Korean War casualty finally laid to rest

With full military honors, religious readings, the thanks of a grateful Korea and the respect of friends, firefighters and veterans, Stanley Paul Arendt was laid to rest in Palatine Monday.

Arendt, a corporal in the U.S. Army, was killed in 1950 while a 22-year-old prisoner of war. His remains lay undiscovered in North Korea until 2004, and his identity was finally confirmed last year.

About 100 people attended a graveside service Monday at St. Michael the Archangel Cemetery, with chaplains from Fort Sheridan and an honor guard from Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

"He's here now in America, and we want him here," said Dorothy Stewart, Stanley's older sister, who came from her home in Sun City, Az. to attend.

She and her younger brother, Jim Arendt of Naperville, were moved at the turnout.

"It's an honor to have all this for him," she said.

Stanley didn't have to go to Korea. After being drafted, the Palatine High School graduate spent his two-year enlistment in Japan, but when it was over, he re-upped, ready and willing to join his friends who were going to Korea.

"It really hurt Mom and Dad," Stewart said. "He served his two years. But he was very loyal to his friends."

Monday's graveside service was attended by the children of Jim Arendt and Dorothy Stewart, and their friends, but many others who came did so out of respect.

Among them were firefighters from the Palatine Rural Fire Protection District and 11 flag-holding members of the Patriot Guard Riders, who honor fallen soldiers and work to bring home any listed as missing.

Chul Huh, the Korean consul general in Chicago, was in attendance. He said the least he could do was represent his country at the service because of the debt owed America by the Korean people.

"Without the sacrifice of Stanley and his colleagues in Korea, and their families, there would be no such prosperous and free Korea as we have today," he said.

Several golf pros also came, as golf joins several generations of the Arendt family. Their father, also named Stanley, was the pro at the Inverness Golf Club, where their mother, Frances, ran the kitchen and the family lived. Today, Jim Arendt is head PGA golf professional at Naperville Country Club.

Jim Arendt, who was 3 when Stanley left home for the last time, said Monday's turnout is evidence that Americans feel deeply about the sacrifice of their sons and daughters.

"People still care," he said.

"It means that there's a lot of people who want these boys to come home," Arendt added. "We should never stop looking for them, and maybe we should be a little more careful sending them over there than we've been."

Once Stanley Arendt got to Korea it wasn't long before he was in the thick of it. Jim Arendt said his brother wrote a lot of letters home; one of them detailed a horrific battle where he was one of only five or six men to survive from what had been a company of 50.

But Stanley wrote to his parents on Oct. 30, 1950, that he thought the North Koreans were about done fighting. The Americans had beaten them soundly, he wrote, and he was optimistic he would be home by Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Instead, the entry of the Chinese into the war had given renewed energy to the North Korean offensive. Arendt, a corporal with Company L, 34d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, was caught up in the ferocious battle of Unsan and on Nov. 2, he and 10 other soldiers were captured by two Chinese Command Divisions.

The Americans and one South Korean were held in a farmhouse as POWs. Then, on Nov. 16, a North Korean unit came back through the area.

"They took nine of them out of the farmhouse, including my brother, stood them up and shot them," said Jim Arendt. Seven of the bodies, including Arendt, were buried close to where they fell.

But one survived. According to Army accounts, Pfc. Joseph P. Doherty fell down as the first shots were fired and played dead. He later was rescued by U.S. Forces, and his account of the massacre would help the Army recovery team locate and identify Stanley Arendt's remains more than 55 years later.

Stewart said Stanley's disappearance 60 years ago was hard on her parents and the whole family.

My parents knew he was captured," Stewart said, "but they never found out anything later on."

The family had long since given up ever getting any word of Stanley when in 2004 a farmer found some human bones in a farm field near Unsan.

The Army recovery unit got permission from the North Korean government to check out the report. They found leg bones and about 30 teeth, enough to positively identify Stanley Arendt using dental records and DNA. It took nearly five years to complete the process - there were no dog tags.

Jim Arendt, who made unsuccessful attempts over the years to find out his brother's fate, has had one vivid memory to carry with him over all these years.

"I remember the last night I saw him," Arendt said. "I was 3 years old and my mom and dad and him were coming into the bedroom trying to wake me up to say goodbye because he was going overseas.

"My brother said something to the effect, 'Let him sleep, I'll see him again.' I can picture that like it was yesterday."