Louie Roberts

Contributed by daughter, Debbie Essary

Many a person will tell you the Bible changed his life. Louie Roberts of rural Springerton, IL, has a slightly different twist on that; the Four Gospels probably saved his life...literally.

Roberts was an 18-year-old GI on the front lines in Korea when, on Friday, the 13th of October, 1950, a bullet fired from a North Korean soldier's gun struck the little black testament he was carrying in the pocket of his fatigue shirt.

The bullet's path was deflected just enough so that it entered his lower left side instead of striking him in the heart. He still has the small testament, with a bullet hole in it, as well as the Purple Heart the wound earned him on that day, a half-century ago in Korea.

Roberts grew up in Mt. Vernon, IN. He turned 17 on August 31, 1949 and enlisted in the Army Sept. 15. After basic training in Ft. Knox, KY., artillery training in Ft. Banning, GA., and maneuvers in the Caribbean, he shipped out from California for Pusan, South Korea, the city on the peninsula's southeastern coast where American and South Korean forces had dug in after an initial North Korean attack.

Assigned to the 1st Cavalry as the second-man on a 105 Howitzer, he and his unit were soon on the front lines, facing the North Koreans. His job was to load the three-foot, 20-pound shells into the gun, but on that fateful Friday the 13th, the unit was hemmed in by its adversaries. Roberts volunteered to scale the heights above the American position in order to determine the location of the Communists. But when he reached the summit, a bullet interrupted his observation almost before it began.

He lay there, bleeding, for nearly an hour, while fighting raged below him and while ants made his wound even more painful. He smoked cigarette after cigarette in an effort to stay awake. Finally, his buddies came after him, an hour after he was wounded and carried him to safety.

Roberts spent two months in Japan, recovering from the wound, and then volunteered to return to Korea.

He was with his unit when the U.N. Forces (of which the Americans were a major component) chased the North Koreans to the Chinese border (the Yale River), and when the Chinese poured across the stream in huge numbers and drove them back, the Americans and their allies.

Roberts was never again wounded, but he faced grave danger on more than one occasion. He recalls seeing a shirt beneath a small bridge and killing a Chinese soldier who had hidden there in hopes of wiping out some Americans. He remembers his unit being surrounded by Chinese, "lots of times," and being rescued, or fighting their way out.

"There were times they'd attack you, hundreds of them coming right at you," he said, "We'd fire white phosphorous shells at them. It was sort of like a small A-bomb."

Roberts has the medals earned for taking part in five major battles, and he has several newspaper clippings telling of his service in Korea, including a newspaper photograph taken of him viewing the bodies of 19 civilians massacred by the Chinese.

He remembers the death, the fighting, the intense cold (sometimes 30 below zero), but he doesn't dwell on it. "Once in a while the wound hurts, but I never did get frostbite, and the VA has taken pretty good care of me," he said.

After 14 months in Jorea, Roberts returned to the U.S. in September 1951 abd got out of the service the next year. He continued the family's military tradition: two great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War, his father took part in World War I, a brother fought in World War II, another fought (and was also wounded) in Korea, and yet another joined the service later but didn't participate in the war.

"It was a good experience," said Roberts of his time in Korea. "I went from being a kid to a man."