KOREAN WAR-ERA VETERANS WATCH CURRENT DISPUTE
Bob Ide, a Korean War-era vet, has been paying close attention to the escalating war of words between the U.S. and North Korea. The Boulder resident believes some action may need to be taken, but “I would hate to see a nuclear war started.” »
In a September speech to the United Nations, President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, and had previously warned that further antagonism by its leader, Kim Jong-un, would be met by “fire and fury.”
Similarly, Pyongyang has vowed to stage an “unimaginable” strike on the U.S., amid ongoing tensions fueled by development of its nuclear capabilities.
As Veterans Day approaches, not everyone needs to use their imagination for what might happen should the ongoing war of words evolve into something far more grave.
With the most extreme measures seemingly having been put on the table, count Don Reininger as a vote for taking them right back off.
“I’d stay away from nuclear, anytime, anywhere,” said Reininger, 87, a Korean War veteran who lives in Louisville.
“Does that mean I disagree with the development of nuclear capability? No,” Reininger said. “But if you want to come mess with me, be careful. Because you know what I’ve got. “But, I don’t want to use it.” In fact, having volunteered for the U.S. Army fresh off of graduating from his beloved Texas A&M, and originally assigned to the 1st Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, Reininger found himself a witness to the only test of an atomic artillery round on U.S. soil in history — the Upshot-knothole Grable test at Frenchman Flat, Nev., on May 25, 1953. With a 15kiloton blast yield, it was comparable to Little Boy, the bomb America dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
Reininger, whose duty that day was to walk toward the blast afterward with a Geiger counter measuring for radiation, remembers rising too soon from the shallow trenches he and others were in at blast time, and being hit by a shock wave.
“It knocked the hell out of you,” he recalled. But apart from the “immensity” of the power from that detonation, he said he was not left from that experience with strong feelings one way or the other about the deployment of such a weapon.
When he was offered a chance before deploying to Korea to leave tanks behind and to fly instead, he jumped at the opportunity. Trained at San Marcos, Texas, as an Army aviator, he would fly 1,000-plus hours in a single-engine L-19 over South Korea and “living in a damn tent” in Chuncheon, South Korea.
“It beats the hell out of driving that tank,” he said, glancing over at a Sherman tank model on display in his apartment, alongside a model of the plane to which he graduated.
Although he arrived in South Korea shortly after the July 1953 cease-fire was signed, Reininger said tensions were still high at that time, and he recalls an American aircraft being shot down when it strayed north of the Korean DMZ.
Reininger’s pride in his service is reflected in the pride with which he displays artifacts from his time in the military — he retired from active reserves after 20 years at the rank of major — and he clearly still believes in military solutions, when appropriate, to the complexities of today’s geopolitics.
“Do we have to live in fear of North Korea? You can be concerned, but nowadays with missiles and artilleries, nobody’s safe,” said Reininger, who as a civil engineer helped build airfields around the world. “So in order to guarantee safety, you’ve just got to bring them to their knees, if you will.”
Bob Ide is another Korean War-era vet who believes some action may need to be taken — but also worries where any first step by the U.S. might lead.
“I read about those MOAB bombs, and I think a couple of planeloads of those dropped over them would wake them up,” said Ide, a Boulder resident who turns 85 on Monday.
“It could be a prelude to bigger things and more deadly things,” he acknowledged. “I would hate to see a nuclear war started.”
Ide, an Iowa native, came home from the University of Colorado one summer to a draft notice, and soon found himself in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
There was still a “hot war” going on at the time, he said, but instead of going to Korea, he would be stationed for two years south of Frankfurt, Germany, assigned to tending a munitions dump.
“I wasn’t anxious to go to Korea, but I could have easily been marked for that, and I was willing to go wherever they sent me, just to get things behind me and get on with my life,” he said.
Like Reininger, Ide follows the news relating to the U.S. and North Korea with some interest.
“I’ve tried to follow that, and I’m certainly in favor of taking some drastic action,” Ide said. “North Korea is too much of a gamble, to let them do what they have been doing so far.”
He voiced mixed feelings in conversations about the international tensions, however, noting that “I think that could be the beginning of a disaster.”
Ide, who would return from Germany and graduate from CU in 1959, ultimately landing in a successful commercial real estate career, said, “We have to put a stop to that guy,” referring to North Korea’s enigmatic leader.
“But I would question whether we should start things going, because of our relations with South Korea and Japan. I think a nuclear attack would be a really big disaster.”
Ide voted for Trump, and said that he supports about 80 percent of what the president has done to date.
“Most of the things he’s doing are right on, that we’ve needed for 20-some years, and he’s willing to drain the swamp, I guess,” he said.
But in the volatile area of international security, Ide said Trump would be better off in turning the search for a resolution to the Korean puzzle over to his senior military advisers, and those who are far better versed in the nuances of international diplomacy and nuclear proliferation.
Reininger, too, said he would be most comfortable if Trump would defer to his defense secretary, his secretary of state and others who have more experience in such sensitive areas than the career real estate mogul.
“My impressions are, he should listen to the professional leaders who are in charge. He’s just the head guy, but you’ve got leaders who know what they are doing.
“I don’t think he should override the good judgment of the leaders he’s already hired,” said Reininger, whose family has served in the military — and continues to — across many generations.
He was not interested in discussing whom he voted for in 2016 — “None of your business,” he said — but did confide that he would not vote for Trump in 2020, should he seek re-election.
“He has proven to me that his gift of gab got him in there, and people who voted for him have got to live with it. Unfortunately, I’ve got to live with it too, but I take him for a grain of salt,” Reininger said. “I took Obama with a grain of salt, too.”