It was like old times — like 44 years ago on the other side of the globe — for Shawnee Milling Company president Bill Ford and Averrill B. McClure, an Alkol, W.Va., coal mining foreman, when they rode together in a 1965-era Jeep in Shawnee’s Veterans Day parade Saturday.
McClure was driving, just as he did for Lt. Bill Ford when the pair Jeeped more than 5,000 miles of mountain trails in the eastern two-thirds of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) along the North Korea/South Korea border in 1965.
Ford and McClure became good friends in Korea, but hadn’t seen nor heard from each other since mid-December 1965. This summer, a Fort Sill friend of Ford’s found McClure through the Internet.
They were reunited Wednesday night at Will Rogers World Airport.
The Jeep was exactly like the one they spent a year driving. Even the letters on the side were the same.
“It might be” the one he drove, said McClure, who Ford called “Mac” when the two U.S. Army veterans and their unit were attached as support to the First Republic of Korea Army.
Theirs was a Ford Motor Company-built Jeep with a Ford Falcon engine.
Parts for the one in the parade were located in Florida after a three or four year search by Ford. Shawnee Milling Company maintenance shop employees Rick Sturn, Steve Johnson, Dub Minor, Les Godwin, Mike Kirk and Leon Carter reassembled the parts and got the Jeep running.
McClure received a commendation for outstanding service in a presentation at Fort Sill Thursday morning. The citation was signed by Lt. William L. Ford as executive officer and firing platoon leader of B Battery, 1/42nd Artillery at Camp Page, Korea. “It was long over due,” Ford said.
Ford was 21 and McClure 18 when they first met in Korea in January 1965.
Ford, commissioned on his 1964 graduation from the University of Oklahoma, got there a month before McClure, who entered the Army immediately after high school.
“Our unit was so short-handed I had to get a license to drive all the vehicles,” Ford said. “They asked for volunteers to drive; Mac volunteered.”
Their unit’s assignment was to use the Honest John Rocket System to defend South Korea from North Korea along a 100-mile section of the DMZ for a year. There was a cease-fire but North Korea had about a half million men across the border.
American and South Korean governments were always worried about infiltrators, Ford said. “They never attacked. We were very fortunate.”
But they had plenty of weather and road conditions to contend with as Ford and McClure scouted artillery firing points and surveyed new firing positions in minus 60 degree temperatures, blizzards, ice, snow in winter, monsoons and river flooding in July and night-time missions on narrow mountain roads.
“Your heart goes out to those mountain people living in those conditions,” Ford said.
“Mac and I would go out for two or three days at a time without any radio contact because in the mountains, our radios wouldn’t work four or five miles out of camp,” he said.
“We spent that whole year traveling together in a Jeep. We never broke down because he was such a good operator. We never had any mishaps and we were always able to get back.
“There was no support; we would have had to walk out of there.”
They had no insulation in their Quonset hut — just a little stove in the middle. Along the DMZ, in a tent, they laid old Stars and Stripes newspapers on the floor to protect against the cold.
The Jeep never failed to start when nothing else would, they said.
“It was a great friendship. We always thought it would be a good thing to get together but we lost track of each other,” Ford said.
He came home about a month earlier than McClure, who continued driving Jeeps during his final month in Korea.
Ford returned to OU, earned a master of business administration degree, and joined his father in Shawnee Milling Company.
McClure returned to Alkol, worked first in a defense plant in Charleston, W.Va., about 25 miles north. When it closed, he began working underground in coal mines.
He’s worked in coal mines 35 years; is a foreman, about to retire. McClure has never been in “any serious” mining accidents, he said, although his wife, Gale McClure said a methane gas explosion killed five miners on the night shift Nov. 7, 1980. McClure was working day shift when it happened.
Gale McClure is employed by a natural gas and oil company in Yawkey, W.Va.
The Fords have one son, two daughters, and five grandchildren. The McClures have two sons and six grandchildren.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Ford said when he called McClure after finally locating him. “I knew it was him when I heard his voice,” McClure said.
“We laughed for 30 minutes,” Ford said, during that first call.
Nancy Ford said they took a sign with names on it to the airport but didn’t need it. “They recognized each other.
“I looked up and thought, ‘there he is,’” Ford said. McClure said he told his wife, ‘I’ll know him.’”
The McClures return home today.
