The Korean War Relived: The Soldier Comes Out Of The War, But The War Lingers On Inside Him

By Leith Lyman Cunningham

War in any fashion is insanity, it is hell on earth. And the story never changes, it is always started by old men thousands of miles away from any harm or killing action themselves, as they sit around a big conference table sticking pins in maps of the world figuring out where to start the next war. Drinking champagne, eating the best foods and

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jul 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952896088

Leith Lyman Cunningham

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity... -Dwight D. Eisenhower If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. -Dwight D. Eisenhower I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America? -Dwight D. Eisenhower (sounds a lot like Trump to me) Only Americans can hurt America. -Dwight D. Eisenhower In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains. -Dwight D. Eisenhower There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs. -Dwight D. Eisenhower When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. -Dwight D. Eisenhower My name is Leith Lyman Cunningham, I was born and raised up on a horse and wagon type farm in Northern Michigan. It was a hilly farm and my father didn't believe in tractors. My father was mostly of a mind if we couldn't raise it, grow it, or hunt and kill it, we didn't need to eat it. We were poor but never really knew it because so was everyone else. We learned early on that hard work wouldn't kill us. Still, as a 17-year-old boy, I was born with a wanderlust. I always wanted to see what was over the hill and around the next curve in the road. Curiosity that killed the cat finally took hold of me and I joined the U.S. Army in 1949. I got caught up in the Korean War, wounded in action, spent the next year in an Army hospital; got married, had two kids and now write books. I hope you enjoy them."

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The Korean War Relived

Copyright © 2020 by Leith Lyman Cunningham. All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-952896-07-1

ISBN eBook: 978-1-952896-08-8

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May the great God of all that is,

bless you and yours,

with a thirst for understanding.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1:SOLDIER’S COME OUT OF THE WAR, BUT THE WAR LINGERS ON INSIDE THEM

Chapter 2:AT HOME ON A MICHIGAN FARM

Chapter 3:AT MY FATHER’S GRAVE SITE SERVICE

Chapter 4:WAR LOOMS ON THE HORIZON

Chapter 5:GETTING BACK NOW, PRIOR TO BEING SHIPPED TO KOREA

Chapter 6:FORGETTING THE KOREAN WAR IS NOT ENOUGH, MANY DON’T WANT TO REMEMBER IT

Chapter 7:FROM WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Chapter 8:MY HEART IS FILLED WITH EMPATHY TODAY

Chapter 9:OUR TRUST IN GOD IS ALL THAT IS BEING REQUIRED

Chapter 10:HELP YOURSELF TO ANOTHER HELPING OF DUMP CURED GERMAN SHEPHERD

Chapter 11:OUR BACKS AGAINST THE WALL

Chapter 12:SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T SEEM RIGHT

Chapter 13:RAW MEAT FROM THE STARS AND STRIPES NEWSPAPER

Chapter 14:WE SECURITY GUARDS HAVE THE BLOOD OF A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG KOREAN MOTHER TO BE ON OUR HANDS

Chapter 15:WE LEARNED THAT YOU DO NOT SCARE FOLKS THAT ARE BEING REQUIRED TO LIVE EVERY DAY, WELCOMING DEATH

Chapter 16:GOD IN CONTROL OF ALL THINGS, AND ALL OF THE TIME

Chapter 17:WE’RE GETTING CLOSER NOW

Chapter 18:BACK HOME COMES TO MIND

Chapter 19:BACK TO THE FRONT

Chapter 20:OPENING UP PANDORA’S BOX

Chapter 21:THE MILITARY SHOWS THEIR MERCIFUL SIDE

Chapter 22:FINALLY, BEING AIR LIFTED BACK HOME

Chapter 23:MY COMBAT BUDDY BOB, MY BEST FRIEND IN MY OLD AGE

Chapter 24:I AM SORRY THAT IT HAS COME TO THIS: A SOLDIER’S LAST WORDS

Chapter 25:ALL LAWS SEEMINGLY SUSPENDED DURING WAR

Chapter 26:MY TIME HAD COME

Chapter 27:HELP ME BE OBEDIENT TO HE WHOM RULES THE UNIVERSE

Chapter 28:YOU BE THE JUDGE

Chapter 29:WE DO NOT KNOW ALL THINGS, BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING KEPT FROM US

