Donald A. Kostuck, a Wausau, Wisconsin native, discusses his career in the Army, including his service during the Korean War and Vietnam War. Kostuck touches on enlisting in 1948, basic training at Fort Knox (Kentucky), and administrative school at Fort Lee (Virginia). Assigned to Fort Meyer (Virginia), he discusses working in the Pentagon until he volunteered to go to Japan. Assigned to Company G, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, Kostuck talks about being unaware of trouble in Korea until he heard of the invasion by North Korea on the Armed Forces Radio Network. He describes the ship ride to Pusan (Korea), going north on a train, and being assigned to an intelligence reconnaissance platoon of the Regimental S3 Office of the 19th Infantry Regiment. Kostuck mentions spending two weeks scouting for enemy positions, characterizes a gung-ho soldier he worked with, and states he spent the rest of his tour in Korea as a rifleman with G Company. He describes sweeping villages for North Korean troops and supplies, witnessing a trench full of children's corpses outside a missionary school, and being moved north in preparation for the Inchon Invasion. After watching the Inchon Invasion, Kostuck recalls moving to Pyongyang, hearing the war was almost over, and watching a Bob Hope Show. During a three-day force march towards the Yalu River, he talks about using captured enemy trucks and hearing gunfire after a North Korean truck joined their convoy by mistake. He details setting up a perimeter near Sinanju, being in a forward listening position when the Chinese attacked, shooting until he ran out of ammunition, seeing his friend get killed, attacking some Chinese soldiers with a shovel after they overran his foxhole, and being knocked unconscious by a shot to the head. Kostuck recalls waking up on the battlefield, discovering he'd been wounded by a grenade, being helped to an aid station, and hearing bullets ricocheting off the division aid station's roof. After two weeks on a Navy hospital ship, he talks about his months of recovery in Japan and working as a typist for hospital headquarters and later for the personnel office. In February of 1952, Kostuck tells of being sent back to the States, having his repeated requests for another assignment in Japan refused, volunteering to go back to Korea, and managing to be sent to Far East Command Specialist School at Niijima (Japan). He recalls discovering he was the only person from his nine-man squad to survive. After the armistice, he tells of going to Korea to process American ex-prisoners of war. Kostuck comments on visiting Hiroshima and seeing the destruction there, having wheelchair races in the Japanese hospitals, and clearly remembering and dreaming about combat. He compares fighting in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Kostuck talks about being a sergeant major rotating between seven companies near Saigon, having difficulty determining Viet Cong from civilians, and danger to camp from the perimeter guards' being forbidden to fire without permission. He talks about blowing up a North Korean ammunition train, frying all the Korean village chickens they could catch in mess kits, and blaming President Truman for holding back the military during the Korean War. Kostuck mentions having "foxhole religion," recalls his mental state during the Chinese attack, and portrays the waves of incoming enemy troops. Kostuck reports lingering trouble from and remaining shrapnel in his wounds, and he touches on returning to Korea in 1956 for occupation duty with the 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He talks about representing his unit at a ceremony in Seoul and meeting Syngman Rhee. Kostuck recalls volunteering as a corpsman when he was in the hospital and describes the information he dealt with on medical forms. He reflects on how his parents were informed of his injury in battle, having to write a death notice to someone's parents, and telling his mother he was in Thailand when he was in Vietnam. Assigned to Fort Shafter (Hawaii) in 1957, Kostuck talks about seeking promotions, assignment to the Broadcasting and Visual Activities unit in Okinawa, earning a military occupational specialty as an intelligence specialist, and duty with a Korean-Chinese team. He touches on running a classified documents section at Fort Knox (Kentucky) and White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico), and while at White Sands he mentions working with the engineering systems test office, which was developing rocket engines for space flight with NASA. Kostuck recalls a time in Korean when he was guarding prisoners and one tried to walk away. Kostuck comments on learning Japanese and a little Korean, learning German, and serving in Germany for three years.
