VETWRITER

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Frank Torres, Fire Team Leader, Marine Corps

Herman Critchfield, Artillery Gunner, Army

Sam Garrett, Ordnance Clerk, Army National Guard

Margaret Brosmer, M.A.S.H. Operating Room Nurse, Army

Andrew Aguirre, Tank Gunner (Held as P.O.W.), Marine Corps Reserves

Jack Hazlerig, Combat Infantryman, Army

William E. Barber, Infantry Officer, Marine Corps

S. Hartley Johnston, Electronics Technician, Navy

Warand Kirsch, Flamethrower and Rocket Gunner, Marine Corps Reserves

Robert Atkins, Engineer Intelligence and Operations Officer, Army

Robert Zangl, Rifle Company Squad Leader, Marine Corps

James Carpenter, Food Service and Transportation, Air Force

David Leyendecker, Combat Radioman, Marine Corps

James Ransier, Combat Infantryman (Held as P.O.W.), Army Reserves

Donald Moritz, Machine Gunner, Army

Janice Feagin Britton, Flight Nurse, Air Force

Jack Oben, Tank Driver, Army

James Costello, Supply and Intelligence, Army National Guard

Jesse Zimmet, Combat Telephone Wireman, Army

Robert Duff, Combat Infantryman, Army

John Chapla, Forward Observer Radioman, Marine Corps

EPILOGUE – WHERE THE VETERANS ARE TODAY

Corporal Frank Torres had joined the Marine Corps just after World War II, at the age of 17. As so many young men of his generation, he had missed out on World War II, but was ready, willing and able to serve his country in peacetime as well. But peacetime didn’t last nearly as long as everyone had hoped and in July, 1950, Frank found himself on his way to a little known country on the other side of the world, a place called South Korea. He was being sent to join with other combat troops from fifteen United Nations countries to defend a tiny, newly formed nation against a sudden and brutal invasion that had stunned the world.

Frank served as an infantry fire team leader with the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, 1st Marine Division for eight months. His first assignment was the Pusan Perimeter, seeing combat just three days after his arrival in Korea. He speaks of the misery of war, the fierce winter conditions and the special meaning that the word teamwork takes on for a young Marine in combat.

Lt. Colonel Margaret Brosmer’s distinguished military nursing career spanned twenty-one years and literally took her around the world. It started when she joined the Army Reserves in March, 1949. Shortly after hostilities began in Korea in June of 1950, she was working at Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington, D.C. when she was alerted for duty in the Far East Command and sent to Ft. Lewis, Washington. Then in August she left from the Port of Olympia onboard the USS James O’Hara, headed for Japan and then on to Korea. Just ten days after the Marines’ historic Inchon Landing, Margaret’s newly formed 1st M.A.S.H. Division found itself following suit, as it came in on the high tide and went over the side of the ship by ladder to a waiting LCM, which took them into the dock at Inchon. This was to be just the beginning of her Korean War experience.

Margaret served with the 1st M.A.S.H. Division as an operating room nurse in several locations in both North and South Korea, moving 16 times in 6 months. She then completed her tour at the 4th Field Hospital in Taegu. Her fellow members of The Chosin Few, the elite organization of veterans who served near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, have now dubbed her "Hot Lips", after the fictional character Margaret Houlihan on the long-running television series, M*A*S*H.

Margaret’s story is taken from a videotape of an interview she gave to high school students from Lisa Mails’ class on January of 1997, at Margaret’s home in Southern California. Students doing the interview included Eric Martineau, Steve Lewis, Peter Bejarano, Andrew Mails, and Ryan Mails. The teacher, Lisa Mails, (mother of Andrew and Ryan) also participated.

The video starts out with Margaret’s recollections of preparing for the long journey from Ft. Lewis to Korea, in August of 1950, with a military force quite unprepared for what lie ahead…

"All we had then was men’s clothing - all the way from the bottom up; long johns, all the way through to outside gear, including shoes and socks and hats and coats. The fatigues and everything was all men’s and we had trouble getting into them because they were too large for us. I wore a 5C shoe, the smallest they had, but I just put a couple of big heavy wool socks in them and that filled them up. They were very comfortable. I wore them the whole year I was over there. They were the most comfortable shoes I ever had. They were brown suede, and new regulations said you had to have black shoes or black boots. So we had to go to the PX and buy black dye. We were in a barracks where they had a fire escape, so we sat out there to use the dye because you know how stinky dye is. We had to dye them because they had to be ready for the next day. They smelled horrible, so we just left them out there because we couldn’t have slept with them. This is the way were prepared for this war. It was a great war…[ha]. We were really prepared for this war.

We finally got everything together and got ready to go. We were to go by ship, up Puget Sound, and out the Great Circle route, which was along the Aleutians, and over to Korea. We were so busy getting ready we didn’t have time to think. The first time we had time to think was when we got onboard the ship, because it was the first quiet time we had. I remember standing up on the deck, with my foot propped up on the rail, and I was alone at that point and I looked out at this beautiful sunset off Puget Sound. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. And I said to myself, "Girl, what in the world are you doing here?" This was amazing. I didn’t even know I was going.

