Memories, emotions come flooding back for area veterans of Vietnam, Korea and World War II

From Sedalia Democrat:  Memories, emotions come flooding back for area veterans of Vietnam, Korea and World War II

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Robert Vaughan, of Green Ridge, shook his head in disbelief as he looked through the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
“I have a piece of paper here that’s got 24 names on it. Twenty died that we know of. Four were listed as missing in action, and one was captured. We know he was captured, but I don’t know if he ever got to come home. I’m going to look on the wall for all these guys,” he said.
Vaughan was one of 29 Vietnam veterans, along with seven Korean War and four World War II veterans, who made the trip to Washington, D.C., with Show Me Honor Flight.
The group of men and their escorts gathered at 3 a.m. in downtown Sedalia to begin the 22-hour journey. Emotions were high, and their reasons for coming varied.
“The major reason I came was I wanted to find the friends that I lost over there, but I didn’t find them on the wall. I was pushing one of the World War II veterans. That was more important to me than finding them. I’ll come back again sometime with my wife,” said Ralph Elsea, of Sedalia, a truck driver and firefighter during the Vietnam War.
Johnnie Holem, a World War II veteran from Stover, initially didn’t want to go on the trip. However, seven of his friends from church went on the Honor Flight last spring. They invited him to attend the reception, and he changed his mind.
“It put tears in my eyes. It’s been a day I will never forget for the rest of my life,” he said. “To associate with the people who were on that aircraft and for these folks to treat us like they have —  it’s awesome.”
For others like Wayne Maxwell, of Windsor, this was a very personal trip. He wanted to see the Vietnam memorial with other Vietnam veterans. He got the added bonus of making the trek with his daughter, Brenda Tylar. His mission was to locate Windsor classmates William Patrick Kelly and Roy Bradley Boyd on the wall.
“It’s really hard when you go to school with them,” Maxwell said. “In the summertime, I’d go out to Boyd’s mom and dad’s house. There would be about five to six of us that were in the same class. We’d go swimming in the pond. His mom always had milk and cookies for us. We were all real close.”
Boyd, a member of the 101st Airborne Division, was killed on March 29, 1969, from enemy small arms fire.
Both Glen Glidewell, of Sedalia, and Dwight Nutting, of Waynesville, had seen the traveling Vietnam Wall but had never been to the monument in the nation’s capital.
“This will be my first time for all of the (war memorials). It will be a privilege to see them,” Nutting said. “That’s one of the things with vets, you know, they have something in common. You can talk about it.” He served in the infantry on two tours in Vietnam and was hit with shrapnel 16 times during his service.
Glidewell felt he was prepared for the trip.
“I had visited the small wall, so I was pretty well braced for it. But this place right here (Arlington Cemetery), it stirred me,” he said.
Vaughan kept to himself while he viewed the wall. He was an engineer in the Navy who did welding on the catapults on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. An explosion took place one night on the ship, and he had to help drag the men out of the water and put them in body bags.
“I’ve never seen anything like that. It kind of bothered me for a while, because one guy, he was with me. He was an electrician. He would help me while I was up there doing the catapults. He had to made sure the wiring was all dead while I was up there welding. Then after I’d get it done, he would turn it all back on,” he said.
Two of the men who were killed were married and had just become fathers. One had a son and was upset because of the name his wife gave him.
“My wife named him after me, of all things. Why didn’t she name him something else instead of a junior?”
Vaughan joked with him and said when he had another son, he could name him whatever he wanted. When he was killed, Vaughan thought “oh my God.”
Some of the Vietnam veterans are still questioning whether their buddies survived the war or not. The reason is the men tended to know each other by nicknames instead of their real names.
Dean Eichenberger, of Saverton, was looking for his buddy “Jay.” Eichenberger was injured when he was sprayed with shrapnel from a B-40 rocket. He sustained injuries to his head, shoulders, chest and leg. After he was hit, he was nicknamed “Rocketman.” When he inquired about Jay, he was told his lower jaw was blown off and he was sent to Japan.
“There’s a chance he made it. They sent him right to Japan where they did like reconstructive surgery,” he said, but he doesn’t know for sure. Even though he didn’t know his real name, he searched for him on the wall.
Vietnam veteran Army combat engineer H.D. Fischer, of Sedalia, admitted he was kind of scared at first to go on the trip because he lost a lot of friends. He was glad he was able to locate all of them on the wall and pay his respects.
Show Me Honor Flight is the first hub in the nation to take Korean and Vietnam veterans to see the war memorials. Tuesday marked their 10th flight. Veterans visited the World War II and Korean War Memorials, the Vietnam Wall and Arlington Cemetery. They were not only greeted at the airport in Baltimore, they were welcomed home by about 100 people in downtown Sedalia.
“It’s brought back a lot of memories. We’ve told a lot of war stories, heard a lot of war stories, but it’s brought tears to my eyes,” Holem said.
“It’s not only the idea of coming here, but the idea when you meet all of these guys,” said Vietnam veteran Larry Parker, of Sedalia. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the guys that we lost and the guys that I know.”
The next Honor Flight will be in the spring of 2013.

