with our toes on a white line then have all of us bend over and spread our cheeks (not he ones on our face either) with our hands. As we were so positioned a doctor (or so they said he was) walked behind us and inspected our spread cheeks for some unidentified anomaly. That was a sight to behold. Spread cheeks and hanging manhood. I still wonder what it was they were looking for. Perhaps the Army didn’t want any half - ass men in their army.
It was also amazing how many of us robust recruits were afraid of needles. Following our cheek spreading exercise we were instructed to line up, but with our pants on and shirts off with our muscled biceps exposed to a gauntlet of “medics� with their hypodermic needles readied to give us a series of shots. This assembly line technique would have made Henry Ford proud. It was too much for a small number of our “heroes� in the making� as we shuffled past this gauntlet of shot givers, because they passed out in panic. “Our real test of courage however was yet to come,� said some of our shot givers. The last shot at the end of the line was to be administered with a square needle applied to the left testicle to ward off the dreaded Korean leftballitis disease. That kept us in a near state of panic and kept our mind off the shots being immediately administered but of course that square needle never appeared and there was no Korean leftballitis disease. The old timers were just funning with us recruits. Of course when we became the old times, we perpetuated that myth. In fact, when the circumstances are just right, I still use this medical ruse to this day … with some other made up disease name … just for fun. Some old soldiers just never seem to grow up.
As scheduled, on the 28th of October 1952 we boarded a caravan of busses destined to Fort (or Camp) Custer (a name I’ve tried to train my brain to forget over these past 51 years) somewhere in Western Michigan where we got to know the army on a very personal basis. On our way to Fort Custer our rest stop was most appropriately, Michigan’s Jackson State Prison where we were “hosted� to use their “glamorous� toilet facilities; given something to drink and a taste of what life would be like if we tried shirk our military obligation. That short visit made us all want to fulfill our obligation to President Truman and to whatever other powers demanded it.
When we arrived at our temporary way station, we were issued uniforms, bedding and assigned to our barracks. There we got acquainted with our fellow conscripts, decided who got the top bunk, who got short sheeted and who would be the recipient of our barracks practical jokes, also known as hazing in college fraternity initiations. For those of you who don’t know about short sheeting, it is when your good friends make your bed with the cover sheet folded in half which prevents you from getting into your bed. This is really fun when the barracks lights are off and the recipient of your joke had to remake his bed in the dark. It is these little things that make a strenuous situation bearable, as long as you are not the brunt of these jokes … at least not all of the time.
My first real culture shock occurred when I went into the latrine area of our barracks. In addition to the usual row of urinals there was a very long row of gleaming white, porcelain toilets, sans modesty walls, just sitting there, in all their glory, just waiting to be used. I could not imagine my buddies or myself sitting there, side by side, elbow to elbow, (or should I say cheek to cheek) discussing the days events or their girlfriends or what’s for breakfast while taking care of our business. I think I swelled up, looking much like a bloated pumpkin, before I had the courage to relieve my overfilled bowel on one of those gleaming white porcelain receptacles. It is funny how one looses their body function modesty after living under such close quarter conditions. At the end of my two-year tour I often invited my buddies, comic book in hand, to join me at the “john� while we jointly took care of business and read comic books together.
We left Fort Custer after a couple of weeks and took a troop train from Western Michigan to Fort Bliss, Texas, our home to be for the next nine months. Our train was really civilian owned but it was leased out and controlled by our Army keepers. This was quite an experience for this Dearbornite as well as for my buddies since few of us had ever ventured far from Dearborn. Train and plane travel was only for wealthy or people who thought they were, not the average “middle America Joe� such as those in our group.
Hurry up and wait, as you do in the Army, was way overdone on this train trip as it took more than a week to get us there. Upon arrival we were really hungry, as we didn’t have anything to eat or drink during the last day because our keepers didn’t have enough food on board to last through this lengthy trip.
We disembarked at the Fort’s train station on a very hot and sunny mid Sunday afternoon, and were immediately ordered into “formation,� and brought to military “attention� with our shoulders back and stomach sucked in, the latter being easy to do since they were running on empty. Being from Michigan, some of our “recruits� were not used to standing in a hot November sun at “attention� for a long period of time on an empty stomach and promptly passed out. Our training cadre were careful to step over these “resting� recruits so their brief respite from reality wouldn’t be disturbed. After all, this was to be the only rest they would get for the next 12 weeks. Treatment such as this was part of our toughening training because we were at war and our cadre constantly reminded us of this … with their added comforting comments that we were being trained to be soldiers … to be killed by our country’s enemies! Now that is a rather discomforting thought as one embarks on a new career path … hopefully, not a short one.
Our cadre woke our “resting� recruits, marched us to the mess hall and fed us the usual Army fare for Sunday’s evening meal, cold cuts. At that point road kill stew, made from Texas’ highways gleanings would have tasted like a gourmet meal. I often wondered if that is what we were being served most of the time anyway. Especially one dish of which I have fond memories, SOS, affectionately named S—t On a Shingle. That is creamed ground beef on toast, laden with lots of fat and seasoning … so good.
Now “hell weeks� began, with gusto. Once again we were commanded into formation and marched to the supply room where we were issued bedding, then marched to our new homes for the next 12 weeks. Our new home was not the usual Army barracks fare. We had something different … really different. Five man huts complete with a stove in the hut’s center. Actually, they were not as much huts as tar-paper shacks. These were built, or rather slapped together during WWII to house German War Prisoners on the base. They were showing their age and in fact were torn down after most of us shipped out to Thule, Greenland in August of 1953. However, if they were good enough for our enemy’s soldiers they were certainly good enough for us.
Our new homes did have some unique features. The stove in the middle of the floor did keep our hut toasty warm on the cold desert winter nights and the half inch gaps between the boards of our walls provided us with adequate ventilation when our badly regulated stove put out too much heat. During summer nights these gaps in our walls allowed the hot desert air into our huts which helped to keep our cool during those times. Our area was also plagued with sandstorms and these gaps also let in the blowing sand that often covered our beds with one half inch of sand. Of course if nature called during the middle of the night, or any time as far as that is concerned, our latrine was only a hundred yards down the dusty path outside our door. All the comforts of home!
Actually our homey huts were not all that bad because we only had to spend half of our time in them. The other half of our nine-month stay in Ft. Bliss was spent sharing a two-man pup with a buddy as we bivouacked in the Texas and New Mexico deserts as we honed our skills at shooting down aircraft with a variety of interesting weapons. Living conditions in the desert were not as cushy as our homey huts as we had to share our tents with the likes of scorpions and other vermin; our comfortable porcelain toilets were traded for a 2� X4� X 8� length of lumber raised above a slit trench; our “delicious SOS was replaced with fatty cans of “C� rations heated in a tub of hot water. Our “C� rations were seasoned with blowing sand as we ate them while sitting on a sand dune in the middle of sand storms, which were almost a daily occurrence. But those experiences did toughen us into hard fighting soldiers. When we finally returned to our huts, the comfort of our porcelain toilets and SOS in the mess hall, we thought we were in heaven.
In thinking back to those early days, now more than a half century later, it was quite an experience. Even though I disliked it, no … hated it … I wouldn’t have missed it for the world nor would I want to repeat it. With that thought, I’ll close this short essay down memory lane and retire to the comfort of my well oiled rocking chair which I so richly deserve and dream of those wonderful 25 mile hot desert hikes laden down with a full back pack and 10 pound rifle singing the soldier’s cadence – yo left, yo left, yo left, right left!
