Emaciated Pfc. Charles Jarvis escapes death in North Korea
By Bob Weaver
Calhoun has several recognized military heroes like Drexel Ice and Medal of Honor
recipient Bernard Pius Bell, but there are dozens and dozens whose lives reached
the edge. Some returned and some did not. Most are forgotten to this generation,
unaware of their duty to the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Norma Knotts Shaffer, associate editor of the Hur Herald, has been collecting their
pictures and stories for years. Many were on a special section of The Herald a while
back. Norma is working on making them available again.
She came across this old newspaper clipping from the 1950's - the Korean War.
Pfc. Charles Jarvis of Minnora is shown in the faded photo, being held for the
photographer in Tokyo's Itazuke Hospital. Jarvis, the son of Spencer and Dona
Jarvis, barely escaped with 20 other survivors from a prison train.
The clipping says he was in a "Red prison train massacre north of Sunchon, North
Korea. Sixty-eight of Jarvis' companions were removed from the train and
murdered."
Jarvis lost 66 pounds during his struggle, participating in seven battles and
receiving a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He was only 19-years-old, according to his
sister Arletta Jarvis Conley of Little White Oak.
He returned to America, marrying and living most of his life in California.
In the 1990s he returned to West Virginia, living at Elkview with his wife, where he
died from cancer in 1995 at the age of 66.
Jarvis came from a family of eleven, a son of Spencer and Dona
Jarvis.
Three of the eleven are now deceased, Paul, Marvin and Charles.
Others in the family include James of Tennessee, Kenneth of Reno, Ohio, Jack of
Dayton, Ohio and Danny of Minnora, Dorothy Rice of Austin, Texas, Frances Saffir of
Spencer, WV, Mary Bittner of Florida and Minnora and Arletta Conley of Little White
Oak.
| 
