Story - The Meade County Messenger


Vol. 119. No.31	August 4 , 2010

Killed by communists 60 years ago, he’ll finally be laid to rest today

Eighteen-year-old Harry Reeve was captured by Communist Chinese soldiers during one of the Korean War’s deadliest battles. Handed over to North Koreans, he was taken with other prisoners to a field and executed in cold blood. His journey home has been a long one, that ends today.

Last night at 7:20 p.m., Cpl. Harry Reeve was closer to completing a sorrowful journey that he began over 60 years ago. A plane was scheduled to land at the Louisville International Airport, and the skeletal remains of his 18-year-old body was to be delivered with both honor and escort to the Coffey and Chism Funeral Home, to await eternal rest at the Kentucky Veterans Cemetery in Radcliff, at 1 p.m. today.

After the passage of 60 years, it is difficult to recount with any specificity his brief life, his friends, or to even find a photo of him – so, much is informed speculation, and so much more remains a mystery.

What’s most conclusively clear is that infantrymen Harry Reeve was captured by either Communist Chinese or North Korean soldiers in one of the most horrific battles of the Korean War, marched to a field with ten of his fellow soldiers, and quite simply executed.

The road to a resting place here in Kentucky for the young soldier has involved international relations, extensive investigation, and the marvels of forensic science – and is perhaps progress and testament that this lone soldier will not be another un-saluted casualty of what has become to be known as “The Forgotten War.”

From the DA Form 52-1 “Final Report No. A 1614,” we know that Harry James Reeve was born Feb. 25, 1932 and listed his home address as Philadelphia, Pa. He listed his father, Harry and mother, Mary, as a beneficiaries, when he entered the Army as an infantrymen on April 14, 1950.

It would seem just eight short months after entering the Army, he was dead.

However, one of Reeve’s few surviving relatives sheds further light on what the official Army record reports.
Eighty-year-old James Hughes, Louisville, said his cousin, Harry, tried to enter the Army when he first turned 17 and was turned down. With the persistence of his mother, though, he was eventually allowed to enter early.

“I don’t know what she did, but she finally convinced them to take him,” said Hughes. “I tried to talk him out of it once. I told him to finish school and go to college, but he said he wanted to go places. So he quit high school and joined up, and when the Korean War began, they shipped them all off fast.”

Hughes described his cousin as a “good, hard-working, but shy kid.”

“I know why he joined,” said Hughes. “It was to get away from his father who was overly strict with him. When we were kids, we’d visit his mother often, but when he was around his father he just clammed up.”

Playing baseball, stickball, and other street games in a Philadelphia suburb, the “street-gang” of childhood friends met one final time.

“Harry visited, and we all were hanging out on the corner shooting the bull, and he was in his uniform,” said Hughes. “It was the last time I ever saw him. When he was 18, I was 24 and married with one child, and one on the way. We lost touch with each other, I wasn’t exactly on his mailing list.”

Reeve was assigned to L Company, of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. The unit deployed to Korea from Japan, where it was on occupational duty following World War II. Conducting the first amphibious landing of the Korean war, the 8th broke out early to Taegu and for weeks held the fragile UN’s fragile Pusan perimeter. The 1st Cavalry Division then broke through, crashing north and capturing the enemy capital city of Pyongyang.

Sent to within 50 miles of the Chinese border, on Nov. 1, 1950, the 8th was quickly surrounded by two Chinese divisions. Stunned and badly outnumbered, soldiers from the 8th fought fiercely to stay alive in hand-to-hand combat for five days, and ran out of food and ammunition.

By Nov. 6, the unit had all but ceased to exist – losing 600 of its 800 men - about half believed to be killed in action, and about half believed to have died as prisoners in camps or executions. It is estimated about 260 remains from the 8th Cavalry Regiment are still in Unsan.

“Unsan is one of the most shameful and little-known incidents in American history,” described Korean War historian Jack. J. Gifford.

On Nov. 24, 1950, just over three weeks after the battle, another U.S. soldier that was captured by the Chinese at Unsan was released to the United States.

