Not forgetting
What veterans saw during ‘forgotten war’ remains with them
Edward H. Specht was 21 years old when he found himself at the epicenter of a bitter conflict on the Korean peninsula that has come to be known as America’s socalled forgotten war.
Others may have forgotten it, but 90-year-old Ed Specht certainly hasn’t.
The things he witnessed on the firing line with an artillery unit of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division during that war, which began 70 years ago today, remain fixed in his mind.
He still remembers dodging artillery fire along the 38th Parallel, the latitudinal demarcation line between North and South Korea.
Indeed, as Specht recalls it, his artillery unit was at times north of the 38th Parallel, essentially behind enemy lines.
But Specht’s most vivid memories are not of exploding enemy artillery shells but of the agony he witnessed as a chaplain’s assistant.
In blackout conditions, with only a sliver of light seeping through the “cat eyes” covering his Jeep’s headlights, Specht drove a
Korean war veteran Edward H. Specht, 90, who served in the Army, with his Ambassador for Peace medal outside the Keystone Villa at Douglassville.
chaplain who ministered to wounded and dying in military hospitals.
The images of what he experienced remain locked in his memory.
During a recent telephone interview from his apartment at Keystone Villa at Douglassville, Specht was asked what he thinks of when he looks back to 1952-53, his tour of duty in Korea.
His reply: “I don’t look back. I try not to.”
Conflict or war
On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops invaded South Korea in what would become a three-year conflict.
The U.S. came to the aid of South Korea, led by Syngman Rhee. The Soviet Union and China backed
the communist government of North Korea, led by Kim Il-sung, grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the country’s current leader.
President Harry Truman referred to U.S. involvement in Korea as a police action.
The U.S. never declared war, and its involvement was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.
The Pentagon’s “Service and Casualties in Major Wars and Conflicts” reports that 33,652 Americans died in battle and another 3,262 died of illness in Korea.
An estimated 3 million to 4 million people, mostly civilians, died during what is often referred to as the Korean conflict.
Conflict or war, it technically has never ended.
While the U.S. and China reached an armistice that stopped the fighting on July 27, 1953, the U.S. retains an estimated 20,000 troops in South Korea.
An ongoing powder keg, North Korea has amassed the fourth largest army in the world. In recent years, it has tested missiles, perhaps capable of carrying nuclear warheads, powerful enough to possibly reach the shores of the United States.