thedrifter
07-24-08, 05:36 AM
James Brady On Media
Ending A War
James Brady 07.24.08, 6:00 AM ET
No matter who wins in November, the war in Iraq will stop one day. But just how do you end a war? The so-called "forgotten war" in Korea ended at 10 p.m. on July 27, 1953--55 years ago on Sunday--with an uneasy truce that still holds half a century later.
For those who forget--or never knew--when Japan surrendered in 1945, the Soviet Union and the U.S. agreed to an ad hoc division of Japanese-occupied Korea along the arbitrarily accepted frontier of the 38th Parallel.
Inevitably, the southern half of the divided country came under our influence and the northern half under the Soviets'. We sent in some military advisers to the South and handed over a few surplus weapons. The Russians sent in plenty of military advisers and built up a powerful North Korean peasant army under Kim Il Sung, daddy of the current despot, who'd served as a major in the Red Army during the big war. Kim and many of his officers and non-commissioned officers were Russian-trained and had some combat experience. The South was militarily clueless.
South Korea was run by an ancient émigré autocrat named Syngman Rhee, a Christian with a German wife. When, on June 25, 1950, Communist North Korea invaded marginally democratic South Korea, Rhee grabbed the wife, a few cronies and the nation's gold and took off in two trains while Seoul fell in two days. The U.S. and the U.N. went in to salvage things, and the war was on.
The Korean War tends to get lost between World War II--the great historical event of the 20th Century--and Vietnam, which lasted longer than Korea, although it was not a larger war. We lost 54,000 Americans in the decade of the Vietnam War; in the three years of Korea, 37,000 American troops died.
Think of it: A war that lasted just 37 months, and for each of those 37 months, 1,000 Americans died. Month after month after month, a thousand dead GIs and Marines. To put the figures into perspective, in the 64 months of Iraq, fewer than 5,000 Americans have been killed. That would be roughly a five month toll in Korea.
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams had me over to 30 Rock the other day to tape a feature about the Korean War and a recently unveiled archive of color photographs by war correspondent John Rich, now in his nineties. In the piece, I was asked to look at the pictures and talk about the place, the time and the leading figures they depicted.
Like several million other Americans, I fought there. First as a Marine rifle platoon leader and eventually as a battalion intelligence officer in North Korea during the fall and winter of 1951. I was in South Korea, north of the Imjin River and Seoul, during the spring and summer of '52. John Rich's photos are swell, and I'm glad people are going to be able to see them. Maybe they'll understand a little better about the war. I only wish he'd shown more of the mountains and the winter. No one who ever fought there will forget the winter.
When the guns fell silent in July of '53, I was back home. I rely on Martin Russ, another Marine and author, to describe what happened there at the end. Russ' best-seller about Korea, The Last Parallel, made the cover of the New York Times Sunday book review in the 1950s. And this is how he recalled that last night when the Marines and the Chinese regulars suddenly stopped killing each other and the ceasefire took effect:
"Van Horn and I [were] what is referred to as 'short-timers' … both due to go home before long. It is the custom to exclude short-timers from patrols or other combat duties. But Van Horn and I wanted to get in on the act somehow. We both wanted to be in the MLR [Main Line of Resistance] Trench to see what there was to see." After all, these guys had been fighting the war, and deserved to see it end.
"A beautiful full moon hung low in the sky like a Chinese lantern," Russ wrote. "Men appeared along the trench, some of them had shed their helmets and flak jackets. The first sound that we heard was a shrill group of voices, calling from the Chinese positions behind the cemetery on Chogum-ni. The Chinese were singing (maybe a hundred thousand of them had died here; why shouldn't they sing?). A hundred or so yards down the trench, someone began shouting the Marine Corps hymn at the top of his lungs. Others joined in, bellowing the words. Everyone was singing in a different key, and phrases apart. Across the wide paddy, and in 'goonyland,' matches were lit. We all smoked for the first time in the MLR trench. The men from Outpost Ava began to straggle back (the outposts were the most deadly place) carrying heavy loads. Later in the night a group of Chinese wandered over to the base of Ava and left candy and handkerchiefs as gifts. The men that were stationed on Ava stared, nothing more."
"So ends the Korean conflict," Russ concluded.
