Days of Drums and Carnivals

I was talking to Bob Cook yesterday.

He was saying it’s a damned shame hardly anyone remembers the Korean War or knows what it was all about.

He was saying school kids figure there was World War II, Vietnam and nothing in between.

He was saying he feels like it was a period in his life that never existed, even though he was there, catching hell.

“They tell us we were the silent generation,” Cook was saying, “that we just went and came back and never said much about it.”

He stops for a moment to think about that and says, “Maybe so, maybe so.”

Cook is one of those quiet, slow-talking men you won’t find at the head of a parade. He was born in L.A., went to Garfield High, is married and works as a lighting electrician.

Nothing spectacular there. Just the kind of guy you’d somehow expect a veteran of the Korean War to be.

Even when he talks about raising money for a war memorial in Washington, D.C., a deep passion of his, he comes across like someone selling brushes, not Bibles.

He just says a memorial is long overdue and we owe it to the 54,000 Americans who died in Korea to see that one is erected.

Then he quotes a passage from Ecclesiasticus he found in a magazine that has a cover story on the war.

It says, “And some there be which have no memorial who perished as though they had never been. . . .”

We were talking about Korea because it was the 40th anniversary of the start of the war. Anniversaries always get a little attention.

Cook was an Airborne Ranger during the war. He wrote me because I’d mentioned once I’d been there too.

The letter was low-key, a matter-of-fact recitation of how they’ve raised $6 million toward the D.C. memorial and need $5 million more.

Then he talked about coming home from Korea aboard a troopship that landed first in Vancouver, B.C., to let off a small contingent of Canadian troops.

It was like VJ Day, he says. Bands, parades, the works. The whole town turned out.

Then: “When we got to Seattle, we were frisked by MPs for souvenirs and put in Army trucks. We traveled to Ft. Lawton in a driving rain. They didn’t even know we’d been gone.”

Later, when I talked to Cook in person, he remembered with a laugh that there had been something of a celebration at that. They served steaks and fresh milk for dinner.

Memories.

“I don’t think we even got that,” a friend says. “Remember? We got creamed chipped beef on toast. That stuff on a shingle.”

We went through the whole war together and came home on a troopship named the William Wiegel. It pulled into San Diego on a day as bright and clean as a baby’s smile.

Hardly anyone was there. A band played the Marine Corps Hymn and a general spoke. He said we’d done a wonderful job and it was too bad we couldn’t just go back and finish it.

Sunday.

I thought about that driving through the morning sweetness, first to San Pedro and then to West Hollywood. The heat would come later, burning the glory from the day, stifling the sweetness.

There were drums and bugles in San Pedro. About 1,500 turned out to remember Korea. They gathered on a knoll overlooking the ocean at a place called Angels Gate Park, where a West Coast monument is being planned.

Flags fluttered in a whispery breeze.

“It seems the same group of people always turn out,” Goldy Norton said, clearly disappointed at the small crowd.

He’s on the committee trying to raise $5 million for their memorial. They’ve only raised about 10% so far.

Norton was in the 24th Army Infantry Division during the war. Like Cook, his words don’t come out smokin’. Like the morning, there’s a gentling quality to his nature.

“It’s funny,” he was saying, “how in places like Denmark, New Zealand and Australia, you’re a hero if you fought in Korea. Here?” He laughs. “Forget it. Even Korea hasn’t donated a penny for the memorial. That ought to tell you something.”

I went from San Pedro to the Gay Pride Parade in West Hollywood, where 300,000 came for a carnival of fun and hope. Its theme: “Look to the Future.”

The past hasn’t been all that great for the world’s gays. Disease and discrimination are heavy burdens for a people to bear.

There are battle cries here too, as there were a long time ago in Korea, but not for land, flags or political imperatives. For life. For survival.

Sunday was a day of drums and carnivals in L.A., Monday a day of remembering. We were boys in Korea. We’re 60 now and it’s time to fight again. The enemy this time is AIDS.

Shall we climb the hills once more, m’lads? Maybe we aren’t a silent generation after all. Maybe we’re just a thoughtful one.