Arthur Phillip Hanks - KIA Korean War; St. Landry Par., LA Submitter: Randy Willis Date: July 2001 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** TIPS FOR SEARCHING RECORDS ON THE INTERNET Netscape & Ms Explorer users: If searching for a particular surname, locality or date while going through the records in the archives or anywhere....try these few steps: 1. Go to the top of the report you are searching. 2. Click on EDIT at the top of your screen. 3. Next click on FIND in the edit menu. 4. When the square pops up, enter what you are looking for in the FIND WHAT ___________blank. 5. Click on DIRECTION __DOWN. 6. And last click on FIND NEXT and continue to click on FIND NEXT until you reach the end of the report. This should highlight the item that you indicated in "find what" every place it appears in the report. You must continue to click on FIND NEXT till you reach the end of the report to see all of the locations of the item indicated. Arthur Phillip Hanks - KIA Korean War by Randy Willis www.randywillis.org randy@randywillis.org My 1st cousin, once removed, Arthur Phillip Hanks was killed in action, February 4, 1952, on a hill called Outpost Kelly, in the Korean War. He was raised in Long Leaf, Louisiana and is buried at the Paul Cemetery in Lecompte, Rapides Parish, Louisiana. There is a wonderful tribute to him at: http://freeweb.pdq.net/mervino/can10-1.html and http://freeweb.pdq.net/mervino/Hanks.html and a photo of the hill he was killed on. My mother said that she only saw my father cry one time in his life and that was when they played Taps at his first cousin, Arthur Phillip Hank's funeral. John Fennimore wrote me: "Randy, I was assigned to Sgt. Hanks training Platoon in 1951 at Ft. Reily Ks. After about 2/3rds. of our 16 week training period Sgt. Hanks was reassigned to Korea, I completed Basic and due to his good training was sent to a leadership school for eight weeks advanced training. I was then also shipped to Korea. Lo and behold when I was assigned to a platoon over there Sgt. Hanks was my platoon Sgt.. again , it was a pleasant surprise to see some one I knew. This was in mid January 1952 I cannot recall the exact date. According to the Army the War had wound down but in our sector no one knew that. We were contacting the Chinese almost daily, by going out on Patrols probing from one to three miles into their territory with much of the action on and around O.P. Kelly. By February 4th we had been on several of these patrols with some but not a lot of casualties. Sgt.. Hanks was a good leader and all the men liked him he took his turn in the lead squad which he did not need to do so often as he did, he was a brave man.The night of Feb. 4th. 1952 we had orders to retake O.P. Kelly , which the Chinese had taken the day before . we were perhaps 50 feet from the top when the Chinese started throwing grenades, firing all kinds of weapons etc.. at us there was also shells and mortars directed at the hill, which were falling on both them and us. Our Lt.. ,and several men were hit I think 5 or 6 men killed. one of these was Sgt.. Hanks. Sgt.. Hanks gave the order to get back down the hill to regroup and then went back to get Lt.. Sittler, this is when he was killed, ,we brought all of the men back with us as we pulled back but Sgt.. Hanks was one of the K.I.A.s. After 50 years hardly a day goes by that I don't think of him and many others, Until the Internet came along I knew of no way to become in touch with anyone as I only knew him as Sgt..Hanks with no address or first name but he was a brave and fine man who cared about his men."