THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510240555
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY ALVA CHOPP, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 232 lines
MEN AND WOMEN in their 60s, with nothing but a shared experience to unite them, mingled around the striped tent at 25th Street at the Oceanfront last weekend.
Some wore the typical vacationer's shorts and sport shirts. Others sported ballcaps with the patches of various military units while a few squeezed into their time-worn uniforms still bearing the insignia of the past.
For these men, veterans of the Korean War, their shared moment was suddenly a renewed memory. It was an occasion to recall the past, remember their old war buddies and make new friends with the only people who truly understand what it's like to be in combat.
The Korean War Veterans Reunion was the first time these men had joined together as a national group to remember and be recognized. It was the first time they planned their own ``Welcome Home Parade'' (canceled due to rain) and the first time many of them had allowed themselves to remember the past.
For Dick Gallmeyer, the reunion was more than a simple gathering of veterans. It was the culmination of a year and a half of dogged determination, a chance to make his idea a reality for everyone on active duty during the Korean War.
Many people thought it would never happen, that Gallmeyer, a 36-year Army veteran and retired master sergeant, was a dreamer who had made a promise to himself he couldn't keep. After all, Gallmeyer claims 4.5 million Korean veterans are still living.
But once decided, Gallmeyer began to make things happen.
The idea began to form while the Virginia Beach resident was recuperating from surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Hampton in June 1994. While thumbing through an old photo album, Gallmeyer began to reminisce about his war buddies. Whatever happened to Johnny Longo or Shorty Heinzelman or the other friends whose faces looked back at him from those faded photographs?
``If I wondered about my friends, I was sure there were others anxious to find their old buddies,'' Gallmeyer said. ``Nobody's ever attempted this, so I decided to try.''
When his hospital stay ended, Gallmeyer began to put his idea to work. He started making phone calls to various veterans groups. He set up a personal computer in his home and began the arduous task of sending press articles, letters of explanation and calls for volunteers to anyone who would listen.
``The task never seemed bigger than I could handle . . . with proper assistance,'' said Gallmeyer, scanning the manned tables at his tent headquarters. ``There's a way to do anything if you set your mind to it.''
Within months, he began to receive the first of thousands of phone calls and letters from veterans and their families anxious to find out more about this reunion.
Gallmeyer soon had a horrendous phone bill and a growing stack of letters from all over the world. Other Korean veterans from Hampton Roads and across the country began to volunteer their time to make this reunion happen.
With borrowed tables and chairs, a donated office space and the use of a home computer, these former strangers rolled up their sleeves and went to work.
Gallmeyer explained the response like this: ``Many of them are like me. Almost all of us put the war behind us. When the war was over, we came home, took off our uniforms and went back to work raising our families.
``Many of us never mentioned the war to anybody,'' he said.
``We've never had any recognition as a group for over 40 years and we went through as much as anyone. This reunion is very important to us.''
Throughout the weekend, Gallmeyer's sentiments were echoed throughout the registration tent beginning Wednesday, along the fairways at the reunion's golf tournament Friday and whispered at the memorial ceremony Saturday honoring those who didn't return.
John Stephenson from Lake Delton, Wis., was an Army corporal in the 185th Combat Engineers during the war. He can hardly talk about the war without tears welling in his eyes. ``I think these vets feel closer now than they did during the war,'' he said. ``When we came home there was no band waiting for us.''
``They were never recognized for what they did,'' said Stephenson's wife, Mary, clutching his arm. ``They really needed this (reunion).''
Don Cush volunteered to be the financial chairman and national coordinator for the reunion after seeing a newspaper article about it.
Although he lives in Annandale, N.J., once he heard about Gallmeyer's plans, Cush said he decided to ``step up to the plate'' and become involved. He was only 17 during his first tour with the Korean Military Advisory Group to South Korea in 1953. He later served from 1955 to '57 in Taegu, Pusan and Seoul.
Cush said his fellow veterans should be proud that they met the combined power of the North Koreans and Chinese. ``We met them and we held.''
Cush, who never spoke about the war to his family after he returned home but developed anxiety attacks over something as simple as a Korean dish, said he doesn't care for the ``forgotten war'' metaphor. ``These veterans won't ever forget the war,'' he said.
But many veterans feel their country forgot them.
``We were the key people in this country fighting for our survival,'' said Paul Reynolds, national commander for the Korean War Veterans of America, a private organization based in Dixon, Tenn. ``Because of us the Cold War was won. Had we lost in Korea, we wouldn't be here today.''
He said Korean veterans simply want to be recognized for their place in history.
About 1,000 Korean veterans attended the weekend reunion, which organizers hope to make an annual affair. A second gathering is already planned for Oct. 18 to 20, 1996, in Virginia Beach.
Those who attended this year's event scanned computer data base printouts for the name of that buddy who shared a foxhole or special commander who never let them down.
From rubber-banded envelopes long yellowed and frayed from handling, veterans pulled old snapshots of themselves in front of jeeps and mess tents, huddled around makeshift camps and posing with their new best friends in a war-torn country halfway around the world. Faces of young men barely out of adolescence.
Gallmeyer said a special connection exists between Korean veterans. ``We're like the Korean War Veterans family,'' he said. Even those who didn't serve in Korea itself feel a part of the Korean War experience.
