A Hero, That's All

 I wrote this story almost ten years ago when I lived not too far away from the fellow it is all about.  He would be nearly 85 now, and may not be alive.  But that doesn't mean we ought to forget him, or forget his younger brothers and sisters in very dangerous places far away...or looking for a place to come in out of the cold back "home" here.  I apologize for the way it looks.  I ain't smart enough to figure out how to make it look like something other than bad poetry.

A Hero, That's All

Burt Beardsley, 74, lives in Philo. He's a Village Trustee. He likes
to putter around with cars and a few friends of mine think a lot of
him. They say things like, "He's a nice man. Good. Gentle. Honest."
They also say, "He's a hero."

I was curious, and met him a few days ago. Here's what a hero looks
like. Small, slim, almost bald, a bit shy and very modest, a plain and
simple fellow. A hero's house is a small cottage on a quiet street
with a little porch where chimes hang, a tidy yard with a cement pig in
the grass and a backyard where Burt the American Hero works on his
friend's cars.

Burt got to be a hero 50 years ago along with another few tens of
thousands of men and women who moved to Korea to practice heroism.
All of them left jobs and families back here, and many of them left this
life, while doing hero stuff over there. You probably have a few heroes
right in your office, or on your street, or in your Church.

Burt told me about some of his experiences, how he was trained here
in the States, how he almost drowned during a typhoon in the Pacific on
the way over and how he spent 15 months straight in combat. He showed
me a few pictures and one or two poems he's written..simple verses
straight from the heart.

Burt grew up around here and was twenty-four years old, working in a
steel mill in Pennsylvania, when he was drafted and twelve or so weeks
later, in December, 1951, he and 2,000 other young heroes-in-waiting
shipped out from Seattle for Korea on an old troop transport whose
name he can't remember. She didn't last long, it seems, because she got
caught in a mid-Pacific typhoon for six days, took on thirteen feet
of water, and Burt and all his buddies had to be transferred to another
ship. Only one man was lost though, swept overboard in the wind and
waves. Considering what was to come in Korea, he might have been the
lucky one.

When they arrived in Korea they were immediately trucked to the front
lines, and there Burt spent the next fifteen months going up and down
the peninsula being a hero - a work which consisted mainly of being
scared, tired, hungry, wet, cold and scared; except for a bunch of
fellows who also got to be wounded or dead.

Burt remembers one time when they were going up a hill with some
fellows he worked at hero stuff with. 247 men started out with him; a full
company. When they got to the top of the hill eighteen hours later
only 17 of them were left. The rest didn't get tired. They got shot
and died along the way. Burt earned a Bronze Star, one of the four
he got over there, climbing that hill with no name. One of the
reasons so many fellows didn't finish the climb was because
there was a machine gun nest in front of them.

It's the same old story, the fellows in the machine gun nest didn't
want
Burt and his friends on top of the hill, and so they killed as many
as
they could. Burt stood up and fired a rifle grenade directly into
the
machine gun nest. That stopped his friends from dying so fast. He
laughed when he was telling me this story because you aren't
supposed to
fire a rifle grenade from your shoulder while standing. The proper
way
is to plant the butt of the rifle firmly on the ground and fire,
sending
the grenade in a high arch onto the target. He says the recoil spun
him
completely around and knocked him down.

Sometimes a hero's got to break a rule or two.

On another occasion, Burt and his unit were surrounded. They had
been
cut off for a week and had had nothing to eat. He was with a bunch
of
fellows from New York and New Jersey. They were nice guys, he told
me,
but they were city fellows. They were starving. Burt noticed some
trees still standing, burned on only one side. With his bayonet he
stripped the bark from the trees and took off the first, white,
layer of
new growth just inside the bark. Handing this to the others he told
them to chew it to extract the nutrients and water, and spit out the
rest. It kept them alive until they were able to break through to
their
own lines. He smiled telling me about this incident, and made a
comment
about the benefits of country living, in Korea.

He and his unit fought all the way up to the Yalu River bordering
Korea
and China. It was then that China entered the war. Burt remembers
the
horror of seeing tens of thousands of men attacking his position,
all of
them screaming. Fifty years later he still cannot understand how
they
could do it. Most of them were unarmed, or armed only with sticks and
clubs. He can recall seeing Chinese soldiers attacking American
tanks
with those clubs.

Navy jets were truly a Godsend during these attacks. Burt told me
that
he can't be grateful enough for their skill and help. "They got so
close to the ground you could see their faces." On one occasion, he
saw
a Chinese soldier on top of a hill stand up and throw a rock at a
strafing jet. "That jet was so low, the rock got stuck in his wing."

During those "human wave" attacks by unarmed men in rags the US
forces
would have to pour water over the barrels of their machine guns to
keep
them from melting. I was a boy of only 9 when all this was happening
and can still recall the fear that merely reading the stories
produced
in me. Burt says that fear was about all one could feel. At one
point
they were in combat for 101 days with no let up. "I think I got
about
eight hours sleep," he said. I asked him if he meant eight hours a
night. "No," he replied. "That was eight hours total. I learned
how
to sleep while I was marching."

He showed me a picture of several GI's in various states of
exhaustion
near a jeep, one of them asleep standing up leaning on the jeep.
There
were other pictures, too, graphic pictures of war and war's effect on
people and places. In a reference to current events Burt showed me
one
snapshot. "This is what a bombed city looks like," he said. "In ten
minutes it was knocked flat!" Only a few chimneys still stood. In
the
foreground two small Korean children smiled for the photographer.

"Did you ever see anybody lose it?" I asked. "Oh, yeah, there was
lots
of them, lots," he replied. I asked him what kept him going all
those
fifteen months of combat. Burt said it was his faith. "I'm not like
other folks, I guess. I always believed that my Guardian Angel was
working overtime for me," he began, " and since I was a little boy I
always thanked Jesus every morning for getting me through the night
and
waking me up. I was scared, but I knew I was being looked after."
He
told me that on several occasions his clothes were shot up by bullets
and shrapnel but he was never harmed. "Maybe they did pass through
me,
and I was healed. Who knows?" Indeed.

The last picture he showed me was of three smiling GI's , Burt in the
middle of his two best friends. They all made it through and are
still
in touch.

After his fifteen months were up, Burt was shipped back home.
Despite
having one transport sink under him he chose to sail home and not
fly.
That was because he had had two planes shot out from under him. As
he
told the officer asking how he wished to be shipped back, "I can
swim a
bit. I can't fly a lick." Heroes are practical.

Burt remembers well the fifteen months in combat with the 25th
Division,
27th regiment, the Wolfhounds, but like most fellows who've been
through
things like this he doesn't say much about it. "I'm telling you
things
I never told anyone, not even my wife," he said, looking at me and
shaking his head, surprised and wondering why, I guess. "We were
loved
while we were over there. When we got back it was like you were an
old
dog." It could make a person keep their counsel.

I sort of wish they would say more, though, you know? It might do
two
things. It might help us to understand and honor better these men
and
women who do so much for us in far away places. It might also help
us
work a bit harder at never having to send any one into "harm's way"
again.

I mentioned that Burt writes poems. He said that some nights when he
can't get to sleep he writes them down. These lines from one he calls
"Looking Up" catch, for me, the spirit of the man, the simple hero,
that's all:

"Stay looking to Jesus
And do your best.
He will seek you out
And do the rest."

Words to live by, in Korea, anywhere.

The End