60 years since The Forgotten War--Korea

[Reba]

Korea--The Forgotten War

Date: July 27, 2013

Recalling ‘The Forgotten War’

Today we and our allies around the world mark the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended three years of brutal open warfare on the Korean Peninsula. Thirty-three thousand U.S. servicemen died in that conflict. Though the battle lines stabilized near the 38th Parallel in the summer of 1951 after a devastating intervention by the Chinese army drove United Nations forces out of the territory of North Korea, it took two bloody years of stalemate to negotiate the truce that took effect formally on July 27, 1953, and guaranteed the survival of the Republic of South Korea.

North Korea, which invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, agreed to the cease-fire and armistice, but has refused to sign a final peace agreement. It periodically denounces the armistice and occasionally launches attacks on South Korean targets. Curiously, though, the Stalinist North Korean government has been holding elaborate celebrations of the armistice anniversary this week, claiming that it marks “victory in the Fatherland Liberation War.”

In the United States, though, the Korean War became known as “The Forgotten War.” It was understandably obscured by World War II, and many war-weary Americans simply looked the other way.

But that war saw some of the nastiest fighting in U.S. military history, compounded by difficult terrain, scorching summers and bitter early cold winters. A low point came in November 1950, just weeks after China entered the war, when the U.S. Tenth Corps was surrounded in North Korea at the Chosin Reservoir, afterward known to the troops as “Frozen Chosin.”

The U.S. breakout was led by the First Marine Division under Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, who was credited by The New York Times with responding to a reporter’s question about retreat by saying, “Retreat, hell. We are not retreating. We are just advancing in a different direction.”

The origins and conduct of the Korean Conflict remain controversial among historians of diplomacy and military operations, but two major outcomes are certain: the emergence of South Korea as a thriving democracy, economic powerhouse and major ally, and the maturing of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, built in part on the role of Japan as the sustaining base of U.S. operations in Korea.

U.S. military personnel, some of whom had already fought in World War II, made profound sacrifices in Korea. Americans across the nation will rightly pause to honor our surviving veterans of that brutal conflict today. Those ceremonies will include a 4 p.m. event at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston, where veterans and family members of deceased veterans will receive a Congressional Certificate of Appreciation and a commemorative pin from Sen. Tim Scott.

But as we look back on our troops’ indispensable service in that distant realm, we also must look forward from the unfinished — and ominous — story of North Korea.

When satellites fly over the Korean peninsula at night, six decades after the armistice, the images they send show the southern half brilliantly lit and the northern half bathed in darkness. While Asia as a whole has prospered in the wake of the Korean and Vietnamese wars by adopting capitalist production methods and joining the world market, North Korea has stubbornly clung to its rigidly communist and dynastic path, seeing enemies on all sides.

Though deeply impoverished, the regime has developed a nuclear arsenal while starving its own people. Despite the international community’s repeated warnings, North Korea now persists in trying to develop long-range missiles to threaten its neighbors — and the U.S.

The rash actions of 30-year-old North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, the founder’s grandson who took over in late 2011, have dashed initial hopes that he would turn away from the reckless path of perpetual belligerence. Thus, in a harrowing sense, the Korean War continues.

And so should Americans’ respect, and gratitude, for our troops who fought for our country — and freedom — in Korea.

The Post and Courier, Charleston SC

TCS will be at the ceremony this afternoon with the Patriot Guard Riders Flag line.

I had only one relative who went to Korea with the Army.

 

[Reba]

Vet shares story

After two years in captivity, Heyward Tumbleston decided he’d had enough of his Chinese guards, the bitter cold and the lack of edible food.

Held inside the notorious “Camp 5” deep in the isolated hills of North Korea, there was too much death and too much torture. So Tumbleston and a fellow prisoner opted to escape.

Their plan was both daring and naive. During the nights they could see bombardment flashes from U.S. Navy guns over the horizon. They figured if they could make it to the coast they could steal a boat and get away.

Part of their effort worked; they made it close enough to hear the ocean. But that’s where their try for freedom ended.

