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The sound of taps drifted through the church and a soldier laid a flag on a table near the altar. For the next hour, prayers, hymns, and stories about Bill Barnes, a World War II veteran, tumbled out in bits and pieces. Barnes had lived a life similar to that of many veterans of his time — boy joins the service, studies under the GI Bill, has a career and a family.
But Barnes was really that — a boy. He had been just 13 years old when he joined the army, Gary Drumheller told the assembled mourners.
"He must have been one tall stinker to get in at 13 years of age," Drumheller said.
"His spelling was creative. It gave him away, but nobody called him out," he said.
Bill Barnes was born in a home for unwed mothers on Feb. 24, 1932 in Memphis, Tenn. He was adopted at seven months of age, but his family life was unsettled. His parents divorced. He went to live with his father, who traveled often, Annalee Monroe writes in Since You Asked, an oral history of war veterans.
His father had a tough time taking care of him, so he put him up in a boarding house for a while.
"He came to live with my mom," said Dorothy Ledbetter, who Barnes stayed in touch with over the years. "He boarded there when he was a boy. His dad paid for his board, and he lived with my mom. ... He was like a family member."
Barnes went to live with his adoptive mother for a while, then decided to enlist.
"He was 13 and a half," Ledbetter said.
As the story goes, the war was nearly over when Barnes walked into the Navy recruiting office, which turned him down. As he left, the recruiter told him what to say if he tried to enlist again.
"The Navy didn't take him but they told him that if you're going to do this again, you need to not say these certain things," Drumheller said.
Barnes walked a couple blocks to the Army recruiting station, lied well, and got into the Army Air Forces. Not long after, he found himself in Biloxi, Miss., for his first roll call, where an officer noted he had put his belt on backwards.
"I was directed to 'get that peach fuzz off my face,'" Barnes wrote in America's Youngest Warriors, Vol. III. A sergeant on the target range saw that Barnes could not reach the safety of his pistol without using both hands.
"The sergeant took my pistol and fired for me," Barnes wrote. "I passed."
The organist played "Amazing Grace" as mourners entered the church. Then the big, silver pipes fell silent. Bouquets of flowers were laid out by the altar and sunlight shot into the room, diffused by the stained glass windows of American Lutheran Church, located in Sun City, a retirement community not far from Luke Air Force Base. When the soldier came down and left the flag at the front of the room and the bugler began to play taps, mourners could hear the din, faintly, of military jets passing overhead.
Barnes fell behind on his first march, 10 miles with a full pack. His group was near the front, he wrote, and he kept dropping back to the rear. The soldiers took 10-minute breaks from time to time and Barnes used them to catch up to his unit.
"That's one thing about him. He didn't quit," said daughter Kathy Botu.
Later, he left the base on a three-day pass and was late getting back. He was court-martialed and sent to the stockade for 14 days. Barnes worked KP — kitchen patrol — for a while after that, but was later transferred to MacDill Field, in Tampa, where his job was to repair flat tires on planes.
"B-29 tires were the largest I had ever seen," he wrote. In time, working on airplane tires led to working on airplane engines.
"He was a pretty smart guy because not everybody gets to be engine mechanics, and not everyone gets to work on airplanes," said John Henson, national commander of Veterans of Underage Military Service.
In December of 1946, Barnes boarded a ship bound for Yokohama, Japan. The war was over. Barnes was assigned a variety of tasks. When a fuel-transfer valve needed to be replaced, he squeezed his narrow frame into the innards of the plane and disconnected it, drenching him in 120-octane fuel.
"The crew chief sent me back to the barracks to shower and change clothes. No one asked me for a match!" he wrote later.
One fall day he went over the camp fence for a walk in the woods, though he wasn't supposed to leave camp. He came across an old man wearing a Japanese military uniform and carrying a shotgun, Barnes would later write. They were both startled.
"He motioned to the guy to lay down his gun," Botu said.
He unloaded the gun and placed the shell at the base of a tree. He walked away, placed the gun at the base of another tree and told the old man in fractured Japanese to stay where he was. He thought of telling someone at the base about the encounter, then thought better of it.
"Being underage meant that you did not do anything to call attention to yourself," Barnes wrote. His superiors suspected he was too young to be there, but they moved him from job to job until he wound up working in a Signal Corps radar room, which was dark. Most of the people in the room couldn't tell how old he was because they couldn't see him.
His honorable discharge certificate shows that he left the army on August 27, 1948.
He was 16 years old.
The room fell still. A couple of soldiers came down and took up the flag on the table. They unfolded it, then refolded it, forming a tight triangle with the end tucked in. A few smartphone cameras came out to record this. The church was white brick, the choir chairs empty, the organ pipes standing tall. A sergeant knelt and presented the flag to Barnes' wife of 36 years, Lucy.
