Ordinary Son

The time has now come to bring together the people of every language and nation and to show them my glory.
—Isaiah 66:18 (CEV)

If you want to succeed, you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
—John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Herman Washington Fletcher breathed deeply as he tied another log to his mule. One more log would yield him a few more sawn planks, and soon the house he was building for his bride, Calla, would be complete. His timing was none too soon, because the crops in the field were almost ripe, and every available hand was needed to bring in the harvest.

The Fletcher family has roots deep in the soil of that farm in Boxville, Kentucky. My great-grandfather, George Parker Hunt, purchased the acreage in 1855, and when he died of pneumonia at the age of 35, his wife was left with four children and a mortgage. A schoolteacher, she somehow paid off the mortgage before she, too, died; typhoid fever claimed her at age 42. Various relatives took in her children, including Calla, who went to Illinois to be raised by her cousin. When Calla came of age, she moved back to Kentucky and took control of the family farm, marrying Herman Fletcher when she was just 19. Their first child arrived on November 7, 1904—Orville Hunt Fletcher, my father. They named him after Orville Wright, the pioneer of aviation whose historic first flight had made headlines just a year earlier.

Farm life at the turn of the century was demanding. Electricity was still many years away, and water for cooking, drinking, and washing was carried in a bucket from the well in front of the house. Grandma made her own soap, washed clothes on a scrub-board and sewed with a foot-treadle sewing machine. Grandpa milked the cows, fed the pigs and plowed the fields. When Dad wasn’t in school, he would be right by Grandpa’s side. In the evenings, neighbors would gather on Grandpa’s porch with their guitars, banjos, mandolins and fiddles—and the night would come alive with wonderful bluegrass music.

Dad was an avid sportsman in high school, and especially good at baseball. By the time he graduated, the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Braves were knocking on his door. Those offers must have been tempting, but he followed the advice of his coach and turned them all down to enter the University of Kentucky at Lexington.

One day, a young coed on campus, Virginia Davis, caught his attention. Dad won her affections, and they were married on October 18, 1926.

Mom had grown up in a home where her mother taught that the Bible and faith were the strong foundations of family life. Her great-grandfather was a Baptist preacher for more than 50 years, and “Old Pappy” would regularly get his grandchildren and great-grandchildren on their knees to pray. He was 101 years old when he died.

As in all marriages, Mom and Dad started out their new life together full of promise, but as the Great Depression deepened, they were forced to drop out of school to make ends meet. One day, with nowhere else to turn, Dad cried out to the Lord for help. He felt his burden lift, and not long after, his Uncle Waller arrived with a gift of new shoes, some money and a lead on a job at a high school—teaching history and coaching football, basketball and baseball.

Their family quickly grew—first Waller, then Martha, and finally I arrived on December 1, 1931. My parents named me after Dad, the greatest honor of my life. Over the next decade, other children followed—Mary Jane, Bill, John and Harry.

Raising a family during the Great Depression was no easy matter, yet Dad managed to return to the University of Kentucky to complete his degree while Mom cared for us on the family farm. When Dad graduated in 1932, he joined more than 12 million Americans who were unemployed and looking for work. With those grim numbers, it didn’t matter that he had a degree in hand; he took what he was offered—a job with the B&O Railroad in Dayton, Ohio, first as a brakeman, and later as yard master working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.

Sometimes, Dad would let me go to work with him. I knew he must be someone important because everyone called him “Doc.” I learned later that was because he dressed in a suit and tie and looked like a doctor. While Dad conducted his business, I would sit in his office and draw, write or play on his typewriter. Occasionally, I’d wander across the street and buy some candy from a store where John Dillinger, one of America’s most notorious criminals, used to hang out not many years before.

Dad worked long hours, eventually becoming a division superintendent, yet he never let his position keep him from befriending or helping railroad laborers. Today we would call him a servant-leader. At the time I wasn’t aware of the many sleepless nights he put in; all I saw was that he autographed his work with excellence.

Mom made sure we all knew the meaning of hard work, too. Many a Saturday morning began with the words I came to dread. “Today is the workiest of work days!” she would cheerfully announce. All my friends were sleeping in, but not the Fletchers. Mom had our full attention and a long list of chores to get done around the house. We maintained a healthy respect for our parents’ authority. Dad could be a stern disciplinarian, and Mom’s strong hand kept us in line when he was away. There were very few times when they told us a second time to do something.

