The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Press, Pittsburgh PA

Korean War Weekly Front Pages

19 April 1953 – 25 April 1953

The Press, Pittsburgh PA

“Bill’s coming home.”

*****

On Sunday Allied and Communist officers agreed to resume Korean truce talks on 25 April. Two hours before the officers met, Communist frontline broadcasts told listening Allied troops that the war in Korea would be over by 20 June. “United Nations and Korean armies will make peace June 20th, 1953,” loudspeakers said. “If the United Nations is in good faith they should go ahead with the proposals they gave us.”

Also on Sunday, Communist staff officers informed the United Nations that the first 100 Allied prisoners to be freed on Monday morning would include 30 Americans, 12 Britons, four Turks, one Canadian, one South African, one Filipino, and one Greek. Ten of them were litter cases. The next day the releases began – Thirty American soldiers were freed, and all would be flown to Japan the next day. As the men returned, accounts of many brutalities by the Communists swiftly emerged. The former prisoners told how many of their buddies died under skull-crushing blows from rifle butts wielded by North Korean guards and from lack of medical care on forced “death marches.” They told too of semi-starvation Communist prison camps and deaths from malnutrition and disease. And many reported that the Reds were still holding some of the most critically wounded and the most seriously ill. The accounts were so appalling that hopes for a successful Korean truce conference faded, despite the Communist announcement that they would return more than more than the 605 Allied sick and wounded prisoners originally promised. In Britain, stories of the atrocities were blacked out to reduce the effect on truce talks.

Tears of joy and relief greeted the flash on Thursday that a Pittsburgh soldier – and the first one – was among the GIs freed by the Chinese Communists. He was 21-year-old Private First Class William J. Prabucki. The door at his home on Ligonier Street swung constantly as neighbors and friends deserted television and radio sets to carry the glad news: “Bill’s coming home.” That was the news – and it left the little mother, Mrs. Czeszlawa Pawlak, dazed with relief after anxious years of waiting. Bill was reported missing just three months after he went into the swaying battle lines in August 1950.

And that was the end of the young artillery men’s letters home until a year later.

The war continued even as peace approached. Air Force and Marine planes dropped 85 tons of bombs around Pork Chop Hill while other fighter-bombers hit northwest Kumwha with almost 70 tons of explosives. It was the heaviest close-support assault of the year.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Pittsburgh Press)