So we made the best of it. This was a 14 day trip and we got out about half way and they had a radiogram from Japan that Wonsan Harbor in Korea, where we were supposed to land, had been mined with 2,000 mines and they couldn’t send us in there. We had to plug away until they figured out what they wanted to do with us. In the meantime, we hit the tail end of a typhoon and we were going every which way, down and up in that thing. We were pitching and rolling and doing it all at the same time. Of course most everybody got good and sick. During this typhoon thing, nothing stayed where it belonged. The trays would go sliding across the tables. It was awful. We had to just hang on for dear life. It was a really frightening experience.

There were seven of us nurses onboard, seven of us and 50 or 60 officers and 1500 G.I.s were onboard that ship, along with the Merchant Marines… and the Navy that were the officers onboard. We had about 40 brand new West Point graduates onboard. It was the 1950 graduating class and they were a lot of fun. We just had a ball. We had a jukebox up in the mess hall and we’d dance. We had to take off our boots and dance in our sox, cause you couldn’t dance in those boots. So, we had a fun time.

What they decided to do then was to send us into Yokohama, since that was the best place to go until they figured out what to do with us. We landed in Yokohama. We were there for just about a month. We worked with the nurses at that hospital (there was a field hospital there.) We worked with them so we’d be helping out, while they tried to decide what to do with us.

In the meantime, MacArthur was planning the Inchon Landing [to take place September 15, 1950]. That was quite a feat. And he needed hospitals in there, too. So they decided they would take our M.A.S.H. over to Inchon, so they would have a medical backup for the people that went into there. So we got on a Navy ship, and we went under the southern part of Korea, and up on the west side. We went into Inchon ten days after the Marines landed. They landed on the 17^th, I think, and we went in ten days after them. We went in just like they did. We went in on the high tide and we went over the side of the ship, down a rope ladder and into the LCM and into the dock. When we got in there, things were pretty well in hand, because that was such a surprise and the Koreans just turned tail and left fast, ‘cause they didn’t have a ‘Chinaman’s chance’. That was a term we always used, but it was true, they didn’t have a ‘Chinaman’s chance’. There were very, very few American casualties, practically none. We had some POWs that they had taken and some Korean civilians that we took care of. We basically didn’t have that many casualties.

I did have one that I have to tell about. I was going down through the tents and the wards saying ‘hi’ to the guys and I went up to this one guy. Here he was with his leg in a cast, with it hanging up in the sling.

I said, "What happened to you?"

He was just a young fellow. He couldn’t have been more than 19, none of them were. And he got real red in the face and said, "I was in the latrine and they did an air drop and I got hit with a wood carton and it broke my leg."

It was so funny. There he was, sitting in the john, and got hit with this big carton and broke his leg. That was one of the humorous things. (I often thought I should write that to Reader’s Digest, the Humor in Uniform part, but I never did.)

We finished up there and the 121st Evac Hospital that always backed us up had come in a little later. They had set up their hospital up in Seoul and between the two of us we took care of what they needed. They were planning an invasion up on the east side, so they decided they’d send the M.A.S.H. by convoy, with the 7th Medic Division, from Inchon down to Pusan. It was quite a long trip, nothing but dirt roads. It was dry and the dust was so bad we used to take our cloth masks we wore in the O.R. and wet them down and put them on our faces because we just couldn’t breathe the stuff. It was yucky, just awful. A lot of the Koreans, when you went by their little homes, would go out and wet down the roads so they didn’t get all the dust from the convoy.

On the way down we had to go down the canyons and there were hills on both sides. I don’t know how long we were out there really, but we were out night and day, and one night the North Koreans were in the mountains and they were looking for somebody to shoot at. And they decided to attack us and we were ambushed. We had quite a long convoy, because the 7th Medics were a pretty good-sized group. We nurses always traveled in ambulances. There were thirteen of us. We picked up the rest of these nurses by the way in Japan. We put six in one ambulance, and seven in another. We were in these ambulances in the convoy when we were ambushed. About six vehicles ahead of us there were fatalities and a lot of casualties. We lost several people there in that ambush. I heard, fairly recently, that there was one young fellow that was in the group that was a very courageous person. He just went up in the hills and blew out that machine gun nest. And that’s all that saved us. I don’t know how he did it, but I hope he got a good reward for it.

At any rate, we didn’t know about this until it was all over because when it hit the convoy up in the front, they tried to get word back to the other units and these other ambulances and sections had hit the ditch. They were really shooting at us pretty good, I guess. We were sleeping in the ambulances, ‘cause it was only 5:30 in the morning. It was daylight in about an hour and someone come banging on back door of the ambulance and said, "Get out! Get out! Get out of there! They’re shooting at us! Get out in the ditch."

