Dorothy Henninger and Bill Jr. look at a photo of Bill Henninger in this front page posed photo for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It had just been learned that Bill Henninger had survived a massacre in North Korea in 1950.

By Al Zdon

The Sunchon Tunnel Massacre is one of the major atrocities that came out of the Korean War.
The North Korean Army, at that time in a desperate retreat, took a group of  American prisoners and gunned them down in October of 1950. Only a handful survived and managed to make it back to friendly lines.
Bill Henninger was one of them.

William Henninger was born in 1924 on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul. His parents moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, soon after where his father found work as a postman. When Henninger's mother died in 1930, the family returned home and the three Henninger children were cared for by their grandmother.
"I was only six years old, and I'd lost my mother. Plus, I had my little sister and brother to watch over," Henninger said.
The grandmother raised the family while the father traveled the country trying to make a living. "He was working out in Arizona at a gold mine. Not that he ever brought any home."
When Bill was 10, his father remarried and the family moved back in with him. Henninger graduated from Minneapolis Marshall High School in 1942, and was drafted into the Army in 1943.
He trained at Camp Cambell, Kentucky, learning how to drive a tank and a motorcycle. The Army also called upon his talent as a bugler, a skill he had learned in high school.

Henninger was shipped overseas to Wells, England, where he spent time in a replacement depot. "Every night, the Jerries would come over, and the sirens would go off, and they'd send us back to our tents."
Eventually,  he joined the 95th Division in France and was with the division as it pushed into Germany. The division fought a major battle at Saarlautern.
"That was a long time ago, and I can't remember all of it anymore."
One thing Henninger does remember is that "I did a lot of stupid things."
"We were cleaning up one town, when we started catching a lot of fire from a barn. I had a bazooka at that time, but my squadron leader took it away from me. I had training on it, but he didn't. All he did was use up all my ammo. I wasn't going to stay there and be pinned down, so I went straight toward the barn, through a wire fence.
"When I got to the side of the barn I turned around and yelled, 'C'mon, C'mon. I'm over here, now you've got to get over here. They came after me."
With the new barrage of American fire, the Germans scattered. "They just got the hell out of there."
Afterwards, his comrades told Henninger what they thought of his heroics. "They called me stupid, plus they had a bunch of choicer words."
When the war in Europe ended, the 95th was one of the first divisions sent home, although there were plans to use the division in Japan if the war in the Pacific continued.
"They sent us to Camp Lucky Strike, and we got out of there in quality time. We arrived back in the United States at Boston." Henninger arrived at Fort Snelling on July 4, 1945. 
He spent the next few years driving a truck for several companies. Henninger joined the Navy reserve for a time to earn a few extra dollars from attending weekends. "I'd have to borrow a uniform for the meetings." 
In the late 40s, Henninger had enough of civilian life. "I just said, oh hell, I'll just go back into the service. There were no wars at the time."
He went to basic at Fort Knox, and then did training as a mechanic for the motor pool. His next assignment was in Nevada.
"They were doing all that atomic bomb testing, but my job was as an MP. I'd go into town every night, and if someone got in trouble I'd put them in the back seat and take them to their company commander.
"But they did give anybody who wanted to a chance to see the atomic bomb. I don't know how far away I was, but I learned later it was about a mile. They told us we'd feel a rush of hot air, and that whatever we did, don't open our eyes."
A plane came overhead. "He dropped it in the right place, but it wasn't what I expected. I had seen bigger explosions in basic training. But then we could feel the heat. They kept telling us not to look, but, of course, we snuck a peek. It was a mushroom cloud."
Henninger had had enough of being guinea pig, and went back to his MP duties.
Henninger's next tour of duty in April 1949 was with the 34th Regiment of the 24th Division which was part of  occupation force in southern Japan. It wasn't long after that when the North Korean Army crossed the 38th Parallel and tried to push the South Koreans into the sea.
"The sergeants came in and told us that we were going to war now. The younger guys in our outfit said to me, 'We'll stick with you. You know what war is all about.'"
Henninger's job at this point was as an infantryman, but he also did work as a radio operator and he would carry part of a mortar. "It was the big mortar with the big barrel, and I had to carry that damn thing."
The 24th Division landed on the Pusan Peninsula on July 2, 1950. Two days later, they were in combat.
With the 24th Division as a key element, the U.S. and UN forces turned the tide of the battle and began pushing the North Koreans north. Outside Taejon, Henninger was hit by shrapnel. He used tobacco from cigarettes to make a polstice, and later pulled six pieces of metal out of his arm.
Later, outside Taejon, south of the Korean capital of Seoul, Henninger's luck ran out.
"We were out on the perimeter keeping track of the South Korean civilians coming and going. The guy I was with went back down to get things a couple of times. The third time he did it, he didn't come back.
"I was by myself, and I was caught by the guerillas. I was hiding behind a pile of railroad ties, and they caught me there."
Henninger's treatment at first was not bad. He was brought back to a village, and was kept captive at the mayor's house. "We had rice soup and that tasted pretty good. We also got rice balls twice a day."
Along the way, a North Korean soldier came up to Henninger and demanded his wedding ring. "I wouldn't give it up, and he threatened me with his gun. I told him what he could do with his gun. He put it right up to my head and was about to pull the trigger when someone intervened. They did take my shoes."
The men were marched up to Seoul, which was then held by the North Koreans. Henninger recalls the date of Sept. 17 as being in the former capital. Still the treatment was somewhat humane. "At least they were feeding us every day."
By the end of the march, though, Henninger could hardly walk anymore and had to be helped by other GIs.
After a stay in Seoul, the next leg of Henninger's journey was the infamous Seoul-Pyongyang death march. The American prisoners were already weak from lack of food and water and medical care, and many died along the way.
The guards on the march from Taejon had been Korean civilians, but the guards on the new march were North Korean soldiers. The brutality increased.
The men, already in terrible physical condition, weakened more. Henninger by this time had lost over 100 lbs. in less than four months. Many men died along the way, and more were shot by the guards.
"After Pyongyang, they put us on a train." The train consisted of open flat cars, and the Americans were freezing from the exposure. On Oct. 20, after several days on the cars, the train pulled into a tunnel north of Sunchon to protect the rolling stock from American aircraft attacks. By this time, the North Koreans were in full flight, heading for the Manchurian border.

