[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 28, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6003-S6004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          PROFILE OF SENATOR JOHN CHAFEE'S KOREAN WAR SERVICE

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor my friend John 
Chafee. On Sunday June 25, 2000, an article appeared in Parade Magazine 
entitled, ``Let Us Salute Those Who Served''. The article chronicled 
John's service in the Korean War. I ask that the article be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             He Was The Most Admirable Man I've Ever Known

                            (By James Brady)

       (The author, a Marine who served in the Korean War, 
     remembers his comrades in arms--and one extraordinary young 
     leader in particular.)
       Is Korea really America's ``forgotten war?''
       Not if you ask the foot soldiers who fought there, Marines 
     and Army both. How could any infantryman ever forget the 
     ridgelines and the hills, the stunning cold, the wind out of 
     Siberia, the blizzards off the Sea of Japan? How do you 
     forget fighting--and stopping--the Chinese Army, 40 divisions 
     of them against a half-dozen U.S. divisions, plus the Brits 
     and some gallant others? And how can anyone forget the 
     thousands upon thousands of Americans who died there in three 
     years, in that small but bloody war?
       Korea began 50 years ago today--a brutal, primitive war in 
     what Genghis Khan called ``the land of the Mongols,'' a war 
     in which I served under the most admirable man I've ever 
     known, a 29-year-old Marine captain named John Chafee.
       Most of us who fought the Korean War were reservists: Some, 
     like me, were green kids just out of college. Others were 
     combat-hardened, savvy veterans blooded by fighting against 
     the Japanese only five years before--men like Chafee, my 
     rifle-company commander, who would become a role model for 
     life. I can see him still on that first November morning, 
     squinting in the sun that bounced off the mountain snow as he 
     welcomed a couple of replacement second lieutenants. Mack 
     Allen and me, to Dog Company. He was tall, lean, ruddy-faced 
     and physically tireless, a rather cool Rhode Islander from a 
     patrician background with a luxuriant dark-brown mustache. 
     ``We're a trifle understrength at the moment,'' he said, a 
     half-smile playing on his face. ``We're two officers short.'' 
     I was too awed to ask what happened to them.
       Chafee didn't seem to carry a weapon, just a long alpine 
     stave that he used as he loped, his long legs covering the 
     rough ground in great strides. ``Got to stay in the trench 
     from here on,'' he said as he showed us along the front line. 
     This sector of ridge was jointly held by us and the North 
     Koreans, the trenches less than a football field apart. 
     Chafee questioned the Marines we passed--not idle chat but 
     about enemy activity, addressing each man by his last name, 
     the troops calling him ``Skipper.'' No one was uptight in the 
     captain's presence, and the men spoke right up in answering. 
     When enemy infantry are that close, both the questions and 
     answers are important.
       When I got there as a replacement rifle-platoon leader on 
     Thanksgiving weekend of 1951, the 1st Marine Division was 
     hanging on to a mountainous corner of North Korea along the 
     Musan Ridge, about 3000 feet high. It took us a couple of 
     hours to hike uphill, lugging rifles and packs along a 
     narrow, icy footpath to where the rifle companies were dug 
     in. As fresh meat, not knowing the terrain and nervous about 
     mines, we followed close on the heels of Marines returning to 
     duty after being hit in the hard fighting to take Hill 749 in 
     September. In Korea they didn't send you home with wounds. 
     Not if they could patch you up to fight again. These Marines, 
     tough boys, understandably weren't thrilled to be going back. 
     But they went. Dog Company of the 7th Marine Regiment needed 
     them. There was already a foot of snow on the ground. When I 
     think of Korea, it is always of the cold and the snow.
       Yet the fighting began in summer on a Sunday morning--June 
     25, 1950--when the Soviet-backed army of Communist North 
     Korea smashed across the 38th Parallel to attack the 
     marginally democratic Republic of Korea with its U.S. trained 
     and equipped (and not very good) army. Early in the war, Gen. 
     Douglas MacArthur had bragged: ``The boys could be home for 
     Christmas,'' But ``the boys' would be in Korea three 
     Christmases--courtesy of the Chinese Army.
       Every soldier thinks his own war was unique. But Korea did 
     have its moments: proving a UN army could fight: ending 
     MacArthur's career with a farewell address to Congress (``Old 
     soldiers never die. They just fade away. . . . ''): helping 
     elect Eisenhower, who pledged in '52, ``I will go to Korea''; 
     demonstrating that Red China's huge army could be stopped; 
     insulating Japan from attack; and enabling the South Korean 
     economic miracle. But the war's lack of a clear-cut winner 
     and loser may have set the stage for Vietnam.
       As a junior officer, I had little grasp of such strategic 
     matters. I commanded 40 Marines, combat veterans who had 
     fought both the Chinese and the North Koreans. Captain Chafee 
     led us: Red Philips was his No. 2; Bob Simonis, Mack Allen 
     and I were his three rifle-platoon leaders.
       Guided by Chafee, I saw my first combat. Mostly it was 
     small firefights, patrols and ambushes, usually by night. I 
     learned about staying cool and not doing stupid things. When 
     darkness fell, we sent patrols through the barbed wire and 
     down the ridgeline across a stream, the Soyang-Gang, trying 
     to grab a prisoner or to kill North Koreans. Meanwhile, they 
     came up Hill 749 and tried to kill us.
       The second or third night I was there, the Koreans hit us 
     with hundreds of mortar shells, then came swarming against 
     the barbed wire, where our machine guns caught them. At dawn 
     there were six dead Koreans hanging on the wire. Except for 
     Catholic wakes at home, I'd never seen a dead man. That 
     morning we tracked wounded Koreans from their blood in the 
     snow. The following day, a single incoming mortar hit some 
     Marines lazing in the sun. Two died; one lost his legs. I 
     hadn't been in Korea a week.
       Sergeants like Stoneking, Wooten, and Fitzgerald, and a 
     commanding officer like

