Join Kim Munson in a riveting conversation with Marine veteran Bob Brockish, who shares his memories from the Korean War. This episode captures Bob’s journey from a youthful dream of becoming a Marine to his days in the intense environment of boot camp and eventually to the challenging theaters of war. Bob recounts vivid tales from the front lines, highlighting both the heroism and the harsh realities faced by those serving in the ‘Forgotten War.’
SPEAKER 04 :
American war heroes from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They selflessly served, and these are their stories. America’s Veteran Stories with your host, Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 12 :
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. This is a show that precipitated from a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that took four D-Day veterans back to Normandy for the D-Day celebrations. And returned stateside realizing that these stories needed to be told. And as I’ve realized, the stories of Korea and Vietnam and all of our wars and conflicts, each story is unique. Each story needs to be told. And so that is how America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson was born. Be sure and check out AmericasVeteranStories.com. And I am thrilled to have on the line with me Korean War veteran Bob Brockish. Bob, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
SPEAKER 12 :
And you served in the Korean War, and many times, Bob, the Korean War is referred to as the Forgotten War. And, you know, it started just five years or so after World War II ended. And, of course, there was the series MASH that a lot of people have seen that. a lot of folks don’t know a lot about the Korean War. So tell us your story. Where did you grow up and how did this whole thing start for you to become a Marine?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, it started, I was born in Denver in 1931. I went to public schools in Denver and We lived right on South Downing Street. Our yard backed up to the Marion Street Parkway. All during World War II, we played war games in the parkway, in the bushes. One day, it was probably just before Pearl Harbor, my mother had sent me to the corner grocery store I don’t know, for something for dinner. And when I came out, there was a man standing there, and he had a bag and a rifle and a blue uniform on with a white cap. And I had never seen this before, and I thought I was pretty good. Not a student, but a follower of the military. And so… Being a little kid of about 10, I went over to him and started asking him questions. What was his uniform when he was a Marine? In those days, when a Marine was assigned his rifle, he kept it with him when he went from one place to another. So this Marine was on leave going from one place being transferred to another duty station. And so I kept asking him all these questions and everything. And then finally, I think he was either waiting for a bus or a ride or something because it was a transfer point. He left and I went home and my mother was a little bit put out with me for taking so long to go get what she wanted for dinner. But from that day forward, that’s when I wanted to be a Marine. And when I graduated, and then about after Pearl Harbor, my brother was going to Regis College, and he enlisted in the Marine Platoon Leaders class, which allowed him to stay in college until they called him. So he finished his freshman year, and then he was called to the Marine Corps and And so we thought, you know, I was all excited about him becoming a Marine because I was going to be one. And when I graduated from high school, I was 17. And so I went and worked for a couple of weeks in the wheat harvest in eastern Colorado and came back and had my birthday and went down and enlisted in the Marine Corps.
SPEAKER 12 :
At the age of 18? You were 18 then, Bob?
SPEAKER 07 :
I was just turned 18, and that was 1949.
SPEAKER 12 :
Now, just a question about your brother. Did he serve then in World War II?
SPEAKER 07 :
He served in World War II and Korea.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 07 :
It was a strange situation. He trained so long in World War II that when he was ready to go back, There was a camp Pendleton ready to board the transport for the invasion of Japan, and the atomic bomb was dropped. And so he was turned around and released. And then when he was called back for Korea, they determined that he hadn’t had any actual experience yet in World War II, so they sent him back to the training again. And then they sent him to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in the 2nd Marine Division. So he had a strange situation as a Marine being trained as an infantry officer and never left the country during the two wars.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 12 :
And I’ve talked to so many guys that have said that if the atomic bombs had not been dropped and, in fact, if there was an invasion of Japan, that many, many Americans and allied soldiers would have been killed as well as many Japanese. And so at least the World War II veterans that I’ve talked to. I agree with that. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 07 :
We were very happy to have my brother and my mother’s father’s son back home.
