"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Sons of the Pioneers theme for TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon artist's musings melding metaphors and journalism, for readers in more than 150 countries.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Korea...60 years later, and still no peace

Korean War Memorial in D.C., where an American infantry brigade moves  weary and wary
This is the 60th anniversary of the signing of  the armistice that brought an end to the fighting in Korea, where 36, 516 Americans were killed in three years. It was an armistice and not a peace treaty, and we still live with that hostility  from a paranoid Communist dictatorship. Only a few yards away, across a "demilitarized" zone,  American soldiers are still on duty, in one of the places in the world where nuclear war could break out. South of the DMZ, flourish a free economic dynamo, South Korea.
Have you been to the Korean War Memorial in Washington? I have, and it was on a rainy day, fitting the mood of the gray soldiers marching uphill,  weary and wary. Here's some things you should know about the Korean War.
I know three people who served in that war. The first was my late uncle Mike, who was aboard an LST, under fire, at the Inchon landing. The next was my late cousin Charles Rogers Lutrick, and I have no idea of his duty there. The third was my former colleague at the OSU j-school, advertising professor Charles Overstreet, who was a "tanker." I think most Americans probably know about the Korean War because of the TV show "MASH."

Here's a salute to those men and women who served, died, or have survived. The veterans observed a solemn  ceremony today. It was a "forgotten" war, except to them.

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