The Korean memorial occupies a grove beneath the Lincoln Memorial, across the Reflecting Pool from the Vietnam Wall. It’s dominated by 19 large, steel statues of infantrymen – a silent patrol moving warily up a slope. They look weary, as though they’ve been on too many patrols and climbed too many hills. That was us in Korea, the way we were, too. Off to the side there’s a granite wall with hundreds of faces etched on it, faces taken from actual photographs of men and women who served in Korea as support troops: truckdrivers, engineers, flight crewmen, nurses, chaplains, sailors. These ghostly faces seem to say, “Don’t forget us.”
We never understood how the Korean War could have been “forgotten” in the first place. It caused such incredible devastation: more than 2 million people dead and more than 2.5 million wounded or injured in just three years. About 54,000 Americans died there, almost as many as in Vietnam in 10 years. More than 8,000 Americans are still listed as missing in action in Korea. Losses on the communist side were staggering: more than 400,000 Chinese soldiers dead, almost 215,000 North Koreans killed in action. Korea itself–North and South alike-was left in total ruins.
The war ushered in the era of jet fighters, and was the first in which helicopters were used in combat. It also was the first (and perhaps last) in which a multinational force fought effectively under the U.N. flag. We did not wear blue helmets, of course; we were in Korea as war makers, not peacekeepers. But Korea was, most of all, a ground war, and “gravel crunchers”–infantry grunts–had a miserable time. The terrain was as much an enemy as the one that was shooting at us. There was always another hill to climb, and the weather seemed to be of two kinds: unbearable heat or unbearable cold.
All of this was remembered at the great therapy session on the Mall last week. “I’ve been waiting for this day for more than 40 years,” said Ed Fenton, whose battery in the 555th (“Triple Nickel”) Artillery Regiment was overrun by Chinese troops in 1951, and who spent 28 months as a POW. “People just never realized what we went through.” Bill McClain, a former company commander in the First Cavalry Division, also was overrun, up near the Yalu River in 1950. “We were spread so thin and there were so many of them,” he recalled. “I’m shocked when I look at my grandson’s history textbook and see how little there is in it about the Korean War.”
Many of those at the dedication wore caps decorated with medals and old insignia, or T shirts proclaiming their old units. There were men from the army’s 24th Division, whose unprepared troops– soft from occupation duty in Japan–were the first to learn what a tough and determined enemy we faced. And the Second (Indian Head) Division, which fought at Heartbreak Ridge, one of the war’s bloodiest battles. And the 25th, a “regular army” outfit that fought in the Pacific, Korea and Vietnam. I grabbed one man by the hand and shouted, “Hi, Marine! Where were you? What outfit?” It turned out we had been in the same one, the second battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, and had friends in common. We embraced on the spot. It was like that all afternoon.
The war lasted three years, one month and two days. The Marines alone suffered more than 2,000 casualties in the final two months, even as peace talks neared the end. On July 25,1958, two Chinese battalions attacked a remote Marine outpost on the western front. S/Sgt. Ambrosio Guillen won a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor helping repel the assault. The next day the Chinese hit the outpost again and another Marine sergeant won a posthumous Navy Cross. The following morning the armistice was signed at Panmunjom.
In the tight little world of a frontline rifle company, we seldom saw the big picture. We didn’t realize then that, as Clinton told us, we had helped South Korea become a free and prosperous nation. Mostly we fought for each other, or to uphold the honor of the Corps–that was what mattered. Most of us escaped the kind of trauma suffered by so many Vietnam vets. It was a different war at a different time, to be sure. But our mind-set was also different: we were closer to the World War II generation, and we answered the call simply because our country needed us. Our only anger, really, was that so much bravery, so much uncomplaining devotion to duty, went unrecognized for so long. Now that lingering bitterness has been laid to rest at last.
