Clifford L. Wilcox

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C:        Clifford L. Wilcox.  CLIFFORD L. Wilcox, WILCOX.  Born April the 15^th,

I:          April 15^th?
C:        Nineteen twenty-five.

I:          Um hm.  Where were you born?
C:        Archer, Idaho, southeastern Idaho.

I:          Um.  So, please tell me about your family background, your siblings and the school you went through.

 

0:00:30

C:        Okay.  It was a little town south of Rexburg, Idaho, a rural community, a small farm.  My dad had only about 50 acres of land.  One of the great disasters in our life occurred when my mother passed away.

I:          Oh.
C:        When I was 2 ½ years of age.  Left my father with a family of seven children.

 

0:00:59

The oldest 14 years, the youngest twin boys 10 days old.

I:          So, you don’t remember your mom.

C:        I don’t remember any of her physical characteristics.  But I do remember at the time of the funeral my grandmother Gilbert arm in arm with my father.

I:          Um hm.

C:        Paced up and down the road next to the burial site.

 

0:01:28

Grandma Gilbert said time and time again, (INAUDIBLE), but he couldn’t be consoled.  And at that time, they tended to close the burial, the gravesite in the presence of the funeral party.  And that only added to the grief and sorrow, I think.  So, that was a difficult time in our lives.  The Great Depression occurred right shortly after.

I:          Yes.  Please tell me about it.

 

0:02:00

How severe was that?  How did it affect your life and family?
C:        It affected us much less than it did with the people that lived in the city because we could grow our own food.  And we had to milk cows.  We would have a beef every winter, slaughter a beef and pigs and those kinds of things.  So, we got along reasonably well at that time under those conditions.

 

0:02:29

I:          So, what school did you go through?
C:        Madison High School, Rexburg, Idaho. Then I graduated from the University in Utah State.

I:          When did you graduate high school?
C:        Pardon?
I:          When did you graduate high school?
C:        Nineteen forty-three.

I:          And that was during World War II, right?
C:        Yes.  War was on all the time that I was in high school, yeah.

I:          And were you planning on being part of the War?

 

0:03:00

C:        Yes.  World War II, you perhaps know that it was a popular war if you can consider a war to be popular.  Almost all of my classmates who graduated in 1943 went into the Service.
I:          Um.
C:        My dad had me deferred from the draft.

I:          Um.

C:        It would have left him alone on the farm.

I:          Yeah.
C:        So, I didn’t go into Service right at that time.

0:03:29
However later, I don’t know how this came about.  But I volunteered in 1946 to join the Army primarily for the purpose of getting access to the GI Bill of Rights, you know that?
I:          Yeah.  So, you knew about the GI Bill?

C:        Yes.

I:          Tell me about what did you know about the GI Bill at the time?

C:        Well, mostly that there was benefits and support for education.

 

0:03:59

And so, we charted our route in life and decided we would try education. I graduated from Utah State.  And then from the University of Minnesota.

I:          What do you mean?  You went, how long were you in Utah State?
C:        Three years.
I:          It’s a college?
C:        Yes.  Utah State Agricultural College.

I:          Oh, Agriculture College.

C:        Um hm.

I:          And what was your major?

 

0:04:28

C:        Dairy Husbandry.

I:          Oh.  And then you went from there to

C:        I went into the Service.
I:          No, after Utah State Agricultural College, you went to the University of Utah?

C:        No, University of Minnesota.

I:          Oh.  When was it?

C:        I went back to Minnesota, let’s see.  I have to think about this a little, in 1955.

 

0:04:58

I:          Oh.  After the War.

C:        Yeah, after the War.

I:          So, after you graduated from Utah State Agricultural College, that was around 1949, right?
C:        Yes.

I:          Did you know anything about Korea?  Did you know anything about Asia?
C:        Very, very little.  Very little.

I:          Tell me.

 

0:05:28

C:        Japan, they bombed Pearl Harbor.  We didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was.  And wasn’t much concerned that.

I:          So, you didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was?
C:        No.  And, we didn’t think the War would last very long, that our nation would be able to defeat Japan rather easily.  But that was not the case.

