Veterans reflect on conflict’s outcome

Friday, July 25, 2003 | 11:25 a.m.

The golden anniversary of armistice for "The Forgotten War" comes at a time when North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and posturing to breach the world's most fortified border, a 155-mile long, 2.5-mile wide demilitarized zone, where more than 37,000 U.S. troops remain on alert.

The Korean War was a stalemate, ending where it began, at the 38th parallel. North Korea, which was then and is now a communist dictatorship, and South Korea, a democracy then as it is now, never signed peace treaties.

"The peace talks began in 1951 and really are still going on," said Raymond Spiess, 79, of Las Vegas, an Army veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. "It probably will stay that way for another 50 years."

As the years go by, however, fewer and fewer Korean War veterans are left to mark the anniversary of the armistice. About 5.76 million U.S. troops served in the Korean War era, but there were just 4.04 million Korean War-era veterans counted in the 2000 Census.

Of the 26.4 million American war veterans alive for the 2000 U.S. Census, 15.3 percent of them were Korean War veterans. A significantly larger percentage of Nevada's 238,128 veterans were Korean War veterans, 16.8 percent or 40,005, according to Census 2000.

Nevada trailed only Puerto Rico (26.8 percent), Florida (17.8 percent) and Arizona and South Dakota (each with 17.4 percent) for percentage of veterans from the Korean War, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

Some of those survivors had been wounded in the war -- 103,284 U.S. personnel were. And many who served in the war didn't get out alive. Nearly as many U.S. soldiers died in the three years of the Korean War, 54,246, as died in the decade of fighting in Vietnam, 58,151.

More than 8,100 U.S. troops in Korea wound up listed as missing in action and more than 4,700 men died in captivity.

An estimated 2,650 POWs survived the war. James Volpone, 74, is one. An Army veteran who spent most of the conflict as a prisoner of war, he said he wasn't always willing to be identified as Korean War POW.

"The POWs were the scapegoats of that war," said Volpone, a retired illustrator and 23-year resident of Las Vegas. "Sen. (Joseph) McCarthy was telling the American public that we were part of a large-scale brainwashing by the Communists and that we were no longer loyal to America.

"I'm patriotic, but because of statements like that, I wouldn't tell anybody I was a Korean War POW until 1984."

It also was a struggle for Volpone to convince the Veterans Administration that he deserved medical benefits stemming from the crippling abuse he took from the enemy. It was not until 1995 that Volpone was given a 100 percent disability rating.

"I often thought that I gave five years of my life to the military -- 2 1/2 of those years as a POW -- and that was the appreciation I got," Volpone said. "In many ways, I'm still fighting that war."

Others, including Air Force crew chief Roland Miller, 72, of Las Vegas, put the war behind them long ago.

Miller flew in planes that delivered supplies and the wounded to the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals that were made famous in the film and 1970s and '80s television series "MASH."

"We delivered everything from steaks to U.S.O. shows to jet fuel to the wounded," Miller said. "Some things will always stick with you. One wounded guy we brought to a hospital was so wrapped in gauze that all you could see were his eyeballs."

But after the war, Miller attended college on the GI Bill, sold cars for 35 years and later sold insurance.

"I got over the war pretty quickly and life was good for me," he said.

While Miller believes there won't be a second Korean War because the North Koreans will think twice about messing with the United States after the convincing victory in Iraq, Volpone believes that North Korea is the next target of U.S. forces in their so-called war against terrorism.

"We have spent so much time looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while on television the North Koreans constantly show us their weapons of mass destruction," Volpone said. "I don't trust the North Koreans or the Chinese. Our next war will be in Korea and it may be a World War."

Miller, however, argues, "we have so many troops in Korea and agents and spies and sophisticated equipment. The North Koreans know we have the strength and won't challenge that power. I believe they will negotiate and try to win favor with us."

Ed Gobel, director of the Council of Nevada Veterans Organizations and curator of the Gobel/Lowden veterans museum, said the variety of opinions expressed by veterans of the Korean War demonstrates its complexities and why "The Forgotten War" needs to be remembered.

"We should remember the lessons of the Korean War and we should honor and respect the people who fought that war," said Gobel, a Vietnam veteran, noting that more exhibits will be added to the Korean War room at the museum for Sunday's ceremony.

"It is important that we focus on Korea as we did on Iraq because when potential enemies perceive that we are weak and vulnerable and they can take advantage of us, the possibility of war increases," Gobel said. "We have to remember that in Korea the war technically never ended. If we are not alert, that truce can be broken."

The Korean War was important because it set the stage for the U.S. victory in the Cold War, as the USSR and China learned they could not spread Communism through military force. That became a contributing factor in the downfall of the Soviet Union three decades after the Korean War.

The Korean War also included blunders that U.S. forces would repeat in Vietnam. The lessons learned, however, helped to successfully achieve objectives in the Persian Gulf War and the War in Iraq.

The mistakes in Korea that were repeated in Vietnam included a lack of a clear objective and divergent strategies used by various generals. The lessons learned from Korea that continue to resonate in the two victories over Iraq were to have clear goals and a single-minded concentration of forces to achieve the objective, experts say.

The Korean War perhaps best served to underscore the need to be prepared for armed conflict, they say.

The first 500 U.S. troops to arrive in Korea in 1950 were poorly trained and ill-equipped to face a 90,000-man North Korean Army and their Soviet-made tanks. Because those U.S. troops had no armor-piercing artillery shells they initially were overwhelmed.

The Korean War also marked the first time the United Nations created a coalition military force. It included 16 nations led by the United States.

But the war also was marked by milestones that U.S. soldiers would sooner forget. Those included the 275-mile retreat from the Chinese forces that crossed the Yalu River -- the longest retreat in U.S. military history -- and some of the bloodiest trench fighting that U.S. forces have ever experienced, at outposts with such colorful names as Porkchop Hill and Heartbreak Ridge.

"At the Yalu, you looked across and one minute there was nothing and the next second the hills were crawling with Chinese. They looked like ants from a distance," said Spiess, a mess sergeant who had to become a squad leader when the forces he was with were surrounded by Chinese soldiers.

"The casualties were heavy, but thank God the Air Force was able to drop ammo and other supplies that saved our lives," he said. "There was no sleep on the line for three days until the First Cavalry broke through the Chinese lines and got us out of there."

Spiess went on to serve with the Special Forces in Vietnam where he was exposed to the deadly defoliant Agent Orange. After that he attended and graduated from college and worked as a state parole officer. An 11-year resident of Las Vegas, he recently beat cancer.

Volpone also was surrounded during the Korean War, but was not as fortunate as Spiess.

"There was about 700 of us, but 400 were killed in action," Volpone said. "The rest of us were captured. There was no POW camp. They marched us from village to village, beating us, kicking us and shooting those who dropped during the death marches.

"There was no medicine, no water. Many POWs died from disease. I came home with tuberculosis. I don't know how or why I survived."

When he was repatriated in August 1953, Volpone weighed 110 pounds, down 30 pounds from his normal weight at that time.

"You don't hear much of these stories about Korean POWs," Volpone said. "It wasn't until 2001, that the U.S. government readjusted the figure for those who died in captivity from 2,701 to 4,747. The real number of those who died as prisoners probably is twice that (readjusted) number."

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