Oral History Interview with Darrell Krenz

[Interview Begins]

DERKS: Start with how you first got into the military.

KRENZ: Well, I was living in McFarland at that time when I was growing up and my father and mother were divorced many years before that. I was nine years old when I moved out there and I graduated from tenth grade and-- or ninth grade, and then we didn't have a high school in McFarland, so I rode my bicycle into East High School from McFarland. My dad didn't have a quarter for the bus station or for the bus, so. And I did that, and I graduated from tenth grade and that's it. I'm seventeen years old and I'm going to service, so. I kind of hated to do that because my folks are divorced, and I had a little sister. And there would have been nobody to take care of us, so they eventually put her in a home. Took her kind of away from my father. Which I have always regretted that, and I 00:01:00couldn't-- so.

DERKS: And that was because you were gone?

KRENZ: Yeah, because I was babysitting too, you know. My dad was working at Oscar Mayers at that time. So, I went into service, and I wanted to be a jockey, I guess, [laughs] and go. So, I went to Breckenridge, Kentucky. It was training the 101st Airborne at that time. And then I graduated from that. And then they wanted me to go advanced training in the States and I said, "No, I joined the Army, I want to go overseas." So, I had a choice actually to go to Japan or Germany. So, I said, "I'll go to Japan." Well, I was seventeen and I turned eighteen in Japan. I was there for fourteen months, and the Korean War broke out. We went on alert immediately on the 25th of June 1950. 4th of July, we were 00:02:00shipped to Korea.

DERKS: So, you must have been about the first to be shipped over.

KRENZ: Just about. There was two platoons out of the 21st Division, they called it Smith-- anyway.

DERKS: Task Force Smith or something?

