HAROLD WEEDEN
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Army, Korea
Harold Weeden was born
in Van Zandt County, Texas in 1933. When he was a small child, his family
moved from the farm into the town of Terrell in Kaufman County. His family
was musically talented and as he grew up he naturally took to picking guitar
and learning songs his father taught him; but his father died when Harold
was thirteen years old. When he was a tenth grader at Terrell High School
and had just made first-string running back on the football team, Harold,
the youngest and only child still living at home, had to drop out of school
and go to work to support his mother and himself. His siblings, although
young adults out on their own, were themselves struggling and unable to
help. He and his mother moved from Terrell to Houston to be near Harold’s
older brother, and then his mother died when he was seventeen. His brother
had served an enlistment in the Army and had a good experience, so he
recommended to Harold that he go into the Army as well.
Shortly after he was eighteen,
Harold Weeden took a
three year enlistment, signing-up for the paratroopers. He was sworn in at
the train station in Houston on October 9, 1951 and sent to Fort Sam Houston
in San Antonio for some initial processing before being sent on to Fort
Riley, Kansas for his 16-weeks of Basic Training. Harold says, “That
training in Kansas was good preparation for Korea because we were outside
all the time, exposed to the weather, and Kansas was really cold in the
winter.” Then in March 1952, he was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia to the
Infantry School where he graduated from the basic Airborne training course
in June. Immediately after his fifth and qualifying parachute jump, Harold
departed that same day on orders for Korea.
He shipped from the United States on the troopship,
MARINE LYNX, arrived in Japan in June and then was sent to the 187th
Airborne Regimental Combat Team on Koje-do Island where the North Korean POW
mutiny had just been put down. Harold and other new replacement paratroopers
unpacked new M-1 rifles, cleaned off the cosmoline, and got them ready for
use. Taken out to the rifle range, farm boy Harold, who had grown up with a
.22 rifle in his hand, attracted notice of the cadre when he put every round
through the bulls-eye of the 500-yard target. So, he was issued a 1903
Springfield with scope and told that he was henceforth a sniper.
Harold Weeden, with
five other replacements also destined for Company G, 2nd Bn, 187th Airborne
Regimental Combat Team, were sent over from Koje-do across to mainland Korea
on an LST where eventually they reported in to the First Sergeant. The
headquarters tent of Company G was set up in a muddy area, so as Harold
prepared to report in, he first found a dry spot and leaned his sniper rifle
up against the wall. Then when he went in to the First Sergeant he was
asked what he could do and Harold replied that he was a machine gunner.
Today, Harold says, “The First Sergeant said, “good we need a machine
gunner,” and I was instantly sent off and taken in charge by the Weapons
Platoon. As far as I know, that scope mounted Springfield ’03 is still in
Korea leaning up against the wall.”
After he arrived, Harold’s unit was at Taegu where
they made several training parachute jumps, conducted forced marches and
other training, then went up into the line.
Three
months after Harold reached Korea, the 187th Airborne was deployed in sector
with Company G occupying a combat outpost on a hill about 1,000 yards
forward of the Main Line of Resistance. It was September 21, 1952 and
Harold’s three-man team had just been sent even further forward of Co G’s
advanced position. Under observation and in range of enemy fire, the three
were hurriedly digging-in to create some cover for themselves when hit by a
76mm recoilless rifle.
Harold
Weeden was severely wounded with shrapnel in
his abdomen, left arm and left thigh.
Harold says, “A lot of people saw what had just
happened when we were hit and a jeep came forward and carried me out, even
though it had to traverse a lot of ground fully exposed to the enemy. The
men on that jeep were awarded the Silver Star for what they did in rescuing
me. After I was back to relative safety a medevac mission was called in and
I was strapped down into an external litter on an H-13 Bell helicopter and
flown back to a hospital. That flight must have looked like a scene from an
episode of the television series, MASH. I was operated on in that surgical
hospital, but they didn’t get all the metal fragments out of me. After ten
days I had to be medically evacuated back to Japan, to Yokohama Hospital.
I had been under medical care for ten days already but
that didn’t make any difference when I got to Yokohama. As soon as I arrived
a couple of very determined Japanese nurses took charge and proceeded to
thoroughly scrub me clean, from head to foot. I was a paratrooper, but I
was still only an 18 year-old, and in addition to the physical pain that was
an embarrassing experience for me, a real shock to the sensibilities.
Harold would be in the
hospital for three months before he was well enough to return to his unit.
Meanwhile, the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team had been pulled out of
Korea in October 1952 and returned to their home base in Japan, Camp
Chicamagua on Kyushu Island, where they reconstituted the strategic reserve
force for the Pacific. Harold arrived back with his unit in December, just
before Christmas, and he was made Assistant Supply Sergeant in Company G.
After he had been back for about six months, the regimental combat team was
deployed back into combat in Korea for the third time. Harold had this to
say about their arrival back in Korea in June 1953,
“The paratroopers removed all
their unit patches and insignia, exchanged their paratroopers uniforms for
standard army issue battle fatigues, and we went back into Korea concealing
the unit’s identity and the fact that the Pacific reserve had been committed
into action. It didn’t work. As soon as we went up into the line, the
Chinese propaganda loudspeakers opposite us broadcast their welcome to the “Rakkasans.”
