LOCAL

“The Forgotten War”: Korean vets recall firefights, frozen feet

War claimed more than 33,000 American lives, left painful memories for survivors

Daniel Walmer
danielwalmer@ldnews.com

They call it “The Forgotten War,” but Lebanon County veterans who fought in Korea have plenty to remember.

Korean War veteran George Yocklovich, of Cornwall, proudly flies the American flag between the red U.S. Marine Corps flag and a blue flag honoring those who fought at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. George Yochlovich can’t forget charging miles northward over freezing and mountainous terrain, then fighting his way out of an ambush that killed many of his comrades – only to have to retrace his steps to fight his way back south.

Army Pfc. Vincent Bentz won’t forget his friends who died and were captured all around him in the chaos of hand-to-hand combat.

Navy Hospital Corpsman John Gergle will never forget stemming the flow of blood from amputees, without a single professional nurse or doctor for miles.

And in case they were tempted to forget, Bentz and Yochlovich still have painful frozen feet from marching in the brutally cold Korean winter to help them remember.

‘Home for Christmas’

Yochlovich and Bentz were both too young to serve during World War II but entered the military around 18 years of age during the short period of peacetime that followed. Yochlovich, who now lives in Cornwall, came from a family with a history of military service, while Bentz and two buddies decided to join because of a lack of local jobs available for high school graduates.

In 1950, they received word they would be heading to the theater of combat in Korea.

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“We were young, we didn’t care. We were 17, 18 years old, full of piss and vinegar,” said Bentz, who now lives in Annville.

Perhaps helping to relieve their worries, soldiers were told by their commanders that the conflict in Korea was a simple “police action” that would be over quickly. Yocklovich remembers the motto “home for Christmas.”

“We were supposed to go to Camp Pendleton and be the guests at the Rose Bowl,” he said.

It didn’t turn out that way.

Heat of Battle

As North Korean soldiers were pushing their way south in July, Bentz’s 34th regiment was thrust into battle, tasked with delaying the advance long enough for the United Nations to amass more soldiers at the southeast Korea port of Pusan. The 19th and 34th regiments were engaged in two furious battles at the Kum River and Taejon, leading to hundreds of casualties.

Korean War veteran Vince Bentz, of Annville, was one of the first Americans to fight in Korea.

“The fighting was usually brutal,” Bentz said – particularly hand-to-hand combat.

“When they come through and they’re attacking you, the first row and maybe the second row  might have machine guns, rifles, stuff like that, but then the next row will have clubs,”  he said.

One of Bentz’s friends was captured by the North Korean army and wasn’t released for more than three years. When the friend returned home, he weighed only 80 pounds due to his treatment as a prisoner.

“When he got caught, we were only like 200 yards apart, but when you’re in a firefight, you never know,” Bentz said.

Another wounded friend couldn’t be discharged until Bentz picked shrapnel out of his nose, and Bentz had shrapnel in his own left leg for a month.

The Chosin Few

After Bentz’s division retreated to a line surrounding Pusan, larger forces from the United States and its allies began a fall offensive that forced the North Koreans past the 38th parallel. Yocklovich’s Marine Corps unit was among those that probed farthest into North Korea – but they marched into a trap.

On Nov. 27, about 120,000 Chinese troops coming to the aid of North Korea encircled about 30,000 United States and allied U.N troops that included Yocklovich’s unit, resulting in a grizzly battle in temperatures as cold as minus 30 degrees Farenheit, according to The Chosin Few News Digest.

“They said they wanted unconditional surrender, or they would kill every Marine standing, or they would freeze us to death,” Yocklovich said. “They thought they would overrun us with manpower.”

The allied forces had an ammunition advantage – some of the Chinese soldiers didn’t have guns, instead improvising various objects as weapons – but as waves of nighttime attacks continued to press the entrapped soldiers, Yocklovich’s unit began to run out of ammunition as well. Many soldiers were down to using bayonets, and so many had been killed or wounded that cooks or anyone who could hold a weapon were pushed into fighting service, he said.

In processing the chaos, Yocklovich remembered advice a warrant officer had given:  “You come first. I don’t care who is on the other side, if it’s a man or a kid or what that has a rifle, you come first, you remember that.”

“What the hell (else) were we going to do?” Yocklovich said. “If it was our turn (to die), it was our turn.”

Korean War veteran George Yocklovich, of Cornwall, talks about his experiences on the Korean peninsula 63 years after the cessation of hostilities.

The allied soldiers eventually received assistance from the air, with planes initially dropping ammunition and food. The forces were eventually able to forge a breakthrough south with tactical support from Marines Corsair aircraft, a sight so welcome to the embattled Yocklovich that he keeps a model Corsair airplane displayed in his home.

“That’s who saved our lives,” he said. “They were the best pilots in the world.”

By the time they reached relative safe harbor at Hagaru-ri in early December, Yocklovich said those with frozen feet did not even bother to seek medical treatment because so many other people were missing arms and legs.

