Prior And During The Korean War

I came back from the Persian Gulf and Nes had a new saw that cost him $500, a lot of money in those days. He and this guy he met in a bar one night, went into the woods and worked just one day. When they went home that night, they left the saw sitting on a stump. When they went back the next morning the group of guys working right next to them had felled a tree and it landed right on the saw and smashed it right into the stump. It was flattened and nothing was left of it. Nes was feeling pretty bad. The guy he worked with walked away, apparently he had persuaded Nes to buy the saw and he was going to pay him half when they earned enough money. 

By chance, our neighbor was a guy in his late fifties, who had worked in the lumber business felling trees. He was getting too old to work in the woods in that line of work, lugging those big ol' saws around. In those days it took two men to carry one. So he sold us his saw and we paid $400 for it. Nes and I went on working right where he and the other guy left off. Through trial and error we learned how to fell timber and cut it up. It got so we made some pretty good money. We had a little old Chevy car that we hauled our tent around in. We camped right out in those Oregon woods on the job. We worked for three or four months and then we decided we wanted to go where the big timber was. If course the timber was plenty big in Oregon, we cut down fir trees approximately 4 or 5 feet thick, but we wanted to get over into the Redwoods. So we headed for the coast and we went to this lumber camp and tried to get a job. The foreman said, "well we could use a couple of guys to clean up after our head fellers. Why don't we go out here and see what you can do.? So we went out and there was a huge old redwood, about 6 feet thick. He said, "Fall this tree right here and lay it right down the center of that roadway over there."  So we fired up the saw and cut it down and boy it fell just exactly where he said.  He told us, "Well, you got a job."  Everyone stayed in the bunkhouse. So Nes and I worked for two or three months in the Redwoods. 

It started to get cold in November and I decided I should go back to sea and save up some money because we seemed to spend all the money we made in the woods, but we had fun doing it! I had a lot of fun working with Nes that year. We were pretty close.

I went back to sea and I don't remember where Nes went. I'm sure he went back to sea, but we didn't go on the same ship. I got on a ship going to Japan and the Philippines. I worked pretty steady in those years from 1949-1950 (just prior to the Korean War years). I spent my time off in the mountains--fishing, and looking for gold. My dad and mom, in the meantime, had moved to Gazelle, CA and sold the house they had in Oregon. My dad spent most of his savings looking for gold in northern California. In fact, he went bankrupt there, and wound up working on a cattle ranch. He and Mom got the house and their milk free and they ran about 300 head of cattle there in the summertime. He would irrigate and take care of the cows. He was able to eek out a living there, but that was all. There was no running water or electricity. Mom had to wash everything by hand, which included carrying the water to the house. It was a hard life.

In 1950 the Korean War started. They classified me as 2A, which was occupational deferment, because of my occupation, which included carrying war materials to Korea. I continued to get that deferment until 1952. In 1952, I was drafted into the army. I did my basic training in El Paso, TX. Eight weeks basic infantry training. That's where I wound up in the artillery. I guess I had something going for me, because they sent me to school to learn about radios and stuff like that. I was in a headquarters unit, so I wasn't involved in any strict disciplinary units. Somehow it worked out where there were three or four of us that went to Austria and everyone else went to Korea. 

Three of those that I went to Austria with were returned missionaries and they found out that I was a Mormon, some way or another...I don't know how. I was really impressed with the example they set for me. I used to tell them "...you don't smoke, you don't drink, but you're always busy." I watched them while I was in basic training and it seemed like they were always going somewhere and doing something. I never went anywhere much, only down to the Post Xchange to drink a few beers. I asked one of them once, "Don't you ever have a beer once in awhile to lift your spirits up?" He said, "No, I've always remembered one thing, 'If you never try it you'll never miss it.' I think I've had just as much fun as anybody." For some reason that really impressed me. From that time forward, as we were on the ship going to Italy, on our way to Austria, I remember all of us reading the Book of Mormon together at different times. 

When I got to Austria, I had saved quite a bit of money for those days. I decided while I was in the army I was going to travel all around Europe...get me a car and use up my leave time and see all there was to see over there. This was 1952 and World War II had only been over for seven years, so many of the buildings were still bombed out. There was a lot of desolation, a country on the rebound. They had a serviceman's branch there and Colonel Goatz was the branch president. I remember there were maybe a dozen active LDS Saints there. They had a little place up above a bar for their meetings on Sundays. They were extremely poor. They didn't have sufficient clothing and they couldn't get much work because they were Mormon. You had to be Catholic to get a job there (Salzburg) in those days. I had really grown quite a bit in the church in a short time. I remember they had just these wooden benches with boards laid across the base part. I remember shifting my weight and one of the boards really pinched me. Boy, it really hurt! I just about yelled out! It was a hard time for the Saints. We wrote home to our respective families and asked for clothing for the brethre there. A building plan was organized so that the Saints would have a better place to meet. In those days, if the Saints would come up with 20% of the total cost of the building, the church would put up the other 80%. The servicemen's group went all out to get that 20% to build a small chapel. I was there probably 18 months and I remember I put all the money that I originally had intended to buy a car with, a little over $400, into that building fund. I was there 18 months. By the time I had left Salzburg, we had just about $5,000 and that was just enough to get a church started. After I came home, I heard that they had bought a building lot shortly after I left. It was around the late eighties when my daughter, Ruth, served in the German Austria Mission. She served in Salzburg for a short period of time. She related to me that in Salzburg there was now a stake. I was very pleased to hear how the church had grown there in that land.