Arlyn Brenchley

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Arlyn Brenchley– Life during the
Korean War
By Arlyn Brenchly
October 13, 2004
Box 6 Folder 3
Oral Interview conducted by Julie Haderlie
Transcript copied by John Bauman September 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
JH: You served in 19…?
AB: In 1953 to 1954
JH: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
AB: I was drafted. Have you ever seen a draft form?
JH: I have not
He left the room to get the draft card.
AB: Anyway, they were called “ greetings.”
JH: Were you drafted to go to Korea?
AB: Well, just to the military and then they send you where they want you.
JH: Were you married when you were drafted?
AB: Uh- uh. No. I had been out of high school about a year… a little over.
JH: So you were about 19?
AB: I was 19.
JH: Where did you go to training camp?
AB: We left Logan [ Utah] on the 12th of January and went to Fort Douglas, Utah where
we were inducted. Then we left there and went to Fort Ord, California. We spent close to
20 weeks… 22 weeks down there for training— for basic training and then advanced
training and infantry training for Korea at the time and that is when Korea was going
strong. Some of our group did go to Korea, we were sent to Germany as an occupation
forces. However, we had been trained for combat in Korea.
JH: So you were part of the Army then and not the Navy or anything like that?
AB: Yes, yes. The Army.
JH: So what was it like to go to Germany instead of Korea? Were you anxious to go to
Korea?
AB: Well, no because you were getting shot at over there. But, I guess that’s why they
draft people… 18 and 19 years old because your young [ and] dumb and don’t have brains
enough to be scared. And we knew a little about what we were getting into because of the
training we had at Fort Ord, but then when we switched and went to Germany, like I say,
it was Occupation forces so there was no live ammunition carried and we didn’t… it was
better, there was no doubt about it. But uh, I guess I’d have to say we were relieved we
were going to Germany rather than Korea at the time because it was still going on, the
war was still going. Shortly after we had gotten to Germany, the war ended. The treaty
was signed, I should say, in Korea. So the hostilities, so to speak, was determined.
JH: So you were in Germany for two years then?
AB: We were over there for a little over 18 months.
JH: Was Germany split into east and west?
AB: Yeah, east, west, The four zones of Germany at that time. And we was in West
Germany, the U. S. occupied zone.
JH: What were your responsibilities while you were over there?
AB: Our outfit, we was in an armored infantry battalion. We were infantry but we had
armor which was tanks, personnel carriers, and vehicles. And we were assigned to be the
shock troops, you might say, if Russia had invaded Germany. We were to slow them
down in order for the Rear Echelon to get reorganized and set up. We were a hit and run
outfit. There was two battalions, ours and the one in Nuremburg, which is the one I was
assigned to, and one in Munich. So we rode everywhere we went until we got there and
then we were infantry. So we were an armored infantry battalion.
JH: Did you have a lot of contact with civilians or not.
AB: Quite a bit, yes. Quite a bit. Not in a military type thing but just communicating,
going into town, or to a movie or something of that nature, As far as a police force, that
type of thing, no we didn’t do that.
JH: Were you treated well by the civilians.
AB: For the most part, yes.
JH: Are there still some…?
AB: Some of the older Germans are a little hostile but not bad, No, we were, we didn’t
feel intimidated or threatened in any way.
JH: Was Germany being rebuilt at the time? Did you help with any of that?
AB: We didn’t help rebuild, but it was being rebuilt. There was a lot of the… well
Nuremburg for example, was a lot of new buildings, but there was still a lot of
destruction where the bombers had hit. Especially in the old parts of Germany, there was
a lot of damage still done. It had been just a few years, what seven years after. For the
most part it was rebuilt but there was still a lot of damage done. We did get on the border
between Czechoslovakia and Germany on what we called boarder patrol. We’d go up
there for 6 weeks about every 6 months and spend on the border patrol and just [ look]
through the binoculars and that. We could see what the other side of the line looked like
which was totally devastating and there was no rebuilding that we could see at all. Other
than that, we did not help rebuild anything. We were just there mainly to protect West
Germany from the Russians.
JH: So, Czechoslovakia was an occupant of Russia?
AB: Yes. It was a communist country at that time.
JH: How did you feel personally about Communism? Did you know a lot about it?
AB: Well at the time, no. I mean we just took it for granted. As time went and over there
and we saw what was going on, those people were really beat down. The people that
came from the communists’ country over through the boarders, they came there at the
risk of their life to get a way from what they had. It wasn’t a good thing. It was not a
good thing.
JH: So when Vietnam broke out did you have any involvement?
AB: No, we were out of there by that time.
JH: When you came home from Germany, were other soldiers and yourself received well
or how did people react?
AB: Yeah we were. At that time, yes, there was no animosity about Korea. Nothing like
what the Vietnam people… that was and unpopular war. The Korean was an undeclared
war, but yeah there were no hostilities that I know of.