Tumbleston’s companion was shot dead by an enemy patrol when they entered a clearing they thought was isolated. Tumbleston was recaptured and taken back to Camp 5 where he was kept inside a tiny box. “I lived in that thing for two months,” he said. “Whenever I got out, I couldn’t walk.”

Today, the calendar marks the 60-year end of the Korean War when an armistice brought a close to hostilities but not a true peace. Some 483 servicemen from South Carolina were killed in the three years of fighting that claimed more than 54,000 American lives, including nearly 8,000 never accounted for.

Tumbleston, 82, of Mount Pleasant — “Gene” to his friends — doesn’t plan to do any form of celebrating, figuring the war is long over and barely remembered, except when there’s the occasional saber-rattling from the North. It’s a feeling veterans’ advocates say is common.

“After facing combat, a lot of people never want to come back and talk about it,” said Frank Adams, a volunteer with HonorFlight South Carolina, one of several nonprofit efforts dedicated to taking aging veterans free of charge to see their war memorials in Washington, D.C. Many of these groups are now further expanding their missions to include Korean vets along with those from World War II.

Tumbleston grew up around Charleston. He attended the former Moultrie High School in Mount Pleasant but admits to being a bored, troublesome teenager. In 1948 the opportunity came to join the Army, so he took it. He was sent to Fort Jackson in Columbia, assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division and shipped to peacetime Japan.

“I loved those Japanese gals,” he said with a sly kick in his voice.

Life abruptly changed for the corporal in June 1950 when war on the Korean peninsula broke out between the communist North and the West-friendly South.

Tumbleston remembers his unit getting a quick pep-talk from an officer about containing the global spread of communism. The message was all but lost on the poor Southern kid.

“We were supposed to be going in fighting communism,” Tumbleston recalled. “And I didn’t even know what communism was.”

During his first weeks in-country, Tumbleston was wounded in the left arm by a North Korean bullet. He returned to the front lines later that year. His capture came that November after the Chinese Army suddenly and surprisingly entered the war. “They hit us about 200,000 strong,” he said.

Isolated and trapped on top of a hill, his post was attacked by Chinese troops for three days straight, coming in wave after human wave. “I don’t know why, but they sure wanted that piece of property real bad,” he said.

When the ammunition ran out, only six of his unit’s 65 men were left.
The survivors began heading toward what they thought was safety but not before stopping to give water and aid to a severely wounded Chinese soldier.
Tumbleston thinks that single act of kindness probably saved his life.

Moments later, hundreds of Chinese troops who had been watching his every move emerged from concealment in the hills above.

When they got up, “it just seemed like the whole mountain moved at one time,” he said.

If his captors had been North Korean, “they would have killed us right then,” he added. Tumbleston’s family would not know of his POW status for more than an year.

Life as a prisoner became a minute-by-minute, day-by-day struggle. There were long night marches in the biting cold when he had only light clothes to wear. Peasant huts became his home. Sometimes the food was no more than handfuls of millet — tasteless grain.

“That’s what we use here for bird seed,” he said. “They’d boil it up twice a day.” The millet would “wash through you,” he added. “It had no food value at all.”

When his Chinese captors learned that his aunt had married an Air Force officer, they wanted information about the airman’s importance so badly they beat him severely enough for him to be paralyzed. The beatings were futile; Tumbleston had never met the guy.

And there were collaborators to deal with — Americans who sided with the Chinese in exchange for better food. “There was 21 of them that I know of. I think most of those are dead now,” Tumbleston said, adding that he later gave testimony against one of the men. “He was ratting us out.”

“They wanted us to denounce our country and come and live in China,” he also said of his captors. “We could have jobs and eat good; we could get married,” he said of their promises.

One of the worst instances of torture he saw was when a downed fighter pilot was placed in a sealed steel drum.

“They beat on it continuously,” he said. “They were trying to drive him crazy and make him sign a confession of dropping germ warfare.”

Tumbleston survived the remaining months of the war until one day with little advance warning he was sent back south as part of the armistice agreement. He came home, got on with his life, went to work and started a family.

One of his two daughters, Cathy Elder, 58, of St. Stephen, said she never heard about her father’s wartime and POW accounts until about 10 years ago. She described him as an absentee father to her when she was younger. Growing up, she knew he was always a “restless” man, she said.

