By Bob Markey, Sr., Seabee Korean War Veteran

Surviving veterans of the Korean War have now experienced 50 years of life and death and still the sounds and sights and smells and experiences of that war bring us back to the early 1950s when we were young warriors, putting our lives on the line so that others might live in peace and in freedom.

Many of us were volunteers, going willingly to serve our country. Others were reservists or former servicemen and women called back to serve their country again, not happy about it, but reporting for duty.

For some of us, the sacrifice was too much. Perhaps 50,000 of us never came back, never lived a moment after their service in Korea. Three kids in my New York City apartment house alone, would die in Korea, never to be forgotten by those who knew and loved them.

I still hear the voice of my 20-year-old brother Buddy, speaking to me in my heart. I still see him in my mind, wearing the dress blues of his Marine Corporal’s uniform, boarding the bus that would take him away to Korea, his point of no return.

     Corp. Leo P. Markey, Jr., USMC
       Killed in action 14 June 1951 

I still see the pride in his eyes as he looked at me, the kid brother he loved so much. And I miss him unbearably, even after a half-century.

I also remember Willie Wilkinson, in his early 20s, wearing his 2nd. Lieutenant’s bars, hugging his young wife as he went off to Korea, a pilot who would die before his first and only child was born. He said his final farewell to a young woman who would never remarry but would, instead, mourn him forever, and raise their child alone.

I remember my friend Bobby Arnall, a young Marine Private drafted to serve his country, shy and friendly, saying his last good-bye to his family and taking his last look at the Inwood, New York neighborhood he loved so much.

My brother Buddy would last but five days in Korea before being blown to bits as a Chinese fired mortar scored a direct hit on him and a wounded Marine buddy he was trying to help down an embattled Korean hill.

Willie Wilkinson would die as his plane was hit by enemy fire over North Korea.

Bobby Arnall would catch a single bullet in his head and die quickly in the arms of a fellow Marine who was fighting at his side.

All three so young, so beautiful, so full of life, so willing to go to a strange land and die there for you and for me.

On the day I graduated from Navy boot camp I was told of my brother's death in Korea. And when I was able to stop crying I promised him that I would go to Korea too, to die there if I must, but to be with him once again.

I transferred to The Seabees because they were fighting alongside our Marines in Korea and I volunteered over and over to be sent to Korea. The trip was a long one. There was Seabee school to attend in California, then a short tour on Guam and a much longer one on the island of Kwajalein in the Pacific, where we would dig up bulldozer-buried graves of thousands of Japanese soldiers who died during the WW2 invasion. We buried them again in a small cemetery on Kwajalein and built new dependents' homes where they formerly lay.

While we served on Kwajalein, we were dusted with deadly radioactive dust from atomic and hydrogen bombs our nation exploded about 100 miles from our island, including the three largest bombs ever exploded… several thousand times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in Japan at the end of WW2.

Most of us who unknowingly became Atomic Veterans there would die later at the age of 40 or 50 due to cancers and other illnesses caused by the radiation and some of our children would also inherit deadly diseases.

Finally it was my turn to go to Korea and I went there joyously. I wanted revenge for my brother and my friends. Instead, I eventually found peace.

After a year I returned home, one son out of two. I went to college and became a newspaperman, eventually worked at The New York Times, World Telegram & Sun, Palm Beach Post and later at seven of my own community newspapers in Palm Beach County, The Town-Criers in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Greenacres, West Palm Beach, Lake Worth and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida..

I was fortunate to find a beautiful girl Pat who would marry me and God blessed us with two wonderful sons, an exceptional daughter and four marvelous grandchildren. Life has been good to me and to those we loved.

But I still remember Buddy and Bobby and Willie. I remember the dead children I found alongside a Korean road, the Korean mother I found frozen to death in a stream. I remember the young Marine who died when a hut mate got drunk and killed him with a bullet fired through his chest. I can still picture another Marine who had boiling water poured on him by a combat crazed buddy. I remember coming across an overturned jeep on a dusty Korean road, with four terribly injured Seabees in it, four of my friends. I remember Marine pilots who crashed returning home to our airbase south of Seoul, most of them burning to death.

I still can hear my friend, Marine Corporal Hank Judd, telling me quietly of the many battles he was in, of being only one of seven of his company to survive combat in Korea. I remember Marine friends telling me how it was to watch their buddies freeze to death or be picked off by enemy gunfire as they walked and fought their way out of a trap, surrounded by thousands of Chinese soldiers at Chosin Reservoir.

I remember a story about a Marine Sgt. Lucky who couldn't stand the continuing cries of a wounded Marine who lay 50 yards past the front combat line as Chinese and American warriors exchanged gunfire. Sgt. Lucky put down his weapons and walked slowly toward the wounded man, ignoring bullets kicking up dirt at his feet, so brave that even the Chinese commander ordered his men to cease fire and let the heroic sergeant retrieve the wounded Marine before all hell broke loose again. Later he would be killed by a single shot in the head.

I remember Marines and Seabees telling me about waiting for hours until finally Chinese soldiers appeared on the horizon blowing terrible bugles as their troops ran toward the American Marines and were slaughtered until they lay in piles several feet high.

So many suffered so much. For us! For you!

But 50 years have passed and I have finally convinced myself it is time to forgive. It is time to let enemies become friends as much as is possible. I know it will be difficult but I must find a way to forgive the Chinese, the North Koreans, and to remember that they lost more sons and friends that we did, many times more.

It is time to move on. We who served during the Korean War were victorious. We held the line. Because we did our duty, South Korea today is one of the most successful nations in the world. North Korea is literally starving to death. The Berlin Wall is no more and Russians are finding its way toward freedom.

The memories will never end until we die. We will honor our wounded and those killed in action until our last breath.

But we can remember with pride what we did as young men and women to keep America free and make the world a better place.

A man should be remembered not for the wealth and possessions he is able to gather, but for what sort of man he was when he lived and what he did to make the world a little nicer.

Korean War veterans did their share. And we expect the rest of you to do your best to do yours!