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War Memories in a Shoebox

War Memories in a Shoebox

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Inside a vintage shoebox that once held size 8D men’s loafers, a memorial service bulletin lies atop curled black-and-white photos, a worn prayer book, and an array of military items.

 

This boxed collection holds the memories of my dad’s time in Korea, where he served as an infantryman on the frontline during the Korean War. 

 

These documents, these images, these pieces of the past represent the stories my dad seldom shared with his family. Except for a few, including that of his buddy Ray, killed the day before he was to return home to his wife and baby daughter in Nebraska. Dad witnessed Ray’s death, a trauma that remained with him throughout his life.

 

In 2005, I wrote about my dad’s war experiences, published in God Answers Prayers, Military Edition: True Stories from People Who Serve and Those Who Love Them.

 

Dad relied on his strong faith to get him through the difficult days of war—the fear, the cold, the hunger, and the deaths of friends. The well-thumbed pages of the pocket-size prayer book gifted to him by the women of his rural Minnesota church prove the importance of prayer during those trying months on the battlefield. He prayed while embedded in foxholes and trenches, while engaged in combat, while recovering from a shrapnel wound and much more.

 

Unlike many of his Army buddies, Dad made it home. Wounded physically and mentally, but he was alive.

 

Every Memorial Day, I think of my father and his time in Korea. But I also remember those soldiers like his friend Ray, who died and who was memorialized during a special service on July 31, 1953, in Sucham-dong, Korea. My dad carried home the creased memorial service bulletin now yellowed with age and tucked inside that shoebox of war memories.

 

Below the typed list of 28 deceased soldiers’ names is this Bible verse: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). How powerful those words! And how comforting to all who heard and read them in Korea.

 

Some 10 years ago, I decided to search for Ray’s daughter. I wanted to share photos and stories of her father. With the help of a career military man brother-in-law, I quickly found Teri in southwestern Iowa. In an emotional initial phone conversation, I relayed how much her father meant to my father, how excited her dad was to return home and see his infant daughter for the first time. I scanned photos and that memorial service bulletin and mailed them to Teri. We continue to keep in touch and I hope to someday meet her.

 

War, without these personal stories, seems impersonal, simply the subject of media reports, statistics, and history books. It’s easy to distance ourselves from the personal realities of war as we go about our lives, living in a free country. Memorial Day gives us cause to pause and reflect. It gives us the opportunity to honor those who gave their lives in service to country. To think of soldiers like Ray, dead on the battlefield with a wife and infant daughter waiting for him back home in Nebraska.

 

Memorial Day reminds me to pull out that vintage shoebox, to filter through the items therein, to reread that memorial service bulletin from Korea. And to page through God Our Refuge Pocket Companion prayer book, reading these introductory words: To all who look to the Triune God for daily strength on their way toward heaven and especially to those on whom burdens lie heavy in peace or in war, this little volume is dedicated.

 

To know my dad read words of meditation, prayer, scripture and hymns therein while on the battlefields of Korea comforts me.




Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Each Memorial Day, Audrey Kletscher Helbling attends the morning Memorial Day parade and service in her southern Minnesota community. In the afternoon, she often gathers at a rural cemetery where attendees sing patriotic songs and listen to patriotic readings as they honor the war dead. While growing up, Audrey read the poem, In Flanders Fields, at the annual Memorial Day program in her rural Minnesota hometown.