SPEAKER 12 :
You bet. You bet. Okay, well, let’s continue on with your story then. In 1949, then, you joined the Marines. What happens after that, Bob Brockish?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, on July 29th, I got on a train in Denver with, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen or eight other guys. And we had enlisted at the old customs house, which was down on 16th Street. We got on the train about 8 o’clock at night. And a couple days later, we were in San Diego. And we were told to get on the city bus and We took a city bus to the gate at the recruit depot. And we got off the bus, and then a drill instructor came and met us. That was before they had the famous yellow footprints. And he marched us into the… into the base to what was called a receiving barracks. And in that receiving barracks, we would be issued our uniforms and equipment and wait until there was enough people to join a platoon Recruit training or boot camp. But that first night, they took us into a kind of an assembly room. It was not really big. By that time, there was probably about 20 of us gathered because we ran into some more people in the Los Angeles train station. They joined us and got on the train to San Diego. So they had us in a circle, all facing into the middle of the circle, and there was a drill instructor in the middle of the clipboard, and he said, I’m going to come around each of you, and I want you to give me your name, last name first. And there was also another drill instructor just kind of walling around in the back of the circle, and he was kind of just roaming around. So the sergeant with the clipboard started with one Marine, and we weren’t Marines yet. We were still civilians. Actually, we were just we were nobodies. And he And the boy said, you know, his name, whatever it was. And it went around that way about four or five people. And the next guy next to me said, I don’t remember his name, but something like Joe Smith. And the drill instructor looked at him and said, I said last name first. And… He asked him again. He said, Joe Snips. And at that time, the drill instructor that was around behind picked him in the seat of the pants, and he just went sprawling across the middle of the circle. This was probably a couple of guys ahead of me, because the next couple, they did it right, and I just stood there the whole time quivering, saying, last name first, last name first, last name first. Just afraid I would just, you know, screw it up and say my first name, but I didn’t. Okay. And we were in that receiving… barracks for about a week, and they would take us. We hadn’t been trained or anything yet, so they would take us to do things like help clean the galley, and one of the things I ended up having to do was clean the grease out of the overhead hood over the grill in the galley at the mess hall. And so I kind of got an introduction to the to the dirty side of being a Marine right off the bat. When they formed up a platoon, they had a couple of… I think they only had about one platoon at a time then.
SPEAKER 12 :
How many guys in a platoon, Bob?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, in the… The platoon in boot camp is not necessarily the same as a platoon in an operating unit.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 07 :
I think we had about… Forty-five or fifty, maybe.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 07 :
And we were platoon 29, and we had… This was in 1949, so they had pretty much… The Marine Corps had dropped from, I think, 485,000 in 1945 to 75,000… Then in 1949. So we actually had our squad day in the top side of the main buildings of San Diego. I don’t know if you’ve been there, but there’s a nice old speckled Spanish-type buildings built around a parade ground. And so we were in the second deck of one of those buildings. The mess halls were underneath. One of the favorite things for the drilling structures to do was to give us an order to be in a certain… set of uniforms and on the parade ground in five minutes. Then he would be down at the bottom waiting for us, and we would hustle out. Within the barracks was a, which we called a squad bay. There was rifle racks, and our rifles were were stowed in a rifle rack. And one of the first things we were told to do was memorize our rifle serial number. And if you were ever down to somebody else’s rifle, you were in really big trouble. Not that you would do it on purpose, but you might do it by accident. And it was a very humbling experience. The Marine Corps philosophy is when you recruit you as a civilian, you’re actually a nobody and they start from scratch and they They carry you down mentally to kind of ground zero, and then they build you up the way they want you. So that’s where the Marine Corps discipline comes in and the history of the Corps. You know, we had sessions on Marine Corps history and… All kinds of training, a lot of physical training, a lot of post-order drill on the parade ground. And there might be out there and there might be five different platoons, but they were all in different phases of their training. Got it. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
A lot of it, Bob, is just real discipline. We’re going to go to break. We’re just about done with this first segment. I’m talking with Bob Brockish, Korean War veteran, a Marine. We’re going to go to break, and we will be right back.
SPEAKER 08 :
Remax Realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home. Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s Kim Munson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 12 :
Welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. I am honored to have on the line with me Bob Brockish. He is a Korean War veteran, a Marine, and we were talking about getting into the Marines and going through, is the right term boot camp? Is that the right thing to call this or training?