Well, the thing was over by this time and the girls in the other ambulance in front of us were all out in the ditch -- cold, wet, and gooey. The chief nurse was making coffee with a Sterno can for them. And here we were, in there having a good time, just asleeping away. It didn’t bother us, you know. They’d been out there most of the night. They didn’t get to us, to get us out, because they were shooting at them and they thought they couldn’t get to us. We were oblivious to all of this, so we just slept through the whole thing. That was our ambush. From that point on, they called us the Lucky Thirteen because we had survived the ambush.

What we had to do then was to split up into ambulances, each with one of the nurses, and took the wounded back to Taejon, which was the nearest field hospital. We had some really, really bad cases. They were very shot up, really bad. There were six in my ambulance and we had head wounds and chest wounds and leg wounds. They were all just suffering terribly, because the best we could do was just keep them sedated until we got them back to the hospital. And the driving on those roads was no picnic because it was bumpy and gooey. I don’t know how they took it. It was bad enough when you were perfectly well.

Anyway, we got them settled and then we kept on going to Pusan. Then we hooked up with another field hospital, which was a Prisoner of War type hospital. We worked there for a little while until they got ready for us again. They decided to put us on a ship out in the harbor to get ready to go up to North Korea, on the other side [the east coast of Korea]. While we were out in the harbor waiting to go, Bob Hope’s crew came in. You know the Bob Hope crew with all the entertainers. They were putting on a show in Pusan. They decided we had time so they brought us in and we got to see the Bob Hope show. Then they took us back out on the ship and we finally went up to North Korea.

We went all the way up, past Wonsan, where we would have gone in the first place. We kept on going and we landed way up in North Korea. We were up in a little town called Iwon. We landed in another beach landing and went into Iwon. It was cold. It was so cold, it was just terrible. We couldn’t stay on the beach so they took us inland a little ways, to a little town called Riwon.

They found an old, abandoned, blown out school building that they could let us sleep in for the night. We were just going to be there for the night, as the advance group went ahead to find a place for us to set up the hospital. Like I said, it was just freezing. They did have a big wood-burning stove they could put in the middle of this room that we were in. We laid our bedrolls and sleeping bags in a clock fashion and we had the stove in the center. We took turns staying up at night to keep the stove going, because we would have frozen to death if we hadn’t, because it was so bad. It was really awfully cold. There was nothing, no way to keep warm at all because there were no windows in the place and it was pretty bad. It was probably below zero, I’m sure it was below zero. But we managed to make it.

So they went ahead and set up a hospital in this little town called Pukchong. That’s where we spent most of our time while we were in that area. And we were not up there too long. (We had left Pusan on October 17^th, so we were just on our way. We dropped anchor in Iwon on October 30^th and then went on up to set up the hospital.) The first operation was performed on a ROK soldier and he had a gunshot wound to the arm. I know that because I was an operating room nurse on November 6^th. Then we had four inches of snow on November 13^th and the temperature got down to zero and it was unbelievably cold up there and it was almost impossible to keep warm. We were there over Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Eve we had an opportunity to get showers. The engineers’ shower unit was a few miles down the road from us. They arranged for the nurses to take showers. That was a big treat for us because we had not had showers since we got to Korea.

They took us down in two ambulances again and it was glorious. They had these big tents where it was nice and warm and the showers had hot water. It was like a luxurious hotel. We washed our hair and got cleaned up and then came out. Of course it was night then and there were no lights and we could not figure what was going on. We found our way back to the ambulances and asked the driver what was going on and he said that they were in blackout phase because the Chinese had come over the Yalu River and had crossed the border. They were not sure what type of air power they had, so they just had to take the precaution and everything was blacked out. We got in the ambulances and everything was the same back at our camp. You would not have known there was a camp there because you could not see that anything, because it was all black.

We got in, but we were not there that long because things got real hot, as this was when they surrounded the people at the Chosin Reservoir. We were just east of Chosin and most of our patients came from there, mostly Marines, but Army and U.N. forces as well. But when the Chinese came down in such huge numbers there was not much we could do, because we did not have the manpower or the ammunition. We did not have the tanks. We were not equipped at all. This war was a disaster in that respect. They just did not have the stuff they needed for this war. They were doing it on a toothpick because they had given it all away after WWII thinking there was not going to be any more world wars. They did not have anything.

Same thing was true in the operating room. We didn’t have ready-made gauze for sponges. They would send us these bolts of a hundred yards and we would have to sit there and cut and fold them. We didn’t have time to this. We had to take care of patients around the clock. We would be on twelve-hour-on and twelve-hour-off shifts, and when we would get off of one shift, we would sit down for two hours and make the sponges for the next shift. This was ridiculous. You had to fold them so all the rough edges were in and then we had to autoclave them, sterilize them. It was just stuff that never should have had to happen, but it did.

We got pretty hot and the CO got together with the 7^th Medics. They were starting to evacuate the men out of the Chosin, so they said they had to get the hospital out of there, especially the ladies, the women. So they put us in ambulances again and we packed up the hospital. They put us in the usual convoy and we went down. We left Pukchong on the 3rd of December at 10:00 in the morning. It was a long ride, about 86 miles over icy mountain roads, just ruts and ice, only room for one vehicle at a time. It was as scary as it could be because the mountains were a thousand feet down on one side and a thousand feet up on the other. You just had faith in the drivers that you were not going to go over the cliff. We had a lot of faith in the drivers. All the drivers were black men and they were absolutely phenomenal. They were great drivers. We had lots of faith in these guys. They were wonderful people. I think there was still segregation at that time in the military, all the drivers were black. All the drivers had shotgun riders with them just in case something were to happen, because they were going to ambush us if they got the chance.

