Nearly 60 years after their service in Korea, Burl Gonion of Powell and other members of the Wyoming Army National Guard's 300th Armored Field Artillery Battalion will receive the Navy and Marine Corps Presidential Unit Citation on Friday.The award will take place during a reunion of the unit, also known as the 300th Cowboy Cannoneers, this weekend in Cheyenne.

The citation recognizes the soldiers' “extraordinary heroism in action against enemy aggressor forces in Korea” from June 6 - Sept. 25, 1951, while they were deployed in support of the 1st Marine Division.

After initial training in Korea earlier in 1951, Gonion said, the unit traveled north into the Pusan Perimeter, joining the 1st Marine Division there.

“For a whole bunch of cowboys that didn't know about guns, they taught us about artillery, I'll tell you what,” he said.

One or two soldiers from the Wyoming unit were assigned to each gun section, he said.

“It was a great relationship,” he said of the soldiers' and Marines' teamwork, which continued for nearly three months.

As for the soldiers' assignment in Korea, “There was nothing un-intense over there,” Gonion said. “We learned what uphill and downhill, muddy roads and rivers were.”

Soldiers also learned that putting their C-Rations on the engines of their M-7 tanks to heat them worked a little too well. If left too long during the heat of battle or other operations, the cans blew up.

“You don't know what beef ravioli looks like splattered all over an engine,” he said.

Most of what they learned, though, was no laughing matter.

“When people come up with machine guns shooting at you ... you do what you have to do,” he said. “You don't think about it.”

Later, after separating from the Marines and joining with a regimental combat team, “We just got ourselves all shot up,” he said.

During one particularly intense battle, “the A Battery (of the 300th) got blown apart, and we (B Battery) had to cover them to get them out of there,” he said.

The 300th had to have all of its supplies delivered by air, and Gonion recalled watching once as two C-115s “popped over the hill, and both got blown up by something somewhere. They made their drops, but they crashed,” he said.

Gonion said he and other National Guardsmen from Wyoming “didn't have a foggy idea” how difficult conditions or the fighting in Korea would be. “We just showed up there and it was a whole different world. (But) we adapted quickly.

“We were a bunch of young people. We didn't know what fear was. I was 18 years old. I don't think ‘scared' was in the repertoire.”

He chuckled a little as he remembered repeatedly having to dive for cover in fox holes while eating lunch, as that was a time the Chinese frequently chose to fire on the unit.

“They used to tell us, this is the only outfit in the world that can sit there and hit a fox hole and never spill a drop,” he said.

Gonion said his experience in Korea helped shape him into the man he is today.

“It's probably one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he said. “When you're 18 years old and fresh out of high school, you don't know what you're doing.

“It gave me a lot of direction and took care of two years of my life. It taught me a lot. I look at some kids these days and think, maybe that ought to happen to you.”

Gonion left Korea as a sergeant 1st class and went on to spend another 40 years in the National Guard, attaining the rank of colonel.