Claire+&+Emily

The Korean War was a conflict between North and South Korea with help from many other countries. Those countries included Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Thailand, Sweden, Philippines, New Zealand, Luxembourg, India, and France (United States Units). This war was not a war that the United States had started, but it was one that we wanted to help end. During the Korean War, Mr. Paul Maulfair was drafted into the United States Army to repair vehicles for war.

The Korean War was a conflict between North and South Korea. Northern Korea wanted communism and South Korea wanted democracy. When the Korean War started, the United States was not going to fight (Korean War History...). Then in 1949, the Unites States withdrew from South Korea, and Korea said that if they were attacked, it was going to be the United States’ fault (Korean War). China was ready for the United States to declare war because of the conflict in North and South Korea (Korean War History...). To help support South Korea and contain communist expansion, Harry Truman, President of the United States, got American troops and the United Nations to defend them (The Price of...). To help get ammunition and other supplies for the Korean War, the United States went through the Special Procurements System that allowed the U. S. to purchase those supplies outside of the Pentagon. The budget went up to 50 billion dollars and the Army size doubled during the war. Also, because the United States and Japan were on opposite sides of the war, the United States lost 50% of manufacturing to Japan (Korean War History...). The United States wanted to make peace with North Korea in 1951 (Korean War). The result of the war caused 33,741 American deaths, 23,615 killed in action, 92,134 Americans wounded, and 4,820 missing in action and later declared dead (US Units).

The Korean War caused many deaths and injuries, and a major factor of these deaths was the climate in Korea. Mr. Maulfair repaired vehicles during the war. He was out in the cold and used his hands to help fix vehicles and make equipment last longer. When the American troops first came to Korea the climate was very hot and humid. That did not last long because a few months later the temperature dropped to zero degrees (Korean War Educator...). Sometimes the temperature dropped -30° Fahrenheit. Temperatures this low were unbearable to work in (The Price of...). Some conditions that the troops faced were frostbite. This caused them to lose fingers, hands, toes, or feet. These conditions prevented men from continuing to fight or work in the war until they got better. To know if you did have frostbite, symptoms of swelling, blistering, and gangrene. For Mr. Maulfair, his job of repairing trucks was hands on so to prevent getting blisters, he had to keep his skin clean to avoid the constant danger of infection. This task would have been difficult for Mr. Maulfair to do. Some other injuries suffered during the Korean War was having no feeling from their knees down from the exposure of the cold temperature (Korean War Educator). Therefore, a major concern for Mr. Maulfair was the cold climate in Korea.

 There was a lot of equipment used in the Korean War. Because of the harsh weather, the normal gear was to wear a khaki olive drab jacket, and a herring bone twill hat with fur flaps. Others wore a pile jacket under the field jacket for additional insulation (The Price Of...). Some vehicles that Mr. Maulfair worked on were the M41 Walker Bulldogs. It wasn’t mainly used but it was new and produced 3,728 times during the war period. Another vehicle that was used for equipment during the war was the M65 Atomic Cannon. It was used to keep European allies calm during the making of the Pentagon and the cannon was used to keep the enemies away (Korean War Military...). To keep vehicles working during the war, they had to be repaired which is why Mr. Maulfair was important to the war.

 Mr. Maulfair was apart of the Korean conflict in which the United States wanted to help protect South Korea and contain communist expansion (The Price of...). He endured many conflicts during the war such as the cold climate. Some of the symptoms were frostbite which didn’t allow the troops to fight (Korean War Educator...). Mr. Maulfair’s role in the war was very important.

SourceURL:file://localhost/Volumes/CShaak/Veterans%20History%20Projects/maulfair_finaltranscript.doc

Paul Maulfair

March 10, 2012

VHP Transcript

Emily Weaver and Claire Shaak

Shaak: Can you please state your name, war served in, branch of service, and highest rank achieved.

Mr. Maulfair: Paul W. Maulfair. Highest rank I had was PSC. I should of had Corporal, but my Section Chief and First Sergeant never put my name in. So we didn’t get it and then they froze rank. They didn’t give no more out until after the Korean War.

Shaak: Where and when were you born?

Mr. Maulfair: I was born February the 8, 1930. In North Londonderry Township, a little north of Palmyra.

Shaak: Can you please explain your childhood?

Mr. Maulfair: What was that?

Shaak: Can you please explain your childhood? Like growing up and what was it like.

Mr. Maulfair: Well I was, I was born during the depression. And my parents lived on the farm with my grandparents in a double house. And so I, after I was big enough I helped my grandad a lot. And I worked with other farmers, and we made hay and thrashed the grain. We didn’t have no combines. We thrashed it, we shocked the grains. Made hay heeps to load them on wagons, and I drove tractors for some of the farmers. And I worked for my dad’s uncle in the fruit orchard. We sprayed the trees, and helped pick the fruit. And I went to high school. I went to Hershey to high school, and an auto body shop. We had a vocational school. They had a vocational school at Hershey and if you lived in North Londonderry Township you could either go to Palmyra or Hershey, and they paid the tuition. We had to supply our own transportation. I rode my bicycle, or walked to Palmyra, and got the trolley and rode to Hershey. And that’s how I come home again. While I was in high school, my dad decided he wants to build a house, so we were building a house. We built a house at all at night. He was a carpenter, and we did it all after work. I never lived in the house long. I went to the service soon after we had it built. When I come back, then me and my wife lived there with my parents for, for three months.

