Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507270045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Nineteen battle-clad soldiers slog across a V-shaped field toward a distant American flag. Fatigue and pain emanate from the soldiers' faces; the outlines of full battle packs are visible beneath their ponchos.
Cast of stainless steel with a gray patina, the soldiers appear frozen in that time four decades ago when Americans fought - and more than 50,000 of them died - in the Korean War.
It has been called the forgotten war, but its veterans are no longer silent or invisible. Those who fought in it are being honored with their own national memorial, 42 years after the armistice was signed at Panmunjom.
President Clinton is slated to dedicate the Korean War Veterans Memorial today, along with South Korean President Kim Young-sam and ambassadors from all 21 nations that supported the U.N. resolution opposing Soviet-backed North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950.
The dedication will include a military parade, a troop muster of Korean War veterans and a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
Like many other memorials constructed in Washington, this one came in late, over-budget and accompanied by controversy.
Congress authorized the memorial in 1986, and President Reagan signed the measure into law. But it took organizers six years to win approval from Washington's fine-arts and planning commissions for their unconventional design. Originally expected to cost $5 million, the price swelled to $18 million.
The concept, by a team of architects from Pennsylvania State University, was selected in a 1989 competition. A year later, the four-member team filed a federal lawsuit to stop the memorial, arguing that their original plan was destroyed by the review agencies and Cooper-Lecky Architects, the firm chosen to plan the memorial. Cooper-Lecky also led the development team for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. But in the interim, the Commission of Fine Arts approved the plan, then later rejected it as having too many elements. The initial concept involved 38 soldiers, symbolizing the North Korean Army's crossing of the 38th parallel into South Korea, inciting the war.
On June 14, 1992, President Bush broke ground for the memorial on a 2.2-acre plot of former marshland at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.
The column of soldiers is a vivid memorial
To the soldiers' right is a black granite wall, reminiscent of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which stands across the reflecting pool to the north. But rather than names of the war dead, the wall at the Korean memorial is a mural sandblasted into the rock. Based on photographs of those who served, the mural is a montage of the support troops - drivers and medics, nurses and chaplains - and the equipment they used.
``Every time I bring a Korean veteran down there, he sees himself in the wall,'' said Ray Donnelly, a volunteer worker with the Korean War Veterans Memorial Dedication Foundation who was an infantryman in Korea. ``I've seen myself several times. ... I've seen my buddies in the wall.''
Korea was a bloody ground war that presaged such future conflicts as Vietnam and Bosnia. Korea marked the first time an international force was gathered to fight under the U.N. flag. And it was this nation's first military action to thwart the spread of communism.
In 37 months of conflict, 54,248 Americans died in Korea - 33,629 of them in combat, the rest in accidents or from sickness. All told, 628,833 U.N. troops died in Korea.
A total of 8,168 Americans remain missing in action from Korea; 389 prisoners of war have never been accounted for. More than 470,000 U.N. troops remain missing; all are presumed dead.
The armistice of July 27, 1953, left opposing lines about where they were when the war started. No peace agreement has ever been signed.
by CNB