DECATUR — June 25 marked the 60th Anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War.
The war was a conflict between the Republic of Korea, in the south, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, supported by communist China. The conflict began on June 25, 1950 and an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
Since the Unites States Congress never officially declared war, the conflict was officially considered a police action.
Lester Austin of Decatur experienced the after effects of the war, serving in Korea just after the armistice was signed.
Austin was one of seven young men from Decatur, and 29 from Benton County, to enter basic training together.
Austin attended basic training in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri at the same time as fellow Decatur residents, Johnny Hays, Roy Dunivan, JD Jones, Ivan Engleman, Bobby Dean Dill and Paul Brandon.
All of the young men were around 20 years old, and they had all been drafted or were about to be drafted, Austin said. His brother, Paul Dean Austin, also served in combat during thethe Korean War, and was still in Korea when he arrived.
The young men trained for 16 weeks, spending eight weeks focusing on infantry training and another eight weeks focusing on combat engineer training, Austin said.
Combat engineers build bridges and roads and are specialists in removing and placing mines, he explained.
During their training, they often returned home together on the weekends. One young man from Siloam Springs owned a pick-up truck and gave Austin a ride home, he said.
Austin wasn’t deployed inKorea until after the war was officially over. He spent 14 months in Korea, beginning in the later part of 1953 and returning home in 1954. Austin and Bobby Dean Dill traveled to Korea together. They left San Francisco and rode for 11 days on a boat called the General Sultan to reach Japan. After spending several days in Japan, they traveled by train to Korea.
In Korea, Austin was stationed in a combat zone near the 38th parallel as a member of the 633 Combat Engineers. He drove a truck hauling everything fromrock and bulldozers to school supplies. He also worked repairing roads and filling in large pot holes, which were called frost boils.
The soldiers lived in big tents that each held nine people. They stayed in the tents through the bitterly cold Korean winters, with a pot-bellied diesel stove for heat.
Soldiers paid Korean house boys to take care of their clothes and shoes.
“We paid them out of our pockets. Most of them were good boys and we gave them extrastuff,” Austin said.
The extra money was likely a big help to the boy’s families who lived in poverty and often suffered from hunger. After years of Japanese occupation followed by a civil war, the people of Korea were extremely poor, Austin said. Their main crop was rice and men would plow the rice patties with oxen, while the patties were covered in water.
After the patties were plowed, women would work in the deep water and mud - even in the cold - planting rice, one plant at a time. They also grew cabbage and vegetables, but American troops were not allowed to eat any vegetables exceptapples because they were grown with human waste, Austin said.
Even though Korea gets much colder than Arkansas, the Korean people had stoves outside their homes and piped the heat into their houses throughrock tunnels under the floor. There were not many large trees in Korea, only scrubby pines, so the people didn’t have lumbar to build with and used other materials.
Most soldiers didn’t get to go off the Army base, so Austin enjoyed his job driving the truck and seeing the countryside. For relaxation, soldiers were allowed to check-out shotguns and go pheasant hunting. Austin remembers a soldier from South Carolina frying the pheasants on the stove in their tent.
Twentythree allied nations were involved in the Korean War, Austin said. At dinner time, a soldier from any country could eat at any other country's base without any charge, he said. As a truck driver, he often hauled loads for other countries, and remembers working with soldiers from Canada, England, New Zealand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Sweden. Austin also learned how to speak some of the Korean language.
Austin said only three of the young men from Decatur who attended basic training are still living - including himself, Johnny Hays and Roy Dunivan.
Austin said he learned a lot about people and cultures from his experience. After seeing how poor and abused the people of Korea were, he also learned to appreciate life at home.
“It's like my brother said, ‘I would have given a million bucks not to go over there and now I wouldn't trade a million bucks for the experience,’” Austin said.
News, Pages 1 on 06/30/2010