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, on June 25, 1950, a 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 still fixed on the “good” war, World War II, that had ended five years earlier.
Remembering Korea today might be painful, as ex-Sgt. 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, no U.S. division sacrificed as much as the 2nd Infantry Division, losing more than 7,000 killed, one-fifth of the total U.S. dead. And it is the 2nd Infantry that still stands guard over South Korea today.
Too many memories
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 their psychic legacy.
“I had night sweats for years,” said Rudy Ruiz, 77, of Las Vegas, a 38th Infantry Regiment rifleman. “Whatever, it’s still blocked out.”
In their foxholes 60 years ago, many questioned why their lives were being risked in a far-off civil war. 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 Ed Reeg, 82, of Dubuque, Iowa, an ex-machine gunner with the 23rd Infantry. “To see this country built up. It’s amazing.”
They recognize the picture is incomplete, however, because the peninsula remains divided.
“That’s one thing I’m sorry for,” said ex-rifleman Henry Reed, 78, of Butte, Mont.
A song for his comrades
John Manly long thought he would wait for Korean reunification before returning. Finally, at age 80, the old 23rd Infantry rifleman came, despite obvious misgivings about his war and its results — “I am almost a pacifist,” he told a reporter.
Equally obvious, as he spoke of a wartime friend killed in action, was his love for his fellow soldiers.
“Isn’t a day goes by I don’t think about him,” said Manly, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “I’m glad to be alive. A lot of the guys in there tonight are happy to be alive,” he said, nodding toward a banquet hall filled with fellow veterans.
That evening it was Manly’s tenor voice that silenced the hall, drawing the gray heads of old soldiers together in thoughts only they could share, as he sang, to the tune of the World War II favorite “Lili Marlene,” lyrics someone had improvised in 1952 as their own war dragged on:
“When the war is over and the world is free,
We’ll relive proud memories of bloody Kunu-ri.
Sayong and Heartbreak will be retold,
And Bloody Ridge will make us bold.
Our hearts will always be
With the 2nd Infantry.”
