A member of the 68th AAA Gun Battalion, Jim Moran can still see the enemy troops, and feel the bitter cold, from nearly 60 years ago

By John Molene

To a generation of Americans brought up on conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East, the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 must seem like ancient history.

To decorated veteran Jim Moran, however, that somewhat forgotten war is anything but. Despite his service in it being nearly 60 years ago, Moran’s Korean War memories are crystal clear.

“We were scared most of the time,” Moran remembered.

Moran, now 77, is a lifelong Eden Prairie resident. His grandparents and uncles were local farmers and he grew up in an old farm house on Eden Prairie Road. His father ran Eden Prairie Oil, and then drove a Greyhound bus for 25 years.

As a teenager, Moran worked on the Douglas farm. He attended Eden Prairie High School, but said he was an indifferent student.

“’Cause the teachers didn’t know as much as I didn’t,” he said with a smile.

So, at 18 years old, he dropped out and enlisted in the Army in January of 1949.

Moran got his basic training at Camp Chaffee in Arkansas, then spent 10 weeks in El Paso, Texas, getting his advanced training as an anti-aircraft artilleryman. From Texas, Moran was transferred to Fort Lewis in Washington where he began duty as an ammo handler on a gun crew.

In August, Moran’s unit was sent to Japan. A month later, in September, 1950, he and his team were loaded onto an LST boat and shipped to Pusan, Korea, where hard-pressed American, South Korean and United Nations forces were desperately hanging onto a toehold of the southeast tip of the Korean peninsula.

Jim Moran of Eden Prairie was a young soldier of 18 when his Army field anti-aircraft artillery unit was shipped to Korea in the fall of 1950. He would find himself in the heat of battle many times over the next two years.

Moran by this time was a fuse setter with a 25-man field artillery unit of the 68th AAA Gun Battalion. While trained as an anti-aircraft unit, Moran’s gun crew was quickly morphed into a much needed field artillery unit.

“They didn’t have any field artillery trained,” he recalled.

Moran’s unit was about to embark on a series of dizzying maneuvers up and down the Korean peninsula over the next two years as Allied fortunes waxed and waned in a series of dramatically changing fortunes of war.

A true multinational force, his American artillery unit fought alongside soldiers from Turkey and Canada, as well as the ROK (Republic of Korea).

“The three of them kept us pretty busy,” he said.

Korea – Moran well remembers – was a very cold, very mountainous, country. A land of one heartbreak ridge after another.

“We didn’t have the clothes, the warm clothes,” he recalled. “And it was all mountains.”

His unit drove their 16,000-pound tractor and 16,000-pound gun up and down, over and around, the narrow Korean mountain roads.

His battalion fought in battles ranging from the far southern tip of the country in the Pusan Perimeter, north to the South Korean capital Seoul, then all the way to near the Chinese border at the Yalu River.

“We were 17 miles from the Yalu River,” Moran recalled. “Then the Chinese hit us. The infantry was totally overrun and we had to fire for cover for them. They (the Chinese and North Koreans) came down out of the mountains like a bunch of ants – hooting and a-hollering and shoved us back to Pusan again. We were just getting the heck pounded out of us.

“The infantry passed us up and we were firing while most everybody left,” he added. “We would set the time fuses for as soon as they would get out of the barrel and they would go 2,700 feet in a second. They were Chinese, although they weren’t supposed to be – it was a different war.”

The fierce attack by Chinese and the North Koreans gradually pushed the Allies back down into South Korea before the American-led troops once again advanced north to near the 38th parallel where the front stabilized.

“Then we got reinforcements and started back the old trail again,” Moran noted. “We got as far north as Inchon [a port just north of Seoul].”

Moran’s unit set up in a base around Seoul before his unit got rotated out. While truce negotiations began in Korea in July of 1951, Moran was home for Christmas that year.

By now a multi-decorated veteran corporal, Moran served out his commitment with a gun battalion based at Fort Sheridan, Ill., before leaving the Army in the summer of 1952.

Korean War veteran Jim Moran earned a host of decorations from his U.S. Army wartime service, including, “seven or eight” battle stars.

He returned to Eden Prairie, and after working for the city for a short time, spent most of his working days driving a truck. He and his wife still live in Eden Prairie.

Veterans Memorial Dedication

The Eden Prairie Veterans Memorial is on schedule to be unveiled at a dedication for Veterans Day, at 11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 9. The memorial committee’s mission is “to create and maintain, in perpetuity, a suitable memorial to honor and preserve the unselfish contributions by the men and women of our military services.”

The dedication event will be at the memorial’s site, Purgatory Creek Park at Technology Drive and Prairie Center Drive.

The group plans to honor members of the armed forces each year. This year four Eden Prairie veterans will be honored. The Eden Prairie News is profiling Korean War veteran Jim Moran in this week’s issue, and will profile WWII veteran Mickey Axton next week. Commentaries on the history of the McClay family, two members of which will be remembered, can be found on our Web site.

Mayor Phil Young is set to be the master of ceremonies at the Veterans Day event. A fly-over by the T-6 Thunder is also set. Special guest speaker is Ret. Brigadier Gen. Dennis Schulstad. Also on hand will be Iraq veteran Ashwin Madia, Vietnam veteran Sen. David Hann, State Reps. Erik Paulsen and Maria Ruud.

The committee is nearing its goal of raising $421,000 for the memorial. For more information, or to make a donation, visit www.epveteransmemorial.org, e-mail epvets@gmail.com, call 952-949-8300 or write to Eden Prairie Veterans Memorial, 8080 Mitchell Road, Eden Prairie, MN 55344.