Rakkasan was the imprecise Japanese term for paratrooper. That name not
only stuck, it was adopted ever after and all units of the 187th Airborne
today still proudly call themselves the “Rakkasans.”
Company G was manning
an outpost forward of the lines when the Armistice was signed in July 1953.
The 187th Airborne remained in Korea for another two years before returning
to the U.S. (where it then became a part of the 101st Airborne Division),
but Harold Weeden
came home “on points” (he had 36) in September 1953. He was one of only six
men in Company G eligible to be shipped back home that early.
When he arrived at
Fort Lawton, after landing at the port in Seattle, Washington, Harold says,
“I didn’t have a penny in
my pocket. I had not been paid in six months and the train trip from
Seattle through Los Angeles and on the San Antonio took three days and
nights. Finally, after I got to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, my wife
came up from Houston to meet me and she at least had a little money. At Fort
Sam I was put on 30 days leave with orders to report to the 82nd Airborne
Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
I knew that the 82nd Airborne was slated to go to
Alaska and I had had all the cold weather that I wanted in Korea. So, when
my 30 days leave was up I went through Fort Benning, Georgia and found
another 187th Airborne veteran, Captain Macdonald, in the Airborne School.
I had not known him during my time in Korea and Japan and he had no
authority to make personnel assignments but he gave me a letter of
acceptance just in case I could manage to get my orders changed. It took
some doing. When I reported in at Fort Bragg and stated my case, the
Lieutenant behind the desk took an instant dislike to me and threw my letter
of acceptance in his trashcan. I walked around the desk, retrieved my
letter, and took it to the Major in charge. That’s where I lucked out. The
Major knew Captain Macdonald personally, and when he saw the letter of
acceptance he directed that a set of orders be cut sending me to the
Airborne School at Fort Benning. Orders in hand, I didn’t waste any time
leaving Fort Bragg and getting back to Georgia.”
Harold Weeden
spent the last year of his three-year enlistment in charge of the
Maintenance Department of the Airborne School in Fort Benning just outside
Columbus, Georgia. He found a place to live nearby that was across the
Chattahochee River in Alabama near Phenix City. He was living there when
martial law was declared in 1954. The Regular Army was sent in, troops were
on the streets with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets and they cleaned-up
that tremendously corrupt mob-run town in very short order. Harold could
not get from home in Alabama to work in Fort Benning without going through
Phenix City to get over the bridge. Even in uniform and with an ID Card, he
had to have a written pass to get past the checkpoints to and from work.
You can revisit what happened there by renting a copy of the old movie
“The
Phenix City Story.”
Harold saw what can happen, even in the United States, when there is a
complete break-down in law and order in a community, and he can tell you
things that he saw and knew about that were worse than what was shown in
that film.
On
October 9, 1954, Staff Sergeant Weeden’s enlistment was up. He took his
discharge, returned to his brother’s home in Houston, Texas. He next
enrolled under the GI Bill, taking university classes as a beginning student
majoring in accounting. Months went by and Harold never received any money
from the GI Bill. He was married and they couldn’t live on nothing, so he
dropped out of school and got a job.
He
went to work for Hutchison Manufacturing Company, a Houston company that
developed and marketed a machine that recycled the drilling mud used by the
rigs drilling for oil, and also developed and marketed an improved derrick
lighting system for drilling rigs. Harold worked the off-shore drilling
rigs and installed the lighting sets from the top of the derrick to the
platform floor. He worked long hours and was paid well for it. For the
first time in his life he was making big money.
Harold Weeden
was a driven man, and he says,
“All my life, I wanted to be
somebody and this was the way available to me to do it. I worked a 77 hour
week and drew tremendous overtime pay for that, and at the same time, also
played guitar and entertained in Houston area honky tonks and night clubs;
and I saved every penny possible. Then I started investing my money in real
estate and making money from that too.”
Harold moved to a 10-acre place in Pearland and, with his experience from
Hutchison Manufacturing, he went to work for Fisk Electric Company, the
biggest electrical contractor in Houston. He was employed by Fisk from 1957
until 1972. His last assignment with them was as general foreman of Fisk’s
110 workers on the 3-year construction project of Shell Plaza One, the
tallest building in Houston at the time. After that, he was ready to strike
out on his own.
Harold moved his
family to Vista, California and went into business as a general contractor
in the San Diego area. Initially he built houses, and then later
specialized in purchasing and renovating existing residential, commercial
and industrial properties; and his sons were heavily involved in the
business with him. He eventually accumulated 150 separate properties,
mostly rented out, but some of which the family held and operated. He says,
“California living was
great, perfect climate, really beautiful, but; it could never be home to
me. I wanted to be back home in Texas. So, I sold out in California and
then moved here and bought some properties; one of which is Executive Town
Homes in San Marcos that is being operated by our son, Mike.”
Harold
and Elrose Weeden are settled into their comfortable life style of country
living in central Texas and Harold has been a Life Member of the Military
Order of the Purple Heart, affiliated with Chapter 1919 since he found out
about us seven year ago. He is also active in the Lone Star Chapter of the
“Rakkasans,” 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team Association.
|
