He remembers Korea, and so will county

A builder of bridges during and after the Korean conflict leads the effort to build a memorial to the "forgotten war."

INVERNESS - Jerry Stamberger did not fight glorious battles in the Korean War. He was not captured by enemy troops and spent no time in a prisoner of war camp.

Stamberger, like hundreds of other troops, performed a vital function that rarely makes headlines during typical war anniversary coverage: He helped build bridges and guard supply trains that wound through the rugged Korean peninsula.

During the past few months, the 71-year-old Stamberger has pursued another little-noticed goal. He has taken the lead in creating a local Korean War memorial, the first of its kind in Citrus County.

The only local acknowledgement of Korean War veterans is a memorial to Maj. Daniel Francis Rooks at the Historic Courthouse in Inverness. Rooks, who served in the 3rd Infantry Division and died in a Korean prisoner of war camp in 1951, was a member of one of Citrus County's most prominent families. He was the son of James E. Rooks, a former chairman of the County Commission.

Last week, Stamberger got his wish: After lobbying the county for months, he convinced the County Commission to unanimously approve locating the memorial next to the existing war memorials on the Historic Courthouse lawn.

Initially, there were plans to put the memorial at the Historic Courthouse temporarily before permanently locating it at Inverness' new City Hall. But commissioners agreed that placing a monument in a temporary location would "diminish the dignity and reverance of the monument itself," as Chairman Jim Fowler put it.

"I think it's appropriate that it goes to the (Historic) Courthouse, and it will be there permanently," Commissioner Vicki Phillips said in a telephone interview.

Permanency is what these veterans want. Although the Korean conflict is often called the "forgotten war," they don't want their legacy to be forgotten.

"This monument that we're putting into downtown Inverness will be there forever, long after I'm gone, and I'll be gone in about 10 years," said Kenneth Heisner, a 73-year-old member of Chapter 192 of the Korean War Veterans, a national group.

The memorial dedication will be July 26, a day before the 50th anniversary of the war's end. An armistice was signed between the United Nations and North Korea on July 27, 1953.

Stamberger said a memorial is needed not only to commemorate those who died during the war, but for the Citrus veterans whose numbers are slowly but surely dwindling.

The chapter chose black granite to match the ebony POW/MIA flag found on county courthouses and statehouses through the United States.

"It's really a tombstone," he said in an interview at his Crystal Oaks home. "We're all in our 70s. We're all dying off."

Indeed, the chapter's founder, Ben Reed, died in 2001. That put Stamberger, who was the first vice president under Reed, at the helm. The group's chaplain, Howard Huttner, died in a car accident last year as he returned from a chapter meeting.

"This chapter has had little heartbreaks," Stamberger said.

Membership has always been low compared with the total number of Korean War veterans in Citrus. The 2000 census showed there were 5,793 Korean War veterans living in Citrus. But only 22 veterans belong to Chapter 192, down from 35 when the chapter formed two years ago.

Statewide, Korean War veterans have organized themselves into 23 chapters with about 1,300 members, said Jake Feaster, Florida president of the group.

In their old age, many veterans are dealing with illnesses and fatigue. Heisner is receiving treatment for prostate cancer and is recovering from hip replacement surgery. Younger vets, who have monitored the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea since 1953, could enliven the chapter. But many just don't have time.

"A lot of our guys are over the hill," said Heisner, who served as a communications specialist in the 27th Fighter Wing of the 5th Air Force.

"All of our members are over 70. And we can't get any of the young guys, because they're trying to support their families," he said.

Then there are veterans who can't muster the interest to join a Korean War chapter since they already belong to a VFW post or the American Legion. One of Stamberger's neighbors, whom he frequently sees taking evening walks in Crystal Oaks, fought in Korea. Stamberger even offered to drive him to Chapter 192 meetings, but the man wasn't interested.

"Trying to get him to join is like pulling teeth," he said.

Small as it is, Chapter 192 has an esprit de corps. It has monthly meetings, most recently at the VFW post in Beverly Hills. They march in the annual Veteran's Day parade in Inverness. They offer each other rides to the VA hospital, and hold an annual Christmas dance that is quite popular. "We're all very close; we're a band of brothers," Stamberger said.

Stamberger's experience in Korea was not the stuff of high drama, but filled with small incidents that were no less frightening for him as a 19-year-old construction engineer.

A native New Yorker, he spent time on Army bases in California, Washington and Arizona before being shipped to Munsan-Ni, near the 38th parallel, in January 1952.

It was here that delegates from the United Nations, the United States, China and North Korea stayed during peace talks that led to the armistice's signing in Panmunjom.