Barnes was not the only person to lie about his age during the war. The underage veterans group has had more than two dozen active members who first served at 13, according to the group's website. Its youngest member on record, now deceased, enlisted at age 12. Estimates on the numbers of underage soldiers over the years vary, Henson said. Some estimates range into the hundreds of thousands.
"There are estimates as high as half a million," he said. Henson said he thinks the number, impossible to track or verify, is probably much lower, and not all of these young men saw heavy combat.
"If you go back to the Revolutionary War, I would guess 100,000," he said. "Now some of them were drummers in the Civil War. Some of them were musket loaders in the Revolution."
The group has 2,951 members and meets at national conventions.
"My guess is that there are another 3,000 out there walking around that don't want to reveal it," Henson said. Their reasons for joining so young vary, but for the most part can be ticked off on one hand.
"Bad home life ranks right up there," Henson said. "Excitement. A lot of us just grew up with boredom. And we just decided to join. And in those days you could do it and get away with it. … Patriotism ranks right up there too."
Some kept their age a secret long after they left the service, afraid that it might lead to a loss of benefits, though Henson said he doesn't know of a single documented case where that has happened. Barnes kept his early home life and the age he enlisted a secret for years, even from his family.
"He didn't tell us a lot about his early years," said Bill's son, John Barnes, of Houston. "He kind of just shook it off, like no big deal."
"He kept all this from us," Botu said. "It came out when he saw this article in the newspaper." The article was about Veterans of Underage Military Service (VUMS). He contacted the group, met its members, told his stories. Barnes had a lot of stories.
More underage veterans are coming forward, as time goes by, Henson said.
"One of the wonderful things about America is we're very forgiving."
When the military honors were over, stories about Barnes' life fell about the room. Over time, the 13-year-old grew up, had a career, a family, reached retirement age and moved to Sun City.
The mourners recited the Lord's Prayer and sang "The Old Rugged Cross." A baritone sang in the back of the room and his voice carried forward. When it was over, the mourners filed out, some in walkers, some using canes.
Like many veterans, Barnes took advantage of the GI Bill to attend a civilian aircraft mechanic school and went to work for Boeing in Seattle. He joined the Washington National Guard, learned to repair radios. When the United States when to war in Korea, became a squad leader in 11th Engineer Combat Battalion, where he helped maintain supply lines and repair roads and bridges.
After his discharge, he returned to the States and attended Georgia Tech University, graduating in 1961. The army had prepared him for a career in engineering, and the soldier gave way to the contract engineer. He married, had four children, learned to fly small planes. He worked hard. They moved often. He worked on the Apollo Program, the Alaska pipeline, John Barnes said.
He was frequently on the front end of contract engineering projects, Botu said. When he started working on the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile project in North Carolina, he loaded his books and clothes into a camper, headed east, and slept in the parking lot of a high-security facility. His family still lived in Mississippi.
"He was living in a parking lot in a trailer," she said. There wasn't much to do except work, sleep, play poker. After about six months, he moved his family.
John Barnes remembers his father going to a parent-teacher conference in North Carolina. A teacher wanted to know about John's active imagination.
"He said you've got an airplane," the teacher said.
"Well, I do," Bill Barnes said.
"He said you landed it on the beach."
"Well, I did."
"It wasn't much of a plane," John said. Just a fabric covered Piper Cub his father found at a bargain price.
"My last flight the seat broke," John Barnes said. He had to sit in a funny position so his dad could fly the plane.
Years passed. Bill Barnes divorced, remarried. He eventually retired in Sun City. He was active in his church.
In the mid-'80s he hired a private investigator to help find his mother. She was still in Memphis when he found her.
"On Mother's Day he showed up with flowers at her door," Botu said.
Some who knew him said he began to look stooped as he got older, but Henson said he never complained.
"He was bent over at the back," Drumheller said. "He was really tilted over . … but it didn't seem to bother him, he was not a complaining individual."
In 2012, he took an Honor Flight back to Washington with Botu, telling stories on the plane. On the way back, he walked to the front of the plane, picked up the microphone, started talking and singing songs from the Korean War.
Henson said that VUMS has a number of doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen. Now a tradition going back to the Revolutionary War may be fading, he said.
"All of us guys who enlisted as kids are now old men. … When I look out at this group I can't help but be in awe with what these people have done with their lives. We were all just high school dropouts. … I am so proud to be a part of this."
Korean War/CCF Intervention (1950-51)
From Month/Year
November / 1950
To Month/Year
January / 1951
Description On 1 November Chinese elements were identified south of the Changjin Reservoir, and within ten days twelve divisions of the Chinese Communist Forces were identified. In the northwest, strong enemy attacks against the Eighth Army smashed the ROK divisions. Very hard fighting took place near Ch'osan, Unsan, and Tokch'on. While the 24th Division pulled back to Chongju on the west coast, the 1st Cavalry and 2d Divisions fought along the Ch'ongch'on River. In the air over Korea, U.N. pilots were opposed for the first time by speedy Russian MIG-15 Jet fighters.