 

South Korean Navy Band to play for veterans in Cerritos

From Contra Costa Times:  South Korean Navy Band to play for veterans in Cerritos 





CERRITOS -- The South Korean Navy Band will offer a free concert Monday for Korean War veterans.
The free concert will take place at 7 p.m. at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, but public tickets are unavailable. Stand-by tickets, however, are available before the concert.
Korean War Veterans will make a special entrance at the concert, which also will feature Korean traditional and pop music, Tae kwon do demonstrations and a color guard presentation.
In July 2010, representatives from the South Korean Navy visited Cerritos to honor Korean War veterans for their service. Also at that time, the South Korean Navy Band performed a concert at the Cerritos Center.
The South Korean Navy Band's appearance this

The Korean naval destroyer Chungmugong Yisunshin, and its support ship, Daecheong, are parked at Berth 51 in the Port of Los Angels as part of it's 2012 Cruise Training Task Group mission. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)

year is part of a Los Angeles visit by the South Korean Navy's Cruise Training Task Group, their 10th visit since 1980. The South Korean Navy will hold receptions Sunday and Monday onboard two of its ships, the ROK Chungmugong Yi Sun Shin and ROK Dae Chung, that will be docked at the Port of Los Angeles.

Want to go?

What: Korean War veterans concert
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Where: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive
Tickets: Stand-by tickets available before the concert
Information: Kiyong Ma, 562-404-0110 or 213-435-0110 

Korea says thanks to U.S. war veterans

From Green Valley News:  Korea says thanks to U.S. war veterans


By the time Green Valley residents Joe and Carolyn Clark were invited by the Korean government to attend an appreciation ceremony for war veterans, they knew something of what it was about.
Likening the trip to Honor Flight, which takes World War II military veterans to Washington, D.C., to see their memorial, the Clarks have known other vets who’ve attended the ceremonies funded by the Korean government dating to 2000 — the 50th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. A friend who attended an early one told the Clarks, “You’re going to find out what it’s like to be treated like royalty,” Carolyn said.

Little did they know.

It’d been a lifetime since Joe was in Korea — 1951 to be exact. A U.S. Marine since 1947, he’d been called to serve as a gunner/mortarman in an escalating war against Communist rule.

The war, and specifically the Chosin Reservoir campaign, is still mentioned in history books but is better detailed by those who were there. They faced impossible odds, leaders who miscalculated the enemy’s cunning, Korea’s worst weather in 100 years — and they were outnumbered more than 10 to one by the Chinese. No one foresaw the bitter cold that killed many, ravaged limbs with frostbite, caused weapons to malfunction, vehicle batteries to fail, and rendered medical supplies useless. The steep, mountain roads were slick with ice and frost too hard to dig foxholes. A hot meal could freeze between the chow line and finding a place to sit and eat.

“We were poorly prepared with no winter clothes,” Jim recalled. “We had field jackets and boondockers (ankle-high work boots) with canvas leggings. We got the Army’s hand-me-downs. I went ashore and was handed a rifle I’d never fired.”

The fighting begins

Joe was a corporal with a fire team of four men.

“Once we got into real fighting, people were subtracted quite rapidly, then they started bringing in cooks, truck divers, third-echelon Marines sent through Japan.”

On arriving, the Marines encountered other military and United Nations forces of Greeks, Turks, British and South Koreans, Joe said.

“We tried to have at least one English-speaking Korean per platoon. What it depended on how close you were going to be to the fight.”