Stamberger was a corporal in the 84th Engineers, a unit of the 8th Army. The unit's main charge was to build the Freedom Gate Bridge, a light suspension bridge spanning the Imjin River on the peninsula's western side.

The bridge earned its place in Korean War history as the path to freedom American prisoners of war took after their release in 1953. One of Stamberger's responsibilities was to ferry wooden pilings to a pile driver stationed in the Imjin, where his teammates were building the bridge.

The bridge, built after U.S. troops had blown away other bridges to stave off Chinese and North Korean troops, also became the main conduit for the U.S. Army to bring back its dead.

"In the morning, we would see them fly over in helicopters and by night they would come back dead," he recalled. "When they put the bodies at the back of the truck, a tag was tied to their toes. We knew they were our men."

These sober moments produced some resentment. U.S. troops also carried back dead North Korean and Chinese soldiers who had been killed in battle.

"Them, I didn't care," he said.

Stamberger and his fellow engineers also enjoyed perching on top of a small mountain near their camp to watch Navy jets blast Chinese troops with napalm.

It was an activity reserved for Sundays, their day off.

"It was like going to a movie," he said.

Then there was the bitter cold, which on the Korean peninsula could plummet to 30 degrees below zero. The men of the 84th Engineers got used to bucket baths, and they frequently slept in their clothes.

As in any war, there were internal struggles within the unit. A routine exercise of taking wooden pilings to a pile driver in the Imjin turned into a near-death experience because of some bad advice from a superior officer.

Stamberger recalls a lieutenant ordering him to fasten a pontoon filled with pilings and a compressor to the side of a speedboat, instead of at the front or the back, where it would have been easier to maneuver.

When Stamberger and three other soldiers set out onto the river, the Imjin's swift current twisted the pontoon, dumping the pilings and compressor into the water.

Stamberger and two fellow soldiers were thrown into the current as well. One swam to shore. Stamberger managed to climb back on the speedboat, but the third man was tossed downstream by the Imjin's powerful rapids.

Chinese troops in the area began firing at the soldier stranded in the Imjin River, but by that time Stamberger had thrown him a life jacket and severed the rope connecting the speedboat to the pontoon drifting in the water. The man made it out of the water.

"The Imjin was the toughest river I've ever seen," he said.

Weeks later, he and the speedboat driver were both promoted, yet he suspects that the same lieutenant who had gotten them in this mess had other plans.

The lieutenant ordered Stamberger, who was promoted to sergeant, and the speedboat driver, now a corporal, to ride supply trains that transported bulldozers and other equipment to the 84th Engineer's main supply depot to make sure enemy troops didn't steal the supplies.

The job was a harrowing one. The North Korean and Chinese armies were notorious for killing guards who monitored the tunnel openings, and for blowing up tunnel openings to trap supply trains - and the people manning them - inside.

Luckily, Stamberger made it through the nerve-wracking trips, taking on whatever came his way - from the enemy or other Americans.

At Taegu, where the black market was thriving, the train stopped at a station where an American G.I. was lurking around the platform. Stamberger and his partner circled the train to make sure none of the equipment was stolen at this station. He noticed that a tire was missing when he circled around the train a second time. The same tire that had been on the train during his initial perusal. Then he saw the tire tucked in a narrow opening between loading dock, where the G.I. stood, and the train. He told the G.I. to give back the tire, a valuable commodity on the town's black market.

"I told him next time, he wouldn't be so lucky," Stamberger said.

Small victories and steady work on another crucial bridge, the Libby Bridge, marked the remainder of Stamberger's tour before he returned to the United States in the summer of 1953. That year, the 84th Engineers received a Korean Presidential Unit citation, dubbing the unit the "Conquerors of the Imjin River."

He spent the rest of his life doing what he did best: building bridges, including the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which links Brooklyn and Staten Island, where Stamberger made his home after he was discharged. He also had a hand in constructing the World Trade Center.

After moving to Florida almost four years ago, he found out that Ben Reed, a fellow Korean War veteran, was starting a chapter in Citrus County, where Stamberger and his wife, Joan, had bought an elegant stucco ranch in Crystal Oaks.

"When I heard of a chapter for the Korean War, I said that's for me," he said. "They knew what we went through, and God knows what we went through."

Stamberger hopes the black granite memorial will act as a reminder to all who pass by the Historic Courthouse.

"When we found out it could be there permanently, we were tickled pink," he said.

Chapter 192 set aside $840 for the the memorial. Its wording will be simple:

- Archana Pyati can be reached at 860-7309 or apyati@sptimes.com