Even at that point, the retreat to places farther south where they could board ships to take them temporarily away from the conflict was challenging. The soldiers were required to fight through desolate, mountainous terrain using bridges airlifted to them to replace those that had been destroyed by Chinese and North Korean forces, he said.

In the end, more than 3,000 of the 15,000 American soldiers in battle at Chosin Reservoir were killed, an additional 6,000 were wounded, and thousands of others suffered from severe frostbite, according to The Chosin Few publication.

‘Cold as hell’

The Chinese weren’t the only potentially life-threatening enemies the Korean War soldiers were battling, however. They quickly learned that hell can be a very cold place.

Many of the soldiers faced the subzero chill of North Korea’s mountainous winter without proper clothing since they had arrived in the summer under the understanding that the war would be over quickly, Bentz said. In addition to their summer fatigues, one person would be given gloves, another a cap, and another a jacket. Bentz remembers taking a quilted jacket from a fallen Chinese solider to help him keep warm.

When fighting their way out of the Chosin Reservior, Yocklovich said it was too cold to eat their rations without stoves or fires they didn’t have. They survived instead on a diet of Tootsie Rolls and “enough cigarettes to start an engine.”

At nighttime, body heat melted the snowpack, making the soldiers’ sleeping bags wet, he said.

“It was cold as hell,” he said. “When you walked, you sweated, but when you stopped, you froze.”

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The temperatures even created difficulties for the medical staff, which had trouble providing plasma and blood to wounded soldiers without it freezing, he said.

The long-term reminder of the cold was the permanent condition of frozen feet, from which both Bentz and Yocklovich still suffer. And they weren’t the unluckiest ones – Yocklovich said he witnessed some soldiers returning from the Chosin Reservior without shoes at all.

Treating the wounded

Palmyra resident John Gergle never saw combat, and he’s quick to say the real heroes were the soldiers in Korea. As a Navy Hospital Corpsman treating wounded soldiers, however, he experienced plenty of the horrors of war.

Gergle knew nothing about medicine beyond what he had learned as a Boy Scout when he enlisted in the Navy, but an officer at boot camp selected him for Hospital Corpsman school, where he was quickly immersed in books teaching him chemistry and laboratory surgery.

“Some of the words in there, I didn’t even know what they were talking about,” he said. But Gergle had talents many of his colleagues lacked: he wasn’t intimidated at the idea of sticking needles in people and could stay calm amidst chaos.

He would soon need those abilities. While he said he received excellent instruction, corpsmen were being trained quickly because there was a shortage of medical professionals needed to treat wounded soldiers returning from the Korean War.

“(They said), ‘Where you’re going to wind up, there’s not going to be a doctor or nurse within 100 miles of you.' And I said, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”

Beginning in 1952, he was stationed at a facility that had everything they needed to provide hospital treatment, including a full operating room, he said.

Of all the soldiers he treated who were physically or mentally wounded, Gergle particularly remembers one person on an aircraft carrier who got his arm caught in the line used to catch the tailhooks of planes and slow them down for landing. The arm was torn off of his body.

“I was never actually in combat, but I saw things that I really didn’t want to see,” he said.

 

Stalemate and aftermath

After the terror of invasions and firefights, Yochlovich and Bentz experienced the miserable tedium of trench warfare once a stalemate became established along the 38th parallel in 1951.

Korean War veteran Vince Bentz, of Annville, wears a ring commemorating his Army career.

As a soldier with a talent for being quiet, Bentz was often chosen for night patrol, attempting to catch opposing soliders who had left their trench in order to obtain information about the enemy’s plans. One of the biggest inconveniences then was the low quality food rations, so when the opportunity presented itself they would cook and eat animals in the area, including chickens and even piglets on one occasion, he said.

Upon their return home, Korean War soldiers weren’t always treated with respect, and their contributions were largely forgotten by many Americans, Bentz and Yochlovich said. That wasn’t the case with South Koreans, though, who continue to send Bentz letters inviting them over to their country to be honored, he said.

Bentz left the military after the war and used the GI Bill to obtain training that allowed him to eventually become a head mechanic at a sewing factory, repairing industrial sewing machines.

In addition to a career at Bethlehem Steel, Gergle remained involved in training future groups of corpsmen, including at the beginning of the Vietnam War.

Yocklovich was rotated out of duty in Korea in May 1951, when he became a staff sergeant focusing on security in Washington, D.C.

The conflict’s proximity to World War II may have served to obscure its bloodiness in the minds of many Americans. According to statistics from the Department of Veterans Affairs, however, more than 33,000 American soldiers lost their lives in battle, while another 103,000 were wounded. As many as 5 million total soldiers and civilians lost their lives over the course of the conflict.

If he had it to do over again, Bentz said he wouldn’t volunteer for combat.

“(Combat) is not good — it gets to you,” he said. “But I cope with it.”