It's like a brotherhood, a group that bonds instantly because they see in each other's eyes the shared memories of the past.
As for Gallmeyer's buddies in his photo album, he couldn't locate but one or two and they were unable to attend the reunion.
Somehow that didn't seem to matter. In a single weekend, Gallmeyer found hundreds of other ``war buddies'' to share in his memories and finally the recognition for what they did more than 40 years ago. MEMO: SOLDIERS WITH STORIES TO TELL by Alva Chopp
Korean War veterans who gathered at the Oceanfront last weekend told
their own personal war experiences to anyone who would listen, each
story uniquely different from the other. . . .
In 1949, Staff Sgt. Ervin Yarbrough was stationed in Seoul, Korea,
accompanied by his young wife, Sue, and their 3-year-old daughter,
Margaret. When asked to stay as part of the Korean Military Advisory
Group, Ervin didn't question the assignment.
``We were young and we had a good time in Korea,'' he said. But all
that changed when war broke out on a Sunday morning in 1950. The next
morning, Sue was told to pack one suitcase and a blanket for herself and
Margaret and board a bus for evacuation.
``I felt incredible fear,'' said Sue Yarbrough. ``We didn't know what
to pack because we weren't told whether we were heading toward a warm or
a cold climate. And I was sad to leave Ervin behind.''
From the coast, Sue and Margaret traveled with 856 other women and
children in small boats to a Norwegian fertilizer freighter waiting at
sea.
``They took us out into the ocean and made us climb a rope ladder to
the freighter's deck,'' Sue Yarbrough recalled. ``We all sat on the open
deck eating food supplied by the crew until it began to rain. Then they
threw the fertilizer overboard and allowed us to go below.''
For three days they traveled to their unknown destination and finally
arrived in Japan.
``We stayed in the Hotel Fujiama for three weeks before we were
allowed to return to the States,'' she said. It wasn't until she and
Margaret returned to their hometown in Mississippi that Ervin found out
what had happened to his family.
``We feel a close kinship to the veterans,'' said Sue Yarbrough.
``We're friends whether we know each other or not.''
While what was called the ``police action'' was raging in Korea, Bob
Swink was an Air Force staff sergeant at Holloman Air Base in New
Mexico.
``I have a strong feeling that these veterans didn't get a lot of
recognition for what they did,'' said Swink, executive officer of the
Korean War Veterans Reunion. ``Although I didn't personally serve in
Korea, I had two of my best friends killed in the war and I almost went
myself.''
Swink was one of three staff sergeants in his unit equally qualified
to fill a billet in Korea. His commanding officer wouldn't make the call
and told the three to draw straws to see who would go.
``I was married and didn't really want to leave,'' said Swink. ``We
drew straws and the only single guy drew the long straw.''
``It could've just as easily been me,'' he said.
Staff Sgt. Dick Gallmeyer was a radio operator and forward observer
in the 58th Field Artillery, 3rd Division in Korea. At the end of the
war, Gallmeyer was pulled back to division artillery headquarters and
took over the radio section. He spent the war at the central front, an
area dubbed the Iron Triangle, right in the center of the 38th
parallel.
When the war ended at 1 p.m. July 27, Gallmeyer remembers clearly how
he called the division together and radioed the countdown to the
artillery battalions to cease firing.
Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and everything
stopped. ``All the firing and noise from as far as you could see
stopped,'' he said.
After a few minutes fellows began jumping out of foxholes and bunkers
all around, he said. Then you heard the sound of bottles popping
followed by a guzzling sound.
``Beer, water . . . whatever was available they drank,'' Gallmeyer
recalled, smiling. The silence, he said, was deafening.
ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
REMEMBERING KOREA
KOREAN WAR VETERANS REUNION
For Dick Gallmeyer, whose Korean War pictures are on the cover, the
reunion was the culmination of a year and a half of dogged
determination to bring old war buddies together.
Photos by L. TODD SPENCER
Bill Salmon, left, Miki Meekins Salmon, and Robert Elko look through
old photos. The reunion of the ``forgotten war'' marked the first
time many of them had allowed themselves to remember the past.
Photos, including color cover, by L. TODD SPENCER
Rev. Dr. Charles L. Cooper and his wife, Ruth Ann, listen to
speeches during the ceremonies at the Oceanfront. Some dressed
casually, while a few squeezed into their time-worn uniforms still
bearing the insignia of the past.
About 1,000 of the 4.5 million living Korean War veterans attended
the reunion. A second is planned for Oct. 18-20, 1996, in Virginia
Beach.
Britt A. Wilkgy and Paul C. Whitley reenact the final minutes of the
Korean War. At 1 p.m. on July 27, 1953, a countdown was radioed to
the artilery battalions to cease firing.
WHO'S WHO?
Korean War veteran Bill Salmon, above, reenacted the part of Gen.
Douglas MacArthur - right down to his corn-cob pipe. As the 1950
picture of MacArthur, below, shows Salmon struck a stunning
resemblance.
Bottom photo courtesy of MacArthur Memorial
COMPARING THE WARS
World War II Korean War Vietnam War
(1941-46) (1950-53) (1961-1973)
U.S. deaths
292,000 54,246 58,426
U.S. wounded
671,000 103,284 153,000
U.S. serving
16,113,000 5,720,000 8,744,000
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the U.S., Bureau of Census and
Korean War Veterans Magazine
by CNB