We got down to a town called Hamhung, which was next to the harbor city of Hungnam. They were close together. We were able to set up a hospital there for awhile. We always tried to get a building nearby to set up the operating room in and x-ray, because it needed something stable. We’d find a bank building or a school building for that. The patients and our quarters were all in tents. We had six operating tables in this one big room and so the doctors would be working on six different patients at one time, the doctors going lickety-split. It was very much like the TV series, M*A*S*H. That was fairly accurate and I thought it was a very good series. They had good technical advice for that series. We didn’t have the fun they did. We did not have the movies or the bar like they did, but for the most part we really did do it that way.

One time I remember we were using these big oil-burning stoves. We were in the operating room with six cases going, a belly case and a head wound and a chest case. All of a sudden, one of the stoves blew up, sending ash everywhere and we had to, quick like a bunny, cover up all the patients. Ash is sterile, because it’s burned, but still you don’t want to fill up a chest with ash. We had some real zany experiences.

Then the Chinese were still coming and it got pretty hot there as far as the firing and all. We were trying to get out, to do this strategic withdrawal. So, our CO decided to put us on one of the many ships in the harbor to keep us safe. There were lots of ships in the harbor in preparation for the evacuation. There were many, many ships out there; Navy ships, Merchant Marine ships, you name it, freighters and everything. They put us on an MSTS ship, the same thing we came over in. We joined with another M.A.S.H. unit and the 121st Evac onboard and set up a hospital on the ship. They brought all of the wounded out to this ship and we took care of them there. At the same time, they were evacuating everyone including the civilians from the area and putting them on these ships as well. There were about two hundred thousand people evacuated before we left, allies of ours.

Hungnam harbor was surrounded by mountains; from shore to shore there were mountains. So there was a place where we could try to keep the Chinese back, but in order to do it you had to have a lot of firepower. So the USS Missouri was sitting down about a mile from us shooting those big 16 inchers right over our heads. They’d start at one side and just kept shooting one after the other, until they’d go all the way to the other side. Then they’d start all over again. Then there were two cruisers, the St. Paul and the Minneapolis, sitting there right next to us, on either side of us, and they hit the rockets, shooting rockets the same way. It was just like the 4th of July, especially at night, you’d swear it was the 4th of July. This was going on constantly. And the Air Force was up there overhead, just bombing the heck out of them, keeping them back. You had to keep the Chinese back of the mountains so you could get these people off of the beach. I think they finally got the last man off the beach at 2:00P.M. on Christmas Eve. After they got the last man off the beach the engineers lined up the mines and blew up the harbor from one end to the other, leaving no two stones on top of the other. What they could not get onboard a ship was destroyed when they blew up the harbor. There was nothing but clouds of dust left.

It was Christmas Eve and we had midnight mass aboard the ship. We had a rough ride and the chaplain got sick and was almost green. We left shortly after that and went back down to Pusan. We got down to Pusan and they had a nice dinner for us onboard the ship for Christmas.

Our first campaign had been Inchon, the second campaign was Puson, the third was North Korea, so this time they decided to take us right up the center. We left from Pusan by convoy and we set up in different places along the way. We stopped in Chonju on December 27^th and we spent New Years Eve there and we had a couple of hours off. There were four of us women that went out with four guys on the Taegu Highway, under one of the bridges, to celebrate New Years. Then we went to breakfast at their quarters and they had some fresh eggs for us.

Then, we went back to our place and we continued to go north to the town of Andong. This was about the coldest place we had been. North Korea was cold, but this was in the center of Korea. It was so cold that when the water trucks came we would have to get the water before the sun went down, because the truck would freeze. We all slept in one big tent and we had two stoves in there. We had cots to sleep on that we would line with the tarpaper that the supplies came in. We would line the cots with tar paper then put our blankets down, then the bed rolls, then the sleeping bags, then the chemical heating bags that would keep it warm, 3 or 4 of them, then put blankets over all that. You would get into your sleeping bag and zip up and you would try to keep your nose out, but then it would freeze. But when you put it in the sleeping bag you couldn’t breathe, so it was a tough situation trying to keep warm. When we got water we had five-gallon containers. One nurse could not carry one by herself, so we took a broom handle and stuck it in the handle and one nurse would get on one side and another on the other to carry it back. We also put water in our helmets so we would get a little extra water. It was not that far, but the water on top in the helmets froze on the way back, it was that cold. I had been cold before, but never been that cold and I hope that I am never that cold again.

