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| Lake Geneva veteran Stewart Sizemore poses with the medals he received as a result of his service in the US Army during the Korean War. |
Lake Geneva veteran featured in Korean War documentary
Orig. published 11/03/06 in The Beacon (Walworth County)
“It
was the bloodiest battle I ever saw,” remembers Lake Geneva resident Stewart
Sizemore of the Battle of Taejon, fought in July 1950. It was one of the first
major battles of the Korean War and Sizemore, a 17-year-old infantryman, was
there.
More
than 56 years later, the memories haunt him. “When we went out to Korea, we had
138 men in our company. I wandered around behind enemy lines for five days
after Taejon … dodging North Korean patrols. I had a BAR (Browning Automatic
Rifle) with one round left in it. When I came out in an apple orchard five days
later, we had 12 men left in the company.”
The
Korean War, long known as “The Forgotten War” for its relative lack of exposure
with the American public, produced thousands of similarly horrific stories.
Many of these stories have never been told. As the veterans of the Korean War
age, these “forgotten” stories are being lost forever.
Wisconsin
Public Television, in association with the Wisconsin Historical Society,
recently undertook a project to document the stories of Wisconsin residents in
the Korean War. They have produced a two-part documentary entitled Wisconsin
Korean War Stories.
Sizemore
was one of 52 veterans interviewed for the program.
Producer
Mik Derks (Wisconsin World War II Stories) amassed a wide range of
interviews for the documentary, selecting veterans from different branches of
the service and all areas of the state. Due to the nature of the Korean War,
most of the interviews that made the final cut of the documentary were told by
soldiers who fought in the ground war. “Most of (the Korean War) was the ground
war,” said Derks, “so we focused on the Marines and the Army who were right
there slugging it out.”
The
project began three years ago after the success of the Wisconsin World War
II Stories series. Derks felt it was vital to collect the stories of Korean
War veterans. “They really do feel forgotten,” he said. “People just didn’t pay
much attention to (the war) and the longer it went on, the less they seemed to
care about it.”
Sizemore
agreed to be interviewed by Derks because of that feeling of invisibility. “I
got so sick of watching the news and they would mention WWII and they would
mention Vietnam, they mention Afghanistan, but they don’t mention the Korean
War.”
Sizemore’s
story is an amazing tale of survival. Born in rural Appalachian West Virginia,
his mother gave birth to three sets of twins during the Great Depression.
Unable to feed them, she sent them to live in an orphanage. When Sizemore was 5
years old, he and his siblings were adopted out as farm labor to a rural farm.
“It was basically slave labor,” Sizemore said. “We got one pair of shoes a
year, and we walked seven miles to school and seven miles back again every
day.”
To
escape a life of back-breaking labor, Sizemore ran away as a teenager and
adopted a hobo life, riding the rails and living in hobo jungles around the
country. When he was 16, he and a friend were hopping a freight train in
southern Illinois on a rainy night. Sizemore caught the train, but his friend
slipped and fell, and was pummeled under the wheels of the train. “They carried
him out of there in a bushel basket,” he said. “And I decided right then I was
joining the service.”
When
the Korean war broke out on June 25, 1950, Sizemore was stationed in Japan. His
unit shipped out to Korea on the Fourth of July, arriving on a fishing boat.
They had no heavy artillery. Their supplies were inadequate. Many of the men in
Sizemore’s unit were 16- and17-year-olds who had never seen battle. Their unit
saw 55 consecutive days of action before getting a one-day break.
“You
fight all day, and you walk all night. You have nothing to eat. You’re eating
whatever you can find, whatever you can swipe out of the fields. You are just
totally, totally worn out. And every day, you’re losing people.”
Sizemore
himself was injured on the Yalu River when China entered the war on the side of
the North Koreans in November of 1950. The Chinese mounted a surprise attack
with an army of more than a quarter of a million men, many of whom had trained
in the People’s Liberation Army in the 1930s and 1940s.
“I
got smashed in the face and all my teeth knocked out with Chinese rifle butts.
They blew me out of a machine gun embankment and just left me for dead. Had it
not been so cold, I wouldn’t be here. It was 20 below zero. It kept me from
bleeding to death.”
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| Sizemore showed me this photograph of American troops in Korea to illustrate the extreme climate they were fighting in. |
From
there, Sizemore spent three weeks in a M.A.S.H. unit. “As soon as they got the
swelling down to where I could open my eyes, they sent me back out on the line.
My face was a mess. I didn’t have any teeth. I weighed 98 pounds and had dysentery
and malaria. But at that period in time, they would not take you off the line
as long as you were physically able to fire a weapon, that’s how bad they
needed bodies.”
American
forces suffered heavy casualties throughout the first 12 months of fighting. By
November of 1950, the South Korean territory was reduced to a small patch of
land in the far southeast portion of the country only 140 miles wide, known as
the Pusan Perimeter. American forces fought hard to maintain this tiny
stronghold before the entrance of the Marines turned the tables on the
fighting.
Sizemore
fought along the Naktong Bulge in the Pusan Perimeter and up to the 38th
Parallel before rotating out of Korea in Aug. 1951. He spent three months
recovering from malaria in the United States before enlisting with the Marines
and returning to Korea for a second tour of duty. This time, his experience was
very different. The U.S. Forces were on the defensive and camped out in
bunkers, the front shifting only a few miles a day. “It wasn’t easier, but it
was different,” he said. “You never get used to it. War is hell, any way you
look at it.”
Korea’s
status as the “Forgotten War” extends to the high price paid in casualties over
the three-year conflict. “A lot of people don’t realize how many men we lost
over there,” said Sizemore. Some estimates indicate that the American Armed Forces lost around 54,000 men
between July 1950 and July 1953, when a cease-fire was declared. (By comparison,
the Vietnam War claimed around 58,000 lives in a16-year period.)
Also
forgotten was the lack of resolution surrounding the end of the Korean War. No
peace treaty was ever signed. The two countries remain technically at war to this
day, a fact that is difficult to ignore in light of recent headlines
emphasizing North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Though Derks had no way of
knowing at the time, the documentary he set out to record three years ago
suddenly has poignant relevance to the headlines of the day. “It’s suddenly
very topical,” he said, “which I hope makes people want to watch it, because
people know very little about this war.”
Sizemore
warns that any future conflict with North Korea may be even more difficult for
American Forces than it was in 1950. “North Korea’s equipment is very good…
their training is outstanding. If we ever have to go in there again, we’re
going to be in trouble.”
“I’m not for war, I don’t glory
war, because I’ve seen too much of it," he says.
"But I think this needs to be told, because I think there are so many
people in this country who don’t realize the price that’s been paid.”
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