On Sept. 2, 1945, World War II ended, and the Paris Peace treaties were signed Feb. 10, 1947. At the end of the war, Korea, which had been liberated from Japanese occupation, was divided under an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the north having a system of government favoring communism and south becoming a republic.
However, on June 25, 1950, the North Korean army, supported by the communist Chinese, crossed the line of demarcation, separating the two countries, and a civil war began. Two days later the United States entered the war to support its ally, the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Over the next three-and-a-half years, about 36,000 Americans and another approximately 4,000 United Nations forces were killed. The war ended July 27, 1953, with an armistice that ended the fighting, but with no advancement by either side.
Two local men, Stan Crowley, 89, of Villas, and Larry Hogan Sr., 91, of Rio Grande, have rather different memories of that time. Crowley was born March 24, 1934, in Germantown Hospital in Philadelphia and would later move to Neshaminy Falls and then Reading, before moving back to Philadelphia with his mother. Hogan was born Jan. 27, 1933, in the Bronx and grew up in Harlem.
Crowley dropped out of high school, and at age 17, his mother signed papers so he could enter the Navy. Hogan graduated from the Central Needle Trades High School in New York, and enlisted in the Army soon after.
Crowley, who weighed 118 pounds at the time, was initially rejected because a man had to weigh 120 to enter the military. A man from the recruiting station took Crowley down the street and fed him bananas and water and brought him back to the recruiting station and had him reweighed, at which time he made the 120-pound minimum.
Crowley enlisted in the Navy in August 1950, and found himself on a ship off the coast of Korea. Hogan entered the Army classified as “RA (regular Army) Unassigned,” which he said meant “infantry.” He was sent to Korea with guys he had gone to basic training with at Fort Dix; guys who were 16, 17 and 18 years old at the time. He said after World War II guys were “jazzed up” to go into the military. He said this applied to all the soldiers; White, Black, they were enthusiastic about the cause.
“We were going over to fight communism,” he said.
When they landed at the port of Pusan in the southeast corner of the country, the men were split up. It was October 1952, and it was his mother’s birthday. Hogan was 18 and was assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He had a Black company commander – First Lt. Raymond Thompson. Hogan said with the success of winning World War II, everyone thought that the Korean War was going to be over in 25 minutes. Instead, he said, he was involved in fighting from the time he got there until the war ended in July 1953.
“I was always on the line,” he said.
Hogan said all the divisions were losing men when they arrived, which accounted for his being separated from friends. He would be involved in one of the more notable conflicts of the war – the Battle of Pork Chip Hill – which he said he climbed more than once.
There were two separate events at the place known as Pork Chop Hill, and between the two, nearly 350 Americans were killed, and over 1,000 were wounded. After being in this kind of a situation, Hogan came to the conclusion that, if a person has been under combat at all he will never be right, citing PTSD, as well as cases of individuals who went on to commit mass shootings.
Hogan said that not everyone who died in combat was infantry.
“You didn’t know where you were going to end up. I believe anyone who raised his hand, they are a veteran,” he said. “I’m proud of any veteran. They had to be able to do it when called upon.”
After Korea, Hogan was asked if he wanted another stripe – a promotion in rank and pay grade. He said the Army wanted military advisors to go to Dien Bien Phu, in Vietnam, to train forces there to fight the communists. But he said no, he wanted to go home.
Crowley said he ended up on an aircraft carrier that carried Corsairs, which was a fighter that also carried bombs, and another small bomber aircraft. He said one of the hardest jobs he had was loading bombs on airplanes. He said two men would pick up a bomb with what they called a “hernia bar” and have to lift it into place. Crowley said the ship he was on was involved in some skirmishes off the waters of Korea. When the warning sirens would sound they would man the 40mm “ack-ack” guns to fire at enemy aircraft approaching the ship, but there was never anything serious that occurred.
Crowley became what was called a plane captain on a Corsair, changing oxygen bottles for the pilots, and so forth. Eventually he became a parachute rigger. He said one of the requirements of being a parachute rigger, or packer, was that the riggers had to make jumps with the parachutes they packed. That ensured that the riggers would pack them right. Over the next five to 10 years Crowley was working with parachutes, which changed from silk to nylon, and they would maintain the “Mae Wests,” which were life preservers and life rafts.
“It was considered a clean job,” Crowley said. “Your hands stayed clean.”
After he finished school, he was put in a Corsair fighter squadron. He tried to avoid bombers – and hernias.
Crowley got out of the Navy because he married a Kensington girl and they had a baby on the way. He said he had some nice job offers, and he was trained by State Farm Insurance to be a casualty underwriter. He said he “got too big for his britches” and quit. Then one day when he was at a picnic in Willow Grove a jet went overhead and he could just smell the fuel.
“I turned to my wife and said, ‘I’m going back in the Navy,’” he said. “She said, ‘Do it.’”
Crowley ended up spending a total of 35 years in the U.S. Navy, mainly working on aircraft carriers, including the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy.
By that time he had made master chief and was in charge of a crew of 5,900 men. On one occasion the carrier ported at Naples, Italy, and the XO (executive officer, second in command) said the commander had asked that he deliver a plaque to the pope in Rome. Crowley said that when he met the pope, John Paull II, a native of Poland, he asked, “Jak się masz?,” which is “How are you?” The pope responded in Polish, and later told his attendants to keep him around so he could speak to him.
Years later, Crowley would be asked to work under a vice admiral who was the “force commander” in charge of all the Atlantic-based naval forces. Crowley became the “force master chief” and was again asked to go to Rome and meet the pope.
“When he saw me he said, ‘I know you,’” Crowley said.
Hogan, on the other hand, got out of the Army in 1955 and ended up meeting a Wildwood girl in Massachusetts, and the two eventually married. Hogan used some of the skills he learned at his high school and got a job in a factory where shoes were made. He said eventually all the fabric trades moved south, and he opened a camera shop, and later a flower shop. He also worked various government related jobs in Massachusetts. At the same time he entered the National Guard and stayed on until he retired. He fully retired in 1994, and he and his Wildwood bride moved to Cape May County. Here, he met Curly, who lives in a house his mother-in-law had built in 1930.
“He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known,” Crowley said of Hogan. “You know, Larry (Hogan) took a bullet in Korea, and it knocked him over. Later they found the bullet stuck in a New Testament in his shirt pocket.”
Hogan is now a deacon at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Cape May. When asked about being decorated for his service in Korea, Hogan said he was happy to come out of it with his life and two good legs.
In 2020, there were over 1 million Korean War veterans. By 2030, the aging Korean War veteran population is projected to fall below 200,000.
Contact the author, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
