Veterans remember
Experiences not all bad, but they wouldnt go back
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
At Ketchum City Hall, police officers, city
officials and veterans paid homage to 10 Idaho police officers fatally shot since 1994.
Ketchum dedicated the new flag pole, located outside city hall, to the slain officers.
(Express photos by Willy Cook)
For nearly 80 years since the battling nations of World
War I signed their armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, Veterans Day has been an occasion to honor
war veterans, and also a day of remembrance of wars horror.
For some veterans, its a day to reminisce about good times, too.
First, they gathered at noon last Thursday at Ketchum City Hall for a
Veterans Day ceremony. At the same time, Ketchum dedicated its new flagpole in honor of
10 Idaho police officers shot in the line of duty since 1994. At the base of the pole, is
a plaque with the officers names.
That night, survivors of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam
conflicts gathered at Ketchums American Legion Hall for a traditional Veterans Day
dinner.
Star
Boy Scout Chris McCarthy served prime rib to Ketchum American Legion Hall president
Florence Froelich. (Express photo by Willy Cook)
One of those arriving at the hall was Korean veteran John Palmer, 65,
of Hailey, who enlisted in the U.S. Army when he was 19 years old.
"I had a ball" hunting Chinese golden pheasant, he said,
during his three years serving as a U.S. Army radio operator.
"The hunting was terrific over there," he said, standing
beside the words "Curmudgeon Construction" stenciled across the door of his
pickup truck.
The South Koreans didnt have any guns, he said, and he
didnt have any bird dogs, so they cooperated. The local kids ran into the fields to
flush out birds. He shot the birds down with his Winchester Model 25 pump-action shotgun
and paid the kids with a pheasant each.
There were so many pheasant the "sky would go dark with
them," he said. "You didnt even have to aim. Wed drive back to camp
with the whole back of the jeep full of them."
Because he arrived in 1950, after the cease-fire was signed, Palmer
said he never saw any fighting. Still, he said, U.S. soldiers had to look out for
infiltrators, who would sneak into or near camp and take pot shots at people or sabotage
equipment.
Stationed 27 miles north of the 38th parallel, near the North Korean
border, Palmer said he was shot at once or twice, but never hit.
"I was quite a bit thinner then," he said. "I was harder
to hit in those days."
Nor did he shoot at any North Koreans; but once, he said, he shot and
killed a deer from 200 yards away after mistaking it for a dog.
All the soldiers had been commanded to kill stray dogs, he said,
because they were carrying hemorrhagic fever.
After the company commander refused to allow the deer to be served in
the mess hall, Palmer sold the deer on the black market for a few dollars.
For the most part, "it was a lot of fun," Palmer said of his
Korean War experience, but it was not without moments of incredible sadness and images of
terrible destruction, too.
Passing through Hiroshima only eight years after the atomic bomb had
been dropped was one such moment. He was on his way to Korea for the first time, traveling
by train.
"There was nothing but one-story tin shacks as far as the eye
could see," he said. "The only two-story building was the new train
station."
Perhaps harboring memories of similar images, other veterans Thursday
were less willing to speak about their wartime experiences.
Veteran and
musical great Jimmy Limes played a medley of military tunes at the Ketchum Legion Hall on
Thursday night after a prime rib dinner. (Express photo by Willy Cook)
John Robertson, 78, of Sun Valley, served in the U.S. Marine Corps
during World War II. Attached to the 1st Marine Air Wing, he serviced torpedo fighter
bombers in New Caledonia and in Guadalcanal, eventually achieving the rank of staff
sergeant before being discharged in August 1945.
Interviewed at Ketchum City Hall, he said only, "I didnt
know what I was getting into," of his wartime experience.
For proof, he displayed a pair of oval, steel dog tags in the palm of
his hand. The military told him to carry them in case he "got lost." He
didnt find out until later, he said, they were in case he got killed.
John McDonald, 58, served in the Army Aviation Group during Vietnam.
Now Ketchums postmaster and head of American Legion Post No. 115, he enlisted at the
age of 21. He said he was "happy he did it."
But, he added, his experience in Vietnam began with camping in a peanut
field while the Army Corps of Engineers built an airstrip and the Viet Cong incessantly
mortared their position.
"It was too long," he said of his three years in the
military.
Gary White, a police training specialist who spoke at the dedication,
perhaps summed up the sentiments of police officers as well as veterans when he said,
"We would trade our badges in a minute for a peaceful community."