KRENZ: Task Force Smith, yes. Hard to get that out. [laughs] But we were there but they had met the enemy before we did. It was only just a couple of platoons. They figured that they'd see the United States soldiers that they'd run like hell, but they didn't. They run right right over us. 130 people in our platoon. There were three of us left. Rest of them got killed and then one of the other guys was missing in action. And at that time, we were still-- we bounced around 00:03:00to another platoon right away. And so, on the 20th of July of '50, we got surrounded in Taejon and that's when they caught us. So, we were immediately taking our shoes off and our shirts. And then stripped our pockets and took our money or whatever. And I guess I made a mistake. I had a South Korean flag in my pocket and that really ticked the guard off, the North Korean guard. And he put his burp gun to my head and was just about ready to pull the trigger. I could almost see it. And I said goodbye to my family and my little sister. Pretty soon here comes a guy, a North Korean running down the railroad tracks hollering and 00:04:00screaming. So, he come up there and he told the guy evidentially in Korean to put the gun down. Then he told us, he said, "We're not going to hurt you." So, that took care of that episode, I guess. And they marched us aways out of town there and put us in a mud shack for a couple of days. And they took us out and took us north some more, walked a little bit farther and farther. And pretty soon there's a whole bunch of people and doing a course of that for some time. They had 800 of us. And that's when hell started really, as far as being a POW, we didn't know what was going to happen. They thought-- we'd seen GIs laying all over the place in this town and their hands tied behind their back and shot in the back of the head and all that stuff. They thought-- we thought they'd do that to us, too, but. We were sleeping in a cornfield at that time and that was 00:05:00in-- eventually in October, late October, Halloween, in fact. Our officers came to us and says that in the morning we're going to move out and be prepared. You don't know how you can be prepared to do that. But in your mind, get prepared to-- it's going to be bad, they said. So, that next morning there was a big North Korean officer, and they had us all around there and he's standing up and I don't know what he was standing up on, it's hard to remember. Someone says it was on a little rock or on a table or something, and he called for an officer to come up there, and he has his interpreters, obviously. So, there was a 00:06:00lieutenant, Second Lieutenant Thornton from Texas went up by him and saluted him and he's hollering and screaming [inaudible] talking about how the American aggression and all that and he turned him around and shot him in the back of the head. Well, he wanted us to know that he's going to be the boss and he was the boss. Then, they lined us all up and in the way we see-- pointed way off over the horizon, he said, "Go over the mountains." So, we started walking and we walked for, like I say, about nine days. A little over 100 miles. But during that time, they took us off the road at one time all night and all night long was the Chinese coming in. It was all five abreast on the road, just walking south. And we had no way of warning anybody that they're coming, of course. Then 00:07:00we were taken north further and in the winter of '50 then really got cold. And that's when we really started losing a lot of guys. But on this march, if you fell behind the last, what they call them in platoons kind of, if you fell behind the last one and then there's a line of guards. If you fell behind them, that's where you're going to be. And every once in a while, you can hear a gunshot and I was helping a kid from Edgerton. His name was Bill [inaudible] and he just gave up completely. And we got behind and really getting behind, really getting behind, and pretty soon we're back by the guards and the one guard wanted me to put him down and I didn't want to. And he turned around with his 00:08:00rifle and he hit me in the knee. Probably was trying someplace else, but then I had to put him down and I went down too, and the big Korean put the pistol in my face. I said, here I go again. So, I looked him in the eye, and I just stared at him and pretty soon he took the pistol and-- "Get going." So, I got caught up to my guys again eventually but I heard a gunshot go. And we got to our destination finally and it was cold and I was in a mud shack with about ten by ten, there was twenty of us in there. And one of the walls was just mud, like corn shucks put together and half of that was gone. And the elements were pretty cold. We 00:09:00lost about five or six of them people out of there and up furthers away, a little farther away, they had a school which had a lot of GIs in it, and they lost a lot of guys, too. Four or five a day at least would die. So, they moved us out of that little shack into that school because there was room then. And that was a little bit better as far as sleeping because you had more people to keep you warm. And didn't have half the building down. But it's tough to live on one little millet ball a day, too. [Laughs] And a little sip of water once a day. A millet ball, and I know that's just a size of a snowball, about not even a big one. So, canary seed. That's what it is more or less. They just boil it and that's it. So, we had to take our dead away once-- once every three or four 00:10:00days and put them up on a hill. We couldn't dig no holes for them. If you found some little hole or something, you tried to get them in it. Their arm would stick out, you just try to break it off, or break it and put it in the hole or something to cover them up. But didn't do any good anyway. One time during this, in this building was-- they had a little shack next door, and everybody always wondered what was in that shack. We had a big fence there, too. So, I'm game about anything. You're not going to go home anyway. You might as well just get shot doing something. So, had a guy watch for me. I went over the fence when the guard was around the building. I found a bunch of red peppers, so I stuff my 00:11:00pockets full of red peppers. And he was supposed to whistle for me when it's so clear-- all clear for me to come back. And he never did whistle. I said, well, I'm freezing out here. I'm going to freeze to death out here. So, I came over the fence and obviously there was a guard. He grabbed the club, and he started beating me and he took me in the building. There were three rooms in this building. They took me in front of all the guys and beat me on the back. And then every time he smacked me one, he'd make me eat some peppers. They were hot, too. So, he finally got done on me. And then another guard came in and he was wondering what was going on. And so, he told them, and he took the club again. He's hit me so hard. Just real high in the neck this time. Knocked me out. They thought they killed me, so they dragged me out on a dead pile. After a while, I 00:12:00woke up. Where am I? You know? And I crawled back in the building and then all the guys just jumped on me right away, started rubbing me and trying to warm me up. So, they probably saved me. So, anyway, the winter of '50 finally got over and then they moved us further north. Again, they said we're going to go home. They put us on trucks, and we went north farther. We went up by the Manchurian border then. And that's some of the pictures you see on there was a barge when they started turning us over again. I mean, there's a lot more stuff going on during this time, but I'm sure that-- I gotta back up. One thing that-- I never told too much about this part because where we buried all these GIs, well, in Korea, they have a farm. What they call some kind of farm that everybody has a 00:13:00pig and they put them all together and they let them run wild and they had no trouble finding them pigs in the spring. They were up eating on all them bodies. I mean, it was a lot of them because we started with over 800 and only 283 of us got out. When we got-- when Big Switch. Then we got turned over to Chinese. I say they took us down the river after us when they went up to Manchuria there for a while. And then the Chinese, I got to really say they were a little better for us, but they gave us all the rice we wanted to eat. Before I think they really started negotiating because some a lot of my friends who were POWs under the Chinese and they weren't very good either. They would stick you in a hole in 00:14:00the ground, which you did something bad, I guess you had to suffer for it. I was in a hole for a couple of days, but didn't do nothing bad, just didn't salute the guard, that's all. [Laughs]

DERKS: When do you think that was that the North Koreans turned you over to the Chinese?

KRENZ: Let me think. So, we come out of-- [inaudible] it must have been in the summertime of 1951, I think. '52. Yeah, must have been '52 because I got out in August of '53, so. We was under the Chinese-- we were under about both of them about as much-- about 15, 14 months? Something like that. And I was in 37 months 00:15:00and 20 days, something like that. But the Chinese [inaudible], they made us go to school, though. Seven days a week, we had to go down to this one building and listen to them talk about how good the communist government was and all that stuff. And how bad ours was. In fact, they even read a book. It was Grapes of Wrath, which they thought at this time that's the way America was yet, you know? About how poor the people were, just struggling. Which it was at that time, I guess, probably it was. But they still thought it was that way yet. Today, probably.

DERKS: So, they were reading it to you?

KRENZ: Yeah, they read it to us. Any kind of propaganda they had. They'd give us no magazines at all, of course. No way of getting any outside-- what's going on, 00:16:00how the cars looked. Nothing like that.

DERKS: Did you have work details or anything?

KRENZ: Yeah, they used to take us across into Manchuria for wood hauling. We'd have to get a log and bring it back so the guards could boil the rice and stuff. If you didn't bring back a big enough log, they made you go back again. And it was-- that was the winter of '51, then, that happened, I believe. I remember some of the guards, they didn't have the right clothes either. And one of ours that was in charge of us, his ears just got big, like elephant ears. They were froze.

