FREEPORT – Hank Welzel comes to his contempt for war from a unique place.

First, from the muddy confines of Camp Rucker, Ala., where he spent all of 1945 as a prisoner of war. Second, from his 10-month post on the front lines in Korea as a decorated medic in the U.S. Army.

“The war in Iraq is wrong, just wrong,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

It’s clear that today, his war experiences are far behind him. Welzel smiles easily, his blue eyes crinkling above his round cheeks. He lives in a snug, knotty-pine home in Freeport with his wife, Gloria. The couple settled here many years ago, starting a nursery that specializes in lilacs, and raising a family.

Aside from occasional trips to Togus for medical care and reunions with his Korean war buddies, there’s scant evidence of Welzel’s remarkable experiences with war.

But he’s never forgotten the horrors of the front lines, nor the strange twists of fate that brought him to serve two countries in two wars; to see war from the vantage point of victor and conquered. The decades that have passed since his active duty have given him perspective. He figures his wit and guile saved his hide multiple times.

“They called me the crazy Kraut,” said Welzel of his service in Korea with the U.S. Army. “We had patrols every three nights – it was supposed to be seven – going in and out, we lost quite a few people. I was always the one that came back. I was like a cat with nine lives.”

In the German army

Welzel was born in Lyria, Ohio, in 1926, the son of German nationals. His father signed a 10-year contract with a British company to do enamel painting work in Europe. The Welzels went to Germany, where Hank entered the public schools.

In 1938, when his father’s contract was about to expire, Germany was preparing for war and the family was not allowed to leave. Hank found himself inducted into multiple war efforts, from working in a chemical factory at age 14 to training in fire squads, preparing for British air raids.

At 16, he was drafted into the German army as a medic.

“I was put in the field hospital as a trainee. We worked in wards with the wounded that came from Russia, … nurses helped us,” he said.

From there, his class of 121 went to infantry school and then shipped out. The orders were assigned alphabetically, said Welzel, and most of the soldiers went to Russia.

“Me being W – there was eight of us left – we went to Italy,” he said, arriving just before Christmas 1943.

He and his unit spent months defending a pass between Bologna and Florence, until Oct. 10, 1944, when American troops rushed the hill where Welzel was posted. He was 10 days shy of his 18th birthday.

“We found out months later, after our officers had left us the night before, that there was only 19 of us left of the 160,” he said of his unit. “The Americans attacked at 4 o’clock in the morning with artillery and fog and everything. So they came up the hill and were surprised that there were so few people up there.”

Captured, Welzel joined about 500 other POWs on a freighter (made in Portland, Maine) that took them from Lavorna, Italy, to Norfolk, Va. From there, the POWs were loaded onto trains. Welzel’ s destination was Camp Rucker.

“There was 12,000 POWs when we got there, about 5,000 of those guys were African corps, they had been there a few years,” he said. “It was a humongous camp; you just can’t imagine how big it was. We were playing soccer – I was a soccer player – 24 hours a day. There weren’t many teams there, but they had about 15 fields.”

He worked a variety of details, such as cutting trees for lumber and tilling peanut fields. One of his favorite – cleaning the muddy campgrounds – led to a little side business.

Because of the mud, all the buildings were connected with wooden planks.

“You didn’t walk on the ground, you walked on these wooden gangways and they had Coke machines, cigarette machines, stuff like that,” he said. “When you’re picking cigarette butts (off the ground), you would find other things and we found a lot of dimes and nickels under the machines.

“So we got some blankets, and wherever there was a machine we put a blanket under it, and some days, you collected over a dollar’s worth of change,” he said with a laugh. “So we were making good money on the side there for a while.”

Back to the USA

When World War II ended, the POW was repatriated back to Europe where he was assigned to work in a sugar factory in France. Three years later, in 1949, he was given his freedom.

He first went to East Germany to find his parents, then to Connecticut to visit his American relatives who hadn’t seen him since he was a toddler.