Chapter 30:THEN ON MARCH THE 7TH 1951 MY FEET HAD BEEN FROZEN, AND TWO DAYS LATER ON MARCH 9TH I WAS LOADED ONTO A PLANE FOR AN ARMY HOSPITAL IN OSAKA, JAPAN

INTRODUCTION

This is a picture of Inchon Korea along about September of 1950 when the First Marine and the Seventh Army Division made an amphibious landing and went ashore on full attack mode. The North Korean enemy caught by surprise and under manned, our forces quickly took control of the area. Making quick work of sending the enemy back to whomever god they worshiped and served, or called upon to save them. The enemy dug into underground bunkers were being burned out by flame throwers, grenade, rifle fire or whatever else it took to get the job done. Bull dozers came in and buried many of them alive as the city of Inchon was being made ready to receive our own goods and war materials to hammer the enemy with in hopes of ending the Korean War.

The North Korean enemy just melted into the existing population, making it impossible to determine who was from the north and who was from the south. Our Port Transportation Company came in on the heels of the Inchon invasion to set up the needed machinery and other things needed to begin immediately to ship needed supplies and war fighting equipment to our comrades on the frontlines. I had been picked to be a security guard to monitor the happenings going on around the waterfront. The starving Koreans were notorious thieves and it was our job to keep them from stealing thing coming off ships intended for our own troops. We were issued live ammunition and given the order to shoot to kill. Many unfortunate Korean dock workers or the enemy passing themselves off as a South Korean lingering in their midst, ended up having to pay the ultimate cost with their bullet riddled dead body. I talk about this in another place in this book.

THE KOREAN WAR RELIVED

This will be a reflection back in time of things that can and do happen on a regular daily basis during war time while being soldiers sent there to do the dirty work of killing their fellow man, woman and children when having to operate on the frontline during combat? And beyond that are those up close to the actual fighting and dying, in rear echelon support outfits to keep up in supplying the needed things required to fight and to win a war. I had spent time in both frontline combat and being in rear echelon to serve and supply those at the front. My hope, wishes and desires are to talk about things that many don’t even like to hear about, and yet do it in a way that does inform and educate folks as to exactly what goes on in all wars.

That knowing these things we should avoid and learn to hate the insanity of war with a purple passion. We can then add to these atrocities performed against our brutal enemy fellowman or woman that is even more brutal, hateful and blood thirsty than ourselves. We and they being programmed and trained by our own military to make us all battle ready to exercise our military vocation that has become our sworn duty to make sure that the other bastard dies for their country, before we have to be a death statistic for ours. I hope my less than proper language in making a point at times will not hinder one from being informed about the normal practices of war, being told only by those that have served in that capacity. With the world as it is today where even our own nation is divided, with one half against the other, and other nations waiting to pounce, it is likely to come to a head within the lifetime of some of you reading these words here now. It might pay you back with great dividends to be aware of what happens on a regular basis, once war has been declared against another nation. My written experiences written down for your edification might help the reader to survive in knowing certain things I will reveal.

It is a personal account written by myself Leith Cunningham, I am a soldier that spent time on frontline duty on the brutal battlefields of Korea during 1950 and 1951. I spend some time talking about the impossible weather conditions the troops were being required to fight and if necessary, to die in, to maintain the freedom within our country, which we have enjoyed for so long. Which turned out to be much, much more demanding and miserable because of a blunder that General Douglas MacArthur made, while refusing to believe his own intelligence sources that kept reporting the massing of the Communist Chinese Forces (CCF) at the Yalu river, a mega army of multiple hundreds and thousands of Chinese soldiers making ready to attack our military in full and overwhelming force in a surprise attack.

Many of our own soldiers lived through misery and absolute hell that first winter and many more that should not have had to, died horrible and excruciatingly painful deaths because of MacArthur’s blunder. Mac Arthur was as a god to the Japanese by this time, as he ruled them as though he was one. Their own leader was a god in their eyes, and their god had to bow down low to their new MacArthur god. So, it made him a super god of some sort. Within that position of authority, it became easy for him to look at himself and feel the same way too. It became the reason finally that President Harry Truman had to fire him and put General Matthew Ridgway in charge of the Korean War. Ridgway became the general that Mac Arthur should have been. He ruled the troops from the front, unlike Mac Arthur who ruled way back in the rear waiting for the right photo opportunity to expound upon his own greatness.