Then, we went up to Chechon which is a little further north of Andong and set up another hospital there. We had a chief nurse from Washington, Colonel Phillips, the chief from Japan, Col. Gritsavage, and the chief nurse from Korea, Col. Desmond come over. They were on tour of the hospitals and came and visited us while we were up there in early April. We also had a lot of excitement while we were there because not too far from us was an ammo dump, and I don’t know how it happened, but it blew up. It was like having an earthquake. Unbelievable, everything just shook. There were a lot of casualties from that. I remember waiting for them to bring the casualties in and one of the guys had half his face blown off. You would not believe the casualties that you see in war. It is really hard to believe that people went through this stuff and lived to tell it. That was another unusual thing that happened while I was there.

While we were in Chechon patients came in by ambulance and helicopter because we had a helicopter detachment with us. There were two planes and four pilots. They would do nothing but ferry the patients from the front back to us. We were always 1500 to 2000 yards from the front line. We could hear the fighting because we were that close. The key was to have it close, so that the faster you could get them into surgery and taken care of, the more you could save. In other words, if they had to go 200 miles back or 100 miles back to get to the hospital, they would never had made it. So they triaged them at the battalion aid station, where they got the ones that needed immediate care back to the M.A.S.H. unit right away. We operated on them, stabilized them and then sent them to an evac hospital. Then they would go back to the field or to Japan, depending on how much care they needed. That is how we saved so many more people with the M.A.S.H. units than they did in just field hospitals.

(They never used the M.A.S.H. units in WWII. They would have used them if the war had gone on. They had them available. They were on paper. In fact, the one we had was actually from Germany, on paper only. It was supposed to be set up in Germany, had they needed to use it.)

You can understand how this can happen, these people could not have made it, bouncing over those roads or even in a plane, it would have been almost impossible. They were so far gone by the time they even got to us, they would never have made it. They did save thousands of people because of the M.A.S.H. units. Korea was the first time the M.A.S.H.’s were used. They played a big part in Korea and in everything since then.

In mid-April they gave us nurses the choice of either staying with our units in Korea or going back to Japan and getting out of the combat zone. See, you had to have 36 points and you got 4 points a month if you stayed in the combat zone. If you stayed in Korea, you stayed until you got 36 points and went home, where if you went back to Japan, you would have to stay for six more months. Well, I did not have any desire to go back to Japan, I wanted to get home, so I opted to stay. I did want to get out of the M.A.S.H. unit I was in, because out of the thirteen of us eleven were going to go to Japan. I would not have known anyone after they left and I knew a lot of people at the 4^th Field Hospital in Taegu. So I asked for a transfer and was finally able to get one only because I was able to find someone with the same M.O.S., Military Occupational Specialty, to replace me at that M.A.S.H. unit. The second time I tried to transfer we got word that there was a nurse down at the 4^th Field Hospital whose husband was stationed near our M.A.S.H. unit, and she also was an operating room nurse. She took my place. That’s how I happened to get back to the 4th Field Hospital in Taegu.

Transferring there was like moving to the palace because there was a CO who had a brother in the Quartermaster unit who could get anything. They were both full birds, you know. He built a swimming pool, the only one in the Army or the military, in all of Korea. He had an ice cream-making machine, the only one anyone ever had. They had air conditioning in the theatre. He really had a plush place. It was just remarkable. You just did not know that things like this could exist in Korea. It was kind of nice. He was very generous with his stuff because the chopper pilots would take ice cream to all the troops all over Korea. Things like this you don’t usually hear about. I was there from April until August. I had come over in August [1950], so I went back in August [1951].

Then in August, I flew from Korea to Japan to Fukuoka. I stopped at a field hospital where I stayed until I cleared the Far East Command. I went home on another ship we boarded in Sasebo. We had about 10 to 12 nurses onboard from different units that were going back so I meet several gals from different units that were going back. We left Sasebo and crossed the Meridian. I had a birthday in August, so they had a cake onboard and we had a lot of fun. We got into Seattle. I went into and out of Seattle. The other nurses went through Hawaii, but we did the same old ‘great circle route’ around again, 14 days and 13 nights. We didn’t hit a typhoon this time.

We were the first nurses to leave for Korea because the first units to Korea came from Japan. They made up three M.A.S.H. units, one evac and one field hospital from the nurses in Japan. It was an occupied territory at that time so there were plenty of hospitals there. They had to get them over there fast because they did not have time to get them from the States. We were the first ones from the States. We were also the first to come back.

They were so excited up in Seattle. They had the fireboats out shooting water and the band was on the dock playing. It was like this big hometown parade thing. The mayor came and brought us each a dozen roses and they greeted us on the docks. It was great stuff. They took pictures and sent them all over the place. A picture even ended up in the New York Times. My sister, who was living in New York at the time, sent me a picture of this. They had a big parade for us. They put us in convertibles and we sat in the back as they drove down the street. People were just cheering away and you would have thought we’d really done something. They were appreciative that we were back. Then we had to make arrangements to go home. We got in Seattle on August 25^th, then from there I came back home by train. My folks were all there to meet me at the train station.

That was basically Korea and it was quite an experience."

