Veterans

William Lutz of Oley Township was stationed at Camp Hovey, 15 miles from the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in 1968-69.

A mortar specialist with the 7th Infantry Division,

Lutz was in country when North Korea’s People’s Army troops crossed the DMZ in an attempt to assassinate South Korea’s president, Park Chung-hee, on Jan. 20, 1968.

A few days later, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, in what has become known as the “Pueblo incident.” One crew member was killed and 82 others captured.

Lutz, who spent much of his 14-month tour of duty on high alert, recalls numerous incidents in which U.S. and South Korean troops were wounded or killed in skirmishes with the North Koreans.

“Korea wasn’t called a war, but there was a lot of action,” said Lutz, 72, a retired farmer. “In my mind, it’s a never-ending war.”

Deep emotional wounds

Doug and Liz Graybill, founders of Vets Making a Difference in Reading, have seen firsthand the lingering emotional scars inflicted by the Korean war.

Graybill, 68, who served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1970-71, said the suffering troops endured in Korea is often underestimated.

During the month-long Battle of Chosin Reservoir in November and December 1950, for example, temperatures reportedly plummeted to 36 degrees below zero.

“These guys suffered, and they never got the recognition they deserved,” said Graybill, whose nonprofit social center provides services to veterans in a rented space at Hope Rescue Mission.

The Graybills recently arranged for the burial of Korean war veteran Raymond W. Wunderly at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery in Lebanon County when no one claimed his body.

With the Korean war coming less than five years after the end of World War II, many of its veterans are in their 80s and 90s.

The Russel M. Butterweck Detachment of the Marine

Corps League until recently had only three Korean war veterans: Herbert Hummel of Blandon, Albert Beadle of Reading and Robert A. Berns, formerly of Fleetwood. Berns died last year in Lititz.

Korean war veterans Ralph Schaeffer, 89, Grover Weir, 88, and Joseph Gregg, 91, reside at Birdsboro Lodge, a veterans personal care home in Exeter Township. All were stationed at bases in the U.S. during the war.

In recent years, with fewer vets able to attend, the Marine Corps League discontinued annual services at the Korean War Remembrance monument in Reading’s City Park to mark the end of the war.

The Combined Veterans Council of Berks County now organizes the service, scheduled for July 27 at the monument.

‘Made me into a man’

When Paul A. Miller of Hamburg quit school and joined the Navy at 17, little did he know that about a year later he’d be present at the start of the Korean war.

Miller was a gunner on the USS Juneau, a Navy cruiser, when they poured over the border, as he puts it, on June 25, 1950.

The Juneau patrolled an area south of the 38th Parallel

to prevent enemy landings and conducted the first bombardments on June 29 at Bokuko Ko. On July 2, the Juneau sank three enemy torpedo boats near Chumonchin Chan.

“When we pulled out the bodies, they were Chinese troops,” recalled Miller, 88, who fed ammo to the ship’s 40 mm guns during the attack.

The whole thing happened so fast, Miller said, there was no time to be scared. He just did his job.

Looking back, 70 years later, Miller marvels at how fate placed a kid from little old Hamburg on the precipice of history.

“I was a cocky kid, and it knocked the cockiness out of me,” he confides. “It made me into a man.”

COURTESY OF PAUL A. MILLER Paul A. Miller was a gunner aboard the Navy cruiser USS Juneau during the Korean war.

COURTESY OF BILL LUTZ Oley American Legion member Bill Lutz adorns a veteran’s grave in Oley-Spangsville Cemetery with an American flag in May 2019 in preparation for Memorial Day.

BEN HASTY — MEDIANEWS GROUP Korean war veteran Paul A. Miller in his Hamburg home with photos and medals from his time in the Navy.

BEN HASTY — MEDIANEWS GROUP Korean war Veteran Edward H. Specht, 90, who served in the Army, with his Ambassador for Peace outside the Keystone Villa at Douglassville.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF EDWARD H. SPECHT Photos of Edward H. Specht during his Army service in the Korean war.

COURTESY OF EDWARD H. SPECHT Edward H. Specht as an artillery specialist in the Army’s 7th Infantry Division during the Korean war.

BEN HASTY — MEDIANEWS GROUP Korean war Veteran Edward H. Specht, 90, who served in the Army.

COURTESY - EDWARD H. SPECHT Edward H. Specht was 22 years old when he was sent to Korea with the Army’s 7th Infantry Division. Now 90 and living in Douglassville, he recounted his experience on the 70th anniversary of the start of the war on June 25, 1950.