News

Coming home

By Scott Wagar

10/08/2013

For one family in Bottineau the remains of their loved one from the Korean War have been recovered and identified and will be returning home for a military burial in Thief River Falls, Minn., this upcoming Saturday.

For Anna Rose Evans, it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks after learning from the US government that her late husband’s brother, Harold Evans, who has been missing in action since 1950 was discovered and will be returned to America this week.

“The family is all excited about the discovery of Harold and that he is coming home after being missing for the past 63 years,” Evans said. “My only wish was that my husband Glenn could still be alive to see all this happen.”

EARLY YEARS

Glenn was born in Crookston, Minn, while Harold was born in Grygla, Minn. As boys, the two brothers were raised on their family’s farm in Grygla just northeast of Thief River Falls, Minn.
Glenn and Anna Rose first lived in Thief River Falls after they married and owned and operated a grocery store there, but the couple eventually moved to Bottineau where Glenn purchased a business and they made Bottineau their permanent home.

MILITARY LIFE

Harold in 1945 moved with his parents to the state of Washington and eventually enlisted in the US Army. His orders took him to Korea with an Infantry Division as a driver. In late November of 1950, Evans, who was just 22-years old, was given an assignment which would take him directly into one of the bloodiest battles of the Korean War, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, where Harold would be killed-in-action and lost from his family for over six decades.

“We were still living in Thief River Falls at the times when Harold went off to the Korean War,” Evans said. “I remember us sending a Christmas package to him but it all came back to us and we found out then he was dead.”  

With his brother missing, Glenn made numerous attempts to find Harold, but it took two years for Glen to find out some information about his brother’s last days in the Korean War.

“He made a lot of calls and wrote a lot of letters,” Evans said. “For a long time he didn’t get much information, but finally he got a hold of a man who wrote a letter back to Glenn.”

The letter Evans speaks of came from First Lt. Henry Trawick from Fort Benning, Ga., which was written on October 27, 1952. 

Although the letter doesn’t give great detail about what happened to Harold at the Chosin Reservoir, it does give some infinite information about Harold as a soldier and his time spent with Trawick.

“Dear Mr. Evans, I received your letter dated 19 October 1952 requesting information pertaining to your missing brother Harold,” Trawick wrote. “I am very sorry I cannot give you any information on what happened to your brother but I will be glad to give you a few details of our final days on the Chosin Reservoir.

“Your brother drove a jeep for me. Driving a jeep is not a very pleasant or easy job. It is a particularly unpleasant job in a country like Korea where a driver constantly fights the bad roads, mountains, and weather elements in addition to fighting an enemy that is everywhere,” Trawick continued to state in his letter.

“On the 25th of November, 1950, we left the Fusan Reservoir and drove for three days and three nights with our rifles on our laps. We rode over mountains and roads that were indescribable. We stopped only for short cat naps and to eat cold C rations. After the three days of hard driving we arrived on the Chosin Reservoir to relieve Marines. We were worn out.

“We moved into the Marine area during the early part of that night and went to bed. I cannot recall seeing your brother Harold again after that day, 27 November 1950,” Trawick added. “The following morning at 0300 hours (3 a.m.) a Division of Chinese hit our small battalion. We were completely surrounded and cut off from the nearest friendly outfit, the Marines, who were 12 miles south of our positions.”

KOREAN WAR

The Korean War started on June 25, 1950, when North Korean invaded South Korean in attempts to unify the entire country under communist rule. America sent US troops over to South Koreans to aid the Koreans in their fight against the communists. With the Americans, a large number of allied countries came to South Korea, all under the United Nation (UN) and fought the first war in history as a world organization.

Joining the North Koreans where the Chinese communists with infantry and Russia who provided supplies, ammunition and air power through planes.

By October of 1950, the UN had gone over the 38th parallel into North Korea and began pushing the communist soldiers north to its capital of Pyongyang, which was 100 miles north of Seoul. On October 19, UN troops captured Pyongyang. As the capital fell to the allies the South Korean infantry had advanced deep into North Korea and captured the port cities of Hamhung and Hungnam, which was situated close to the Chosin Reservoir.

At this time, the overall commander of the UN troops, General Douglas MacArthur, began his drive to end the war through an operation he called the “Home-by-Christmas Offensive.”