(The rest of Margaret’s answers are in Part Two: Chapter 4)

Frank Torres

How could we have won the war? WE DID WIN THE WAR! We were ordered to free South Korea and we did that! It was Gen. MacArthur who decided, for his own glorification, to push north and cause many of my friends to die needlessly. South Korea remains free today.

Yes, the war was worth it, because as in the case of the Hitler regime, during World War II, so many countries did nothing until it was almost too late to stop the hideous crimes being committed in the name of world order, and total domination.

There was no way we could have avoided the war when the aggressors were the North Koreans who ran across the 38th Parallel and massacred our troops, both U.S. and South Koreans. Nuclear weapons would have caused many casualties on both sides. So no, it would not have been wise to use them, because it could have caused a snowball effect.

All diplomatic approaches should be fully exhausted, to include the heads of state, before declaring war. One lesson that we should learn from the war? That wars seldom resolve anything. They just create a new set of problems for those left behind to wrestle with.

Herman Critchfield

I feel that we should have used nuclear weapons. It was suggested, but the President did not want to do that again. This would have shortened the conflict. We had the North Koreans whipped, but then the Chinese came across the Yalu River in droves and we had to retreat back to the 38th Parallel.

Sam Garrett

Do I think the war was worth it? We lost 54,000 troops and our enemies lost many, many more. The war ended where it began. They drew a line and stopped fighting and nobody won anything. We all lost.

If MacArthur had been left in command, we could have continued until we stopped the Communist drive from China. We could have won and prevented the Vietnam War completely. We should NOT have used nuclear weapons.

We could have avoided the war. When World War II ended, the Korean Peninsula should have been one free country. We should not have divided it into North and South Korea. This was a mistake made by Soviet and American negotiators.

One lesson I’d like us to learn from the war is that people should realize that our government "of the people, and by the people" works best. It is very important for us to vote and to KNOW WHO WE ARE VOTING FOR. The history books in school tell the story of our country from the 13 colonies to the 50 states today. It is very important for us to study this history and know who we are voting for when we have an election.

Margaret Brosmer

(Taken from a videotaped interview, see Part One)

"MacArthur got into a problem with Truman over this Chinese thing. He wanted to go up there and take out the Chinese but Truman didn’t want him to do that and that’s when Truman fired him. No one will really know what would have happened if he had done it. But we were all disappointed, of course. We wanted to give it to them…

At the Chosin, we literally retreated, that was a defeat. That was one of the biggest defeats the military ever had. We were literally kicked out. We got out fast. I called it a strategic withdrawal. It was a flat-out retreat. We either had to flat get out or get killed. That was the way it was. That was the better part of valor, to get the people out of there and then go back and regroup and start over again.

The triumph, I felt, of the whole of Korea was the fact that even though we just had an armistice and we had a demarcation line at the 38th Parallel, at least we saved South Korea. And South Korea has flourished because of that. They would have been absolutely inundated by the North Koreans and the Chinese if we hadn’t been there. We saved an awful lot of an important part of Korea and those people are wonderful people. It was a victory in my eyes. I would say the Korean War was certainly worth doing because we did save South Korea…

People ought to know that that war was not fought in vain, that something really important did come out of it. We did save South Korea, and the whole of Korea, from becoming communistic and overrunning the countries around it, like Japan. They could have very easily, if they’d gotten control of Korea. With Japan in such a vulnerable position they could have done something. The Chinese had the manpower and the control. It was not a total victory, but we saved the southern part of Korea…

Even though it’s been 50 years (in 2000) that we were up there, they’ve never forgotten the fact that we conquered them. I would say that is the legacy of Korea…

I hope that [young people] realize how important it is that people worked together for a common cause, and that is for the security of the United States. Believe me, it’s very important that we don’t ever give up on that.

I don’t think you can be too patriotic. I think that if you’ve got a country as great as ours is, and as wonderful as ours is, and if you’ve been any place else but this country you’ll know that there’s no country any place else like it. I’ve been all over the world and there is just nothing like the United States. It’s got a lot of bad things, yes; everybody’s got some bad things. But believe me, we’re head and shoulders above everybody else in the world and to keep it this way we have to have a good backup force…

The military, for the security of the United States, is like an insurance policy. We have a lot of technology but who is it that is going to go in and take the territory? It’s the troops. You should never go below what you need to have because you never know when it will all of a sudden [erupt]. The same thing happened after World War II was over. Everything was gone and then they had to start over from scratch. That’s what all of it was, 53-54,000 casualties because we didn’t have the equipment and stuff to do it with. I don’t now why we just don’t learn. Nobody seems to learn. History repeats itself because no one seems to learn from what happened the last time. I don’t know how you change that, I really don’t. I do hope and pray that the young people will never get so complacent that they can’t visualize the possibility of something like this happening again, because it can and it probably will.

