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Korean War Service Medal David Earl Askew, 20, graduated from Columbus High School in 1951 and worked at a local trucking firm before enlisting in the Navy on July 30, 1951. A corpsman serving at U.S. Marine Base Hospital, Camp LeJeune, N.C., he was fatally injured in an auto accident July 8, 1953, at Beaufort, N.C. Forrest S. Burns, 30, was stationed at Camp Atterbury during World War II and remained in the Army Reserve. In June 1951, while he was farming locally, he was called back to active duty and left the states for Korea Feb. 4, 1952, hoping to return home by Christmas. He was killed in action Aug. 30, 1952. Survivors included his wife and daughter and an infant son he never saw. He also lost a brother in World War II. T. Delmonte Carpenter was in a familiar situation in the early 1950s. Like a number of young men, he had served during World War II and had returned to civilian life but signed up with the military reserves. His civilian career was in medicine. The physician had been in practice for more than six years when he was re-called to active duty because of the Korean War. The 31-year-old Hoosier was assigned to a hospital in California, but in March 1953 he suffered a fatal heart attack. Two years after his death the Columbus community honored his memory by naming an open air memorial chapel at Youth Camp in his honor. William Martin Fisher, 22, attended school in Columbus and worked at Arvin Industries before entering the service Jan. 23, 1952. He went to Korea in July 1952 and had been in action on the front lines for several weeks when he was killed in action Oct. 15, 1952. Avery Green, a Jackson County native, moved with his family to Columbus in 1946. He enlisted in the Air Force and was called to active duty Dec. 23, 1943. He re-enlisted three times and was serving as a flight engineer on a B-29. In a letter home in early November 1950, he stated he had been on 13 missions in Korea. He was killed in action over Korea Nov. 9, 1950. Jackie Lee Hulse had enlisted in the Air Force shortly after the Korean War broke out. The Grammer resident had attended Columbus High School before enlisting. In 1952 the plane on which he served as a crew member crashed, and he was among the dead. Edgar Dean Jones, 20, a native of Iowa, attended Columbus High School and enlisted in the Army in November 1948. He arrived in Korea in July 1950 and was killed Aug. 7, 1950. Grover D. Kinney, 21, enlisted in the Army Feb. 18, 1948. A member of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, he was given emergency leave to visit his wife, who was stricken with tuberculosis, and the couple’s infant daughter. However, as the paperwork for that emergency leave was being processed, he was killed in action Sept. 23, 1950. Robert Eugene Miller had been on active duty in Korea for four months when his tank unit was overrun by Communist forces Dec. 6, 1950. He was carried as a prisoner of war for three years until 1953 when his name appeared on a list of those Americans who died in Korean POW camps. The former Clifford area resident had served in World War II and had been awarded a Silver Star for actions in the Korean War. James Ostick, 24, a 1947 graduate of Columbus High School, was named to the All-Indiana High School Football Team in 1946 as a tackle and was an All-South Central Conference choice. He attended Wabash and Colorado A&M colleges before enlisting in the Marines Aug. 6, 1950. His unit was stationed near Seoul, South Korea, arriving on Easter 1953. He was killed July 12, 1953, while serving with the 1st Marine Division on the central Korean front. He had been in action only two weeks. Survivors included his wife. U.S. Army S Sgt. Phillips lived in Columbus, Indiana as a child and young man in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was laid to rest April 18, 2008 in Loogootee, Indiana next to the son he never saw. He was buried with full military honors provided by a United States Army Honor Guard from Fort Knox Kentucky. Virgil also served during WWII. He was considered MIA for 57 years. Identification was made possible through the work of Cathy Jo (Phillips) Bryant, of Columbus, Indiana, who was Virgil Phillips' niece. Alan Randall, 21, a former resident of Columbus, had served four years in the Army and enlisted for six more years. He was killed April 6,1952, in an auto-truck accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Allentown while en route from Fort Hood, Texas, to the East Coast and an assignment in Germany. Charles Owen Smiley, 23, of Hope enlisted in the Air Force at age 17. A six-year Air Force veteran, he was planning to make the military a career. He died Sept. 3, 1952, in the Japanese islands from a gunshot wound. He was last known to be stationed with a radar unit on a small island and was not believed to be in combat. Years later his daughter (who was born after his death) wrote a fictional novel based on her father’s death that speculated he might have been killed by fellow soldiers. John Samuel Stearns received a rather long letter from home while he was aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean in 1952. It was 42 feet long and contained the signatures of members of his Methodist Youth Fellowship in Columbus. More than a year later his fellow church members learned that the 20-year-old Columbus resident had been killed in an auto accident in Hawaii. Glen W. Tatem, 30, a native of Kentucky, worked at Cummins Engine Co. and Golden Foundry after World War II and before re-enlisting in the service. He was wounded twice in World War II and held the Silver Star and Bronze Star. A member of the 83rd Infantry Division, he was killed Aug. 13, 1950, while acting as commanding officer of his rifle platoon in an advance against Korean snipers. The unit ran into the enemy’s main force and was surrounded. Most of the men were lost. He was survived by his wife and two children.
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Korean War "The Forgotten
War"
