From: Otis Willie deawatch@aol.com
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:34 PM
Subject: [vetissues] Veterans muster quickly for Korean War medals
Sun Apr 28, 6:29 PM ET
Veterans muster quickly for Korean War medals Sun Apr 28, 6:29 PM ET
SPOKANE, Washington - Dick Hazelmyer thought other local veterans of the Korean War, long dubbed "The Forgotten War," might want to join him in applying for a medal offered by South Korea (news - web sites) on the conflict's 50th anniversary.
He figured if Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 51, where he is an officer, helped organize the applications and send them in, there might be enough for a small ceremony when the medals arrive.
He didn't know what he was getting into.
After a brief story about the effort was published in The Spokesman-Review, along with his telephone number, hundreds of veterans called. Hundreds more couldn't get through.
In two weeks, Post 51 took in an estimated 250 applications for the Korean War Service Medal — now being processed or en route to the Pentagon (news - web sites).
"We woke the sleeping giant," Hazelmyer said.
Hazelmyer had been thinking of a high school auditorium for the ceremony. He's started looking for a larger venue — perhaps the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena. The ceremony is tentatively scheduled for Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
The response is the local indicator of a nationwide trend as Korean War veterans and their families emerge from a half century of personal silence and national indifference.
Sandwiched between World War II and Vietnam and lasting from 1950-53, Korea really was a forgotten war, said Ted Barker, co-founder of the nonprofit Korean War Project in Dallas.
"It came at a time when we weren't prepared mentally to go back to war," he said.
But the local response was no surprise. The Korean War memorial unveiled in 1995 in Washington, D.C., helped rekindle interest, as does the medal offer, Barker said.
"The pride is there," he said.
When American troops were sent to help stop North Korean forces invading the South in June 1950, the nation was told they'd be home by Christmas.
But the young, inexperienced troops suffered high casualties, and hundreds became prisoners of war. More troops and more experienced commanders were sent in. Then United Nations (news - web sites) forces joined American troops and the South Korean army, and China aided North Korea (news - web sites).
Hazelmyer was 20 when he arrived in 1952. He'd enlisted rather than wait to be drafted after he graduated from Rogers High School.
"At the time, it was the thing to do," Hazelmyer said. "I lay awake that first night in the tent. The artillery sounded like it was coming in one door and out the other," he recalls. "For several nights I didn't get much sleep. After a week to 10 days, you seasoned into it."
As a member of the 7th Signal Corps of the 7th Infantry Division, he helped string phone lines and drove trucks on supply lines. He remembers Chinese troops blowing horns and bugles when they charged, and being mowed down by machine guns.
"The people were living on nothing, with nothing. A shanty town was a luxury compared to what they were living in," Hazelmyer said.
After 11 months, his unit came home. He was in Seattle when the war ended in a stalemate.
"But we just didn't get the recognition of World War II," he said.
"People just forgot us."
John Gese, who served on a destroyer off Korea, says the war "wasn't as important (as World War II) in the mind's eye of some — including myself. The war was kind of like an orphan because we didn't fight it to win."
Gese, a resident of Chattaroy north of Spokane, is applying for the medal, and said he appreciates South Korea's move to honor the vets.
Betty Hill of Spokane is seeking the medal for her late husband, Robert, a career Army man who was 19 when he fought his first battle in Korea.
Robert Hill, who also served in Panama and Vietnam, didn't talk as much about Korea, she said.
"Maybe it stunned him because he was so young," she said.
He'd have wanted the medal, Hill said.
"This would have been his first," she said, because Korea was his first war.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020428/ap_wo_en_ge/us_korean_medal_1
---------------------------
Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com