Following a grueling two weeks in the Taebaek Mountains and around Chosin Reservoir, now know by its Korean name Changjin, Allied Forces were finally ordered to withdraw the horrific conditions under which thousands were killed in battle or perished in the cold. Joe was among the few survivors able to hike 79 miles back to port where he was put on a stretcher and hoisted aboard the hospital ship Constellation.

His hands and feet were frozen, his arms and legs pierced by shrapnel and he suffered from blood poisoning. The more seriously injured were slowly trucked to the ship over rough, frosty terrain.  They were all brought aboard and would come to be called the Chosin Few.

As the Constellation made its way out of the east Korean port on the Sea of Japan, the Allies bombed the harbor to prevent the enemy Chinese from overtaking it. The billowing clouds of thick smoke are still vivid in Joe’s mind. In his home library is a “Pictorial History of the Korean War,” published by the Veterans of Foreign Wars that bring it all into focus in stark black and white.

After about six weeks recuperating in Japan, Joe was sent back to Korea in early March 1951.

“They never let us go back across the 38th Parallel,” he said, referring to the military demarcation that still splits the Korean peninsula roughly in half. To this day, the line separates North, which no longer calls itself Communist but a “single-party state,” and the South, Republic of Korea.

Back home

Joe then got orders to return stateside and arrived back in Michigan in November. His family knew some of what the Chosin soldiers had experienced from headlines in American newspapers, but those quickly subsided. He came through San Francisco and was surprised to see society ignoring the returning troops. 

“We were like the guys from Vietnam. There was no parade.”

Now called The Forgotten War by many, Korea is but a fading memory for survivors, and virtually unknown to younger generations, Joe said.

Shortly before Christmas 1951, he was met at the rail station by his father and father-in-law. He went to work the following Monday.

“People were tired of World War II, which had just ended in 1945,” he said. “The Korean War wasn’t over yet, there was no clear victory. A resolution was still hanging at armistice, and the country was still divided.”

Soldiers were still stunned over military decisions based on low-ball enemy counts that resulted in thousands of bloody deaths. 

“We knew they (Chinese) were there,” Joe said. 

Many vets also bristled at references to the eventual decision by military leaders to withdraw being categorized a “retreat,” a cowardly term in Marine vernacular.

On returning to the states, Joe entered training at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where he stayed five months. He was offered the chance to remain in the service, but says “my wife at the time helped decide. Stay and it would mean divorce. She’d had enough.”

So Joe went home to Michigan and entered police work, making it his life’s career first in Detroit, then with the Roscommon County (Mich.) Sheriff’s Department.

Joe is now 83 and long retired from police work. His children are grown and he survived a bout of cancer three years ago. He and Carolyn now live in Arizona because, unlike Chosin, it’s not cold.

He hasn’t shared much about the war — it was 10 years into their marriage before he mentioned anything, Carolyn said. Even after 61 years, he gets emotional. But after a trip back to the 38th Parallel during the couple’s visit to Korea last month, Joe is impressed with what the country has become.

A new Korea

The modern Korea is an economic force, clean, rebuilt, respectful, well-educated. Its people seem to genuinely appreciate what the Allied Forces did. Nearly 100,000 refugees left with the troops, escaping communist tyranny. When Joe left, the place had been leveled.

“They can’t say thank you enough,” he said. “My only regret is that we didn’t finish it, it is still an act of war. The South Koreans live in fear every day of the Chinese and the North Koreans coming back.”

Carolyn added, “I think they’re afraid Americans won’t help them.”

While there, the Clarks met people from all over the U.S., about 300 veterans, relatives and companions.  They filled five buses, which took them on daily tours, furnished meals and hotel stays, all at government expense.

“They’re selling Korea, no doubt about it,” Joe said.

The Clarks were impressed. Traveling with them were medical personnel, ambulances and four big, young men to help the aging veterans on and off.

“They wouldn’t take tips,” Joe said.

At a school visit on Sunday, children sang, played, danced and most touching, presented personally written letters and artwork to each veteran. Some even joined veterans on buses. As the entourage rolled through town sporting Korean War veteran banners, people on the streets waved and gave “thumbs up,” Joe said.

They visited the U.S. Veterans monument and Korean Veterans Memorial in Seoul, and the 38th Parallel, where guards still watch over a 30-mile stretch of the Han River, armed ones on the north side. On the last day, veterans were given “Ambassador of Peace” awards by retired Gen. Se Hwan Park at a banquet. The weeklong visits were sponsored by the Korean Veterans Association and the Patriot and Veterans Affairs, Republic of Korea.