Shaak: Were you drafted or enlisted in the military?

Mr. Maulfair: Drafted.

Shaak: And how old were you when you were drafted?

Mr. Maulfair: Twenty-one, twenty-one and a couple months.

Shaak: And how did you tell your friends and family that you were going to have to leave them?

Mr. Maulfair: They knew it. I didn’t need to tell them. They saw the letter.

Shaak: Can you please explain how getting drafted into the Army changed your life?

Mr. Maulfair: Would you repeat that please?

Shaak: Yup, can you explain how getting drafted into the Army changed your life?

Mr. Maulfair: Well they give you numbers, and they pull numbers out of a box or something, and when your number come up they called you, yeah.

Shaak: Was there anyone else in your family that served in the military?

Mr. Maulfair: Not in my immediate family, no. Not, not, when I was in, before I was in, I had two uncles that were in.

Shaak: Yeah.

Mr. Maulfair: They were in the second World War.

Shaak: Where were you sent for basic training?

Mr. Maulfair: Aberdeen, Maryland. It’s only about eighty miles from home. And, do you have, oh what other questions do you have there?

Shaak: Can you explain your basic training experience?

Mr. Maulfair: My basic training was about, I’m ashamed to say it, it was about like a Boy Scout Camp. It wasn’t very good. We didn’t, we didn’t get near the training that an infantryman got. We were, we were drafted I guess for ordinance cause we only had six weeks of training. That included marching, and we were on the rifle range about, about a week. And then we were on bill back about a week, and we we never, we only slept out while we were on the rifle range and on bill back. Other times we were always in barracks. And after basic training then they sent us to a special school. I went, there right at Aberdeen, Maryland. I went to Carburetion and Ignition School, they called it. It was for tuning up the trucks, and jeeps, and what ever they had. We took a, we didn’t get into any major overhauling work. It was just all electrical and carburetion. We didn’t, we didn’t have no diesel that we worked on at all.

Shaak: And can you tell me about the uniform you had to wear? Like did you have to wear a uniform during special training?

Mr. Maulfair: Not more than fatigues, light green and a we had khakis in the summer, and wool, dark wool on for in the winter.

Shaak: And can you explain your living conditions there?

Mr. Maulfair: What?

Shaak: Can you explain your living conditions?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh, well in Maryland we had we were in barracks. There was double deck beds. And it was about two hundreds in the barracks, a hundred on the first floor and a hundred on the second floor. And it wasn’t bad. We had showers and stuff. I wasn’t in in the winter, so I don’t know if it was warm it got a little warm. In the summer cause we didn’t have air condition or nothing. And we had to scrub the barracks every Friday night.

Shaak: Did the people you room with work with you or did they go out in, on missions?

Maulfair: Here at home?

Shaak: At like, during specialized training.

Maulfair: Well we had, there was about thirty of us that were going through this course at the same time. This course was given week after week maybe in ten week intervals, and we learned to know each other pretty good. We usually were working, you and another guy were always working together on one project. We had to, if we had to tear a carburetor apart both of us were working on it or if we had to pull a magneto apart both of us were working on it. And we, the one tank we had to, a big electrical box we had to tear that apart and put it back together again. And I was a little lost cause I was color blind. It was good it was numbers or I would of really been a lost.

Shaak: And how much, like room did you have personally?

Shaak: How much, like room did you have personally?

Mr. Maulfair: Personally, oh about the size of a cot bed I’d say. It was, each guy had part of a rack where they had to hang your clothes on. And you had to hang them up in a certain way, I don’t know how it was no more but we had to have it lined up right. And your shoes had to be shined really shined. Friday nights you made sure your clothes were pressed and your shoes were shined, and you were shaved.

Shaak: And were you able to take along any personal items?

Mr. Maulfair: Yeah I had a radio, and I had a sports suit that I kept there. I used to, I come home nearly every weekend. I’d, there was a buddy of mine he lived out in Western Pennsylvania, and he dropped me off on the west side of the river and I had to run across the river catch a bus and go down to Palmyra and walk home.

Shaak: Can you please explain the base where you were deployed?

Shaak: Can you please explain the base where you were deployed?

Mr. Maulfair: When I was deployed?

Shaak: Yeah.

Mr. Maulfair: Well, I come home in September. I was home for thirty days, and then we went to California. And we were out there they got a boat load ready to go to Korea. And we run around out in California, I guess we had two weekends out there. We took off on the weekends and went out into San Francisco. We rode the cable cars, and that was about the biggest thing we had, cable cars.

Shaak: And can you please explain the individualized training?

Mr. Maulfair: I’d didn’t catch that.

Shaak: And can you please explain the individualized training?

Mr. Maulfair: Not more than a little bit of bayonet practice we had, and on the rifle range. That was the biggest individualized other than that, we didn’t get much.

Shaak: And was the work mainly hard or easy in training?

Mr. Maulfair: In training?

Shaak: Yeah.

Mr. Maulfair: I never minded it cause I was pretty, I was born and raised on the farm there and I was pretty tough. So, I didn’t mind it. Some of the guys did. Especially, I was, I was one of the taller guys in our outfit, and they always lined you up from tallest guy on down. And when you started marching you had to keep up and guys that were only five foot they almost had to run some times to get up with us. I never, as far as the war that work never bothered me. Some guys complaining about it, but never.

