Message #366050

[franksolich]

The older sister, the other great-aunt, the one in the Army, had only the usual and standard and customary experiences of those serving in the Army during the peaceful 1920s and 1930s, and the second world war, spent mostly in the Pacific, although it appears not at one particular place for too long of a time; just everywhere from Australia and New Zealand up to, ultimately, Japan.

In June 1950, she was in Seoul, South Korea.  This was 1950; she had been in the Army for more than 30 years by then, and because of "downsizing" of the then-military, was pretty much redundant, although she was still in the Army, and still an officer.

Along with other redundancies (surplus about-to-retire officers and other military), she was with the UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Recovery Administration).

Well, we all know what happened in June 1950.

As the North Korean socialists overran the capital, she was in command of a train evacuating orphans and other refugees to the south.  Even though the train was clearly and repeated marked with the Red Cross, the North Koreans stopped it, and massacred all of the Korean inhabitants therein, shooting men, women, and children in cold messy blood.

(As an aside, one of the older brothers of this great-aunt told me bitterly about the disorder and confusion of the time and place, in which an Army general was supposed to be in charge of things; apparently the minute the North Koreans reached the city limits, he commandeered a very large airplane, with plenty of room for others, and rode in it, its sole passenger, all the way to Tokyo, where he was decorated by Douglas MacArthur for his "heroism".)

The non-Koreans, which consisted of my great-aunt and four U.S. Marines, were spared being shot, and instead packed into an ox-cart and moved north.

After which the curtain descends again.

In late 1953, some months after the armistice in Korea, my great-aunt was located and returned.  The North Korean socialists had broken her back so thoroughly that for the rest of her life, she resembled nothing more than an upright upside-down capital "L".

She returned to the family farm in northeastern Pennsylvania, to live with an older brother (the one such a good farmer that he had never joined the military), in utter seclusion and isolation.

Actually, it was not that bad of a deal; the family farm was located in the heart of a Pennsylvania state forest (the farm had existed before Pennsylvania made the woods surrounding it state property); trees, streams, ponds, meadows, all sorts of wild- and domestic animal life, big house, barns, lush gardens (there were three).

But she never left it, for twenty-five years, until she died.  Family of course visited her, and if there was a compelling reason for a priest, physician, banker, or attorney, they went to her, not she to them.

As a small child, I saw her much, this upright upside-down "L," feeding the birds and beasts, working the garden, pouring tea for guests.  She was bent, but apparently not utterly arthritic, and of all my great-aunts and great-uncles, she was the only one to die with a clear mind, uncorroded by senility.

She was of a special tranquil, serene religious nature, and prayed often, from an old Slovak prayer-book.  One time, when still a child, I asked her what she was praying for.

Thinking of the four Marines who had been on that ox-cart with her, she reminded me that one should always think of those whom only God remembers.