Reader's Digest Soldier Stories

by Reader's Digest

  There are no medals of honor listed in my records at the Bureau of Personnel. But a tribute I will always remember came that summer day in 1946 when I left the Chemung and the Navy. At the gangplank to say good-by was a big boatswain’s mate whom I’d had thrown in the brig the night he started a riot in the Virgin Islands; a signalman whom I’d quieted down with the threat of my .45 when he came aboard drunk and tried using the fire ax to extort cinnamon rolls from the baker; and a collection of other crew members, many talking in Southern drawls.

  “Mr. Rowan, if you’re ever in my neck of the woods, the latch string shore will be out,” said a white lad from my home state, Tennessee.

  “That goes double for me, and y’all know I mean it,” said a radio operator from Georgia.

  I walked down that gangplank in a strange daze, almost overwhelmed by mixed emotions. I was sure of one thing: the previous three years had been filled with a wonderful revolution in the life of a country boy from the wrong side of Tennessee’s tracks. And I had reason to believe that the revolution was even greater in the lives of crew members from the other side of the tracks.

  Today I am pleased whenever I get a letter with a postmark from Arkansas or Texas—just a note from someone who sailed the Chemung, writing to tell me that, for him at least, the thought of a desegregated South strikes no special terror.

  During World War II, Carl T. Rowan became one of the first African Americans to become an officer in the U.S. Navy. His Navy experience revolutionized the life of a country boy from the wrong side of Tennessee’s tracks—and the many shipmates he touched along the way. From there, he went on to serve in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as ambassador to Finland and later as director of the U.S. Information Agency.

  THE KOREAN WAR

  1000 Men and a Baby

  BY LAWRENCE ELLIOTT

  One lonely Saturday night in July 1953, a medical orderly at an Army dispensary in war-devastated Korea went out to have a smoke and kicked a bundle of newspapers out of his way. A feeble little cry shivered up from the darkness.

  It was a child—a gasping, emaciated infant.

  Soon the orderly was racing toward the Star of the Sea Children’s Home in Inchon. There he handed the bundle to a nun who unwrapped the scrawny little body. The baby was a boy, perhaps a month old. And his eyes were blue.

  The war was entering its fourth year. Inchon had been overrun, liberated, shelled and starved, and the Star of the Sea orphanage had been spared little. Staffed by overworked French nuns and a dozen Korean aides, it was run by Sister Philomena, a crafty, tough-minded Irish nurse.

  Her orphanage was so desperately overburdened that when the children became teenagers they had to be sent out on their own. There was never enough food or clothing. What would she do with this half-Caucasian baby? She wondered.

  Sister knew in her heart that there could never be a place here for a blue-eyed child. He would always be scorned as “the white one.” When her back was turned, the Korean aides ignored the baby. Even if he somehow managed to grow to adulthood, she realized, he would be a pariah—despised and harassed as the abandoned offspring of an American soldier.

  So when the USS Point Cruz—an escort carrier that had been in the thick of the action—dropped anchor in Inchon harbor early in September, Sister Philomena had an idea. She sent a message to the chaplain, Lt. Edward O. Riley.

  They were old friends. Sometimes, with the connivance of the Point Cruz’s captain, Father Riley brought the children things from the ship’s stores: powdered milk, cough medicine, aspirin. When he arrived at the orphanage, Sister Philomena told him about the baby the orderly had brought her from ASCOM—the U.S. Army Service Command headquarters. Then she took him to the nursery.

  Blue eyes stared up at them. The infant was all ribs and swollen abdomen. A rash covered his face. “I haven’t proper medicine or food,” Sister Philomena said. “Surely you can do something, Father. After all, he’s an American.”

  Father Riley brooded about it, then went to talk to his skipper. “Does this baby have a name?” the skipper asked.

  “George—after the orderly who brought him in,” said the chaplain.

  “What are the chances he might be adopted by a Korean family?”

  “Zero.”

  “Then here’s what I want you to do,” said Capt. John T. Hayward, nicknamed Chick, who had once been expelled from a military academy, never finished high school, and thus knew something about starting out against the odds. “Find some Korean official who will issue this kid a passport. But first we’re going to bring him aboard the Point Cruz and keep him here until he’s healthy.”

