Legends of Indiana Post 452

John Klump, Raymond Hemke, and brothers Harry and Raymond Schaefer returned from World War II to their small town of New Alsace, Ind. While they shared different experiences during their tours of duty, they formed a life-long brotherhood.

That brotherhood was born at American Legion Post 452 in New Alsace where the four veterans are the last living original charter members.

Combined, they share more than 280 years of Hoosier Legionnaire experience. They are all still active in their post. These are their stories:

John Klump, Army, 1944-1946, Infantryman

Klump was born in his father’s tavern in New Alsace. The bar - Klump’s - had been opened by his father in 1914. His father was also a corn and bean farmer. Klump, the youngest of nine children, knew his elder brothers would eventually run the farm so he volunteered for the draft.

He was drafted into the U.S. Army two weeks after graduating high school in 1944, trained as an infantryman in the 24th Infantry Division and deployed to the Philippines.

Klump soon found himself in the heat of action. His unit spearheaded the invasion of Leyte for the 38th Infantry Division, headquartered in Indianapolis. He charged the beaches on Mindoro and again on Luzon from amphibious landing craft, wading through chest deep water. He fought in the bloody week-long battle of Zig-Zag Pass. His unit endured the jungle terrain laced with trip wire booby traps and ambushes around every corner. More than 2,400 of roughly 2,800 Japanese dug-in at Zig-Zag were killed – only 25 surrendered and were taken prisoner. Attrition was staggering. Klump earned technical sergeant, sergeant first class today, with just under two years of service in the Army.

His unit liberated allied POWs from the Bataan Death March from a camp in Mindanao. They were defending the airfield there when his company was assaulted by 200 Japanese on a Banzai charge. They fought through the night. At one point, a Japanese 172mm mortar landed 10 meters from his position.

“It’s either your time or it isn’t,” Klump said. “Somebody up there must have thought it wasn’t my time.” Klump fought back the enemy from close quarters. “It’s really unbelievable when you look back on it,” Klump said. “There are things you can’t even describe. I came out of there looking like a skeleton, you could count every bone on my body. Being a 19-year-old kid fighting through the jungle while carrying 80 pounds of gear will wear on you.”

The fighting dragged on day after day. The odds caught up with Klump fighting on a hill one day in Mindanao. You could say he got lucky, or that his luck ran out, depending on how you look at it. He was wounded when the BAR gunner directly in front of him took a Japanese grenade. Klump caught the man in his arms as he fell.

With the BAR gunner dead, Klump was caught alone with his lead scout, the rest of his platoon to the rear. They took cover in adjacent ditches on either side of the road.

“You could see the machine gun fire hitting the road between the ditches,” Klump said. “The scout yelled to me to ‘run for 12 seconds and fall into the next ditch for cover.’ We ran ditch to ditch.”

They bounded back to their platoon under Japanese machine gun and mortar fire.

“When we got back down I noticed a younger guy holding his arm where it had been completely shot off,” Klump said. “I grabbed him and brought him to the medics.”

In all the adrenaline of the fight, Klump didn’t realize he was also hit.

He spent the evening in a foxhole. He slept solid through the night, exhausted after several days of heavy fighting. He awoke to find his leg had swollen so bad he couldn’t walk. It was then he realized he’d taken shrapnel from the enemy grenade that took the BAR gunner’s life.

After recovering and receiving the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his actions, he returned to the front line with shrapnel still embedded in his leg.

In all he spent a week shy of two years in the Army retaining the rank of technical sergeant. He wears shrapnel in his leg to this day, a reminder of the struggle he and hundreds of thousands of allied forces endured in the Philippines.

Klump picked up and carried on with his life after returning home from war. He and 24 other fellow veterans chartered New Alsace Post 452. He worked for his brothers on the family farm and in his family tavern.

One evening while tending bar he met his wife of 67 years. He and his wife have eight grandkids and three great-grandkids. He built a career for himself working 35 years as a dye maker at the Fisher Body plant, now General Motors, in Hamilton, Ohio.

Klump’s Bar stayed in the family until 1992. Under new management, the bar is still serving loyal customers today under the original name Klump’s and is somewhat of a landmark in the community.

Raymond Hemke, Army, 1942-1945, Radio Mechanic

Hemke was born in Weisberg, Ind., in 1922. He studied printing mechanics before he was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1942. He attended basic training in sunny Miami and technical school in Sioux Falls, S.D.

“We went from Miami Beach to 40-below outside,” Hemke said, laughing.

Luckily for Hemke, his schooling prior to the military earned him a spot as a radio mechanic. He was selected for the specialty school and moved out for advanced training to Scott Field, Ill.

