VETRANIZED
Buried stories from my fathers Army service during the Korean War
I been thinking about my dad and noticed it was Veteran’s Day once again today, so decided to finish this story I had been working on for a few years about his time served in the United States Army. On this annual holiday, we American’s remember our veterans – their friends, family members, and other folks who volunteered or were drafted into the US Armed forces. I think that would include the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and probably even the Coast Guard. There likely are other branches or subbranches of the military that I am not aware of that also produce veterans worthy of honoring on this day as well.
According to Katie Lange who writes news stories for the US Department of Defense, per her 2018 article titled “5 Facts to Know About Veterans Day”:
Veterans Day honors all of those who have served the country in war or peace — dead or alive — although it’s largely intended to thank living veterans for their sacrifices.
Nov. 11, 1918, was largely considered the end of “the war to end all wars” and dubbed Armistice Day. In 1926, Congress officially recognized it as the end of the war, and in 1938, it became an official holiday, primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I.
But then World War II and the Korean War happened, so on June 1, 1954, at the urging of veteran’s service organizations, Congress amended the commemoration yet again by changing the word “armistice” to “veterans” so the day would honor American veterans of all wars.
Congress signed the Uniform Holiday Bill in 1968 to ensure that a few federal holidays — Veterans Day included — would be celebrated on a Monday. Officials hoped it would spur travel and other family activities over a long weekend, which would stimulate the economy.
Within a few years, it became pretty apparent that most U.S. citizens wanted to celebrate Veterans Day on Nov. 11, since it was a matter of historic and patriotic significance. So on Sept. 20, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed another law (Public Law 94-97), which returned the annual observance to its original date starting in 1978.
I find it interesting that Katie pointed out that in 1968 when the Holiday date was changed to a Monday, officials were hoping to stimulate the economy, which really shouldn’t be a surprise. Wars themselves have also typically been good for the economy, although that benefit is not highlighted as much as the other more nebulous reasons to justify them like protecting our freedoms, or protecting the democracy of other peoples. Power, which can be bought with money in our Democracy, is another not often discussed benefit of war. Typically, it isn’t the Veterans of the wars who make the most money or gain power out of the war. The spoils go to the munition manufacturers, military contractors, the politicians, investment brokers, and wealthy folks or at least people with some extra income, who can invest in the stock market where they hope to make more money by investing in the cash-cow military industrial complex.
The veterans do get some rewards for their services – a pay check, maybe money to pay for schooling, some services for medical assistance and monetary benefits from the Veteran’s Administration, a title of “Hero” on days like today, and when they die, some of their burial costs are even covered. Those were profits my dad made from his service in the war anyway.
On this Veteran’s Day, I reflect back on the man who played a big role in shaping my life, Army Sargent Leonard C. Jablonski, one of the many dead and living Veterans honored on this holiday. Two years ago, when my dad died, my family decided to have my dad’s ashes interred in a columbarium (a wall full of urns, full of ashes) at the Northern Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery. Carved into the bronze plaque mounted on the granite wall marking his final resting place, below his name was his abbreviated title he had when he was discharged from serving in the Army – “SGT US ARMY KOREA”. During the 60 years that I knew my dad, I never really thought of him as a Veteran, nor as a Sargent.
A year or so ago, while digging through some old pictures of my dad, I came across my first written autobiography that my mom had tucked in with the old pictures. I must have written the document for a school assignment and it is interesting that in that eight-sentence document highlighting my life up to that point, sometime in the later 1960’s when I was probably 6 or 7 years old, that two of the sentences were devoted to highlighting that “My dad was in the Army. He fought in the Korean War”. “Based on this analyses, 25 % of my life at that time was defined by my father being a Veteran of the Korean War.
With that much of my life being shaped by my father’s war experience, you would think I would have known more about the 3 years he served in the war. I recently asked my mom about it and she didn’t know too much. She told me that when he graduated from High School in May of 1949, he took a job as a deckhand on an iron ore ship operating out of Duluth MN, but that career only lasted for one round trip. He resigned from that job after breaking his glasses while scrubbing the deck or doing some other menial task. He went back to his home town of Park Falls WI, bummed around there doing some odd jobs. He told me how one of those jobs involved working at a used car sale shop where one of his tasks was to turn the odometer milage backwards. Becoming disillusioned with the used car sales world, he joined five of his high school buddies to enlist in the Army where he went off to basic training in Kentucky, then as an 18-year-old adult, got shipped off to Japan where he started out serving in, I believe the 1st Calvary Division Band, perhaps to pursue his passion for music.
My mom thought time in the Army band was pretty good for him, except she recalled that apparently one time one of his army buddy’s and him had too much to drink, and my dad fell into an abandoned or bombed out basement and broke his glasses. Unfortunately, broken glasses weren’t enough to get him out of the army job. Once the North Korean Army crossed the line dividing South Korea from the North, the 1st Calvary then joined in the latest war making the world safe for Democracy, and the stories about my dad’s service during actual war-time became few and far between. My mom recalled finding out that he was on troop transport truck that had overturned, and my dad had hit his head pretty hard which caused some damage to his eyes as I understand it. He always had eye problems anyway. She also mentioned him suffering from frost-bite in his feet, apparently from not getting decent winter boots to wear – which explained why his toes also looked pretty beat up when he went barefoot.
