Home Front: Mike Korger

I was in a long time, so if anything that was going to happen, we were always locked on base, and if you needed to ship out, they just shipped you out.

“Mom worked part-time like at Figi’s, and my dad worked for Midwest Breeders, artificial insemination for cows, so he was out at the farms a lot,” Korger recalled.

“That’s how I learned how to drive. Drive him around for 100-150 miles a day.”
When Korger joined the service during the Vietnam War, he left behind his family and a girlfriend.

He enlisted in the Army for three years, and then the Army Reserve for another 10 years and then the Air Force Reserve for 22 years.

In the Army, Korger received specialized training as a recovery specialist.
“Basically, you drive a tracked vehicle or a large wrecker and retrieve any equipment that’s down or blown up. I was always a mechanic, you know, even though you’re a recovery specialist, you also worked as a mechanic. And so then when I went into the Army Reserve, it was a — wheel mechanic — it just crossed right over. And then the Air Force also went into wheel mechanics, and then became superintendent of vehicle maintenance at the base,” he explained.

Korger recalled his basic training in Missouri as “always cold in the morning, even though it was Missouri, and then hot during the day. And because you have regulations, everybody had to be the same — you couldn’t wear a field coat, and you always had to have your sleeves rolled up — so, basically, you froze in the morning, and you sweated at night.”

Korger said that he enjoyed shooting the M16 during the Army’s basic training.
“In the Army Reserve, we were able to shoot at remote-controlled airplanes,” he said. “On full automatic, so you got 200 rounds and then with tracers and stuff you tried to knock this thing out of the sky.”

After the Army’s basic training, Korger was assigned to the infantry unit.
“Fort Carson, Colo. I stayed there from January 1973 to August 1975. They messed up my orders, so I never went to Germany. I was supposed to go, but it never happened,” he added.

As a recovery specialist, Korger said that he “learned how to rig up pulleys and ropes and cables to pull equipment out.

“They go out, and they take a Jeep or something, run it out into the mud and you had to be the one to go out there and walk through the mud and stuff to get to it. Sometimes up to your knees, and hook up to it and pull it back. I mean, it was fun, if you don’t mind getting dirty,” he said.

“I wasn’t promoted that much, only E-4. When I got into the Army Reserve, I went to E-5, and then in the Air Force Reserve, I went all the way up to E-8. And like I said, I was a superintendent of the base for vehicle maintenance; so, I had 24 mechanics that worked for me, and my job at the end was when we were closing the base, so I had to find places for them to go, or they got out.”

“But then as time goes on, your buddies, they’re family, you know. Everybody becomes a family then,” he added.

Though he avoided going overseas during the Vietnam War, conflicts were never far from reach during his time in service.

“I was in a long time, so if anything that was going to happen, we were always locked on base, and if you needed to ship out, they just shipped you out. At one time, we were supposed to go to Wounded Knee in 1975, during the uprising, because we were Fourth Infantry. And so they were going to send us there, but they stopped. And during the Gulf War, basically we had to have everything ready to go because you had four days’ notice and you had to ship out. I supported the war with Kosovo and Bosnia. Operation Just Cause in Panama, I was at the end of that,” Korger recalled.

Toward the end of Korger’s service, the Air Force base in Milwaukee closed following the Base Realignment and Closure process.

“They were actually moved to Pope Air Force Base (North Carolina), so we had to move all of our equipment out, either ship it to Pope or to other bases and stuff. And so, myself and two other reservists — the final reservists that were still on base — we closed it up on December 31, 2007. And that was the end. All the rest of the people were gone in October. There were still civilians there, but we were the last reservists, traditional reservists,” he explained.

“I had one week, and then I started school at Mid-State Tech in Rapids. And so really, I went from military active duty to school and then went to work right away.”

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Joren Anderson and the students of Auburndale High School for making these veterans columns possible.