The Forgotten War shouldn’t be, Joe said. He’d like to see the missing in action returned.

“There are three places I know of that are well-marked on maps where we dropped the dead. The graves were marked so they could be found. We constantly try.”

Due to the dwindling attendance at Chosin reunions and the inability for many vets to travel, survivor chapters including Arizona’s may be closed soon.

“They’re running out of guys like me,” Joe said. Korea is now inviting descendents of Korean War vets to visit the country. Anyone who gets the chance should go, the couple says.

 

Procession brings fallen soldier Williams home

From the Meadville Tribune: Procession brings fallen soldier Williams home

MEADVILLE — It’s why persons said they turned out Friday afternoon — either along the streets or at the Robert W. Waid Funeral Home — to honor U.S. Army Sgt. Chester L. Williams, a Korean War veteran, as his remains were brought to Meadville.

Williams, who grew up at Conneaut Lake, was 32 when he was reported missing in action in Korea on Dec. 6, 1950. Williams died of exposure in a North Korean prison camp in late December 1950.

“I just thought it was important to be here,” said Robert Catalano of Meadville, who watched the police-escorted procession go by along Chestnut Street with his wife, Dianna Catalano.

“It’s to show respect,” said Dianna Catalano.

John Camp of Meadville isn’t a military veteran, but said he just felt the need to turn out.

“I didn’t know this man, but it’s bringing home a vet,” he said of why he rode in the public processional.

Camp and Richard Rodgers were part of the more than 60-motorcycle public processional that escorted Williams’ remains along Interstate 79 to the funeral home in preparation for the weekend burial with full military honors.

“It’s out of respect,” said Richard Rodgers of Linesville, a member of Guardian Vets Motorcycle Club, a veterans motorcycle club.

Once the processional arrived at the funeral home, an honor guard of pallbearers from Veterans of the Vietnam War Post 52 bore the remains into the funeral home. Williams will be buried Sunday at 2 p.m. in Greendale Cemetery, Meadville — more than 60 years after he was declared missing in action.

Soldier’s last days

Williams came up missing when he was part of the 31st Regimental Combat Team, known as “Task Force Faith,” that was fighting in North Korea, according to Maj. Carie Parker, spokeswoman for Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.

The unit was advancing along the eastern banks of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in late November 1950, when it came under attack, Parker said. Task Force Faith began a fighting withdrawal to positions near Hagaru-ri, south of the reservoir, but during the withdrawal Williams went missing, Parker said.

In 1953, returning Americans who had been held as prisoners of war reported Williams had been captured by Chinese forces and died in December 1950 as a result of exposure to the elements, Parker said.

Between 1991 and 1994, North Korea gave the U.S. 208 boxes of remains believed to contain the remains of 200 to 400 U.S. service members. North Korean documents, turned over with some of the boxes, indicated that some of the human remains were recovered from the area where Williams was last seen, according to Parker.

In the identification of the remains, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools, such as radiograph, dental records and mitochondrial DNA, which matched Williams’ nephew and grand-nephew, she said.
Using modern technology, identifications continue to be made from remains that were previously turned over by North Korean officials, according to the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. Today, more than 7,900 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, according to the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit online at dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.

the funeral with full military honors for Sgt. Chester L. Williams took place  on Sunday at 2 p.m. in Greendale Cemetery, Meadville.

 

Discovery of Korean War letters prompts search

From Star Advertiser:  Discovery of Korean War letters prompts search

WATERBURY, Conn. » The letters, written in pencil in the uncertain half-cursive of a 25-year-old soldier, sat on a bookshelf in a New Britain home for 59 years.

After Nicholas DeSimone Jr. was declared missing following a July 13, 1953, battle in the Korean War, someone tucked the two dozen letters he wrote to his family in a safe spot. Later, the letters would be joined by posthumously awarded medals and updates from the military on recovery efforts for the remains of those presumed killed in action.

Lana Ogrodnik of Waterbury, DeSimone's niece, stumbled upon the letters while cleaning the home where Nicky grew up and where her parents now live. Outside, next to the American flag, waves a black POW/MIA flag.

Ogrodnik's mother was pregnant with her when Nicky went missing. (Ogrodnik's father, Fred DeSimone, is Nicky's older brother.)