Shaak: And where did you serve?

Shaak: Where did you serve?

Mr. Maulfair: In Korea? Hey I can’t exactly tell you cause I don’t know. There was no towns near us. They had taken all the people from the Thirty Eight Parallel and they moved them back I guess five, six miles. Everybody, there was no civilians around us, except for the civilians that worked with us. And we were on 3-A about two or three hours north of Seoul, Korea, and that’s where we were and that’s where we stayed.

Shaak: What was your daily routine in Korea?

Mr. Maulfair: Get up and eat breakfast, and go to work. Come back and eat dinner, and go to work and come back and we ate supper. Then you were free unless something drastic would of happened. I always said we had it good. We had big tents. There were five men in a twelve men tent. And we had two stoves two little stoves, they were about that big, about that high. And if we got hot chocolate mix or something from home we’d set it on the stove, we’d set our helmets on the stove to heat water to shave and wash. But we had our own shower unit, and most guys showered about once a week in the winter, and that was too often. It was, it got down to thirty below over there, and we had a tent with a pipe down through the middle and holes in it and that was your shower. And when you got out of the shower boy I’ll tell you it didn’t take you long to dry off and dress. But then in the summer time it was pretty good, yup. We had one incident where there was a bunch of, this was in the summer time, the guys were showering and I come up and there was no water and the one guy hollered out Maulfair go get that gook and get him down there and get that thing running again so I had to go down. We had Korean civilians working for us over there, there was about maybe a dozen or so, and this one guy was assigned to take care of the pump and the shower unit that pumped the water and heated it. And I went down and I got him after a little coaxing he went and did it but it didn’t take it long to get going again, them guys were happy.

Shaak: Can you please explain the rules on the base, like did you have any rules?

Mr. Maulfair: In Korea? Yeah, you were, the lights were out at nine o’clock because we had a generator, we had no supply line and the guy that was in charge of the generator he went out and shut it off and the lights went out. Other than that, we didn’t, we didn’t have many rules. Not that I know of. Nothing out of the ordinary anyhow. You had to keep it cleaned up. They didn’t want you to throw cigarette butts and paper and stuff all over the place. And your tents, we had to keep our tents clean and your clothes had to be clean and I got in trouble one time. Me and another guy were repairing tents, the roof part of it, and we burnt diesel fuel in these little stoves and that made that tent black and greasy, and I was greasy and dirty and I didn’t change clothes and we were gonna do it another day yet and I got in trouble for it. The first sergeant bailed me out and he said that they have tents to repair yet today. Ok they said to him and they let me go. We had a Korean house boy who took care of our tents. He cleaned the floor, it was a dirt floor. I don’t know if he swept it or if he just raked it or what, but he washed our clothes and cleaned our stoves. He had to clean the stove pipes every day or every other day. They sooted up. And, they did one time. They sooted up for us and our section chief come in and he started giving us a hard time till he looked and saw we were all black. Here the stove sooted and if we would have been in the tent I think we would have been dead. We would have been asphyxiated. And then he shut up. We got away with it.

Shaak: What kind of punishment were you given if you broke any of the rules?

Mr. Maulfair: KP, that’s about the biggest after hours. You had to go up and help clean out the mess hall, wash the pots and pans and stuff. But I never had to do that. I tried to behave myself. I didn’t want to do that extra work.

Shaak: Can you explain the weather conditions in Korea?

Mr. Maulfair: It was, we had rain. We didn’t have much snow the year I was over, but it was cold. It was really cold. It was 30 below and we pulled guard about every third night for two hours and if you were out there anytime after 8 o’clock and it was 30 below, it was cold! You stood there two hours. We really didn’t have the clothes for that kind of weather. We put on everything we had pretty near. I always had two pair of pants on, long underwear and boots. We had boots that were rubber on the bottom and leather on the top. We had thick insoles, felt insoles. And, they gave us heavy ski socks. I used to take everything out and set it up by the stove and powder it before I put it on. I keep my feet warm too. Till it was time to go off of guard.

Shaak: Was there any sickness or disease you came across?

Mr. Maulfair: Yeah. We had Hangerromic Fever. Yous never heard of that.

Shaak, Weaver: No.

Mr. Maulfair: It a disease carried by rats. I never heard of it till we got over there. It, it could have been deadly. Ah, we didn’t lose anybody, but half of our troop was quarantined to our tents for I don’t know how long. There was half a dozen guys in the hospital over it. And, they were in a little while. But it just so happened our tent we never got any. And if you ever had any food that you got from home, or you bought, candy or anything, why a if you didn’t have it in a metal container, they took it from you. This disease was spread through the rats and they would have got into that. They sprayed our area for, I don’t know what they used, but they disinfected. We had to disinfect our clothes every time we washed. We had a special garbage can with disinfectant in it. You had to go and disinfect your clothes and let them dry again. But, we never had it. But we had a colored guy that got it, and he lost an awful lot of weight. He must have weighed close to 200 lbs. when he went, but he only weighed 150 when you come back.

Shaak: And, the work you did there, was it tiring? Did you get tired from it?

Mr. Maulfair: Well, I during the worst part of the winter, I was repairing radiators and I had a tent 10 x 12, and I had a stove in there and I, it was work, but I was used to work so it didn’t bother me. And then when spring come I told the section chief, I said I am a body man. I want to get out and work on the trucks. I don’t want to repair radiators, so then I got out and was welding and repairing trucks -- body work. We didn’t paint anything. We just took paint and brushed it on. We had to weld the fenders and boxes and different stuff that was broke.

