He was the school's only ROTC graduate to die in Korea, and the unit was preparing a tribute to his sacrifice. Voelker, now retired after a long career as an Air Force and corporate pilot, was happy to share what he could. And in the curious way of such chance encounters, it led him to track down Roy Servatius, who as it turned out had endured 310 days in a Chinese prison and survived the war. Voelker reports Servatius went home to Clarkston, Wash., where he raised a family and ran a business until his recent retirement. Pleasantly surprised that each was still alive, they reminisced as old soldiers are entitled to do.
All old soldiers ask, sometimes only to themselves, questions they know have no answer.
In this case the great imponderables would be why it was that 49 years ago the lives of four good and brave men intersected in that Korean valley, and only two came home. And why the two that did.