"So Mary is going to have a baby, it about time she has a boy," Nicky wrote in a letter dated July 12, 1953, a day before the battle in which many think he died. "I think I will be home by the time she has the baby."

The simplicity of his missives, with misspellings and poor grammar, touched Ogrodnik. She grew up hearing about her uncle's easygoing nature, but the letters, mostly written to his mother — who had a nervous breakdown when her fourth child was declared missing — brought him to life. Nicky was a corporal in Company C, 461st Infantry Battalion (Heavy Mortar).

His letters mention training in California — and a wish to have stayed and "made a love picture with Marilyn Monroe" — and a rough ride on a ship to Japan, followed by a nondescript train ride to Korea. The letters, and a black-bound photo album of snapshots, are all Nicky's family have of him. They still hope some piece of him will be found in North Korea, something they can bury beneath his military plaque in a New Britain cemetery.

They are not alone. More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, according to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO. By comparison, there are 73,000 missing from World War II.

Ogrodnik and her sister, Linda Beder of Ohio, do what they can to find information about their uncle. Beder trolls websites run by veterans and sends letters to those who might have known Nicky. She found one man who remembered him, but offered scant details.

"He was always talked about and always there ... and I think when someone is missing like that, they loom larger than if they had lived," said Beder, who was a toddler when her uncle went missing. "I grew up with him as part of my life, even though I never had a relationship with him."

The sisters especially want to find answers for the sake of their father, Fred DeSimone, now 85. DeSimone described Nicky as a "good brother." Shortly before Nicky was drafted into the service, he built a cottage in East Hampton.

"He'd buy new furniture for the place and give it to us, and take the old stuff for himself," DeSimone said of Nicky, who stopped school after 8th grade. "He was a go-getter. He had a brand-new car and worked in construction."

Thinking of the day he drove Nicky to the train station en route to basic training, DeSimone said, "I knew I'd never see him again. ... I just got that feeling and I had tears in my eyes. But Nicky wasn't scared to go. He was a good-luck guy and that's one of the reasons he got killed. He volunteered for extra duty so he could get extra points."

DeSimone is referring to the few details available about what were likely Nicky's final moments in the Battle of Kumsong Salient. Chinese Communist forces launched their largest offensive in the final two years of the war, which had evolved into trench warfare similar to World War I. The North Koreans and Chinese outnumbered the American, South Korean and United Nations forces. Nicky's company was providing fire support to South Korean units. He and two others were dispatched to the front lines to find enemy targets and call in the coordinates.

On the evening of July 13, Department of Defense documents state, "An overwhelming number of Communist Chinese attacked the South Korean positions, including the post where Cpl. DeSimone was stationed. ... The wave couldn't be stopped, and ... with complete disregard for his own safety and rather than surrender, Cpl. DeSimone radioed in his own coordinates and called the artillery and mortar fire down on his own post and all the Chinese troops surrounding it."

A letter to Nicky's parents from a soldier who was with him offered more details:

"We were all in the bunker when the Chinese overran our position. The last I know of Nick when he told me he was hit. I don't know because it was dark. An hour later the Chinese came ... Nick was laying there. I don't know for sure if he was dead, but if he wasn't dead, they would have been taken prisoner with me. After I was repatriated, I inquired about Nick and Lt. Cox and all they told me that they were still missing. I honestly believe both Lt. Cox and Nick are dead, but I hope and pray for a miracle."

The offensive lasted one week. Communist forces drove the Allied line south six miles, but that gain came with a heavy price with 28,000 Communist soldiers killed. The large loss, historians say, helped spur the acceptance of peace accords one week later.

A year after the battle, DPMO sent the DeSimone family a letter that said because "none of the 4,400 repatriated American POWs — including one of Cpl. DeSimone's comrades who had been captured in the same combat where Cpl. DeSimone was lost — had ever seen him in enemy hands, a legal presumptive finding of death was filed on 14 July 1954."

Nicky was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star with a "V," for valor, and a Purple Heart.

Despite evidence to the contrary, some members of his family chose to believe he had gotten away somehow, that he met a nice girl and started a family in Korea orChina.

"For years, I think they held out hope that he would walk through the door," Ogrodnik said of her family.

Instead, Nicky, wearing HIS military uniform, smiles from a sepia-toned portrait that hangs in the DeSimone living room.

"I think about how young he was and how he had his whole life ahead of him," Ogrodnik said.

