(2 of 2)
"Won't You Come In?" After three days a Korean reconnaissance patrol came up the mountain, looking for the three. "We decided we'd better get the hell out of there on foot," Wilkins continued. "We got to the coast in seven days, moving mostly at night. We hadn't had anything to eat in nine days, and damned little to drink." At dusk they sneaked into an abandoned bombed-out house near a fishing village. "Jack took the watch, and Neal and I sacked out. We were there about three hours, and I was half-dozing, when suddenly I heard Jack say in a perfectly normal voice: 'How do you do. Won't you come in?' "
Their callers were Communist soldiers, who promptly sprayed the house with machine-gun fire. The three Americans decided to surrender. "They tied us up and marched us through town, with all the civilians shouting threats and throwing things at us, to a headquarters. During all this time, Jack was constantly pointing out my burns to the Koreans and insisting that I needed hospitalization. I had maggots in my legs, and they looked pretty bad. So finally they gave me two guards and moved me out. I never saw Jack again."
Both Captain Wilkins and Machinist's Mate Neal survived their ordeal as captives and were repatriated. But three months after Wilkins last saw the man who saved him, Jack Koelsch died of malnutrition and dysentery in a Korean P. W. camp. His valor was not forgotten. Last week, in a ceremony at the Pentagon, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first helicopter pilot in history to win his country's highest decoration.