Joining the Army was easy. Getting out was a little more complicated.
After eight grueling weeks of basic training, Pvt. Raymond E. Hafer of Akron was tired of marching, drilling and camping in the Alabama heat. He yearned for his mother’s homemade biscuits.
“It’s getting pretty rough,” he admitted in a 1953 letter. “Besides, I miss the home cooking.”
Hafer finally marched up to his commanding officer and begged to be discharged. The lieutenant colonel listened incredulously before ordering the upstart soldier out of the office.
No matter how hard he tried to explain, Hafer couldn’t get military brass to believe that he was only 13 years old.
The Akron boy made national headlines 60 years ago as “the youngest GI in the country.”
He really was 13, although he didn’t look his age. Hafer stood 5-feet-10 and weighed nearly 160 pounds. Those homemade biscuits must have been mighty delicious.
Hafer, an only child, lived with his mother, Thelma Smith, and stepfather, Floyd B. Smith, in their home at 681 S. Firestone Blvd.
A restless spirit with a short attention span, Hafer wasn’t the best student in Akron. In fact, he attended nine different schools in eight years, transferring from classroom to classroom.
After Hafer flamed out at Ellet Elementary, Mrs. Smith sent her son to a Detroit boarding academy in the fall of 1952. The eighth-grader quickly “got tired” of the strict academy and concocted a sure-fire scheme to get out.
He used ink eradicator on his birth certificate and retyped the birth date from July 29, 1939, to 1935, which changed his age to 18. Then he ran away to Cleveland, took the fake certificate to a draft board and enlisted in the Army on Feb. 10, 1953.
The military was all too happy to have a new recruit during the Korean War.
Hafer hoped to join his Akron pal Keith Phillips, 19, who had been drafted into the Army. “I figured I might be sent to Fort Lee, Va., where he was stationed,” Hafer later explained.
Instead, Hafer arrived Feb. 23 for basic training at Camp Rucker, Ala., and was assigned to Company M of the 16th Infantry Regiment in the 47th Division. Only one other trainee, Francis Armstrong, also of Akron, knew Hafer’s real age but he was sworn to secrecy.
Clearly, Hafer hadn’t considered all of the ramifications of his enlistment. The U.S. Army made the boarding school look like a garden party.
Hafer had to rise early each day, march for miles, run obstacle courses, learn to build bivouacs, crawl under live machine-gun fire and prepare for combat in Asia.
Meanwhile, his mother had no idea he was missing.
“The last time Ray was home was when he got a week off school last January,” Mrs. Smith told the Beacon Journal. “I didn’t worry when no letters came for several weeks because he sometimes planned trips home for the weekend and wanted to surprise me.”
Boy, what a surprise.
After eight weeks in camp, Hafer wanted out. He spent two more weeks trying to convince officials of his true age, and dropped a bombshell on his mother with a letter that requested an official copy of his birth certificate.
National story
Hafer became an overnight celebrity when the truth came out. Reporters flocked to interview him when he received his honorable discharge. His photo appeared in newspapers around the country.
“I didn’t like school, so I joined the Army,” he told one journalist. “But now I have decided that school is better for me — much better — so I’m going home.”
After 10 weeks of Army chow, he said, “I sure do yearn for some of my mother’s biscuits.”
Hafer returned to Akron on April 13, 1953, and enjoyed a home-cooked meal with his family. He also reunited with friend Keith Phillips, who was home on leave, and sat for more interviews with reporters.
“Don’t think it was any rougher on me than the other guys,” Hafer told the Beacon Journal. “About the time I left, everyone was wishing they could get out, too.”
The soldier boy planned to attend ninth grade at Garfield High School in the fall.
“The next move is up to him,” his mother said. “But he’s definitely going back to school.”
When Hafer returned to Akron, everyone wanted to see his forged documents.
“The Army kept ’em,” he explained. “Don’t know why they bothered. I sure won’t be using ’em again.”
More trouble
That would have been the end of the story, but Hafer ran away the next year at age 14.
By then, his family had moved to 1223 Pondview Ave. He lied once more about his age to rejoin the Army in 1954.
His mother contacted military officials and had her son returned to Akron with a second honorable discharge.
In August 1955, a military policeman noticed a uniformed soldier cavorting in a downtown Cleveland bar and asked to see his pass.
“I don’t have any furlough papers,” the soldier replied. “I have discharge papers. In fact, I have been discharged twice.”
As it turned out, the soldier had been AWOL from Fort Knox, Ky., since Jan. 25 — only 10 days after enlisting for the third time. Hafer had used the fictitious name of Ray E. Fisher to join the Army.
The 16-year-old was held overnight in Cuyahoga County Jail before being transported to Fort Hayes in Columbus, where he received his third honorable discharge. Again he made national news.
Tragedy strikes
If only he had joined the military when he was of legal age. He would have lived.
“The brief but adventure-packed life of Raymond E. Hafer ended this morning in the jagged wreckage of a car,” the Beacon Journal solemnly reported April 2, 1958.
Hafer, 18, was speeding south on Massillon Road about 1:45 a.m. when he lost control of the automobile on a steep hill just past the Waterloo Road intersection. The car rolled and scattered debris for 200 feet in the darkness, authorities said. A friend was seriously injured in the crash.
Just as police arrived on the scene, Hafer died of his injuries.
He was buried in Ellet Cemetery, probably the only U.S. veteran honorably discharged three times as a teenager in the 1950s.
Once and for all, that restless spirit was free.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.