Pacific Stars and Stripes, August 4, 1953

Waif Grows Happy, Healthy With Yanks

 

 

WITH U.S. 7^TH DIV., Aug. 4 - Every once in a while in a war, where death and destruction are the rule, an act of kindness will seep through.  M/Sgt. Archie Bolon, mess steward of the Bayonet Division's Company L. 31^st Infantry Regiment, couldn't resist helping a ragged, shivering waif standing in a doorway when the 7^th was withdrawing from the Yalu River in the winter of 1951.

 

THE COMPANY had stopped for the night in a little village called Inja when Kil Hung Kun, just another of the many thin, ragged children of the war-torn peninsula, was spotted.  Troops of L Company brought him into the mess hall, gave him hot food, and christened him Mickey.  Through an interpreter, Bolen found the boy had no living family, so he stayed on as a houseboy.

TWO YEARS LATER, 16 year old Mickey was a fixture of the company mess crew, and a master of American soldier "slanguage."  One of his proudest possessions is a loud sport shirt and a pair of blue jeans sent by the mess steward's wife, Mrs. Margaret Bolon, Fullerton, Cal.

 

The Bolons have started proceedings to have Mickey adopted and will then work on arrangements to take him to the States.

 

SSA-676