The Forgotten War

I despise the term ¨The Forgotten War¨ and after this sentence, I will never use it again.

Others will continue using the phrase and that's important. The phrase itself is part of the war's legacy.

My father and mother's generation were molded by a war that slaughtered approximately 33,000 U.S. military personnel.

There will be a series of entries to this blog that also addresses the heroic service of American women -- nurses and others -- in the Korean War. Women suffered uniquely in Korea. They were not in combat, but as they faced their jobs and saw what the war did to human bodies, I know that PTSD had to exist in the ranks of women nurses and other female personnel. I garble this information. I cannot even start to imagine what it was like to stand in a M.A.S.H tent and look at bodies blown up.

The Korean War happened. It was horrible. It was not a ¨conflict.¨ It was a goddamned war.

How did we build a powerful economy and a healthy middle class with scarred men and women who had seen so much death and destruction?