A Mandan man who served in the Korean War has been awarded an honorary high school diploma.
Frank Kraft, 96, was recognized under a North Dakota law that allows veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to apply for honorary diplomas if they went into the service before graduating from high school and were honorably discharged, according to state School Superintendent Kirsten Baesler.
Kraft was drafted into the US Army in February 1951, after he finished eighth grade at the Selfridge public school. He served as a tank mechanic and was discharged two years later, according to his service record.
During his Army training, Kraft was stationed at Fort Worden and Fort Flagler in Washington state and at Camp Desert Rock, a Nevada nuclear testing site about 65 miles north of Las Vegas. He “told us he arrived after one test and left before the next one,” said his daughter, Sheila Rothstein, of Dickinson.
After taking tank maintenance training in Tokyo and Seoul, Kraft was posted to the Korean war zone, where he spent a year as a tank mechanic, including time about 3 miles south of the front lines. He worked mostly on M46 Patton tanks. Once Kraft left his helmet atop a tank that he was working on, only to discover a bullet hole in it when he retrieved his helmet later.
After his Army discharge, Kraft returned to North Dakota, where he was a construction worker, bricklayer and mason in North Dakota and South Dakota for most of his working career. He also did farm work, had a job at a Mandan creamery and repaired radios, his daughter said.
Another North Dakota veteran, Clayton Bertsch, 87, of Ypsilanti, also received an honorary high school diploma. The graduate of the eighth grade from a rural school near Danzig enlisted in the Navy in September 1954 and served for four years, including time as a pipefitter on the destroyer USS Brown. After his service he trained to become a plumber and got a job as a plumber at the North Dakota State Hospital in Jamestown, where he worked for 54 years.
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