John Meehan: Considers himself a lucky man

Sheer dumb luck. Those three words give the best summary of John Meehan’s account of his experience in the Korean War. He knew it from the start of his basic training in December 1950 until his discharge in the summer of 1953.

His service time began with a trip to downtown Chicago, where he boarded a train for Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. He was 21, leaving his mother, father, siblings and future wife, Theresa.

When his group arrived on a Sunday (these men were the first GIs to be drafted), they all thought they were going to starve in the Army because they were only served cold cuts for their first few meals. However, they quickly learned it was simply a Sunday tradition and moved on into their six weeks of basic training with a better menu on all of the other days of the week.

Being well fed was important, as hiking to condition their bodies for the rigors of carrying gear through Korea dominated their schedules; they would often hike out to the shooting range and learn how to properly fire and clean their weapons before trekking back for lunch.

They also worked on marching and military maneuvers in keeping with the regimentation of Army life. In Meehan’s case, he proceeded to engineering camp for another six weeks after basic training. There he gained the knowledge of how to build bridges across small rivers, repair roads, and other tasks to aid the Army’s movements through the Korean terrain.

In June of 1951, he took a train out of Fort Leonard Wood to San Francisco where he and other soldiers were shipped off to Korea.

John Meehan’s journey contains more side stories that fall under the grand umbrella of his time in the service.

The first occurred in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a 2,000-man destroyer. Almost all of the men decided to head down below decks for the first hours of the voyage, but a sailor told John to stay up top for a couple of hours since the seas around San Francisco were rough. Needless to say, he was probably one of the few landlubbers not vomiting that first night out thanks to that seaman’s advice.

Some days later, the ship hit a whale out at sea. Yes, a whale. Unfortunately, it died shortly after the impact and some crewmen had to go down in smaller boats and push it off the front with oars. Plenty of men experienced overwhelming gladness when their strange trip ended in Pusan, Korea.

Immediately after arrival in Pusan, the GIs were placed into a holding area where each GI would wait to hear his name called and receive their assignment to either the 25th, 7th, or 38th Division. John Meehan waited all day for his name, but ended up being among 12 men that were never called forth. It turned out that all of them qualified for Officer Candidates School and would have to sign on for another year of service if they so desired.

None of them wanted to stay in Korea for a minute longer than they had to, so they were posed two other options: 12 volunteers were needed to be MPs (Military Police) for the 7th Division, or they could go into the infantry.

One soul chose to head to the front lines; the rest along with Meehan became the MPs for the 7th Division. He spent about a year with “Hourglasses” primarily at Pork Chop Hill. The Hourglass is the black-and-red symbol of the 7th Division; each Division had their own unique symbol. That one hill changed hands nightly, and many infantrymen died for no reason.

The soldiers did not believe in the large scale sacrifice of American lives thousands of miles from home when no clear results were being gained. Luckily, as an MP John was charged with running defiles, which essentially meant controlling the flow of military traffic in the area so that people could safely pass in both directions.

Other duties consisted of watching over Korean prisoners of war and shipping them south, or assigning American soldiers who went AWOL various difficult tasks as punishment for their attempted desertion. One AWOL prisoner escaped the barbed wire brig when the entire company was watching a movie from the States, but he was captured trying to board a ship at Pusan. That effectively ended any movie nights for the troops.

Another story stems from a second lieutenant, fresh off the boat, trying to look for Koreans at night with a flashlight. Anyone who had some matter of brains steered clear of that man since he was almost guaranteed to be shot.

After their stint at the front lines the 7th Division was given a break from combat and returned to Seoul for a brief period of rest and relaxation. Meehan’s group of men stayed at an occupied school and observed the children of the area. One boy in particular, referred to as the “Shoe Shine Boy,” would come up every day to shine the company’s shoes and perform other tasks in exchange for food.

Compared to life on the front lines, this was a welcome break for men who had seen more death and gore than anyone should have to experience. Another piece of good fortune came Meehan’s way shortly thereafter: he was selected for duty as an MP at Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone where peace agreement negotiations were being held between the North Koreans and U.N. forces.

The selection process was random; the military did want an assortment of men from different divisions to represent the Army as a whole. The 12 lucky soldiers headed to Masan for two weeks to train for their positions so as not to shame their country before being stationed at Panmunjom.

The days in Panmunjom felt slow and dragged on for the six months Meehan lived there, and most of the time was spent reading Life and Look magazines from the States, playing cards, or listening to his transoceanic radio (which eventually was damaged). A typical day included a six hours on, 12 hours off watching over the camp. One Korean and one American were assigned to each tent, and each person had a phone to call their superiors in case the enemy felt like holding a conference.

However, every day at 11 o’clock leaders from both sides would present their demands and neither would concede. Five minutes later, each group would head back to base and leave the MPs with a daily feast since the officers from the U.N. never stayed for lunch. Steak, pork chops, and other delights went straight down the MPs’ gullets.

Considering that regular infantrymen less than 500 yards away starved on K-rations, the MPs had the easy life.

John Meehan remembers life in Panmunjom the best simply due to the fact the most interesting stories come from this time in his service. The first relates to the never-ending desire for rations, particularly beer. A fresh shipment of food, beer, and mail finally arrived after two months of waiting for supplies. Therefore, each man received two cases of beer all to himself; Meehan decided to sneak off and bury one of his cases for later. He returned in about a week and found another person had dug it up, and he was not a pleasant fellow to be around the rest of the day.

The mail his parents and friends sent him cheered him up though: Hershey’s bars, cakes, and magazines brightened up his dull routine. Even the packaging contained popcorn so that he could have more food to eat, thus earning him the nickname “Popcorn Man.”

But the greatest days of all were paydays. One payday in particular gave Meehan the funds to buy his first car, all because of the luckiest poker game ever. It had been three months since any of the soldiers had been given their salaries, and poker games began as soon as the money reached their sweaty palms. By the end of the night, only six men had any money left to continue playing. The final hand gave Meehan a royal flush, the highest one can have in poker. The other men had full houses and straights and kept asking to raise, but when the time came to show their cards, he came out on top and earned over $2,000 to boot.

He sent the money back to the states to Theresa (or Tess as he affectionately referred to her), along with pictures from his 35 mm camera and letters describing the warm summer days and blisteringly cold winter nights.

Around the end of his tour, he was offered the chance to attend OCS one more time and to stay up at Panmunjom, perhaps in time for the final peace negotiations. On one hand, Meehan was intrigued by the possibility that he could be present at a moment in history but was deterred by the fact that it could be in the next few weeks or the next few years.

Instead, he decided to take and honorable discharge and head home to his family. For six weeks he was stationed at an anti-aircraft base in Skokie to finish out his time in the Army.

Thank goodness for all of his Irish luck or I would not be here to tell his story today because John Meehan is my grandfather.