[right: US Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley gives Rose Youngblut her husband's Purple Heart.]I have great admiration for those who risked their lives or sacrificed themselves during the Korean War. Fighting an often overwhelming force in dead of winter or the scorching heat of summer, thousands of miles from home. (It's a shame, really, that "the forgotten war" is a relative blip on the historic screen, even though it bent the Cold War in a direction that favored our victorious outcome.)
And stories like this one make me sad. It's about Richard Youngblut, who was shot while serving in the Army in Korea during the war. The physical and mental damage he suffered stayed with him for four decades, until he could bear no more and took his life in 1993.
Youngblut was haunted by recurring nightmares of the enemy coming to get him — nightmares that had their roots in Youngblut's near capture by enemy troops, a capture foiled only when the Jesup soldier leapt from a cliff.Much like Korea today, Americans in the 1950s and 1960s must have felt great stigma when it came to seeking help for mental health problems. Post-traumatic stress disorder was probably underestimated and largely misunderstood at that time.
"He never got over that," said Ken Ohnstad, 80, of Brooklyn Center, Minn., who twice saved Youngblut's life in Korea.
"I told him, 'You can't let this get to you, Dick,' but it did," said Ohnstad, who remained close to his Army buddy and tried to counsel him about his postwar apprehension.
The article doesn't explain why it took so long for Youngblut, a father of eleven, to be given the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during the Korean War. Better late than never, I suppose, to honor an Iowa boy who left a part of himself on the Korean Peninsula so long ago.
i have sympathy for conscripts, but volunteer soldiers are amongst the most base of person you can find, combining the two evils of killing for the state, and killing for money.
ReplyDeleteWWII and korea were different, conscripts had no choice, and i am referring to the human garbage fighting for the US in iraq and afghanistan 'serving the nation'
they have an informed choice, and they took it.
i'd be happy to see them skinned alive on you tube (happens occasionally)
a society that gives war as the only viable option for social mobility for the poorest in society is corrupt and corrupting.
yeah i know, not everybody thinks the same as me.
emily wrote:
ReplyDeletei have sympathy for conscripts, but volunteer soldiers are amongst the most base of person you can find, combining the two evils of killing for the state, and killing for money.
That may accurately describe some people, but a lot of the people who sign up (especially for the Reserves or the National Guard) did so because it was their only way of affording college, and they spent the whole time hoping and praying they wouldn't be sent off to war.
I remember back in 1991 when people Reservists were being forced to leave their jobs and head off to Saudi Arabia, there was this collective, "Holy fuck! What did we get ourselves into?!" response.
WWII and korea were different, conscripts had no choice, and i am referring to the human garbage fighting for the US in iraq and afghanistan 'serving the nation'
they have an informed choice, and they took it.
Well, I would differentiate the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I could see someone signing up after 9/11 and wanting to do something (though that leaves a lot of room for sadistic revenge).
Let's not forget that the National Guard is full of people who thought they might be helping protect their neighbors from floods and natural disasters.
i'd be happy to see them skinned alive on you tube (happens occasionally)
Okay. You're definitely not Nora, wjk, or Baduk.
a society that gives war as the only viable option for social mobility for the poorest in society is corrupt and corrupting.
Well, I don't exactly disagree with you there.
yeah i know, not everybody thinks the same as me.
Well, you sound a little like someone who might have seen Fahrenheit 9/11 ten times in the theater, but got up to go to the bathroom at the wrong parts.