Our Honolulu
Two men bound by one real war

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Staff Writer

For 50 years, Jerry Bruhnke of Our Honolulu thought Harley Coon was dead.

Coon didn't know what had happened to Bruhnke, either. The last time they saw each other — until three days ago — was on a bitterly cold hill in Korea near the Yalu River on Nov. 26, 1950.

They were on the point of a crumbling defense against an overwhelming Chinese attack, holding open a corridor so the 1st Cavalry and 2nd Division could escape.

Squad leader Coon ordered Pvt. Bruhnke to pick up some mortar rounds at the ammo dump nearby. Bruhnke came back with a satchel of mortar rounds slung over his neck.

He dumped the satchel and the mortar and dived into his foxhole as the fighting intensified. "The Chinese had almost wiped us out," said Bruhnke. "Out of 203 infantrymen, 26 still held the hill."

The concussion from a 122mm artillery round knocked Bruhnke off the hill. A medic found him and got him back to a first-aid station, which had him rushed to a hospital.

No after-action report is in the records, because there was nobody to write it. Coon later located his own death certificate. Only 17 men on the hill survived.

"I put it out of my mind," said Bruhnke. "I no longer talked about it. It was too hard for me. We were in the same foxhole. We played cards together. I won all of Coon's money."

Then, this year, he spotted Coon in a Korean War documentary as narrator, talking about prisoners of war.

Bruhnke got on the Internet, located his comrade and arranged a Hawai'i meeting.

Coon's story is different. Earlier in the war, five of his buddies were blown to bits by an artillery round before his eyes. He made up his mind not to get close to anybody after that.

So he deliberately kept Bruhnke at a distance when he joined the outfit, and tried to forget him after that evening of Nov. 26, when Bruhnke disappeared.

Meanwhile, Coon received word to fall back. He got his men together and they fought their way off the hill in the dark. They held out all night.

"It was hand-to-hand at the end," said Coon. "I started with eight bandoleers of ammunition and used my last round. A black guy tried to take out a machine-gun nest. He got hit. I reached over to help him and felt his last heartbeat."

Coon spent 33 months in prison camps. "I wouldn't talk about Korea for 30, 35 years," he said. "Then I heard a college professor lecture on U.S. wars. He left out the Korean War because it was 'just a police action.' That made me mad."

Coon, who lives in Ohio, began giving talks, first to his granddaughter's fourth-grade class, then to clubs. He became president of the Korean War Veterans Association. He's here in that capacity.

Coon and Bruhnke met in the lobby of the Ilikai Hotel. It wasn't very dramatic: The men hardly recognized each other. Bruhnke said, "I'll be a son of a gun." Then, "You got a beer in your room?"