Art Spronk tells the story of his time serving in the army during the Korean Conflict.

At dawn on June 25, 1950, (it was still June 24 in the U.S. and Europe) 90,000 communist troops of the North Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea.

One month later, on July 25, 1950, I received a letter addressed to me which had “War Department” as the return address. Uncle Sam wanted me to report to the Calumet Hotel Bus Stop at Pipestone, to go to St. Paul for a physical exam, which I did.

Thirty days later I received a letter that I passed the exam and was ordered to be at the Calumet Bus Station at Pipestone, Minnesota, on October 25, 1950, to go to an induction center. After the bus ride there was a long train ride. We arrived at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, at 1:30 a.m.

From there, we rode in buses that took us to army barracks that had stood empty since World War II – so about five years. Twelve busloads of men were told to stand in line at the supply room for their bedding – white sheets and a pillow case. The barracks had an eight-inch layer of accumulated dust on the floor. The water had not been turned on in five years. This was in the middle of the night.

I was so glad that my name was close to the end of the alphabet, because some of the names of the first half of the alphabet were called at 4 a.m. to report for K.P. (Kitchen Police). In other words: “Get out there in the kitchen and prepare breakfast for 5,000 guys, now!”

We were at Fort Leonard Wood for 10 days. Everyone got a butch haircut, underwear, work clothes, and dress uniforms. We attended classes every day and took tests to find out what our IQ was.

One of the men I was with was very homesick already. He would check his watch every hour to think about what was going on back home on the farm. He would say, “It’s 6 p.m. now, and they are doing the milking back home now….” and “Now it’s 7 p.m., and it must be suppertime back home.”

Well, his name was in the first half of the alphabet, and that group went to Camp Polk, Louisiana, for basic training. Those of us with our name in the last half of the alphabet went to Camp Carson, Colorado, which is where I was sent.

At Camp Carson, we were put into the South Dakota National Guard to fill out their ranks. They were the Cadre, we were the new Recruits. We were in training for 16 weeks.

There was a lot of classroom training, assembling and disassembling our rifles, which we learned to do in the dark. We spent a lot of time on the rifle range, with the M1 rifle, the 22 caliber carbine rifle and the 45 caliber pistol. If you missed your target, you got “Maggie’s Drawers,” which was a red flag!

My wife, Mayme, came to live in Colorado while I was there. Our daughter, Wanda, was born there. We lived in an upstairs apartment of a house in Colorado Springs.

After 16 weeks, on a Saturday morning, we were all called to stand in formation. Two commanding officers walked past all of us, pointed to some and said “You-you-you – Report to company headquarters!” Those chosen in this way were sent to South Korea. I was not one of the chosen.

In a few days, the ranks were filled with new recruits. So now, for those who stayed behind, it was back to basic training with the new recruits. This procedure went on two more times, and each time a quarter of each company was shipped out to South Korea.

In June of 1951, everyone in the 196th battalion had a 7-day furlough. We were able to drive home back to Edgerton and visit my parents and other members of our family. Mayme and Wanda stayed in Edgerton and I returned to my base the next week.

After getting back to Camp Carson, we got ready for an “overseas assignment.” We figured we were going to Korea, but we were not. We were going “overseas” to Alaska.

On July 20, 1951 the 196th battalion left Camp Carson for Fort Lewis, Washington. Five thousand men were loaded onto an army ship called The Marine Adder and headed northwest to the “Territory of Alaska.” Alaska was not yet a state. We arrived at the small village of Port Chilkoot, Alaska, where the port was too small to land a ship the size of The Marine Adder. We were re-loaded on smaller landing ship tanks to get on shore. There we received a warm welcome from the natives.

We then started on a month-long bivouac. Wearing full field pack, steel helmets, and carrying our rifle and a tent, we began our journey. We walked in two columns along the road to Tok Junction, on the Alaska Highway. One line of men walked on the left side and one column on the right side of the road, with five yards between each man. We walked 25 to 35 miles every day. Every night we would set up our tents, and every morning the cooks would have breakfast ready for us. On the fourth day we would get a ride on an army truck for 100 miles or so.

Edgerton veteran Art Spronk with an army mess kit and his photo album depicting his time of service in the army at Ft. Carson, Colorado, and the Alaskan frontier.