Vets
of forgotten war detail 7 betrayals
Hewitt
– Jack Goodwin was only 20 when he boarded a plane at his duty
station in occupied Japan and flew into the hell of an undeclared
war.
He
fought only one day before the North Koreans took he and his comrades
prisoner of war – the day before his 20th birthday.
“I
spent 4 birthdays in captivity,” he recalls today, a rueful tone
very evident in his delivery.
Mr.
Goodwin is the historian for Korean War veterans in the central Texas
area. He is one of less than 60 POW's still living, a revered figure
in the ranks of America's forgotten warriors who made it home alive
from the Korean “conflict.”
They
got little if any recognition for their sacrifices. For instance,
when Mr. Goodwin got home after 4 years of the hell of a POW camp, he
was greeted by a lone photographer from the local Waco paper who
recorded his name and took his picture. That was the last he and the
other troopers ever heard of it.
There
were no boulevards lined with cheering citizens, no ticker tape
parades, no welcome home banquets.
But
he's upbeat. “We didn't have it so bad as prisoners of the North
Koreans. It was the Chinese who were so hard on prisoners. They
starved them, beat them – we had one death march – We had one
death march where we lost 100 men...” His voice trails off. He's in
his 80's now. It's been a long war for Jack Goodwin
The
Library of Congress is sponsoring a Veterans History Project, the
intention being to record their stories on video or audio in their
own words. The stories that are chosen will be archived in the
library for the duration. For particulars, you can learn of the
librarians' standards at this website:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/
They
gathered on Tuesday afternoon at VFW Post 6008 in Hewitt, members of
the Order of the Purple Heart, Vietnam Veterans, and many warriors
who served in the first war prosecuted under the command of the
United Nations in a place so obscure that President Harry S. Truman
admitted many years later he had to go to the Map Room at the White
House and consult the globe to find its location when the Department
of State first informed him of the need for American troops to be
sent there.
It was a war of many firsts, and though it was not the first undeclared war America ever fought, it was the first ever fought that committed American fighting men to the control of an international tribunal like the United Nations. It was the first in which the enemy attempted to force POW's to confess to war crimes they did not commit, crimes which no one committed because – in fact – they never took place.
An
honored speaker, Mike O'Bric, outlined the “seven great betrayals”
that dictated their wartime experience, the first of which was
sending untrained, inexperienced troopers like young Jack Irwin into
harm's way to confront an enemy who had violated a treaty and flooded
across the DMZ in a strength at least 8 times that of their number.
They
were committed by generals and a President who assured Congressmen
they could handle it. The reality was stark. They wound up in a tiny
area of southeastern South Korea at a place called Pusan, starving,
nearly bereft of ammo and supplies, and helpless.
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