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Ostrowski to get Purple Heart

Chester E. “Chet” Ostrowski of Parkersburg soon will be receiving a Purple Heart — 63 years after being wounded by enemy fire in Korea.

Ostrowski, who turns 86 today, received a letter from the U.S. Army on Sept. 22 stating he had been awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he suffered during the Korean War in 1953.

Bernie Lyons of Vienna, Ostrowski’s friend and a Marine, is making the arrangements for Ostrowski to receive the Purple Heart, probably at the end of November when his family can be present. Ostrowski is staying at the River Oaks, a long- and short-term care center, in Clarksburg.

The effort to get Ostrowski his Purple Heart began more than three years ago after he told Lyons he was missing military service ribbons.

Lyons asked Ostrowski where his Purple Heart was for service in Korea. Ostrowski told Lyons he never received his Purple Heart.

This revelation sent Lyons in motion to not only find Ostrowski’s missing ribbons but also the Purple Heart he deserved but never received.

Lyons obtained the five ribbons, or medals, for Ostrowski — a Korean Service Medal with two bronze service stars, a United Nations Service Medal and medals from the president of South Korea — but the Purple Heart proved more elusive.

Until recently, the U.S. Department of the Army had no record that Ostrowski was wounded by enemy fire during the Korean War. In fact, the U.S. Department of the Army at first denied Lyons’ request for Ostrowski’s Purple Heart in August 2015.

Part of the problem was that there was another Chester E. Ostrowski, a private from Minnesota, who the U.S. Army had listed as a casualty in Korea in 1950, Lyons noted. Chester E. Ostrowski, originally from Toronto, Ohio, and now of Parkersburg, did not show up in the list of injured servicemen from the Korean War, Lyons said.

Also complicating the case of Ostrowski’s missing Purple Heart was that the records of many U.S. servicemen were lost in a fire at a storage warehouse in St. Louis in 1973, Lyons said.

Lyons showed me his letters of correspondence with the U.S. Army in trying to get a Purple Heart for Ostrowski. He also has Ostrowski’s war records.

Ostrowski, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army at the time, was wounded in the left shoulder by either a gunshot or a shrapnel fragment while standing on the back of his tank in Korea on Feb. 18, 1953. Ostrowski was a tank commander with the 14th  Tank Company, 25th Infantry Division in the U.S Army.

“I remember the back of my shirt was soaking wet,” Ostrowski said. Another soldier standing nearby told Ostrowski his shirt was full of blood.

“If I had been turned around, the bullet would have hit me in the heart,” he said.

Ostrowski was first treated for the left shoulder wound at the 44th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. He was later transferred to the Swedish Red Cross Hospital in Pusan, Korea, where he remained in February and March of 1953, according to records.

Ostrowski returned to his tank unit in Korea before receiving an honorable discharge in July 1953, after completing one year, 10 months and 15 days of active military service.

In its September letter, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records stated, after looking at the evidence presented by Lyons, that Ostrowski’s Department of the Army records would be corrected from the 2015 decision and Ostrowski would receive a Purple Heart.

Ostrowski, who is retired from the insurance business, said he is humbled to receive a Purple Heart and is reminded that many service members didn’t come home after the war and their families received the medal instead.

Ostrowski said he appreciates Lyons’ efforts on his behalf. The two have been friends since the early 1970s.

“Bernie did all of the work. I did none of the correspondence” with the Army, Ostrowski told me.

“I don’t know how to show my appreciation, except to say thank you,” Ostrowski said. “Bernie wouldn’t give up.”

Ostrowski noted that Lyons is true to the Marine cause of never leaving a Marine, or in this case, a friend behind.

Happy birthday, Chet, and congratulations on being awarded the Purple Heart.

Contact Paul LaPann at plapann@newsandsentinel.com

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