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"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."- Abraham Lincoln
May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.
- General George Patton Jr
Call Your Senator Or Representative
Toll Free:
800-828-0498,
800-459-1887
and 800-614-2803
LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE PAYING ATTENTION AND VOTING
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
-- John Adams (Address to the Military, 11 October 1798)
Veterans can find out information about using their VA Benefits including the VA Loan benefit.
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail.
Without it nothing can succeed.
He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws.
"-Abraham Lincoln
"Korea, the forgotten war"
by Frank Praytor
"Korea, the forgotten war" is a label certain New Mexico veterans are not accepting quietly. Their monthly newsletter of Albuquerque Chapter One, Korean War Veterans Association, is even titled "Forget Hell!" And, these guys have a mission: To see that their fellow citizens aren't allowed to forget the war that saved South Korea, a great part of the North-Asian Pacific Rim and probably Japan from falling into the communist realm. Astounding describes the difference between South and North Korea today and Korean War veterans can be as proud of their accomplishment as anybody on earth.
What disturbs us most is the fact that the piddling amount of U.S. history taught these days in many public schools rarely, if never, includes the Korean War (1950-1953). It may rate a few indifferent passages. Some of the more recent examples are spun with a vague, apologetic hint conveying skepticism of the validity of our being there. (Sound familiar, Vietnam War vets?)
Seventh and eighth graders are abjectly ignorant of what "politically correct" textbook producers refer to - if at all -- as "the Korean conflict" -- an alliterative euphemism that seems to make the Korean War a heated confrontation worthy of little more
than a footnote.
Thus is brought into focus the
mission of Albuquerque-area
veterans of the Korean War:
To make it unforgotten in the
minds of our history-deprived
fellow citizens, especially young
ones. Albuquerque Chapter One
is small in number and getting
smaller, but we're endeavoring
to compensate by being vocal.
Whenever there is a military
kind of public event, such as
Armed Forces Day at the
annual state fair, or organized
events at Albuquerque's Veterans Memorial (park), we are there and we talk to people.
To our pleasant surprise, young people stopping by our outdoor "booth" at the state fair reveal honest curiosity and interest. They study the maps we have on display, they gather up our information pieces and they ask questions. Some even express appreciation for teaching them something they never learned in school.
What's our message? It's lengthy, but certainly not boring:
"This is a map of the Korean peninsula and here's the 38th Parallel that separates South Korea and North Korea. Until the end of World War II in 1945, it was one country occupied by imperialist Japan. The Allies, mainly the U.S. and Great Britain, agreed, imprudently many say with the advantage of hindsight, to splitting the country in half so that our communist 'allies,' suddenly our adversaries, could put the northern half under their domination.
"Thick barriers of barbed wire,
ours and theirs, went up and a
'demilitarized zone' 2.5 miles wide
was created. The 'peace' was iffy until…
"Until June 25, 1950, five years
after the Big War, the North Korean
Army swarmed into South Korea in
a shock invasion. It was spearheaded
by tanks from the Soviet Union.
The intent was to 'unify' the entire
Korean peninsula. They slaughtered
defending soldiers, murdered civilians indiscriminately and took an untold number of prisoners.
"There were only a few thousand U.S. Army personnel stationed in South Korea at that moment. They put up a fight, but the invasion was too large and overwhelming. The Republic of Korea Army, ROKs as they are called, along with their American allies, were driven to the far southeastern corner of the peninsula.
"With reinforcements from occupied Japan, they formed a semi-circular line of defense that quickly came to be known as the Pusan Perimeter. And there they held off the northern hordes as more reinforcements came from Japan, Okinawa and the U.S.
"The American military had some surprises of its own for the North Koreans. A brigade of Marines landed and captured the port of Inchon on South Korea's upper west coast. Army infantry moved in and joined with the Marines to recapture the capitol city of Seoul in fierce assaults.
"Before it fell into Allied hands for the last time, Seoul was invaded and defended a total of four times, each action compounding the horrific destruction. The pro-democracy Western bloc of the five-year-old United Nations began to send support in varying degrees of manpower ranging from token to brigade-size, the British Commonwealth (England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada) comprising the largest contingent of U.N. member nations. Turkey contributed a brigade of infantry fighters.
"The push continued northward, past the 38th Parallel. General MacArthur, who commanded the 'U.N. police action' (President Harry Truman's euphemistic name for this war), ordered his forces to the Chosin Reservoir bordering China. His strategy was to rid the peninsula of communism.
"The Chinese communist government had a different idea. It sent its first troops into the war on October 10, 1950, with an offensive operation as ROK Army units reached the Yalu River. During the month of November, vast numbers of Chinese swarmed into North Korea to overrun and stop the Allied advance.
"Truman fired MacArthur and ordered him to the U.S. It was a crisis within a crisis that spawns arguments to this day: Was MacArthur's plan, which might have sparked a full-scale war with China, the wisest thing to do, or was Truman right in relieving him? This argument is back on today, since North Korea has become an even greater threat - this time, a nuclear one.
"American and South Korean forces found themselves literally surrounded and fighting in every direction. Those that escaped had to fight their way to the east coast port of Hungnam to be hurriedly evacuated.
"Beginning in the first quarter of 1951, offensive drives were initiated and the North Korean and Chinese forces were pushed back northward just beyond the 38th Parallel and both sides 'dug in' in a scenario reminiscent of World War One. The ground war consisted of outpost fights and night raids. The air over North Korea, however, became the main scenario of combat as American Saberjets encountered Russian MiGs piloted by Soviet airmen, who were careful not to cross the earthly demarcation line.
" A Pacific Stars and Stripes reporter in Korea, Air Force Staff Sgt. Robert S. McNeill, broke the news that Soviet airmen actually were the combatants for North Korea. He filed the story, only to learn that it was killed by the Far East Command censors in Tokyo. He observed, wryly:
'I suppose they don't want the Russians to know they're in a war.'
"His 'scoop' became an official secret that finally was declassified late in the 20th Century after the USSR became a non-entity.
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