Jeanne Sexton-Brown
Ernest “Ernie” Hoelscher, 95 is a Korean Combat Veteran living at the North Dakota Veterans Home in Lisbon.
Hoelscher served in the Army, 7th Division, 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea for the last 14 and a half months of the war. He was a combat soldier on the front lines.
“All of us seasoned front line combat Veterans were due to invade China, but the war ended the day before we were to go in,” said Ernie.
He arrived in Korea with forty men he trained with. They were sent to an outpost on the front lines. The morning of the third day there were only three of them left alive. One was Ernie.
The Chinese sent about 1,000 troops over the hill to attack their position.
“We threw everything we had at them,” said Ernie. “We hit them with napalm, just about everything there was. In the morning the bodies were two and three deep.”
Ernie said they called in big trucks to haul off the bodies.
“Once we got the bodies loaded,” said Ernie, “we had to climb up on top of the pile and ride up there to the ditch where we threw the bodies in like so much garbage.”
Ernie was there for 14 and a half months. He had three baths the entire time he was there. He never slept in a bed or a cot.
“We were like machines,” said Ernie.
“After a while, I learned if I propped my gun up just right, I could sleep standing up,” said Ernie with a chuckle.
Ernie fired his rifle one night so much he burned the rifling out.
“I went to my commander and told him, ‘I burned up my gun, you have to send me home now.’, Remembered Ernie. “He told me it didn’t work that way. He gave me another gun and sent me back to the front.”
His commander was an Airborne Ranger whose motto was: ‘You don’t run, you stand and fight.’
Ernie took four bullets in the back.
“They poured iodine on it, packed it with gauze and sent me back to battle,” said Ernie. “I spit those bullets up after I got back home.”
On a recent visit to the Veterans Hospital in Fargo, he discovered that he had fluid building up in one of those old wounds, pressing on his lungs making breathing difficult. The fluid they drained had cancer cells in it, according to Ernie.
“I was knocked out four times,” said Ernie. “Big shells came in; one blew me into the air. I came down unconscious. The medic turned me over, got me breathing again and said, ’I thought you went to hell that time, Hoelscher’.”
According to Ernie, the Chinese would shell that hill for two and a half hours a day for 20 days straight.
“When it finally stopped your head would hurt,” said Ernie.
“War changes you,” said Hoelscher in a recent interview with the Gazette. “I was married when I went to Korea. But when I came home, I was a different man. My wife, Shirley, just couldn’t get it. After some really hard fights, I told her I was going to get my 22 and go for a walk. Something clicked that time and she ‘got it’. We were married for 73 years.”
Shirley died March 19, 2023.
He and Shirley had four children, three boys and a girl. Wayne lives in Surrey, Ken lives in Oakes, Bruce is the youngest and lives on the home farm in rural Berthold. Their daughter Sherry Hoelscher Bauer, died of cancer May 13, 2023, just two months after her mother.
Hoelscher was a farmer in the northwestern part of the state. He had a team of horses that were a cross between Belgian draft horse and quarter horse. They were named Pete and Poncho.
He did a lot of farming with horses ‘back in the day’ according to his friend Phil Newman, rural Minot.
“Ernie was big in a Civil War re-enactment group,” said Newman. “Ernie and another guy, Lee Vigstol worked on restoring the Civil War Era Freight Wagon.”
During his time in the Civil War Re-enactment group, they had a six-horse hitch to put in front of a Napoleon Cannon to pull it. The barrel was 1,250-pound solid brass. There was a rider mounted on the left horse that drove the right horse. Ernie always drove the middle team.
When his wife’s health started failing, he gave the farm to their children. Shirley went into the nursing home in Velva. She was there for 13 months.
Ernie had to fight for his disability pay for forty years.
“The military lost my records,” said Ernie. “At one point, after writing to Senator Hoven three times, Hoven told me he didn’t want to hear from me again! He was tired of me writing about my disability.”
After the Korean War, no one talked about the damage war does to the mind and soul of a man. Ernie has been open about what he experienced. But the damage takes a toll.
Ernie continued to serve the Veterans Honor Guard until he was 88 years old. He attended over 300 funerals as an Honor Guard. He attended the Honor Flight in April, 2022.
Ernie came from a family of 10 children. He has one sister left.
“My baby brother died of Agent Orange from his time in VietNam,” recalled Ernie. “My oldest brother spent 20 years in the Air Force. Another brother died of cigarettes. The cigarettes took his lungs.”
Ernie moved to the North Dakota Veterans Home in January, 2025.
“When I got here, I asked them if I could have a shot of bourbon if I needed it,” said Ernie. “They told me I could have a shot if I needed it. I can take a shot of bourbon and it puts me to sleep and keeps the war out of my head.”
When Phil Newman brought the Civil War Era Freight Wagon to the North Dakota Veterans Home on Sunday, October 12, Ernie couldn’t stop smiling. He couldn’t believe that anyone would do such a great thing for him.
That day was a bit of a family reunion with his son Bruce Hoelscher and a neighbor, JoAnne Radmacher arriving for the event. Ken and Karla Hoelscher along with their daughter CeCe Hoelscher and her fiancé, Marshal Buelow and their daughter Kollyns Buelow who is Ernie’s great-granddaughter came from Oakes. Grandson Ernie Bauer (Sherry’s son) and his wife Kathy, Minot, were also on hand to see Ernie as his Civil War Wagon arrived at the Veterans Home.
“These kids have no idea what the Veterans and their families go through,” said Bruce Hoelscher in talking about the ravages of war on the body and mind of soldiers.
Words like ‘Battle Fatigue’ and ‘Shell Shock’ don’t do justice to the ravages of war. The phrase, ‘War is Hell’ seems much more fitting after hearing Ernie’s story. Corporal Ernest “Ernie” Hoelscher and his family have earned the utmost respect from this nation.
Read the full “Tribute to Service” feature at https://www.nordaknorth.com/newspapers/northernsentry/online-issues/tribute-to-service-2025/
