Life and Death of Melvin Handrich
The life of Melvin Handrich of Manawa
should have been a placid and a well-ordered one.
A son of Northeastern
Wisconsin's prosperous farm country, it was natural that he should spend
his boyhood doing the chores on his father's farm, attending school in
the nearby small city and growing into healthy and clean-cut young
manhood. Had he lived in "normal times," he probably would have married
and bought a farm of his own, and perhaps would have been a leader in a
local farm organization and even a town councilor or county supervisor.
Death should have come to Melvin Handrich when his full life was done,
with his children and grandchildren around him and in the knowledge that
he had led fruitful life of service to his family and his community.
But
death came to Melvin Handrich on a lonely outpost "in Korea, with
hundreds of screaming Chinese charging at him. For a full night and a
day he held that position, leaving it only to race through rifle and
mortar fire to rally his comrades who were preparing to abandon their
less exposed defense line. Although severely wounded, he returned to his
forward outpost and continued to fight until overrun and mortally
wounded by the sheer mass of enemy soldiers. When the Americans retook
the position later, they found Melvin Hand-rich's body, along with more
than 70 bodies of Chinese he had killed.
In the 15 years from the time
this young man graduated from Little Wolf High school at Manawa to his
death at the age of 32, he saw far more death and bloodshed and
suffering than a dozen average men see in a lifetime.
The real tragedy
of this man's life emerges when we read the record of his battles and
decorations. The Aleutians, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Korea. The
Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters, the Bronze Star, the Combat
Infantryman's badge, the campaign ribbons studded with battle stars.
With such chapter headings is the story of an American youth in this
century told. Melvin Handrich's death was not tragic, but his life was.
In those final hours when the battle rages and the blood pounds and the
senses reel at the sheer frenzy of the fight, there is no room in the
mind for fear or remorse or reflection. It is rather during the long
days and nights, the weeks and months of soldiering when a man thinks of
the times death has brushed close but passed by and the near certainty
of its coming again, that the steel of the nerves and the set of the
backbone are truly tested. Melvin Handrich went through all this over a
span of almost 10 years before meeting Death with his chin up and his
rifle blazing on that lonely outpost.
When congress created the Medal of
Honor as this nation's highest award for valor, it was thinking of men
like Melvin Handrich.
[Green
Bay Press-Gazette,
Green Bay, WI,
,
Page 10]
[courtesy of Don Morfe]
Application for Headstone or Marker for Melvin Oscar
Handrich and resulting grave marker in Lot 141, Space 8, Little
Wolf Cemetery, Manawa (Waupaca county), Wisconsin.
On 19 August 1942, Oscar enlisted ib the Army at Milwaukee,
WI.
T/4 Handrich was transferred from the 3rd Replacement Depot
to Company I, 508th PIR.
On 29 January 12945, he was wounded in action and evacuated
to a field hospital. He was transferred to the hospital's
Detachment of Patients on 1 May 1945.
However, on 31 May 1945, T/4 Handrich was transferred back
to Company I from the 19th Reinforcement Depot.
T/4 Handrich was subsequently transferred to the 513th PIR
on 18 August 1945.