Shaak: And, what types of food did you eat there?

Mr. Maulfair: Same kind we ate here. We had meat and potatoes twice a day and a lot of times we had eggs and pancakes. I don’t know if we had cereal or not, but it was usually eggs and pancakes. And, they had made a grill. It was a pretty big grill and there was where they made the pancakes and if you wanted your eggs over, flipped over and then you stood back and the other guys went through. We ate out of mess kits. We didn’t have trays or dishes. And, if you got eggs that weren’t hard in the mess kits, they were a mess to clean and they’d come around and check your mess kits. And if they weren’t clean, you would get in trouble. You could get sick from it too. I always got my eggs over, flipped over. I didn’t want them runny, cause you had boiling water to wash them in and you had a brush to brush the stuff with. I have pictures of them. (Showing pictures) I don’t know if you ever saw a mess kit, an Army mess kit. I don’t have none in here. I thought I put one in here. There’s one you can see a little bit of one. We kept them outside our tents. And, they had a pole there. Each one was numbered and each one had a certain number. You didn’t eat out of anybody else's mess kit.

Shaak: Did you make any friends?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh yeah, we made a lot of friends. I had a buddy that we were sleeping next to each other in the tent. He was from down around Mt. Penn. And we were pretty good friends. We visited back and forth after we got home. And he could talk Pennsylvania Dutch and so could I. We used to get the other guys riled up. They couldn’t understand us. What we were talkin about?

Shaak: What feelings did you have about the other people? The people in charge of you Did you like them?

Mr. Maulfair: I never had no trouble with them. Except for that one sergeant who didn’t put our names in. He came down in our radiator tent right after and there was a big guy from New York, he forgot to put his name in. He was scared. He thought he was gonna get beat. We didn’t. He soon transferred out of the outfit and went back to Japan.

Shaak: What feelings did others have towards you? What feelings did others have towards you?

Mr. Maulfair: The other guys? We got along good. When we were gonna come home, I think it was, they had a kind of a party and they were drinking and everything and I didn’t drink. I wasn’t going and then the one guy, they kept begging me and finally I moved to another guy’s bunk so they couldn’t find me. And, that sucker, I thought he went out of the tent and he didn’t and he drug me up to the party. I didn’t drink any.

Shaak: What was your MOS?

Mr. Maulfair: I can’t tell ya. I believe it was 30-40. It was Carburetion and Ignition MOS. I don’t know if they changed when I started to repair radiators. But, when I got over there, you were interviewed for Captain. Every guy that came in they interviewed you. And, I come in there and he said, “Did you used to work in a body shop and do body work?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “Well, we need a radiator repair man.” I said, “Sir, I never repaired a radiator in my life.” He said, “We’ll teach ya.” “OK.” Another guy that was repairing them was there awhile yet. He showed me how he repairs them so that’s how I repaired them.

Shaak: And, you worked on trucks, right?

Mr. Maulfair: Yea!

Shaak: What type of trucks did you work on?

Mr. Maulfair: Most of the time we worked on the two and a half ton six by sixes and the Jeeps, and we had three quarter ton Dodges that we worked on and every now and then we worked on bigger combat engineers trucks. But as far as, that was me. Now our company, we did pretty near everything. We had a recovery section up and out and picked up the stuff that didn’t run and tanks, and big trucks, and we worked on tanks. Some of the guys, that’s all they did. They just worked on the tanks. And then we had another outfit that, another group that just worked on the artillery pieces. Whatever went wrong with an artillery piece ,they fixed it or either put new on it or condemned it and sent it back to Japan. And then they had what they called the instrument repair group. They repaired instruments and binoculars and whatever instruments that they had that they had to repair. And then we had a shop that rebuilt carburetors, and distributers, and, what else did they do. That’s about it, but we had a shop in our section that repaired the hydraulic cylinders and repaired the heads. They ground the valves and put new valves and stuff in them. And we had a machine shop in our section too. Now I didn’t work in a machine shop. I was welding and did the bodywork. We had special guys that were machinists that did that work. We had vans. We worked out of. I didn’t have a van. I had a truck with a canvas on it. I had an electric welder on there and acetylene welder and my bench and my toolbox and stuff. But then they, I don’t know if I have a picture of it. There’s a line of our work trucks, I don’t have none of the machinist's trucks. There’s when we were coming home.

Shaak: What kind of materials did you need?

Mr. Maulfair: In Korea? Steel. That’s all we worked with. That’s all I worked with anyhow. The only thing we had that was different was the water tanks that held the water. We had to haul all the water to our company. Except for the bath. We had a creek going through our company area, and we pumped it out of the creek. But we weren’t supposed to eat any Korean food or anything. We weren’t supposed to drink their booze, but that was it. We had little stoves that they cooked on, and they were about that big with pressurized gas, and they had lines in it that they crack and stuff and I had to repair them still. We had to use a special sodder to repair them and our stoves had a float in that regulated the amount of fuel that went into the stove and they’d leak, seams would break, and they’d leak, I had to repair them, so that’s what I did. Except for, I repaired a Jeep radiator and they were poor and they put it in a lieutenant’s Jeep, and he went down the road, and it fell apart again and boy did he come back. He gave me a hard time on it and I happened to be repairing one and I said, “Sir I’d like to show you this Jeep radiator that I did.” He swore another time. But not at me, the radiator. Oh, I got out of that one.

