According to my sister, from whom all comments should be taken with a bushel of salt (she tends to exaggerate), my dad is having flashbacks from when he was in combat in Korea, over 50 years ago.
He was a Marine, with less than 6 months left to go on his enlistment in July 1950 (I think it was July). His ship was about to go out on another round-the-world cruise, and Daddy was able to talk his commander into leaving him behind, because his enlistment would end before the cruise did, and it was cheaper to leave him in port than to ship him home from half-way across the planet. While in port, he got into a fight (my Dad made Lance Corporal 3 times, IIRC, although he was a PFC when he got out). While the doctor was fixing him up after the fight, he noticed that Dad had a badly scarred lip (he had cut it on something when he was a kid). The Doc offered to fix that, too, and so Dad was recovering from that minor surgery when all the Marines around him were shipped over to Korea.
So he missed the first call-up, but they grabbed him in the second wave.
Here is where I admit my total lack of knowledge concerning the Korean Conflict. I'm ashamed to say that almost all I know about it is what I learned from watching M*A*S*H on TV. Dad never talked about it - in fact, it was only last Dec, after Mom died, that he told me any of what I'm sharing here. Dad got over there in time for the push that went clear into... .some city that he can't remember the name of. Anyway, they got there, but then got pushed all the way back to the beach, or something like that. (Any historians around here that can help me out?)
He fought in the Chosin Reservoir, he says, and didn't have a bath/shower for several months, from the time he landed to the time he was medevaced out. Yeah, he was injured over there.
He and his buddies were hunkered down in their foxhole, keeping an eye out for any activity in front of them. It was stooopid cold, but they were doing ok, and there was no action to speak of.
Until some idiot parked a tank near their foxhole.
Suddenly they were taking enemy fire from every which-way. The enemy eventually managed to hit the tank and destroy it, and Dad caught some shrapnel in his right wrist.
He stopped a moment, telling me this story, poured himself another beer, and took a long drink before he continued. He caught shrapnel in his wrist, but one of his buddies was hit in the hip. It entered him in one hip, just above the thigh, and exited somewhere above his hip joint on the other side of his body. Dad said his buddy was alive when they left there, but he has no idea whatever happened to him. at this point, I don't think Dad even remembered his name. I forget what he told me about the 3rd guy that was with them. All 3 of them survived the tank explosion, but they were all wounded.
This was early Dec, 1950. I'm thinking he was only over there for about 6 weeks or so before he was wounded. Then he spent some time in the hospital in Korea, and then Japan (he and a buddy went over the wall, still in their PJs, and went into town and got drunk. He said it was very challenging to climb back over the wall before they were caught AWOL). Eventually he wound up back in the states, where he got a job driving a taxicab, and drank up his pension each month.
I don't think it was very long after that, that he met my mom. She was a short-order cook at a drive-in restaurant, and he would be the cab driver that drove the other girls home after work. He liked Mom, and she ignored him. *grin*
She moved halfway across the state, and so did he. She moved back home, and so did he. Eventually they moved in together, and they were together for the next 52 years, until her death last winter.
I just spoke to my aunt, who saw Dad earlier this week, and she said he told her about his buddies in the foxhole, and how the one guy's head was blown clear off, right in front of him. She doesn't know if he's actually having flashbacks, or if he's just remembering more about that time in his life, since as we're older we tend to focus more on the past.
She's going to keep an eye on him, and let me know if she learns any more about it.
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