No one can deny Mac Arthurs great leadership during WW11, but in Korea he was aligning himself up to look like the almighty king that he reasoned himself to be, and 5300 men had to suffer severe frostbite cases that first year in the Korean War. Both in freezing off body parts and freezing to death on the mountains and in the stinking rice paddies of Korea. I go on and tell you about the after effects that myself and multiple thousands of other soldiers have had to suffer through, during their own combat experiences of kill or be killed, in bloody heart stopping action that never seemed to end in that first year of the Korean War. Then after going home supposing it was all over with, only to find out that in reality, it hadn’t gone away at all, it had just moved inside and gone to work on other body parts and continued on doing the dirty work of overtaking and anchoring the memories that you wanted to forget, to grow in intensity and stick in your guts and your whole being even worse yet than when they had actually happened.

Where reliving it became a whole different ball game. I had turned to self-medication in an attempt to heal a sick and troubled mind, heart, body and soul. Eventually, after a couple of decade or so later, with a lot of love, kindness and understanding from my wife along the way, I was able to with the help of the VA later on in identifying the source of the problem being caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD, to understand what was happening in my insides and in my now boggled mind.

A kind of mental, emotional, spiritual and to a degree, a physical breakdown was moving in to keep me company. I found it difficult to endure having someone get in my face in any kind of a correctional way, or in their raising their voice to me up front and personal without having a near uncontrollable urge to smack them in the mouth. And to many times that is what happened, which was causing a lot of problems. It wasn’t working well for me and only seemed to be getting worse until one night in my early thirties in Henry’s bar in Reed City, Michigan when a convict just released from Jackson prison, along with the bar owner’s son had beaten hell out of me and left me with a piece of one ear dangling loose and being black and blue all over my body when I woke up in the morning. I never took another drink of booze of any kind for over seven years after that episode. But this was after having to lose everything that myself and my family had worked hard for and earned, three different times, before getting some relief. The biggest change came to my life when I realized that God was revealing the truth of life and death to me, the healing since then is well on its way now.

We will hear a little about my early younger life on a farm in northern lower Michigan, out east of Fife Lake, Michigan, a little village where everyone knows everyone else, and like all local rural areas, everyone likes to mind everyone else’s business a little too much, as well. An early picture about my start in life and the direction it has taken along the way. We will begin to understand how I have come to believe that God has used all aspects of my life, including the blood and gore and the mindboggling misery of the Korean War, to drive me in the way that He would have me to go. With that belief and knowledge in mind, I now believe that all things are possible with God. I believe that I am the living proof of this fact. God has taken a rebellious high school dropout with a ninth-grade education and a twisted mind, and is turning myself into a useful tool in His hands. God has called me to be an ambassador for the soon coming kingdom of God to be established right here on earth. My vow to God, is to not squander the past fifty-five years of steady and intense spiritual education I have been receiving from Him, and now am involved in passing it on to others.

Although this book is basically about war and the specific problems that go along with it, when a soldier is being required to kill, maim and destroy his own fellowman, still I am compelled to bring God into the picture at certain times, because it is God that will always determine the destiny of all of mankind and in fact all of creation. Any attempt at teaching and passing the truth and the reality of life onto others becomes an operation of futility while leaving God out of the equation. I will be revealing some of my own war experiences, the experiences of other comrades who have been there and done that. As well as the documentation of others who have written their own accounts for others to learn from.

The author on the right at 17 years old.

Chapter 1

SOLDIER’S COME OUT OF THE WAR,

BUT THE WAR LINGERS ON INSIDE THEM

Prior to enlisting in the United States of America Army, I will reveal a little about myself as a farm boy with wanderlust, and a desire to see the world and what it had to offer for me. I was just bursting at the seams to get out from under my father’s iron handed rule, because just by my being in his sight and hearing, somehow seemed to aggravate and agitate him. I cannot remember back far enough to a time that I had not wanted to escape his wrath that he seemed to receive comfort of some kind from, his judging and condemning the way that I did everything. Including how I held a shovel to shovel cow shit out of the barn, along with my brother Glade, while we were back home on the farm. Just getting the job done somehow never seemed to be quite enough to please him, consequently I just quit trying and begin to work toward being a thorn in his side.

During all of my early years while growing up including the day I left home for good. As soon as I turned seventeen and had joined the army. I remember only one time in all of my life, that he had actually picked me up and carried me to my mother to get her to help, it meant he had to touch and hold me. It was so foreign to me that it is still embedded in my mind and heart to this day. I had stepped on some glass shards and had cut my foot really bad, and it wouldn’t have looked too good to the neighbors that might have stopped in or have been passing by and had witnessed me crawling across the yard to the house, to have my mother take care of it, while my dad was still in sight. To my dads’ credit on that day, he even seemed somewhat caring, and didn’t give me the usual correction I was used to getting.

