THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507270363
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
They came home, those lucky enough to make it, to a country that barely seemed to realize they were gone. There were none of the welcome home parades that followed World War II, none of the protests that went with Vietnam.
``Most folks came back and got out and got a job and settled down to living,'' one of them said Wednesday. ``I guess it was just a sign of the times.''
But this afternoon, at a peaceful spot near the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of Korean War veterans will gather around a monument recalling their war - and claiming it finally as an American victory.
More than 100,000 veterans, their families and other Americans are expected to attend ceremonies dedicating the Korean War Veterans Memorial. After patriotic demonstrations and a speech by President Clinton, they will open to the public a monument unlike any other in this city of statues.
The memorial is dominated by the just-slightly-larger-than-life statues of 19 troops, arranged in a loosely formed wedge on a hillside and advancing toward an American flag.
Rifles at the ready, the men peer across the landscape in search of the enemy. They are crouched, tensed for battle, but their faces have the weary look soldiers get when they've seen too much death.
At the point of the wedge, under the flag, this inscription is etched into a slab of granite:
OUR NATION HONORS
HER SONS AND DAUGHTERS
WHO ANSWERED THE CALL
TO DEFEND A COUNTRY
THEY NEVER KNEW
AND A PEOPLE
THEY NEVER MET
We had two goals,'' said William P. Lecky, one of the memorial's architects. ``To honor the veterans and pay tribute to a time when the concept of military service was an honor and a privilege.''
The soldiers on what Lecky calls the ``field of service,'' including representatives of each military branch and all major races, take care of the veterans. Their time gets its tribute in the images of 2,500 support troops, sandblasted into a 164-foot black granite wall that runs along one side of the wedge.
Copied from Korea-era photos in the U.S. military's archives, the images include nurses, truck drivers, helicopter pilots, mechanics, and an assortment of their planes, ships and other equipment.
The memorial also includes a circular ``pool of remembrance,'' alongside and behind the flagpole. Etched in stones at the water's edge are the war's grim tolls: 54,216 Americans and 628,833 United Nations troops killed, more than 1.16 million Allied wounded, more than 478,000 missing.
Lecky, whose Washington-based firm also produced the nearby Vietnam Veterans Memorial, has been involved in the Korea project for five years. The new memorial, built with $18 million in privately raised funds, has survived a contentious dispute over its design that recalls the controversies surrounding development of the Vietnam memorial.
But the early reviews of veterans arriving for today's ceremonies and peering at the memorial Wednesday through fences suggest the long labors have paid off.
``I'm a little disappointed that it took so long,'' said Patrick Cunnane, a Yorktown Heights, N.Y., resident who saw action in Korea as an infantryman. ``But it looks nice.''
Cunnane spent part of Wednesday afternoon visiting a tent city erected near the memorial as a headquarters for the ceremonies today and earlier this week. Tents there provide entertainment for the visiting vets and exhibits about the war and modern-day South Korea.
A native of Ireland with the brogue to prove it, Cunnane seems a prototype for the kind of unassuming soldier Lecky hopes the memorial will celebrate. He had been in America only a year when he joined the Army and headed for Korea; he would not even become a U.S. citizen until four years later.
``When we came back, there was no demonstrations, no draft-card burning,'' he said. ``We just came back and went to work. That was the thing to do. Nobody went to Canada. . . . Nobody smoked drugs - if there were, there were very few, you never even heard of it.''
Cunnane said he joined up because ``it was the thing to do. If you didn't go and you were found out, you were kind of an outcast.''
Besides, he added with a grin, there were those sharp uniforms and the knowledge that they could make quite an impression on the girls. A lot of the immigrant teens in his neighborhood figured they'd sign up, get sent to nearby Fort Dix, N.J., and be able to go home for dances on the weekends.
``We got messed up,'' he said. ``They sent us to Texas instead.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by George Laumann/Visage photos
One of the 19 statues of the Korean War Veterans Memorial is
depicted with a rifle and a radio, looking north. Behind him, images
from archival photos, sandblasted into a black granite wall, pay
tribute to veterans.
The statues, slightly larger than life, are arranged in a loosely
formed wedge on a peaceful hillside near the Lincoln Memorial. They
are shown advancing toward an American flag.
KEYWORDS: KOREAN WAR MEMORIAL VETERAN by CNB