Especially poignant is a letter to Nicky from Ogrodnik's mother. It was dated July 26, 1953, and returned to sender: "Dearest Nicky! Just a few lines to let you know we just heard the wonderful news about the Korean Peace treaty. It came over a special news broadcast. I cried like a baby and am so glad for your sake. I hope you get home a lot sooner now."

Fred DeSimone doesn't remember how his family learned Nicky was missing — if it was via telegram or if someone came to the house. But he knows his mother, who regularly sent her son packages of Italian cookies and dried sausage, "went berserk ... Nicky was her baby and they were very close," he said.

Nicky's letters almost always downplayed hardships and expressed concern for his family. In one, dated June 2, 1953, he talked about winning $800 playing cards. He sent half of the money home and gave the other half to a sergeant traveling to Japan to buy Nicky's mother nice china.

"If you need any money, take all you want and buy dad something for his birthday," Nicky scribbled. "The only thing you do for me to make things more pleasant for me is to not worry about me ok mom and tell dad to."

Nearly six decades later, the special china from Japan is stashed away, but memories and hopes about the son who sent them linger.

"Intellectually, you know that even if we found a bone fragment, we'd be lucky. Emotionally, there is never that closure," Beder said. "For my father, I would like to see remains found. No one is at peace because he's not really home."

 

2nd Big Sky Honor Flight brings sobs, solemnity

From Billings Gazette: 2nd Big Sky Honor Flight brings sobs, solemnity

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Only three strides into the vast Korean War Veterans Memorial on Sunday, Warren Dexter halted, convulsing with emotion.

His son, Russell, steadied him with a firm embrace and whispered words of reassurance.

Dexter didn’t walk another 10 feet before dissolving into tears. Seeing the “Ghost Platoon” reminded him of being with his comrades in the Korean War, and he relived it as though it were yesterday.

After serving in World War II, Dexter remained in the Naval Reserves. In 1950, when the Korean War began, he was called to active duty. He served aboard the USS Curtis, the USS Pine Island and the USS Salsbury Sound.

At the memorial, he hunted for the name of one of his fallen comrades.

“We lost some of the men who didn’t come back,” he said.

Unlike the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial does not have the names of each fallen soldier etched into the monument.

Nevertheless, Dexter continued the search.

“I can remember trying to get them out of the water,” he said, starting to heave with sobs. “One was dead. I was trying to pull them out, and I slipped and fell. I want to see if his name is there.”

The unit had been returning from patrol in North Korea when an engine went out and they crashed.

“I couldn’t get it right,” Dexter said. “I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

His shoulders heaved as he sobbed. He did not speak again.

His were the signature emotions of the day: sobs and silence.

Dexter, 87, was one of 87 veterans who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Sunday as part of the second tour of the Big Sky Honor Flight of Montana. The group was to spend 1 ½ days in the nation’s capital visiting some of the nation’s most spectacular monuments that pay homage to men and women of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The group spent about 90 minutes on an emotional roller-coaster tour of the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial.

Len Bestrom, 85, of Laurel, served in World War II and the Korean War. He made his way around the three memorials. As he stood dwarfed by the Lincoln Memorial, he had only two words: “It’s super.”

He was still overcome by the welcome at Dulles International Airport, where U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a member of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, greeted each veteran and shook each of their hands.

“The welcome made my eyes start to sweat,” Bestrom said. “It was unbelievable.”

Laurence Shipp, 90, of Miles City, eyed the Lincoln Memorial and was nearly speechless. “It’s outstanding. Unbelievable.”

As the afternoon wound down, Bill Skorupa, 89, of Bridger, toured the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and caressed the names etched into the granite.

“I don’t think the war should have ever been fought,” he said, shaking his head. "It was a mistake. The war was a waste.”

The sun had not yet set on the day and Yellowstone County Commissioner Bill Kennedy, who serves as vice president of the Big Sky Honor Flight Committee, said plans are under way for flights in April, May and June of 2013. Each trip will cost about $155,000 and will be paid for entirely with donations.

Kennedy said he hopes to have all the money raised by Jan. 1. Time is of the essence, he said. Many of those who would have been eligible have either died or are now too ill to travel.

“I really do feel if we’re going to do justice to their service and get them on Honor Flight, we’re going to have to step it up,” Kennedy said.

Korean war vets want to embrace all who served

From Daytona Beach News Journal: Korean war vets want to embrace all who served

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."