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right, boot camp or recruit training.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. Bob Brockes, you said something really fascinating. This is not the first time that I’ve heard this, that in the Marine Corps, they tear you down so that they can rebuild you the way they want you. What’s your thoughts about that?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, of course, at the time, I had no understanding of what was going on. I thought they were just being mean. But after you go through it and after you look back on it, you understand that they’re bringing everybody in the unit, they’re bringing to the same level, and then they’re building them up with the discipline and personal responsibility that’s required to… function as an efficient individual in a combat situation. I mean, in a combat situation, you can’t stop and ask the sergeant why he wants to do something. I mean, you’re told to do something, you do it immediately, and if you hesitate, it might cost somebody their lives. So I was in full agreement with it after I’d been through it and understood it.
SPEAKER 12 :
And that discipline, bringing that into civilian life, I’ve got to think that that served you well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, very well. Very well. Okay. I mean, discipline and having a routine to follow, that’s important for everybody.
SPEAKER 12 :
Really important for a successful life. But let’s move over here now, Bob Brockish. Tell us how you got from boot camp to you ended up in Korea. What transpired then?
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. When I enlisted, I enlisted for in what they called the United USMC-V, as in volunteer program, which was to be one year active duty in active duty and then six years obligated reserve service. After boot camp, I was assigned to the Naval Ammunition Depot at Hawthorne, Nevada, which is a huge sprawling base that supplies… naval weapons to, it’s located so that it can supply both San Francisco and Los Angeles areas with ammunition. So we were sent there to join the Marine Company that were the guards and the firefighters. So I spent about, well, I spent the rest of my almost a year there And instead of going to July 29th, about the 1st of June, they called all of us that were USMCVs in and said, you’re all being released to inactive duty on the 30th of June. That’s 30 June 1950. And so somebody said, well, why are we doing that? They said the convenience of the government. Somebody else said, well, what does that mean? It means that the government doesn’t have enough money to pay you. So we were all set to go home on the 30th of June. And, of course, on the 25th of June, North Korea invaded South Korea. So we were all sure that, well, we won’t go now. It’ll be like World War II when everybody’s in for the duration plus six months or something. Well, they did send us home on the 30th of June. And then in October, we were ordered back to active duty. I had come home, started school, and went to Regis College about three weeks and got my orders to go back. So I went back to Camp Pendleton, went into the 1st Infantry Training Regiment. We trained there until in January. We went up to an area around Lake Arrowhead for winter training. By this time, the Marines had been through the battle with the Chosin Reservoir, and they had realized how important it was to have some cold weather and mountain training. So we issued all this cold weather gear, and we went up around Lake Arrowhead. and the daytime temperatures were about 72 degrees. Okay. Now for a side you didn’t ask about, that was the last time, that was the last group they sent up there. The Marine Corps went up around Bridgeport, worked out a deal with the National Forest Service, and they established up there what’s now the Marine Corps— Mountain Winter Warfare Training Center. But now getting back to the other. So we came back, and then February 15th, we sailed for Korea. And we were the sixth replacement draft. There had been six groups of Marines deployed, for the Korean War go before us about once a month to kill him for the casualties that the 1st Marine Division was experiencing. Let me sideline it again a minute. At the same time, my brother got his orders to go to Camp Pendleton for being recalled to active duty. And he brought my mother and one of her friends out with him to visit her sister. And so, unlike many other Marines, my mom was at the pier with my brother when we boarded the ship.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 07 :
And then we sailed out of San Diego in the evening. And at that time, there was a very popular song called Harbor Lights. And boy, was it nostalgic, humming Harbor Lights and looking back at San Diego.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Because this was in the wintertime, so the lights were already on. And I was one sick kid for about the first three days out at sea. I’d never been to sea before. And I got over that. And we had a, I think it took about two weeks, we got to Japan. We landed in Kobe. And we disembarked at Kobe and they rearranged the, they made our assignments to what regiments we were going to go to. And then we reloaded the ship according to where we were going to go. And then we sailed over to Pusan, which, as I recall, was just kind of an overnight deal. And we landed in Pusan at… Well, I think we had our noon meal aboard ship. We got off and we marched to the railroad station. And at the railroad station, we were formed up into groups according to where we were going. At that time, I was going to the 5th Marines. So we got on the train. I think we rode the train two nights. And this train was, of course, a steam locomotive. The cars were fitted with shelves about three high and two and a half or three feet between them. Maybe not that much. So you could lay down on them, but you couldn’t. There was no place to sit except on the bottom shelf. And then you couldn’t lean back because the next shelf above it was… You just kind of had to stick your butt back in and kind of lean over to sit down. And we kind of thought that was bad, except the… The last leg of the trip, we got off that train, and we got on another train, and it was open cattle cars.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, my gosh. And what were the temperatures at that time?
