PORT ORANGE — As young soldiers, Bob McGuire and Bob Hawes were strangers on Triangle Hill, fighting to survive one of the bloodiest battles of the Korean War.
All these years later, the two men are fellow Port Orange chapter members in the Korean War Veterans Association, a national group currently made up mostly of men in their late 70s and older.
Their mission now involves a different kind of survival.
"We're afraid the organization will die off with us. I left there in '53 at 19. I'm 78 now. I'm about as young as you can be to be a member," said McGuire, vice president of the state organization. "But the chaos continues to go on. We still have people getting shot and dying. It's just not reported."
For that reason, the Port Orange chapter has expanded its membership eligibility and is seeking veterans who served in Korea since the official armistice date of July 27, 1953. It's a position McGuire said was in the original bylaws but that "no one paid attention to" for decades.
The national group's more inclusive membership requirements online stipulate that: "If you have EVER honorably served in Korea as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, or served outside of Korea June 25, 1950 to Jan. 31, 1955, you qualify."
But McGuire estimates that 90 percent of the chapters nationwide still are hesitant in embracing the concept of expanding the ranks to include younger veterans that later followed in Korea. It's partly because of the stubbornness of some combat veterans who fought and survived brutal battles such as Triangle Hill, where 374 Americans were killed and 1,074 were wounded.
"But if we don't wake up and get others to join, we'll be gone in 10 years," McGuire said of the veterans organization that has about 30,000 members. He planned on making that argument at the state's annual meeting in Altamonte Springs on Saturday. "We want these young guys to carry on."
Like McGuire, Hawes, 79, said that Korean War combat soldiers, given their advanced age, should be more open-minded.
"Otherwise, those memories will be lost if we don't get more in the organization who were not in the war," said Hawes, who carried ammunition up Triangle Hill and dead and wounded soldiers back down.
He added: "Technically speaking, the war's still going on. Thousands of troops remain there. There's only a cessation of the fighting. Korean vets and Korean War vets should be united. There should be no distinction."
Al Staples, 60, of Port Orange is the youngest member of the local Korean War Veterans Association chapter — an offshoot group of about 40 that's affiliated with the Port Orange VFW post off Williamson Boulevard. Staples served in the Army in Korea in 1970-71, providing United Nations security as a military policeman.
"A lot of people don't realize we lose military people every year in Korea. It's just not mentioned," he said of unreported raids and firefights across the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. "I knew someone who got shot at the DMZ. I was pretty fortunate."
Staples, past commander of the VFW post, said he is glad the Korean War Veterans Association is opening up membership to others who served in the country, long after the official fighting stopped.
"To me, it's not essentially the Korean War vets, it's all the vets who served, no matter when they served," he said.
Ed Stepnowski, 82, of South Daytona, a combat-intelligence soldier, favors adding younger recruits to the association, given "the war was never declared over."
"A treaty was signed. But it just stopped the active fighting," he said. "The Korean War vets, just like the World War II vets, are dying off. We need younger veterans to preserve this (association and history), to keep it going until this is finally settled between North and South Korea."
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