“My supervising officer said, ‘it is not a rumor, you are going.’ It changed the looks of the men’s faces, we were going to war,” Earl Bell said to a classroom full of fifth graders, with mouths agape.
“Were you nervous about going to war,” one of the students asked.
“I’d say I was a bit nervous,” Bell replied, with a slight grin.
Bell, a Korean War veteran, stopped by Marilyn Bumstead’s 5th grade classroom at Lincoln Elementary Monday morning to give insight into his experiences in the Army.
While the students were intrigued by the dangers of war, much of Bell’s presentation included the positive experiences he had, traveling the globe.
Bell, now 84, was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1951 at age 20. He spent time training in Crowder, Mo., and California, and from there he went to anti-aircraft training at Fort Bliss, Texas.
“We had to be trained to kill the enemy,” Bell said. “That was our job, but we hoped we wouldn’t have to.”
He said the training taught him many things. “We didn’t have marching-in-step on the farm,” he said with a laugh. He trained on 40mm and 50-caliber anti-aircraft guns.
He held up a 40mm shell casing, nearly half as large as some of the fifth graders.
“These would shoot 20 miles into the air,” he said, to the students’ amazement.
From Texas he spent time in New York and Cape Cod for additional training. It was in Cape Cod that he learned he would be shipping off to Korea for the war. He loaded up on a battleship three football fields long with 1,200 soldiers — they would pick up 800 more in Puerto Rico — and eventually made his way to Hawaii. After spending Christmas on a boat in the Pacific Ocean, he arrived on the islands, where he was taken aback by the first coconuts he had ever seen.
“After all, I came from Kansas,” he said. “I never saw a coconut tree.”
After Hawaii, Bell and his fellow soldiers arrived on a frigid (20 below zero) day in Korea, where they set up camp. Bell said he remained on alert during the war, and went through much training. But, he and his battalion never saw the face of their enemies close up.
During his presentation, Bell flipped through different photos of his time in Korea. Some showed the experiences he had as a young man, while others pointed out the darkest side of war. One photo showed young children carrying buckets to pick up garbage, which would be their next meal.
“War is bad,” Bell said to the students. “I once saw a mother and her baby doing the same thing.”
Other photos were of Bell and other soldiers who became his friends and have since remained.
Before opening up his presentation to questions from the class, Bell brought out a letter he had recently received from the president of South Korea. He said he was touched by the kind words he received from a people he aided over 60 years ago.
He read from the letter: “You will always remain our true heroes,” the letter read. “On behalf of the South Korean people.”
SHOW AND TELL – Korean War veteran gives glimpse of experience