JH: Did any of the People that you grew up with around here, did they serve with you?
Did any of them go to Korea?
AB: Yes. Yes, some of them did. Some went to Okinawa and some to Korea, and a
fellow right down the road, he and I served in the same company in Germany we were
right together all the time. In fact there were several from Utah that was in our outfit.
Yeah, they screwed everybody up. It didn’t matter, wherever they need you that’s where
you went.
JH: Did you have any friends that didn’t come back from Korea?
AB: Some that we’d made in basic training in Fort Ord, yes. There was 32 of the men of
our company in Fort Ord, in our training company that did not, that got killed in Korea.
JH: After you came home, did you still want to be active in the army or were you done?
AB: We were, temporarily discharged. We were still in the army reserve… active reserve
for 8 years. So anything that could have happened from 1954 to the beginning of 1955—
for eight years we could have been called up as trained military people.
JH: Were you ever called up?
AB: No, no we were not. We were not activated, that’s the proper term.
JH: While you were in basic training, were the instructors or your commanding officers
really tough and brutal?
AB: Yeah. Basic training in a sense is to get you trained to take orders and not question.
Your company commander and your 1st sergeant and platoon sergeant, they’re supposed
to know what we’re supposed to be doing. I was always in trouble because of some of the
dumb things they would have us do and I’d say it. ‘ That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever
heard of!’ And I’ end up cleaning weapons for three and four hours every night for a
week. It was mainly to get you out of the civilian mode into the military mode so to
speak. So that you take orders and you do what you’re told and you’re not doing your
thing. You’re protecting your buddies. You’re protecting the people that your with. And
you’re not off gallivanting somewhere else because you don’t think what you’re doing is
the proper thing. So, yeah they were rough. They were rough. Those old boys, they’d
been through… a lot of them, most of them were Second World War veterans. And so
yes, they could get rough if they had to.
JH: So what were some of the things that you didn’t agree with? Were they drills or…?
AB: Yeah, well like usually lights out would be at 10: 00 o’clock. And maybe the platoon
sergeant he’d come walking through and just for no reason at all, he would decide he
didn’t like the way somebody was laying in his bed or some stupid thing like that. Or that
they hadn’t closed the foot locker and he would roust everybody outside and scream and
holler and carry on for fifteen, twenty minutes or an hour. Just to prove that he was in
authority. It didn’t happen often but occasionally. And it was so that we knew that he
meant what he said.
JH: Did you get to take anything with you when you went to training camp?
AB: No, no. We wore our civilians clothes the first couple of days down there and we
were issued army clothes. Our civilian clothes were boxed up and shipped back home.
Everything we had there was military issued, Government issued: shoes, socks,
everything.
JH: Were you able to keep in contact with your family?
AB: Yes. Oh yes. Through letters. That was really encouraged. That was one thing that
they all pushed. That’s one thing that the company commanders did not want was a letter
from mom saying, ‘ My boy is somewhere… he’s in your… and I never heard from him’
and they did not like that.
JH: Did that happen often?
AB: No. Not often, not often. We had some people from Texas and Louisiana people,
that I don’t know their details, but a couple of them I don’t think could write. They were
illiterate. But after we found out about it people would help them out.
JH: So being drafted— were the rest of your company drafted?
AB: Most of them.
JH: Did people enlist in the war?
AB: Yes. There was enlisted people. I don’t remember how many, but yes there was
enlisted. They went in for three years where a draftee went in for two.
JH: Did you ever have a desire to enlist before you were drafted?
AB: No because I had just gotten out of high school and started college. We knew we
were going to go. I mean, everybody was being drafted at some time or another. We just
got drafted a little early compared to some. Everybody my age didn’t get drafted at that
time. Later on within a year or so why they did. Just like when you win the lottery it was
your time.
JH: Did you serve a mission [ for the LDS Church]?
AB: No I didn’t at that time. Most of them didn’t until they got back or until they got out.
JH: I did hear that when the wars or conflicts were going on that only a certain amount
from a stake were able to go.
AB: Well that depended on your classification of health. There was a 4- F that meant that
you were physically handicapped in someway and they were free to go on a mission.
Most of the rest that were 1- A didn’t. Some of them got a deferment to go but the minute
they got home they usually were drafted. So some did go prior to their being drafted.
Most did not at that time. Most went after their service.
JH: While you were in training camp and also, over in Germany, how did your religion
play apart? Were there others of your faith?
AB: Oh yes. There was return missionaries. We had area conferences with President
Henry D. Moyle at that time, Elder Henry D. Moyle, he came over and we went up to
meet in Frankfurt and also I think it was called area conference in Munich. We were
encouraged to attend our religious meetings.
JH: Were there others who didn’t have any religious beliefs?
