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He Was The Most Admirable
Man I've Ever Known

John H. Chafee (1922 - 1999)

Is Korea Really America's Forgotten War?

Not if you ask the foot soldiers who fought there, Marines and Army both. How could any infantryman ever forget the ridgelines and the hills, the stunning cold, the wind out of Siberia, the blizzards off the Sea of Japan? How do you forget fighting — and stopping — the Chinese Army, 40 divisions of them against a half-dozen U.S. divisions, plus the Brits and some gallant others? And how can anyone forget the thousands upon thousands of Americans who died there in three years, in that small but bloody war?

Korea began 50 years ago today — a brutal, primitive war in what Genghis Khan called the land of the Mongols, a war in which I served under the most admirable man I've ever known, a 29-year- old Marine captain named John Chafee.

Most of us who fought the Korean War were reservists: Some, like me, were green kids just out of college. Others were combat-hardened, savvy veterans blooded by fighting against the Japanese only five years before — men like Chafee, my rifle-company commander, who would become a role model for life. I can see him still on that first November morning, squinting in the sun that bounced off the mountain snow as he welcomed a couple of replacement second lieutenants, Mack Allen and me, to Dog Company. He was tall, lean, ruddy-faced and physically tireless, a rather cool Rhode Islander from a patrician background with a luxuriant dark-brown mustache. We're a trifle understrength at the moment, he said, a half-smile playing on his face. We're two officers short. I was too awed to ask what happened to them.

Chafee didn't seem to carry a weapon, just a long alpine stave that he used as he loped, his long legs covering the rough ground in great strides. Got to stay in the trench from here on, he said as he showed us along the front line. This sector of ridge was jointly held by us and the North Koreans, the trenches less than a football field apart. Chafee questioned the Marines we passed — not idle chat but about enemy activity, addressing each man by his last name, the troops calling him Skipper. No one was uptight in the captain's presence, and the men spoke right up in answering. When enemy infantry are that close, both the questions and answers are important.

When I got there as a replacement rifle-platoon leader on Thanksgiving weekend of 1951, the 1st Marine Division was hanging on to a mountainous corner of North Korea along the Musan Ridge, about 3000 feet high. It took us a couple of hours to hike uphill, lugging rifles and packs along a narrow, icy footpath to where the rifle companies were dug in. As fresh meat, not knowing the terrain and nervous about mines, we followed close on the heels of Marines returning to duty after being hit in the hard fighting to take Hill 749 in September. In Korea they didn't send you home with wounds. Not if they could patch you up to fight again. These Marines, tough boys, understandably weren't thrilled to be going back. But they went. Dog Company of the 7th Marine Regiment needed them. There was already a foot of snow on the ground. When I think of Korea, it is always of the cold and the snow.

Yet the fighting began in summer, on a Sunday morning — June 25, 1950 — when the Soviet-backed army of Communist North Korea smashed across the 38th Parallel to attack the marginally democratic Republic of Korea with its U.S. trained and equipped (and not very good) army. Early in the war, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had bragged: The boys could be home for Christmas. But the boys would be in Korea three Christmases — courtesy of the Chinese Army.

Every soldier thinks his own war was unique. But Korea did have its moments: proving a UN army could fight; ending MacArthur's career, with a farewell address to Congress (Old soldiers never die. They just fade away...); helping elect Eisenhower, who pledged in '52, I will go to Korea; demonstrating that Red China's huge army could be stopped; insulating Japan from attack; and enabling the South Korean economic miracle. But the war's lack of a clear-cut winner and loser may have set the stage for Vietnam.

As a junior officer, I had little grasp of such strategic matters. I commanded 40 Marines, combat veterans who had fought both the Chinese and the North Koreans. Captain Chafee led us; Red Philips was his No. 2; Bob Simonis, Mack Allen and I were his three rifle-platoon leaders.

Guided by Chafee, I saw my first combat. Mostly it was small firefights, patrols and ambushes, usually by night. I learned about staying cool and not doing stupid things. When darkness fell, we sent patrols through barbed wire and down the ridgeline across a stream, the Soyang-Gang, trying to grab a prisoner or kill North Koreans. Meanwhile, they came up Hill 749 and tried to kill us.

The second or third night I was there, the Koreans hit us with hundreds of mortar shells, then came swarming against the barbed wire, where our machine guns caught them. At dawn there were six dead Koreans hanging on the wire. Except for Catholic wakes at home, I'd never seen a dead man. That morning we tracked wounded Koreans from their blood in the snow. The following day, a single incoming mortar hit some Marines lazing in the sun. Two died; one lost his legs. I hadn't been in Korea a week.

Sergeants like Stoneking, Wooten and Fitzgerald, and a commanding officer like Chafee, got a scared boy through those early days. When I tripped a mine in deep snow the morning of Jan. 13, 1952, and blew up Sergeant Fitzgerald and myself, the first man I saw as they hauled us out by rope was Captain Chafee. We fought the North Koreans into spring and then, when the snow melted and the Chinese threatened to retake Seoul, the Marines shifted west to fight the Chinese again.

In July 1953, the fighting finally ended — not in peace but in an uneasy truce. So uneasy that even today some 35,000 American troops are dug in, defending the same ridgelines and hilltops that we did a half-century ago.

If you've seen combat in any war, you have memories. Also a duty to remember absent friends. And if, like me, you become a writer, you have a duty to write about the dead, memorializing them: young men like Wild Horse Callan, off his daddy's New Mexico ranch; Doug Bradlee, the big, red-haired Harvard tackle who wanted to teach; handsome Dick Brennan, who worked in a Madison Avenue ad agency; Mack Allen, the engineer from the Virginia Military Institute; Bob Bjornsen, the giant forest ranger; and Carly Rand of the Rand McNally clan.

As the survivors grow older, we stay in touch: Jack Rowe, who won a Navy Cross and lost an eye, teaches school and has 10 children; Taffy Sceva, still backpacking in the High Sierra; my pal Bob Simonis, retired as a colonel; Joe Owen, who fought at the frozen Chosin Reservoir; John Fitzgerald, the Michigan cop, twice wounded on Hill 749. Each of us appreciates how fortunate we are to have fought the good fight and returned. No heroic posturing. Just another dirty job the country wanted done, and maybe a million of us went. If we got lucky, a John Chafee was there to lead us.

Chafee later carried out a brilliant political career, including governor of Rhode Island, Secretary of the Navy and four terms as a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. I had dinner with John and his wife, Ginnie, last fall: a meal, a little wine, laughter and good talk, a few memories. I'm glad we did that. Because John Chafee won't be marking today's anniversary. Last Oct. 24, still serving as a Senator, Captain Chafee died, 57 years after he first left Yale to fight for his country.

The funeral was in Providence, and my daughter Fiona and I drove up. The President and First Lady were there and 51 Senators, as well as Pentagon chief Bill Cohen, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, a Marine honor guard, people from Yale and just plain citizens, Chafee's five children and 12 grandkids, and a few guys like me who served under him in war. His son Zechariah began the eulogy on a note not of grief but of joyous pride:

So, when you think today of that small war long ago in a distant country, remember the dead, those thousands of Americans. And the thousands of U.S. troops still there, ready to confront a new invasion. Think too of the Skipper — my friend, Capt. John Chafee.

The Heroic Career of John Chafee

In Memory

James Brady's novel "The Marines of Autumn," about the battle between the U.S. 1st Marine division and the Chinese Army in Korea, was just published by St. Martin's Press. James Brady. June 25, 2000. He Was The Most Admirable Man I've Ever Known. PARADE Magazine. ‹http://www.parade.com/›

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