“I was frightened,” my college classmate told me, “but you develop a certain numbness to it.” This friend, a Boston native, was responding to my questions about  his experiences in the front lines of the Korean War in 1952. (Since, for reasons not altogether clear, he does not want his name used, I will call him “Ed.”)

Though an officer in the field artillery, Ed moved with the infantry because he was a forward observer for his battery of six 105 howitzers. In this position he faced constant threats to his life. As he himself was well aware, the mortality rate of forward observers was very high.

The worst incident, he says, occurred when he advanced with the infantry against the North Korean/Chinese lines. He saw an American soldier blown up in front of him by a mine, one of many whom he would see killed. Ed had a radio operator with him but discovered that the radio had gone dead. Before jumping  into a trench, he saw another soldier torn apart by a mortar shell.

The dead man had a radio with him and, fortunately, that one still functioned. “The good Lord was working,” is the way my friend explains this piece of luck.

After the sound of bugle calls came from the enemy, the Chinese troops swarmed toward the American forces. That is when Ed called in artillery fire on the attackers but the shells had to fall close over the American trenches too. First, C47 planes flew over and dropped flares lighting up the advancing troops. Then came the shells from which the Americans took cover by burrowing down deeply into their trenches.

In the face of this fierce bombardment, the Chinese attackers withdrew and, after another day and night, the American troops were relieved. Thus came to an end Ed’s time of greatest peril. However, he later received another assignment that put his leadership abilities to the test.

He was appointed executive officer (second in command) of six howitzers, each with eight men. They fired a distance of three miles. Not long afterward, Ed was  promoted to first lieutenant and became battery commander at age twenty-two. Of this assignment Ed now says, “It was a challenge – 120 men under me.” But, because of what he had already accomplished, “I felt I earned it.”

His batteries had to be moved half a dozen times. He must have managed this and other demands on his abilities well because, in an onsite ceremony, Ed was awarded a Silver Star, one of the Army’s highest commendations. A fellow officer borrowed Ed’s 8 millimeter movie camera to record the scene.

What motivated me to interview Ed was the recent fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War’s beginning. I wanted to get some sense of what the experience was like for someone much like me. By contrast, however, while Ed was fighting the war, I was as far removed as another person could be – living in the seclusion of a monastic community. Some of my college classmates were dying in that conflict while I, literally, did not know the war was going on.

The timing of my interview with Ed turned out to be inspired. “I’ve thought more about it in the last week,” he told me, “than in the last forty-eight years.”  Not without reason he added, “It really is the forgotten war.”

Ed confided to me that our conversation marked the first time that he had told another person about some of his experiences. He had not even shared this with his adult children. They may not be aware that their father won the Silver Star on the battlefield for his bravery and leadership skills.

Since our interview, I have wondered about his refusal to let me use his real name. At one point he muttered something about the matter being private. My best surmise is that he does not wish to call attention to himself as having done anything extraordinary. His seems to be an old-fashioned humility whereby he does not expect others to regard him as different from other people.

How does Ed see the geopolitical significance of the Korean War from the vantage point of almost half a century later? He does not harbor any doubts about the cause. “It was necessary at the time,” he says. “That was part of stopping Communism.” Then, quickly switching back to the personal, he adds, “It was a job I had to do and you did it to the best of your ability.”

When, after a voyage of two weeks, his troopship arrived back in Seattle, “three office girls met us with ribbons.” That’s the closest he came to any hoopla returning from a war that featured grinding combat under nasty conditions. But Ed did not see himself as a hero then, nor does he now.

However, he cannot stop this classmate from regarding him so.

Richard Griffin