  Father Riley was elated. But he felt obliged to ask how the Navy would take to the idea of housing an infant aboard an aircraft carrier.

  “Hayward’s Law,” came the crisp reply, “holds that, in an emergency, regulations are to be intelligently disregarded.”

  “God bless you,” said the chaplain gruffly, and went off to battle the Korean bureaucracy.

  A week later he was back, sagging with discouragement. He had trudged all over Inchon and beseeched countless government functionaries. But no birth certificate—no passport.

  Chick Hayward didn’t flinch. “I guess we have to go right to the top.” Taking a bottle of whiskey out of his safe, he said, “Father, this is my last bottle. Maybe you’ll find someone in the foreign ministry in Seoul who needs it more than we do. Don’t come back without the passport.”

  • • •

  The hospital ship USS Consolation had been in port three weeks before Lt. Hugh Keenan, a surgeon from Spokane, Washington, set foot on land. It was a blazing-hot September morning, and his two companions, old hands in Inchon, suggested visiting the Star of the Sea orphanage. “We can get out of the sun and Sister Philomena will give us tea.”

  But Sister had more than tea on her agenda. She fixed a canny eye on the newcomer and, having ascertained that he was married and had an eight-year-old daughter, led him to the nursery. When Keenan came back he was holding a rashy, blue-eyed baby. “Here,” Sister Philomena said, producing a bottle, “you feed him.”

  Holding the child eased an ache the surgeon had carried a long time. He and his wife had lost several babies during their marriage—the last one, a boy, about a year before. Now, leaving, he promised, “I’ll bring something for that rash.”

  He was back the next day with ointment. Then he sat down and began feeding baby George. “Tell me, doctor,” Sister Philomena asked, “is it likely that you might want to adopt a little tyke like this one?”

  “Yes, it’s likely,” Keenan said.

  When he returned to the Consolation, he asked for his captain’s advice.

  “Lieutenant, your job is to take care of military personnel,” the captain said. Keenan had to tell Sister Philomena that adopting George was out of the question. But he kept coming back to hold the baby.

  Then came a long stretch when he couldn’t get shore leave. When he finally got back to the orphanage Sister told him George was gone. Her friend, Chaplain Edward Riley, had received a passport for him and taken him to the Point Cruz. “He’s going to send George to an orphanage in America.”

  “The hell he is!” Keenan yelled as he ran out.

  • • •

  When Father Riley carried “George Cruz Ascom” up the gangway of the Point Cruz, 1000 men lined the rail. For days, they had worked to prepare a nursery in the sick bay. Ship’s carpenters had built a crib and playpen. Both were so full of homemade rattles and toys that there was barely room for George. A foot-high stack of diapers had been cut from Navy sheets and painstakingly hemmed in the ship’s laundry.

  The baby was put in the charge of two hospital corpsmen, both seasoned fathers. The flight surgeon, a pediatrician in civilian life, had the galley make special formula. Within days the listless, spindly infant began filling out and worming around in his crib.

  So many men requested permission to visit the nursery that Captain Hayward
instituted “Baby-san Call.” After nap time each afternoon, the ship’s public-address system would blare out: “Attention all hands! Baby-san on the hangar deck from 1400 hours!” Men would run for their cameras and file past the bomb cart that had become a baby carriage. They would coo at George and snap his picture. Some offered George a forefinger and he would curl his tiny fist around it and laugh.

  “That baby had 1000 uncles,” said William J. Powers, the petty officer in charge of the hangar deck. “By then, the armistice was signed and we were all waiting to go home, and along comes this little kid to hit us right in the heart. It was as though he was the peace we’d been fighting for.”

  • • •

  George had been aboard the Point Cruz more than a week the day Lt. Hugh Keenan came stomping up the gangway looking for Father Riley. What did Father intend to do with the baby from Sister Philomena’s orphanage?

  Father Riley, stricken, assumed Keenan had been sent by naval authorities. He admitted they had a baby on board. They were looking for an orphanage in the States.

