Today in Ironton, Ohio, the Memorial Day parade is scheduled to include a restored 1943 Jeep from World War II. It belongs to 84-year-old Boyd Hiser from Belle.
The man in the Jeep deserves a parade in his own right, complete with confetti, please. An Ansted native and a fiercely loyal West Virginian, he's a bona fide war hero, recipient of a Bronze Star with "V" Device for meritorious and heroic combat service during the Korean War.
In July 1953, ignoring a barrage of enemy fire and the threat of almost certain death, he led a small team directly into the fray to carry wounded comrades to a safer place. He cared for them there until help arrived.
It took years before he could talk about that or even think about it without choking up.
Encouraged by his daughter, he eventually put it all on paper in a comprehensive hand-written military memoir filled with snapshots he took before he went off to war.
Even after 63 years, the memories keep coming. War -- the constant specter of death, the horrors he saw, the comrades he lost, the profundity of all that -- those memories never fade.
He was thinking about a military career. Until Korea. "Three months in combat," he said, "I think it was enough."
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"I was born in Ansted. My dad was a coal miner. I was next to the youngest boy and three sisters above me.
"I always loved airplanes. I knew every airplane of the Germans and Japanese and Americans. I got my pilot's license later on in life.
"I played football and basketball and ran track in high school. Basketball was my favorite. Twice I made all-tournament. I thought I was good, so I guess I was. I played center. I was about 6-1, and I was a horse. There weren't many guys that tall then.
"The Korean War started in June of '50. I knew I was going to be there. I was scared. I never had been out of West Virginia. I couldn't get a job because I was 1A. I made money mowing grass and digging ditches.
"At the time I went in, you could join for two years and choose what you were going onto. Before that, you had to join for four years. All the other guys were going in the Air Force. You'd think I would want to do that. But I was always skinny and had bad teeth. I felt my best chance of making a career of it was to join the Army. Less competition. I went to Beckley and passed all the prerequisites to go to Officers Candidate School and got sworn in.
"I went to Indiantown Gap for basic training. I know my right and left. Always did. But you anticipate the command. The sergeant would say, 'Left face!' I'm anticipating it, but I went in the other direction. He yells, 'Everybody freeze!' He comes up and puts a rock in my right hand and says, 'When I say right, you turn toward that rock!' It humiliates you.
"I was in the infantry, the lowest ground-pounder there is. I fired every weapon the infantry had. I was well trained in it. After basic training, I went into mortar school. That would put me about two miles behind the line because mortars fire overhead to the line. I didn't want to be up there. You could get killed!
"I was scheduled for OCS. A week before we were to go to Fort Benning, a directive came down saying all OCS programs had been suspended. I assume they were getting too many officers.
"I wound up in Korea, and they handed me a Browning automatic rifle. which weighs 19 ½ pounds.
"I was still a private when I earned the medal. I wrote about it in a book I wrote for my daughter. I would write a little and go out in the yard. I can tell you now without breaking up.
"On July 17, 1953, we were supposed to go to this Chinese-occupied hill. As we went down this valley toward the hill, we could see soldiers in a skirmish.
"There were two platoons during this assault. One got trapped. Our platoon was to the side. Navy Skyraiders would come and strafe with a machine gun and drop their ordnance, it might be a 500-pound bomb. After they had their milk run, our artillery would start out softening up the Chinese line.
"Here came these three tanks that were ours. They told us to get on them before we started up the mountain. Bullets started flying around. I remember this machine gunner firing this 50-caliber machine gun on top of the tank. He ducked down in there. A set of hands shoved him back up and someone yelled, 'Keep that blankety-blank firepower up!' What if a bullet had hit that guy and killed him? The guy who shoved him up there would have to live with it the rest of his life.
"I heard this terrible explosion behind us. A tank had hit a land mine and it blew off the left track. We had to abandon the tanks and we started up this creek. They didn't know when we would get food or water or ammo. I was born and raised in West Virginia in the mountains. I thought, 'I'm going to be the last man standing.'
"I didn't want to get dehydrated. I gulped from my canteen. I put more water in it from the creek and put pills in to purify it. You are supposed to let it sit for two and a half hours. I shook it up and said, 'Hell, that's good enough.' I drank some more, put some more pills in and drank some more. I don't know if the water I drank was where I got it, but later I did get hepatitis.
"We started up this creek. I hadn't gone 15 yards, and there in a pool of water was a dead [Chinese soldier]. He'd been dead a long time. He was all swelled up.
"When we found out this other platoon was trapped, some of us volunteered to go in there. I stood up and said, 'Let's go!'