SPEAKER 07 :
We got on that one, and we stood up, and there was nothing to hold on to. If you weren’t near the bulkhead where you could lean on, you were in the middle, but there were so many people in there, you wouldn’t fall over. You just… And thankfully, we only had to ride two or three hours on that train. We got off. We marched us to a schoolyard, I think. And we went in this school building, kind of like a gymnasium. And it was now… fairly late at night, they told us to bunk down, get out our bedrolls, and we would sleep there. And we’d be picked up by trucks in the morning and taken to our units. Well, my friend Tom Bernal and I, we decided we weren’t going to sleep on the hard floor, so we went out in the schoolyard and we slept out there. We woke up in the morning and we had about an inch and a half or two inches of snow on us, because we were just laid out on… Our sleeping bags were just laid out on the ground. Got up, packed up, got on trucks, drove to the… In my case, we drove to the 5th Marine Command Post. Uh… I went to the 1st Battalion, and the 1st Battalion happened to be in reserve at the time, which means they were back in an area with big camps. And they gathered us around, and this one gunnery sergeant, Asked, does anybody have a Navy driver’s license? And nobody said anything. I said, well, I have one, but it’s expired from the NAD Hawthorne, Nevada, when I was at the Marine Barracks there. And he said, well, how old is it? And I said, well, it was last year. So he took me out and pulled me out and assigned me to drive a Jeep ambulance for the battalion aid station. So there was this motor transport section that was assigned to the medical people. And I did that. I was there about a week, and everything was fine. You know, they were teaching me different tricks for driving off the road and such as that. One thing that was interesting was they put me on guard duty at the entrance of the camp, and they gave me a Thompson .45 submachine gun which I’d never seen before. I mean, I’d seen, they’re very popular in movies anyway, but I had never trained with one. And they gave me that, and they gave me about five minutes on how to use it, and set me out on this road of, where the traffic came in. The first Jeep that came along, in fact, I think maybe the only one that came along all the time I was out there. I stopped them and asked them for the password, and the voice said, Do you know who I am? And I said, No, sir. Just want the password. Turned out it was the either the battalion or the regimental commander. And he gave me a hard time a couple times about, and then finally he gave me the password, and I said, go ahead and proceed. And then as he went by, I said, good job, or something like that. Okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
Bob Prockish, let’s go ahead and finish that.
SPEAKER 07 :
The next morning, I had acquired a navy black stocking watch cap, and I figured that was really going to be good in the cold weather. So I had gone up to the mess camp, had gotten my breakfast, was sitting on the side with this watch cap on. And who comes along but the same officer? And he didn’t know that I was the same guy as the night before. But he just chewed me up one side and down the other, saying, you know, we don’t wear that Navy gear around here. He said, you go get in uniform. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hey, Bob Brockish, let’s go to break on that note. We’ve got one more segment. This is really fascinating. It’s my great honor. This is Kim Munson with America’s Veterans Stories. I am talking with Korean War veteran Marine Bob Brockish. We’ll be right back. Before we go to break, I’m thrilled to be talking with my friend and valued sponsor, and that is Karen Levine, award-winning realtor with REMAX Alliance. You are a valued sponsor, and why do you partner with me on America’s Veterans Stories?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I think what you’re doing, Kim, is amazing and awesome and something that any American could benefit from. But hearing the stories of our veterans and how they have served our nation and how they have kept us the home of the free and the brave, as we say, is something that we all need to, one, know about and appreciate. So I think the work you’re doing here is marvelous. And the part that I love is I have some students here. in my community Bible study who actually utilize your show as part of their history course.