It’s been going on ad infinitum since the year 1. As long as there are two people on earth there’s going to be a fight. It only takes two people to fight…

I just hope and pray that people will never forget the sacrifices that all the people made from the first day that the Pilgrims landed in America and all that people went through to preserve all that we’ve got today. Because we’ve got the best country in the world and there is no doubt about it… absolutely no doubt about it. I just hope that they don’t lose sight of that, I just hope that youngsters realize how important that is and get that aspect of it…

You have to start thinking about somebody besides yourself, the ‘Me Generation’ stuff. You have to remember that you’re not the only pebble on the beach. The only way that you’re going to get along with the other pebbles is to join them and work with them. You have to work with other people; you can’t be at odds with people all the time. You have to work with them and you have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule is still the best thing we have to follow. It covers everything. If I’m allowed to go out and shoot you, then you’re allowed to shoot me.

You have to remember that with every freedom goes a responsibility. That’s very important. Everybody wants what they want, but they forget that there’s a payment for that. With every freedom goes a responsibility.

I think we have to talk about it, to be aware of it and disseminate the information. I like to talk to young people and tell them some of thee things. Because it’s not "what they don’t know don’t hurt them", but "what they don’t know really can hurt them". If they don’t know that something like this really went on and that people were together enough to do this and to make it into something that was a triumph, then they’re never going to understand what it’s all about."

Andrew (Chief) Aguirre

It is possible that the war could have been avoided by including Korea within the perimeter of defense established by the Department of Defense in the years prior to the Korean War. Korea was excluded and this was perceived by the communist block, especially North Korea, as a message that the United States would not go to war over South Korea. This is clearly written in many history books of the Korean War.

There are many who would say that the Korean War, sometimes called the Forgotten War, was not worth it - depending on what your role was during the war. I think Korea was worth it because it was the first time the United States faced the Communist threat head on and stopped them from overtaking South Korea. It also helped for the first time to unify the United Nations to a common cause. Korea and the death of Stalin was the beginning of the end for the cold war and the U.S.S.R. Viet Nam was to be the last war supported by the U.S.S.R. Shortly after that, the U.S.S.R. started to fall apart and the end of communism began and the cold war came to an end.

It is very gratifying to have Korean children and grown ups come up to you, shake your hand and thank you for saving their country when they find out I am a Korean veteran and fought in Korea during the Korean War. Yes, I would have to say that it was worth it.

There was a four star general in charge of the United Nations command in Korea who, after blundering the war and underestimating the Chinese and nearly loosing all of the Tenth Corps on the east side of Korea, thought that we should use nuclear weapons. Just as he underestimated the Chinese, he was underestimating the Russians and their nuclear capability. He was a frustrated individual who had once been hailed as a military genius for the Inchon Landing and was blinded to reality by the vast praise that had been bestowed upon him. After the Chinese came into the war and practically annihilated all the UN troops, he became disorientated and blamed everybody but himself for the fiasco and debacle which befell the UN troops. He tried to regain his broken stature and military bearing by wanting to use Chinese Nationalist troops in Korea, in addition to bombing the Chinese mainland and to lay a wall of radiation across the Korean Peninsula. The use of nuclear weapons, to me, was not acceptable, as it would have escalated the war into a nuclear holocaust.

One lesson that I think we should learn is that if we go to war again, make sure that the country as a whole, including the American People and Congress, is in full agreement and behind it. As an example of this, look at the Gulf War. It did not last long because every American supported it and the mighty power of the United States and its allies was unleashed against Iraq. On the contrary, in Vietnam and Korea the wars were not all out wars, they were limited wars that restricted the military and committed them to an unwinnable war that prevented total victory.

Yes, I feel the war was worth it. The Korean War was the first time we said to the communists "You can’t take over the world." It was the beginning of a long conflict, which we eventually won when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Do I think we could have won the war? First, let me make one point. Our declared purpose in Korea was to prevent North Korea or their allies from destroying South Korea. We did that; in fact, in the end, North Korea had less territory than they had at the beginning. Therefore, we succeeded.

We should not have used nuclear weapons in Korea, NO!! I think we could have driven the Red Chinese out of Korea, but we might have started World War III.

To avoid the war, we could have simply not sent any troops in, but we would have had to fight somewhere else. The lesson I’d like for us to learn is this, we need to have a strong military in a state of readiness at all times. When we enter a war, we should intend to win and we should commit enough troops to do so.

William E. Barber

Yes, I do think the war was worth it. We won World War II, and achieved essential results in Koea. We could have won the war against North Viet Nam, by taking the war to them instead of fighting in the land of our Republic of Vietnam ally. We could have avoided the war in Korea by deserting our allies and sticking to "fortress America". Should we have used nuclear weapons? Of course not.

One lesson that I would like us to learn from the war would be that we should engage in war only after very serious and complete evaluations.

If we are to go to war, go to win.

S. Hartley Johnston

The only way we could have avoided the war was to have allowed the North Koreas free reign in South Korea. In Korea, we did not find nuclear weapons necessary. Circumstances may have developed that would have justified the use of the atomic bomb. They didn’t, therefore we didn’t.

One lesson I would like for all to learn from the war is to have a vision of what you believe is right and fight for it.

Warand Kirsch

Yes, I think the war was worth it. I believe we could have won by using all our weapons. But, what would the consequences have been? I don’t think we could have avoided that war, unless we didn’t allow Russia to have North Korea in the first place.

