Kunu-ri

The congressman stepped down from the podium and walked to the glass case, and the whole room followed him with their eyes. Inside was a black-and-white photo from 1951, a young Black soldier carrying a wounded white soldier on his back through the snow. The caption read, Pfc. C. Booker, 24th Infantry, rescuing Pvt. W. Holcomb, Kunu-ri.

The congressman turned to the new post commander and asked, is William Holcomb your father, Commander. Bryce Holcombs face went gray.

It was his father. The wounded man in the photo, carried through the snow at Kunu-ri in 1951 by the ninety-four-year-old veteran sitting on a folding chair by the coffee urn, was Bryce Holcombs own daddy.

He told me Korea was a long time ago and put me in the back of the room, never knowing I carried his father out of it on my back.

Bryce walked across that room and he did not say a word at first. He just helped an old man up out of a metal folding chair. And then, in front of the congressman and the whole post, he walked me to the front row, to the third seat from the flag, and he stood at attention, and he saluted.

They found the paperwork later. My name had been put up for a medal in 1951 and lost in the shuffle, the way a lot of things were for a soldier like me in a regiment like the 24th. The congressman made it his business to see it finally awarded.

I have sat in that same seat every Memorial Day since Eisenhower. My great-granddaughter is typing this, and she wants me to tell you that this year, when they played taps, there was a young commander standing beside my chair the whole time, with his hand over his heart, for the man who gave him his father.