Pacific Stars and Stripes,
February 1951
By SFC Fred W. Baars
S&S Korea Bureau
With 1st Cav Div In Korea- Little Park Sukk Ung,
11, was playing soldier in his native village of Kyungbowokmoonkung,
as small boys always do.
But Park had the real McCoy-a live hand grenade.
Fascinated, he fondled it admiringly and, inevitably,
pulled the pin.
The deafening explosion brought Park's mother
running to the scene where she found the boy miraculously alive, but
with his right arm a bleeding, mangled horror.
Korean doctors had long since left the area, and
the frantic mother rushed the child to Rev. Pack Myng-See, pastor
of the little native Christian church in the village. The pastor appealed
to an American chaplain, Maj. David E. Weaver, Louisville, Ky., 5th
Cavalry Regiment, then in the area. The chaplain promptly took the
little casualty to the aid station.
Tenderly and patiently, Capt. J. C. Crutcher,
Durham, N.C., Sgt. Joseph Killian, Maiden, N.C., and Sgt. Clarence
Shamley, Centralia, Wash., of the 5th Cavalry Regiment, worked over
the shattered arm as the little boy smiled bravely at them through
the tears which he tried to so hard to hold back.
It was hopeless. The arm had to be amputated and
there were no proper facilities for such surgery at the aid station.
The arm was dressed, penicillin was administered,
and Pack was prepared for evacuation. As if by magic, genuinely distressed
GIs produced a donation of many thousand whan. A tough MP, wearing
a gentle expression, flagged down a Taegu-bound Army truck, placed
the mother and child aboard and gave the driver strict orders to deliver
them to a hospital.
The truck roared away.
War is hell.
PSS-068