Weaver: Were there any parts that you used a lot of or any you used a little of?

Mr. Maulfair: Parts?

Weaver: Yeah.

Mr. Maulfair: Well, we didn’t replace parts. We fixed them. Because we didn’t work with transmissions or engines or nothing. We just worked with the body. And if it was too bad, we couldn’t fix it, we sent it back down south the bumpers, they had big bumpers on them, they were thick, and we used to take two torches and put on them to heat them to straighten them out. And we had some blacksmiths, Korean blacksmiths, that worked with us. If they were too bad, we’d take them off and take them up to them and they’d put them in their forge. A forge is a thing where you heat iron to straighten it and stuff. And they put in there, and they’d make it red hot and they’d hammer them straight and we’d go back and put them on. Yeah.

Weaver: How long approximately did it take to repair a part?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh geez. I’d work a whole day on one truck. That all depends on what you had to do on it. Especially if you had the bumpers we had to hook. We hooked two trucks to it and pull it straight still.

Weaver: Was there always a lot of work to do?

Mr. Maulfair: We were busy everyday. We worked seven days a week, from, I don’t remember what time we started, but it was around 6:30-7:00 till 5:30-6:00 in the evening. But then we had an hour off for lunch; yeah, for lunch and breakfast, I don’t know, we got up we got up around 5:30 and went and ate, and then they called us out around 6:30-7:00 and then we went over to the shops.

Weaver: Did you have any rush jobs? Did you have any rush jobs?

Mr. Maulfair: They were always rush jobs.

Weaver: Okay. And, could you carry a gun?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh yeah, yeah.

Weaver: What kind was it?

Mr. Maulfair: We had an M2 Carbine.

Weaver: And when could you use it?

Mr. Maulfair: We didn’t. We never had to, thank goodness.

Weaver: Did you see any type of action?

Mr. Maulfair: No.

Weaver: No, okay.

Mr. Maulfair: But one time, one sergeant, he saw an airplane go over top and he thought it was a mig, and the siren was a ducked up battery, and he hit the siren and boy everybody headed for the foxholes.

Weaver: Were any of your friends hurt or seriously injured while performing their job?

Mr. Maulfair: Yeah, one guy was hurt. The guy didn’t know how to drive, pulled the truck and then he pulled in too close and pinched it in between two trucks. He was in the hospital, I think he had some broken ribs and that was about it. Other than that we didn’t... Oh a couple guys would get flashed from welding. They didn’t flip their helmets down in time and stuff, but we never had any sickness other than that Hangerromic fever.

Weaver: When you were off duty, what did you do?

Mr. Maulfair: We were never off duty. Except after supper, that was the only time. We played cards, and talked. We’d play checkers, Koreans liked to play checkers so we played checkers and play cards. There was four, five of us and we’d play pinochle a lot of times.

Weaver: Did you end up liking to serve your country?

Mr. Maulfair: What?

Weaver: Did you end up liking being in the army?

Mr. Maulfair: Well, it was nice other than being away from home all the time and stuff, but it wasn’t, I was married, and it would’ve been nice to be home with your wife.

Weaver: Was there any conflict between men?

Mr. Maulfair: In our company? Yeah, they’d get in arguments. But never nothing, nothing real serious. We had our guns or rifles, they were, all we had to do was pull the bow back and you had a bullet in the chamber and we were ready to go and so we never had any trouble like that. Except, we got a new company commander and he come around inspecting the rifles and we only had little clips that held fifteen rounds of ammunition and we were in a combat zone and he looked at the sergeant and said, “Is this all the ammunition these men got?” “Yes sir.” “Tomorrow they will have two, thirty round clips taped together. We are in a combat zone,” he said, “How long is fifteen rounds gonna last these men if something happens?” So we got sixty rounds then.

Weaver: Was there any communication with your family back home?

Mr. Maulfair: Not more than letters.

Weaver: And when did you find out you were going home?

Mr. Maulfair: Well we could almost tell when we were going home. Cause we got four points a month, and you rotated with thirty six points, and that was nine month. Now, not all the people in Korea got that. It was those that were in a combat zone that got four points. And I figured I was gonna go home in September, no that was August that I should have went home. But they dropped our points when the fighting, when they started the truce, and the fighting dropped down and then they said it’s not as dangerous now we give you two points so we had to stay till September, my group.

Weaver: How did you get home?

Mr. Maulfair: Boat. A slow boat to China. We hit a, I guess you call it a typhoon. It’s about like what you call a hurricane or something and boy it was rough, ay ay ay. The propellers were out of the water and it was shaking, I thought that old boat was going to break in two. It took us seventeen days to come home. And we had to go from, from our company down to Pousan. And then we got on a train and went down to Seoul, that was the southern tip of Korea. And there we were in jail for a week or so till they got a boatload. We were actually in barbed wire fences that day so we couldn’t get out. Yeah, it was about like a prison camp, that’s what it felt like too. We knew we were going home soon so we didn’t get too excited.

Weaver: And when you got back, did everyone want to hear of your experiences?

Mr. Maulfair: A few, but I didn’t have nothing to tell, I was over there working and that was about it.

