All in their 90s, remaining Stillwater soldiers who served in Korea meet again

On a bitter January day in 1951, Roger A. Kuhn, then just a teenager, joined his fellow Stillwater National Guard soldiers who had been mustered for the Korean War and marched a few blocks from the Chestnut Street Armory to a waiting train.

The young men were in high spirits as a few hundred people turned out to see them off, recalled Kuhn, now 92 and living in Brainerd.

"We thought we were going to have a good old time," he said. "It didn't work out that way."

The memory of that long ago deployment was still fresh Thursday at the Lowell Inn in Stillwater, where Kuhn joined some of the last surviving soldiers from that day for a toast.

They call themselves the H & H Last Man's Club, and at their first meeting nearly 70 years ago they had 153 members. Eight men remain, but only six were healthy enough to make the luncheon, said Jack Johnson, a local military historian who helped organize the event.

The club took its name from the National Guard units in which the men served: Headquarters Co., First Battalion, and Heavy Mortar Co., both of the 135th Infantry.

The group last met in 2019 and had hoped to meet again in 2020, but the pandemic interfered. Johnson, who volunteers with a group known as the Stillwater Armory History Project, said he and the other volunteers decided to host a luncheon to help the surviving H & H members gather, perhaps for the last time.

"They really weren't in a position to do it for themselves anymore," he said.

The club is only the latest in a long line of last man clubs in Stillwater. The first known group was drawn from Civil War survivors of Company B, First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, who met every year on the anniversary of the Battle of First Bull Run.

After a dinner and guest speaker, members held a ritual for those who had died, according to a brief history written by Johnson. Their last surviving member, Charles Lockwood, died in 1935.

A similar group, called the Last Two Man's Club, was formed by Stillwater residents who were the surviving members of Company C, Eighth Minnesota. That club ended with the death of Horace Voligny in 1931.

Frank Manning, the last surviving member of a club made up of World War I veterans from Stillwater, died in 1998. And Jean DeCurtins, the last member of a club of World War II veterans from Stillwater, died in 2019.

On Thursday, Kuhn was joined by survivors Charles L. Ciesman, Lyle C. Doerr, Vernon E. Kumerow, Angus D. MacDonald and George W. Seim Jr. Two others, Kenneth Streiff, and Roger F. Utecht, could not make it due to poor health.

Kumerow, still spry but no longer able to carry the 80-pound milk containers he once hoisted two at a time at the Maple Island Dairy on Stillwater's N. Main Street, will be 94 on Nov. 8. He's considered the old guy among the bunch, two years older than most of the others. He marveled at how the world has changed, pointing to his son's place in Panama Beach, Fla. It sits in a row of condominiums that run for more than 18 miles along the popular Panhandle beach, he said. When he trained at Alabama's Fort Rucker, he went with others on a weekend break to the same place, staying in tents. "There was one building!" he said.

Kuhn said his memory of shipping out is still raw because the ship he took from Seattle never stopped rolling until it reached Japan. "Guys lost a lot of weight on that trip," he said.

Despite the hardship on the way over, Kuhn said he still feels he lucked out. The war was relatively quiet in his area, and the Army had begun sending Sorel boots to the soldiers by then to help them weather the harsh winters.

Seim spent his eight months overseas documenting buildings and real estate for the Army, a job he got after seeing a sign at the barracks looking for a soldier who could type.

"They took my rifle and gave me a 35mm camera," he said.

Working for a general based in Seoul, one of his jobs was searching for an island that would make a good location for a POW camp. He was 21 years old.

At the reunion Thursday, Chaplain and retired National Guard Col. John J. Morris, gave an invocation before lunch. Guest speaker retired Army Gen. Richard C. Nash thanked the men for their service and spoke about the lasting legacy of the Korean War. Deb Field, daughter of the late H & H Last Man's Club member John C. Ulrich, talked about what the club had meant to her father, who died in 2008.

The group's meetings were one of just three activities he would never miss, she said, the others being home games of the Stillwater Area High School football team and marching with other veterans in the Memorial Day parade.

To end the meeting, Morris extinguished the candle that had been lit for the club's members who've died, and he then read the last stanza of a poem written by Stillwater soldier Henry Hayden. It was first read at a Last Man's Club meeting in 1887, and has been read at the conclusion of Stillwater last man's club meetings since then.

The campfire smolders, ashes fall
The clouds are black against the sky.
No tap of drums, no bugle call,
My comrades all ... goodbye.