I:          Hm.

 

0:05:58

C:        So, throughout the War, and then five years after the War, the Korean War came along.
I:          That’s right.

C:        Yeah.

I:          So, you knew nothing about Korea.

C:        No.

I:          And then, what happened to you after you graduated from Utah State Agricultural College?  What did you do?

C:        Uh, oh I took several jobs in dairy, dairy husbandry.

I:          Um hm.

C:        Not doing well.

 

0:06:30

I:          Um hm.

C:        And I had some friends, a couple of friends who had gone back to the University of Minnesota, had a contact there.  And so, I applied, and I went to school at the University of Minnesota in 1955.

I:          Right.  What did you study there?

C:        Dairy Husbandry.

I:          Again?
C:        Again.

I:          And, so then, did you go to Korea?

 

0:06:59

C:        Uh, yes, uh.  I went to Korea in January of 1952.

I:          So, please tell me about that.  You said that you enlisted into the Army in 1946.  Did you receive any military training before you left for Korea?

C:        Yes. I’d served one tour of duty in the Army occupation in Japan.

 

0:07:28

I:          Oh, you were in Japan.  When did you leave for Japan?
C:        I left in 1946, December the 31^st.  It was New Years’ night.

I:          How long did you stay there?

C:        I spent a year in Japan.

I:          Uh huh.

C:        And it was a very good tour of duty for me.  I was a heavy equipment operator

I:          Um hm.

C:        Operated a big clam shell shovel.

 

0:07:57

And our unit was laying the landing strip for B29 bombers at that time in Yokota Air Base in Japan.

I:          And then you went to Utah College, right?
C:        I gotta think about that for a minute.  I’d gone to, yes.  Then I went home and went to Utah State, yes.

I:          Um hm.

C:        Right.

I:          And then you went to Korea?
C:        Yes.
I:          Yes.

 

0:08:27

So, where did you arrive in Korea in January of 1952?

C:        I left, I got, I arrived in Korea in March of 1952.

I:          Where?
C:        I joined the 987thg Field Artillery Battalion, Battery B.  And that unit was stationed up right on the 38^th Parallel.

 

0:08:56

I was an officer at that time, a commissioned officer.

I:          Oh.

C:        First Lieutenant.
I:          First Lieutenant.
C:        Um hm.

I:          Did you arrive in Inchon or Pusan?  Inchon, right?
C:        Pusan.

I:          Oh, you arrived in Pusan?

C:        Yes.

I:          And then you went up to 38^th Parallel?

C:        Went up to Seoul and then went across the Peninsula to Chinchon.

I:          Um hm.

 

0:02:25

C:        And over the head waters of the Pusan River.

I:          Um hm.

C:        And the Kumsong River.

I:          Um hm.

C:        You know those.

I:          So, what was your responsibility as a First Lieutenant at the time?

C:        Well, I spent several times as a Forward Observer for a Field Artillery.  I was on hill number, let’s see. I gotta think about that.  May I have just a minute?

 

0:09:57

Anyway, as a Forward Observer, my first unit, my first time out was a full mile in front of the main line of resistance.

I:          Yeah.

C:        Two thousand yards.

I:          What kind of dangerous situations are we talking about here?  Forward Observer? Tell me the typical day that you worked as a Forward Observer or in charge of those.

C:        Okay.  A Forward Observer is a real threat to the enemy in that they can control a tremendous amount of artillery fire.

 

0:10:32

So, you’re very vulnerable, and if they can pick you off, it’s a credit to them in doing that.  When I first went there, it was a quiet time of the War.  There wasn’t a whole lot going on.

I:          Um.
C:        So, we just kind of held the line and waited for developments, you know.

I:          Was that around Punch Bowl area or Kumhwa Valley?

 

0:10:59

C:        I tell you, I don’t know either of those locations except I know the name.
I:          Where did you sleep?  Was it a bunker or was it in the tent?  How was it?
C:        When I was at the Forward Observer Post, it was in a cave on the backside of the hill.

I:          Is it a natural cave or manmade cave, right?

C:        It was kind of a manmade cave.

I:          Uh huh.

