Sep/Oct 2005 - Korean War Veterans Association

Forgotten No More
And when we go to heaven, St Peter will surely yell,
“Here’re the boys from Korea, they served their time in Hell.”
(Excerpt from a poem written by a GI killed in Korea)
By Christopher Gibbons
Those who have seen the memorial
are struck by the stark beauty of its
realism. It depicts a walking and
weary platoon of 19 soldiers. These steel
statues, with their helmets, guns, boots,
and ponchos, are so accurately sculpted
that you almost expect them to take a step
forward. But it’s their faces that haunt you.
They wear the faces of war: looks of determination,
fear, loneliness, and grim
resolve that somehow the artist was able to
capture. I’ve seen these faces before. My
father is burdened with them on the rare
occasions he talks of a certain place that
his generation was asked to defend. That
place was Korea, and the statues are part
of the National Korean War Veterans
Memorial.
The war is often referred to as “The
Forgotten War,” and for good reason.
While the conflict was raging from 1950
to 1953, it was not uncommon for newspapers
to relegate stories from Korea to the
back pages. With the horrific memories of
WWII still fresh in their minds, Americans
didn’t want to deal with the harsh realities
of this new conflict. The soldiers returning
from Korea were greeted with little fanfare
here in the U.S. When my father returned
in 1952, the first thing my grandfather
asked him was if he had a job lined up. My
Dad told me “that’s just the way it was
back then,” and like the other returning
soldiers, he very quickly and quietly
weeks. On December 10th, the Chinese
army retook Seoul and we quickly
returned to Pusan, where we produced the
above-mentioned terrain model used by
that command’s general to establish a new
defense perimeter around that city. We
also continued the printing of hundreds of
new maps. In late March of 1951 we went
to Taegu and set up again for more mapmaking
and printing.
But, our most important—and proudest—productions
came during the
Panmunjom Peace/Armistice talks conducted
by Admiral Joy and his team. Each
day we produced “up-to-the-minute”
maps of the progress of those talks. At 7
p.m., a well-protected courier arrived at
our company with the scratched-up and
marked-up maps that had been used that
day. We took those maps, from which we
produced many new maps of the entire
area around the 38th parallel involved in
the negotiations. We gave them to the
courier the next morning-at 6 a.m. to be
flown to Admiral Joy for that day’s discussions.
It was from those maps that the
merged back into society. History books
now barely mention it, and many young
people know nothing about it.
Many of the Korean War veterans were
the children of immigrant parents, and
they endured the depression as young children.
Their character was certainly shaped
by the tough social environment of the
times, and complaints at home surely
would have been met with the back of a
hand, or an icy stare. As adolescents, they
huddled with their families around the
radio for news from the fronts of WWII.
They witnessed the changes in the men
who returned from the war, and they
remembered the ones who didn’t return.
Sacrifice and service to their country were
second nature to them.
With a determination and resolve characteristic
of their generation, the veterans
of the Korean War waged one of the
fiercest fights in the annals of U.S. military
history. In a conflict that witnessed
American and Communist forces meeting
each other on the battlefield for the first
time, both armies hurled each other up and
down the Korean peninsula. The battles
were often as brutal as the harsh Korean
winters. After enduring some initial
defeats at the hands of the Communist
armies, the U.S. and UN forces, under the
brilliant command of General Matthew
Ridgeway, began to turn the tide of battle.
American led UN soldiers repeatedly
routed the massive “human wave” assaults
final “peace-line” was established as it is
to this day. .
I had the distinct pleasure of returning
to Korea during June of 2004, and going
to Panmunjom. When I asked to see those
maps, I was told they were classified as
“TOP SECRET.” They must be very
important!!
Roland Turley, a proud veteran of the
62nd Engineer Topographic Company
(Corp), can be reached at 193 Wildwoods
Lane, West Decatur, PA 16878, (814) 765-
8910
of the Chinese, and after a prolonged stalemate,
an armistice was eventually signed
in 1953. The South Koreans remain free to
this day. In addition, a message was sent
to the Communist leadership in Moscow
and Beijing: the U.S. will meet your
aggression, with force and on the battlefield
if necessary. Throughout the duration
of the Cold War, Communist leaders surely
remembered the bloody nose they
received in Korea and set a much less
aggressive agenda in the subsequent years
that followed. Many historians now
believe that the seeds of our eventual Cold
War victory were sewn on the battlefields
of Korea.
The brother of a GI killed during the
war told me that he hates the term “The
Forgotten War.” He said, “My brother is
not forgotten, and there’s not a day that
goes by that my family and I don’t think
about him.” The time has come for all of
us to remember the Korean War, and its
importance in U.S. history. The United
States emerged as the winner of the Cold
War, but the first steps towards that victory
were tread 55 years ago by American
soldiers on the often frozen ground of the
Korean peninsula.
June 25th marked the 55th anniversary
of the start of the Korean War, and it’s a
day to remember, and not one to forget. If
you ever get the opportunity, visit the
Korean War Veterans Memorial in
Washington, DC. And, if you happen to
see some older gentlemen there, with the
same haunting faces as the statues, let
them know that they’re not forgotten.
Christopher Gibbons (gibbonscg
@aol.com) is a writer from Philadelphia
and the son of Korean War Veteran, John
M. Gibbons.
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The Graybeards September - October 2005