Talking with Private Domain, Korean War Vet

Last night, at the American Legion in Fox, Lake, Illinois, I had the opportunity to talk with Larry Domain, who I found out was a Korean War veteran. Like the WWII vets, the Korean War vets are fast passing on into eternity.

He told me that the first thing the army did to him upon induction was to make him Private Domain. We had a good laugh about that one. At least he didn't become Eminent Domain. He said he'd rather be Private Domain as it is not fair for the government to take people's land away from them.

One interesting story he had was that he never actually saw combat, but he did see his sergeant killed in a fluke accident. Larry Domain was in the army engineers and they were working on leveling a road in South Korea. His sergeant was overseeing the project and operating the tractor.

The South Korean had assigned older citizens to assist the Americans and the GIs called them Papasans. Their job was to clear stones from the roadbed. One old Papasan found an object and brought it over to the sergeant. It turned out to be a hand grenade. Evidently, when Papasan picked it up, the pin had rusted and fell out. As he handed it to the sergeant, it went off, killing both right on the spot.

Now, this was in the days before terrorism, so it was obviously unintential, but still a tragedy.

A Big Salute to Our Korean War Vets. --RoadDog