In the mid 2000s I visited Washington DC. Among the places I visited was the Korea War memorial. I had just finished reading, The Coldest Winter, that book and the memorial had a profound effect on me.

The Faces in Granite

They stare out from the polished granite, faces frozen in time. They were young then, forced too soon to mature. Their eyes stare out into an unstable distance, seeing everything and nothing. Their faces are grizzled. They seem to be pleading, "Get me outta here, I did not want this".

Each face was laser-etched in the granite wall from battlefield photos. They were heavily decorated, carried lifeless from the field. They stare out over a field of nineteen bronze comrades in attack formation, weapons at the ready. The leader of the bronze squadron is half-turned, his M-1 rifle raised high as if to say, "Follow me into hell".

At night with the floodlight illuminating the bronze squadron, and the granite wall with the frozen faces, the reflection of the bronze squadron doubles in size to thirty-eight. They signify the 38th parallel, marking the boundary between North and South Korea, before the war and after the war.

So much sacrifice for an uneasy truce. Nights spent in numbingly cold foxholes, stomping circulation into frozen feet, hands shoved into their crotches to ward off frostbite to their trigger-fingers. These were the men of Hamburger Hill, The Chosen Few, the wet landing at Inchon, and many other battles whose names are less celebrated, but no less heroic.

Korea was the first battle of the Cold War. A cold war both metaphysically and metaphorically. In the skies overhead, the first fighter-jets flew missions. Douglas McArthur, had he had his way, would have used the first battlefield nuclear weapons. He did not have his way, instead retiring, "an old soldier (who) just fades away".

Not far from the polished granite wall, with the faces frozen in time, is the Word War II memorial and the Vietnam War memorial. These three memorials, all within sight of each other, represent just four decades of mid-twentieth century US military history. Three memorials representing the folly of some and the heroism of many more.

Will we run out of room to build such memorials, or will we declare an end to such folly?

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