Local veteran selected for war-memorial tour

From the Gleaner: Local veteran selected for war-memorial tour
Henderson County’s first Honor Flight veteran will wing off to Washington, D.C., on Saturday [Oct 13] to view some of the country’s most moving monuments.

Donald Keach, 85, was selected to visit the World War II Memorial by the Honor Flight Bluegrass Chapter in Louisville because he’s a veteran of World War II. He’ll also get to see the famous monument depicting the U.S. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. But it’s the monument to the Korean War that he’s most looking forward to seeing.

He has combat stars from both Germany and Korea. But it was latter conflict that was the hardest on him.

“We was up north, and they ordered us to set up tents to live in, when the Chinese came across the Yalu River and pushed us back. I had one buddy in my platoon who got killed in Korea,” he said, his voice taking on a somber timbre as he spoke of it. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

“The last thing he said was, ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.’ A sniper got him. We shot and killed him, but not before he shot my buddy.

“He was from North Carolina and always talking about moonshine running in souped-up cars.”

Keach was born and raised in Baskett and lives there still, but the U.S. Army showed him the world. He enlisted Sept. 22, 1944, and arrived in Germany a little too late to participate in the Battle of the Bulge, in which the Germans made a last-ditch effort to break out of the encircling Allied armies.

“I got there when they crossed the Rhine River” and was part of the occupying troops in Germany. “They had the Germans on the run, really. I came back in ’46. Then I stayed out 16 months and went in again.”

After his Korean War experience, he became a drill sergeant and trained probably tens of thousands of troops at Camp Breckinridge and other stateside forts all over the country.

And, yes, he barked at a lot of green recruits. “You’re supposed to do that,” he said. “That’s instinct, I think.”

In the early 1960s he was stationed in Panama, where his wife and children joined him. “That was good duty,” he said with a chuckle. “The kids could go to swim in the Atlantic in the morning and in the Pacific in the afternoon.”

He left the military in 1966. The Vietnam War was heating up and he had his 20 years in, which let him retire with a full pension. “The reason I got out was the Vietnam thing,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. I decided I’d check in my chips and go home.”

His daughter, Jane Baxter, explained that his niece Sonnie Nolan nominated him for Honor Flight. “She put in his name at least a year ago.”

Since it was founded in 2005, Honor Flight’s chapters have provided numerous aging World War II veterans a chance to see the monuments enshrining the freedoms for which they fought.

“To the best of my knowledge, he is the first from Henderson County,” said Brian Duffy, who founded the Bluegrass Chapter in 2008.

About 30 vets are expected to travel on Saturday’s flight out of Louisville. Their day will start before 5:30 a.m. and won’t end until they return to Louisville about 9 p.m.

“It’s a long day for some of these gentlemen,” noted Sharron Hilbrecht, one of the guardians on the flight.

But Keach said he’s up for it. It’s like he owes it to someone. “I’m anxious to see that monument for the Korean War.”