C:        You may be familiar that the Koreans and perhaps in earlier years would build their homes in such a way they had a false floor.

I:          Yes.

 

0:11:31

C:        And they could build a fire in one end and vent out the top end.

I:          Yeah.
C:        When we got there, that cave was already fixed that way.  And it was cold.  We froze the first night or two I was up there.

I:          Um hm.

C:        And then we decided to build that fire and try that Korean principal of heating your bed.

I:          Right.

 

0:12:00

C:        Well, it worked very, very well.  It worked so well that it was too hot for us to sleep.  And there was nothing we could do about it.  We just had to wait it out.  And we finally got to laughing about it, and one of my men was a real character.  He got to explain it in great detail how his rear end was being burned, you know.

 

0:12:27

And we began to laugh and hoot and holler about that.  I think the Korean soldiers must have thought we were either drunk or a bunch of nuts.

I:          What were you thinking?  Why am I here?  Did you regret?
C:        I thought about why I’m here a number of times.  The first night when I joined the Battery, two of our artillery pieces fired right in the middle of the night.  And it woke me up of course.

 

0:12:59

And I thought again what in the world am I doing here?  But it was harassment fire.  A target would be picked out, and every night they would fire those two pieces.

I:          To scare you out.

C:        It scared me because I heard that shell going out across the valleys and the [swails], you know echoing back and exploding in enemy territory.  There I was in the War.

 

0:13:28

I:          And what was your answer to your question why am I here?
C:        I don’t know that there was an answer.  We were there because I was sent there.

I:          Did you know what you were fighting against?
C:        In many ways yes, yes.  We had troop information and education programs telling about the War, why we were there, those kinds of things.

 

0:13:57

And that was very helpful to us.

I:          What was it you were against?
C:        Communism.  And the fact that I’ve often thought if President Truman had not responded to the attack of the north on South Korea, I don’t know what this world would be like today.

I:          Right.
C:        But he did respond.  And it was a bitter struggle.

 

0:14:27

And there was many restraints.  We had that War won a number of times.  Got up to the Yalu River, couldn’t bomb across the river, those kind of things, restrictions.  Worst winter in history in North Korea.  It was a very tough time.  So, they fought up and down that Peninsula a number of times.

I:          How was your soldier?  How were they?

C:        We had a very good unit.

 

0:14:58

They were a National Guard unit from Canton, Ohio called Intact. So, they were a very good unit.  And we had some very, very good men, very good men. I related to them very well.  And I think they related to me pretty well, too.  We got along very, very well.

I:          Any trouble you remember?
C:        Nope.

I:          No, not at all?

C:        No.  The First Commanding officer in the Battery, I didn’t like him at all.

 

0:15:28

I:          Why?
C:        He was a vulgar, loud-mouth guy, and he loved to tell his exploits with the women in great detail.  I don’t know long I’d been able to take him.  But fortunately, Captain Max Rosenbaum was appointed as the Battery Commander.  He was Jewish and the best Commanding Officer I ever served under.

I:          Um hm.

 

0:15:58

C:        It was a great experience.

I:          Did you believe in God?
C:        You bet.

I:          Uh huh.  So, did you pray?
C:        Yes indeed.

I:          What did you pray?  How did you pray?

C:        Well one thing. For my own safety.  And that we might be successful in our problem there, those kinds of things, you know.

 

0:16:28

I:          Did you read the Bible?  Did you have a Bible at the time?
C:        I did, yes.  And I read it, and I set up on the outpost, the Forward Observer post, often there was not much going on. And you had a lot of time, you know?  So yes, I read it, yeah.

I:          What was your favorite verse or the chapter or the book, remember?
C:        Oh gosh.  I don’t know that I can come up with one.  But we had a Catholic priest.

I:          Hm.

 

0:16:56

C:        Who come to visit our unit periodically.  And he came in one time in August I believe, and a monsoon struck.  You familiar with monsoons?
I:          Oh yeah.
C:        In Korea.

I:          Uh huh.
C:        Well, the bridge went out behind him over the Kumsong River.

I:          Um hm.
C:        And we couldn’t get him out.  So, a lot of them said he was a jolly old guy.  Must have been 30, 35 years of age, you know.

