Documenting a War

* Content Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of warfare, combat casualties, and psychological trauma. Reader discretion is advised.

Born in Minnesota, Don Podany was just another young buck eager to start his life after high school.

However, the Korean War had other plans in store for Don. After he was drafted to the United States Army, he went through basic training before being put on a troop boat to Korea.

He took a camera with him, given to him by his mother with a request that he take lots of pictures to document his time. He also took to journaling his experiences while he served for two years.

After 74 years, now 97 years old, Don has chosen and given permission to share these pages.

Having lost most of his belongings, including one journal that documented the voyage over to a hurricane years ago, he was most fortunate that the photographs and the journal he kept while stationed in Korea were kept up high enough to remain unharmed from the floodwaters.

The following are accounts from Don’s journal combined with his remembrance from present day:

“My basic training was in heavy weapons, mortars, 50 caliber machine guns, and rocket launchers.

I had no experience in the medical field except I had learned where the pressure points are to stop bleeding, how to apply a splint to a broken bone, and where to give a shot of morphine.”

Don, along with 1,000 or so fellow servicemen, waited in line to board a troop boat that would take them from San Francisco to Korea. One by one, their names were taken and a number was assigned to them, then written in chalk onto their steel helmets. Don’s number was 860.

They departed at the end of March and did not arrive in Korea until the first of May. The voyage was “misery.” With absolutely nothing to do but wait and imagine what their fate would be upon arriving, time dragged on.

Their bunks were stacked three high due to the amount of men on board and provided little comfort as they were made solely from one piece of canvas.

“After two weeks, we hit a storm. It was so bad, this big old boat would go up and down. The props would come out of the water, and the whole boat would shake.”

With everyone down below seeking shelter, they got seasick. “They’re throwing up, they’re smoking cigarettes, and they would cook all day long to feed all the people.”

Because of the smell, Don couldn’t take being below and chose to sleep on the deck of the ship for the remainder of the voyage. Through rain and even snow, he remained up top, “It was so bad down below, I could hardly breathe.” He was fortunate that he never got seasick.

When Don docked in Korea, he and the others had to take a train across the treacherous Korean mountain terrain to reach the combat area. He sat in the rear and when the whistle blew at crossings he described it as, “The most forlorn and scary sound a young man on his way to whatever future it was, probably bad.”

At a stop, he and about 20 other fellows on board got off the train and loaded onto trucks. As they made the trip further north, they stopped only to let men off at various places.

The last stop was at M.A.S.H. (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital). At this point, everyone had gotten off the truck except Don. The truck continued for about a mile when the driver said, “This is as far as I go; you have to take the path down the hill.”

“I took the path to a small tent, which was the forward aid station. The officer in charge said, ‘Drop your rifle and bayonet. You won't be needing them again.” He gave me a bag and said, ‘You are now a medic.’”

Within no time at all, he was on the front lines, every afternoon, ready to take the wounded to the forward aid station. That is where helicopters or ambulances would then come to pick them up. Nobody got to this station unless Don brought them.

“I was the third man from the front. The GI in front stepped on a mine. It went off about three feet from the ground, killing him instantly. The second GI was hit in the lower body. His testicles and penis were gone, and he had a hole in the lower part of his abdomen. There was not much I could do to save him. I gave him a shot of morphine to try to stop his screaming and his pain. I tried to stop the bleeding, but I couldn't… He died in my arms. I had sand and blood on my hands and tears in my eyes. I never got hit, and I don't know why…”

There were no tents or shelters for Don and his fellow servicemen. As a medic, Don had to be ready 24/7, on call for whatever the need or whenever the time was for him to move. Don drove a Jeep MD3 that doubled as his ‘home’. This jeep had no doors and provided little shelter.

“I was asleep in my Jeep. I was parked on the reverse scope of the mountain so I would not get hit by artillery. However, I did not figure on mortars. A mortar shell fell on the left side of the Jeep, 10 to 15 feet away. I got out of the Jeep and into the mortar hole with the smoke still coming out. I had my boots in my hands and cannot remember how I did it. A few more mortar rounds and it was over. I didn’t get hit and I don’t know why…”

Weeks at a time would go by with no option of taking a shower or a bath. To clean oneself, you would have to rinse as best you could in a freezing cold creek.