AB: Uh, yeah. Not a lot but some. A lot of Catholics. Sunday mornings, I mean early
Sunday mornings they would get up and go to Mass. Our meetings were usually in
individual times in Nuremburg. We didn’t get to go a lot because we were on the move
all the time. Probably over 18 months, and our headquarters was in Nuremburg. We
probably spent not much more than 6 weeks in our basic headquarters. We was out
roaming around. We were in training, we were usually the aggressors or we were the
enemy to like the 43rd division. We were the enemy to them and so, we were trying to
disrupt their communications and their supply lines and stuff like that so we were out a
lot. We learned how to sleep on the ground. We didn’t get to go as much in the city as
some did who stayed in barracks.
JH: So when you say that you were the enemy to the 43rd division was that like the…?
AB: That would be like the Russians to us. We were their enemy at that time. It was just
a training. We tried to disrupt their communications, we’d go cut their lines. We’d find
the telephone lines going along the ground that were his somewhere and we’d cut them.
That’s what we were doing. We were disrupting. We didn’t use ammunition, but we had
little sacks of flour: white, blue and red flour. And when we got a chance, we’d hit
somebody with one of those red sacks of flour and he was dead. He was out of it. It didn’t
matter whether he was the general or whether he was a private or what. It was a training
exercise.
JH: This is while you were over…?
AB: This is while we were in Germany.
JH: So did you ever have any contact with the Russians while you were over there?
AB: No. No. The closest we probably came to them was maybe… two or three hundred
yards. When we was on border patrol and a couple of other places. When we’d actually
be on border patrol, we’d actually have 30 and 50 caliber machine guns our own personal
rifle. Loaded… they would be loaded. We’d have live ammo on what we called ‘ no
man’s land.’ Which had mines and everything else set up to keep the people from coming
from Czechoslovakia into Germany; from communism into freedom. And there was
people that did come in. They’d come through there… in there in the middle of the night.
And there were times that we’d shoot across the area until they got through. Yeah, there
was a few times but not many. We could see them with binoculars.
JH: So there were no real hostilities?
AB: No, no. Just like the Iron Curtain through Berlin, only it was just a big vacant field
for two or three hundred yard. No vegetation, no trees, nothing like that.
JH: So people did make it through from Czechoslovakia over to Germany?
AB: Yes.
JH: Were the mines set up for them?
AB: Yes. Personnel mines. People mines. To discourage them from coming across. To
discourage them coming from communism to freedom. They didn’t want people coming
across. And there was… well there was… for example there was a young girl probably
17 or 18, I would guess and it was cold with 3 or 4 inches of snow and she came across
bare footed. We had dugouts built and we drove the jeeps down and then we would V- out
and she got into one of those and we got her warm. She could speak some English and
there were a couple of the guys there who could speak German and she said, ‘ Well, I’ve
gotta go back and get my family.’ She started taking the shoes we had given her and the
socks off and we questioned that and she said, ‘ I can feel if I hit a mine.’ I still don’t
understand that, but she left and went back and brought 18 people across. It was about
four o’clock in the morning when she got back. And the babies and the little kids, when
they’d cross and make noise, they had mufflers around them and tied onto the backs of
their dads and the older kids. But they did come across several times.
JH: Did a lot of them end up being killed because of the mines?
AB: Some, some did.
JH: The mines were set up by the Russians?
AB: Yup. They are what we would call, AP or anti- personnel mine. They’d trip them and
they’d shoot up from the ground and then would explode. Yeah, there was some. Some
got it through the mines and some got it through shooting fire. That’s when we’d shoot
back.
JH: When they would open fire?
AB: Uh- huh. Yes. On our half of the invisible boarder, there were no mines. So roughly a
hundred yards out it was clean and the next however far they went sometimes they get
two hundred yards, there would be mine fields. If they could get on to our side they were
pretty well safe, other than from the machine gun fire.
JH: When those who did make it over… were they able to find refuge?
AB: Yes they were given asylum. I don’t know what… the German government took
them over and took them in. I guess into refugee camps I don’t know beyond that. We
would keep them in with us for maybe 10 or 12 hours depending on time of day and
usually we’d got them right out in the vans and get them fed and clothed. Beyond that, I
don’t know what happened to them. They were not sent back to my knowledge.
JH: Were you ever close to the Berlin Wall or the Iron Curtain?
AB: No. Just that invisible wall. That was the Iron Curtain although there was no wall.
That ‘ no man’s land’ served as a wall, but there was no visible wall.
JH: When you weren’t roaming, were you able to go into the city?
AB: Oh yeah. When we were in the barracks or in Nuremburg, we’d go to movies and
out and eat dinner. We were able to go out and watch. We’d schedule leave time and
could go to church services or three of us we took off and went for two weeks and went
to Holland and spent a week and two days in Holland and Belgium and France and back.
It was a leave for a fairly long time.