Legacy of War: “Ace” Allen’s mother wrote to him every day, even after his death in Korea

Seven miles after its confluence with the Nam River, South Korea’s Naktong River swings southerly to the Sea of Japan, forming a sharp bend in the river known as the Naktong Bulge.

Isadore “Ace” Allen was about 5,400 miles from that foreign river’s bend, driving around Spokane with a friend of his brother’s wife, when he heard the news over the radio: North Korea had invaded South Korea, and President Harry Truman was sending American troops to support the south.

“That means me,” Ace said aloud in the car.

Forty days later he was dead, one of 600 Americans killed in combat near the Naktong Bulge during a two-week battle that claimed nearly 2,000 lives in all. Ace had been in Korea only two days, a platoon leader of a unit assigned to clear a valley, and had just been taught how to use a 3.5-inch “Super Bazooka” rocket launcher.

He was 26 years old, and was already a veteran who survived 30 months of World War II.

Though he left many people behind, including his parents, two brothers and sister, his niece and nephew have kept his memory alive in different ways.

Ace Allen, who was given his uncle’s name, is a doctor in Kansas City, Missouri.

“I was born after he was killed. In Jewish tradition, you name your child after someone who has died,” Allen said. “I’m named after his nickname. But my wife calls me Izzy. Somehow, somewhere, I’m an Isadore.”

But it was the adoption of his own Korean-born son, Benjamin Allen, that supplied Allen with the most direct connection to his uncle’s death. Ten years ago, the father and son traveled to Korea.

“I think it’s serendipity,” Allen said. “He was born in Pusan, which is within the so-called Pusan Perimeter,” the location of the large-scale battle fought in the summer of 1950 that Ace took part in.

“My son and I went on a roots tour with other Korean adoptee families when my son was 10,” Allen said. “We visited Taegu. We visited more or less the area where Uncle Ace had been killed, which was very, very touching.”

Near the battlefield, a wall is inscribed with the names of American service members who died there. Allen and his son, who is now 20, visited the wall to see their Uncle Ace’s name under the green flag of Washington state.

“It was uncanny to see the wall and see my name up there,” said Allen.

Allen was born a year after Ace died, but said the loss shook his family long after his uncle’s death.

“Emma, my grandmother, she was always kind of haunted by that for the rest of her life,” Allen said. “Ace was the youngest of the kids and the darling of the family.”

Pat DiGeorge is the daughter of Ace’s brother Herman, who attended Eastern Washington University when it was called the Eastern Washington School of Education.

“Ace was the baby. He was the one who was so close to his mother,” DiGeorge said. “You know how it is when the baby stays with you longer. They were so close.”

DiGeorge said the family didn’t discuss Ace’s death much, likely out of heartache.

Her father wrote a poem for his fallen brother. Ace’s death weighed heavily on her grandmother.

“When he died, my grandmother, my granny Allen, had a tic in her eye that she had for the rest of her life. I say it’s because of that. That’s my memory,” DiGeorge said, adding that during the war her grandmother kept open a written lifeline to her son. “She wrote him every day: ‘My dearest boy.’”

Her letters came back unopened and stamped with two words: verified deceased.

“It just breaks your heart,” DiGeorge said. “That’s what mothers all over this world had to go through.”

DiGeorge is working on a book about her parents, who met in Sweden when her father’s plane crashed there during a bombing raid on Berlin. Her Uncle Ace’s story is part of that book, which she has titled Liberty Lady, after her father’s plane. The book will come out later this year, but she maintains an ongoing website.

Ace had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II in Europe. After the war, he enrolled in what was then called Washington State College in February 1946 and joined the Army Reserve unit in Pullman.

“His dream was to become an officer like his brothers,” said DiGeorge. “When the war broke out, his group was one of the first to go.”

During Ace’s four years in the Spokane area, he lived in Pullman at Waller Hall, and with his mother on West Boone Avenue near its intersection with Summit Road in a house that was converted into a triplex in 1980. The family lived for a long time in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, where Ace was born, but moved around in the wake of the Great Depression. They eventually settled in the Inland Northwest, where Ace’s mother’s family lived.

On June 15, 1950, Ace graduated, commissioned as a second lieutenant. Ten days later, the war began. He and his brothers had all fought in World War II, and came home safe. Ace was the only brother to fight in Korea, a fact his family won’t soon forget.

“My Uncle Ace does still haunt me. I’m an oncologist and I’ve worked at the VA hospitals here in town. I’m running into Korean War veterans all the time and I’m always on the lookout for people who might’ve heard of him, but I haven’t yet,” Allen said. “He never had children, so the only legacy he has is the legacy we give him in terms of our memory of him and his sacrifice. I’m very grateful that he was willing to make that very tragic sacrifice.”