"This fellow, a medic from this other platoon, has a stretcher. We ran up on this black guy who was wounded. He had a big chuck taken out of his thigh. We set the stretcher down and put him on it. It's like a table leg. You have to get it a certain way or it collapses.
"Here's this guy holding the side of this thing and hollering, 'Hey man, there's something wrong!' He was in the stretcher and it had collapsed and he was trapped in there. I had to turn around and smile. We took him off and locked it and put him back on.
"We started carrying him back to our lines. This medic named Mullins was on the front of the stretcher and I'm on the back. We were running with this guy, and the mortar rounds were coming in. I looked back and saw this Puerto Rican named Delgado running with his rifle. He was there, and an instant later, he wasn't. A round hit very close to him. They found some of his remains later.
"About that time, it sounded like firecrackers in your ears -- bullets going by fast enough to break the sound barrier. We were running. Mullins got hit and was killed instantly. The stretcher fell on his legs. I tumbled over top of the guy on the stretcher. There was a stack of rocks, and I got behind that. I pulled both of them behind the rocks and hollered for our medic. He tried to give Mullins plasma.
"All this stuff is happening like a flash camera. I see it, but stuff in between, I can't remember it. It's not there. I've tried.
"The medic tried to give Mullins plasma. He looked at me and said, 'No, Hiser, he's gone.' I didn't want to leave Mullins out there. I drug him to a dry creek and put him on a rock because I was going to come back and get him that night. It would be easy to follow that creek and go right to him.
"That evening, the lieutenant said, 'They tell me you know where Mullins is. You don't have to go back there. Just tell us, and we will go get him.' I said, 'Sir, give me three or four men, and I will get him.' So we did.
"We started putting him on the stretcher. He had been dead about seven hours. I heard a big sigh, like taking in a breath. My hair stood up on end. I realized rigor mortis hadn't set in and it was his diaphragm going down.
"That evening, I was checking my equipment and my sling on my rifle had about four or five threads where a bullet went through and my cartridge on the side had a bullet go through there. That's how close I came to buying the farm. When you got killed, you bought the farm.
"The lieutenant the next day said, 'Hiser, you have all the qualities of a good military leader. You didn't get to go to OCS, but we can get you a battlefield commission of a second lieutenant.' I said, 'Sir, the stuff I've seen in the past three months, I just want the hell out of here.'
"But that's where I got the Bronze Star.
"I stayed over there and got in the United Nations showing movies for the custodian forces from India. That was interesting, meeting with another culture. I came back and went to Fort Knox and got discharged and went back to Ansted and married the girl next door. We were married 45 years and nine months when she died of cancer 14 years ago.
"I've done a number of things. I started out in engineering for the city of South Charleston as a rod man. Then I got to running a transit where you lay out angles and stuff. Then I worked for a corporation building a building at Carbide and I worked high steel as a welding inspector. Then I went to Ohio and built a warehouse. They wanted me out there but I wanted to stay in West Virginia. I was always real good at art and started working for this printing company as a commercial artist. I almost starved to death for three years.
"Then I went in the coal mines. I worked in the mines for 13 years and became a foreman. Then all the mines went down. I opened a coal testing lab in Boone County and operated it for a year. A mine at Cabin Creek had a lot of labor problems so they shut it down and then I managed that property for about a year.
"So I've done a bunch of things. I've never been fired and always did a real good job, the best I could.
"I got the Jeep about five years ago. I saw an ad in an antique cars magazine and drove to Georgia to get it. I started collecting parts. I belong to this organization over at Beckley, West Virginia Military Vehicle Support Group. They said they would restore it for me.
"On Nov. 11 last year, we had it in a parade at Beckley. It's going to be in a parade this Memorial Day in Ironton, Ohio. Bobby Weiford put me on that. It's conflicting with one of my other parades, but he asked me first.
"I did the book about four years ago. I've got all these pictures taken with the camera I bought before I went over. I wrote the good stuff and the bad stuff.
"I told you about Mullins on the front of that stretcher? That's a picture of his grave. Through the Internet, I found that he's from Grundy, Virginia. It took me about three days to find his grave, and I took pictures of his grave. I about died with him. He was 19.
"There are a lot of things I would have changed, but not my marriage. I would have settled down at one job. I have no regrets about the war. I learned a lot of stuff. I don't care how good you are or how bad you are, there's always somebody out there who will beat your hind end.
"I don't hate anybody, but I have my prejudices. I am partial to somebody from West Virginia. I will give them a break. I will give people from Ansted a break quicker than I would somebody else. That's the way it is."
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-342-5027.