Weaver: What was it like to be home after almost two years away?

Mr. Maulfair: I wasn’t away two years, I was only away a year. It was nice, well my grandad was putting his corn away, so I helped him put corn away. He always cut his corn off and shocked it, put it on shocks, and then he took it down and then we had to husk it. Me and Marion, we were out there husking corn, I don’t know how many days we husked corn for. And we were sawing wood, and, what else did we do? I was stationed out here at the Gap for three months. When I got home I still had three months to serve, so I was serving them back here. And back here, I was working on trucks too. I ran back and forth here, I, the only people I had to report to back here was the soldier that was in charge of the shop and there weren’t any formations or anything, I don’t know, maybe I did and maybe it wasn’t right, but I did.

Weaver: When did you hear that the war ended?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh I was here at home. Let’s see, that ended in ‘53. I don’t know what month that was no more. When I got home, yeah, I got out of the, I got released, I didn’t get a discharge. I just got released on January the 17th and January the 18th I started working on the farm down in Quentin. So I didn’t have much time for fooling around. I was at home for thirty days after that hold from Korea.

Weaver: Did you stay in contact with your friends from the military after you returned home?

Mr. Maulfair: One or two from Reading. We were in contact until, oh he died, Marion?

Mrs. Maulfair: What?

Mr. Maulfair: How long ago did Hinnershitz die? Is that a year or two?

Mrs. Maulfair: Two.

Mr. Maulfair: Two years. We were in contact with him-

Mrs. Maulfair: That’s the only one.

Mr. Maulfair: Yeah. About every six month we’d go one way or the other, they’d come here. We would go here or we’d go down there.

Weaver: How has being in the army affected your life today?

Mr. Maulfair: It didn’t. Not that I think, maybe the first few month, you might have to ask her.

Mrs. Maulfair: Ask me.

Weaver: Did you learn anything from your military experience?

Mr. Maulfair: Not more than I got to be a better welder, and stuff.

Weaver: Did you receive any medals?

Mr. Maulfair: Oh, here I have a couple. These were all unit medals except this here one. That one was marchman for acetylene. And here I got a certificate from the Ordnance school because I passed it with, I don’t know what it says no more. Anyhow, that. And this here is a Korean war medal there that the Korean government gave us, and I don’t remember what all these are for, for different things. This one here was for being in the Korean War, and I didn’t get no personal medals

Weaver: Did you ever think about enlisting yourself after your experiences?

Mr. Maulfair: No! Nope.

Weaver: Overall, did you have a good experience?

Mr. Maulfair: Yeah, It wasn’t bad. As I say, it was like you’d been working at a job. For me, anyhow. We got done working in the evening. We went back to our tents and we had that little stove. You could keep warm. And we’d play cards and talk.

Weaver: And would you encourage any young person to join?

Mr. Maulfair: It wouldn’t hurt them. It wouldn’t. Especially if they’d let the booze alone, and the women. That was the biggest problem. A couple of the guys couldn’t understand why I didn’t drink. I said, I never liked that dog on stuff, I don’t need to drink it now. I went one time, when we first got over there we didn’t have no PX or nothing. When the truck come in you had to go and buy what you wanted. And we had a beer ration. You could only get so much beer and that was it. I said I don’t need nothing cause I said I don’t drink so I don’t want my beer. And he came up to me and I said okay, let’s go up and let’s go get this dog-on dumb beer. So we went and got it and I paid it and I threw it on the bottom of my bunk and about in the middle of the month he said hey, he said, you have that beer yet? I said yeah, he said you want to sell it, I said yeah. So I doubled my money on it. But being we were in a combat zone, we got a candy bar, chewing gum, cigarettes, soap and toothpaste, I think we even got a toothbrush every now and then. And you didn’t need to buy nothing. And then we, then they said, we ain’t in a combat zone no more, then we didn’t get that stuff. But I had enough cigarettes and soap and stuff that I got to keep me going. But our Korean houseboy, we always supplied him with soap and stuff to wash our clothes. But if you girls would’ve seen them wash the clothes over there you would have fits. There was no automatic washer. They were down at the creek and they had a flat rock and they were beating them with a stick. That’s how they got them clean. And they got them clean.

Weaver: Did your deployment make you appreciate what you have here?

Mr. Maulfiar: Well it sure did. Because those poor people over there had nothing. They were living in huts, most of them. And I guess they had enough food because they were farming the sides of the mountains over there and they had territory and some of those strips were only ten feet wide. I don’t know how they got water up there but they watered it. And they said they lived pretty good. Now, right now, they’re living a lot better than the north Koreans. The North Koreans are pretty near starving to death.

Weaver: And you have plenty of memoribilia here, so why don’t you share it with us.