SPEAKER 12 :
That is so cool. Just gave me the chills. I just love that. And Karen, I mean, you have been in the real estate business for many years. We’ve been friends for many, many years. Have you helped a lot of veterans find their homes?
SPEAKER 09 :
I have. And in the market that we’ve been experiencing over these last three to five years, it’s been challenging for our veterans because there’s a perception out there that the financing that veterans can obtain, which is a VA loan. is not easy to obtain and that there are hurdles and that is a misnomer that is people have received misinformation and so sellers have shied away from wanting to take a VA buyer as we refer to them as and I’m an advocate for the veteran and I can explain to the other agent the seller’s agent why it is a benefit not only to their seller to take this offer from a veteran but the benefit to both the buyer and the seller and get a veteran into a home and it’s an exciting journey to be able to do that for our veterans and having the knowledge and the education to be able to navigate that for them is something that I really pleasure in doing and look forward to those opportunities when they come my way.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, and you know, we’ve been friends for so long, I have your phone number memorized. It’s 303-877-7516. 303-877-7516. And I know that you can help anybody that is buying or selling a home, but I know you really do have a heart for these veterans. Thank you so much, Karen Levine.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thanks for having me in studio today, and I look forward to helping any veteran out there that’s looking to buy or sell. And again, that’s 303-877-7516.
SPEAKER 12 :
We’re going to go to break. This is Kim Munson with America’s Veteran Stories. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s 303-880-8881. Call now.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 12 :
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. I am talking with Marine Bob Brockish, served during the Korean War. And these are just fascinating stories, Bob. But let’s get to combat. Tell us, you know, how did you end up at Horseshoe Ridge?
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, the 1st Marines Regiment, they incurred a lot of casualties, and so those of us that had recently joined the 5th Marines were transferred to the 1st Marines. There were a few weeks, and we were on various combat patrols and such, but then we were called out to go up to… a place that we call Hill 307 it’s over time it’s come to be known Horseshoe Ridge and we were the first battalion was set up as a battalion outpost that means we were out there all by ourselves there were 11,000 excuse me about 1,000 men in the battalion the 6th the Republic of Korea Army Division had bugged out and left our 1st Marine Division flanked unprotected. So we were sent out there. Each battalion of the 1st Marines was sent out there on an outpost to at least afford some protection from the Chinese coming behind the 1st Marine Division lines. So we got up there, and about 8 o’clock, the Chinese attacked.
SPEAKER 12 :
And 8 o’clock at night. Didn’t they come at night normally?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, 8 o’clock at night. And the Chinese attacked with several regiments against our battalion. uh… they uh… we have a little we have a little company outpost of a squad of people out in front and they were overrun and pushed back and our main lines held the chinese attack probably uh… from about eight o’clock until about three in the morning uh… i was in a very fortunate position that my foxhole and my foxhole buddy, we were on a steep, at the top of a steep cliff, which would have been very difficult for anybody to attack us. And off to our right was where the rest of the company was being attacked. But we had to hold this little… because if anybody did get up there, then they could really cause trouble. So we missed most of the assault, although the whole hill was just covered with incoming mortar rounds and artillery fire, and of course our fire was going out. The company commander said later that… He could read the map in his command post by the light of how many tracers were going around over his head. This lit up the night. That went on all night. In the morning, the Chinese had backed off a little bit because our air power started coming in. My squad leader came around and said, you know, the Chinese are all around us. Clean your weapons and get something to eat and get ready to move out. So a little later, about 9 or 9.30 or something, the battalion set out to attack back in the other direction. And since Charlie Company was at kind of the apex of the perimeter and took most of the battle the night before, we had the job of being the rear guard and keeping the Chinese off the… Wow. So our A Company attacked down one ridge line and… B Company attacked down at the ridge line to the right, and then we came down the middle following the weapons and headquarters companies keeping the Chinese back from us. And my friend Tom Bernal, I saw him as we were coming down and He had not been feeling well the day before when I saw him. And I wanted to know if he… I told him, come on, come on with us. He said, no, I’ve got to wait for my squad to come. And so we went on. And in order to get across one field, help carry a stretcher across there. And when we got down to the bottom… You know, this took a while. This was maybe a mile or a couple miles. We went to