 

0:17:27

And he said I’m gonna preach every hour on the hour until you get me out of here.

I:          Um.
C:        But he did have to stay for two or three days before we could get him out.

I:          What was the most difficult for you to stay there and to fight there in Korea?

C:        The Forward Observer thing was the toughest part of my service.

 

0:17:54

After I’d been there two or three months, I was promoted to First Lieutenant.  And as other officers rotated out and went home, I could move up.  So, I became Executive Officer, second in command of the Battery.  Now for me, for a little kid from the hills of Idaho, that was pretty heavy stuff.

 

0:18:22

Then I had a number

I:          Can you give me the detail why it was so difficult to you?  Was that because of the danger or what is it?

C:        It was the danger.  Also, the living conditions up on the hill was very poor.

I:          Tell me.
C:        Well, you, we had three in laborers would haul our stuff up for us.

 

0:18:53

And water was one of the most important things.  Well, it was pretty precious stuff, you know.  And you didn’t have water to wash with. You only had water to drink.  So, at the end of five or six days, you got pretty grimy, you know, and dirty.

I:          What else? Where did you sleep?

C:        We slept in our cave.  Like I said, it wasn’t, most of the time there wasn’t much going on.

 

0:19:24

But I got up one morning and went up to the foxhole.  It was deep.  You could get down into it, you know.  And I just settled down and I heard an artillery piece fire in the distance.  And the shells seemed to go right over my head.  They could see us.  They had observation on our post.  Well, I wanted to find out if I could get the location of that piece.  Anyway, the next round came,

 

0:19:54

And it landed just in front of me.

I:          Wow.

C:        Threw dirt all over me.  There was no shrapnel in it.  So,

I:          Lucky.

C:        Yeah.  If they’d have raised just one notch, I’d have been a statistic.

I:          Um hm.

C:        In the Korean War.

I:          Yeah.  You said that you were promoted to Second Lieutenant, no, First Lieutenant.

C:        First Lieutenant.

 

0:20:25

I:          How much were you paid?
C:        I don’t remember.

I:          As a First Lieutenant.

C:        It was around $450 a month, I think.

I:          That’s quite a lot.

C:        At that time, yes.

I:          Yeah.   What did you do with that money?

C:        Sent it home.
I:          To whom?  Your father or who?
C:        To my wife.

I:          Oh, you were married?
C:        Oh yes.

I:          Oh, you didn’t tell me about that.

0:20:52

C:        Well, let me tell you this story.

I:          When did you marry?
C:        You’ll see it in here.  But the day I left for Korea in January of 1952 was the worst day of my life.  Everything up to that point had been going well.  I had a job in my field, had a new car, and my first baby was about six weeks old.

 

0:21:20

When I left them that morning, that was the toughest day of my life.

I:          Six years?

C:        Hm?
I:          Six years old. Six months?

C:        Six weeks.
I:          Six weeks.

C:        Yeah.

I:          Is that a daughter?
C:        A boy.

I:          Boy.  Wow.  It must have been tough for your wife.

C:        It was.  And she has a little story that’s been said I’m gonna leave you.

 

0:21:50

I:          Yeah.

C:        She said she went to the window after I had gone that morning looking down on the street.  She was in the upstairs apartment hoping to see me coming on the street, you know.  She said that a number of times that day.  Finally, she realized that I was gone.  And then we simply, under those conditions, you wait it out and hope you never got the dreaded message from the government, we regret to inform you.

 

0:22:25

You’ve been, do you get that?
I:          Um hm.

C:        Yeah.  When I got out of Korea, I went down to Pusan and over to Japan and waited to board a ship home.  They told me I could make a long-distance phone call.

I:          Oh.

C:        So, they set it up with relay stations across the Pacific Ocean.  And they called me, and they reached June in the middle of the night, woke her up from a sleep.

 

0:22:56

And they said you have a long-distance call from Sasebo, Japan.

I:          Um hm.

C:        The first thought that came to her this is the dreaded message.
I:          Um.
C:        And then when my voice came through, she went from a period of great fear to elation.  She was elated.