It was revealed during his debriefing that Pfc. Joseph Doherty, from 2-8 Cavalry, was also captured in the 3rd Battalion’s command post dugout on Nov. 2, along with Reeves and eight other 8th Cavalry soldiers . The group was moved two days later to a nearby house.

It is not clear from the report what exactly transpired for the next 14 days, and one almost hates to imagine... but according to Doherty, on Nov. 16, four North Koreans took the 11 men to an adjacent field and shot them. Doherty and two other Americans initially survived by falling when the shooting started, though one died the following morning due to his wounds.
Doherty was able to recollect the identities of three of the seven Americans murdered in the field, including Master Sgt. Silas Wilson, Pvt. Charles Higdon, and Reeve. The other survivor of the execution was Cpl. Franklin Harding, who was a prisoner of war until after the armistice in 1953. Following his release, he substantiated Doherty’s accounting of the events. He recalled the names of the executed soldier Wilson, and also of Cpl. Stanley P. Arendt.

Because of their accounts, the Army declared Reeve dead on Feb. 8, 1954 and notified his mother on Feb. 15.
The survivors’ accounts would live on as an important tool to investigators – decades later, though – in finding, extracting, and identifying these missing soldiers.

In 2004, from May 18-21, American teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command were granted rare access jointly with a North Korean team to excavate a mass grave south of Unsan. Their report said “An elderly North Korean national who had once lived in the area, told the team that in November 1950, he witnessed the death of seven or eight U.S. soldiers and a South Korean soldier when they were strafed by a U.S. aircraft.”

The eyewitness accounts as to the manner of death, obviously differ.

This farmer could not precisely recall where the mass grave was. Planted at the time with rice and corn, the team, nonetheless, excavated and found the remains of at least seven individuals, and other materials “issued to, or used by 1950’s American soldiers.”

“The team told me they had dug down six feet and were about to quit, but the farmer told them to go down to at least 10 feet and that is when they started discovering bones, teeth and buttons,” said Hughes. “I was told that buttons were about the only thing left because everything else – belts, shoes, everything – was normally stripped from their bodies.”

Between June 15, 2006 and June 27, 2007, 34 of the recovered bone and tooth samples were submitted for mitochondrial DNA analysis. The team already had obtained samples from relatives for nearly all of the 355 missing soldiers lost near the Unsan battle.
“They had first contacted me back when I was 78 or 79 years old to provide blood samples. They didn’t know about my brother Tommy, and they took samples from him, too,” said Hughes.

Eight of the recovered samples matched two maternal cousins of Reeve. In addition, the dental records available for Reeve were a perfect match with the skeletal remains recovered.

While Tommy initially wanted his cousin buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Hughes said he wanted him closer, at the Veteran’s Cemetery near Fort Knox.

“Our family thought that he’d never come back,” said Hughes “but, the United States doesn’t like leaving its soldiers overseas. This is closure for us. Someone in our family went to war, and served his country, and I’m so glad he’s coming home to American soil. I think his mother would have been relieved and comforted...the only thing she ever received was his death certificate.”
Hughes said his brother, Tommy, planned to fly in from Delaware for the ceremony, and that he hoped he could make it to the airport to see the plane land with Harry’s remains.

While Reeves and seven others are finally home, cooperation with the North Koreans on recovering remains ended in 2005 with the escalation of their nuclear program. It has left 8,000 soldiers still unaccounted for from the war. The Obama administration is said to be moving slowly towards beginning recovery efforts again, but the recent torpedoing by North Korea of a South Korean ship has provided another stumbling block.

“If I had a direct line to the president, I would say ‘Please reinstitute this program. There are families who need closure,” Ruth Davis told the Military Times. Her uncle was one of the soldiers also killed at Unsan with the 8th Cavalry Regiment.
For Hughes, his cousin is but one of many soldiers he grieves for.

“I wish we would get out of the wars we’re in now. I wish we would never send another young person to any war, ever,” said Hughes.

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