50th Anniversary Issue — October 1, 1995

By Andrew Headland Jr.

Reporting for Pacific Stars and Stripes always had a feeling of suspense, particularly back in the fall of 1945 when Tokyo was mostly a pile of rubble, and stories cried out to be told.

Those were the days when the West was putting Kipling's theory about East and West to the test, with the issue still to be decided.

Only a few years later, the Korean War broke out, and Seoul replaced Tokyo, which was already rising from its ruins, as a showplace of devastation.

This was the setting in which Air Force Tech. Sgt. Corliss A. Miller, an illustrator from the PS&S art department, and I were sent to Korea early in 1952 when the war had been going on for more than a year.

My job, as a reporter, was to write stories for which Miller provided the illustrations.

At that time, more than a dozen United Nations groups were supporting the war effort in combat or by providing materiel and medical support. By hitchhiking -- no regular transportation was available -- we made our way from one unit to another and were winding up our work at the French Battalion when Miller decided to accompany a French patrol on a routine scouting mission.

I stayed in camp to finish a story while he was out sketching, and when the patrol returned, went to meet him. He wasn't there.

"Where's Miller?'' I asked the lieutenant who led the patrol.

"Je ne sais pas,'' he replied shrugging his shoulders. "He left us at the end of the line to hike to the Dutch Battalion a few miles down the road. I told him it was risky, but he insisted on going.''

Miller might have carried it off all right -- the country looked peaceful -- but unfortunately for him he began his trek just the Chinese and North Korean communists launched their massive 1952 spring offensive by which they hoped to drive the Americans off the Korean peninsula.

The Dutch Battalion had already been ordered to fall back to new positions when he reached their old camp; in the meantime, the French Battalion had also pulled out. Having broken the basic rule for a combat soldier -- to stay with his buddies unless unavoidably separated or sent on an urgent one-man mission -- he had become hopelessly lost among 150,000 communist troops on the offensive.

While the French Battalion was breaking camp and I was casting about for a ride to rejoin an American outfit, Col. Dumoncel, the commanding officer of the French Battalion, pulled up in a Jeep and offered a lift, but with a proviso, namely that I share his fate, whatever it might be.

It sounded as though he had a premonition that something unpleasant might happen, as it very easily could. Feeling that being linked up with Miller's destiny and an unpredictable future of my own was all the kismet I could handle, I thanked him and caught a ride on a truck.

I never heard what happened to Col. Dumoncel, but had he come to any harm word would have circulated. The French lieutenant who led the patrol was not so fortunate. He died in the fighting. As for Miller, I could only hope that the enemy's overwhelming size made it difficult to spot a GI lost in the woods.

Too many trees to see the forest. He hid and slept by day and slipped along like a ghostly fugitive after dark.

At times he was close enough to smell the foe's cigarette smoke, and once he hunched under an embankment while troops marched overhead.

One day he found an old musket that he intended to keep as a souvenir, but, finding that two rifles were twice as hard to handle as one and threatened to reveal his whereabouts by snagging in tree branches or rattling against rocks, he buried both weapons.

PS&S asked me to return to Tokyo, but in hope that somehow, somewhere, Miller might walk in out of the night, I stalled along and spent my days alerting front-line outfits that he was still missing, and contacted a chaplain to ask that he spare a prayer for Miller's safe return.

Men think more of God in times of death and danger, and it seemed like an appropriate request, but the chaplain's response left me speechless. "There are hundreds of Americans missing in this war, and you expect us to make a special case out of this one?'' he asked.

I left without saying goodbye. Whether the chaplain ever prayed or not I do not know, but on the 10th night after Miller disappeared a sergeant came into the tent where I was sacked out and said, "Miller just came in. He's all right.''

"Where is he?'' I asked, jumping up and starting to pull on my clothes. Over at the neighboring division, he answered. ``He'll be here tomorrow.''

The next day Miller showed up lean and hungry, despite having just come from a full meal. He had already been subjected to a press conference by correspondents whose line of questioning plainly indicated they thought he was nuts for getting lost in no-man's land.

He countered by asking, "Doesn't everybody get lost sometime?''

The rest of the story is that wrong-way Miller had literally returned in a blaze of glory by touching off a trip flare that spotlighted him down in a valley being watched by the Americans.

"Hold your fire, men!'' an officer shouted. "That looks like one of ours down there!'' Someone else shouted for him not to move. He was standing in a mine field. A technician who knew the lay of the land carefully worked his way down and escorted Miller to safety. Home at last.

During the many talks we had about his experiences on the trail, he said the thing that impressed him most was how Korean country people gave him food and indicated the best route to follow to avoid the communists and to find his own people.

One night when he seemed to be hopelessly lost, a Korean farmer and his wife guided him about two miles to reach the next village. The farmer, he said, had suffered a terrible fate. Communist troops took him out of his field and castrated him.

Our ride back to Tokyo wasn't on Air Force One, but it seemed like the height of luxury, with good hot food on the way. We did find something new to pray about -- that Miller wouldn't be disciplined for his disappearing act.

In fact, he was well received at PS&S, so I guess the powers that be considered the important thing to be not that he had been lost, but that he had returned.

The account I wrote of his adventures for PS&S caused a copy editor to ask whether I really considered Miller a hero.

I hadn't written him up as a hero, and I'm sure he never thought of himself as one. He was simply being himself, and that's not too easy.

After all, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but only a fool for luck could survive to tell such a beautiful story.