Shawnee resident John Townsend recalls a day more than 50 years ago when he and his fellow U.S. Army National Guardsmen were treated to quite a send-off.
In September 1950, Townsend and others with Company D of the 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, were mobilized in preparation for overseas service during the Korean War. In a show of support, the Shawnee community turned out in the thousands for a farewell parade.
“The crowd was estimated to be between 2,000 to 3,000 people, along with the Shawnee High School band,” Townsend said.
The troops boarded a train at the Rock Island Railway Station on Bell Street and left for training at Camp Polk, Louisiana. Townsend said the train made several stops along the way to pick up more soldiers, and nowhere was there a send-off as big as the one in Shawnee.
About 60 to 80 soldiers from the Shawnee area marched in the parade down Main Street, which was organized by American Legion Post 16, Townsend said.
Townsend’s fellow soldiers went through “advanced military tactics” training at Camp Polk, while Townsend went through reconnaissance and intelligence training in Georgia.
The group’s next stop was Hokkaido, Japan, where they thought they would remain.
“When we went to Japan, we weren’t supposed to go to Korea,” Townsend said. “We weren’t supposed to go into combat. We were supposed to go into Japan as an occupation force.”
Townsend said that in November 1951, he was selected for winter training. Part of that training would have been snow skiing, which he was excited about, but the training was canceled as the troops prepared to go instead to Korea, he said.
“I was really looking forward to that,” Townsend said of the prospect of learning to ski. “I didn’t get to do my thing. Instead of getting advanced snow training, I got advanced to Korea.”
Townsend said he and his fellow soldiers were the first National Guard unit to go to Korea. Because of his reconnaissance and intelligence training, he was sent over before the rest of his unit in December 1951. He said all of their prior advanced training in the United States proved useful.
“We were probably the best-trained unit when we got to Korea,” Townsend said. “We were in what they called ‘the Invasion Route.’”
This area was so named because it was where the invasion of South Korea began, Townsend said.
Once in Korea, the 180th Infantry Regiment was attached to artillery and tanks and was renamed the 180th Regimental Combat Team (RCT). Soldiers with Company D of the 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, has since been deployed from Shawnee to Iraq and Afghanistan.
A vivid memory for Townsend is the winters in Korea, which he said are “brutal.” While on patrol on Christmas Day 1951, he was caught in the open as the temperature plummeted.
“Everything on me was frozen,” he said. “Even my shorts were frozen.”
Upon his return to the United States in 1952, Townsend went on to graduate from Shawnee High School in 1953. He went to California to work for General Dynamics on the Atlas missile program, and eventually retired from that job in 1997 in Fort Worth, Texas. He immediately returned to Shawnee.
All total, Townsend served about eight years with the National Guard and served in Korea almost nine months. He said he and his fellow soldiers “will never forget” their ordeal.
“We were proud to serve our country,” he said.
A photo album highlighting his unit’s history is on display at the Santa Fe Depot Museum.
“If anyone is interested, they can look up all the people that were in the National Guard here,” Townsend said.
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Jason Smith may be reached at 214-3932.
