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Following in His Father’s Footsteps

Fighting In Korea On the night of November 27, 1950, PFC Joe Dunford, a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) gunner, sat shivering in his foxhole at Yudam-ni, a village deep in the mountains of North Korea.…

Fighting and Dying in a Frozen Hell

It’s a pivotal event of the 20th century. The Battle of Chosin, or “Changjin” as it’s called in Korea, a two-week-long bloodbath pitting 30,000 US, ROK, and British troops against 120,000 Chinese soldiers, was a…

Capt. Stevens and his men at the Battle of Okinawa

A Marine for All Time

John Stevens, the steely-eyed, tireless Marine who fought in World War II and Korea and played a major role in establishing the Korean War Memorial Foundation’s memorial to Korean War veterans at the Presidio, passed…

A Lifetime of Waiting

You Are Not Forgotten Their stories are heartbreaking. For decades, thousands of families – over 7,700 – have wondered when and if their son, husband, brother, or uncle will return from the Korean War. They’ve…

The Only Woman at Red Beach

As Marines climbed aboard their landing craft at Inchon, one woman, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, went with them. She was the only female to land at Red Beach on September 15,…

Montford Point Marines proudly saluting in their dress uniforms, circa 1943.

You Ain’t Going To Be No Officer

On November 10, 1945, the 170th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps, a small ceremony took place at Montford Point, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In what would later be deemed an…

Marines landing at Bougainville in 1943.

From Bougainville to Hungnam: A Marine’s Life of Service

He’s one of the main reasons I’m in Korea. But after spending more than three years researching the Marine colonel who dedicated his life to country and Corps, I’m still no closer to knowing what…

On the East Side of Chosin

As the helicopter took off and disappeared over the North Korean mountains, Lt. Col. Don Faith, watching from his desolate, wind-swept command post at Chosin Reservoir, threw his newly awarded Silver Star into the snow.…

Two Medal Of Honor Recipients, One Small Town

With just a few elementary schools, a middle and high school, two hospitals, a community center, a “busy” main street, and 13,000 residents, South Charleston, West Virginia, is an all-American community like thousands of others…

Guided by God’s Own Hand: Captain Leonard LaRue and the Meredith Victory

From deadly World War II Murmansk runs, to history’s greatest rescue operation by a single ship, to a life of prayer as a Benedictine monk, Leonard LaRue, or Brother Marinus as he was called after…

Brothers in Arms: A Story of Sacrifice and Survival

For 19-year-old Pat Finn, a Minnesota Marine with Item Co, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the night seemed colder and darker than any of the others he’d experienced since landing in Korea. His battalion had just…

A Hat Full of Candy and Chocolate

The horrors of war surrounded her: bombed-out buildings, smoldering barricades, the rumbling sound of planes, artillery fire, troop trains, and tanks; wounded soldiers, corpses, and panic-stricken families searching for lost loved ones; and as far…

The First and Only Time

It’s only happened once. And the chances of it happening again are slim to none. When North Korean soldiers and T-34 tanks attacked across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, and stormed into Seoul…

Saluting Fallen ROK Heroes at ROK Marine HQ

We Will Always Remember You

How many times have you heard it? Someone receives a gift, compliment, or helping hand and simply says, ”Appreciate it!” The other person replies, “No problem.” They move on. Call me antiquated, even a “dinosaur”…

There Was an Angel on Her Back

On March 26, 1953, nearly four months to the day that the Korean War armistice was signed, one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history began: The Battle for Outpost Vegas. Located in the…

On a Hill Far Away

We’ll never know the terror 18-year-old Marine PFC Edward “Eddie” Thorn experienced in the final minutes of his life, but we do know that what he and hundreds of other Marines went through at the…

US Marine Corps Cemetery, Hamhung, North Korea 1950

Great Sacrifice Can Produce Great Results

This weekend as Americans enjoy cookouts, beach reading, shopping sprees, blockbuster movie openings, and good times with family and friends, many of us will also take time to remember America’s military men and women who…

