Remember.
The "Greatest Generation" fought two wars, only 5 years apart. One war it talked about all the time. Tom Hanks made a great feature film about one. The other one has 614 views on Youtube.
His story is one I remember hearing from the World War II vets, but only when they got older. When they were younger, they never talked about it, but when they got older they wanted to make sure that people didn't forget their buddies who didn't make it back.
Such a strange war, that robbed this man of his earned heroism. You might ask yourself why this was, unless you're as nasty and suspicious as I am, in which case Tail Gunner Joe explains pretty much the whole thing for you.
Yeah, truly sad story and there are a lot more like that...
ReplyDeleteArguably the best book about the Korean War is "This Kind of War" by T.R. Fehrenbach.
ReplyDeleteSadly it's a totally forgotten war. Maybe that's because it was the first one that the U.S. didn't fight to win, but only fought to a draw.
Another Chosin vet is in the news. He's looking for the remains of his friend and fellow pilot who went down during the fighting:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2013/07/20/world/asia/north-korea-veterans-visit/index.html
When we buried my uncle 2 years ago, I found a hundred or so pictures from the Chosin Reservoir. He went in that battle as a Sgt, and came out 30 days later as a lieutenant through attrition.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures are of a desolate place where they were building windbreaks and gun emplacements out of the bodies of the Korean soldiers. More than anything, the pictures showed snow and rock and sterile land.