Published July 29, 2012
By Joseph Newkirk
As an agreement was
being signed on July 27, 1953, for a ceasefire in the Korean War, a lone Marine
bugler played taps at 2200 hours (10 p.m.) at the United Nations Truce Camp in
Panmunjom, Korea. U.S. Marine Sgt. Robert Ericson, a native of Quincy, was known
forever after as the war’s “ceasefire bugler.”
Ericson had been playing the bugle since the age of 11, when he became a member
of the Drum and Bugle Corps of Quincy’s American Legion Post 37. It was a
fortuitous association, placing him among young men of the nation’s best
drilled corps. In 1946, he was with the Quincy Corps when it earned a national
champion title in San Francisco. Ericson and his musical mates returned home to
Quincy and were greeted by thousands of proud and cheering neighbors.
A year earlier, during a manpower shortage caused by World War II, Ericson had
detasselled corn alongside German prisoners of war, who were held at Camp Ellis
near Peoria. The war in Korea was on the distant horizon. After joining the
Marines in 1950 and completing basic training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., he was
named 1st Service Battalion Bugler in the 1st Marine Division.
In 1948, Korea was divided at the 38th Parallel with a communist government in
the north and the People’s Republic in the south. On June 25, 1950, North Korea
invaded its southern neighbor and U.S. President Harry Truman, without waiting
for congressional approval, deployed American troops.
Fought by U.S. and U.N. forces to stop the spread of communism in Southeast
Asia, the war cost 5 million military and civilian lives. About 40,000
Americans were killed and 100,000 wounded. The war ended in a stalemate, and
Korea remains divided to this day.
In 1952, Ericson was ordered to Korea. Peace negotiations began soon after the
war started but were held up for two years by politics that were as mean and
vicious as the fighting.
Ericson reflects on this dismal interlude. “Negotiations took place in a tent
and were made difficult by the Koreans, who cut legs off of the chairs to sit
taller than U.N. representatives; they also cut bases off of American flags.
During this two-year charade, most of the casualties and fatalities of the war
took place. South Korean President Sigmond Ree tried to destroy the cease-fire
by releasing 20,000 North Korean POWs, but they were so tired of war they
disappeared into the population rather than fight.”
After the truce was signed, an exchange of sick and wounded prisoners took
place with the Koreans. Ericson was assigned to Freedom Village — where doctors
and nurses received infirm soldiers — and played daily military bugle calls for
the camp.
Ericson’s efforts were well-remembered and honored. In 1995, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan appointed him to a commission to design, build and dedicate the
National Korean War Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and was named the
official bugler at the dedication ceremony.
Ericson, his wife, Gladys, and about 20 local Korean War veterans took a train
to Washington for the ceremony, whereabout 200,000 veterans had
gathered. During the practice session for the program (involving
an 80-piece symphony orchestra and an elaborately lighted stage), a
spotlight shone on Robert Ericson as he played taps and
then held the last note until fading into the orchestra’s rendition
of “America the Beautiful.”
Ericson gradually muted his bugle and
waited for the song to begin, but as he looked down for a cue from
the orchestra the
musicians gave him a standing ovation.
Ericson has played at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National
Cemetery in Washington, the dedication of the Illinois Korean War Memorial at
Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, the Korean War Memorial at the Illinois
Veterans Home in Quincy, the burial of the last known Civil War veteran in
Memphis, Mo., and several international memorial programs. He became director
of the same drum and bugle corps in which he had played in Quincy as a youth
and was an officer in the Marine Corps League and the Korean War Veterans.
In 2003, the Korean government invited Ericson to play at the 50th anniversary
of the war’s cease-fire, and during this time the Norwegian Embassy learned
about the “cease-fire bugler” and invited him to play in that country.
After a limousine ride to the Norwegian Memorial courtesy of the government,
his performance, together with a half-page photograph, was featured in a
prominent national magazine.
Ericson was born on Aug. 22, 1930, and except for three years in the Marine
Corps, has lived in Quincy all of his life. His father was a World War I
veteran who later became a postal worker. In 1948, Ericson married Gladys
Holtschlag, and after his discharge on Jan. 4, 1954, accepted a job offer from
his father-in-law, the owner of Holtschlag Florist. For the first eight years
of his 35-year career, he worked in the greenhouse as a grower, learning this
trade on the job and by using the G.I. Bill for specialized horticultural
training. He then became a floral designer and in 1969 was named Designer of
the Year at the National FTD Convention.
After contracting rheumatoid arthritis, Ericson reached a point in 1989 when he
could no longer stand for long periods of time and accepted a job as Veterans
Service Officer for the Illinois Disabled Veterans of America at the Illinois
Veterans Home. In that position, he helped veterans receive benefits and
medical aid and directed them to VA programs and agencies. Ericson
now lives at the Veterans Home himself and has come full circle: His first
public bugle performance was in Lippincott Hall at the Home on Armistice Day
(now Veterans Day) of 1941, 26 days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
His hands and fingers bent by arthritis, Ericson just last Friday held his
gleaming bugle to his lips at the Korean War Memorial at the Veterans Home. And once again, he played the same familiar bars he did on the same date
59 years earlier, Ericson’s music that signaled the end to the Korean War.
Ericson’s most poignant performances, though, have been private ones. He has
played taps for 69 years at nearly 7,000 funerals of American veterans. It is a
gesture of gratitude to those who have served in their nation’s uniform as they
enter the hereafter on the notes of a lone Marine bugler bestowing a final
elegy.
Joseph Newkirk is a local writer and photographer. He has written for the
Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project and the Illinois Veterans Home
magazine “Bugle” for the past 19 years and published essays, poetry, travel
stories, and biographies in literary magazines and journals.
Sources
Blair, Clay. The
Forgotten War: America in Korea 1950-1953. New York: Times Books, 1987.
Catchpole, Brian. The
Korean War: 1950-53. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Ericson, Robert H.
“Korean War Truce Bugler.” The Graybeards (The Korean War Veterans
Association, pub.), Vol. 17, No. 4: July-August 2003, p.42.
Genosky, Rev. Landry
O.F.M., ed. People’s History of Quincy and Adams County, Illinois: A
Sesquicentennial History. Quincy, Illinois: Jost & Kiefer Printing Co.,
1974.
“Quincyan plays
taps at D.C.” Quincy Herald-Whig, July 28, 1995.
“Spurrier, Ericson
to be honored May 20 for 50 years as Lions.” Quincy Herald-Whig. May 26,
2012.
Stueck, William. The
Korean War: An International History. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University
Press, 1995.
