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When the ‘Boy Code’
Was Really Tough

January 2001

Many of us remember when the “Boy Code” was really tough - in the 1940s during World War II. Male teenagers in the U.S. were given a rifle with a long knife on the end (known as a bayonet) and told to kill people all over the world.

We were told to be strong, silent and resolute. Everyone was damned glad we were.

As we grew towards that magic age of 17-years, we saw in the movies at the local theater, the toughness and the suffering of the men in the U.S. military. We witnessed the horrific scenes of war that our older brothers and friends were undergoing in order to save American women and children. The story of D-Day was not history to us; it was a living reality. We knew we would be told to do the same in a year or two. Some of our friends returned from battle. Some did not.

After that terrible time had passed and we were at peace again, Harry Truman sent a wrong signal to the Communists in 1950 by saying that Korea was not a part of our national interest. The Communists responded by invading Korea. At that point, Truman realized his terrible mistake and sent many of us to winter warfare in summer uniforms to die or kill once more. When the Chinese entered the fray, he forbade Gen. MacArthur from destroying the bridges that spanned the river between Korea and China. So they poured across the river to kill many of us who still believed that we must be strong to protect our homes. Was that the “Boy Code” that we were hearing? Was it good that we heard it?

This was the first war which American men were not allowed to win. The citizens back home did not really know or care what was happening there. But the boys who were there knew all about the “Boy Code.”

When Lyndon Johnson sought to go down in the history books as a great president, he sent more American teenage boys back to Asia, this time to Vietnam to kill and die. Can anyone doubt that we will be facing problems like those again?

Are we going to send our girls to fight the men of the world?

It was not Presidents Eisenhower or Reagan who sent all those boys to kill other people. For good or bad, it was all done by liberals.

It’s annoying to hear people say how men are violent and how they like war. I didn’t meet that kind of man in either the Navy or the Army. I never met  any man in either war who had a desire to go to combat. If you did hear it, you knew it was from a man who would be running the other way if a fight did occur.  I joined the U.S. Navy in 1945 when the war was ending. I was drafted as a private into the Infantry in 1952 and was on a troopship to Korea when Eisenhower was able to end it. I have never regretted that I did not see combat. There was more of a gung ho feeling in World War II because we believed we were helping the world. In Korea, everyone knew that it was Harry Truman’s plaything, and no one wanted to die for that. Everyone tried their best to be sent to Germany.

When the French lost Vietnam in 1954, all of us in Korea were happy that Eisenhower had stopped any thought of sending us on to Vietnam.