I have decided to write about some experiences from my life being raised up on a northern Michigan farm, and the early direction that my life and life style was being shaped and molded in. The character traits and the environment in which I grew up in were being formed within me, and I began to follow the line of the least resistance. Mostly going along to get along, while pushing the limits to the edge. My father let me know that he didn’t like me, and I wasn’t going to make it easy on him in my actions, that there wasn’t any love lost between us. I knew back then something was missing in my life, I didn’t realize at the time, but it is a void that has been created within each one us, that only God can fill. We have all been created in that way and cannot become mature until that realm of truth be fulfilled. It is not something that God nor Jesus Christ would ever let fall by the wayside. At this point in time only Jesus Christ, the Son of God has attained to that level of wisdom, understanding, power, authority, self-control, and has become as His Father God is. Which is the final destiny of all of mankind.

My older Brother Glade, the sibling I was the closest with, was an outgoing individual whom everyone seemed to like to be around and listen to his tall tales that he would embellish upon, as if he had already lived several lives filled with unique experiences. Glade had the diplomacy of a politician that had a certain flair that attracted people, and a unique gift of gab. He could squeeze that last little dab of intrigue out of his stories, to keep folks on the edge of their seats. He could charm a snake out of a rock pile or the panties off a girl before she would realize they were gone. It was just the way things were for him. He was my best friend, at least when we weren’t fighting with one another about something. He was only a year and eight months older than myself, but he protected me with all that was within himself to do, often at his own peril, he would take a whipping for things I had coming, and had earned for myself.

A sad and painful segment of my life

During December 1961 I got a phone call from Glade and he was in the VA Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. They had found a brain tumor in his head the size of an orange. He had been having balance problems, memory problems and other traumatic issues that could not be explained. They made preparations to operate and remove the tumor. He had asked if I would come down and be with him during this traumatic event that was about to happen. We had been given a couple extra days to visit and talk about the things he would like happen if he didn’t make it. He asked me to make sure he would not be placed by an open window after his operation and before he returned to consciousness. He had witnessed it causing the death of another patient, and didn’t want it to happen to him. He asked me to not let them perform an autopsy on him, should he die. He had been the head detective on the Gallup, New Mexico police department at one time and told me how he had witnessed an autopsy being performed on a person, and when they had finished, they had just dumped skin, blood, bones, brains and everything that went with it in the stomach and chest cavity.

He told me where he wanted to be buried, and knew that his choice wouldn’t set well with our father. I had promised him that I would see that his wishes were to be carried out. I did so at the time that his early death at thirty-one years of age became a reality. The day of the operation came and they prepared him for surgery and wheeled him into the operating room. It was three days before Christmas and the spirits were being passed around freely. A lot of time had gone by before we got any word on the progress that was going on, and it wasn’t good. They had damaged to much of his brain in attempting to remove the tumor and continued on then, in trying to get the bleeding stopped. Then the woman doctor that had performed the operation came in to tell myself and his wife that was with me, the news. She told us they had transfused him with 32 units of blood before throwing in the towel and the only part of his brain that was still working was the part that makes one breathe. Then she told us we could go in and see him, still on the gurney.

I held one of his hands and put the other hand under the sheets that covered him and felt for a pulse. He had a pulse and as I talked to him his complexion changed and tears began to run down his face. I knew then that someone had lied to me, he was aware I was there, but couldn’t respond. His breaths were more erratic and strained as he choked and gurgled out his last breath of life. I had thought I had become immune to death and dying because of all of it I had seen in Korea. But I wasn’t at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was 29 at the time and he was 31, and in a split second of time, my closest blood brother was gone. It is right near the top of everything I have ever had to endure and it took a long time to be able to endure it.

Still, because of my up-bringing in being brought up in a home that didn’t show emotions, it took me a year to be able to cry about it in the open. A mutual friend of both Glade and myself, had stopped in to visit one day that I had not seen in quite a while. He was more like a brother then a friend, we had known each other all of our lives. He was also a Korean War veteran that saw front-line combat action against the Chinese, and had been wounded on Easter day 1951.We had got to reminiscing about the past fun times we had together, and about some of the things that happened in Korea and we had drunk a few beers together, and I broke down and couldn’t quit crying, that had gone on for some time. It finally just had to come out. I was finally able to get squared away and regain my composure, but on the one hand I felt like a weakling for breaking down, but as time went by it had felt good to get it off my chest.

