As Ray Parchment and his twin brother, Roy, grew up in rural Tennessee, their farmer father knew that his boys would likely have to go someplace else to find their living.
Ray and Roy tried to take that advice and joined the Army by fibbing about their age, signing up at 17.
"When it got close to time to report, we went back to the recruiter and told him that we changed our mind," Ray Parchment, who has lived for the last 50 years in Granite City, said. "We told him we were too young and they had to let us out."
Parchment said his brother eventually joined the Army and ended up in Germany as part of the post-World War II occupation force. His father told him he should have joined, too.
"By that time things were starting to get bad in Korea," Parchment said. "My dad told me that they were probably going to be needing men for the war -- and then I wouldn't have a say in what I ended up doing."
Father knew best.
In November 1951, Parchment was drafted into the Army and was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., where he trained to be a combat engineer. He was assigned to the 25th division of the 116th Engineers.
"We worked with all kinds of explosives, using them to blast holes for bridges and culverts," Parchment said. "It was mighty dangerous stuff. And then there were the North Koreans who fought against our positions."
Parchment said snipers took shots at workers as they built bridges across rivers and streams to help keep NATO troops moving. He said they used a mirror to help zero in their mortars for attacks from mountain sides to the shores of the waterways below.
At night, the North Koreans would shoot flares. Parchment said soldiers were told to stand still like a tree to keep from drawing enemy fire.
The men in his unit installed temporary and portable pontoon bridges and larger, more permanent frame bridges that were numbered and put together on-site like a giant puzzle.
"I was in charge of a group of 21 Koreans who were doing labor for us," Parchment said. "They were South Koreans, who were our allies, but they defected from North Korea, so we weren't really sure if we could trust them. It was my job not just to supervise them -- but also to guard them."
One day, Parchment asked one of the Koreans to dig a hole with a pick ax for a project. The man refused the order and a heated argument, complicated by their language barrier, broke out.
"He took a swing at me with that pick ax," Parchment said. "He could have cut my guts out. He just missed. Before I knew what happened, I reacted and hit him in the face, knocking his two front teeth out. I felt terrible about it. But I had to defend myself."
The response was investigated and found to be justified. The civilian worker was taken off the project and had to work with a ball and chain shackled to his ankle after that.
While he was more careful around the Korean workers, Parchment wasn't past pick ax-related problems.
While digging a hole one day, he struck a blow, and when he pulled the tool out of the dirt, three grenades were hanging from the pick by their pins.
The explosives were taken to a remote area, the pins pulled and they were detonated. His lieutenant asked Parchment if he wanted to walk down the road a bit and have some fun by pulling the pins and blowing up the grenades. Shaken from the near miss, he declined.
"I told him if it wasn't an order, I didn't want to do it," Parchment said.
Two of the three turned out to be live, while the third was a wooden dummy. Parchment said he doesn't know if they were placed there as a booby trap in the soft dirt or if they were dropped by soldiers passing through.
While the work was back-breaking and dangerous, it did have its benefits. Working in a combat zone piled up the points necessary to earn discharge and a trip home. By November 1962, Parchment was released from duty.
"I still remember when we pulled into harbor in California on that big ship," Parchment said. "They blew the whistle and I nearly jumped into the water, it was so loud. The guy next to me told me I was too close to home to fall overboard now."
Back home, he found himself in Tennessee, where he bought an old car and mapped out plans for his future.
With a $200 loan from Roy, he headed off to Detroit to find work in the auto industry. He worked in the Hudson factory where, armed with a hammer and dolly, he took out imperfections in the steel bodies of the cars. He also worked to align doors after they were installed. But the work was short-lived. In late 1954, Hudson, which had merged with Nash, closed its Detroit factory, and Parchment was back to looking for work.
He headed to Granite City with plans to work in the steel industry. But he ended up working for the electric company where he cast electrical components.
"When I was in Korea, all I could think about was coming home to my mother and father and my brothers," Parchment said. "It was tough being away at war. And then when I get back, people told me I wasn't in a war -- I was in a police action. It was tough. But I feel like I am lucky because I always had choices."
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