How will it end in Iraq?
Ellie
Ending A War
James Brady 07.24.08, 6:00 AM ET
No matter who wins in November, the war in Iraq will stop one day. But just how do you end a war? The so-called "forgotten war" in Korea ended at 10 p.m. on July 27, 1953--55 years ago on Sunday--with an uneasy truce that still holds half a century later.
For those who forget--or never knew--when Japan surrendered in 1945, the Soviet Union and the U.S. agreed to an ad hoc division of Japanese-occupied Korea along the arbitrarily accepted frontier of the 38th Parallel.
Inevitably, the southern half of the divided country came under our influence and the northern half under the Soviets'. We sent in some military advisers to the South and handed over a few surplus weapons. The Russians sent in plenty of military advisers and built up a powerful North Korean peasant army under Kim Il Sung, daddy of the current despot, who'd served as a major in the Red Army during the big war. Kim and many of his officers and non-commissioned officers were Russian-trained and had some combat experience. The South was militarily clueless.
South Korea was run by an ancient émigré autocrat named Syngman Rhee, a Christian with a German wife. When, on June 25, 1950, Communist North Korea invaded marginally democratic South Korea, Rhee grabbed the wife, a few cronies and the nation's gold and took off in two trains while Seoul fell in two days. The U.S. and the U.N. went in to salvage things, and the war was on.
The Korean War tends to get lost between World War II--the great historical event of the 20th Century--and Vietnam, which lasted longer than Korea, although it was not a larger war. We lost 54,000 Americans in the decade of the Vietnam War; in the three years of Korea, 37,000 American troops died.
Think of it: A war that lasted just 37 months, and for each of those 37 months, 1,000 Americans died. Month after month after month, a thousand dead GIs and Marines. To put the figures into perspective, in the 64 months of Iraq, fewer than 5,000 Americans have been killed. That would be roughly a five month toll in Korea.
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams had me over to 30 Rock the other day to tape a feature about the Korean War and a recently unveiled archive of color photographs by war correspondent John Rich, now in his nineties. In the piece, I was asked to look at the pictures and talk about the place, the time and the leading figures they depicted.
Like several million other Americans, I fought there. First as a Marine rifle platoon leader and eventually as a battalion intelligence officer in North Korea during the fall and winter of 1951. I was in South Korea, north of the Imjin River and Seoul, during the spring and summer of '52. John Rich's photos are swell, and I'm glad people are going to be able to see them. Maybe they'll understand a little better about the war. I only wish he'd shown more of the mountains and the winter. No one who ever fought there will forget the winter.
When the guns fell silent in July of '53, I was back home. I rely on Martin Russ, another Marine and author, to describe what happened there at the end. Russ' best-seller about Korea, The Last Parallel, made the cover of the New York Times Sunday book review in the 1950s. And this is how he recalled that last night when the Marines and the Chinese regulars suddenly stopped killing each other and the ceasefire took effect:
"Van Horn and I [were] what is referred to as 'short-timers' … both due to go home before long. It is the custom to exclude short-timers from patrols or other combat duties. But Van Horn and I wanted to get in on the act somehow. We both wanted to be in the MLR [Main Line of Resistance] Trench to see what there was to see." After all, these guys had been fighting the war, and deserved to see it end.
"A beautiful full moon hung low in the sky like a Chinese lantern," Russ wrote. "Men appeared along the trench, some of them had shed their helmets and flak jackets. The first sound that we heard was a shrill group of voices, calling from the Chinese positions behind the cemetery on Chogum-ni. The Chinese were singing (maybe a hundred thousand of them had died here; why shouldn't they sing?). A hundred or so yards down the trench, someone began shouting the Marine Corps hymn at the top of his lungs. Others joined in, bellowing the words. Everyone was singing in a different key, and phrases apart. Across the wide paddy, and in 'goonyland,' matches were lit. We all smoked for the first time in the MLR trench. The men from Outpost Ava began to straggle back (the outposts were the most deadly place) carrying heavy loads. Later in the night a group of Chinese wandered over to the base of Ava and left candy and handkerchiefs as gifts. The men that were stationed on Ava stared, nothing more."
"So ends the Korean conflict," Russ concluded.
How will it end in Iraq?
Ellie