LT. COL. RICHARD H. SCHIEBEL
The Korean War Hero Who Swung the Board of Education at Ball High
By Bill Cherry, Dallas Broker-Realtor
My 43rd Year Serving Texans
If any of the students at Galveston's Ball High School knew he was Lt. Col. Richard H. Schiebel, a Korean War hero, who in the years before had flown an F-51 all through the war zone, successfully completing 100 missions against the enemy, they didn't talk about it. Perhaps it was no big thing. For after all, except for less than a handful of years, war had been with us for our entire lives.
By 1955 when we first encountered Mr. Schiebel, he was strolling the halls of Ball High, usually in gym shorts and tee-shirt with a coach's whistle hanging on a lanyard around his neck, and the Board of Education in his hand, applying it to backsides here and there - a soft swat to accompany a friendly hello; a sincere and swift pop if you were cutting up.
"Behave," he would say.
What's odd is that Coach Schiebel was only a member of the Ball High faculty for two school years, yet almost every Ball High graduate over 50-years old will all but swear he taught them. Coach raised two superb tennis teams, taught any number how to bowl and swim with good form, and explained to anyone who would listen, rather than throw spit balls or pass notes, the evils of not maintaining good health habits.
While Coach and I met at Ball High when I was 15, and have been friends for almost 50 years, like many Ball High graduates who keep in touch with him, I was never formally in one of his classes.
Coach told me once that the only job he ever had that he liked better than teaching at Ball High was flying missions in Korea. Wanting to defend one's country, even if it cost you your life, was something his generation understood while many of my generation and those that followed didn't.
Coach Schiebel's friend Herman Burton has copies of a number of the letters that Coach wrote home from Korea. For an example, just days before Easter 1951, he wrote to his parents, a Dallas principal and his teacher wife, about Mission No. 37. He was a first lieutenant
"I napalmed a house with enemy truck tracks leading into it, and got a gun position on the top of a hill with my other one. Tandy, flying with me, located another gun position and asked me to mark it for him with a short burst of 50s. I go pounding in and make a short burst on it right on top of a hill. I must have hit a rock or something because just as I pulled up over the top of the hill, something hit the canopy about eight inches from my head....I ducked and closed my eyes...and missed the Plexiglas chips that hit my face. It knocked a hole...in the canopy and cracked it in a circle behind my head.
"...I punched the rocket tab. I thought an explosion had gone off in the canopy. It was a tremendous roar.... The whole top of the canopy blew off, and the racket was terrific from the air blowing around the new 20 inch hole above my head. It sounded like a cannon in my ear. The suction almost ripped my helmet off. We immediately went home.
"But you should have seen the faces of the G.I.s when I taxied by waving at them through the top of the canopy."
COACH AND HIS PLANE WITH THE BLOWN OFF CANOPY
It's easy to take this whole accounting as one of whimsy, rather than that there was deep gut fear. Coach is like that.
And yet one of his unidentified Korean War comrades did explain it well when he wrote, "There is no glory in war, no shame in being afraid, only pain and suffering for the unfortunate ones whose bodies are maimed, minds scared and for whom recovery is a long hard struggle.
"Those who lost their lives will never be forgotten by their comrades. Even almost 50 years after my first exposure to combat, I still hear the screams of agony, see the terror in faces and hear their last ragged breath. You see, we who survived continue to endure a terror that only those who have been there understand."
We are left to wonder why so many of us who came after Lt. Col. Schiebel see no reason to continue his love of country and fight the ever dividing amoeba of evil.
It has to be politically correct today, Memorial Day, to humblely pray for the souls of the departed war veterans, and to ask His blessing on them and those who served in the past, and on those who are serving today with the hopes that their service will guarantee that all of us will be able to continue to live free on this, the greatest country on His green earth.
Copyright 2004 - William S. Cherry
Hello Bill,
do you know what happened to Richard 'Dick' Schiebel? I stood in contact with him over a few Months. We wrote via the Internetmessenger ICQ but he has'nt been online for 4 months now.
Greetings from Germany,
Steven
Steven, you didn't leave a way to contact you personally. I sent a note to Coach and told him that you had asked about him. I suppose he still knows how to contact you.
He's doing pretty darned well. Had eye surgery about six weeks ago to remove cataracts. Then he went to the driver's license station, passed the test, and will be on the roads at least until he's 90! He bought a new car about a year ago.
I've been after him to get rid of his big home and move to the Edgewater Retirement Community, but so far he's not been a bit receptive to the idea. Two of his friends, Thea and Jody check up on him every day or so.