"We got our first smell of cordite; the perfume of the military. With that first salvo, I had seen enough of war already." (Video Interview, 2:54)

William Joseph Didycz

William Didycz [2004] War: Korean War, 1950-1953 Branch: Army Unit: 176th Armored Field Artillery (AFA) Battalion Service Location: Korea Rank: Corporal Place of Birth: PA

William Didycz did not arrive in Korea until the final months of the war. Reading from a memoir he wrote in 1996, he describes the holding pattern the conflict settled into for many soldiers. He had trained to repair tanks, but when he arrived at his duty post, an artillery battery, he was offered a job as a forward observer. He turned that down in favor of his safer specialty. His life wasn't without danger, thanks to North Korean artillery shells, which soon had his unit on the run. Didycz stayed in country for a year after the armistice was signed. He participated in a massive victory parade that fell a little short of what the victorious soldiers of World War II marched in.