I:          What did she say to you?
C:        I don’t remember what we said except I told her that I was out of Korea.

 

0:23:27

I was all in one piece and was looking forward to getting home in about 10 days.  And when I did arrive home, it was on Valentine’s Day.  I don’t know if you know Valentine’s Day.

I:          Sure.  So, it was February 14 of 1953?
C:        Fifty-three is right, um hm.

 

0:23:55

I:          So, then you had the benefit of GI Bill getting into the University of Minnesota.

C:        Yes.

I:          Right.  What is the Korean War to you, personally and historically?

C:        I think the Korean War is pivotal in world history.

I:          Why?
C:        Because if President Truman had not responded at that time, that gave China and Russia an open invitation.

 

0:24:30

To continue to spread Communism throughout the world.

I:          But were you aware of Dean Atchinson, the Secretary of State.

C:        Yes.

I:          And he had a press club conference on January 12 of 1950 saying that the Korean Peninsula would be out of American defensive perimeter.

C:        Um hm.

 

0:24:59

I:          Did you know about that?
C:        Yes.  In general, yes.

I:          What do you think about it?
C:        Well, I think that was a very important move.

I:          But that was the kind of signal for (INAUDIBLE) to attack South Korea because Korea was out of American defensive perimeter.  That’s what he said on January 12.

C:        Oh okay.  Maybe I misunderstood you.

I:          Um hm.

C:        You’re saying that Atchinson said that we were not going to protect Korea.

 

0:25:31

I:          Yeah.

C:        Well, that was most unfortunate.

I:          Unfortunate, right?
C:        Yep.

I:          Yeah.

C:        Maybe that gave China and Russia an option to go ahead and move in.

I:          Exactly.

C:        Yeah.

I:          Yeah.  Stahlin knew about Atchinson declaration that Korea is not going to be part of American defense.

C:        Yeah.

I:          And he gave signal to (INAUDIBLE) that you are okay to go ahead.

 

0:26:01

C:        That’s my impression, yes.

I:          Yeah.  What was the scene that you remember when you left Korea, the scene?  Did you see the big cities like Seoul or other cities around it?  And what was the kind of scene that you remember?
C:        The day I entered Korea, I looked toward the day I could leave.

 

0:26:30
And when that day came, I was not near as happy as I thought I would be.  I wanted to go home, of course.  But I developed a better understanding of what we were there for, a good relationship with the men who served under me.  And when I left to go that morning, they came with a jeep and picked me up, and my things to take home.  We went down the gunline through the battery waving to men who had served with me and supported me.

 

0:27:00

And that was bittersweet.

I:          You were relieved that you were leaving for home, but at the same time you are leaving those.

C:        That is right, yeah.

I:          Um.

C:        Yeah.

I:          Have you been back to Korea?
C:        No.  Yes, I have.  I went with Sunni Lee.

I:          Sunni, would you join us please?

C:        Come here.  You bet.

 

0:27:30
That was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  It was, Sunni, when was it?

S:         It was 2010?

C:        Ten about, yes.  Anyway, I saw a notice in the paper that Sunni had put in inviting Korean War veterans to apply to revisit Korea.  You’re familiar with that term.

I:          Yeah.

C:        Revisit Korea.  So, we signed up fortunately.  And it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

 

0:28:03

I:          Tell me why it was the greatest?
C:        I saw Korea in the ashes of war.  When I got into Pusan going into Korea, badly beat up.  Old men and women and children living in squalor with cardboard huts and tin huts, anything they could get.  They had been driven from the forces of war down to Pusan.

 

0:28:33

You know about this, to just a little perimeter around Pusan where they got down there.  And I think most of them stayed to almost all of the War.

I:          And, what you saw when you were in Korea in 2010?
C:        I saw a country that I couldn’t believe had made such progress and recovery from that War, yeah.

 

0:29:03

Beautiful country.

I:          What was the most impressive thing that you remember from that visit?
C:        Well, our experience there, first class hotel and visiting different places, you know.  They’d take us on tours, took us up to the DMZ.  We got to see the North Korean soldiers there.  That was an impressive thing.

