From Inchon to Idaho

HAYDEN — With sabers and Olympic medals rattling on the Korean Peninsula, the world’s attention is focused on what might happen there next. But Hayden resident Bob Ahler remembers what happened there 66 years ago.

The boy from Bay City, Mich., arrived at Inchon, South Korea, in March 1952. Ahler had first entered the military by joining the Michigan National Guard in 1951. The underage soldier witnessed his commanding officer totally drunk during a field training exercise.

“Everything was chaos,” he said.

There was a draft on in those days, Ahler explained, and he didn’t want to go to war in such a unit.

Ahler bolted the Guard for the U.S. Marine Corps. He said his desire to join the Corps was so intense that when his train went off the rails en route to boot camp, after helping survivors and being taken to a hospital himself, he ran from the hospital to get on another eastbound train. Ahler joined the 4th Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment after boot camp at Parris Island, S.C.

Ahler remembers the bitter cold he experienced upon arrival at Inchon. He and his fellow Marines drove for hours in subzero temperatures and jumped out of their trucks onto numb legs and feet. All the food was frozen solid. He chose a can of frozen fruit cocktail, which he thawed out with his body heat. His friends who chose other cans didn’t eat a bite, he said. However, the Marines’ sleeping bags, called “mummy bags,” enabled the warriors to stay warm despite the Arctic-like temperatures.

“That sleeping bag was unreal,” he said.

In addition to handling mail, Ahler was on call around the clock to deliver ammunition to artillery batteries in the field. The 155 mm howitzers each required both a 104-pound projectile plus a bag of powder.

“They would load about 20 on the truck,” which was an old World War II-era International truck that took a lot of moxy to drive over the bad terrain. Ahler said the dust was a foot thick in Korea.

“Eight of us trucks, the first one would get stuck, and we’d hit each other to keep going. The last guy — usually it went down where he could just crawl.”

Ahler said that one day, “Me and a friend from Lansing were taking supplies to our forward observers and had to drive one and a half blocks.”

Ahler and his friend gunned the engine the whole way. When they arrived, one of the forward observers told them, “You guys were lucky.” Communist forces had the road zeroed in with their artillery, and they just happened to not fire that day.

After deciding to return a different way, the pair got stuck in the woods as night fell. In pitch-black conditions, they heard people approaching, speaking Korean. Ahler and his friend had taken cover in a deep culvert and were outgunned. Then after hearing some English from the patrol, Ahler began to fear a friendly fire incident.

“If we jumped out of that culvert, would they kill us?,” he wondered. The pair stayed in the culvert until the patrol was right on top of them. They called out to them, and went back to the U.S. Marine position with the patrol. “If we had made any sudden moves, we wouldn’t have come out of there. That was the scariest.”

After 13 months and 12 days in Korea, Ahler returned to the U.S. and completed five years in the Corps. Ahler then spent a career with General Motors in Michigan while growing a family with his first wife.

Decades later, he would discover a new state to love by rediscovering a long-lost love.

Ahler and his wife of 16 years, Eunice, had known each other from their childhood in Bay City. They went on a date once as teenagers, but Ahler said Eunice bolted inside the house once he got her back to her door. He’d have to wait 48 years for that first goodnight kiss.

Eunice had built a family with her first husband, whose work moved them out to California, and whose retirement settled them in Idaho. In their later years, death parted both Bob and Eunice from their former spouses. When Eunice went to Michigan to visit her sister 16 years ago, the pair saw each other for the first time in decades. Bob said they didn’t recognize each other at first. Nonetheless, after talking for a month, they began a new chapter of their lives, together.

While living in California, Eunice had worked with handicapped children from Korea. She admires her husband’s service in the Korean War.

“I feel safe” being married to a Marine, she said with a smile.

Eunice drew Bob to North Idaho, and he’s very happy to be here. Their friends from Hayden Bible Church, along with neighbors and others in the community, have supported them when she suffered injuries from falls and during his bout with cancer. Ahler said his most recent CAT scan looked good.

“I never in my life seen people come out of the woodwork to help somebody, not even in my hometown. People just seem to love each other here,” he said.

“Our church family is so good to us,” his wife added.

Of course, it helps that Bob and Eunice are easy to love. The couple act as stand-ins for local youngsters whose older relatives live far away, and the Ahlers have a large family of their own. Their refrigerator is covered with photos from their combined eight children, 33 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, plus their faux grandchildren.

Ahler loves the Michigan Wolverines and watches them play while talking on the phone with his kids and grandkids in Michigan. However, he said that when he remembers the guys he knew who died in Korea, and the wives and parents who lost loved ones there, he can’t stomach watching National Football League games anymore. The players protesting during the national anthem are deplorable, he said.

“How could these guys do that?” he asked.

The ship heading to Korea was loaded with troops playing blackjack, said Ahler. The ship ride home in 1953 had far fewer troops on board, he said.

“When I came home there were five of us that got together after a year,” he said. “The rest were either killed, wounded, or whatever. The ship wasn’t loaded at all.”