Sibling Service: A family’s dedication to the country’s defense
By Kris Leonhardt
CENTRAL WISCONSIN – Don Kurth grew up in a family of 15 in central Wisconsin.
“We moved every couple of years,” Kurth recalled. “I think I went to seven different schools.”
Kurth was 10th in line in the August and Josephine Korth family, with two brothers and three sisters arriving after him.
“There wasn’t room for everybody to sleep alone,” Kurth explained. “I had a bed partner until I joined the Air Force.”
That may have set the pace for a future among military troops, which Don was eager to be a part of his senior year in high school.
“I think my older brothers thought I was the wuss of the boys, because when I wanted to join the Marine Corps my oldest brother and my brother a year and a half older than me, they talked my leg off. They practically beat it into me that I should not join the Marine Corps,” Kurth recalled.
But in 1951, Kurth received his draft notice.
“It said, ‘You’re classified 1A; unless they can find something wrong with you, you’re going.’ So, I went and joined the Air Force,” he stated.
Kurth asked for a job outdoors and the Air Force set him up for a job as a telephone line repairman.
“But, about a week before we left basic training, they called a whole bunch of us in. They took us all to the personnel office and they said, ‘I’m sure your recruiter told you that above all things, when you enlist in the military the needs of the service comes first.’ Well, he didn’t tell me that, but…,” Kurth recalled.
“’ (They said) all of you have seen a typewriter and the Air Force needs cryptographers, and in order to be a cryptographer you’ve got to type. So, you all are going to be cryptographers.”
Kurth later became a recruiter and went back into communications, spending 20 years in the Air Force.
“I guess that they thought I was smarter than I was, but I got a job working in the highest headquarters that they had, up in Alaska…They called it a unified command. They had one group of people who worked sort of feeding things together from each of the branches of the service. I got to work there for most of my last tour, when I was up in Alaska,” he explained.
But, Don was just one of nine in that family who headed into the service.
Don’s brother, August, Jr. first served in the Marine Corps. “Then he was out for a while, and he got married. Then, he went back in the service, but he went in the Air Force. So, he retired from the Air Force also,” Don stated.
“The third oldest girl was the first one to go into the service,” said Kurth of his sister, Alice. “She went in in 1944… She was in the Army Air Force. They were called WAACS… The Army had an air corps, so she was in the Women’s Army Air Corps Service.
“Then, there was my oldest brother (William); he went into the Marine Corps. He did his tour in the Marine Corps during (World War II) and never got to see any action. He was in the Third Marine Corps Division, and they were to provide all of the troops for the invasion in Japan.”
Don’s brother Orman was drafted into the Army and served in Korea. His brother, Henry served in the Marines and the Army, and also went to Korea. Don’s brother David served in the Marine Corps and the Army as well.
“Then, there was my brother Orville, the twin to Orman, he couldn’t enlist at first. He had some physical problem he had to get fixed. He got that fixed and then he enlisted in the Army,” Don recalled.
Don’s sister Shirley also served in the Marines.
“That is a record for Wisconsin. Minnesota beat us. They’ve got a family in Minnesota that has 10 people – all siblings that went in the military,” Kurth said. “I researched it.
“If anybody can come along and challenge it and have more, I would be tickled.”