God Makes Angels and Navy Corpsmen: A KoreanA Korean War Veteran's Memories of the War and Life

By Joseph Barna

I was knocked down by a shell. As I found myself laying on my back, the half-full flamethrower tank pinning me to the ground, a North Korean soldier came at me with his bayonet. In his quilted suit, he seemed to come out of nowhere. I can still see his face and smell the garlic on his breath. As he lunged at me, I was able to turn, but he stabbed my upper left arm with his bayonet. I had a double-barrel shotgun taped on the arm of my flamethrower and gave him both barrels. I think I blew him in half. The battle kept going on around me. Weapons fire was all around me, and I heard other boys being hit and falling. I laid there feeling weak as blood from my deep wound seeped out on the Korean dirt. I must have been ready to blackout when I heard a familiar voice say, “Joe, if I don’t close up that wound, you’ll die.” (Paragraph italicized.)

From growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, through Marine Corps boot camp and training, and finally, remembering and coping with buried memories decades later, Korean War combat veteran Joseph Barna recounts his life events that will put a tear in your eye and a smile on your face.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662432439

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God Makes Angels and Navy Corpsmen

A KoreanA Korean War Veteran's Memories of the War and Life

Joseph Barna

Copyright © 2021 Joseph Barna

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-3242-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3243-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Boot Camp and Training

The War

Growing Up

At Home

Memorial Day Reflections

Thoughts on Veteran’s Day

To the unsung heroes of our wars, the Navy Corpsmen and the Army Medics. How many of us owe our lives to them? I thank them all on behalf of myself and our families.

Corpsman helping a Marine.

God Makes Angels and Navy Corpsmen

I would like to share a story about a Navy corpsman. A man who saved my life on top of a mountain in Korea. He gave me sixty-six more years of life. His name was John Jackie Kilmer. He was just a boy from Michigan who loved Marines and wanted to save as many as he could. His face is forever cemented in my mind and my heart. Jackie was tall, maybe six feet two inches, and very thin. He had a high squeaky voice, like the Wally Cox TV character Mr. Peepers. In those few quiet times between battles, I shared a bunker with Jackie, and we became good friends.

The Navy corpsman is a wounded Marine’s best hope to survive. On the battlefield, there are no doctors, or nurses. In my thirteen months in Korea, I never saw an ambulance, field hospital, or MASH unit. There were two corpsmen assigned to a platoon. During the Korean War, 108 Corpsman were killed on the battlefield.

I arrived in Korea in June of 1952. I was trucked to my unit: Company B, Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division. We ended up on a road leading to a mountain hundreds of feet over our heads. There was almost no vegetation, or trees left on the mountainsides because of the constant shelling. We got off the truck and began to walk up a trench for the final several hundred feet. I thought I was climbing to heaven, but I would find out I was going to hell. I saw a lot of tired Marines all around the trench at the top of the hill. My first real battle came here a few weeks later. This mountain was called Bunker Hill. This hill was a gateway to Seoul, and if taken by the North Koreans and the Chinese, it would have changed the outcome of the war.

Every Marine that I ever fought alongside was my hero. I watched so many fight and die. The relationship among combat Marines is beyond friendship. It is beyond love. Assigned to weapons company, the first weapon given to me was a M2 flamethrower. Fully fueled, the flamethrower weighs sixty-eight pounds. In Korea, I stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed about 157 pounds. The battle of Bunker Hill was one of the bloodiest battles of the Korean War. I witnessed courage there that I will never forget.

During the battle, I was knocked down by a shell. As I found myself laying on my back, the half-full flamethrower tank pinning me to the ground, a North Korean soldier came at me with his bayonet. In his quilted suit, he seemed to come out of nowhere. I can still see his face and smell the garlic on his breath. As he lunged at me, I was able to turn, but he stabbed my upper left arm with his bayonet. I had a double-barrel shotgun taped on the arm of my flamethrower and gave him both barrels. I think I blew him in half. The battle kept going on around me. Weapons fire was all around me, and I heard other boys being hit and falling. I laid there feeling weak as blood from my deep wound seeped out on the Korean dirt. I must have been ready to blackout when I heard a familiar voice say, Joe, if I don’t close up that wound, you’ll die. Jackie found me in the chaos. He took off my flamethrower and carried me into a bunker. He cleaned my wound. I felt no pain as he sewed it closed with the needle and thread he pulled out of his medical kit. After he tightly bandaged my arm, I returned to the ongoing firefight.

