BY RICH BROWN
Growing up, we could tell when the one-liner was coming. My Dad’s eyes would get wide behind his black-rimmed glasses. His dark eyebrows would shoot up. His already grinning mouth would grow even larger. And then he’d let it rip. Sometimes they would hit, but many, to be honest, were groaners.
He would share his one-liners with family, friends – my friends! – neighbors, whoever happened to be there when the opportunity presented itself. And rarely did he miss an opportunity. The one-liners were part of the reason so many appreciated him. Even if he misfired, everyone knew he had such a great time delivering the line, they still loved him – and the effort he put into it.
Though technically not part of the “Greatest Generation,” Dad was a Korean War veteran. Like his World War II compatriots, he didn’t talk a lot about his war experiences. In fact, growing up, one of the few pieces of information I knew from his time in Korea was one of his one-liners.
The set-up was, when he arrived in Korea, the Lieutenant asked if anyone knew how to type. Dad said he immediately shot up his hand indicating he did, indeed, know how to type. Then the one-liner: “Okay private. We’ve got a truck load of typewriters over there. Start unloading them.”
What I didn’t understand at the time was that the Lieutenant really did ask the question. But there was no truckload of typewriters. His one-liner was a vet’s way of deflecting. A way to put a grin around what was a dark and haunting two years of his life.
What I also learned, years later, is the mere fact he knew how to type quite possibly saved his life. Most of the guys in his unit were sent to the front lines. Many lost their lives there. But because he knew how to use a typewriter, Dad was assigned to the relative safety of the office at base camp.
He worked with the Commanders typing reports coming in from the front lines. He worked with the Chaplain typing letters of sympathy to families of the dead and the wounded. And he responded to the many requests for information from mothers about their sons who were missing in action.
I learned these stories because late in his life – before Parkinson’s robbed him of his grin and his one-liners – he put together a written narrative of his time in Korea. Amazingly, both my mother and grandmother had saved every letter he sent them during his deployment.
Using those letters, he put together a chronological history of his time in Korea, from his arrival in Japan in April 1953, to his departure from Korea in August 1954. With an entry every few days, it reads like a diary. He obviously edited out some of the personal things he wrote to my mother, whom he had married in November of 1952, shortly before he was deployed, first to Camp Roberts in California, and then on to Korea the following Spring.
The narrative contains descriptions of his fellow GIs and the weather, complaints about the food, descriptions of the local towns and townspeople, and observations of the US military and political leadership that sent him to Korea, with his trademark humor interspersed throughout.
But a lot of it is dark.
“A kid two tents down from ours committed suicide by shooting himself with his rifle. I directed the ambulance to the scene but didn’t linger since I’m a man who hates violence.”
The punishing horrors of war on display to a twenty-three-year-old city kid from Portland, Oregon.
“I experienced an odd and somewhat helpless feeling when I saw my first helicopter loaded with two units heading towards the nearest M.A.S.H. It’s great the way they get those guys out of the lines quickly. Each patient is wrapped in about nine blankets for the ride back to treatment.”
His ability to type kept him off the front lines, but it also turned him into the grim messenger to soldiers’ families of war’s inevitable results.
“My present concern is all the letters coming here inquiring about men who have died in enemy prison camps. I have to notify their next of kin by letter, and I’ve been dead set against mentioning that they died of yellow jaundice, pneumonia and malnutrition. It’s bad enough that they died in a prison camp. In spite of my arguments, the officer from division prefers that I mention the disease.”
There was also a name in the narrative that I had never heard him mention before: Charlie Pendleton. Dad had met Pendleton at leadership school at Camp Roberts. Though they only knew each other a short while, they became fast friends, corresponding from their different locations in Korea.
“I mailed a letter to Charlie, after receiving six pages of penciled comments from him. Our letters crossed the mail. Mine was returned to me stamped DECEASED. Subsequent contact with Medal of Honor administration revealed Charlie’s achievements and fate.”
The term “war stories” is a cliché, but as I read the narrative, I understood why my father, like so many others, had for all those years hid his war stories from us. There was too much pain, too much lingering fear, and too much sadness. Better to throw out a humorous one-liner than talk about how his closest army buddy was blown up in a fire fight, even though his buddy’s heroics deservedly earned him the Medal of Honor.
It took Dad until his late seventies to commit these stories to paper – more than 50 years after his time in Korea. I think he wrote them down because he felt we deserved to know his war stories. He was never going to tell them to us face to face. And once he committed them to paper, that was pretty much it. There weren’t any further deep dives into those war stories around the family dinner table.
Dad is buried in Willamette National Cemetery. On the day of his funeral, we knew there would be a small military procession as part of his internment. What we didn’t know is that a bagpipe volunteer comes when he can to veterans’ funerals at the cemetery. Fortunately for us, though no one told us, he was available that day. As we lay Dad to rest, seemingly out of nowhere, the notes of “Amazing Grace” came floating up among the colorful October trees.
It was humbling for me, a guy born too young for Vietnam and too old for the Middle East conflicts, to learn the sacrifices my dad made for his country. Though he hid them behind one-liners, there were scars of war, no doubt.
It is also humbling to know that Dad’s ability to type could be the sole reason I am here today on this earth.
Amazing grace, indeed.