It was Thanksgiving. A week later, he tried to enlist with the U.S. Marines.

“I figured my obligation was to square myself away with the country I belonged to,” he said. “And I thought I was still young, get that out of the way first. So after the recruiter’s done, an hour of taking notes, he says, ‘Oh, what was your last address?’ I says, ‘East Germany.’ He says, ‘You gotta be kidding me!'”

To enlist, Welzel needed an American address for at least one year.

“So I says, ‘I was a POW in ’45, ’46, does that count?’ He says, ‘No, no.’ I had to wait a year.”

But the Korean war would change that. Eleven months later, in January of 1951, Welzel was drafted.

“I went to Camp Stuart in Georgia, but with my medical background, they promoted me up and I was a medic right away for the outfit I was with,” he said.

After some additional medical training, he got his post: Korea, with the 45th division, the Oklahoma National Guard. He arrived three days before Christmas 1951.

Patrolling in Korea

Welzel stayed with that division, which served in the Yonchon-Chorwon area, and in sectors fronting Old Baldy, Pork Chop Hill, Heartbreak Ridge and Luke’s Castle, for the next 10 months. His first sergeant was Dan Blocker, who played “Hoss” on “Bonanza.”

A medic on the front lines, Welzel patched up wounded soldiers who were then evacuated to MASH units a few miles from the front. The work was grueling. Welzel recalls working as quickly as he could to stabilize soldiers while mortars rained from the skies.

“When it started, you went to work and you didn’t stop until the last patient was passed through and that was it,” he said. “If I was told to do it today again, I would refuse. But you were like in a trance, you know?”

Every three nights Welzel joined a patrol of about 25 men as they searched for the Chinese enemy. Despite the danger, Welzel found a way to have some fun and protect his buddies.

Given his European roots, Welzel spoke multiple languages and dialects. Another man, a white Russian in his unit spoke a rare dialect of German. Together the two would radio back and forth their locations and maneuvers in an unintelligible conversation that the eavesdropping Chinese couldn’t translate.

“We did that a lot of times,” said Welzel, chuckling at the memory. “We got guys speaking German. We got guys speaking Italian. We totally confused the Chinese with that little trick. They never caught up with us.”

Sometimes the only way to maneuver around Pork Chop Hill and others was by walking in the streams that ran at their base. During one of those patrols, Welzel said he and his unit realized they were surrounded by Chinese. Their only option was to stop and wait for the enemy to pass while they stood ankle deep in the freezing water.

“By the time I got out of the ice water and walked back a mile, my feet were like two lumps,” he said. The frostbite was severe, but Welzel opted to treat it himself and not report it to his superiors.

His motivation was simple math: for every month spent on the front line, a soldier earned three points; two points at the battalion aid station, 100 yards behind the line. At 36 points, a soldier could rotate to a safer post. If you spent time in the infirmary recovering from an injury, you didn’t earn any points at all.

Besides, Welzel said, he knew his work was important. He operated a front-line triage, patching up soldiers as best he could and helping transport them to aid stations or MASH units. More than once he used his body to shield wounded soldiers waiting for aid. He carries those souvenirs to this day.

“I had shrapnel in the arm and then I had another shrapnel wound in the leg and I had frostbite. I really don’t know which one they gave it to me for,” he said of his medals. “I told the man, one Purple Heart, that’s all I want. And I finally got it – they mailed it to me. Oh, and a Bronze Star they gave that to me, too.”

By the time Welzel was discharged in December 1952, he had accumulated 40-some points for his service.

He returned to the states, married Gloria and settled into a relatively normal life. At Togus, he received treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and frostbite, but today he doesn’t like to dwell on the bad memories.

“I was no easy cookie to live with for 50 years,” he said. “I’m all straightened out now; I’m in pretty good shape.”

Today, he enjoys his retirement, his family, his peace.

“I got it pretty good now,” he said, smiling. “No complaints.”