The 8 O'Clock Broadcast

Theodore Shadrick, a gaunt, silent man with a face seamed by 37 years in the coal mines, was eating breakfast with his wife when he heard the sound of running feet. A neighbor burst through the doorway of the Shadricks' mountain shack with a breathless shout.

"Kenny's been killed! The 8 o'clock broadcast just said so."

Lucille Shadrick, a thin and bony woman, left the table, sobbing. Theodore Shadrick stared stonily, pondering the news that the fourth oldest of his six sons and four daughters was gone. "He was the best there was," said Theodore finally. "Never caused us a mite of worry."

Soon everybody in the mountain miners' hamlet of Skin Fork, W.Va. -- about 150 people -- had heard the news that put their home town on the U.S. front pages: Private Kenneth Shadrick, 19, of Skin Fork, was the first U.S. foot soldier reported killed in the battle for Korea.

Half a World Away. Waiting for the telegram from the Government in Washington (which arrived two days later), the Shadricks assembled their recollections of Kenny. It was probably the football uniform, his father decided, that started Kenny on the way to his death, half a world from Skin Fork.

Until the family moved to Skin Fork four years ago and Kenny entered Pineville High School, seven miles away, Kenny's main interests were riding his bike, hunting a little now & then, and reading--mainly westerns and a magazine called Fantastic Novels. "All that boy liked was to sit hunched up there with a book and a piece of cold bread," said his father.

At Pineville, Kenny fell in love with football. His father scraped together $5 to help buy his football uniform, Pineville High being a poor school with little money to spend on athletics. For a month Kenny practiced hard, trying to make the team; he was wiry and quick but light (130 lbs., 5 ft. 10 in.). One October day when he showed up for practice, Kenny opened his locker and found that his football suit was gone--stolen. He gathered up his books, went home and told his mother: "I'll never go another day of school."

Seeing the World. A month later, Kenny had passed his physical, had a letter of permission from his folks (he was only 17) and joined the U.S. Army.

At first, he got a thrill out of Japan.

By last month, he had seen enough. "Mom," he wrote home, "this place is getting me down."

Last week, Private Kenny Shadrick and his buddies were a bazooka squad in a graveyard near the town of Sojong, close to the advancing North Korean Reds. Kenny aimed a bazooka rocket at an enemy tank, counted three while the rocket lobbed toward the target, then stuck his head & shoulders above the gun pit to watch. The tank's machine gun chattered and Kenny Shadrick tumbled backward, a bullet through his right arm, another through his chest.

The neighbors dropped in on the Shadricks to speak their sympathy and leave quietly. It was the newspapermen from out of town who asked the fancy questions. What was Kenny fighting for? "Against some kind of government," said Theodore Shadrick simply. Where was Korea? He didn't know--out there somewhere, where his boy had been killed.

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