A Death In Korea
And The Search for Answers
by
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When a man goes off to war and dies, leaving behind a young wife and infant son, that fits the definition of a tragedy: a disasterous event, calamity; misfortune. If one of the witnesses to the tragic event happens to be a friend, and that friend later marries the young widow of the deceased and adopts her son, and nobody from either of their families attends their church wedding that is held near the home of one of the families, that fits the definition of bizarre: strikingly out of the ordinary. This is a true story that is both tragic and bizarre. The last time I read something that had both qualities, it was a play written by William Shakespeare. As someone once said, the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Fate somehow played a role in my being able to find out some important facts that made this incredible story possible to tell. A fire at the National Personnel Records Center in st. Louis, Missouri on July 12, 1973 damaged, but didn't destroy, the records pertaining to the official investigation into the tragedy that took a young man's life on July 8, 1952 in Korea during the Korean War. Without those records, there would be no story. Some dictionaries describe fate as being: the determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do; an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end. Fate surely had a hand in this story, in more ways than one.
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About the Book
This is a true story that is both tragic and bizarre. It’s tragic because a young twenty-two-year-old serviceman, married and with an infant son back home, died in Korea during the Korean War. It’s bizarre because a fellow serviceman with whom he’d been stationed at two different locations was one of the witnesses at the shooting that took his life. Then that witness later married the man’s widow and adopted his son. Even though they had a church wedding, nobody from either family showed up. Very unusual. Exactly twenty years to the day after the young serviceman died in Korea, his twenty-year-old son had a near-death experience in Vietnam. The son grew up not knowing his biological father’s name, his branch of service, how, when, or where he died, or what he looked like, until he was almost fifty-eight years old. Then fate stepped in and provided him with a reason to investigate into the past. What he found out will astound you as much as it did him.
About the Author
A retired US Air Force master sergeant, Steve Crews was born in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He enlisted in the Air Force in June 1971. He served in Vietnam from October 1971 to October 1972. He also served three tours of duty in the Philippines at Clark Air Base and four monthlong TDYs in South Korea. He has six grown children and twelve grandchildren. He currently lives in an RV, being a full-timer since 2007. He calls wherever he sleeps for the night “home.”