Again fate smiled on Hemke. Three days before his unit was due to deploy, a group of officers came and selected 40 soldiers of his unit to participate in an important mission. “We were all sworn to keep a top secret clearance,” he said. “They rushed us out of there and put us up in the Lincoln Hotel in Asheville, N.C. We were living high on the hog!”

Hemke was chosen to become a radio mechanic on a cutting-edge telecommunications device. During World War II, the U.S. War Department needed a way to effectively communicate with its commanders on the other side of the globe. A new version of Radio Teletype was the answer. Essentially, the system allowed operators to bounce radio frequencies off of the atmosphere to send signals around the curvature of the earth. This top secret system allowed allied forces to communicate messages globally and faster than ever.

“There was no garbling, no room for error,” Hemke said. “One miscalculation could throw the whole thing off. This was before satellites.”

From Asheville he sailed for a month to Bombay, India, via an ocean liner. Tragedy struck when they finally berthed at Bombay. The freighter SS Fort Stikine, carrying ammunition and 1,400 tons of explosives, caught fire and detonated. The explosion sank 13 nearby ships and killed hundreds of people.

“People here in the U.S. never heard about what happened there in Bombay,” Hemke said. “We were put on body collection. The Bombay civilians abandoned the town. We cleaned up and moved out.” Afterward, the U.S. Pentagon communicated top secret messages with Hemke’s unit by bouncing radio waves toward the West Coast, across the Pacific and into India. Their first transmissions were orders for the 20th Bomber Group. “We relayed the messages over the ‘hump’ to bomb Japan,” Hemke said, referring to the Himalayas.

They relayed the orders to Doolittle’s historic Tokyo Raid, the first bombing run on Japanese mainland and retaliation for Pearl Harbor. After the war, Hemke went back to school and took up a trade in the printing business. He retired after 50 years working at the Lawrenceburg Register and the Harold Tribune in Batesville, Ind.

“Our little post has grown over the years,” he said. Hemke has held every office at Post 452. “We need to remember to keep our focus on the good of the Legion, and not on ourselves.”

Harry Schaefer, Army, 1945, Infantry

Harry was born in New Alsace in 1924. He was raised with his 10 brothers, including Raymond, and two sisters on a 170-acre farm. Seven of his brothers served in some capacity; he was drafted in 1945. He reported to Fort McClellan, Ala., and deployed to the Philippines.

“When I got there the war was over,” Harry said. “I reported to a replacement depot. They promoted me up from corporal through technical sergeant. That’s the way it was then.”

Harry, who was acting first sergeant, and his company processed troops redeploying home from the Philippines. He returned to the states by way of Fort Ord, Calif., in 1946. He took a four-day train ride to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis where he was discharged.

Back home, Harry went to work for the Fisher Body Automobile Plant. He left after a year and bought a grocery store in Weisberg, Ind., with a fellow Post 452 member.

Harry met his wife at a town dance and married her in 1948; they were married for 55 years before she passed away. He has two daughters, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He worked 32 years at his grocery store before retiring in 1980.

Raymond Schaefer, Navy, 1945-1946, Ordnance Specialist

Raymond was born in New Alsace, Ind., in 1925 and was drafted into the U.S. Navy in 1945 as an ordnance handler. He was stationed at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hastings, Neb., a boomtown created by the war effort.

The depot was strategically placed there in the center of the United States to deliver ammunition to both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. They produced 40 percent of the rockets, bombs, mines and torpedo warheads used by the Navy and Marine Corps.

Though he never left the United States, Raymond's job was not without its dangers. Less than a year before he was stationed in Hastings, more than a million pounds of TNT exploded there. The enormous blast sent a shockwave that could be felt more than 30 miles away.

Raymond was discharged and returned to Indiana in 1946.

He was married and has three girls and one boy. He drove a semitrailer, hauling liquid fuel, for several companies before retiring.

Today

Once back home in Indiana, the men knew they weren’t alone. They found brotherhood with their fellow veterans; they found a way to continue serving.

Post 452 started from humble beginnings. The men spent years meeting in the basement of the town school before purchasing four acres from John Klump’s family farm. Hemke, Klump, the Schaefer brothers and other members of Post 452 literally and figuratively laid the foundation of the brick and mortar post that stands today. They built the post from the ground up, cutting boards, framing the building, tacking down the roof, etc.

The World War II-era Legionnaires hosted baseball leagues, sponsored Boy Scout troops and held cookouts to support their local community whenever they could.

“We couldn’t be prouder of these guys,” said Post 452 Commander Lawrence Hoffbauer after honoring all four members with 70-year member plaques during a recent ceremony at the post. “They’re truly like legends around here.”