Mom ran the house like Dad ran the railroad—on time and within budget. She knew how to stretch a dollar further than anyone I knew. One year she decided to raise chickens to eat. Then she took up photography and set up a studio and darkroom in our house. No matter who stopped by—relative, friend or insurance salesman—they had to pose for a picture. She later added antiques to her list of hobbies—collecting and selling them. When Waller and I launched a basement cleaning business, she had first claim on whatever junk we hauled from the homes of our “clients,” who never knew how Mom turned their trash into treasure.

Mom liked to make money, but she liked giving it away even more. Her greatest gift was that she gave of herself to her family. She knew I had a hunger for adventure that was unbounded. When I was young, she took me on a train ride to Chicago, where we shopped at Marshall Fields, ate at Coopers Cafeteria, and even dipped our hands into Lake Michigan.

Mom loved without holding tightly and gave me a long leash. By the time I was 12 years old, I was hitchhiking all over Indiana and Ohio with my friend Maynard Clark. Big freight trucks would pick us up, then drop us off to explore new places. When I was 16 and living in Indiana, a friend and I hitchhiked our way down to Texas, and when Grandma Fletcher was dying in a Kentucky hospital in 1948, I hitchhiked to see her before she passed away.

Mom made me feel that with God’s help I could do anything, no matter what the obstacles. “You can do it!” she’d encourage me. With Mom, there was always a way. All I needed to do was to find it.

We would often take vacations back at the Fletcher family farm in Kentucky. Grandpa would let us ride the horses, and Grandma would fill us up with biscuits and chicken gravy. On Sundays and for revival services, we’d head to the little one-room country church. Grandma was raised in the Christian Church and had a genuine love for the Scriptures, especially the writings of Paul. Whenever we were around the house, I’d hear her singing songs like “Jesus Loves Me,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Rock of Ages” and other hymns.

She must have instilled that faith in her son because Dad was a deeply spiritual man and the spiritual leader in our home. His favorite book was the Bible, and he honored and revered it as the sacred Word of God, regularly reading it aloud to us. He believed in God’s absolute power, including the power to heal.

One afternoon when my younger brother Bill was working at a local farm, he fell off a cultipacker with a big iron disk that ran right over him. Unconscious and lying in a pool of blood, he looked as if half his head had been cut off. In fact, his scalp was just barely attached, and the back of his head was completely exposed. An ambulance raced him to the hospital, where Dad boldly got down on his knees in the lobby and begged God to spare the life of his son. God answered his prayer, and after months in the hospital and at home recovering from the surgery, Bill had only a scar to remind him of God’s mercy.

I also learned about the Lord from one of our neighbors, Helen Salisbury, who had led my sister Martha to the Lord. Mrs. Salisbury invited me to attend the “Miracle Book Club” that she hosted in her home. She read us Bible stories and told us we needed to make a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but one day I raised my hand and went through the motions of asking Jesus into my heart.

When the world turned to war in the 1940s, Dad hung a large map on the wall, where he’d plot the movements of the Allied forces. He kept up on current events and would captivate us with stories about battles happening in far-off places all over the world.

Mom and Dad put an emphasis on education, but I have to admit that I loved sports more than my studies. By the time I was in high school in Garrett, Indiana, I was playing first-string halfback on the varsity football team, the “Mighty Railroaders,” and starred on the track team, running the 440-yard dash and the mile relay. During the summer, I joined the rest of the town working on the railroad.

While we were growing up, it seemed as if we moved as often as the trains did. Every time Dad was promoted, we sold our old house, packed up everything we owned, and started life all over again in a new community with new friends and schools. The constant moves made us appreciate each other and knit us into a close family. From Indiana, we moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in 1950, and attended the University of Indiana at Bloomington where my older brother, Waller, was already enrolled.

In ordinary times, I would have looked forward to four years as an undergraduate—but these were not ordinary times. Just a few months earlier, the North Korean army had invaded South Korea. America feared that Communism, which was already entrenched in Russia and China, might gain yet another foothold and eventually engulf all of Asia. President Harry S. Truman ordered U.S. ground forces to Korea, and 15 other nations joined the Americans under the umbrella of the United Nations Command. At home, however, the pursuit of prosperity and the good life filled the soul of a nation that had endured years of depression, followed by years of war in Europe and the Pacific. No one wanted another war, and newspapers were not carrying much news about what was happening half a world away.