DERKS: How were you dressed at that point?

KRENZ: The Chinese gave us some cotton padded uniforms. During the whole time of the Korean thing, marching to the mountain and living up there in that cold 00:17:00place and all that. I still had no shoes. I had just rags of stuff around me. And then if someone died, he didn't need his shirt or something, and finally it caught up to all of us where we'd have some kind of a shirt and stuff.

DERKS: But no boots?

KRENZ: No boots. I had a pair of boots, actually, that were thrown away where there was just the sole was left on. I only had them not too long. Someone stole them from me. [Laughs]

DERKS: When you were with the North Koreans after you stopped marching, did they do any kind of education or interrogation?

KRENZ: No. No.

DERKS: Or you were just-- kept you in the room?

KRENZ: Just kept guard over us. That's about all they did. They didn't-- they 00:18:00took us on work details. You know, but like I said, maybe some unload something of a truck or something, but that's about all. They didn't-- They just let us lay there and die, I guess. But in the mornings, we had a major that would get us all up and make sure we got outside and do some exercises and stuff. And he just passed away just not too long ago. Major Dunn. We had some civilians with us also that made that trip. They were missionaries from England and a couple of other countries. Turkey. There were some Turkish girls. Guys. One woman even had a baby when we were POWs there. But they kept us not together, you know what I mean. Separated. And one of our guys under the Koreans had appendicitis and then 00:19:00we had a doctor with us, but he had no [inaudible] or nothing to kill the pain. But he did operate on them with a knife. Jack knife. Which very few had. They finally found out that in your combat boot was a nice little piece of metal and they dig them out and make a knife out of them. Just for-- use it yourself. You wouldn't kill anybody because you couldn't go anyplace. [Laughs]

DERKS: Did the person with appendicitis live?

KRENZ: He did. But he did die in POW camp later on. I mean, he got to be well again. My--

DERKS: Do you have any sense at all of-- I mean, obviously you didn't get any news or anything. How do you think the war was going?

KRENZ: The only way we kind of knew a little bit was that we were in MiG Alley, they called it. That's what we named it anyway. The Russian jets would come in one way, and then the United States, our jets would come the other way and they'd drop the wings, wing tanks, the gas tank things, and they'd have dogfights. We'd be watching them all the time. And then all of a sudden, they'd be gone. Then we'd go, "Oh, man, we're going home now," you know, "Everything's done with. It's all over with." But it never happened that way. And Little Switch came by, and we thought we were going to go but they just took some of the people that were-- We had a lot of names for them guys that kind of turned on us. The GIs themselves would turn anybody else down for a cigarette or 00:21:00something. Some of them got out real first because they were good boys. And I'm wounded. Then it was some time before we had Big Switch again. One of my best friends is-- he lives in North Carolina now, and he was so sick. I don't think he-- well, none of us would have lasted a couple more months, I don't think. Especially another winter. But I was on detail one time and this mama-san just pokes me. [makes hand gesture] Where that don't mean goodbye, it means come here to them. And she handed me two great big strawberries. I put them in my pocket and the guard didn't see us at all, of course. I got back into the room, and I says, "French," I says, "How'd you like to have a big strawberry?" "Oh, yeah, it's a big strawberry. Never going to see them again." And I took one out and I says, "Here." I gave him one. He still remembers that. We go to a reunion every 00:22:00year. I don't think I'm going to make this one though this year. We got some things at home that need to be taken care of. And I have a daughter that's real sick, so.

DERKS: How did you find out when something like Little Switch came along? Did they just call everybody together?

KRENZ: Yeah. Got us together and put us on trucks and we were going down-- well, it was quite a ways away. And we had overnight and all that. And then during the morning, one morning, we were going down the road and we only had the back of it open a little bit where we could see once in a while. We kept seeing something laying alongside the road all the time, but we just couldn't-- the guards, two guards right there, they wouldn't let us do much. So, all of a sudden, the guard lifted up the thing. We're still going and we're going across this big bridge and all kinds of flags across the bridge and all of a sudden there's American 00:23:00flags. Then we knew. Then we knew we were home. So, what was laying alongside the road, the guys are all taking these cotton padded uniforms and throw 'em away. They didn't want nothing to do with them anymore.

DERKS: So really, you didn't know when you got in the trucks where you were going?

