The Press: Stolen Base

When the first war wounded from Korea arrived in San Francisco last week aboard a hospital plane, a small army of reporters and photographers turned out to meet them. In search of a “local angle” they surrounded Oakland’s Corporal Albert Vieira, 25, the only Bay area soldier.

Seated in a wheelchair, with his right ankle in a cast, Vieira told his story: he was a weapons instructor in the U.S. military mission in Korea, had stayed on to fight the Communists. How had he been wounded? Explained the corporal quietly: “An artillery shell came over and the concussion knocked me to the ground. I started to get up and found my ankle was fractured . . .”

That afternoon, Hero Vieira’s tale was spread across Page One of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, the San Francisco News and the Oakland Tribune. In the rush for deadlines, only one reporter, LIFE’S Milton Orshefsky, checked Vieira’s medical and service records. They gave a somewhat different version of Albert Vieira’s story. He had been in Korea with the military mission, but before the fighting began he had been sent back to Japan. There, he had shattered his ankle sliding into second base in a baseball game.