War, veterans will tell you, changes those who survive it.
“After the war, I became a better person, because I learned the importance of things that I have,” says Jim Holman, who became a successful land developer and founded the chamber of commerce in Gore. “I realized how precious our ordinary life was, so I could not live roughly.”
For Holman, fighting a relentless enemy in Korea was rough enough to last a lifetime.
The horrors of war are the demons that haunt those who watched as their comrades died within arm’s length of them and wondered if they were next, who emptied their weapon repelling implacable enemy combatants that never seemed to diminish, who were ill-equipped to endure unimaginable cold and sweltering heat, wondering if they’d still be alive in an hour, in a day, in a week.
The Korean War was, in the words of Yale University historian Samuel Moyn, “the most brutal war of the 20th century, measured by the intensity of violence and per capita civilian death.” More than 3.5 million Koreans died in the brutal three-year campaign, and ground and air assaults destroyed “every town and even village of note in the north,” Moyn said. In addi- tion, 2 million children were orphaned or separated from their families.
Yet, sandwiched between the enormity of World War II and the protracted and unpopular Vietnam War, the conflict that claimed 36,000 American lives — 90% of all UN forces casualties — is considered by veterans as “The Forgotten War.”
It was from this hell on Earth that Holman emerged, having survived 1951’s relentless and bloody Chinese spring offensive, the biggest Chinese communist offensive of the Korean War.
Like many veterans who struggled with their war trauma upon returning home, Holman sought closure amid 40 years of self-imposed silence about the war. Even his second wife, Barbara, for more than 30 years didn’t know anything about his time in Korea.
Although Korea may always prey on Holman’s mind, those closest to him have seen that he has finally come to grips with his past and has received enough closure that he now willingly speaks about his experiences on that rugged, war-torn Asian peninsula.
“War is too horrible,” says Holman, who has been a successful entrepreneur in real estate in Tulsa and becomes an 89-year-old grandfather this year. “I never talked about it for 40 years.”
The memory of the Korean War is a wound Holman knows will never completely heal. Talking about his comrades who died at the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese, he is often interrupted by a lump in his throat and an audible swell of emotion.
In Korea, soldiers faced conditions like never before — temperatures of 40 below, wind chills of 80 below — while fighting a fanatical enemy undeterred by heavy casualties.
Holman tried to forget the war until a fascinating turn of events when his daughter got him involved in participating in veterans’ activities. A boy in Korea
Growing up in a rough part of Kansas City in the 1930s and ‘40s, Holman began at an early age doing whatever he could to make a buck to help support his mother after a divorce divided the family. While in elementary school, he planted a “victory garden” to raise vegetables to sell in order to buy stamps and $25 war bonds. He did anything he could think of as the family tried to make ends meet. He set pins at a bowling alley, swept store floors, sold concessions at prize fights, was a golf caddy and caught pigeons — he would climb along the pipes under bridges with a sack and fill it up with pigeons — to sell them for a nickel apiece. His entrepreneurial spirit served him well during his formative years, as it would later in life.
At 16, Holman quit school in a quest to follow in his older brother’s footsteps. His brother was a Marine Master Sergeant in World War II, and Holman idolized him and devised a plan to also serve his country in uniform. He altered his birth certificate so he could pass as being a year older than he was, and was accepted into the Marine Corps on June 23, 1950.
Two days later, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the U.S. military led United Nation forces to defend the Republic of Korea (ROK), a country Holman didn’t even know existed.
He was the youngest man in his unit, having turned 17 after completing basic training. During the next two years, he saw the horrors of death and destruction while targeting enemy forces that sent wave after wave of soldiers in an unstoppable assault to overrun the country.
In March 1951 as a 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st Division Marine rifleman, PFC Holman was put aboard a transport to Inje, Gangwon province. Two weeks later, he was in a fight for his life from April to May, as 250,000 Chinese communist forces (CCF) poured into the battle.
“Chinese troops were blowing trumpets. Thousands of CCF began to push forward with shouts covering the sky. No matter how we shot our machine guns, no matter how many of the enemy was killed, the enemy kept pouring forward incessantly, like a wave,” recalls Holman, who hurled fire indiscriminately.