put the stretcher on this tank, and the tank had come down by the road. We didn’t come by the road. And I went to put the stretcher on and happened to lay it on this. There were all kinds of casualties already on the tank. I laid it on this one leg and I said, oh, sorry. And another Marine that was sitting up there was an ambulatory wound, I guess. He said, no, it doesn’t matter. I looked at him. This was my friend. Who we slept out in the snow with at that school. And then we went on and… From there on, it was kind of a drop-back battle then. The 1st Marine Division was able to kind of swing their left flank around and protect themselves, and the whole division started moving back. I’m thinking this was the 23rd, 24th of April, And I think we finally started going back north about the 20th of May. But we lost four missing in action that night. We didn’t know it at the time. And in 1999, I got a phone call. Would I be willing to go back to Horseshoe Ridge and look for these missing in action? There was one that, actually there were two that they knew had been killed. And there was one that they completely didn’t know anything about. And then there was one that the last time they’d seen him was he was wounded. So we went back with a detachment from the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii and an explosive ordnance disposal unit from the Army. And we went back up into the same area and we dug out the old foxholes that we could find. They were filled with leaves and debris and And we did not find any fountain bones. They turned out to be Chinese bones. We found a lot of battle junk, like ammunition clips and magazines. And in one hole, I didn’t personally do this, but they dug out a Marine Corps emblem that evidently had been on somebody’s cap. And you can see I have a large picture of it on my wall, and you can see the frayed fabric behind it that’s just disintegrated around it. So they say that that night there was 2,500 bodies of the Chinese aerial observation. They said there was 2,500 Chinese bodies around that That Horseshoe Ridge that had been killed by artillery and air. And I’m sure our guys accounted for some of those, but not nearly all of them. But, I mean, it was a horrendous battle. And the other two regiments of the division, they had equivalent kind of battles on their outposts. I should have said the two other battalions of the regiment. So, yeah, I remember that night very well.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, wow. What happened after that, Bob Brockish?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, we had it pretty quiet for a while for the summer, and then we went up to the Punchbowl in the fall. Punchbowl was a huge… It was really high, high mountains around it. And we took those hills. When I say we, I mean, I don’t mean me. I mean, not even our only unit, the whole, you know, the whole division was involved in that. The last time I went on the line was December 12th, and I got orders to go to the division NCO school, which was a nice, cushy thing back in the big camp. And then I went back there, and I’d been there a week or so, and they came in and told me to pack my gear, that I was going to… I was going to Quantico. I had applied to the enlisted commissioning program, and they had gotten that, so I was going back there to become an officer, and flew to Japan, flew to Lake Island, to Honamu, to San Francisco, got a train, and took the train over to Denver, walked up and rang the doorbell of my home at about 9 o’clock on Christmas night.
SPEAKER 12 :
Did they know you were coming home?
SPEAKER 07 :
They didn’t know. I hadn’t told them. I thought it would be a good surprise.
SPEAKER 12 :
I guess it would be.
SPEAKER 07 :
It was. I was there on leave for a while, then I went back to… and we had to go through what they called an officer’s candidate screening class for four weeks. And after that, I was commissioned a second lieutenant, went home on leave, got married, brought my wife Carol back to Virginia. We had an apartment in Fredericksburg. I got released to the reserves in August. And we came back and I went to Regis College. Carol, we were married for 57 years. She died in 2009. But she left me with, well, we had eight children. One of them died when he was an adult. She left me with seven children. children who are now my best support group. She couldn’t have left me with a better legacy. Wow. When I got out of college, I got hired at the Martin Company in Denver, which is now Lockheed Martin. And they didn’t have any titles, but the first thing I was taught to do was program a computer in 1956. And that led me to a career in computing and data processing. I retired from IBM in 1987. And I was in the Marine Corps Reserve until… 1974, I went on the retired list. And then when I got to be 60, I actually was retired from the reserve. So that’s pretty much my life story.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, Bob Brockish, absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing that with me and with America’s Veterans Stories. I greatly appreciate it.
SPEAKER 07 :
It was my privilege.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. Well, Bob Brockish, thank you so much again. And be sure and tune in to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. And God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 04 :
Join us next time for America’s Veterans Stories with your host, Kim Munson. Until then, keep saluting our vets.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
