“I kept copious notes because I knew this would be my only war and I wanted to remember
everything . . .”
We were settled down and living the good life at Langley Field,
Virginia, when war began on the 38th Parallel. I lay in a hospital with a major
shoulder injury at the time and I wondered if I would be left behind. My barracks
friends did what friends do, and offered to carry my gear to the ship. It was as
if . . .
“Bill got us assigned to a C-47 flare drop flight over North Korea and I . . .”
Ten
minutes out of Kimpo we began to feel the bursts outside the aircraft. We were young,
indestructible, and we laughed as we shoved the flares into the drop tubes to the
calling of the aircraft’s Sergeant. I will . . .
“We had a ‘get temporarily rich’ scheme that almost worked right up to the road check.
. . .”
One of us came up with the idea of selling meat tenderiser to the Koreans.
After arranging for a substance called Ajinamoto to arrive at Kimpo Air Base, we
drove into Inchon and sold what we had. On the way back to Kimpo, we were stopped
in a line of vehicles headed in the same direction. We must have looked guilty and,
well, we were hauled in. We really thought 
. . .”
December, 1950
Taegu, Korea
I had good friends and a good assignment, well, as good a spot to be when at war. I saw many wounded and too many dead for one lifetime. It was a miserable place to be for the soldiers and marines as they faced the bitter cold and too many battles and too many. . .”
“The school house we occupied in Taegu burned so fast Sponheimer was naked as . .
.”
I woke up from a bad dream wondering why the first Sergeant was yelling outside
my tent. I heard crackling and things falling and dressed as quick as I could. That’s
when I noticed Willie Sponheimer was missing from the rank and file. A Canadian
Airman beside me yelled, “Let’s go!” and he and I broke ranks and ran into the billowing
smoke. Sergeant Balint was . . .
January 1952