KRENZ: No. So, I jumped because the flap went up, of course. And then a couple of Marines came over. I guess they were Marines at that time. I said they were. I can't quite remember now, but they said, "C'mon. We'll help you off the truck." I says, "I don't need your help." You know, I still got some pride in me, you know. And I jumped off the truck and went on my face. I didn't think-- I thought I was stronger than I was. And I looked over there and I seen the 00:24:00American flag and I couldn't-- I went over there and I just-- I put my arms around that pole, and I could hardly keep control of myself at all. I just hung on to that thing. Pretty soon the officer come over and says, "Come on now, you're-- son, you're home now." I says, "Okay. Home." So, they put me in a hospital there-- I guess it was Seoul at that time. I think we had taken that back. They had a little hospital there. I was there for a couple of days and then I-- they took us by helicopter over to Tokyo General. I had a problem with-- they thought I had something-- my chest [inaudible] were bad. I couldn't breathe good, and I had-- my ears were all plugged. So, I got to fly home in a 00:25:00special pressurized home-- airplane, you know. So, anyway, then I got home, finally. I got discharged in November of '53, November 11th, in fact. Veterans Day. I got a thing here, a story that I wrote for the American Legion. I don't know if you're interested in something like that, but we can-- [pulls out paper]

DERKS: Well, [clears throat], we're going to change tapes before long, so I'll look at that then. Was there ever a point where you thought, I mean, did you give up? Did you just think, "I'm never going to get out of here?"

KRENZ: Yeah, a couple of times I did. And I said, I'm not-- I'm not moving. I'm not going to do this. I might as well-- I'm going to die anyway. Why prolong it? But always something sparked to-- well, let's go, you know? I don't know, I 00:26:00didn't have a good life when I was a kid. I did a lot of bicycle riding. Like I said, I camped out. I was a Boy Scout, and I was going days and days without food the way our family was. My dad couldn't cook and work, too. You know, I didn't eat much, while I did in the service. I never smoked. I always traded my cigarettes ration for candy at the PXs and stuff. So, I weighed 180 pounds when I went to Korea. I come out as 102. [Laughs] So, I kind of-- someone else I'd see had given up and, "Hey, you can't be doing that." And I said, "Jesus. Am I doing that too?" You know? And I just-- I go grab them and say, "Come on, let's 00:27:00go walk around, let's do something." And just kept on going and finally got out.

DERKS: Were those health problems-- did they bother you when you were-- a prisoner?

KRENZ: When I first got out?

DERKS: I mean, were you-- no, I mean, before, did you know--

KRENZ: Everybody was that way though, it seemed like, you know. They had so much stuff in you that couldn't get out. You were coughing all the time and everything, but my ears were real bad. And that's why they-- I've got hearing aids in my ears. That's why I had that special plane. There was-- they put us on a [inaudible] and there was like, ten of us on this plane.

DERKS: Were there problems from infections? From the cold and the--

KRENZ: Yeah. Mostly infections and stuff. We don't know, these guys that died, we have no idea what they died of, you know, if they had pneumonia, I suppose, and heart attacks, you never know. You had no way of telling. Some of the guys 00:28:00were dying because of gunshot wounds and got gangrene and stuff.

DERKS: You talked about the guys that were released in Little Switch. What were the-- I mean, did you know there were certain people that were cooperating? Was there--

KRENZ: Oh, yes. We knew. Every once in a while, they'd find out that we knew. We kind of gang up on them a little bit. Rough 'em up, try to get them straightened out. Someone would go down to the headquarters and they'd get some cigarettes and a little [inaudible] that [inaudible] and they'd tell them who was doing something wrong, you know? I brought out a code. The Chinese gave us pencils for 00:29:00writing home, and paper. I rolled up a little real piece of paper about that long and an inch wide. I had three of them. And I wrote codes down and I had letter on it, but I knew what it was for and who it was and what we were doing. And it was four of us that did that. All the timers under the Chinese and kept names of people that died. The other guys got lost [inaudible]. They found them or something. And I had mine in my mouth. I had found an ink pen. You know, in the old days, you had that blotter inside of them. I had took that out and that's where I stuffed mine in. And if I had to, I was going to swallow it. But I never had to, so. But that was turned over to the FBI and they had it for-- 00:30:00must have had it for two or three years at least. Finally, I got it back and it's right up on the square now at the museum. [tape cuts] It's pretty tough for us to get up in the morning at 5:00 and fly 'em and then take a minute five at night and fold them all if you don't have enough help. So, we got together. I said, "We got to do something else here." So, we're building, right now, building a memorial behind our legion hall. We put their names in granite instead of a flagpole, but we'll still keep them flags flying. I think I got a-- [reaching for item] a little picture of it, I think, here. Two of them. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I just grabbed junk here. I must have forgot it. But it is going to be a beautiful-- there it is. And that's what we're building right now.

DERKS: On each of the names--

KRENZ: Number of steps, yeah. That looks like it's standing up there. I'm not a much of a artist, but those are thirty steps going up to the top of that and then all along here are these-- all along this whole ridge is 106 flags flying.

DERKS: What names go in which--

KRENZ: The first plateau on the bottom we're dedicating that piece of granite there for the Spanish-American War, World War One and World War Two people. And the next plateau is going to be for the Korean and Vietnam veterans. And the next ones are for Bosnia, Iraq and Persian Gulf. And the top one is for future whatever. We hope not, but. [Laughs]

DERKS: A place to sit and contemplate no more war. [Laughs]

KRENZ: Yeah, I hope not. It's terrible.

DERKS: Um-- are we rolling?

UNKNOWN: Yes, we are.

DERKS: Is it difficult for you to talk about it at all?