Raised by a father that didn’t like me

Our father was a task master that I could never please, because he didn’t like the way I did anything, and was quick to point it out to me. Glade was a people pleaser and quickly agreed with anything and everything that our father wanted to hear, at least to his face. Because he hated confrontation with others. It mattered not how he felt inside about it. I believe that I am the only one who knew how much that really affected him on the inside. Through gritted teeth and clinched fists, he would seethe with a red-hot rage, in those times when we were together alone, on how much he had to cow tow to get along with our father. And for the favoritism he always showed our younger brother Marcel, and other injustices he hated to see happen.

Since I knew I couldn’t please our father anyway, I didn’t even try and became a bigger and bigger thorn in his side. On top of that my father had always accused my mother of being unfaithful, claiming someone else was my father, and not himself. His proof rested upon the fact that my hair was darker than either my older brother Glade or our younger brother Marcel. Marcel was his obvious favorite and he pointed that out on many occasions, he would gaze off into the sunset with a pleasing smile in his eyes, reminiscing to himself about times gone by when he was a young man still at home with his brother Harry. Then he would remind us that Marcel reminded him of his own younger brother Harry that had died as a teenager during the flu epidemic of 1918, while my dad was fighting the German Army in France during WW One.

The older we got the worse things became for both Glade and myself. Whenever we were by ourselves and alone, we would reminisce about how great it would be, in getting out away from the no nonsense and iron hand of our father. He never seemed to have any kind words or any praise at all for Glade and myself. He wasn’t a fun person at all in those years. From about ten years old during the second World War, when all of my uncles, cousins, my half-brother Teddy and friends that were old enough, started joining the military service. Glade and I would talk about joining up too, it became a constant part of our conversation. I had learned as a kid to hate the Germans and the Japanese in general, because of what I could see and feel with my own eyes and ears. I wanted to be a part of the force that would make them pay with their lives for attacking and killing so many of my friends and family members that I shook hands with, said good-by to and never seen them again. People that I knew personally were coming home dead or all shot to hell because of their brutality as a people. Being mostly of German blood myself, I hated the Japanese worse. Life, death and war became a reality for both Glade and myself, we had many family members that served in WW2.

We anxiously awaited to go to war

We knew within a few years our time would come, as it became foremost in our mind at the time. My mother had taught us to shoot a 12gage double barrel shotgun and how to build a fire and to survive in the woods if we ever got lost. She wouldn’t allow us to go into the woods without a knife, an airtight container with farmer matches to keep them dry and a needle and thread inside. Along with that she had grown up in a large family of 12 and her father was a hunter, trapper and had been involved in floating logs down the Manistee river to the saw mills further south. My mother being the oldest child was raised to hunt, trap and do things that normally a man would do. Grandpa Pitz taught our mother how to survive in the wild. She knew many things that were eatable, grown in the wild. She had bought both Glade and I a rim fire 22 rifle. I credit my mother more than anyone else, for teaching me how to live and survive outside. Without it, I doubt if I would have survived Korea.

Glade and I spent a lot of our time playing war, he with his Mossberg 22 rifle and myself with a Marlin 22 rifle. Starlings, sparrows, chip-monks, squirrels, wood-chucks, porky-pines, rabbits and other varmints became the enemy. Ma had taught us that a porcupine was known as a lost man’s friend, and how to climb a tree and get one out if we didn’t have a gun. How to kill it, skin it, gut it out, and build a fire to roast it over. When our cats and dogs had to be put down, our mother was always the one that had to do it. Although my father was a combat soldier in WW 1 he could no longer tolerate the dealing with blood in any way. After the demise of the animals having to be put down, such as our pet cats or dogs, Glade and I would send them away in style, we would hold a make-believe memorial, say a couple words that we had heard on the radio over them and make a cement or a wooden box to bury them in. I still know pretty close to where I could find some of them yet to this day. By that time during WW11 our older brother Teddy was with the 101st Airborne Glider Infantry Division serving at the battle of the bulge.