Soon, the boy painfully learned that the reality of war was the dead bodies stacked before him in the aftermath of one of many assaults.
Holman still shudders at the sound of whistles and bugles, and said, “It was too much. The CCF continued pouring in despite our success in killing them. Bodies piled up everywhere and blocked the view. The battle continued for a whole week, even as we fought back with every weapon that we had — mortars, artillery, etc.”
The Chinese spring offensive ended in a crushing defeat, and the Allies reached a turning point, switching to offensive operations.
Then from August to September 1951, Holman fought in a three-week-long battle against the North Koreans at the eastern front, Yanggu Coastal Basin, Gangwon province. The coastal basin looked like a hollow bowl that holds punch, so the battle was named the “Punch Bowl Battle.” In the battle, ROK and U.S. forces killed 2,800 and captured 557 soldiers of the North Korean Army.
Casualties of war
Many photographs Holman took during the war contained his comrades in a daze, standing over dead bodies.
Some of those bodies belonged to men with whom Holman had become friends, including David Hatch and James Holtke, who he met while being transported to Pusan.
Then he heard the shouting — “Hatch was shot!” — during combat. Holman called his friend’s name several times while shooting his rifle. No matter how many times he called his friend’s name, there was no answer. He could not recognize who was who, because there were so many bodies. Moreover, the bullets kept coming.
“I attacked more crazily, having a fit of anger for my friend’s death,” he recalls.
Then in 1995, he found Hatch. After being evacuated by helicopter, he was sent back to his hometown, and he lost touch with his buddies.
“During the battle, he heard my voice, but he couldn’t respond because he could not raise his voice above the noise of the shooting,” Holman explains of his reunion with his friend. “After 35 years, we had a lot of things to talk about.”
In April 1952, Holman came back to his hometown after the most severe year in his life, which included the debilitating winter of 1951-52. Because of David Halberstam’s book about the Korean War, “The Coldest Winter,” and because of his memory of the cold winter, Holman still cannot sleep without wearing socks during all four seasons.
“I do not regret that I enlisted,” he says, acknowledging the importance of the U.S. military’s role in securing freedom. “Above all, I can now live and breathe.”
After the war
Holman returned to Kansas where his first marriage resulted in six children. But when a divorce followed, he raised his children by himself. Then in 1966, he met Barbara, his future soulmate for life. Years later, they met again in Tulsa, and they dated through 1973 before marrying in 1974. With Barbara’s four children, the Holman family swelled to 10 kids. By October 2021, there were 14 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.
The turning point in his battle to excise the demons that haunted him came on Nov. 13, 2010, thanks to his daughter. It was what he called one of the greatest experiences in his life: He attended his first Marine Corps League Ball in Tulsa. There were 500 Marines in their dress blues with wives and dates. And then, almost 60 years after the war, in a special — and surprise — ceremony, Holman received all the medals and awards he earned in the Korean War: National Defense Service, Korean Service and United National Service medals, and Combat Action ribbon. Since then, he and Barbara have been regulars at the annual gala, as well as other veterans events.
Then in May 2013, Holman visited Korea for the first time since he was there in combat. His memory of the barren land and death had been transformed into a land of green life.
“When we left, there was total ruin. No sound, no trees, only rock,” he recalls. “But now it was thickly wooded. I could recall the old look. I could not believe that here is the place where we were at war. The developments of Seoul were surprising. I am proud to have contributed to this foundation of prosperity.”
While in South Korea, Holman visited the Demilitarized Zone, and also presented a plaque to the Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs for hosting his trip to the nation he defended 60 years earlier.
Because the Korean War ended in a stalemate — an armistice was signed in July 1953, but no peace treaty was ever signed and the two Koreas are technically still at war — there was no ticker-tape parade for American veterans returning home as there was less than a decade before at the end of WWII. Veterans of Korea were neither spat upon nor greeted. It was like they were just returning home from work, from the so-called police action. It was like three years living one minute to the next half a world away was “The Forgotten War” for those who fought and died and survived and tried to cope with a horror no one could imagine.
In war, all give some, some give all.
On this Memorial Day, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice that we might be free to have “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson expressed it. We also remember, as Abraham Lincoln wrote, those who “laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”