Free Republic

CHICAGO: Not long after her father went missing during the Korean War, Carol Elkin spotted then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in downtown Chicago and did what any kid might do when coming face to face with the nation's most famous soldier: She asked him to bring her dad home. On Tuesday, the now 76-year-old Elkin will be at Arlington National Cemetery to bury the remains of Army Maj. Stephen Uurtamo, nearly seven decades after he was taken prisoner by the Chinese and died.

I posted this article from Israel Hayom at Warsclerotic, of which I am an editor. The article argues that to fight the Islamic State we need to change our rules of engagement. The parenthetical comment at the top of the Warsclerotic post is mine and is reproduced below. (Could the U.S. and her allies put effective boots on the ground, or have the boots and the nation become too multiculturally damaged to do what needs to be done? More than the rules of war needs to change. When the U.S. responded to the Russian supplied, trained and initially led North Korean invasion on June 25, 1950,...

US Army Chaplain Father Emil Kapaun stole, suffered and sacrificed his life for his fellow soldiers in a Korean prison camp. Six decades after his death, he is being considered for the Congressional Medal of Honor - and sainthood. On 2 November 1950, Father Kapaun made the decision that led to his death. The Korean war chaplain was in the middle of a firefight, with the American forces overrun by Chinese soldiers outside a crossroads town called Unsan in North Korea. Lighting forest fires to frustrate US reconnaissance planes, the Chinese surrounded the Americans and pressed in, attacking with small...

After he hit his head on the ground in a pole vaulting accident last year, they sawed off a third of his skull to relieve the pressure on his swelling brain. They told his family that all hope was lost. But Chase's family lives near Wichita, where a farm kid named Emil Kapaun was ordained a priest 69 years ago. The Kears prayed thousands of prayers to the soul of Father Kapaun, asking him to bend the ear of God. They chanted his name like a mantra. And Chase woke up. And he arose and walked. His baffled doctors said...

Memo to Tom Brokaw: How about you do your next book on A Very Good Generation? Namely, those who served faithfully during a less popular war, the Korean conflict, from 1950-53? I am, of course, prejudiced. I've just returned from another reunion with comrades who put their lives on the line in the brutal last six months of the Korean conflict. We first met on a cold January day in 1952 in Fort Sill, Okla. Two hundred of us were members of Officer Candidate Class 17. I was the youngest at 19. The oldest, naturally dubbed Pop, was 28. Six...