By 10 November, as the Chinese attacks were abating, the Eighth Army and the X Corps conducted only small-scale operations, and a comparative lull hung over much of the front. By 21 November elements of the U.S. 7th Division occupied Hyesanjin on the Yalu River in northeastern Korea, the most northerly point to be reached by U.S. forces during the war. The ROK Capital Division meanwhile progressed rapidly up the east coast to the Naman-So-dong area. By 24 November the U.N. positions extended from So-dong in the northeast to Hyesanjin on the Yalu, and thence in a southwesterly direction through the areas around Sang-ni, Handae, Yudam-ni, Yongwen, Ipsok, Patch'on and south of Chongju to the Yellow Sea.
Previous to the entry of Chinese forces in North Korea, MacArthur had ordered the Eighth Army and the X Corps on 24 October to attack toward the Manchurian border and restore peace in Korea before the onset of winter. The difficulty of securing adequate logistical support delayed the attack. In the latter part of the month, brief clashes with Chinese troops posed a new threat. The purpose and extent of the Chinese intervention was not yet clear; but in the face of this new opposition, Walker had withdrawn his extended forces back to the lower bank of the Ch'onch'on River, leaving only a small bridgehead above Sinanju.
The fact of Chinese participation in the conflict caused MacArthur to reconsider his plans for an all-out attack to the Yalu River, but not to abandon them. Walker's forces were to move northward through western and central Korea, while Almond's troops were to attack to the northwest to cut the enemy line of communications and give maximum assistance to the Eighth Army. On 24 November the Eighth Army, with the ROK II Corps, launched its planned offensive. For the first twenty-four hours little enemy opposition was encountered, but on the next day enemy troops initiated a violent counterattack against the Eighth Army in the mountainous territory surrounding the central North Korean town of Tokch'on. The X Corps began its attack early on 27 November, and had made slight advances before evening, when a second enemy force, moving down both sides of the Changjin Reservoir, struck at the 1st Marine Division and elements of the U.S. 7th Division.
It was quickly apparent that the bulk of the enemy forces were organized Chinese Communist units. It was now evident to the UN Commend that the Chinese had amassed two large armies in northern Korea, by marching them from Manchuria under cover of darkness and expertly camouflaging them during the day. They were comparatively safe from detection by UN air observers in the rugged mountain terrain, and UN aircraft were prohibited from making reconnaissance flights across the frontier. Thus the strength of the attacking Chinese forces came as a surprise to most of the U.N. Command.
The main enemy effort was directed against the ROK II Corps, which collapsed under the weight of the Chinese assault. As the Communists strove to extend their breakthrough of the U.N. line, Walker rushed his reserve units (the 1st Cavalry Division, the Turkish Brigade, and the British 27th Commonwealth and 29th Independent Infantry Brigades) to the area, but failed to stem the Communist advance. Assaulted by wave after wave of enemy troops, the Eighth Army front withdrew south across the Ch'ongch'on River. These forces, fighting hand to hand with the enemy along the river banks and retreating over reads choked with troops, refugees, trucks, and tanks, suffered heavy losses. The U.S. 2d Division wee assigned to fight a delaying action until other units could retire and regroup in defensive positions near P'yongyang. On 5 December the Eighth Army fell back from P'yongyang to positions about 25 miles south of the city. By the middle of December it had withdrawn below the 38th parallel and formed a defensive perimeter north and east of Seoul.
On 27 November 1950 the Chinese began their offensive against the X Corps, attacking the Marine and 7th Division elements in the Changjin Reservoir area with six divisions. Since the most northerly UN units-the ROK I Corps, the U.S. 17th Infantry Regiment, and other elements at the Yalu-might be cut off by the weight of the Chinese offensive, the X Corps was forced to withdraw these elements. Troops at the reservoir were also ordered to fall back. MacArthur then ordered Almond to concentrate the X Corps in the Hamhung-Hungnam area; and early in December directed the Corps to withdraw to South Korea by a waterborne evacuation.
Most of the Corps reached the port of Hungnam without serious incident. However, some 14,000 men of the 1st Marine and 7th Infantry Divisions were trapped in the Hagaru-Kot'o area and were forced to fight their way to the coast along a narrow escape route. As the main column progressed along the road, a provisional battalion of marines and soldiers, aided by close and efficient air support, cleared the Chinese Communist forces from the high ground which dominated the road. Almond sent Task Force Dog, a reinforced battalion of the 3d Division, forward to Chinhung to relieve the Marine battalion there and to assist the withdrawal by providing support and rear guard action. Air Force, Navy, and Marine cargo planes parachuted daily airdrops of ammunition, food, and medicines to the column, and evacuated battle casualties. Fighter elements bombed and strafed the enemy-held mountainsides and Communist troop concentrations. On 9 December 1950 the two forces met in the mountains a few miles south of Kot'o and both moved toward Hamhung to be evacuated.
