Eugene Harwood shares his experience as a Korean War Veteran

By Bonnie Kirchman

Leader-Record

Eugene “Gene” Harwood, a longtime resident and business owner in the Bagley area is also a Korean War Veteran. He recently shared his memories along with some of the many photographs he took while serving in the Army.

 Eugene Harwood spent his early years in North Dakota, attending a one-room country school through the eighth grade. He and his siblings walked across pastures and fields, a little over a mile each way to get to their school. All but one of Gene’s five siblings served in the military and his dad had also been in the service. After the family moved to Minnesota, Harwood was delayed in starting high school. So he was slightly older than fellow draftees when he was called to serve right after graduating from high school. 

“That’s when you got your life turned inside out,” is how Gene describes his basic training at Camp Chaffee in Arkansas. Coming from a farm in Minnesota, he was used to having some freedom in deciding how to do his work.  But at basic training, you had to do what you were told, when you were told to do it. His photos show the men standing in line, an experience that would become very familiar to him while he was in the Army. His photographs of himself with friends, demonstrating push-up skills or just horsing around while on the base show the importance of these relationships during what must have been a stressful time.

While in the Army, Gene was part of the 92nd Armored Artillery Battalion, known as the “Red Devils”. This unit was equipped with 155-millimeter Howitzers.  Gene’s job as part of Battery B was to provide maintenance services and see that the tanks kept running. There were two portholes in the front of the tanks and the men would hop down in these to do repairs.  Vehicles known as half-tracks were also used. These vehicles had wheels in the front and tracks like a tank in the back. The terrain in Korea was rough and rocky, causing the tracks to come off frequently. When this happened, it would be one of Harwood’s jobs to get the track back on the vehicle. Gene said he really enjoyed driving the tanks and described some of the innovations that occurred during his year in combat. The old tanks were steered with levers, but the new M46 was steered with a shaft. According to Gene, the tank operator could just hop in the hole, grab the stick and go.

Gene’s photos depicted some of the difficulties experienced by the tank operators. Farmers in the area had rice paddies surrounded by trenches. It was common for a tank to slide off the roadway and partway into the rice paddy. Special vehicles known as tank retrievers would be sent out to pull the tank out of the paddy and set it right again. While the main concern for these men would be avoiding enemy fire, the tanks themselves could be dangerous. With repeated firing, the guns could freeze up and not recoil as they should. This would cause the guns to blow up, sending pieces all around. Gene remembers one such incident where two men were killed.

“We spent most of our time running around the hills”, is how he casually described his time in combat while in Korea. But his album of photographs taken during this time tells a more dramatic story.  While he calmly discussed his maintenance work, his pictures provide details of the dangerous setting he and his buddies faced each day. One photo shows smoke rising over some tanks in the background. 

“They were getting hit by artillery,” Gene said, “If you wanted to watch the war live, you just had to stand there.”

 Other photos showed the variety of techniques the soldiers used to protect themselves, such as overhead screening that helped hide them from incoming enemy planes. The tanks were placed in formation with the hills to their back in hopes of avoiding attack from behind. Gene also told of how they started out living and working in tents, but when they began getting bullet holes in the tent walls, they realized they needed the greater protection of bunkers. So from then on, the walls were fortified by sandbags. 

One of Gene’s favorite memories from the time he served in Korea was his single “R and R”, a trip he took to Tokyo with a buddy. He used this time to sightsee around Japan. He visited the Tokyo zoo. He travelled by train, viewing the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both still showing the destruction from the atomic bombings from World War II. 

Gene’s other travel experiences during his service years were also memorable. He recalls riding out of Seoul in an Army 6 x 6 truck, sitting on a bench. The vehicle went 60 miles per hour over a narrow, treacherous road, with the passengers bouncing up and down. He said, “I could look straight down and see the river”.

Gene also traveled on one train that had no windows, with people crowded in, three to a seat. He said it was not very comfortable on those slats. He also had a wild ride on a boat from Japan to Pusan, Korea during a monsoon, with waters so rough the passengers had to hang on to avoid being swept away.

The day to day routine in Korea included lots of time spent in line for food, mail, and other things. In his time off from his work and guard duty, he remembers mostly sleeping. One time he was able to attend a special show of movie stars who had come to entertain the troops. This didn’t happen often, because the shows had to be held a distance behind the lines of combat where Harwood spent most of his time.

Gene was honorably discharged from the Army on September 1st, 1959. His certificate read “Sgt(E-5) Eugene L. Harwood, ER 55 141 603, Arty, USAR, Standby Reserve (active status) who was inducted 28 August 1951 and transferred to Army Reserve 15 May 1953 was honorably discharged from the Army of the United States on the 1st day of September 1959. Signed by Edgar W. McCracken, Major, Inf”. 

When Gene was discharged from the service, he traveled home by ship. On the way home, he and a friend visited a fellow soldier in Colorado who had been discharged earlier. He took a train to Bemidji, and then got a cab to drive him to the county line near his family’s farm.

Harwood returned to work as a mechanic for Art and Joe Amundson. He later bought the business, and owned and managed Harwood Oil for over 20 years. Gene met his wife Lois when she was babysitting for a neighbor. They were married in 1954. He and Lois raised 3 daughters, Marcia (Harwood) Kern, Bonnie (Harwood) Borene, and Susan (Harwood) Sims. He has six grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. After his wife passed away in 2017, he moved into the Cornerstone Assisted Living Center in Bagley. He is a long-time member of Faith Lutheran Church in Bagley.

While Gene admits that his years of service in the combat zone of Korea was stressful, he says he was young then, and didn’t give much thought to the dangers he faced. When asked how serving in the military changed him, he said it made him a more mature person.

But a story shared by Eugene Harwood’s daughter, Sue, shows how important his time in service was for him. She sent him a card on Veteran’s Day. He told her, “That means more to me than any birthday card I have received.”