  “What if I told you I wanted to adopt the baby?” Keenan said. Father Riley gasped. “I’d say God bless you, my son—he’s yours!”

  They embraced and went looking for Hayward. The captain fired questions at Keenan, but the young surgeon’s answers were sensible. The three agreed that George would stay aboard the Point Cruz. Since Keenan still had a year to serve, Captain Hayward would try to arrange passage for George to the States.

  When the news was announced to the crew at dinner that night, a cheer ripped through the mess.

  Back on the Consolation, Hugh Keenan was struck by the numbing realization of what he had done. He went at once to the wardroom and wrote his wife. “I am making arrangements to send you a Christmas present that I hope you will love.” The days crawled by as he waited for her reply. When it came, the envelope was fat and the letter was long, but the answer was: Yes!

  • • •

  Things were not going well for Father Riley. Korean nationals needed a visa to enter the United States, but when he applied for one, the U.S. consulate told him the quota was filled. Maybe next year.

  As time passed, a visa for the baby seemed out of reach. Then, in mid-November, Hayward was invited to a dinner in Seoul where he was to receive a decoration. Vice President Nixon was also scheduled to attend. At the reception there was a good deal of talk about “Chick Hayward’s baby”—every flag officer in Korea having heard the story by this time. An admiral friend of Hayward’s told Nixon about George and his desperate need for a visa. Nixon turned to Ellis O. Brigg, the American ambassador in Seoul, and spoke the magic words: “Can you help out here?”

  Seven days later, the visa came.

  In late November, Lt. Hugh Keenan kissed his new son good-bye and handed him over to the crew of the Point Cruz, which was about to set sail for Japan. Several days later, “1000 uncles” cheered while the bosun’s mate piped George Cruz Ascom, IBfc—Infant Boy, first class—over the side, and the baby was turned over to Father Riley, his escort to America via military transport ship.

  • • •

  The Point Cruz finally made it back to the United States in December 1953. Father Riley went on to Central America, where he served as a missionary until his death. Chick Hayward, the one-time high school dropout, became a vice admiral and, with the USS Enterprise as his flagship, became the first admiral to command a nuclear task force.

  In America, George became Daniel Edward Keenan—Daniel for Hugh’s father, Edward for Father Riley. Growing up in Spokane, where his father returned to practice general surgery, Danny dreamed of becoming a sportswriter. He graduated from Washington State University with a degree in communications in 1977. Today he’s married and works as sports editor of the biweekly Grant County Journal in Ephrata, Washington, a town of 5300.

  One by one, the men of the Point Cruz had returned to peacetime pursuits, raised families, made careers. Over the years, they lost track of each other, but they never stopped wondering about “their” baby.

  Bill Powers, the former hangar-deck chief, had served 30 years in the Navy. He told his four children the story of the baby on the aircraft carrier, told it to his eight grandchildren, and he can hardly wait until his five great-grandchildren are old enough so he can tell it again.

  When a reunion of the Point Cruz crew was organized for September 1993, Bill was determined to have “George” there. He telephoned Keenan repeatedly, and encouraged him to attend the gathering. “Son, I knew you when you had to be burped after you ate. You have to come!”

  Once the word was out that “George” would be there, a special expectancy took hold of the veterans. Our baby is coming! The former sailors crowded around to meet a handsome, well-built man, his eyes now turned to brown.

  “I would go to the sick bay just to see you,” said Donald J. Houlihan, recalling those magic moments in the improvised nursery. “I held you in my arms,” one said. “I changed your diapers,” another added with a laugh.

  On the last night of the reunion, Danny Keenan rose to bid the men farewell. How do I thank them for saving my life? he wondered. The faces he looked out upon from the podium where he stood were still strangers to him, but he was touched deeply.

  And then the words came. “Without you good men, I wouldn’t be here,” Danny said quietly. “Not in this hotel, not in this country. And maybe not even on this earth.”

  The men of the Point Cruz were ordinary men. They had saved a life without asking for praise or thanks. And now, late in their lives, they could see that their long-ago act of kindness had been something of great importance.