Mr. Maulfair: Oh, not too much. I bought this knife, we carried that. Most of us carried a hunting knife, I don’t know why, I guess just for, so we had a knife. And these here we wore on our dress uniforms, on the collars of our shirt and the lapels of our jackets. And all your medals you were supposed to display too. I never got to wear my, after I got home from Korea I never wore a dress uniform. And this was the patch that we wore on our coats that were there. This is a can opener we used to open them sea rations or tea rations, and the only time we ate them was when we stole them out of somebody else’s truck and ate them. And then these were the dog tags that we wore. Them we wore twenty-four hours a day. They have your name and your serial number on them, and your blood type. And here’s a bunch of pictures if you want to see them. That is the capital city of Seoul. That city was ran through three times by armies. The North Koreans came down and chased the South Koreans and the Americans out. And then we went back up and chased them out, and they come back down again and the Chinese and then there it stopped. But there was no window in that building, and they’ve fixed that up now. And there’s how the terrain was over there. And that was me, yeah, that was me and my radiators that I was repairing. I had them stacked outside. I guess them were to be repaired yet because as soon as I had them repaired, the supply man, he came and picked them up, took them back to give them to somebody else. And another one. There’s one of the trucks we worked on. That was me getting ready to go on guard. There you see the tent in the background. This was our line of tents we had. I took that from the valley, was about a half a mile wide and one Sunday afternoon I didn’t have to work we got, every now and then we got a Sunday afternoon off, and I walked up on the mountain, took a picture and I did. All I had was a little box camera. There we had, that was a fifty caliber machine gun we had at the one end of our company area in case somebody tried to come in. That was my shop van, where I worked out of. There, I was working on a bridge. We had a bridge going across. We had a creek through our company area. And they wanted a bridge to haul supplies and stuff across so they sent out to weld those high beams together and stuff so I welded them together and; that’s another one of our company area. There I’m welding them high beams together. Oh and that, they made me in charge of building a dam. I don’t know why they wanted a dam, but we swam in it, oh, we made sandbags and we had a bunch of Koreans make the sandbags and stuff and we made them across the creek near the bridge and farther on. There’s me with the radiators again. Oh there I, the sargeant said you were a half witted carpenter, weren’t you? I said, yeah. Well he said we had to build that building and you help do that. I said, okay. So then I was up there and nailed the roof down. There was the dam when it was finished and nobody told me how to do it, I just did it. And then we got heavy rains, and they’d come down through that creek something terrible. I mean, it was full. It washed the dam, the bridge and everything away. We never did rebuild the dam, but the bridge we drove back up and set it up. After you were over there for so long you were suppose to get some R and R. Some rest and recuperation and go back to Japan, but I never got it. I didn’t want it. There they took us up to a reservoir and it was for three days. We were up there loafing around. Swimming and boating and whatever we wanted to do. And they had movies and you could play ball, whatever. And that was down in Puson when we got there they had that, either Puson or Japan, I don’t remember what it was. I guess it was down at Puson. You’ve earned your trip home. But it was a different experience, it wasn’t bad. At least I wasn’t out front laying in the front line, in the cold. I come in one morning an around four o’clock in the morning off of guard and I was so cold I couldn’t even move my hands no more. I took off my outer jacket and my outer clothes, and I never took my pants off or nothing. But I took my boots off and crawled in and we had down sleeping bags; and they were warm. I crawled in that and I got warm till breakfast time. Well the stove we had went out and the diesel fuel gelled and didn’t run, it didn’t come in. And the one guy wanted me to help hold my hands on the line to thaw it out, I said, I can’t even close my hands! How am I supposed to hold it down! And I said they’re so cold now they’re going to make the dang thing colder than it is! And it was cold that morning. I was never so cold in all my life. I don’t know if I could’ve even used my rifle if I had to that morning, it was that cold. I was that cold. That was the worst thing in Korea was the cold. We had, as I say, we had three hot meals everyday, except maybe Sunday nights we only had cold cuts and stuff but them stoves, I said, about had cooks and stuff, they filled them. And they were supposed to they had ruled don’t fill her hot and inside. Then this one cook, he filled it inside and hot and it blew up and it burnt we didn’t have a building, we just had a flame with candles over it. It burnt the candles right off the building. We didn’t even have a mess hall until we got more camas to fix it up. And I don’t know what happened to him, but he sure wasn’t a happy kid after that. Then we were eating cold cuts and whatever they had to feed us for a couple days. I guess that was when we were eating sea rations and stuff.

Weaver: Alright well that’s all I have.

