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