“I was parked beyond the front lines about 200 yards, and the captain asked for a volunteer to pick up a wounded GI. It was down an open valley with no cover. I volunteered.

I made it to a tank which was firing on the hill. The tank commander had his head out of the top turret. He saw me and yelled, ‘What in the h* are you doing here?!’

I went around the tank to the base of the hill under fire. I got out of the jeep and went up the hill about 20 feet to the wounded GI. He was hit in the chest on the upper right side.

I gave him a shot of morphine and started to dress the wound. He was very badly wounded. Unknown to me, a Half-Track pulled in behind me on which were mounted with Quad 50 caliber machine guns. They opened fire right above my head.

The noise was so loud and close to my head, my ears went deaf.”

Don was able to load the GI onto his jeep and made way for the forward aid station. He had no choice but to go back down through the open valley again.

About halfway back, an artillery shell hit on the right side of the Jeep. The shrapnel went around the Jeep and Don but hit the dashboard. It put a two-to-three-inch hole in it. It had missed Don by inches.

“By the time I got to the aid station, the GI had died. I couldn't hear very well for a few days and my ears started to ring. I still don't know why I was never hurt…”

Time continued to pass. The location was hilly with an unforgiving mountain terrain. The climate was even more cruel with either over 100-degree temperatures or below freezing, frigid Siberian winds, or monsoon rain. There was no shelter, no place to seek comfort or a moment of peace, other than a few blankets in the open-door jeep.

“We were stationed at the Forward Aid Station. I had a radio in my jeep, so I had been called many times to pick up wounded. I had been awake and driving for 10 or more hours. I had to drive through what was left of a small village and got a very uneasy feeling every time I had to drive over this small bridge which was wide open with no cover from the partially destroyed buildings.”

The partially destroyed buildings made perfect cover for an ambush.

“At just about dark, a captain shook the jeep. I was asleep but he said that I had to make another run for a wounded GI. I had been on the go for so long and I was so exhausted I asked him to send Osie, the other jeep driver. Which the captain did.”

Osi was ambushed and killed on the bridge. The very same place Don was so uneasy about.

“It should have been me…”

More time comes and goes, filled with hunger, death, and seeming like no end in sight.

Food was routine and nothing but a cracker and a can of hash (Assault Rations) and cigarettes.

“I was as close to the front line as possible, parked behind a huge rock as big as a house with a firefight going on the other side.”

Don got a call on his radio that a GI had been hit. He tried to get to him, but there was too much fire. A new Lieutenant came to him and said that he received the same call and that they were going to go and get the GI.

“I told him there was no way we could get the GI without getting hit ourself. He insisted that we try. I told him to go around the rock on one side and I would go around the other side. I went around about 10 yards and the bullets were hitting the rock and dirt inches from me. I can still hear the crack of the bullet past my head and bouncing off of the rock. I pull back and the lieutenant was waiting for me. He never got 10 yards beyond the rock and was as white as a sheet, scared to death. I never saw him again.”

Over halfway through his time, Don made an entry on September 10th, 1951. A night that he will never forget.

It was about 11 o'clock in the evening. I was sitting at the forward aid station.”

He had been driving for 10 to 12 hours, bringing wounded from the front to the forward aid station. The day before, a new replacement had come to be his assistant. Up until this point, he had always been alone and did not want the assistant. But he had his orders. His name was Tom.

The forward aid station said they needed more plasma and told Don to go M.A.S.H. and pick some up. It would require driving in the dark, as they could not use lights of any kind for risk of being detected by the enemy.

They arrived, secured the plasma (which was in glass bottles), and began the lightless drive back to the forward aid station.

“I was so tired, I asked Tom if he could drive, so he did…”

About a half mile later, Tom drove over a wooden box mine. The force of the explosion flipped the jeep and threw Tom out onto the road. The jeep landed on its top with Don under the cowling. The jeep began sliding upside down…and down the side of the mountain.

