Originally Published in the Cecil Whig
Master Sgt. Francis Durham of Rising Sun, Cecil County was a World War II veteran when, in August of 1950, he re-enlisted in the army to fight for his country in Korea. Three months later he was a prisoner of war. He would spend nearly three years in a North Korean prison camp run by the Chinese.
When he was 16 years old, Emory Lee Copenhaver dropped out of Rising Sun High School. As soon as he turned 17 in 1952, Copenhaver enlisted in the United States Army. Following basic training, he was sent to Korea to fight with the 25th Division. About a year later Copenhaver was also captured by North Korean soldiers and made their prisoner for the next 3 months.
Fortunately, both of these stories have happy endings, but not without severe hardships at the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese Communists. Both men were released following the signing of the truce agreement between North Korea, China, and the United Nations.
In an interview with the Cecil Democrat newspaper shortly after his release in 1953, Master Sgt. Durham described his days as a Prisoner of War. Durham, at the time of his capture on November 5th, 1950, had shrapnel wounds in both hands and one leg. He said his Chinese captors considered him, “well” and forced him to work like the other prisoners. “Of course I worked,” Durham exclaimed. “When they marched us, we all carried stretchers. We carried our wounded. We had to show them that we’re not afraid of the Commies.”
Durham said medical care was scarce. “Men were dying like flies.” The article adds that “he rubbed the frozen limbs of his comrades, carried them on his back when they were too weak to walk. How did his wounds disappear so that now his arms and leg are scarcely scarred? ‘They just healed up by themselves,’ he said.”
The article goes on to describe Durham’s physical condition during his years in the Pyoktang POW camp. “Durham’s weight slipped to 100 pounds as winter fell upon Pyoktang with its cutting coldness. Needing wood to build a fire to stay alive from the ravages of the Korean winter, he stole some shingles off the roof of a dilapidated Korean building only to be caught and charged with ‘destroying people’s property.’”
“For this ‘crime’,” the article continues, “he was made to stand at attention for two hours in the very cold that he was trying to escape.”
“’Every time I shifted from one foot to the other, a Chinese guard japed a bayonet into me,’ he said.”
No similar interview has yet been found with Pfc. Emory Lee Copenhaver, however, there are newspaper accounts of the party the town of Rising Sun threw in honor of their hometown heroes. The Cecil Whig article of October 8th, 1953 notes “the downtown section of the town was decorated for the affair, each store window holding a display, and the streets decked out in bunting.”
“Four hundred people turned out for a banquet and program in the Rising Sun High School,” the paper reported. William C. Graham (Supervisor of High Schools in Cecil County and former principal at Rising Sun High), as master of ceremonies, called the welcome ‘impressive…one of the finest things Rising Sun has done for a long time…an example of total cooperative effort on the part of the community.’”
And it was, indeed, a community event with participation by the auxiliaries of the fire company and the American Legion Post No. 194, the W.S.C.S. of the Janes Methodist Church, the P.T.A., and members of the Catholic Church in Rising Sun.
Each soldier was awarded a watch and a $200 defense bond. According to The Democrat, music for the affair was supplied by the Aberdeen Army orchestra and a reception followed the banquet in the school auditorium.
In a separate commentary for The Democrat, George Prettyman wrote that when “the evening’s community exercises were over, the (crowd) broke into spontaneous applause, climaxing a program that had been inspiring and warmly human.” Then he added, “but the big moment seemed to come as Francis and Lee stood beside the man who had served as chairman of the evening – stood there with the boyish smiles playing across their faces – stood there in the knowledge that this was ‘their night’ in the town that had shown its love for them.”
They may have displayed “boyish smiles,” but these were men; men who had earned the respect of their community and their fellow soldiers alike. At the close of his interview with The Whig, Sgt Durham revealed some of what went on between the soldiers of his POW camp. He said, “we kept telling our boys what we should have to tell them. We told them not to forget that they were still American soldiers.” To which the reporter added, “Few folks in Rising Sun and especially his mother at home in Washington, D.C. will forget that Sergeant Durham was, in the highest sense of the term, ‘an American Soldier.’”
These American soldiers, Sgt. Durham and Pfc. Copenhaver, were not the only individuals from Cecil County who served in the “Korean Conflict,” as it was called. Nor were they the only Cecil Countians who were wounded in that war. However, precious little has been written or documented around Cecil Countians who served, let alone who were captured, wounded or killed in action. Over the next few months, as information becomes available, the Historical Society of Cecil County will document and share the stories of Cecil County men and women who served their country in the Korean War.