As I settled into classes at the university, the war in Korea moved into full swing, and everywhere I looked there were Armed Forces recruiting posters. One in particular had special appeal to me. It was a picture of a battle-hardened Marine and read, “We don’t promise you a rose garden! United States Marine Corps.” Another had a picture of Uncle Sam pointing his finger, with the words, “We don’t want you! We want men! United States Marine Corps.”

Able-bodied men were needed to expel the communists from Korea and stem the flow of Communism into the free world. I sensed history in the making! Should I seize the moment and enlist? I asked myself. I could always complete my education later, I reasoned. Besides, all my life I had wanted to be a Marine. I admired the aggressive toughness and can-do spirit of America’s oldest military service, not to mention its ability to quickly deploy troops to far-flung crisis areas.

Finally, I made my decision. Even though truce talks had already begun, I walked into a recruiting office in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 22, 1951, and enlisted. The next day, the communists broke off the peace talks, and I headed to boot camp.

My introduction to Parris Island, South Carolina, was everything I had heard and worse. From the moment our bus arrived, the drill instructors (DIs) did everything they could to intimidate us—yelling, cursing and threatening us every waking moment. They were brutal dictators, and we were at their mercy. We were a bunch of wanna-be Marines who didn’t know the first thing about war. Our DIs had their work cut out for them.

The physical side of our training was demanding. We endured a grueling obstacle course and never-ending repetitions of every exercise known to man. Every day we marched, crisscrossing the grounds, back and forth. In the heat of the day, a flag would sometimes be raised, indicating that the temperature was higher than acceptable health standards. Our DIs could not have cared less. Instead, they would march us behind the barracks, out of sight of their superiors.

The high stress, hazing and rough treatment that we endured were designed to develop respect for authority, physical stamina and mental fortitude. DIs had a way of solving disciplinary problems right on the spot with a kick in the pants, a fist in the stomach, 50 push-ups, endless marching or worse.

Although Parris Island had all the charm of a maximum-security prison, three months of demanding, backbreaking training transformed a ragtag class of recruits into a new generation of gritty, gung-ho “leathernecks.” The Marine Corps’ motto, “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful), was inscribed on our hearts. We were taught to watch each other’s backs, and that we had an obligation and accountability to our fellow Marines. We also learned an important lesson: To accomplish a hard mission, we had to push ourselves to the limit, then beyond—and never, ever give up.

Graduation Day finally arrived, and I was proud to have survived the toughest school on earth. I was now one of “The few. The proud. The Marines.”

Next stop was Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where I learned more about the legendary Reconnaissance (Recon) Company, an elite Marine Corps service battalion. The Company’s motto—“Swift, Silent, Deadly”—and special mystique intrigued me, and the thought of being on a cloak-and-dagger mission behind enemy lines seemed especially exciting. When the opportunity came, I volunteered and was accepted.

Preparing for war was tough. In the months that followed, I underwent special training for amphibious reconnaissance. Simulated missions were as real as they could make them, even involving rubber boats launched from submarines. We practiced our maneuvers over and over again until they were second nature, and we learned to “flourish under conditions of uncertainty.” Since Recon Company Marines go to war in small units, our instructors drilled into us the concept of teamwork. With teamwork, we would live; without it, we would die.

Over time, we all felt that our Recon Company was “the best of the best,” and that we could face any danger and take on any challenge to get the job done. As the “eyes and ears” of the division, our Recon Company trained for a variety of missions that would keep our troops abreast of the Chinese: surveillance (probing behind enemy lines to collect information on troop concentrations and movements), terrain reconnaissance (checking roads, bridges and other sites), and intelligence (gathering information by staging an ambush and capturing prisoners).

By the end of the summer of 1952, I had been in training for a year and was tired of war games. All my requests to go overseas for the real thing kept coming back denied; others were “waiting in line” in front of me. In Korea, the truce talks were deadlocked, and I prayed that God would let me go before the war was over. As a final act of desperation, I wrote letters to Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and Senator Earl Clements of Kentucky, a childhood friend of my father. I stated my plight and asked them to intervene, if possible, on my behalf. To this day, I don’t know if one of them actually did intervene, but within a few weeks, my orders arrived. I was on my way to the Western Front in Korea to fight with the First Marine Division.

First, however, was a ten-day furlough. It was great to see my family again, although it was a solemn time for all of us. The night before I left, Mom prepared a farewell dinner, and as we gathered around the table, Dad said an eloquent and moving prayer, asking God to protect me and give me good success in battle.