The water movement of the X Corps from North Korea required 173 vessels. About 350,000 measurement tons of cargo, including 17,500 vehicles, were salvaged; some 105,000 troops and more than 98,000 civilians were evacuated from Hungnam, Songjin, and Wonsan. Evacuation began on 11 December and was completed on 24 December, despite constant enemy fire and observation.
The Hungnam evacuation left North Korea once again controlled by Communist forces. Before the enemy renewed his attacks, General Walker was killed in an auto accident north of Seoul (23 December 1950). On 26 December Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway succeeded him in command of the Eighth Army in Korea.
On 30 December MacArthur warned the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Chinese Communist forces could drive the U.N. forces out of Korea if they so desired. The United States, although anxious to avoid a full-scale war in Korea, was also determined to resist the Chinese-North Korean aggressors. Therefore the Joint Chiefs ordered MacArthur to defend his positions; to retire, if forced to, through a series of defensive positions as far back as the former Pusan Perimeter Line; to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy; and to maintain his units intact. If necessary to avoid severe losses, he was authorized to withdraw to Japan.
Within this framework of operations, MacArthur invested General Ridgway with complete authority to plan and execute operations in Korea, and ceased the close supervision which he had formerly exercised over the Eighth Army and the X Corps. The latter, which had heretofore been a separate command, was assigned to the Eighth Army, thus placing all U.N. ground forces under that army's control. By this time fifteen nations of the U.N. had troops in Korea-the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, France, Greece, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Belgium, and Sweden. As 1951 began, U.N. ground forces numbered about 495,000, of which 270,000 were ROK troops. The U.N. Command estimated that the enemy had about 486,000 men, 21 Chinese and 12 North Korean divisions, committed to the Korean front, and more than a million enemy troops stationed in reserve near the Yalu.
In late December, Ridgway, in establishing the defensive line along the 38th parallel, concentrated the bulk of the Eighth Army in the central and western sectors because of the obvious enemy concentration above Seoul. The west flank was held by the I Corps; the central sector by the IX Corps; and the ROK I, II, and III Corps held the eastern mountainous sector. The X Corps was reorganizing near Pusan. The 1st Marine Division, until recently a part of the X Corps, was held in Eighth Army reserve.
At daybreak on 1 January 1951, after a night of mortar and artillery bombardment, the enemy launched an attack all along the U.N. line. The main effort was directed against the U.S. I and IX Corps in the west and central sectors. A force of seven Chinese armies and two North Korean corps pushed deeply into the U.N. line toward Seoul in the west and Wonju in the center.
As the offensive gained momentum, Ridgway ordered the U.N. forces to fall back to a line which ran along the south bank of the frozen Han River to Yangp'yang, through Hongch'on and Chunmunjin to the Sea of Japan. A delaying force remained around Seoul to deny the enemy use of the Han River bridges. When the attacking forces, following up their initial success, crossed the Han to the east and west of Seoul, it became clear that the Seoul bridgehead could not be held any longer. Ridgway, following a policy of rolling with the punch rather then risking destruction by defending in place, decided to withdraw south to a line in the vicinity of the 37th parallel on 3 January. This line ran from P'yongt'aek, east through Ansong, northeast to Wonju, and in an irregular trace to the east coast town of Samch'ok. When Seoul fell on 4 January, the port of Inch'on was also evacuated.
After the fall of Seoul, Chinese attacks tapered off in the west. Many enemy units were shifted eastward so as to be in position to attack southwestward behind the U.S. I and IX Corps, and capture Wonju and the railroad and highway between Hongch'on and Pusan, the main U.N. north-south supply route. Wonju was abandoned by U.N. forces on 7 January. By 10 January large numbers of the enemy had phased through the gap and into the defensive zone of the ROK III Corps. To meet this threat Ridgway ordered the 1st Marine Division to prevent the enemy penetration from north of the Andong-Yongdok road on the east, and to protect the supply routes of the ROK units.
In the western sector, which was comparatively quiet, Ridgway planned Operation WOLFHOUND, a reconnaissance in force in the I Corps sector, to reestablish contact and secure more exact information about the enemy. On 15 January the task force-the 27th Infantry Regiment, reinforced-advanced northward along the Seoul highway toward Osan. On the 16th it reached Suwon with practically no opposition. Satisfied by the reconnaissance, the U.N. Command ordered the task force to withdraw south.
By the third week in January the situation in the central and eastern sectors had eased, and pressure on our troops was gradually decreasing. However, although quiet prevailed on the front, air reconnaissance revealed that the enemy was accumulating reserves of supplies and bringing up thousands of replacements.
