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thedrifter
08-16-05, 07:24 AM
A sacrifice recognized
Airman receives medal 55 years after being wounded in Korea
Published Tuesday August 16 2005
By GEOFF ZIEZULEWICZ
The Beaufort Gazette

Last week at an American Legion hall in Hampton, William Ralph Bowers received his Purple Heart for injuries he sustained nearly 55 years ago while fighting for his country.

Bowers, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant, was recognized for his sacrifice during the Korean War, a commemoration he said he never really thought about until earlier this year.

By chance, Bowers, 76, found out this year that his Air Force medical and personnel files did not match. While at the VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga., a counselor noted that his wounds qualified him for the award, but no mention of those wounds had been made in his other files.

"I wasn't disturbed about it, but he was," Bowers said of the realization, more than a half-century in the making. Bowers sent in a correction request to the Defense Department, leading up to the tardy presentation of his Purple Heart.

"I had never thought about it before," he said. "I was happily retired."

One cold day in Korea

Bowers was a 22-year-old on Dec. 11, 1950, when he was riding in a jeep between his station, just north of Seoul, and the local headquarters.

It was a cold, cloudy day, Bowers recalled.

"In December, it gets cold in Korea," he said.

Bowers was riding with two other troops, one of whom was driving. The mood was tense.

"The night before, there had been heavy shelling in our area by the North Koreans," he said. "And on our way back, they started shelling again."

One round slammed into the ground a mere 50 feet from the speeding jeep, leaving no time for reaction, Bowers said.

"We went right into it so fast," he said. "We didn't know it was coming. It tore the jeep up, it threw me out and it killed everybody else."

After realizing he was still alive and discovering the fate of his fellow troops, Bowers felt something warm on his face. It was blood.

"A piece of shrapnel hit me right in the head," he said.

Bowers' injuries placed him in the hospital, apart from his unit, for about three days.

At one point, a colonel came and pinned a Purple Heart to his pillow, Bowers recalled. But afterward, the colonel took it back and said he needed to look into what happened a bit further.

"He said he was going to investigate it after it was on the pillow," Bowers said. "I said, 'Fine, fine, I just want to get out of here.'"

The ceremony's location last week at the local American Legion hall was especially appropriate for Bowers, whose father helped build the hall more than 70 years ago.

"My father and his brother cut the logs in 1933 and pulled them up there with two mules," he said. "They worked a week doing it and were given $10 a piece."

Through all the years, Bowers said it never occurred to him that he deserved a Purple Heart for that gray Korean day.

"When I was younger, I didn't even know what the Purple Heart was," he said. "All I cared about was getting home. I was just doing my job."

"I was just really thrilled to see him get it," said his wife, Julia Ann Bowers. "He was thrown from a jeep, the other guys died and he lived. That was a miracle in and of itself."

The fog of war

While unfortunate, such mishaps with medical records have happened to other veterans injured in the line of duty, said Stanley Thornburgh, an officer with the South Carolina chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

"It's infrequent, but it's not unusual," Thornburgh said. "Sometimes it's a matter of intense combat. You're wounded, treated, and you might go back on the line without ever being awarded a Purple Heart."

Such confusion is not a matter of ill intent, but an unfortunate result of combat, he said, although a situation like Bowers', where the award was given and then taken back, is not normal.

"Most of the guys who receive a Purple Heart are not concerned about awards," Thornburgh said. "Nobody works to get that recognition, it happens as you perform your job. I'm happy he got his medal, and that's long past-due."

Beaufort resident Jim Bradin, who helped coordinate the award ceremony, said the nature and intensity of the Korean War might help explain why Bowers' recognition was so long coming.

"Everything was very fluid, and if you could get up and go back out, they'd get you up and send you back out," Bradin said. "It's a damn shame he didn't get it sooner."

All confusion aside, Bowers is now back to continuing his quiet retired life in Hampton -- fishing, gardening and taking it easy.

But now, his sacrifice on the other side of the world, and in a completely different time, has been made official. And Purple Heart or not, his love for the Air Force will never fade away.

"They got different stripes now, they got a different philosophy, but I think it's just great," Bowers said, adding that he is an unofficial Air Force recruiter. "Every time I see a man who wants to go in, I talk to them. And we even land a few of them."

Ellie