By Sandy McKay
Like many Americans, Frank Wetzel bravely served his country in important ways. His most significant Army duty was with the 304th Infantry of the 76th Division as World War II ended in Germany, followed by duty as second lieutenant in the 35th Infantry of the 25th Division during the stalemate in Korea.
He was twice awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, a recognition for infantrymen and Special Forces soldiers in the rank of Colonel and below who personally fought in active ground combat.
His military experience started early. He first put on a uniform at 17 while still in high school. He joined the Army Specialized Training (Reserve) Program. He was sent to the University of Idaho.
“As pre-engineers, our subjects included physics, chemistry and math,” the 88-year-old veteran said. “I hadn’t the foggiest notion how to study. I was always satisfied with a ‘Gentleman’s C’ in high school, and I did poorly.”
Even so, it didn’t matter. They were all called to active duty.
In July 1944 the men were assigned to the Army Air Corps. Basic training at Buckley Field at Denver lasted six weeks. Wetzel was then assigned to gunnery school at nearby Lowry Field, but he quickly washed out when they found he was colorblind.
But this was, by no means, the end of his military career.
His next destination was the Army Troop Command in Sedalia, Missouri, and soon thereafter to a tiny field at Vichy, also in The Show-Me State.
“Then came the Battle of the Bulge in Europe during the winter of 1944,” Wetzel said.
Because of this, there was a huge need for infantry men. “I was yanked from a comfortable assignment and sent to Camp Gordon, Georgia for six weeks of training,” he remarked. “I went back to Bremerton for a short leave, and then to Camp Myles Standish near Boston.”
In February of 1945 a troop ship landed the men near Glasgow, Scotland. They immediately went to Southampton and across the English Channel to Le Havre, France. “No more than two or three days there, and finally as a foot soldier, I joined the 304th Infantry of the 76th Division,” Wetzel said.
“The 12 men of my new squad were bearded, tough and dirty,” he said. “Some hadn’t taken off their boots in days. In other infantry units replacements were greeted warily because the veterans didn’t want to get too close to newcomers.
“But that was not my experience and I felt quickly accepted,” he added.
In late March and April of 1945 the war was winding down. “As part of the Third Army we fought against only spotty resistance and were deep in eastern Germany, almost to Leipzig when the war ended on May 8,” he said. “We had liberated some red wine that tasted only slightly of gasoline because of its jerrycan containers, and of course we celebrated. The war was over!”
Soon after V-E Day he was reassigned again, to the 83rd Division which was training for a new war. “We were at Graffenwohr, which had been a training ground for the German Wehrmacht, when V-J Day unexpectedly arrived with two big bangs. The United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and the Emperor quickly surrendered.
“We celebrated again but perhaps without the same joy as those months earlier when our immediate danger had ended,” Wetzel said. “If the war against Japan had continued it would have taken months for us to get to the staging areas and, we figured, a lot of things could happen before we took that long trip half-way across the world.
“Those of us who remained in Germany, those with the shortest service overseas, became an army of occupation,” he said. “The longtime vets were shipped home as fast as ships could carry them. Russia, France and Britain shared the occupation.”
The Allies divided Germany geographically into four sectors, with the United States taking command in Bavaria. The fear the Germans would continue the war from a redoubt in the Alps proved to be unfounded. At some point in Wetzel’s Army career it had been entered on his service record that he could type. On that basis, he was assigned to an intelligence unit that was interrogating Nazi party members at Stalag5V at Moosburg, about 60 kilometers from Munich.
“It was a rich assignment,” he stated. “There were only a half-dozen U.S. interrogators most with German backgrounds, and my job was to type their reports. We lived in German homes that had been requisitioned and ate at a local Gasthaus that the Army had commandeered. The assignment gave me the opportunity to learn some of the nuances of NSDAP (Nazi) party membership. The party was everywhere; after 1933 it permeated the German nation. I remained in that choice billet until June of 1946 when I returned to Bremerton,” he said.
And then there were the infamous death camps.
A visit to Buchenwald after the war and before he returned to the states was pivotal in his civilian life. “General Eisenhower wanted the world to know about the concentration camps and one of the ways to advertise it was to set up tours for American soldiers. Some of the inmates in their striped pajamas were still at Buchenwald when we came through.
“Although Buchenwald was a work camp, not a death camp like Auschwitz, our German-Jewish guide said 51,000 had died there. I was aghast at their treatment and I wrote an article that was published in the Bremerton Sun on July 31, 1945. It was my first byline and I was thrilled.”
Wetzel joined the ROTC while at the University of Washington and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
“I graduated in June of 1950, just two weeks before the North Koreans invaded South Korea,” he stated. “I managed a long-planned bicycle trip in Europe with a friend before I was called back into the Army in June 1951.
“I served at Fort Ord, California for almost a year before going to Fort Benning, Georgia for two weeks of infantry training. A brief home leave, then we were flown by Flying Tigers to Japan. They hurried us to the combat zone but when it came time to return to the States it was aboard a pokey Navy transport, the Marine Lynx. But it landed in Seattle. Hooray!”
He was in Japan for several days, then on to South Korea where he was assigned to the 35th Infantry of the 25th Division. “I became a platoon leader with three squads of a dozen men each under my command. After a few days we moved forward and took up positions on Heartbreak Ridge, which had been hard-fought earlier but was now stable.
“We held our dug-in positions on the forward slope overlooking the Mundung-ni valley while the North Koreans and Chinese held their traditional positions on the north slope opposite us,” he remarked. “There was perfunctory artillery shelling as we arrived and that continued during our 76 days on line. The most dangerous part for me was the nightly ambush patrols that we sent forward. It was regimental policy that an officer accompany such patrols and I spent many nights with my men, lying in ambush, trying to keep us all awake.
“One morning, just as it started to get light, we were pulling back to return to our lines when we were ambushed,” he continued. “Seven of the 10 men were wounded. I was unable to rally the men from where they were pinned down, despite putting down fire from my ‘burp gun,’ as my machine gun was called. But eventually a rescue squad arrived and we all managed to return to our lines.”
In retrospect, he thinks they all survived because the enemy had only concussion grenades instead of the fragment grenades that they carried.
Wetzel was discharged in Seattle in the fall of 1952, and almost immediately went to work at the Tacoma News Tribune.
He cites a quote by James Madison: “War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason; and if any thing is to be hoped, every thing ought to be tried.”
This accurately reflects how Wetzel feels. “War is humankind’s greatest failure,” he said.

Wetzel has had a long career in journalism and written several books.