Many thousands of words have been written eulogizing the magnificent fight that Americans put up in Korea. Many reasons have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of innumerable American boys being drafted for, or recalled to, active duty in our armed forces and sent to fight in far-off Korea. To a large segment of the American people it has been almost impossible to understand why these Americans fought so well and so long.
Pride, team spirit, and many other such intangibles have been offered as reasons. These intangibles are all true and to some degree they do explain why Americans fought in Korea. However, in searching for reasons, the one perfectly obvious reason has been overlooked. Those Americans fought because it was right. The essential decency of the United Nations aim in Korea was the compelling reason for the magnificent fighting of our troops and the other UN forces as well.
Here in the United States, the decency and rightness of the Korean War was lost. For example, I was amazed when I returned from a Korean tour in April, 1953, to be greeted in much the same way as I had been eight years earlier following my release from a Japanese PW camp. Everyone felt sorry for me. They told me how lucky I was to be out of that mess.
I believed then, and even more strongly believe now, that intervention in Korea was the finest thing the United States ever did. I considered it an honor and a privilege to serve there and said so. Those who didn’t condemn me as a warmonger generally changed the subject. A few listened to my reasons. I believe my reasons were shared by those who were there. They are just different ways of saying that we fought in Korea because it was right.
I believe that intervention in Korea occupies jointly the hallowed place in the struggle of humanity for dignity, decency, and justice that was once reserved solely for the signing of the Bill of Rights. In June, 1950, we were answering Cain’s immortal question; “Yes, Cain, you are your brother’s keeper. We are our brothers’ keepers, too, both as individuals and as nations.” I’m sure Abraham Lincoln would have been proud of our efforts to preserve “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
I was proud of my country in June, 1950, and very disappointed when I couldn’t go with the 1st Marine Brigade to Pusan. Instead I stayed behind to reform the Sixth Marines of the Second Marine Division. That regiment a year later had a waiting list of one thousand men, many of them wounded veterans of Korea, who had requested duty in Korea. They believed as I do.
Humanitarianism is in its infancy. A baby falls often learning to walk but eventually scampers around the neighborhood. Our faltering steps in Korea may seemingly have accomplished nothing, but the precedent has been set. Succeeding generations will know that we tried to safeguard our brothers. The truly great events in history have come only after repeated, long, hard struggles. Some day the world neighborhood will refuse to allow the big nation to conquer the small. The first step in that direction was Korean intervention—a world-shaking event.
A nineteen-year-old jeep driver, a Korean Marine Corps colonel, the Korean Service Corps, and some U. S. Marine organizations strengthened my convictions while I was in Korea. They, too, appreciated the privilege of Korean service.
The private first class couldn’t understand why he had to be sent home just because he had been wounded twice. He reasoned that Korea was full of Communists, Communists needed killing, he was trained to do the job, and he should get on with the business. His battalion commander explained that the Commandant of the Marine Corps had ordered all commands to send home anyone wounded twice in Korea. Finally the lad asked seriously, “Colonel, can’t you foul up my records?”
The jeep driver explained it this way. “Back in Niagara where I grew up, we didn’t put up with bullies. Korea has shown the Communists that Uncle Sam won’t put up with a bullying nation any longer.”
The Korean Marine Corps (KMC) colonel, when I asked him how the South Koreans felt about the North Koreans, answered, “North Koreans and South Koreans same people. Half of KMC officers come from North Korea. South Korea lucky Russians not come when Japanese go.”
The Korean Service Corps (KSC) is the labor force for all United Nations troops in Korea. Supplies to outpost positions were handcarried almost entirely by KSC pack trains. At night they carried out food, ammunition, water, and medical supplies; bringing the wounded back on the return trip. During outpost fights like Vegas, this went on around the clock. The KSC, had no helmet, no armored vest, and no weapon. There were always as many KSC casualties as Marines. Why did they do this? The KSCs will tell you it was their job. They wanted no part of the Russians and Chinese.
During the winter, the KSCs were seen along the road by their camps, breaking the ice in the ditches. They used the water to wash themselves and their clothes and to brush their teeth. “The Chinaman is dirty,” they said. Only the accident of birth saved me from being alongside those KSCs.
During the March of Dimes campaign, the KSC received his meager pay (equivalent to S15 a month) and gave part of it to the relief of polio victims in the U. S. Surely this contribution, small as it was, was doubly blessed like the “widow’s mite.”
The 1st Marine Air Wing established a U. S. Marine Memorial orphanage in Pohang. They bought farm land which makes the institution self-sufficient. The 1st Marine Engineer Battalion adopted a refugee village. Feeding the village cost each of the 700-odd officers and men approximately ten dollars a month. Every spare minute that the Marines of these two outfits can spare from their duties (it was the same while the fighting was going on) is spent improving the premises and giving that commodity that nothing can buy, love.
On Christmas Day, even front line regiments of the 1st Marine Division had Christmas parties for the children. Many of the kids had their first toys as a result. Stomachaches from too much candy were not rare in Korea on Christmas night.
Many people have written of these charitable activities in Korea but all have failed to grasp the fundamental reason. In Korea, every single individual was conscious of one thing. The only difference between the American and the Korean was that provided by the accident of birth. None of us chose our mothers. Yet because our mothers lived in Texas or Montana or New York when we were born, we were free. Each of us was secure in the knowledge that if we had the stuff, we could be President some day. Unless we freed them, the Koreans could only look forward to hunger, disease, and oppression. We had to fight because it was right.
These are a few of the reasons why I fought in Korea. In Korea, I served with men who were “trying to make the world a little better place to live in.” I was proud to be a member of the 1st Marine Division, an outfit that donated over $90,000.00 to this year’s March of Dimes. Millions of Americans have fought that I might enjoy the neighborhood movie and the corner drugstore. I’m proud that my generation of Americans tried in Korea to give others the opportunity to enjoy those same advantages and pleasures. It was a privilege to try to reduce the terrible consequences of the accident of birth. Cain’s question was answered emphatically every day in Korea.
Mr. Eric Sevareid said in a CBS radio broadcast that their fighting had “to do with their parents and their teachers and their ministers, with their 4-H clubs, their scout troops, their neighborhood centers.” He was right. But he missed the boat when he said that it outmatched him. Because those parents, teachers, ministers, 4-H clubs, scout troops, and neighborhood centers had taught American youth to fight for what is right. That is why they fought and why they will fight again if it is necessary.