They hope you'll remember

To Korea veterans, it will never be "the forgotten war.'' Fifty years haven't faded their memories of the horrors they experienced there.

By CARY DAVIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 25, 2000

Bob Henigsmith sits in his wheelchair, atop a pillow that offers padding for his aging body. His right leg is gone from the hip down, and his tan slacks are tied in a knot just below the stub.

He talks with pride and sadness about the 18 months he spent in Korea as an Army infantryman. About the thousands of Americans who lost their lives serving their country in the Korean War. About the frostbite he got on his right foot during the frigid Korean winter, and how he thinks the loss of his leg from gangrene last year is somehow connected to the war.

And, with anger in his voice, he talks about how wrong it is that the bloody three-year conflict has been dubbed "the forgotten war."

"I don't think it should be called that," Henigsmith, 75, said in an interview last week at the Baldomero Lopez State Veterans Nursing Home in Land O'Lakes. "I don't forget it, and I don't think any of the other GIs who were over there will ever forget it."

After all these years, the spotlight finally returns to the Korean War.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of that war, and veterans like Henigsmith hope the milestone will bring them and those who died in Korea overdue respect.

"We have never got the respect we deserve," Henigsmith said, "just like the Vietnam vets haven't got the recognition they deserve."

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army, trained by the Soviets, crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the South. The U.S.-trained South Korean army was overwhelmed and they retreated, surrendering the capital city of Seoul.

President Harry S. Truman committed U.S. troops to the conflict, declaring that the spread of communism must be stopped. But Truman refused to call it a war, referring to it instead as a "police action."

Truman's refusal to call the conflict a war still bothers many veterans.

"It was a war," said John Donovan, 76, of New Port Richey. "You don't use 16-inch machine guns in a police action."

When the conflict ended in 1953, the statistics were staggering. An estimated 54,000 American servicemen and more than 2-million Koreans, most of them civilians, had died.

Geographically, nothing was accomplished. The two sides ended exactly where they began: staring at each other across the 38th parallel. And little has changed since then, although recent diplomacy suggests the two sides are closer than ever to achieving a lasting peace.

But the United States had made a statement that it would oppose communism in every corner of the world, and it proved to be the beginning of the Cold War.

"We got the communists' attention," Henigsmith said. "Russia found out that the United States wouldn't back down from anything."

'It was about patriotism'

Henigsmith and other Pasco veterans say they knew their presence in Korea was important, but at the time, they weren't concerned with politics. Some went because they had no choice -- they were drafted. Others served in World War II and re-enlisted because military life suited them.

But all had one thing in common: They loved their country.

"It was about patriotism," Donovan said. "We were patriots. We were serving our country."

Donovan joined the Navy during World War II when he was 16 and was assigned to a PT boat in the South Pacific. One day during shore patrol, an enemy plane dropped a bomb on the boat, destroying it. About 20 of the 30 men on the boat were killed, he said.

Donovan and the other survivors swam to a nearby island occupied by Marines. But after a month of heavy bombing, they were nearly out of food and ammunition, and they surrendered. Donovan spent the next 31/2 years as a prisoner of war.

He said he was beaten repeatedly with rifle butts, dropped from 165 to 90 pounds, and didn't care if he lived or died.

When the war ended, he stayed in the Navy, but he switched jobs. He became a cook -- a commissary, in military parlance.

From 1949 to 1951, Donovan was on a destroyer that patrolled the Korean coastline. He didn't realize it at first, but as a former prisoner of war, he could have gotten out of combat duty. He found out during his third tour in Korea, but he didn't ask for a transfer.

"It was exciting and I wanted to be a part of it," he said. "We were blowing up towns, blowing up everything we could find."

James Barrett of Zephyrhills was an Air Force crew chief during the war. His job was to work on F-86s, keep them running and repair them when they were damaged in combat. He said he never really stopped to think why he was in a foreign land halfway around the globe.

"Everyone else was there, so I figured I'd just see what happened," he said.

What he saw -- and heard -- he'll never forget.

He remembers the nights in the barracks when he was startled awake by the sound of sirens. It meant their base was being bombed, again, and he and everyone else took off running for the ditch behind the barracks. They called it "the grave."

He remembers hiking through mud that stuck like glue to the soles of his boots when the North Koreans launched a massive offensive push across the 38th parallel.

And he remembers watching from a few feet away as a radio man wandered too close to the intake of a jet engine and disappeared.

"You grew up pretty quick," said Barrett, 71. "It separated the men from the boys."

When his commission expired, Barrett left the service for good.

"I figured I'd done my part," he said. "But there's plenty of men who did a lot more than me."

Henigsmith was an experienced soldier when he arrived in Korea. He had been an Army patrol sergeant in World War II in Europe, and he re-enlisted when things began heating up in Korea. He had left the service after World War II, but he quickly found he wasn't ready yet for life as a civilian.

He was in Korea for 18 months, in the middle of the war, and it is a time he would rather forget.

"I try to keep it in the back of my mind," he said. "It's over with, so why dwell on misery?"

But sometimes he can't help himself. Some things, like watching in horror as a mortar shell explodes on a man's chest, you just don't forget.

Henigsmith, a company commander in Korea, led men into battle every day. But as he encouraged them and barked orders, he was thinking of someplace faraway.

"I wanted to go home," he said. "When the bullets are flying around you, home is the best thought you can have. And anybody who says he wasn't scared was either crazy or he wasn't there."

Life after the war

Korean veterans, some more successfully than others, have moved on with their lives.

Donovan delivered cakes, sold auto parts and spent six years as a postal worker before finding his calling as a stock broker.

He recently spent three months in the hospital for a lung infection that he said he contracted while he was held captive in World War II. His doctor told him he had been carrying Asiatic parasites in his lungs for the past 50 years.

But he doesn't want any recognition for his service, or any sympathy for his war-related illness. He's got a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star for exceptional service and a POW medal, and those are enough for him. It makes no difference to him whether Americans have a newfound respect for Korean vets because of the 50th anniversary of the war.

"Nobody owes me anything," he said. "We done our duty. I don't want nobody to do me any favors. What are they gonna do, give me another medal? I earned mine the hard way."

Barrett has made a life out of serving others. After the war, he went on to become a police officer in a Pennsylvania township outside of Erie, working the night shift for 33 years as a patrol sergeant and plain-clothes detective.

Now, he and his wife, Fran, work with the East Pasco Meals on Wheels program, delivering food to people who can't leave their homes.

Henigsmith said he was never the same after the war. He got divorced and shuffled between jobs. He missed the regimented lifestyle and the esprit de corps.

"I wasn't happy with civilian life," he said. "I just couldn't adapt."

He said he has finally found peace in the veterans nursing home. The home's namesake, Baldomero Lopez, was a Korean War veteran who gave his life for his platoon.

"This is as close to the service as you can get," he said. "You feel a brotherly love for one another."

Last week, he was moved to tears when a group of local kids came to the nursing home and put on a pageant. The children sang patriotic songs and performed skits. Some of the kids shook hands with the veterans and thanked them for serving their country.

"That was real nice," Henigsmith said. "They were real patriotic. Why can't everybody be like that?"

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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