KRENZ: Well, I haven't done anything for many years before-- after I come home. I wouldn't even let my wife wear a red dress. [Laughs] And she better not have any rice and or anything like that in the house. But since I got on Allegiant in the VFW and stuff and got going back, starting to these reunions that we have all together and it's gotten a lot easier. I know three years ago I tried to give a talk at the Legion down there when we had Memorial Day, and it just was-- I couldn't even think about. I was just breaking down all the time. And I just-- 00:33:00but it's gotten a lot better.

DERKS: Just letting that come back to you and thinking about it was causing the--

KRENZ: I've been on antidepressant. Took pills for about two years. So, it's gotten a lot easier. [Laughs] There's still some points where I start thinking a little bit too much about it, and then I start going to do something else right away. It'll never go away. I mean, it's been over 50 years, you know, and I still think about it. You've just got to say it's never going away. I mean, this is just a small amount of what I just said, you know? I mean, it was over three years, you know, we did that. There's so much happened, there's so much-- so 00:34:00much death. You know, it's terrible.

DERKS: I would think in that kind of a situation it would just-- nothing happened quickly. It was just, you know, slow, lingering, and just awful stuff around me all the time. Do you remember, um, the details of when you were captured, what the situation was, how that happened? And anything that you don't want to talk about, that's fine. Just say you don't want to go there, but.

KRENZ: [Inaudible] they took-- split our platoon up and we were on an outpost and all of a sudden, we were just getting run right over. And there was, you know, hundreds of them coming at you. And there was only like ten or twelve of 00:35:00us left at that time. And so, we finally-- well, they must forgot about us. [Laughs] So, we jumped. They had a truck there and we jumped on the truck, and we went back into town and not knowing that the town was surrounded already and we drove right into them and they started shooting at us from the side, from the roadsides and stuff, you know, they seen us and the driver and the guy was sitting, the shotgun guy. They both got hit right away and there was four of us left in the back of the truck then at that time that we were alive, and we jumped out and we run into this big ditch. This was towards the evening already and went in this big ditch. And we crawled away, and we got into heavy grass and it seemed to be pretty quiet, then. [Inaudible] we could hear them talking and hollering and screaming, you know, but they never found us. Next morning, they 00:36:00come down in this big ditch and they-- this one kid. He's just a young kid. He spotted us. He didn't even have a rifle. He started running right away and up over the bank he went. And then we knew that they were coming back. We had nowhere to go. Just absolutely nowhere to go. And we were out of ammo now at this time almost. I had a few rounds, the other guy had a couple of rounds, and this one friend of mine, he got hit really bad and tore half his head off. Side of his head was-- he went out of it and he was just running around like a chicken. You know, he cut his head off or something. I was on the sniper scope rifle at that time, and I didn't have maybe a half a dozen rounds left and so I 00:37:00rejected the magazine out. I knew where something is going to happen there. They're not going to get this rifle, though. Then I smashed the lenses in it, took the trigger house and threw it way over in a ditch one way and ripped the scope off and threw that against the rock over there and made sure that something was going to be wrong with it. And this French, he says, "I don't have no ammo left, what are we going to do, Krenz?" You know. [Laughs] "Well, I guess we got to try it." We seen these GIs all laying around with their hands behind them and all that. So, we put our hands up and that's when them two guards come over by us and they stuck his rifle in my face and searched us and all that. And one of the other kids who got hit right we were crawling in that ditch, and he got hit right in the back of the head, too. But we survived. And then I always 00:38:00kept saying after a while, I says, "One Jeep's coming out here, I'm going to be on it." You know, so I made it.

DERKS: What about that-- the first time you were overrun, when you said three of you survived out of your--

KRENZ: One of the guys was a-- he was a prisoner of war already before. We didn't know where he went there. He was missing in action, you know. And one of the guys that was driving in that truck that I was talking about? The shotgun guy? That was his brother that was missing. And his name was Charles McComas. And when we got to where all these other GIs were up north, there he was with his brother. He was a POW and I had to tell him that his brother got killed. 00:39:00From Kentucky. Williamstown, Kentucky, they were from. And I went to visit their graves. Both of them are gone now. I went to visit the graves there about two years ago.

DERKS: What was your job in Japan?

KRENZ: I was trying to go to school too, and to get my high school diploma and which I was supposed to have it. But somehow the records in 1950 got all screwed up because of the Korean thing. But basically, I was qualified on a bazooka, the new bazooka they had, the 3.5 bazooka. I was on the machine guns. I qualified for all that. I had all that stuff. That's what I had done on the rifle range. It was three sniper scope rifles given out to a battalion. And I have one of them.

DERKS: To a battalion?

