Jack Ward:  

I attended Blythe schools 1st through 12th grades. I was not a straight A student. After high school, I attended one year at Palo Verde College which was in its second year of existence, sharing the former Morton Air Academy campus with the high school. I was working in the Grand Teton National Park as a beetle spotter when the Korean War began, at which time all the temporary workers in the park were sent home, because some were already receiving their call up or draft notices. Back in Blythe, I felt that I could not return to an insuffrable home situation, so I went to San Diego to join the Air Force, but could not find the recruiting station, so I joined the USMC in July 1950. Boot camp was at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot and at Camp Mathews firing range, which is now part of the UCSD campus. Near the end of boot camp, I was told that my GCT score qualified me to apply to Officer Candidate School, which I did. However, I failed the physical because I was both red-green and blue-green color blind. After boot camp, I was assigned to the Barstow Marine Corps Supply Depot, first at Daggett and then at Nebo, working in requisition and stock indicator-locator control. In May of 1951 I was promoted to corporal and shipped to Camp Pendleton for combat training, which included a bonus training trip into the Sierra Nevadas for "winter" combat training. Lucky for me, it was not winter and there was no snow. We boarded the USN troop ship USS Noble in October of 1951 and spent almost three miserable weeks on that tub before docking at Kobe, Japan. The next day, a Saturday, we were given a day's leave in Kobe, so I spent my time wandering around the city like a tourist to absorb the sights and sounds. I caught sight of a Japanese woman who must have been 7 feet tall. From a distance, I first thought she was on stilts. On a side alley that was being avoided by everyone in that milling crowd, I encountered a leper couple with a young boy, all in rags and begging for alms. I will never forget the stench of that rotting flesh. I took a rickshaw ride and a ride in a three-wheel taxi, sampled a beautiful bakery item that was as hard as rock, ate at the PX which served a steak smothered with rancid mayonaise, finally grew weary and returned to ship. That night, we sailed for Korea and ran into a violent storm. Many of the Marines had returmed tp the ship in Kobe quite drunk. There was massive, convulsive vomiting which required a massive cleanup the next day. Our ship anchored off the east coast above the 38th parallel 23 days after we sailed from San Diego, so we had to awkwardly climb down cargo nets to an LST that took us ashore. We were greeted by hundrerds of kids begging for "chop, chop money". We boarded open- bed trucks which carried my small group to the First Service Battalion, General Supply Platoon, arriving after midnight. Walking to the chow tent my first day there, I saw half a dozen young Korean boys playing an approximation of soccer on muddy ground, but the ball wobbled crazily. When I came closer, I saw the ball was a skull. That was a little shocking, but I later learned the battalion had pitched camp on what was probably a very old battle field where the dead had been placed in shallow graves, so that every time it rained the trucks turned up more bones and skulls. The second day there, I was shipped south to Wonju to the rear supply office, but after a few weeks, we were all shipped back to the First Service Battalion. The battalion had the division fuel supply depot; supplied all the division food & all the division general supplies, which was everything except ammo, weapons, and armored vehicles. The battalion, also, had the division laundry to which the front line groups sent their dirty clothes, but we washed ours by hand. There was an Army refrigeration unit attached to the battalion which served as the division morgue for all the battle casualties. I was promoted to buck sergeant, a month after arrival, had to serve as sergeant of the guard a number of times and had to take out security patrols a number of times in sub-zero weather. In late February, the whole division was moved across the peninsula to guard the area between Panmunjom and Seoul. At that time, General Supply was divided into forward and rear sections, so I was fortunate to be assigned to the rear, which gave me opportunity to visit Seoul and Inchon to continue my learning experiences. In May of 1952, I was promoted to Staff Sergeant, 22 months after I enlisted. The Korean experiences are too many to enumerate in a general account such as this. The sights of destruction, the crippled civilians, orphaned childen, were emotionally depressing, as well as heart rendering at times. The most rmotionally devastating was a viisiit to the USN Hospiital Ship USS Haven, anchored outside Inchon Harbor and passing through a large intensive care unit of seriously injured Marines, many missing limbs, blinded, badly burned, and one had his intestines resting outside his body on a rubber mat. They were all so sedated their was hardly a moan or a sign of life from any of them.. These were my age peers, and I realized that most of them would never have a half normal life again. I confess I was overcome with sorrow and choked up, and I felt guilty that I had been lucky enough to escape that maiming. I doubt that a singlle one of those unfortunate peers is still alive, but it weighed heavily on my memory to this time. This was the real price of war, maiming and death. Sad to say, there were Marines who were gung ho to become dead "heroes". Those maimed survivors in that intensive care ward were considered "lucky" to have not died, but I could see them only as unfortunate victims to live the rest of their lives handicapped from their injuries. In my view, war was destruction, slaughter, mangled bodies, with blood and guts scattered on foreign soil, and great sorrow for their families back home. It made ne enough of a pacifist to be against alll war unless absolutely necessary. IIt is always the youngest men who pay the price of war with their lives and their ruined bodies. After discharge from the Corps, I attended UCLA, UC Riverside and USC to earn my BA & MA degrees in History to embark on 32 years of high school teaching, mostly World, U.S. & European history, but English, Ecology, Geography, Math, jJournalism, Geography and a few other subjects thrown in., the last ten years before retirement, I taught Advance Placement Modern European History. My wife and I reared four children during that time. I have one grand daughter, a teacher, and two great grandchildren, and I am thankful I haven't done much to contribute to the world's population explosion, so we haven't had much worrry about our descendents' personal problems. To occupy some of my leisure time, I compiled a voluminous ancestral genealogy, and I write fiction for my own entertatinment,. My wife and I are Master Gardeners, so we spend too much time battling weeds. I have given dozens of master gaardener programs to various groups in the last decade and have organized garden shows in .both California and Missouri. Also, I serve as a city P&Z chairman and President of a Senior Citizens Housing complex, but my wife and I do little socializing, because we find it boring. We prefer to read or to watch art films. We love visiting botanical gardens and revisiting them. We do attend flower shows, but there are fewer and fewer of them. My wife and I are not bored with our lives, and our two Schnauzers keep us entertatined. There is never enough time to do all the things I would like like to do, but I suppose that my 80 plus years has something to do with slowing me down somewhat. My wife and I still have all our teeth rooted in our jaws. I no longer bound up staiirways two risers at a time, but I do exercise daily, do some garden digging, have never smoked, do not drink, have never used recreational drugs, anid avoid prescription drugs as much as I can, so I consider myself healltheir than most iin my peer group. My advice is never to become addicted to anything, never to take unnecessary risks, eat healthy, keep your emotiions under control,, keep yourself as close to your ideal weight as possible, exercise daily, keep yourself busy and your mind exercised, and stay away from doctors who want to prescribe pharmaceuticals, because those pills always create more health problems than they help. these In November,1952, I boarded the USS Pope at Inchon, a much larger troop ship than the USS Noble, and we had smooth sailing, reaching San Franciso in two weeks. After leave home, I w...Expand for more