“I was conscious and I could feel the rocks going past my elbows. I had to keep raising them to keep them from being torn away.”

The jeep eventually stopped sliding, and Don could hear Tom screaming. Tom had lost control completely.

“The bottles of plasma were broken and were pouring all over me. I didn't know if it was my blood or plasma. It was pitch dark. I was lying under the wreck. It was a very bad time…”

They were close enough to M.A.S.H. that the men were able to come and get him out of the jeep. Again, no lights. Everything had to be done by feel. When they finally got Don out, the only injury he had was to his jaw!

“It's a miracle. Nothing was left of the Jeep MD3, and I survived.”

Tom was mentally in bad shape and had to be given a shot to knock him out. With no time to waste, Don found a four-by-four truck, loaded more plasma, and continued his mission, alone. He never saw or heard from Tom again.

He later got a Jeep MD7 and considered three and seven his lucky numbers.

Two days later, his teeth were hurting so bad that he went back to M.A.SH. in search of a dentist. They had one, and in a little tent in the middle of a rice paddy, he had eight cracked teeth pulled.

“It was a very bad day…”

Later on, he wrote, “It seems like a door closed behind me. I knew my life would be changed. All the peace and good times I had were gone. Now death and violence and very difficult times lay ahead…”

Dan was relieved in March of 1952 and went on to finish his time in San Francisco. He was an orderly taking care of crippled and paralyzed GIs at a military hospital there.

With the mental toll from his time in Korea weighing heavily, he told the head nurse that he could not take it anymore for fear of winding up in one of those beds himself if he was unable to change his role.

She checked his records and said that he could do anything he wanted to.

“I ended up cleaning the floors, dusted the beds, cleaned the sinks, tubs, toilets, did everything to keep my mind off of the patients.”

With a waiting bride back home in Minnesota, he had his reason to keep fighting. He shared, in the present day, “She waited for me, my bride.” His smile filled with a deep love, over seven decades later, as he touched the photo of them taken just before he left for Korea. Don and Joanne married upon his return in 1952.

They began their life together and had two beautiful children, a son and a daughter. He began working for a window and glass company and wound up buying it when the owner was ready to retire.

He worked hard with his business for *45 years before eventually handing it down to his son.

His time in Korea stayed with him. The sights. The sounds. The smells. Years later, he returned to the journal in hopes of it being a channel to release the burden.

He wrote more…

“I can't get the smell of the dead and gangrene out of my head even after so many years. There were so many dead and wounded I thought it would never end. I can still hear the screaming and crying in my dreams. I did the best I could to try and take care of the wounded…

The blood, missing legs, arms, head, anything that can be blown away and always in the worst of conditions. Blood, guts, dirt, water, cold, insects seemed like everything happened at the same time…

The bad part is there was no peace…nowhere to get away from it all…

Almost every day was the same. Death, dying, hot, cold, wet, tired, discouraged.

It was very hard to keep your mind alert.”

Don took the time to talk with the Coastal Breeze. With a smile on his face, a sincere and warm handshake, his appreciation for life radiated off of him. As he flipped through the many pictures he took, he would point out men from his entries and again echo the words, “It should have been me, and I don’t know why…” He recounted more experiences of firefights and explosions.

“It just stays with you, we were all just young guys…18-22, both sides.”

“Every day is beautiful.” He had written in his final entry, and he still abides by this truth today. Driving himself daily to the YMCA to keep a healthy body and a sound mind, he wishes that everyone could have been as lucky as he was to both make it out and live life to the fullest.

The last entry in his journal, kept safe after 74 years, shows an honest vulnerability that not many possess: “I guess someone or something was watching over me. Maybe God was my co-driver. I did talk to him many times.

There are so many bad memories and not many good ones, if any. I learned to live every day, and every day is beautiful.

I know that I shouldn't be here, but I am thankful.

I was most fortunate to have gone through everything without hardly a scratch.

I figure I am a lucky SOB.”

May we all find the beauty in our everyday, may we all count our blessings, and may we all live our life to the fullest.