Page 97 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2018- Online Magazine

korean war

type; someone had come Union school and hadn’t seen each other in
across Alton’s record of 80 years. It was a wonderful and unexpected
being a bookkeeper. It addition to the wonderful experience of the
was here that he “saw a Honor Flight.
lot of casualty lists.” He
recalled that they were Alton Garner, the young bookkeeper, became
told that “20% of the a Marine caring for wounded Marines, and a
Marines sent to Korea witness to the high cost of war – roles which
were not going to come influenced him for the rest of his life.
back.” His brush with
combat came in December
of 1952 when his unit
was sent out one night
and told to bring with
them the 30 and 50 caliber
machine guns with tracer ammunition. This
fire mission consisted of many United Nation
troops and weapons. “The total number was
unknown to us at that time, but it had to be
in the hundreds.” They stopped on the south
side of a river and were told that “the enemy
was on the
“ When the firing started, north side and
to fire when
commanded.”
Alton “thought it
sounded like the world Garner was
was coming to an end” discharged on
“ April 14, 1954.

He returned
to Texas where he lived in Littlefield and
Perryton and worked in the abstract and
savings and loan business. He and his
wife traveled back to Korea in 1987, so
he could “show her where I was during
the war.” Freedom Village was still
standing, barbed wire fence and all.
After retirement, he and his wife settled
in Levelland to be close to their daughter,
Jennifer, and her family in Lubbock.
They were married for 68 years before
Thalua passed away in September 2016.
While on the 2017 Texas South Plains
Honor Flight, Alton met up with veteran,
A.C. Oliver. It turned out that they had
attended 1st and 2nd grade together at

Lubbock Senior Link 97