“That was part of the PTSD. As we got older, we realized a lot of it wasn’t his fault,” Elder said. When the stories of the war did come, it was “in little bits and pieces,” she added.

Decades later, Tumbleston still suffers nightmares that bring back the fighting and death he saw.

“The Chinese — I’ve seen them time and time again in my dreams,” he said. But the misery pangs and anger have subsided.

“I don’t really hate them now,” he said.

The Post and Courier, Charleston SC

 

[Foxrac]

Oh wow, 60 years is pretty long year.

There were very few in my families served in the military during Korean War, but all of them died about decade ago.

My grandfather was US Navy and served in naval ship in Japan and Korea in late 1940's to early 1950's, but he left due to medical reason.

 

[caz12]

i was looking KimJong Un on the news.something very wrong his brain not in full working order he so child like. Those Generals could see they telling him how to respond.If he has some form of mental retardation then those Generals are beyond cruelty.He definatly not normal

 

[VacationGuy234]

I have a relative who fought, army infantry out of California.

If McAarthur hadn't crossed the parallel, the war would have been different. Truman did not want a war with the Soviet Union and rightly so after WWII.

The conflict took a lot of American lives, sadly.

 

[Jiro]

parts of the Forgotten War are the Korean soldiers and civilians as well...

 

[Calvin]

 

[soulchill]

MASH lasted 11 years.

 

[femme Fatale]

One of the few points in this world where the cold war lives on. The sacrifices the western world makes is understandable to sustain our freedom and democratic way of life.

 

[whiskeyonesix]

We forget that the ANZACS and also the British took part as well.

 

[Reba]

We forget that the ANZACS and also the British took part as well.

It's up to each country to remember its wars and veterans.

If you have a story about the Korean Conflict (War) that you would like to post here, please feel free.

 

[KristinaB]

My father was in Japan during this. He was a Linotype operator for the Pacific Stars & Stripes. During R&R he caught malaria and lost his hearing as a result. The Army fitted him with his first hearing aid. I also remember him saying that they used to do forced marches with rocks and such in their packs and he broke all the bones in his feet.

He was discharged after the malaria and never got any of his benefits from the VA. All the paperwork claims he went AWOL, but we have his discharge papers. DD-214 (?) Don't remember the name of them.

 

[KristinaB]

Oh, my father-in-law was also in this War. I think he was Navy, but might have been Army. MIL does not talk about it at all. Seems he had no good memories and refused to talk about it. After he died in 2009, he was buried in the Veteran's Cemetery here locally, but it was not what he wanted. That's how upset he was about this war. Don't know why.

 

[Steinhauer]

It's up to each country to remember its wars and veterans.

If you have a story about the Korean Conflict (War) that you would like to post here, please feel free.

When I was a kid growing up in a Gulfside town in Florida, my parents would sometimes let an older man and his wife babysit me when they went out of town.

He never babysat my older brother and sisters .. just me. His name was Mr. Hicks and he was a Korean War veteran (USMC). I remember him opening up to me about his war time horror experiences, when I was 6 or 7 years old. His wife was even taken back by it. She later told me it was the first time even she knew about them, since he had never told anyone before. All she had known, was that he had been injured.

Mr. Hicks had been shot in the head, and had metal plates in his head as a result of the surgery. He had been shot numerous times, but the head shot was what made him used as a human shield since the other Marines with him thought he was dead. He told me that he was shot at by children. Children as young as me (at the time).

North Korea still trains children to fight.


edit: Wow, I just did an internet search for him and came across this:

Letter to the editor: Poem comes back by recalling Korean War - News-Sentinel.com

It came back to me at the memorial service at Fellowship Baptist Church, New Port Richey, Fla., several years ago for a godly man, Brother Hicks. He was in the Korean War and was so badly injured that he was put in a body bag. However, he moved, someone saw it, and he was revived. He suffered all the rest of his life from those wounds. I taught the auditorium Sunday school class, and Brother Hicks was such a blessing with positive comments and literature from time to time. Those were great days, and great winters in Florida.