Several weeks later, Jackie was called to go to a nearby battle to help with the wounded. During this battle, he was hit with shrapnel and was taken into a bunker to be treated. From inside the bunker, he heard Marines calling out for help. Looking out, he saw two wounded men on the battlefield. The sergeant told him that if he would go out there, he would die. Jackie replied, If I don’t go out there, they will die! He crawled out to them and began to treat their wounds. As he did, a heavy round of shelling came in. Jackie threw himself over the two Marines. A shell landed so close that he received fifteen pieces of shrapnel into his body. Jackie died, but the two Marines lived. He was six days short of his twenty-second birthday.

Jackie Kilmer was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. His medal was presented to his mother. Shortly after I arrived home in 1953, I was able to call Jackie’s mother in Flint, Michigan. I told her that he was the bravest man I ever met. Jackie now rests in a grave in San Antonio, Texas. I carry a picture of my hero John Jackie Kilmer, in a pocket, close to my heart. God makes angels and Navy corpsmen.

Navy Corpsman John Jackie Kilmer

Boot Camp and Training

Induction and Boot Camp

I would like to tell the story of one boy, who, in one day, started the journey into becoming a Marine and a man.

I was drafted into the Army in November of 1951. I was told to report to Wilkes-Barre for induction. However, when I reported, a Marine Corps sergeant entered the room. He announced that he needed six recruits to fill his quota for the month. I remember that he left the room and reviewed all our paperwork. An hour or so later, he returned and read out six names. Mine was the last name read. So it was the Marine Corps, not the Army for me.

I remember the long train ride all the way to South Carolina where I would live and train for twelve weeks. We arrived at Parris Island at around midnight. We were ordered out of the bus and into long lines. Then what seemed like a seven-foot giant appeared in the middle of us. This was our drill instructor. He was yelling and hitting some of us with a cardboard tube. All I could think was What the hell am I doing here? After what seemed like hours of screaming, we were ordered into barracks. We were fifty-four scared boys with no idea what lied ahead.

The next day, we were ordered to fall out, and we were marched to the barbershop. After half an hour, fifty-four young men stood out on the parade field all without any hair on their heads. I remember that you could not recognize any of the boys that you had made friends with.

I said to the guy next to me, I’m Joe. Who are you?

I’m Roy, my buddy answered from the side of me.

Here, everyone looked the same. We did not know it at the time, but this was to teach us that we were all the same, that no one was different from each other. The Marine Corps was breaking us down to nothing and would now start the long process of building Marines. We would soon find that if one of us fouled up, all of us would pay the price with one hundred push-ups, five laps around the football field, or by cleaning up the barracks that wasn’t dirty. This taught everyone that we all had to depend on each other. No one cared what the other’s religious beliefs were, or what the color of his skin was.

After twelve hard weeks of boot camp, we finally graduated. I can’t explain the pride I felt that day on the parade field. Even that seven-foot drill sergeant may have shed a tear of pride in what we had become. We were given our first stripe and were sent home with ten days’ leave. After that, we all got our assignments. Part of us would head to Camp Pendleton in California for advanced infantry training. I was going to Camp Pendleton along with Roy and several boys from Wilkes-Barre. It was then that I knew I would end up in Korea. After six months of weapons training, I boarded a troopship with six thousand other Marines. My cruise took twenty-one days. I became so seasick that I was only able to eat for eight of those twenty-one days. My buddy Roy would bring me toast from the mess hall. Slowly, I began to eat, but I had lost ten pounds.

As the ship neared land, we saw the mountains of Korea in the distance. We knew it wouldn’t be long before we would answer the question in each of our minds: Would I be able to kill another human being?

Boot Camp Photo November 1951

Camp Pendleton, California

I wanted to reflect and talk about my time in the Marines at Camp Pendleton, California.

In November of 1951, I joined the Marine Corps. I spent twelve weeks of basic training at Cherry Point in South Carolina. After graduating from boot camp, I was given ten days of leave at home. When I returned to duty, I quickly learned that I was assigned to camp Pendleton near San Diego in California for advanced infantry training.

I would go to Southern California. This would be my first time on an airplane. Needless to say, I was a little nervous. After several hours, I was in sunny California, where all the movie stars lived! The plane landed, and there was a truck waiting for me to go to Camp Pendleton. I was hoping that it would be a limo, but I had to settle for sitting in the back of this truck. We got to Camp Pendleton and stopped at the entrance where two Marines met me and told the driver where to take me. We drove off and eventually stopped in front of a big barracks building. I didn’t have a suitcase, only a duffel bag with all my clothes. A Marine led me into the barracks and into a huge room where there must have been sixty or seventy two-story bunk beds. He showed me where mine was, and I was on top. Then a big Marine sergeant, he looked like he was six feet four inches tall, came over to me and told me what my next few months were going to be like and what we would be doing. We would be training to go to Korea.

It was late in the afternoon, so he took me to the mess hall for supper. I went into the mess hall, and the sergeant introduced me to a bunch of Marines eating their meal. He said,