The Army’s Been Good to Me

In 1948, Travis Brann, an immature and disillusioned high school kid, dropped out of school. He wanted to make money, he told his parents, not sit in a classroom. A year later, tired of working…

Robert Reem and Donna Zemmerli's wedding at the US Naval Academy Chapel 1949

He Promised Me He Wouldn’t Do Anything Heroic

On April 9, 1949, 2nd Lieutenant Robert “Bob” Reem and Donna Zimmerli, both 24, were married at the US Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland. Bob, a prior enlisted Marine and graduate of the Naval…

Is The Korean War Finally Ending?

For those who served on the Korean peninsula from 1950-1953 and survived, men now in their eighties and nineties, the fighting ended when they came home. For those who died in the streets, fields, landing…

Contagious Gratitude: Susan Kee, Honoring Korean War Veterans

We frequently tell young people – our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the neighborhood kids – to follow their dreams. Pursue your passions, serve others, make the world a better place, we tell them. Somewhere…

From a PT Boat to the Streets of Seoul, William H. Shaw’s Life of Character and Conscience

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? For Bill Shaw, a 28-year-old husband, father of two, and first-year doctoral student at Harvard, the answer was clear. He told his wife, two young sons, parents, and…

Men of the Merchant Marine: Unsung Heroes of the Korean War

As the elderly American, surrounded by cameras, microphones, and reporters, walked towards the memorial, two Korean men stepped forward from the crowd. As if on cue, the sea of people suddenly parted, and the three men shook…

Easter on Okinawa, 1945

On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, Richard (Dick) Whitaker, a Private in the US Marine Corps, landed on Okinawa’s Red Beach-2. For the next 82 days, Whitaker, along with 180,000 American and Allied soldiers, sailors,…

He Had His Whole Life in Front of Him

Their stories are heartbreaking. For decades, thousands of families – over 7,800 from America and 100,000 from Korea – have wondered how and when their son, husband, brother, or uncle died during the Korean War.…

Follow Me! The Life and Legacy of a Medal of Honor Recipient

In one of the most iconic images of the Korean War, a Marine lieutenant climbs out of a landing craft, his right foot on a rocky seawall, his right hand gripping a rifle. Smoke fills…

Maggie Higgins on front of Life Magazine

She Eats, Sleeps, and Fights Like the Rest of Us

In a few weeks the 67th publication anniversary of a little-known Korean War book will quietly come and go. The non-fiction work won’t make headlines, and its author won’t be remembered in editorials or magazines.…

The Forgotten Fighting Irish of the Korean War

I always look forward to St. Patrick’s Day. My maternal grandfather, Patrick J. Sullivan, did too. His father had come to America from County Kerry, Ireland, at the turn of the 20th century and had…

World War II and a Grand Matriarch

On December 7, 1941, Pauline Peyton Forney, like all Americans who heard the fateful news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, knew everything was about to change. The United States was at war, and for…

SS Meredith Victory monument on Geoje-do

Bringing History to Life: The Power of a Road Trip

Let’s go! Bali, Bali, Hurry, Hurry! Grab your bags and get on the bus! We all remember our favorite field trip. Whether it was for a day, an overnight, or a week, it became a…

Shin Ae-gyun with her students at an orphanage

The March First Movement and a Tiger Grandmother’s Legacy

I never met Shin Ae-gyun. But I wish I had. To spend just one day with her asking questions about her life and son, Dr. Hyun Bong-hak, the man who helped save 100,000 North Korean…

Childhood Dog Tag Hunts

Country “A”: “We don’t study that.” “No, our teachers never talk about it.” “I may have heard about it in a movie but not at school.” Country “B”: “Oh, yes, we learn about it starting…

Happy Birthday to the Soldier Who Never Left

Stepping off the bus in January 1965, US Army Private First Class John Nowell, a 22-year-old California native who’d been drafted the year before, immediately knew Seoul wasn’t the place for him. The impoverished city…