MacArthur’s plan was to drive UN troops north to the Yalu River and the Manchuria border with the Eighth Army pushing through the west side of Chosin and the 10th Corps marching on the east side of the reservoir.

CHOSIN RESERVOIR

However, on or around October 12, Chinese soldiers came into North Korea through the Yalu River from Manchuria side and entered the war to assist the North Koreans. Minor skirmishes had taken place between the UN and China’s infantry starting on Oct. 25 with a primary move by the North Koreans and Chinese starting in early November to annihilate the UN forces.

During the early morning hours of November 27, and unknown by UN intelligence, 67,000 Chinese troops quietly surrounded the 30,000 UN soldiers (made up of US, British and Korean soldiers) at the Chosin Reservoir and started a major offensive against them.
The UN squared off with the Chinese and fought a hard battle in wintertime temperatures that were at 40 below zero and at times in close quarters. The troops fought so valiantly they were given the nickname, “The Chosin Few”.

At the time Trawick and Evans separated, Evans was an Army Corporal and a member of the Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 31st Regimental Combat Team (RCT) and was deployed near the Sinhung-ri, South Hamgyong Province.

“After engaging in a battle with enemy forces east of the Chosin Reservoir, members of the 31st RCT, historically known as Task Force Faith, began a fighting withdrawal to a more defensible position,” stated the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.  

Being out numbered over two to one and fighting in difficult terrain, MacArthur had no choice but to call a retreat. MacArthur order the troops to Hungman port and the UN soldiers fought their way through a blood bath of fire fights to Hungnam. The troops were evacuated to the sea by a 193 ship fleet in what US historians have called the “greatest evacuation movement by sea in US military history.”

When the battle was over, Harold Evans was reported missing on Dec. 12, 1950.

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir lasted 17 days where 1,029 UN troops were killed with 4,894 soldiers missing, 4,582 wounded and 7,338 non-battle casualties. The Chinese saw 29,800 battle casualties and 20,000 non-battle casualties. (Some of the non-battle casualties consisted of not only disease, but from actually freezing to death in foxholes due to the cold temperatures.)

The retreat from North Korea caused the war to continue for another two and a half years before a truce was called on April 26, 1953, which ended the Korean War.

Ten years after Harold was killed in Korea, Glenn contacted the military and made a request for he and his sister to give DNA samples to them in hopes of finding Harold and bringing him home.

The DNA granted to the government by Glenn and his sister assisted the military in identifying Harold and finally bringing him back to the United States.

IDENTIFICATION

During the Chosin battle, UN casualties were buried in temporary grave sites along the road to Hungman.
 Between 1991 and 1994, the North Korean government handed over 208 boxes of human remains to the U.S. government which was thought to hold the remains of 350-400 U.S. servicemen.

“North Korean documents, turned over with some of the boxes, indicated that some of the remains were recovered from the area where Evans was believed to have died in 1950, near the Chosin Reservoir,” stated the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.

“To identify Evan’s remains, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, used circumstantial evidence and forensic tools, such as dental comparison, radiograph comparisons and DNA analysis. Two forms of DNA were used to identify Evans, Mitochondrial DNA, which matched his sister, and Y-STR DNA, which matched his brother.

“We are very, very thrilled to the fact that they are finding bodies because it was always a concern of Glenn and the family on how Harold died and where he died,” Anna Rose Evans said. “We had almost giving up hope after 63 years. He and his sister both gave DNA and the military told me that it was Glenn’s DNA that made it possible to identify Harold, which is pretty special considering Glenn tried so hard to find his bother before he died a few years ago.”

COMING HOME

Presently, 7,900 Americans’ remains are unaccounted for from the Korean War.

However, Harold’s remains will be flown to Fargo this week with the funeral home in Thief River Falls returning Harold back to his home.

On Saturday, all of Harold’s family will meet in Thief River Falls to say their welcome homes and good-byes as a full military funeral will take place for him.

After spending years with hopes of finding Harold, the man who grew-up with him, loved him and held him in high esteem, will not be there in person to welcome him home. But no doubt, Glenn’s spirit will be there; and perhaps, maybe both men will be there in spirit looking down from heaven filled with the brotherly love they have for another after their long journey apart from each other.
Sources: Anna Rose Evans, Harry Trawick, Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, Wikipedia and World Book Encyclopedia.