My dad never really talked too much about what his time in the Army was like or how he got to be Sargent. The only times I recall him talking about the war, were on a couple of occasions when my parents and my in-laws came to visit my wife and I when we were living in La Crosse WI. I don’t remember the exact discussions, but the best as I can recollect my dad and father-in-law and myself would take off and go for a ride and walk somewhere along the Mississippi River. My father-in-law was also a Veteran of the Korean War, having served in the Air Force as a tail gunner in some sort of surveillance plane if I recall correctly. On a couple occasions they exchanged a few stories I was able to listen in on.
One of the stories my dad told during these talks was about the time he had gone out drinking (sake if I recall correctly) and he drank so much that he passed out. Upon waking up he found himself on a troop transport truck of some sort surrounded by Koreans. Since the South Koreans looked like the North Koreans (imagine that), he assumed that he had been captured by the enemy, but fortunately it was a truck load of South Korean soldiers who dropped him off at a US Army base in the area.
Another tale he told was about a time he was on guard duty. The unit that he was in had come from the Band and was trained more to make music than war, so they were stationed with the Generals at the Headquarters far behind the front lines, where the likelihood of enemy attacks was pretty low. On that occasion his guard duty at night after sleeping in cold pup tents resulted in the tired musician falling asleep when he should have been protecting the generals as they sleep.
Because of that dereliction of duty, he was reassigned to a platoon that was responsible for occupying Cities that had recently been taken back from the North Korean Army. He mentioned how on the outskirts of one of these Cities they came across a large trench that was full of dead Korean people. He didn’t say anymore about that experience, and I never had the courage to ask him more about it. When I recently asked my mom if he ever told her about that she said that she did not know about it – as he rarely talked to her about his war experiences. He did tell her that a buddy of his told him about getting assigned to help bury some bodies once.
The dead Koreans in a mass grave story is one that has stuck with me. I often wonder what that must have been like for a 19-year kid to experience. I’m pretty sure that visions like that probably haunt a person for the rest of their life and I wondered what affect that had on my dad, and my relationship with him. In a search to better understand his experiences in Korea, I came across Charles J. Hanley’s Pulitzer Prize winning book GHOST FLAMES – LIFE AND DEATH IN A HIDDEN WAR, KOREA 1950 – 1953.
In the book I came across a description about British journalist Alan Winnington’s findings of a mass killing site that might have been the site my dad saw, or probably was similar to it anyway. The section in the book is titled “A Day in Late July 1950. Alan Winnington discovers the mass killing of thousands and signs of a U.S. role”. Some excerpts from Hanley’s book about Winnington’s description of the site near Taejon in South Korea follow.
Alan Winnington has walked into the midst of a nightmarish vision. He proceeds slowly down a slender solid path between long pits of loose earth. Waxy, putrefying hands, legs, skulls protrude through the surface. A stench of death sinks deep into his throat.
He has heard reports of a ‘very big slaughter’ outside the city. Now he has been taken to the valley of Sannae and the village of Rang Wul, five miles southeast of Taejon.
Villagers there tell him South Korean police made them dig the pits in the first days of July and again in mid-July before the North Koreans captured Taejon. The police brought prisoners to the site by the truckload, laid them down along the edge of the trenches, and shot them in the head, then tipping the bodies over in the mass graves.
The villagers, who were then ordered to cover the dead and dying with the thin layers of soil, estimate seven thousand men and women were killed – South Korean leftists, supposed sympathizers, some simply hapless minor criminals.
The executioners used U.S.-supplied M-1 rifles and carbines and U.S. ammunition. American officers, riding up in jeeps, stood by during the carnage, the villagers say. They say the trucks were American and sometimes driven by American soldiers.
As he walks the narrow path down the valley, Winnington peers into fissures in the rain-washed earth, seeing unidentifiable messes of rotting flesh, heads blown open by bullets, wrists bound with wire. He paces out the six pits, which measure from thirty yards to two hundred yards in length. He takes photographs. He collects U.S. cartridge cases. He picks up empty cigarette packs, Lucky Strikes, where he’s told the Americans stood.
The U.S. Embassy in London quickly denounces Winnington’s published report as an “atrocity fabrication”.
Unfortunately, I will never know what my dad’s or my life would have been like had he not been a Veteran of the Korean War. I will never know what my dad’s role was at the pit he observed that was full of dead Koreans, if it was the site of mass killing at the valley of Sannae, or some other site. And maybe, I don’t really want to know. Unfortunately, as wars continue, and profits from them continue to role in to the powers that be, most of us prefer to simply honor our men and women of service with waving flags, some VA benefits, and silence when it comes to really understanding what deeds our heroes were forced to participate in. And so, the never-ending wars role on, along with the economic benefits.
In my dad’s case, one redeeming thing for me, was that my family added one more title to my father’s final resting place plaque, which was “Music Man”. For it was my dad’s love of music that I will remember him for, not any forced participation in another war to pad the pockets of the rich and powerful.