[[Page S6004]]

     Chafee, got a scared boy through those early days. When I 
     tripped a mine in deep snow the morning of January 13, 1952, 
     and blew up Sergeant Fitzgerald and myself, the first man I 
     saw as they hauled up out by rope was Captain Chafee. We 
     fought the North Koreans into spring and then, when the snow 
     melted and the Chinese threatened to retake Seoul, the 
     Marines shifted west to fight the Chinese again.
       In July 1953, the fighting finally ended--not in peace but 
     in an uneasy truce. So uneasy that even today some 35,000 
     American troops are dug in, defending the same ridgelines and 
     hilltops that we did a half-century ago.
       If you've seen combat in any war, you have memories. Also a 
     duty to remember absent friends. And if, like me, you become 
     a writer, you have a duty to write about the dead, 
     memorializing them: young men like Wild Horse Callan, off his 
     daddy's New Mexico ranch; Doug Brandlee, the big, red-haired 
     Harvard tackle who wanted to teach; handsome Dick Brennan, 
     who worked in a Madison Avenue ad agency; Mack Allen, the 
     engineer from the Virginia Military Institute, Bob Bjornsen, 
     the giant forest ranger, and Carly Rand of the Rand McNally 
     clan.
       As the survivors grow older, we stay in touch: Jack Rowe, 
     who won a Navy Cross and lost an eye, teaches school and has 
     10 children; Taffy Sceva, still back-packing in the High 
     Sierra; my pal Bob Simonis, retired as a colonel; Joe Owens, 
     who fought at the ``frozen Chosin'' Reservoir; John 
     Fitzgerald, the Michigan cop, twice wounded on Hill 749. Each 
     of us appreciates how fortunate we are to have fought the 
     good fight and returned. No heroic posturing. Just another 
     dirty job the country wanted done, and maybe a million of us 
     went. If we got lucky, a John Chafee was there to lead us.
       Chafee later carved out a brilliant political career, 
     including governor of Rhode Island, Secretary of the Navy and 
     four terms as a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. I had dinner 
     with John and his wife, Ginnie, last fall: a meal, a little 
     wine, laughter and good talk, a few memories. I'm glad we did 
     that. Because John Chafee won't be marking today's 
     anniversary. Last Oct. 24, still serving as a Senator, 
     Captain Chafee died, 57 years after he first left Yale to 
     fight for his country.
       The funeral was in Providence, and my daughter Fiona, and I 
     drove up. The President and First Lady were there and 51 
     Senators, as well as Pentagon chief Bill Cohen, the 
     Commandant of the Marine Corps, a marine honor guard, people 
     from Yale and just plain citizens, Chafee's five children and 
     12 grandkids, and a few guys like me who served under him in 
     war. His son Zechariah began the eulogy on a note not of 
     grief but of joyous pride:
       ``What a man! What a life!''
       So, when you think today of that small war long ago in a 
     distant country, remember the dead, those thousands of 
     Americans. And the thousands of U.S. troops still there, 
     ready to confront a new invasion. Think too of the Skipper--
     my friend. Capt. John Chafee.


                    the heroic career of john chafee

       I didn't know it at the time, but John Chafee already was a 
     kind of legend when I met him. A college wrestling star, he 
     dropped out of Yale at 19 to join the Marines after Pearl 
     Harbor, fighting on Guadalcanal as a private, then made 
     officers candidate school and fought on Okinawa as a 
     lieutenant. He went back to Yale (and the wrestling team), 
     was tapped by Skull and Bones, the honor society, and took a 
     law degree at Harvard. Then as a married man (to Virginia 
     Coates) with a child on the way, he went back to commanding 
     riflemen in combat. A man with money and connections (his 
     great-grandfather and great-uncle both had served as 
     governor), he never took the easy out.
       Chafee went on to become governor of Rhode Island, 
     Secretary of the Navy and a four-term Senator--a Republican 
     elected in one of our most Democratic states. He died last 
     Oct. 14.


                               in memory

       In the 37 months that the Korean War raged, thousands of 
     Americans died. (For years, the number was thought to be 
     54,000 but recently was revised to 36,900.) More than 8000 
     are still missing. Yet only in 1995 was a national memorial 
     finally dedicated. It includes a black granite wall with 
     murals and stainless-steel statues of infantrymen slogging up 
     a Korean hill. You can visit it at the National Mall in 
     Washington, D.C.
       The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when the Soviet-
     backed army of North Korea smashed across the 38th Parallel 
     to attack the marginally democratic Republic of Korea. With 
     UN approval, the U.S. intervened, halting the Communists at 
     the Naktong River. Then came Gen. Douglas MacArthur's 
     brilliant end run at Inchon, the recapture of Seoul and the 
     sprint north. But as winter approached, with temperatures at 
     -20 deg.F, about half a million Chinese came south, 
     prolonging the fighting. The war ended with an armistice on 
     July 27, 1953. It was an uneasy truce: Today, 35,000 American 
     troops still are dug in, their weapons pointing north.

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