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It was like old times — like 44 years ago on the other side of the globe — for Shawnee Milling Company president Bill Ford and Averrill B. McClure, an Alkol, W.Va., coal mining foreman, when they rode together in a 1965-era Jeep in Shawnee’s Veterans Day parade Saturday.
McClure was driving, just as he did for Lt. Bill Ford when the pair Jeeped more than 5,000 miles of mountain trails in the eastern two-thirds of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) along the North Korea/South Korea border in 1965.
Ford and McClure became good friends in Korea, but hadn’t seen nor heard from each other since mid-December 1965. This summer, a Fort Sill friend of Ford’s found McClure through the Internet.
They were reunited Wednesday night at Will Rogers World Airport.
The Jeep was exactly like the one they spent a year driving. Even the letters on the side were the same.
“It might be” the one he drove, said McClure, who Ford called “Mac” when the two U.S. Army veterans and their unit were attached as support to the First Republic of Korea Army.
Theirs was a Ford Motor Company-built Jeep with a Ford Falcon engine.
Parts for the one in the parade were located in Florida after a three or four year search by Ford. Shawnee Milling Company maintenance shop employees Rick Sturn, Steve Johnson, Dub Minor, Les Godwin, Mike Kirk and Leon Carter reassembled the parts and got the Jeep running.
McClure received a commendation for outstanding service in a presentation at Fort Sill Thursday morning. The citation was signed by Lt. William L. Ford as executive officer and firing platoon leader of B Battery, 1/42nd Artillery at Camp Page, Korea. “It was long over due,” Ford said.
Ford was 21 and McClure 18 when they first met in Korea in January 1965.
Ford, commissioned on his 1964 graduation from the University of Oklahoma, got there a month before McClure, who entered the Army immediately after high school.
“Our unit was so short-handed I had to get a license to drive all the vehicles,” Ford said. “They asked for volunteers to drive; Mac volunteered.”
Their unit’s assignment was to use the Honest John Rocket System to defend South Korea from North Korea along a 100-mile section of the DMZ for a year. There was a cease-fire but North Korea had about a half million men across the border.
American and South Korean governments were always worried about infiltrators, Ford said. “They never attacked. We were very fortunate.”
But they had plenty of weather and road conditions to contend with as Ford and McClure scouted artillery firing points and surveyed new firing positions in minus 60 degree temperatures, blizzards, ice, snow in winter, monsoons and river flooding in July and night-time missions on narrow mountain roads.
“Your heart goes out to those mountain people living in those conditions,” Ford said.
“Mac and I would go out for two or three days at a time without any radio contact because in the mountains, our radios wouldn’t work four or five miles out of camp,” he said.
“We spent that whole year traveling together in a Jeep. We never broke down because he was such a good operator. We never had any mishaps and we were always able to get back.
“There was no support; we would have had to walk out of there.”
They had no insulation in their Quonset hut — just a little stove in the middle. Along the DMZ, in a tent, they laid old Stars and Stripes newspapers on the floor to protect against the cold.
The Jeep never failed to start when nothing else would, they said.
“It was a great friendship. We always thought it would be a good thing to get together but we lost track of each other,” Ford said.
He came home about a month earlier than McClure, who continued driving Jeeps during his final month in Korea.
Ford returned to OU, earned a master of business administration degree, and joined his father in Shawnee Milling Company.
McClure returned to Alkol, worked first in a defense plant in Charleston, W.Va., about 25 miles north. When it closed, he began working underground in coal mines.
He’s worked in coal mines 35 years; is a foreman, about to retire. McClure has never been in “any serious” mining accidents, he said, although his wife, Gale McClure said a methane gas explosion killed five miners on the night shift Nov. 7, 1980. McClure was working day shift when it happened.
Gale McClure is employed by a natural gas and oil company in Yawkey, W.Va.
The Fords have one son, two daughters, and five grandchildren. The McClures have two sons and six grandchildren.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Ford said when he called McClure after finally locating him. “I knew it was him when I heard his voice,” McClure said.
“We laughed for 30 minutes,” Ford said, during that first call.
Nancy Ford said they took a sign with names on it to the airport but didn’t need it. “They recognized each other.
“I looked up and thought, ‘there he is,’” Ford said. McClure said he told his wife, ‘I’ll know him.’”
The McClures return home today.