KRENZ: Yeah. So, I was-- when we went-- [laughs] way back again now, when we were lined up on the railroad track in Chonan, which was the first town we were ever seen the enemy. I had my bazooka with me. Well, Captain [Marlot??], he called for the bazooka team because they said the tanks were coming and so we went up there and I had my ammo bearers with me. They says, "Them tanks are getting close. Let's get 'em." Okay. Shot out there, hit the tank and just seen smoke go up. What's going on? It didn't explode. I said there's something to the 00:41:00captains. What's wrong? He says, "Why don't try another one?" So, I picked out a box car was over there on the railroad track, it was some North Koreans in the railroad-- in the boxcar, I hit the boxcar and just bounced off. And I checked. We had practice rounds. Blue rounds, we call them. But in Japan, we had real rounds. [Laughs] I mean, we were blowing stuff up like crazy, you know? Here we had practice rounds. So, then I went and got my sniper scope back. So, it was chaos. Nobody knew what they was doing. We found rifles and stuff just laying, there were GIs had left them laying and run, I guess, I don't know. I found a 60-millimeter mortar, which a whole bunch of white phosphorus rounds, and I got 00:42:00my ammo bearers that were for the bazooka, and I says, "Let's get this thing going." Here we got-- we could see them North Koreans coming, and we couldn't carry the base plate because it was so heavy and carry rounds, too. So, we-- I said, "Leave that base plate be." I propped it up against the railroad track and started-- they started shoving them in there. [mimicking sound of mortars firing off] I just would going like this. We got a lot of them with that white phosphorus. That's terrible stuff. I was awarded the Bronze Star for that.

DERKS: And then you pulled back out of that, right?

KRENZ: Mm-hm. Yeah. We kept falling back all the time. We know we wanted to be a retreat. It just says we're moving back now and reorganize and then the time 00:43:00went by and pretty soon that July 20th came. That's when our division, whole division got surrounded. The whole 24th Division. General William Dean was my commanding general. He was on the road looking at a map on a Jeep that involved spread out. And we started getting hit real bad. He took off that way and I took off this way. He got captured about a week later. He held out in the weeds, I guess, or something probably. Yeah, it was a big thing to have the general captured because, well--

DERKS: Wasn't he like, the highest ranked officer captured since World War Two?

KRENZ: Probably, yeah.

DERKS: What was your rank?

KRENZ: I was a PFC at that time. And that was another thing that kind of got to us guys. I mean, we were on the battle line every day, even though we weren't on 00:44:00the battle. You know what I mean? You battle to keep alive in POW camp. Well, there was guys making ranks like every month, they'd get another stripe or something, you know? They gave us one stripe when we got out. So, I was a corporal when I come home. I mean, and just about three years ago, we got our furlough pay because we didn't have no furlough in three years, four years, whatever it was. So, they finally said they'd give us our furlough pay. We never did get any combat pay, which we were supposed to get, too. Never did get that.

DERKS: And I suppose it wasn't with interest.

KRENZ: No. [Derks laughs] We got a dollar a day for rations and a dollar and a half a day for sleeping quarters. That's all we got. And our back pay, of 00:45:00course, for our regular pay. So, I was over 1,100 some days POW. I should have invested it in land.

DERKS: What did you say? 39 months?

KRENZ: 37 months. Just under--

DERKS: And how many days is that?

KRENZ: Over 1,100. Around 1,100.

DERKS: And you weren't counting by months, were you? You were counting by days.

KRENZ: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I used to dream over there of home and I get home and dream over there. Just reverse. I don't know. I still-- if my wife is here, she just-- I wake sometimes at night, just hitting the wall. And I know what I'm doing. I just-- I'm surprised she hasn't left me so many years ago. We were married 51 years. [laughs]

DERKS: Well, [laughs] she says I'm not going to leave you now.

KRENZ: No.

DERKS: [Laughs] When you were on the march, was it-- or did you have officers with you, too?

KRENZ: Mm-hm. Yes. We had officers until they turned us over to the Chinese and then they separated us.

DERKS: Was there anybody that they-- that the North Koreans picked out for worse treatment or for better treatment or-- besides the people that would cooperate with them?

KRENZ: I don't understand.

DERKS: I mean, was there anybody that they really had it in for aside from somebody with a South Korean flag in their pocket or what?

KRENZ: I don't think so. They didn't pick us out. Saying beat the hell out of 00:47:00you or something. If you were doing something that they didn't like, they'd hit you with the rifle butt or something, but they've lined us up several times and going to shoot us all. I mean, we refused to work one day to go out in the hills. It was so cold and we had to go up on the hill and we refused to do it. And they take about 30, 40 guys out there, you know. Well, this one guy got his burp gun out and he snapped her back and he shot a couple in the air. Well, I guess we went to work. I mean, he would have shot us, too. I know. That guy was a mean one. They all had names. We had named this particular guy Burp Gun Charlie, of course. And the Chinese, they had their supervisors, they call 'em, [inaudible] and they spoke perfect English. One guy graduated from the 00:48:00University of Texas. He was a North Korean. [Lucia??] And like a [inaudible], too. [laughs] You don't want to put that on tape, though.