Narrative

Mr. Paul William Maulfair was born on February 8, 1930 in North Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania during the depression. He went to Hershey High School and an auto body shop school. Everyday he had to ride his bicycle or walk to Palmyra. There he had to get the trolley and ride to Hershey. And, he had to do the same thing to get home everyday. He lived on a farm with his parents and grandparents in a double house. Everyday he would work with his grandpa to thrash hay and work with other farmers in the area. Later in his life he got married to Marion Maulfair, and they had five children. Then in April of 1951, he was drafted into the Army. When he was drafted in the Army, he was sent to Aberdeen, Maryland for basic training. His basic training was like boy scout camp. Basic training included marching, going on the rifle range about a week, and bill back for about a week. They only slept out when they were on the rifle range, and the other times they were in barracks. Then after basic training, he stayed at Aberdeen, Maryland for special training. There he went to Carburetion and Ignition School for tuning up the trucks, jeeps, and whatever they had. During his time at specialized training he wore no more than fatigues, light green khakis in the summer, and dark wool for the winter. He lived in barracks with double deck beds. In the barracks there were two hundred men, a hundred on the first floor and a hundred on the second floor. It wasn’t bad because they had showers, but in the summer they didn’t have air conditioning. Also, every Friday night they had to scrub the barracks. His only personal space consisted of the size of a cot bed. He had part of a rack where he had to hang his clothes. His clothes had to be hung in a certain way, and his shoes had to be really shined. Every Friday night he would make sure his clothes were pressed and his shoes were shined. He would also shave. He had a radio and a sports suit that he kept there. Then he had individualized training which was a little bit of bayonet practice and going on the rifle range. That was the biggest individualized training that he got. After individualized training, he was deployed to a location about two or three hours north of Seoul, Korea. In Korea his daily routine was to get up, eat breakfast, and then go to work. He would have an afternoon break and would eat dinner. He would return to work and then come back and eat supper. He had free time unless something drastic would have happened. They ate the same kinds of food he ate at home including meat and potatoes twice a day and a lot of times eggs and pancakes. He lived in big tents with five men in a twelve man tent, and they had two stoves in their tent. They also had their own shower unit which was a tent with a pipe through the middle and holes in it. Most guys only showered about once a week in the winter, which was too often. The temperature would get down to thirty below over there, and when you got out of the shower it didn’t take you long to dry off and get dressed. Rules on the base were lights out at nine o’clock because there was a generator and no supply line. The guy that was in charge of the generator went out and shut it off, and the lights went off. Other than that, there was no other out of the ordinary rules. But if anyone broke any of the rules, he got KP (kitchen patrol), and had to go help clean up the mess hall, and wash the pots and pans and stuff. The weather conditions over in Korea got below thirty degrees, and they didn’t have the type of clothes for those conditions. They had two pairs of pants on, and long underwear and boots with thick insoles. They had heavy ski socks as well. The weather was not great, but there was also disease to worry about. They had Hangerromic Fever which was a disease carried by rats. If you ever had any food that you got from home, or if you bought candy or anything and didn’t have it in a metal container, they would take it from you. They sprayed his area with disinfectant, and they had to disinfect their clothes every time they washed themselves. This disease could have been very deadly to the camp. Other than those everyday routines Mr. Maulfair’s main job was repairing trucks. Repairing various parts was the main job that Mr. Maulfair had to do on a daily basis in Korea. Usually the bumpers on the trucks were the hardest to fix. To repair them, he would have to take two torches and make them hot and try to straighten them out, and if that didn’t work the Korean blacksmiths he worked with would put them in a forge. If any part of the body was too hard to fix, they sent it back down South. Each day was filled with a truck to do and there were no breaks except for lunch from 6:30 in the morning to 6:00 in the evening. There weren’t many injuries around Mr. Maulfair except for a Hangerromic Fever and heat flashes from welders who didn’t flip their helmets down in time. Also, as past times, Mr. Maulfair and his friends would play cards, talk, and play checkers with the Koreans at the base with them. Mr. Maulfair was also able to carry an M2 30 Caliber Carbine just in case anything would happen at his base. He also carried a knife just because that was something that the men at the base did. He started out with 15 rounds of ammunition and then a sergeant said to give the men 60 rounds because at the time they were in a combat zone. Luckily, he never had to use the gun and there was no fighting in his time in Korea at his base. There was only one incident where an airplane flew over top of his base and a sergeant said it was a maige and hit the siren, but it was a false alarm. Being in a combat zone rewarded Mr. Maulfair with soap, cigarettes, chewing gum, candy, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and beer. There was a ration for the beer, but Mr. Maulfair wasn’t interested in it, so he didn’t ever buy any when he was able to. One time a man from his company asked him if he was going to buy any, and he said no but eventually went and got some, and put it under his bunk. After about a month, the man asked him if he still had it and Mr. Maulfair sold it to him and doubled his money on it. Some jobs other than repairing trucks Mr. Maulfair had to do included building a dam and building a bridge for the creek going through his company town. He welded the high beams together for the bridge and he was in charge of building the dam. Koreans filled sandbags for the dam and the men would swim in it, but a horrible flood came through and washed both the bridge and the dam away after a little while. To come home, Mr. Maulfair and other men at his base had to have 36 points as a total to get to go home. Four points were rewarded to the men in a combat zone. He figured out he should have gone home in August of 1952, but when a truce was going on, the amount of points dropped and he had to stay until January 1953. When he finally was able to start his journey to come home, he was on a train from his company town to Puson and was in a barbed wire fence and was there until a boatload came and they could leave. Mr. Maulfair felt as if he was in a jail because there was barbed wire around him and he couldn’t get out. Once a boat came for the soldiers, they were on it for 17 days total because the boat hit a typhoon and Mr. Maulfair was scared that the boat would break into two, but he got home safely and happily to his family. Once he was back in Pennsylvania, he and his wife helped Mr. Maulfair’s grandfather harvest corn and husk it and saw wood. But he wasn’t finished serving because he had three months here in the States to serve at the Gap near his home. He still repaired trucks and went back and forth from his house to the base everyday. He did stay in touch with a man on from his base that was from Reading, Pennsylvania. Some medals that he got was one from the Korean government and another from the Ordnance School and some from within his company. Doing the work, for Mr. Maulfair, wasn’t that difficult compared to being at home and working on the farm. Once he saw the people in Korea, it made him appreciate what he had in America. He said that most of the people living there were living in huts, and they had to farm on the mountain sides to live. Overall, Mr. Maulfair had a good experience and would recommend the Army to young men who are considering the option. Being in the Korean War repairing trucks gave Mr. Maulfair a different experience, and he didn’t mind doing the work. He says that the worst part of being over there was the cold. He is glad to be home and would not go back into the Army, but he did not have a bad experience.