Former Chaska resident Howard “Howie” Bielke, 78, died on Aug. 2 at St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee.

Bielke was one of a handful of Chaska and Carver Korean Veterans profiled for a September 2000 Herald article, “50-year-old ‘Forgotten War’ is remembered.”

As an assistant gunner/radio operator, Bielke gave the Herald readers good insight into the life of the infantry soldier. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Howard “Howie” Bielke still remembers the North Korean army firing “harassing” mortar rounds at his division.

The soldiers would hear a sudden “Shhhhhhhh” sound and they’d run for a bunker, or lie flat on the ground. “It was pretty tough sometimes,” Bielke said, of North Korea’s offensives. During one incoming round, Bielke took cover in a trench and received a shrapnel wound to his leg.

Bielke served as assistant gunner and radio operator on the eastern front during the Korean War. The front was near Korea’s “Punchbowl,” a valley surrounded by hills, and an area fought over for strategic reasons. “We were set up more or less in a blocking position in case we got an attack and they threw everything they had at us,” Bielke said.

He served in Korea for almost a year, and spent nine months of it on the main line of resistance. Bielke grew up in Chaska and, before and after the war, worked at Continental Machines in Savage. He was drafted in November 1951.

When he left for Korea, Bielke’s mother warned him to be careful of snipers hiding in the trees. Bielke sent her a picture of Korea and wrote, “Mother, you don’t have to worry about snipers in the trees. There aren’t any trees. They’re all blown to kingdom come.”

The North Korean army received ammunition twice a month, when they would launch major offenses, Bielke recalled. The enemy would attack his position in “wave after wave ... They just kept coming. They just wouldn’t quit,” Bielke said. “We’d open up with everything we had. They were lying all over the place ... They were just mowing them like cordwood. “

"A lot of times they had what they called a turkey shoot. Everything on that main line of resistance would open fire, and we were low on ammunition at that time. But you know what they told us? ‘Fire all those rounds and show (them) how much fire power we (have).’”

Bielke estimated that one out of every three North Korean soldiers didn’t carry guns. “I never stabbed one, but we always had to be at fixed bayonets,” Bielke said.

During attacks, a North Korean soldier would drop across rolls of concertina barbed wire, stacked six feet high, and his fellow soldiers would run over him toward the United Nations troops, Bielke recalled.

In case they were ever overrun by North Korean troops, Bielke’s company kept numerous five-gallon cans of napalm wired to a battery. “All you had to do was touch it to the battery and the whole front exploded with napalm.” Luckily, the maneuver was never required.

Bielke and the other soldiers would throw their C-ration cans over the front lines. If they heard the cans rattle at night, they would fire a flare to light the sky, and fire at North Korean troops attempting to infiltrate the lines.

Before soldiers went on patrol, they would tape their dog tags together, so they wouldn’t rattle and alert the enemy.

The North Korean soldiers would talk to Bielke’s company on a loud speaker. Their message, asking the soldiers to come over to their “friendly” side, would carry across the valley.

The North Korean army would also drop pieces of propaganda from airplanes, or fire them in artillery shells. “Tens of thousands of them would fly down,” Bielke said.

In the spring of 1953, Bielke wrote home to his parents in Chaska, “I will now tell you the good news, I am leaving this hole the 25th of May.”

Bielke’s company commander asked him to stay another week, and he’d get him another stripe. “I told him in plain English, ‘You can jam that stripe. I’m out of here.’ ‘OK,’ he said.”