A Hundred and Fifty Dead [Korean War--l952]

There I sat, ninety-five degree weather

Outside; the bookstore café, was cool.

An Old Timer stood by me, explaining:

"�There were two-hundred of us on the Island,

Near North Korea, back in "�52"�

We guarded 16,000-prisners"�

"�All of a sudden, all hell broke loose

Three-hundred North Koreans came

Over the bob-wired fence, in pursuit

"�It all happened in a matter of seconds

The machineguns killed 150-of them

That"s all I saw in the war of "52.

(One American wounded one concussion.)

"�Now we had to fingerprint them all!"�

The old timer said; exhaustedly;

As if he was to do it all over again"�

But they were just old memories unearthed;

Resurrected for a moment, from the

Sands of that little horse-shoe island.

"�But I guess I"ll never forget,"� he said with

No regrets!... as he moved on looking

For his table, where he left his coffee.

#762 7/15/05

Notes: as a War Veteran I used to meet a lot of old timers from an assortment of wars, at one time, WWII seemed to be the one I meet the most from; before that, it used to be WWI (when I was a kid); very few from the Korean War (but now and then I meet one), and a few from Vietnam; where I was. Funny it seems, most of these groups are becoming more scarce, especially WWI, and the Korean War; or so it seems. Now we have three more wars to look at: Persian Gulf One, Afghanistan War and Persian Gulf Two (it seems, all in a matter of a decade); and I should mention, the Bosnian War, which my son was involved with; I guess I will not run out of War Veterans to talk to. It is also funny; we stop the longest war on record, the Vietnam War, only to replace it with the four-wars I mentioned. Oh well, that is life is it not.