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Monday 05/31/2004 12:36:22am |
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Name: |
Robert Leibold |
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E-Mail: |
wwiivictory@usa.net |
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Homepage Title: |
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Homepage URL: |
http:// |
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Referred By: |
Search Engine |
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Location: |
South Mountain, Arkansas |
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Comments: |
While searching through my deceased father's boxed memorabilia from WWII
and Korea, yesterday--from within the yellowed pages of a tiny military-issue New Testament Bible--I recovered the following
newspaper clipping from the Kansas City Star, entitled: "Marine Draftees to Korea."
The article reads: 'The first United States Marine draftees to enter a combat zone since World War II landed today in the biggest
group of Marine replacements yet sent to Korea. The 900 Leathernecks--nearly half of them conscripts--marched off the transport
vessel General William Wiegel at an East Korean port. The Marines,' the report added, 'had sailed from the United States February
1 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William S. McLaughlin, of Gloucester, Mass.'
My dad, then 26, had already served in WWII, and had a child by 1950. Officially on inactive reserve, he was not required to report
to Korea, but nevertheless chose to report of his own free will. Twenty years after the end of the Korean War, I was in the First
Marine Division myself, and while on leave I asked the man why he'd gone to Korea when he didn't have to, and he replied:
"I had Second World War buddies who'd stayed in the Corps, and who had been trapped near the Chosin Reservoir. It was my
duty to be with 'em. I owed them something."
On this Memorial Day, 2004, it's impossible for me to forget the words from the prologue of Colonel Joseph E. Alexander's
"The Battle History of the U.S. Marines." Said Alexander: "There is a fellowship of valor that links all U.S. Marines, past, present,
and future."
That fellowship was so deep and inviolable, indeed, that my dad--a son of pacifist Mormons--willingly forsook the comforts' of
hearth and family for the rigors of uniform not once, but twice in his life. And he never publicly expressed regret for his wartime
choices. |
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