Crazy in Suburbia: A Special Memorial Day Service in Walnut Creek Honors Those Who Fought in America’s “Forgotten War”

Did you know that 36,940 U.S. soldiers died during the 36-month Korean War? That's an average of 1,000 Americans dying per month.

I confess I didn't know about this grim statistic, not until I attended Walnut Creek's Memorial Day service at Civic Park.

During a very moving service in Civic Park, Walnut Creek and some 200 people paid tribute to locals who had fought and died in America's wars. Locals who sadly died more recently and who received special mention were: Army Spc.James J. Coon, a 22-year-old Las Lomas High graduate and Bronze Star recipient who was killed in Iraq in 2007; and Cpl. Sean Langevin, 23, an Ygnacio Valley graduate and a Bronze Star recipient who died in 2007 in Afghanistan.

Monday's event featured performances of music by the Walnut Creek Concert Band and the laying of wreathes--accompanied by "Taps"--by representatives of the Contra Costa County's U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Station at the city's Veterans Memorial Plaza.

A big focus of Monday's service was to recognize those who served and died during the Korean War, which started in June 1950 and ended in July 1953. The Korean "conflict" was the first major proxy war of the Cold War, and is known to have involved the most intense small-unit fighting ever experienced by American soldiers.

I didn't really know any of this. Aside from growing up watching the TV show "MASH,"seeing "The Manchurian Candidate" a couple times (the John Frankenheimer/Frank Sinatra/Angela Lansbury version), or viewing the brief Korean War escapes of "Mad Men's" Don Draper, my Korean War knowledge is pretty dim. If I'm no military historian, I know a few other things about the two wars that bookend the Korean War: World War II and the Vietnam War.

The Korean War veterans speaking at Walnut Creek's Memorial Day service acknowledge this gap in popular knowledge.

Said Steve Williams, of the U.S. Army's 21^st division: "You will note that I speak of the 'Korean War' and not the 'Korean Conflict' because although all armed combat is by its very nature conflictual, history customarily refers to such conflicts as a 'war.' "

Williams, now a civil attorney in Walnut Creek, explained why the Korean War was particularly harrowing. After North Korea's surprise and unprovoked invasion of South Korea, the United Nations approved a swift "police action" that was largely made up of U.S. troops.

But this U.N. force was short of personnel, experience and training. This was definitely true of Williams' 24^th division.

"It was an unequal contest," he said. "The men of the 24^th were mostly teenagers, some enlisting at the ages of 15 and 16. They were on occupation duty and most had enlisted in the army to serve in Japan during the post-World War II occupation because the duty was not arduous and the off-base diversions were extremely attractions.

"Even though World War II had just finished," he continued, "the great majority of enlisted men, except non-commissioned officers, were not veterans of World War II combat and had received very little combat training.  They were thrown into the conflict as a stop gap to permit time for the arrival of the other divisions."

He concludes: "The young men and boys of the 24^th, given their ill-training and lack of weapons, were severely mauled in that phase of the war."  

Truce talks began in June 1951, he said, but they continued for two more years. Battles were fought, with names like Porkchop Hill, Triangle Hill, and Sniper's Ridge, Williams said. Other speakers referred to the battles fought in the Korean War as intense and close in as the grisly trench warfare experienced by soldiers in World War I. 

These are battles, Williams acknowledges, that most people have never heard of.

They didn't register with me, I confess. But now they do. And maybe they will among the people--old, young, and, like myself, somewhere in between--who attended Monday's service.