Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507280094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Forty-five summers after they were first shoved back to the famous Pusan perimeter, tens of thousands of Korean War veterans completed their long road back Thursday, receiving at last their nation's thanks and a striking new monument to the war the world forgot.
Assembled in a jaunty but perspiring multitude along the Mall east of the Lincoln Memorial, the veterans, their families and friends stood in wilting heat as President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam dedicated what is officially known as the Korean War Veterans Memorial.
Clad in countless baseball caps and T-shirts, the veterans, mostly in their 60s, guzzled water and puffed cigars while the two leaders recounted their deeds and proclaimed that they had struck the first blow against Communism's curtain of iron.
``Now we know,'' Clinton told them, ``that those of you who served, and the families who stood behind you, laid the foundations for one of the greatest triumphs in the history of human freedom.''
And when the speeches were over and the gates to the monument opened, the men and women of Korea launched their last assault, engulfing the steel and granite sculpture and surrounding the memorial with affection.
It was a confluence of humanity, art and history. ``This is your day,'' a retired Marine general had told them. ``Beautiful,'' said one crimson-faced veteran. ``Beautiful.''
The new memorial, just across the Mall's reflecting pool from the Vietnam ``wall,'' has been as long-suffering as the men and women it honors, and is as stark and arresting as the bitter war it commemorates.
At its heart are 19 steel statues depicting GIs on patrol during the war. The 7-foot-tall, thousand-pound figures are clad in rain ponchos, their haunted faces etched with the anguish of combat, their movements frozen in eternal alert.
Serving as a backdrop is a 164-foot-long polished granite wall etched with ghostly faces taken from photographs of people who served in the war. And, arrayed on a slight rise on the ground, the memorial is surmounted by a shallow reflecting pool and a towering American flag.
The Korean War began June 25, 1950, when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, and it concluded with an armistice 42 years ago Thursday, July 27, 1953. The conflict pitted the Communist forces of North Korea and China against those of South Korea, the United States and a host of countries from the fledgling United Nations.
In the bitter seesaw struggle that ended roughly where it began, more than 1.5 million Americans served and 54,000 lost their lives.
Of those who served, many returned Thursday.
They came from Kuttawa, Ky., and Ontario, Canada; from Sanford, N.C., and Ipswich, England; from Columbus, Ga., and North Queensland, Australia.
They wore kilts and berets and overseas caps, and sweated through T-shirts and medal-covered vests that proclaimed what outfit they were in so long ago.
Many sported paunches and faded tattoos. Some carried canes, or used crutches, or were pushed in wheelchairs.
But when they spoke, they spoke about bloody and terrible and glorious places: Inchon, Chosin, Koto-ri, Hill 355, also known as Little Gibraltar. Sometimes they didn't know the official name of the place seared into their memories. ``Just put in `the apple orchard,''' Tom Pulliam, 71, said of a bloody spot he recalled. ``Everybody'll know where it was.''
For many, the names of the places brought tears.
A short time before the festivities, Russell Kingston, 64, of Kuttawa, Ky., and Oren Hanbaum, 68, of Paducah, Ky., stood outside the fenced-off ceremonial area wondering how to get in.
Both men wore the maroon overseas caps of the Western Kentucky Chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War. Hanbaum used metal crutches, a result of his treatment while imprisoned.
Both men had been Army riflemen. Hanbaum, who was in the 2nd Infantry Division, was captured May 17, 1951, when his unit was overrun by the Chinese near the 38th Parallel around the middle of Korea.
``We had been back in a rest area'' and had just returned to the front lines. It was at night. He and a buddy had just come down from the perimeter, had returned to their foxhole and covered themselves up with their tent.
Suddenly they heard a commotion and some shots being fired. Someone yanked the tent off, and Hanbaum and his pal were staring up at six Chinese with burp guns.
``We had nothing else to do but put up our hands,'' he said.
``Nobody knows the trauma you experience when you have to put up your hands and surrender,'' Hanbaum said. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned away.
``We marched for 41 days and nights,'' he said, before reaching a prison camp near the Chinese border. Hanbaum said he was treated brutally.
Kingston said he and his entire company had been overrun by the Chinese near Unson, North Korea, in early November 1950. He and some comrades managed to elude the enemy until Nov. 18.
Their capture came after he and five buddies had sought shelter in a hut in a tiny village. ``We was all froze out, hungry, no water,'' he said.
There was a small fire burning in a hibachi, and Kingston was just leaning over to light a cigarette when the sliding door was pulled open and an enemy soldier stuck a huge pistol to his forehead.
Kingston, a farmer's son, endured the rest of the war in severe captivity. ``If I hadn't been a country boy, I'd couldn't have stood it,'' he said.
by CNB