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The last of them
Members of the H&H Last Man’s Club, from left, Charlie Ciesman, George Seim and Vernon Kumerow raise a toast at the 69th and final meeting of the group at the Lowell Inn in Stillwater on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. The men, all in their early 90s, are among a handful remaining of the 153 Stillwater-area veterans who started the club after their service in the Korean War. John Autey / Pioneer Press
Last meeting of Stillwater’s Korean War Last Man’s Club marks end of an era
BY MARY DIVINE | Pioneer Press
It’s been almost 72 years since Gus MacDonald and Charles Ciesman left the Stillwater Armory on a bitter-cold January day and marched down the hill to the train depot to board a Rock Island Line train.
The members of the Minnesota National Guard’s Headquarters Company First Battalion and Heavy Mortar Company, both of the 135th Infantry, had been called up to serve in Korea, but first had to report for training at Camp Rucker in Alabama.
“Remember when we got off the train in Alabama? Do you remember what the band was playing?” Ciesman, 90, asked MacDonald, 91, during the annual meeting of the H & H Last Man’s Club on Thursday at the Lowell Inn Event Center in Stillwater. MacDonald said he couldn’t recall.
“They were playing ‘I Wish I Was in Dixie,’ ” Ciesman said. “We didn’t wish we were there. We wished we were back in Minnesota.”
MacDonald and Ciesman were among the 153 young men from Stillwater who fought in the Korean War. When they returned, they formed the H & H Last Man’s Club — which stood for “Headquarters” and “Heavy.”
Now, eight members remain. Six were able to attend the 69th reunion on Thursday, Oct. 13 — the group’s last official gathering.
“It’s the end of a tradition,” said Retired Major Gen. Lyle Doerr, who lives in Stillwater. “It’s amazing that it has continued for as long as it has. I’m one of the youngest, and I’m 90. We decided this would be a good time to close it out.”
Tradition dates to 1886
The men who met on Thursday were continuing a tradition that began
in Stillwater in 1886 on the 25th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run. Survivors of Company B of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment formed a “Last Man’s Club” that resolved to meet annually until all 34 Civil War veterans had passed away. It is believed to be the first military Last Man organization in the United States, said Jack Johnson, a local military historian who helped organize Thursday’s event.
The “last man” was charged with drinking a toast to his departed comrades. Charles Lockwood earned that honor in 1930.
The reunion on Thursday followed the same format as those Civil War reunions: socializing, a meal, a speaker and a ritual of remembrance for those deceased.
A group of World War I veterans from Stillwater in 1932 formed the Last Buddies Bully Beef Club, another Last Man organization. That group’s “last man” was Frank Manning, a former typesetter for the Stillwater Gazette, who died in 1998 at the age of 101.
The father of George Seim Jr., a member of the H & H Last Man’s Club, was a member of the Last Buddies Bully Beef Club, which was named for the canned rationed beef the soldiers received. “They always brought a can with them to their reunions, but nobody ate it,” said Seim, 92, of Oakdale.
During World War II, Stillwater’s two National Guard companies — Company A and Company D of the First Battalion, 135th Infantry — fought together in North Africa and Italy with the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division. A year after returning home, they formed the A & D Last Man’s Club, with 180 members.
As those numbers dwindled, they joined forces with the H & H Last Man’s Club to hold joint reunions. Jean DeCurtins, the last surviving member of the A & D Last Man’s Club, died in 2019 at 100.
Memories of war
Talk at that Thursday reunion — the first since 2019 — inevitably turned to who would be the H & H Last Man’s Club’s last man and what honor he would receive. Vernon Kumerow and Roger Kuhn joined Seim, Ciesman, MacDonald and Doerr at the head table; Kenneth Streiff and Ralph Utecht could not attend due to poor health.
“Nobody knows who’s going to be the last man,” Seim said. “It’s one day at a time.”
Doerr said he doubts there will be another Last Man’s group formed in Stillwater.
“We haven’t had a new war,” he said. “The way things are now, people serve but not in the units like they did, beginning with the Civil War, where most of the people in the unit were from the same hometown. That made a difference. When they came home, they came home to the town that they had started from.”
Most of the men still live within a few miles of the old Armory in downtown Stillwater.
The exception was Kuhn, 92, who lives in Brainerd. He was 20 years old when he arrived in Korea. “I started at Pusan (now Busan) and went up the whole peninsula to the replacement depot in Seoul,” he said. “I was a company clerk. I could type. That saved my life. I didn’t have to shoulder a rifle.”
Korea was a desolate place, Kuhn said, and one of his daily tasks involved contacting every battalion and compiling a list of all the soldiers who had died that day.
One of his most vivid memories was watching a North Korean man surrender. “He’d floated down the Imjin River all by himself,” he said.
One of Kuhn’s friends died in Korea, but he wasn’t a member of the H & H Last Man’s Club, Kuhn said. Roland “Rollie” Palm, a corporal with Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 135th Infantry, was going to school in Winona at the time, so he was in the Winona National Guard unit, he said.
“I’m glad to have been a part of it,” Kuhn said. “It’s amazing to think it went all the way back to the Civil War and continued on all the way up the line. Look at all the sacrifices that were made. Most of the officers in the Guard were World War II officers, and my God, they went through hell. They went to Italy. The 34th Division. It was brutal, just brutal.”
Deb Field, of Irvington, N.Y., flew in for the event. Her father, John Ulrich, who died in 2008 at the age of 77, never missed a reunion.
“There were few events that he never missed: a (Stillwater High School) Ponies home football game, marching with the Stillwater veterans on Memorial Day and going to the H & H reunion,” she said.
‘No veteran … overlooked’
Lt. Gen. Richard Nash, the featured speaker at the event, said the veterans of the Korean War did not return home to parades, like WWII veterans, or protests, like Vietnam veterans.
“Among many Americans, tired of war, there was and seemed a desire to forget and move on,” Nash said. “As one veteran said, ‘We just came home and took off our uniforms and went to work.’ ”
But, Nash told those gathered, “no war should ever be forgotten, and no veteran should ever be overlooked.”
“Each of you served our nation with incredible courage and commitment,” he said. “You left your homes, your families and you risked your lives in what often has been called the
forgotten war. Today we all want you to know this: We remember. We remember your courage. We remember your sacrifice. The legacy of your service lives on in a free and prosperous Republic of Korea.”
The men used to light a candle for each of the fallen, but they had to set that ritual aside years ago when the number of candles became a fire hazard. On Oct. 13, one candle in a wooden holder represented all the members who have died.
At the close of the meeting Thursday, the members toasted one another and then stood and faced west — just as they had for the 68 other times.
Chaplain and retired Col. John Morris read the last few stanzas of the poem “The Last Survivor.” It was written by Henry Hayden in 1887 for the Civil War Last Man’s Club.
It ends with this salute:
Bugler Wesley Balsimo, a senior at Stillwater Area High School, played Taps, and the last candle was blown out on the last gathering of a Last Man’s Club in Stillwater.
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