I wrote him so many letters back then, that I still know his serial number as well as I know my own. My brother Teddy’s spirit returned back to God who had given it to him at his physical birth, a couple years ago now, on November 11, 2014, on Veterans Day while myself and a group of veterans were celebrating Veterans Day at the Cadillac grill in Cadillac, Michigan. By enjoying an awesome dinner and a belly dance show I had arranged to come in and entertain us. Teddy’s daughter and her son was able to have been there as well. My brother Teddy had been the last living member alive of the 101st Glider Infantry Division section that he had served in. Teddy was the smallest one of us, but was also the toughest. He never in his life backed down from a physical fight that I know of, and could put the boots to more than one alone on a regular basis. I witnessed four of the so-called toughest guys his age in our area, run away from him and lock themselves in their car. Threatening him through the window with a jack handle wrench, but to scared and in fear of coming out, because he had whipped them all before.

Chapter 2

AT HOME ON A MICHIGAN FARM

There came a nice warm spring day when my brother Glade, myself and several kids that went to a country school with us, took a notion to play hooky for the day. The country school is still standing across the road from where we have lived for the past fifty-seven years now. We decided to skip school on this nice, warm and sunny spring day, probably about mid-April, because there was still a little snow in patches around on the ground and in the woods. We were all having a good old time playing around this one pond that we all knew well, and then suddenly an old neighbor man we all knew was out with a team of horses and a farm wagon picking up wood wherever he could find it, to last him through till spring and summer came on. We all hollered out, hello Ray, to him as he went on about his business. Never giving it any thought at all that he would exercise his civic duty and hustle right on over to pass the news onto our father.

Ray Fuller turns rat

We went to the same school as his daughter Jessie was going to. His name was Ray Fuller, and he no doubt after observing the situation, decided the proper and neighborly thing to do was to go and tell our father. As we continued on and left that area. We had gone on to a lake in the area. In the spring time is when we all like to cut loose a little and enjoy the warmth of the outside sun that has been hidden all too long during the winter months. In our efforts to continue on with the fun we were having, we were all having a grand old time. One of our group had looked up and had alerted the others, that our father was coming straight at us with steam coming out of both ears. (a slight exaggeration) But he sure didn’t look in a playful mood. Our dad knew and used every curse word known to mankind to curse, swear and use the name of God in vain on Glade and myself and his horses, as long as there wasn’t any other adult around to hear, and witness it.

Spare the rod and spoil the child

On his way to where we were at, he had leaned over and picked up a part of an old rotten fence post, and broke a part of it off to get down to good whipping wood and I was the first one that he had caught up with, he got an iron grip on me and began the worst beating I have ever had in my life. Looking back at it I have come to the conclusion that two things caused it to be so severe. Number one, I think he had been waiting for a long time for the right set of circumstances and a good excuse to take place that would justify and salve over his mind and conscience for something he had been wanting to do for a long time, and here it was being dropped right in his lap. He had gone right to work on me and had probably at one time or another remembered the words in the bible that had cautioned him about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

And secondly, he prided himself as being a good neighbor that wouldn’t put up with such flagrant disobedience to blacken and tear down his good name by skipping school. He rightly so, taught us the value of maintaining a good name, but in his desire to make me pay for something that his own mind was telling him was a fact, he had gone a tad over the line of common sense and in wondering what his neighbor may have thought about the level of punishment compared to the offence he had just committed might do to his name, if the neighbor had been there to witness it. Those memories stay alive in my mind, heart and soul, just as vivid as they had come about and took place seventy some years ago.

We all should learn to operate in such a manner that is pleasing and a delight in the eyes of the unseen God of all that exists. In that way, no one can judge or condemn us in any way, in anything we do, at least that matters to God. Our mode of operation should be based upon what God wills, wants, or desires to happen, not on what carnal mankind wishes, wants, desires to happen that opposes God. The old man had scared the other neighbor kids half to death and all we could see of them is their hind ends heading for their own home. This experience, along with the difference in how my father treated me as opposed to our younger brother especially has had a lifelong negative effect on the mindset I began to take on to insure and to protect myself against anyone in life whom I sensed was out to put the hurt on myself in any way. I think I sort of reasoned I would get them before they could get me. It has cost me more than a lot of problems that I have brought upon myself.

A couple days later, after the beating my father had given me, my mother had seen me in my underwear and she had gone completely ballistic when she seen that I was black and blue from the back of my neck to the heels of my feet. She wasted no time at all, in catching up with my father in the yard. She approached him like a mother Grizzly Bear and