  For a moment no one spoke. There was really no need. As it had once been a long time ago on the Point Cruz, it was again: Danny Keenan was surrounded by an ocean of fatherly love.

  Veterans of a Forgotten Victory

  BY RALPH KINNEY BENNETT

  On June 25, 1950, the morning the war started, Private First Class Leonard Korgie, 25, of Columbus, Nebraska, was sleeping the deep, easy sleep of the men in the U.S. Eighth Army. For the victorious occupation forces in Japan, it was a life in which training was nil and “light duty” was often the order of the day.

  Just over 650 miles to the northwest, the sky filled with flashes and thunderous concussions as North Korean artillery began a savage bombardment. Soon more than 90,000 North Koreans, supported by Soviet-built tanks, were streaming across the 38th Parallel separating North from South Korea. Within days, poorly trained South Korean troops were in panicky retreat.

  President Truman committed U.S. forces to a “police action.” The United Nations Security Council called on member states to help South Korea resist aggression.

  Private Korgie was to be shipped to Korea on July 8. “Wow, we’re going to fight!” he shouted to a buddy. Korgie had not fired a rifle in two years; he’d never thrown a grenade. He packed his summer dress uniform to wear in the victory parade his officers told him would probably take place within a few weeks.

  When those few weeks had passed, Korgie was dirty, hungry, weakened by raging dysentery and longing for a few hours of peaceful sleep. He had seen men’s stomachs laid open by mortar shells and a soldier next to him bayoneted to death. His regiment, the 34th Infantry, had 1981 men when it went into combat. Eight weeks later only 184 of them were left.

  The fighting moved up the peninsula as the North Koreans were pushed clear to the Yalu River border with China. Then it moved back as hundreds of thousands of communist Chinese troops entered the war in November 1950.

  Korgie will never forget the choking heat of the Korean summer and the vicious cold of the winter of 1950-51, when temperatures dropped to 20 below. He still remembers the sound of bodies being crushed as refugees fled over a Han River pontoon bridge at the same time as an armored column. And seared in his mind is the day his unit came upon an advance element of the Eighth Army, which had been massacred, then doused with gasoline and set afire.

  Back home, with “absolu
tely no fear of anything anymore,” Korgie was disappointed at people’s indifference to the faraway war. Restless, he worked for a while in Denver and there met Jean DeMichelis, a vacationing schoolteacher from Rockford, Illinois. They were married in 1953.

  This past May, Leonard and Jean Korgie retired after long careers in the Peoria, Illinois, public schools. Their two daughters have grown up and moved away. A son died of viral pneumonia in 1975.

  Occasionally, Korgie is visited by a recurring nightmare—North Korean soldiers burst through his bedroom door, and he screams for someone to shoot them. Jean gently shakes him awake.

  Sometimes when he’s about to gripe about something, Korgie thinks of Korea and says, “Hell, this is nothing.” And at veterans’ reunions, when they blow taps in memory of dead comrades, he swallows hard and finds something stuck in his eye.

  • • •

  For Marine Sergeant Frank Takeyama, the whole of existence came down to a ragged horizon and the sky above it, a frozen moment when fear and death are put in perspective. In that tiny piece of sky, an object little bigger than a soup can tumbled lazily toward him.

  “Grenade!” he yelled as he hit the dirt. But the blast caught him, and fragments tore bloody holes in his chest.

  Stunned, yet amazingly calm, Takeyama walked off the hill. After 18 days in an aid station, he returned to dodging grenades on more hills. The men of Baker Company’s First Platoon were glad to have him back. They knew him as a quiet, reliable leader with steely nerves, but they had no idea of the route he had traveled to fight for his country.

  It was a journey begun five years earlier in a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans in California. His family was sansei, third-generation American, but they were interned nonetheless.

  Takeyama was allowed to leave the camp to work as a houseboy for a Pasadena family while finishing his senior year in high school. The family’s son, a career Marine, greatly impressed him and in 1946 Takeyama signed up for a two-year hitch. After that, he was in the reserves, attending college as a prelaw student.