Son of a gun. My mother, who doesn't like him, only said once that he "was just a mechanic during the war and never really did anything,"
Well, after not seeing him for twenty years, he stopped by the house to meet up with my cousins who had to evacuate from the hurricane and I got a chance to pick his brain.
It turns out, he is a plank holder in this Unit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMX-1 and he was a mechanic of the very small number of the first helicopters flown by the marine corps in combat.
THe unit was made up of these
(they had to take a door off and shove a stretch catycorner with the injured marines feet through the other doors open window.
The unit also flew these ugly things. I don't know why.
between the helicopters and the corsairs, they made up this unit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Provis ... ne_Brigade
which was drawn into
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
as the NK army drove us down to pusan. They ended up as the fire brigade for the whole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pusan_Perimeter
and he fought (I don't mean mechanicked, he mechanicked and and actually fought, particulalry he remembers getting frostbite as he had to fight his way through Chinese lines and back to his unit when he was cut off from all the other marines (he was A.L.O.N.E. waay in back of enemy lines) when he was sent out to work on another chopper that had gone down and was still repairable. Both of birds made it out but the bent one couldn't take his weight so he walked out.
Did I mention the battle? No. Well, it was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir
Somehow along the way he ended up with a jeep and drove around picking up wounded guys and loading them on it and in the end he and another half dozen guys clinging to wheel wells, bumpers and each other drove it back into our lines. He got pretty bad frostbite but in those days they couldn't afford to let you off the lines for that. So he stayed with his unit, which fought back down the penisnula and through the battle of Seaul and evidently he fought from the Marines first engagement of the war all the way through to the armistice.
He has all his awards in little hat pins on his baseball cap. They include,: several purple hearts, a silver star, a navy and marine corps medal, a DFC and a bronze star (He claims to have more than one of some of them, and after he told me some of his stories, I tend to believe him> He knows all he places I rucked in Korea, and fought over a couple of them.
He had a bunch of stuff I didn't recognize, but Mom later told me he and his friends got together when he had a mojor surgery, and they all talked about how he got them out of there.
I am ashamed that my mom downplayed his service. He stayed when he could have left, he stayed behind enemy lines to collect wounded and stragglers at the freaking Chosen REservoir, and he fought almost every step of the way through the Korean War. I could slug her when I think of how he was "just a mechanic"
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