Boarding a U.S. Navy ship with several thousand other battle-ready young men, I was enveloped with a sense of honor and anticipation. For the first time in my life, I was leaving the shores of my homeland. Destiny was in the wind. I was on a mission—to fight as a United States Marine! Although we were well trained, we were untested, and privately, many of us on board that ship wondered how we would perform under enemy fire. The camaraderie of a close-knit unit trained for dangerous missions is hard to describe. We all knew we needed one another, and that any laxity or failure to follow a particular plan to the letter might cost a life—our own or a buddy’s. We were a unique fraternity, the sons of America’s families, friends and brothers in battle. We were men of the night who lived in the shadow of death.

At first, my itch for combat led me to volunteer for every mission, regardless of its danger, but after a series of deadly encounters, I decided to be a bit more selective—at least when I had the choice.

A few weeks after Billy Graham came to the front, our Recon Company was part of a strategy that became known as one of the showpiece combat missions in the latter half of the Korean War. We were at full strength that day; anyone who could walk, even the cooks and bottle washers, joined us. In broad daylight, we descended a hill in full view of the enemy. By design, we offered ourselves up as a decoy to make the Chinese reveal themselves. They must have thought that the entire First Marine Division was about to push forward in a major offensive because they quickly reinforced their positions on the hills. Then our tanks fired smoke-screen shells into the “no-man’s land” between the Chinese and us.

As the enemy responded with mortar fire, our Marine Air Wing came in with low-flying assault planes, strafing the Chinese lines and launching a brutal napalm attack. The utter mayhem of war was horrific beyond words.

This is the end, I thought. The pounding was relentless, continuing for hours, and I couldn’t see how we would ever make it out alive. I repeated the only Scripture that I could remember—the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters” (verses 1-2, KJV).

As I lay on my back, once again I faced the fact of my own mortality—yet this time with the full assurance that I was ready to meet God. Over and over again, I repeated the words, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” (verse 4, KJV)—the primal cry of my soul reassuring itself of God’s protection for a desperate time like this. Eventually the fighting ended, and once more I had passed safely through the shadow of death.

Within a four-month period, our company of 120 Marines sustained a casualty rate of approximately 70 percent. I mentioned none of this in my letters home, so as not to alarm my family. Instead, I would give the impression that I was stuck in headquarters, a safe distance from the front lines. Dad suspected otherwise, and he would often feel a burden to pray for me, wondering if at that moment I was in peril. Mom set aside every Friday as a day of fasting and prayer for my safety.

Even my brother, Waller, although not a Christian at the time, told me that he had prayed for me on his birthday—January 28, 1953. I remember that particular night well because we were on patrol when, all of a sudden, the Chinese ambushed us. Our point man, Kent Nixon, was wounded severely in the stomach, but we all made it out alive—grateful that the trigger-happy Chinese had failed to wait for us to completely pass through their ambush.

There were many other times that I saw God’s hand of protection on my own life and those of my fellow Marines. Whether it was an unexplained delay at a crucial moment, or supernatural courage in the face of overwhelming odds, I am forever grateful that I began the war by turning over control of my life to the Lord Jesus.

Finally, after two years of truce talks, a cease-fire went into effect at 10:00 p.m. on July 27, 1953. Two nations, drenched with the spilled blood of 17 other nations, were left to heal and pick up the pieces. Mao proclaimed the war “a great victory” for the communists, but at what an awful price—4 million Koreans (military and civilians) and 1 million Chinese military gave their lives.

Thirty-seven brutal months had also taken a terrible toll on the U.S, making it one of the costliest wars in our history. More than 1.5 million Americans served in Korea; 36,940 were killed, 103,284 were wounded and 5,178 were missing or captured.

A month after the cease-fire went into effect, I was released from active duty. Tired of seeing people maimed and killed, I was ready for home. They say, “War is hell on earth,” and in some ways I’d have to agree. It’s also true that a Marine never fully comes home after a war. Historians later referred to the Korean War as “The Forgotten War,” but it would never be that to me. How could I ever forget? For years to come, the haunting memories of battle would awaken me in the middle of the night. Mysteriously, half a century later, I still weep at the thought of certain people or experiences from my time in Korea. I guess that’s one reason why within our ranks we say, “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

My journey to the precipice of death forced me to grow up in many ways. In fact, it seemed a lifetime had passed during my nine months and two days overseas. I was a changed man—a new man, bound for Heaven and in search of a new path for my life.