It wasn’t very long into the conflict that the tide swept Russell and his unit into an even worse fate than hitchhiking across a war-torn foreign country. On the night of the second, 1950 in November, the Chinese came across and attacked the 8th Army and from there we retreated back…I don’t know, maybe a mile or two, and we dug in and made us a perimeter and we stayed as long as we could stay. We had to retreat and when we retreated we were on our own. Every man was for himself so there was about 300 of us, I guess, so we took to the mountains. The next morning myself and four others, we started at a different direction and we stayed behind the enemy lines for 16 days, and on the 18th of November, 1950, the Chinese and the North Koreans overrun the building we were in and I was captured - I was taken prisoner of war. Now, when Russell looks back on his time as a POW, he’s matter-of-fact about what he and his fellow soldiers endured. In the meantime, while I was there, I had malaria fever twice. I had my tonsils removed by the Chinese in a little makeshift hospital they had. I had one tooth pulled with no Novocain and I won’t even say how many times I was forced labor and this, that, and the other because I don’t know whether people would even believe if I done forced labor or not. But he’s not so matter-of-fact about one part - when he learned that he was coming home. “On August 11, 1953, they told us that we was gonna get to come home,” he says. “We all went nuts! Everyone was whooping and hollering and carrying on.” He wrote a telegram home with the news: “Hi Mom and 8 NOVEMBER 2023 | INTHEVUE.COM Dad. Never so happy to be an American as today/Your prayers for me have been answered/Feel pretty good for the shape I’m in/ Looking forward to seeing you soon/Best wishes for our speedy reunion/Love to the Best Mother In the World. “It felt wonderful to be sending good news home for a change,” Russell remembers. It was either the 29th or the first day of September when I got to Kentucky. Nearly three years, and 33 months of it had been in a POW camp. They picked me up and we come on down to the little town of Kuttawa. We stopped at his restaurant for a while and there was probably 200 people there. Then he brought me home and the yard was full, and the house was full, and there was all my neighbors and friends come to see me when I got home. And a couple of weeks after I got home they had “Russell Kingston Day” with a parade in the little town. They gave me a brand new Browning automatic shotgun, which I still have, wouldn’t take nothing for it. They had the Chamber of Commerce, the mayors, bankers, judges, and I rode in a big convertible. The high school band played and I’ve still got all the newspaper articles, which I wouldn’t take nothing for. In addition to his gun and newspaper articles, Russell has precious little left of his time in the Army. When I got wounded, I got hit in the leg and in the side of the face at the same time. I had the shrapnel taken out of my face several years ago, but in my leg it never was taken out and sometimes I can feel it. But I had to have it removed from my face because it was giving me headaches. I got wounded in Korea, so I got two Purple Hearts for being wounded plus I got one for being a POW. I got the combat infantry badge, the South Korean service medal, the United Nations service medal, the national defense service medal, the good conduct medal, the POW medal, and they just came out with one I’m eligible for if I want it - the Korean medal. I got ten combat battle stars, which equals two bronze stars. In addition to some stray shrapnel, his medals, and other memorabilia, Russell still has his memories, which his son Wade is working hard to help preserve. “My maternal grandmother, Esther Hammons, once asked me to write down all her stories, and it didn’t get done,” Wade says. “I blamed myself for that, so years later I decided I would get my