DERKS: Where there are some that were better to you in the treatment wise, or were they all--

KRENZ: Yeah. There was. Some of the guards, I never took any, but the Koreans that I'm talking about too, they would give guys a cigarette or something if they liked them or if they did something nice for him or something, you know. You really didn't get to know them too well and you didn't want to. But some of the guys with them, they'd get to be, well, like our cooks, you know. They'd take them to the kitchen where they'd have to cook our meal of the little millet 00:49:00balls and stuff. They got to know some of the guards pretty well and they were nice to them. They'd give them a cigarette once in a while. We didn't mind that.

DERKS: So, your cooks cooked up your millet balls?

KRENZ: Yeah, some of the times. Depends on what camp we were in. The last camper, they had cooks. And then the Chinese, we cooked all of our own rice. They give us all the rice we wanted. And we were like this. Big bellies from eating all that rice and just-- there's not a lot of value in strictly rice.

DERKS: So, you were all skin and bones with big bellies?

KRENZ: Yeah. Well, you see them people like, in Africa and stuff. They're walking around with them big bellies.

DERKS: Those photos of the POWs marching in the parades in Seoul I guess, did 00:50:00you do that?

KRENZ: I was in way in the back, probably.

DERKS: But you did? You marched through the streets?

KRENZ: Yeah, we went through Seoul. I think three times we went through Seoul. First time we were pushing them north, and the next time we got rocks thrown at us from the civilians. And the third time we were POWs. So. I don't quite remember a lot about that there particular march going through Seoul that way, but when I seen the pictures, I said well, I had to be with them because that's us, you know. I recognized some of the guys, so.

DERKS: Were you on display any other places?

KRENZ: Only one time. There were Russians that come and officers and stuff. They 00:51:00came and looked at us in the winter of '50. Where them pictures, that one where we were sleeping, they came in there and we must have really stunk. Cuz didn't have no baths or nothing for years until we had [inaudible] the Chinese. But they come in there and they just [inaudible] and all we would say, "Eyzenkhauer." That's Eisenhower in Russian. [Laughs] They didn't like that. Then they left. We were on a little peninsula when the Chinese had us, and the Yalu River and they let us go out in the water. This was really neat. Of course, you're always under guard and you had no place to go. You might as well just stick it out. I mean, how could you ever walk a couple hundred more miles back 00:52:00to our lines or something? You would never make it.

DERKS: Undetected.

KRENZ: Some guys, there were three or four that tried it. And one guy did get back, the other ones got killed. I didn't know them, but I knew something was happening. We had-- some of us planned it one time, but we wouldn't have never made it, I don't think.

DERKS: That winter of '50. I've just heard awful things about how-- how did you get through that?

KRENZ: I don't know. You'd wake up in the morning and the guy next to you would be dead. He starved to death or froze to death. I mean, just-- my cap-- my sergeant, he just laid there in that cornfield, and he never got up the next morning. You just died overnight, and it was cold. And one day we heard some planes and we all of a sudden, we'd seen the paratroopers dropping. And they were ours. They missed us. So, we put a-- we got up, all of us in the morning, 00:53:00we got up and we got in lines and in the snow, we walked in the snow on POW on the snow. Just in case another plane would come over or something and find it. Well, another plane come over one time, we were in a schoolhouse with big windows in it. And it was a Cosair, one of ours. And it came over and took a look at us. You could see the guys sitting in it just as plain as day, just real slow. And they made one more pass and they opened up. Took out three or four GIs and a couple of guards. He must have had to get rid of his ammunition or something. And away he went. [Laughs] Didn't know we were there, of course. Just seen a bunch of stuff going on, I suppose. He's in enemy territory and so.

DERKS: It must have been something, watching those dog fights.

KRENZ: Oh, yeah. They had a-- one of the Russian pilots. They didn't have transportation there. We were in the hills, you know, and he come walking with some guards past our camp. So, one of our guys must have shot him down. We never did see any of our planes go down, though. They're looking for a lot of them yet, though. Some of them pilots and stuff over there. Especially Vietnam.

DERKS: So, when you dreamt of home when you were a prisoner, was it just of being a kid again?

KRENZ: Some of the time, yeah, with bicycles. But I tell you, I'm so close to it now. State Street. When we were kids, we used to ride our bikes in here and go 00:55:00to the museum over there at the-- oh, the big red building that used to have a-- before you go up Bascom Hill, I guess it is? There's a museum that used to be up way one of the top floors and the fire escape--

DERKS: Old Science Hall. Right.

KRENZ: The fire escape had a big tunnel. And we always-- we'd go in the building and go down that thing and [makes noise] you know, just float all the way down into the bottom again, like a big-- like a water park. Except for no water. We used to go look in shop windows and stuff, and I always remember that. Old State Street.

DERKS: What'd you guys talk about for three years?

KRENZ: Well, there's a lot more of them made now. Candy bars. At night. Especially food, you talk about food all the time. Well, at night, we'd take 00:56:00turns going around, who could name-- it's your turn to name a candy bar, you know? Then it'd be my turn, the next guy, you know. But, you know, there wasn't as many candy bars than it was now. Everybody had Oh Henry and Baby Ruths, you know. Then we used to take turns, "Well, it's your turn now and tonight-- or in the morning, you have your breakfast. What are we going to have for breakfast?" So, bacon and eggs and stuff, you know, potatoes and all that stuff. Well, then the next day, I get up. Hash or something, you know. [Laughs] Mainly it was food. I couldn't stop thinking about food. Yup. It was a long time.

