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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: UNFORGOTTEN WAR: 60 years on, ex-GIs remember Korean War WAEGWAN, South Korea — The old soldier stood erect on the riverbank, his cane at his side, a baseball cap emblazoned “2nd Infantry Division” square above his brow. He looked out, then turned away from the slow, silty Naktong. “I’ve seen this river before,” Carroll Garland said. “I don’t want to remember. Too many memories.” The war that began in Korea 60 years ago today, a ghastly conflict that killed millions and left the peninsula in ruins, became “The Forgotten War” in many American minds. To a shrinking corps of aging men, however, the soldiers of Korea 1950-53, it can never be forgotten. It damaged many physically, scarred many mentally, and left men questioning their commanders’ and their nation’s wisdom. They fought many enemies — not just the North Koreans and Chinese, but also the heat, the killing cold and the cursed hills, the thirst, hunger and filth, the incompetence and hubris of their own army, and the indifference of an American homeland fixed on World War II, which had ended five years earlier. Remembering Korea today may be painful, as ex-sergeant Garland, 81, of Oxon Hill, Md., can attest. But when such men get together, the freeze frames of war’s horrors and miseries, of lost comrades and paralyzing dread, inevitably emerge in sharp focus. “At the reunions, they talk about it,” said Lucille Macek, 76, wife of Shawnee, Kan, veteran Victor Macek. “And then they break down.” In a wartime arc of desperation, triumph, retreat and final stalemate in Korea, no U.S. division sacrificed as much as the 2nd Infantry Division, losing more than 7,000 killed, one-fifth of total U.S. dead. And it is the 2nd Infantry Division that still stands guard over South Korea today. Two days spent with a “2nd ID” group on a 60th-anniversary visit to old battlefields opened a window on the men and events of a lifetime ago, when what happened here, on the Naktong, on the Chungchon River of North Korea, in places like Kunu-ri and Heartbreak Ridge, neglected stories though they may be in today’s textbooks, was nothing less than a pivotal turn in 20th-century history, when a cold war grew hot in America’s confrontation with communism. Lack of firepower “We didn’t have enough men,” Henry Reed, 79, of Butte, Mont., recalled of the division’s ordeal on the Naktong. “There were so many holes in the line, the North Koreans didn’t have to try too hard. The enemy would get behind us, and we’d be fighting on all sides. Things were desperate.” It was called the Pusan Perimeter, a southeastern corner of Korea running 85 miles north to south along the Naktong, and 60 miles east to west. Here in mid-1950, in one of the most perilous U.S. military operations ever, outmanned U.S. and South Korean troops mounted a last-ditch defense against a closing North Korean vise. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. After the communist-led northerners struck south in their surprise invasion on June 25, two years after U.S. combat units withdrew from South Korea, U.S. commanders believed the simple reappearance of American troops would deter the North Koreans. “At our base in Hawaii, we thought the war would be over and we wouldn’t get our Combat Infantryman’s Badges,” said Marvin House, 79, a veteran of the 5th Regimental Combat Team (RCT). “Boy, were we fooled.” The northern army battered the first-arriving U.S. units and shattered the South Korean divisions. It simply was better trained and better equipped, with Soviet-made T-34 tanks. The U.S. government had shrunk the Army drastically after World War II, and training and equipment upgrades were neglected. As the 2nd Division sailed from Ft. Lewis, Wash., toward Korea in late July 1950, “we wound up training our soldiers to fire their weapons at tin cans thrown into the Pacific,” said retired Col. Ralph M. Hockley, 84, of Houston, then a young artillery officer. “Twenty percent of our vehicles had to be towed to the embarkation point,” Walter Wallis of Palo Alto, Calif., recalled of the 2nd Division deployment. “We had some real crap, four-year-old C-rations and stuff like that.” More suffering lay ahead The lunge north had been ill-conceived, putting the American army on a collision course with the might of China deep inside North Korea. Retired Lt. Col. Lynn A. Freeman, then a lieutenant at 23rd Infantry headquarters, remembered the night in late November 1950 when a Chinese attack materialized from nowhere, “blowing bugles and whistles and making a lot of noise,” and penetrating into the regimental command post at the Chungchon River. The regiment’s 1st Battalion beat them back. “The bodies of wounded Chinese were frozen in the river’s ice the next morning,” recalled the quiet-spoken Freeman, 87, of Concord, Calif. Meanwhile, young Wallis had an image frozen in his memory, of panicked U.S. soldiers trapped in sleeping bags and hopping down a hillside to escape the Chinese. “The next day we went up there and saw a couple that didn’t make it,” he said. But Chinese attacks all along the front forced the longest retreat in U.S. military history, a withdrawal by the entire U.S. Eighth Army some 160 miles back into South Korea. For the 2nd Division, the pullback through Kunu-ri and the valley remembered as “The Gauntlet” was a descent into a wintry hell. Even for those who escaped, the frigid temperatures and biting Siberian wind of an early winter could be as deadly an enemy. Wounded men froze to death while waiting for help. Hundreds suffered frozen feet and fingertips, noses and ears. The Army had failed to deliver winter clothing to tens of thousands of troops. It was at Heartbreak Ridge, in September 1951, that “we got into trouble, when we tried to move north,” recalled Ed Reeg, ex-machine gunner with the 23rd Infantry. Too many memories This May 31, Reeg, 82, of Dubuque, Iowa, stood with his wife and son atop a ridgeline south of Korea’s dividing Demilitarized Zone, and looked out toward Heartbreak. “To think we were so close to where I lay dying 59 years ago,” he reflected later. “I never thought I’d get back here.” Duty and doubts, flashbacks and nightmares, pride and uncertainties — veterans of killing fields, in Korea or elsewhere, are often torn by conflicting feelings. Many Korea vets are open about the psychic legacy of their war. In their foxholes 60 years ago, many questioned why their lives were being risked in a far-off civil war. “As a young fellow, I did wonder what we were doing here,” said the big Montanan and ex-rifleman Reed. Their anniversary tour supplied an answer for some, as they gazed upon a prosperous and — in recent decades — democratic South Korea, whose government subsidizes such veterans’ visits. “This makes me feel it was worth it,” said Reeg. “To see this country built up. It’s amazing.”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
#7. To: christine (#0)
Too bad soldiers don't learn to think until it's too late. I suspect most of these fools thought they were being "patriotic" when they joined.
Fools? Perhaps I was and am. Many of my friends that were "fools", still lie over there somewhere, and I resent them being referred to as fools.
#9. To: Cynicom (#8)
Perhaps I was and am. Many of my friends that were "fools", still lie over there somewhere, and I resent them being referred to as fools. Aren't all young guys who the military fools? That's why you don't see older guys line up to join. I had some 19-year-old ask me to buy him a beer at a casino before he went off to boot camp. Since I knew I could never talk him out of it, I told him, "I want you to remember the words 'Jews' and think long and hard about it when you come back."
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