 

0:29:32

I:          So, were you proud of your service?
C:        Yes, I was, yep, very much so.  And one of the greatest things that came from that is that I believe five of my grandchildren have been invited to go back to revisit Korea.

S:         Peace Camp.

C:        In a Peace Camp as well which you inducted.

 

0:29:57

And that is a tremendous experience for them.

I:          Yeah.
C:        Yeah.  Great.

I:          Sunni, how did you come to know him?
S:         When he applied for the Revisit Korea program, so we went on a trip.

I:          That’s the add that you put up, right?
S:         Right.  And from then, grandchildren, like a whole family now bonded.

C:        Yeah.
S:         I came to visit him many times to see him.

C:        Yeah.

 

0:30:26

S:         And grandchildren all connected.

I:          You know his family, right?
S:         I know now.

C:        She does, yes, a lot of them.

I:          What is your son doing?  I think I heard about your son.

C:        I have one son who is a district judge here in southern Utah.

I:          Wow.

C:        My oldest son is in Minnesota where we lived for 35 years, married a local girl there, and he’s employed by a company called Vitaplush.

 

0:30:57

They deal in nutrition for livestock.  And then Jeff is here as a district judge.  Jay is in Alasha, and Ann Marie is in Arizona, and Jean is in Tremont, Utah, northern Utah.  So, they’re kind of spread around the area.

S:         And also, Ann Marie’s son went to Washington, DC last year.

C:        Yes, he did.

 

0:31:25

I:          What is the impact of the Korean War upon your life?  How did it affect you?
C:        It affected me in that when I left to go to Korea, the worst day of my life.  When I returned from Korea on Valentine’s Day, it was the best day of my life.

I:          Um hm.

C:        If I’d have known when I left Korea that morning how low I was, if I’d had any idea what might have happened to us after that,

 

0:31:57

I would not have felt nearly so bad.  But it did.  To revisit Korea and see that nation, when I saw it in the ashes of war to the prosperous country it is today, that’s a great thing for me.

S:         (INAUDIBLE)

I:          And you emphasized, repeated over and over that it was a really important War.

 

0:32:28

But why was it regarded as Forgotten War to the American people?  Why is that?
C:        Because it happened only five years after World War II.  That was supposed to end all wars, which it didn’t of course.  But it was an unpopular war for one thing because the American people were tired of war.  But President Truman, I think, made a great move when he committed Forces to Korea under those conditions.

 

0:33:01

I:          So, your grandchildren have been to Korea and also the Korean War Veterans Youth Corp.  Have you ever talked to them about your service?
C:        Many times.

I:          Many times?  This is very exceptional because many Korean War veterans that I interviewed, they never talk to them.

C:        You know, that’s unfortunate.  And Sunni brought that out to me.  Why is it that some of those veterans don’t talk about their experience.

 

0:33:28

One reason is they may have seen their buddies killed.  Another is they may have been a prisoner of war.  Another is they may have been badly wounded.  For those reasons, but I love to talk about it. I have a good set of colored slides, and I have in my personal history almost 15 pages of experiences that I had in Korea.

I:          What do you think about the alliance between the United States and Republic of Korea?

 

0:34:00

C:        I think we have a very good relationship with it.  Of course, the north is a different story. Well, there’s still some hardliners left in the North Korean government.  As they pass on, maybe that makes it possible for better things to happen.  What is China’s position now in relation to North Korea?
I:          China is getting really tired of North Korean approach.

 

0:34:31

C:        Um hm.
I:          But still, North Korea is strategically important to Chinese national interest.  China is in the process of developing economy, modernization, and they don’t want anything to be interrupted.  So, they have to support North Korea.  But also at the same time, they don’t like what North Korea is doing.  Any other message that you want to add to this interview?

 

0:34:57

C:        No except again I advanced from that worst day of my life up to the happiest day.  And to have it continue on like it has is unbelievable to me.  This interview included.

I:          Without your service, there is no Korea. And I want to thank you on behalf of the Korean nation again.  Thank you very much.

C:        And thanks to you.  Thank you.

 

[END RECORDED MATERIAL]