Henninger remembers a colonel in their group went out to get a bucket of water because the prisoners were literally dying of thirst.
"It was just getting dark when they took us out." The North Korean guards took the prisoners in three groups of 30 or so to nearby ravines, promising that they would feed them at a nearby house. The guards carried Russian-made burp guns. When they got to the ravine, the men stood or sat down with their bowls waiting for food.
The North Koreans opened up from a distance of about 25 feet.
"I was the first one down. I wasn't hit, but I figured I had to use my wits. With the first shot, I knew it wasn't right. When that first round went off, I was down.
"I was fortunate that the guy next to me fell right on top of me. He was hit, and he had blood all over his chest. I just lay there, and I could feel the bullets. Some of them went right through my hair. Other bullets went through my clothes.
"When they started shooting, it was almost dark. When they quit, it was completely dark.
"I just laid there, not moving a muscle. Then somebody crawled right over me. I waited to see if he'd get shot, and when he didn't, I thought I'd take my chances."
One by one, the American survivors crawled out of the mass of bodies and gathered in some nearby bushes. Four in Henninger's group were wounded. Two, including Henninger, were untouched.
Of the group of 30 or so, six were still alive.
"We checked each other out, trying to see who was hit and who wasn't." The men worked their way out into a nearby field and built themselves a little structure out of corn shocks. "We made a shack there, and stayed all night. I slept good there. It was warm for a change."

The next day they set out for what they hoped were friendly lines. "We just went the best we could remember." A soldier named Jim Yeager took the lead, and Henninger was the last in line.
"It was my job to take care if anybody was falling behind. I told them we'd have to leave them behind if they couldn't make it, but, of course, we wouldn't. But we kept the wounded going."
During the day, the men received food from local civilians.
Yeager crept to the top of a hill and looked down and saw trucks below. After a while he was able to determine that the flags they flew were for the Republic of Korea, the South Korean allies.
The prisoners were approached by a man who turned out to be an American general. They tried to salute, but the General told them to relax.
The prisoners were helped down the hill, one soldier on each side, keeping them erect.
The five men rescued with Henninger were John Toney of Kirksville, Mo., Max Reid of Winnsboro, Tex., Roy Sutherland of Cameron, West Virginia, James Yeager of Grand Junction, Colorado, and Raymond Rindells of Shell Rock, Iowa.
Of the 91 men who went out to the ravines, 23 survived the massacre. More than 100 prisoners were still on the train which moved out of the tunnel and was later attacked by American planes. The train was hit by rockets, killing many of the POWs, and those who tried to escape were shot down by North Korean machine gunners. Again, only a handful survived.
A reporter for Association Press, Don Whitehead, was one of the first Americans on the scene at the Sunchon Tunnel. He had also covered World War II. "The slaughter of the American prisoners was equal to anything I saw at Buchenwald."
The dead were found in four groups near or in the tunnel. Two groups of about 15-20 each were found where they had been shot. A third group was found in a ditch where they had been piled up and covered with a thin layer of dirt. There were 30 in this group. Seven more were found in the tunnel, and they had not been shot. They were dead of starvation.
When Whitehead discovered a prison alive near the tunnel, the prisoner said to him, "Oh thank God. Thank God. We've been waiting for you guys for so long. They shot us all."
Henninger has spotty memories of the days that followed. He remembers a general providing them with a big box of candy. "He knew we were hungry. We had lost a hell of a lot of weight." Henninger had weighed 185 lbs. when the 24th Division left Japan. He now weighed 75 lbs.
The general was probably Brig. Gen. Frank Allen, a public relations officer who was taking reporters around the area after the Army had heard rumors of the massacre.
The survivors were loaded on trucks and taken to a nearby airport where they used parachutes for blankets. "They also gave us some chicken soup."
The next stop was a hospital near Tokyo. Before they left Korea, Henninger was asked to give up his coat. "They gave it to some South Korean soldier." At the hospital, the first item of business was to try and separate the men from their fleas and lice.
Back home, first word reached the United States through Whitehead's story on Oct. 23, 1950 – three days after the massacre. The relatives of most of the prisoners had been told in July that their soldiers were missing in action and had not heard a word since.
Dorothy Henninger was interviewed in a story that covered the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She told the local reporter, "God has been kind to us. If my heart could be as big as I am happy, it would fill this room."
Henninger arrived back in the United States on Nov. 11, Armistice Day. Shortly thereafter, he was home in St. Paul. Dorothy remembers he still had fleas on his body.
Bill and Dorothy were divorced in 1964. Bill remarried, became a widower, and then remarried Dorothy in 1997. They make their home in Hastings.
As of this writing, Henninger, 87, is in a nursing facility in Cannon Falls recovering from a fall. "I'm not at the top of the hill, but I'm not at the bottom either."

 

Bill Henninger in uniform.

Bill Henninger today.