DERKS: Well, I thank you for your service.

KRENZ: Thank you.

DERKS: And thank you for-- I hope you don't have bad nights from sharing this 00:57:00with us, but I certainly appreciate it and I hope we put it to good use. Did you have that sense when you got back that people weren't paying attention to the war or it didn't mean anything to people? Did you ever feel that?

KRENZ: Yeah, sometimes I still think about now, you know, it's so publicized now to be in the service. I mean, and I think, jeez, I wonder if it was like that when I was in the service, you know, and I don't think so. You know. Of course, like the electronic stuff and they got, they got guys getting shot over there and they got tape, got them tapes, shooting. You know, the people are there taking all that stuff. And there's so, so much more publicity about things. Well, we were just overseas. We were just some place, you know. Of course, the Second World War, they had a lot of that, too. A picture taken or something. Just seemed like that's why it's named the Forgotten War. Korea. You know.

DERKS: Yeah. Guys talked about coming back and somebody would say, "Where have you been? Haven't seen you in a while."

KRENZ: Yeah. Yeah. That's about it, yeah. But we didn't care. We went on with our lives and got a job. Now I'm retired and supposed to be not working and I'm working harder than ever.

DERKS: [Laughs] I don't see any retirement in my future, [laughs] that's for sure.

KRENZ: Yeah, I just-- I retired, I got home, I got a job with Holland Furnace Company, which I knew that wasn't going to do it. And I worked for Solvent Chemical for a little while. Then I got a job with Heller Elevator Company out of Milwaukee. My first job was to go on this [inaudible]-- this hall over 00:59:00there in the corner. First elevators I was my own mechanic over there to put them in.

DERKS: Chadbourne?

KRENZ: Chadbourne, yeah. First time I ever in 1957, I think that was. When that building was built.

DERKS: Did you have any lingering health problems?

KRENZ: Oh, I'm hundred percent disabled. I mean, government disabled. Service. Ulcers. Arthritis is real bad. I mean, I'm on a super amount of pills for that. I've had two pulmonary embolisms. My lungs fill up with blood. No cause. Don't know where it comes from. I had a lot of returning stuff, post trauma stress disorder stuff. That's been pretty well settled, now. And just this last few 01:00:00years now, I've been on drugs certainly, which has helped me a lot.

DERKS: Well, that's a lot to carry with you.

KRENZ: Sometimes I get really down. I mean, a lot of-- sometimes, but especially if I go to them reunions. We start talking about the old times. And it wasn't all bad either. We had some good times, too. You know what I mean? We make playing cards out of any old thing we can find. [Laughs] Stuff like that. Yeah. It was a long time.

DERKS: And all those candy bars. [Laughs] Did you have a candy bar when you came home?

KRENZ: Yeah. They wouldn't give us too much when we first come home. The only thing they-- like in-- still, when I first got out. The only thing they gave us was eggnog and a lot of penicillin. Boy, I tell you, I had so much penicillin 01:01:00stuck into me every couple of hours. I'd hear the nurse come down the hall and I'd pull my pajamas down. I don't care what side. [Laughs]

DERKS: You probably had to totally rebuild your digestive system.

KRENZ: Oh, yeah. And my knees are bad. Of course, this one's really bad. Like, they want me to put a new knee in there and I keep putting it off and putting it off and I just--

DERKS: Is that where they hit you with the rifle?

KRENZ: Yeah. No, the other one's got so much arthritis and that gives me trouble.

DERKS: Did you get wounded?

KRENZ: Mm-hm.

DERKS: In the firefights?

KRENZ: I got-- went through my butt, cheek in my butt there, and I got shrapnel. I got scars on my legs from shrapnel and stuff. I had a piece of shrapnel going in this very small piece and took this tooth out. I still got the scar inside 01:02:00and I can-- when I get a good suntan, I can just go like that, and it never not don't suntan. It's just a very little mark. Took the tooth out.

DERKS: So, you were in pretty bad shape when you were captured.

KRENZ: Yeah. That other guy I was talking about, French, he got the same bullet that went through my cheek and my butt went through his arm. [Laughs] And we cleaned the gangrene out of his wound, he had a cross here. Flesh wound. He'd [inaudible], "I ain't cleaning your butt today." You know, but we just take anything we could and scrape the little green stuff off of it. Keep it from trying to get infected, you know. We laugh about that, too. That had burnt my 01:03:00ears. I had a big burn across my ear here, that bullet come so close to me. Went boom and just [inaudible] right in and we were out crawling.

DERKS: So, he was in front of you?

KRENZ: Mm-hm.

DERKS: And it came through your cheek and passed to your-- [recording cuts].

KRENZ: [Laughs] Okay.

DERKS: Thank you.

[Interview Ends]