Robert Atkins

South Korea was one of our client states and North Korea was a client state of the Soviet Union. When North Korea invaded South Korea, we went to its aid through the United Nations. Other countries helped also. In doing so, we had to fight a bitter war on the mainland of Asia against not only the North Koreans, who lost their war, but also the Chinese Communists who fought us to a standstill. The US settled for an armistice, a stalemate, and the war had not yet been ended nor a peace treaty signed. Our army, together with the South Korean Army, still stands guard night and day on the border with North Korea. Hundreds of soldiers have died since the armistice was signed because the North Koreans have continued to send soldiers across the line to attack the South Koreans and us. You hear very little about this, however.

Initially North Korea lost the war, but then their friends the Chinese came into the war and it finally became a stalemate, generally along the 38th Parallel, about where the war started. North Korea remains a communist country and an outcast among the nations of the world. It is backward both economically and politically while South Korea has become a well-developed industrial nation.

With our support, and under our protection since 1950, South Korea has become a modern industrialized nation with a first class army. While its government is not the same as ours, its people are far better off than their neighbors in North Korea who share a similar history and cultural heritage are.

The Soviet Union gambled on North Korea being able to quickly defeat South Korea in 1950 and lost the gamble because we intervened with our military forces and with other United Nations troops. Because the Soviet Union did not send troops of its own, as the Chinese did, there slowly developed a rift between the Chinese Communist Government and the government of the Soviet Union which finally led to a complete break between them - and the recognition of China by the United States under President Nixon.

President Truman called the Korean War a "Police action." It was a nasty war, just like all wars. We lost thousands of soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors killed and wounded. The North Koreans and the Chinese lost well over a million dead during the war. The war is not yet over, because no peace treaty has ever been signed, only a military armistice.

Perhaps we could have avoided the war if Secretary of State Atchison had kept his mouth shut and not announced to the world that Korea did not lie within our security zone; maybe the North Koreans would not have attacked South Korea, maybe. I happen to believe that they would have done it anyway. You have to understand the Korean people and what motivates them, both North and South. Basically, the Koreans have been squeezed for centuries between the Chinese and the Japanese and have both hated and feared both countries. Koreans have always been a warlike people. They had to be or they would have been completely assimilated by either the Chinese or the Japanese.

I don't know if we could have "won the war" and neither does anyone else. It would have depended on what you meant by "win the war." If by winning the war you meant defeating China and driving her armies back into China and then having South Korea take over North Korea, you would be asking for a lot. What would the Soviet Union have done in the meantime? Remember that North Korea had a common border with the Soviet Union and China. Our forces reached both of those borders and all hell broke loose from the Chinese.

As for the question of nuclear weapons, how could we have used them? Against what? There were really no good targets for nuclear weapons and the fall out from their use would have endangered us and a lot of other people who were not involved in the war. It would have been a stupid thing to do.

I feel the war was certainly worth it. If you want proof, go to South Korea and see what the people of that country have done since 1953 because we were able to protect them and help them to retain their freedom.

One lesson that I’d like us to learn from the war is to keep the nation's powder dry and that freedom is always worth fighting for, including dying for, if necessary.

I think the war was worth it because we stopped the Commies in Korea. I think we could have won the war. We should have stayed away from the U.N. I do not think we should have used nuclear weapons.

I don’t think we could have avoided the war. You fight to win.

One lesson that I would like us to learn from the war? That sometimes it has to be.

James Carpenter

The one important lesson that I would like us to learn from the war is to make any effort possible to avoid further conflicts that could lead to another war.

Janice Feagin Britton

I think we could have won the war by doing it at the conference table. We could have avoided it through negotiations and peace talks. The United Nations peacekeeping has opened up new ways to avoid outright war. One lesson I’d like us to learn from war is that it is a waste.

If we’d been allowed to win it – yes, the war would have been worth it. We could have avoided the war by not defending someone else’s loss of freedom!

Yes, we could have won the war! By not stopping just above the 38^th Parallel. I don’t think it was necessary to use nuclear weapons.

One lesson I’d like us to learn from Korea is that our freedom is precious and must be protected from those who seek to take it away!

James Costello

No, the war was not worth it. None are, or are rarely so. I do not believe that we should have used nuclear weapons.

I am uncertain, but with the Chinese we probably could not have won the war. We could have avoided the war by staying home. The lesson I’d like us to learn from the war is to keep our nose out of the world’s business.

No, I don’t feel the war was worth it. I think we could have won the war, in any form we needed to. Looking back now, I think we should have used nuclear weapons in the early years of the war and saved some of the 54,000 men we lost. Also, the war is still active after 44 years.

We could have avoided the war by understanding the Russians and China better. One lesson I’d like for us to learn from the war was to never start a war without all the facts and the will to win it. Don't fight a war you can't or don't want to win.

John Chapla

Yes, I do believe the war in Korea was worth it. Now I think the chickens are coming home to roost. The job was not finished then. I think we could have won the war by using atomic weapons.