Charles Masek, the middle son of Joe and Rose Masek, faced far more misfortunes in his lifetime than he ever deserved.

Charles, an infantryman, was struck by shrapnel while ascending a hill near Trier, France, during World War II. It tore a deep gash along his jawline which became a permanent scar.

Despite his facial wounds and severe bleeding, Charles was able to make his way to an aid station two miles to the rear.

Even before the injury Charles fought in the famous Battle of the Bulge in which Hitler's German forces made a last ditch effort to oust allied liberators from the continent.

In his letters home, Charles complained of not receiving mail and having no overshoes to wear during the heavy snow and extreme cold of the winter.

Finally, after being evacuated to a hospital in England, 65 letters, mainly from home, reached him. His parents mailed overshoes but it was too late or for some reason they didn't reach him.

For his war injury, Charles received the Purple Heart award. Later, tragically as a young man, Charles was to become a heart victim.

Meanwhile, after making a partial recovery at the hospital in England, Charles was transferred to a medical facility in Texas. Shortly thereafter he was given a 90-day furlough to spend with his parents, relatives, and friends in South Dakota.

Doctors at the Texas Army hospital gave Charles the impression that he would receive plastic surgery to remove the scar form his face. After returning from leave, Charles learned that the Army would renege on the plastic surgery promise. The Army brass may have turned it into a promise of an earlier discharge. Charles was downcast for a period because of the Army's broken promise. However, he eventually learned to live with the scar.

It wasn't until many years later that Fred was to learn that Charles may have had a heart condition early in his life. He suffered fainting spells as a child. The parents didn't speak of his condition openly because it might have appeared to his brothers that "Charles was different."

As an elementary age youth, Charles fainted in the house where his aunt's funeral was being conducted. This episode gave the parents another scare. Yet an extremely warm room, a large crowd of people, and a scent of embalming fluid might have been contributing factors.

This fear kept Charles' parents from allowing him to play high school football until his senior year. His father kept shaking his head "no." Finally, the football coach and three players came to the farm on a Sunday afternoon and lobbied hard that Charles was desperately needed on the Geddes High team. The Dad finally relented.

Charles played the football season without incident and seemed to receive some acclaim in sports stories.

Of course, Charles passed the Army physical, went through exhausting training, and survived a wartime injury. He later passed a physical for a light aircraft pilot license.

Yet, Fred has still wondered whether there was a heart condition tracing from his earlier years which lingered in his system.

In 1962, Charles, 37, suffered two heart attacks. The second was fatal. He was survived by his widow, Florence, who he married in 1953, and two children, Joseph 4, and Katherine, 7 and 1/2 months.

Initial funeral services were held at the East Tulsa Christian Church. Charles' body was transported to Geddes, S.D., where final rites were held at the Methodist Church. Burial was at Pleasant Lawn Cemetery, Geddes, in the Masek family plot.

Charles received his basic training at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, and worked as an Army cook several months while awaiting orders for overseas.

It was significant that Charles was an avid hunter and a crack marksman.

When Charles was 10 or 12 years old, Fred recalled him coming home at dusk with six pheasant cocks he had shot. It may have been more than the limit and the weapon was a .22 rifle instead of a shotgun but maybe the young boy didn't know better or didn't really care.

His excellent one-day hunting results occurred when the Masek family lived in the bottomlands of the Missouri River near Fairfax, SD. The pheasants were roosting in a tree which is rather uncommon. As Charles shot, one by one the pheasants fell to the ground. The birds never even attempted to fly away, also a rarity.

The fact that he possessed a sharp shooting eye may have saved him in one combat situation. Charles confided to Fred that a sniper was pumping rounds at him and remarked, "I was afraid he was going to get me." Charles finally figured out the location of the sniper and returned fire. The sniper was silenced.

While in high school, Charles worked as a carry-out and stock boy at a grocery store. After discharge from the Army on Dec. 4, 1945, with 26 months service, Charles engaged in a series of jobs: a baker in Platte, SD.; a meat cutter, a grocery clerk, and a construction worker at Lake Andes, SD.

Apart from work, Charles continued to take his hunting very seriously. Charles and a friend became South Dakota coyote bounty hunters. Charles was the rifleman and his friend, the pilot of a light plane. Later Charles was to become a light plane pilot and member of two flying clubs in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area.

In the late 1940s Charles enrolled at the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa. It led to a position as senior jet overhaul mechanic a the American Airlines Tulsa Maintenance Base.

Charles wasn't always satisfied with the job largely because of frequent union-management bickering. At one time he attempted to convince two or three South Dakota airport managers as to the need for someone with his skills. The job effort was not successful.

He also expressed a dream to retire on the family farm near Geddes. It was a dream unfulfilled because of his early death. Presumably Charles wanted to continue his late years with access to the outdoors and hunting.

Charles achieved some skill in light aircraft construction as a member of a Tulsa area flying club. He talked of setting up his own shop, possibly in South Dakota, after his retirement.

Throughout his years at Tulsa, Charles and wife, Florence, and eventually one of the two children came to South Dakota during each annual hunting season. On one or two trips to South Dakota and back, the journey was made in a light plane that Charles piloted.

Fred, who had settled in Sioux Falls, would join Charles, as much as time-off from work would allow, for pheasant hunting in Charles Mix County. Charles' father also joined him much of the time in the fields that were hunted.

When Fred lost his amiable and "seldom-missed-a-shot" hunting partner and brother, he began hunting with Joe, Cliff, and Norman Johnson, friends who had farm land in the Geddes area.

Later Ken Jones, Yankton, who roomed with Norm Johnson at South Dakota State University, Brookings, became a hunting friend. Ken and three other persons brought a farm between Geddes and Armour and developed it as a pheasant habitat. Ken was kind enough to allow Fred to hunt on the land when ground for shooting game started to get scarce.

Above everything else, for Charles there never seemed to be a greater sport than tramping through corn fields, converging into tree belts, walking between rows of milo, or trudging though lake beds in search of cock pheasants.