The U.S. military calls it the “tooth-to-tail” ratio: The number of rear-echelon troops (or tail) it takes to support a combat soldier (or tooth).
In World War II, only 19 percent of soldiers (or Marines or sailors or airmen) ever saw the front line, which means that every serviceman who fired a gun in anger or heard one fired had 4.3 troops in safer and cozier billets keeping him supplied.
It was such a cozy billet that Andy Michel—a longtime Chesterton resident and member of the Utility Service Board—was seeking when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the opening months of the Korean War.
Michel, 92, born in Baltimore, Md., was working at Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s Sparrows Point mill when a buddy of his from the block, Bobby Smith, returned home after being severely wounded in action.
Bobby, who’d been serving in the National Guard, was among the first wave of U.S. and U.N. troops sent to South Korea and tasked with resisting the marauding Korean People’s Army (KPA). It was, in those first violent days of the war, an almost futile resistance, and those early boots on the ground found themselves pushed irresistibly behind a tiny perimeter at Pusan, with their backs hard against the Sea of Japan.
“So when Bobby came back all shot up, the whole neighborhood, Mount Washington in Baltimore, a whole bunch of us joined the Navy,” Michel remembers.
A calculated choice. With the exception of the hugely successful amphibian landing at Inchon, under MacArthur, the Korean War was fought chiefly on the land and in the air.
Michel was en route to Korea from Japan aboard the USS Dixie, a destroyer tender, when he learned a valuable lesson in military logic. “They issued me a sea bag full of new clothing. Well, it’s U.S. Marine clothing. Khakis, boondockers. Because I’m going to work with the Korean Marine Corps.”
On shore. In Pusan.
“I wore a gun all the time because Pusan was sort of at the edge of what was going on,” Michael recollects.
By that time, the U.N. forces had managed to launch a counteroffensive, the KPA was overextended and on its heels, and Michel, for his part, was content with his assignment, in the rear and at the “tail,” occupying his apparently secure but necessary place in the supply chain.
One day Michael and a crew were ordered to load five tons of ammunition into six 2 1/2 ton trucks and transport the ordnance to the Korean Military Academy at Jinhae-gu, about 40 miles outside Pusan.
“On the way to the ammo dump, one of the trucks broke down,” Michel says. “So we had to offload the five tons. Now we got five 2 1/2 ton trucks with a ton of ammunition each. And as we’re going up through the mountain, we get ambushed.”
The interviewer asks: “North Korean or Chinese?”
“I had no idea,” Michel says. “All we knew they were shooting at us. I’m in the cab of the truck. And you can’t dig a foxhole in a truck. I’m only armed with a .45 sidearm and I’m trying to hide in the cab.”
“Because I’m a coward,” Michel adds. “I come from a long line of cowards. You might say cowards run in my family. But that was the only time—I won’t say I saw action—I experienced it. I just hunched down in the cab of the trunk. Who in the hell was I going to shoot at?”
So did the tail become the tooth.
HONOR FLIGHT
Michel recently joined other U.S. military veterans converging from all parts of the country on Washington, D.C., as part of an Honor Flight. They toured the memorials, shared memories, made new ones, and perhaps had occasion to reflect more on their youth and their service than they had in decades.
“It was an honor,” Michel says. “They treated us great. Anything we asked for they were there. At the end of the Honor Flight, they had a mail call for everybody. They gave you an envelope with all these letters from people showing their appreciation and I had a letter from (Chesterton Town Council Member) Sharon Darnell, a letter from (Chesterton Street Commissioner) John Schnadenberg, a letter from (Chesterton Utility Service Board President) Larry Brandt. It was very emotional to read the letters. Just because some a**hole shot at me many years ago.”
Earlier in the day, at it happens, Michel was sitting in a wheelchair at the World War II Memorial when he was approached by a man he’d seen before: Mike Rowe, presenter of “Dirty Jobs,” who was in Washington filming a documentary, “Something to Stand For.”
But let Washington Examiner journalist Selena Zito tell the story: “Rowe said he was standing in the World War II Memorial trying to collect his thoughts for a very specific, scripted stand-up he needed to do for the film when he noticed the veteran. . . He stopped the production, grabbed the director, and said they needed to stop what they were doing and go talk to a man Rowe saw sitting in a wheelchair staring at the memorial with tears running down his face.”
“He came over and interviewed me,” Michel said, still surprised, as he recounted his chat with Rowe. “And there’s a movie that’s going to come out and I’m in the damn movie. It’s called ‘Something to Stand For.’ That’s something in my life that was never expected.”
JUST BECAUSE SOME A**HOLE SHOT AT ME MANY YEARS AGO
Michel: “I’m not sure I even really did anything to deserve the Honor Flight.”
Interviewer: “You enlisted, Andy. You did your service. You did your service in a war zone.”
Michel: “There’s nothing special about that, though.”
Interviewer: “Don’t make me argue with you, Andy.”
Michel: “Well, what we did was necessary. I didn’t feel like it was a waste of my time. I was doing something to help prevent the North Koreans from overrunning the place. The few close calls I had over there I’m thankful it wasn’t worse.”’
Interviewer: “When we observe Veterans Day, Andy, it’s not ‘Veterans Who only Shot in Anger Day.’”
Michel: “Yeah, you need everybody. We were all part of a machine.”
Give the last word to Larry Brandt, who serves with Michel on the Utility Service Board. “I’d personally like to thank Andy for his service,” Brandt says. “He’s been my neighbor for almost 50 years. It shows in his life what he learned in the service and what he did for his country. He brought it back with him. He treated the neighborhood and the company he worked for and his friends with honor and dignity and loyalty. He’s been that way as long as I’ve known him: A great solider and a great, great neighbor.”
