In a drowsy little Arizona cowtown where fresh-picked cotton drifted in ditches like snow when it was 110 degrees in the shade, a mental patient got off a bus from the Rust Belt one afternoon and climbed a water tower down by the railroad tracks.
He threatened to jump. Said he was a Vietnam veteran. I told my boss about it back in the newsroom and he immediately offered to bring the guy down personally - with a deer rifle. It wasn't personal. Jim Garner (real name) just got ugly about that Vietnam post-traumatic-stress syndrome stuff that was a generic alibi for every liquor-store holdup - hostage taker in the 1980s. Jim didn't buy it. He was a Korean veteran.
I thought about Jim when I met Harry Faulk, another Korean War vet who carries a grudge like a shoulder pack from the ''Forgotten War.''
''It's never been called a war,'' Mr. Faulk said the other day, leaning back in his favorite swivel rocker as a storm outside did a convincing impression of mortar shells. ''It's only been called a police action and a conflict,'' he said, making the names sound like four-letter words. ''What it is was the Korean War. Everyone jumps from World War II to the Vietnamese War. They call that one a war, but if you ask a kid in school today about the Korean War, they say, 'Where's that at?'''
Korean vets are always saying they were forgotten - and they are almost always right.
Next week is the anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. The World Almanac says: ''Over 60,000 North Korean troops invaded the South June 25, 1950.'' More than 53,000 Americans were killed (nearly as many as Vietnam in one-third the years), and 103,284 wounded.
Harry Faulk can give you the numbers with exact change. He was there in November 1950 when 200,000 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River.
His story is something.
Imagine being snatched out of high school and sent to Germany for the final reels of World War II; then shipped out to Korea for a ''police action,'' armed with leftover weapons in a company of leftover soldiers, railroaded straight to the front to wait like bait for a human wave attack by what looked like half of China.
Mr. Faulk was about six miles from the Yalu, where he watched the invaders cross at night on bridges hidden a foot below the surface of the water. ''We kept telling our company they were coming across by the thousands. By the thousands. They wouldn't believe it.''
He was quickly surrounded, captured, trapped between battle lines, then marched through 35-below nights for eight days.
''The wounded, if he happened to fall back or drop out, we'd hear shots in the distance and we knew what happened.''
Mr. Faulk spent the rest of the war in a prison camp and was finally released on Aug. 23, 1953 - nearly a month after the armistice on July 27.
He still has the amber newspaper clips that trap his younger self in flashbulbs like a fossilized footprint from another age. His scrapbook contains the Western Union telegrams to his parents:
''Nov. 22, 1950 - The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regrets that your son has been missing in action . . . ''
''Dec. 19, 1950 - A name believed to be that of your son is included on a list of prisoners supposed to be held by enemy forces . . . ''
''Aug. 24, 1953 - Hi, Mom. Back on the right side of the bamboo curtain . . . Nothing wrong with me your cooking won't cure . . . ''
Somewhere between ''MIA'' and ''Hi, Mom,'' he remembers the chaplain who crawled through camp at night to feed wounded and starving prisoners with charred kernels of corn. He remembers the collaborators and turncoats and the brainwashing lectures about evil, rich capitalists, that sounded like rough drafts of speeches by Pat Buchanan.
''It was all about propaganda,'' he said.
Still is.
Guys like Harry and Jim remember because of all the friends who didn't come home. ''Those guys should have some kind of recognition of what happened,'' Mr. Faulk said.
They remember because a hot afternoon in the Arizona desert or a spring day on a tree-shaded street in Cincinnati is never very far from frost-bitten Korean foxholes.
They remember because the rest of us forget. We forget that it took 42 years to get a Korean War memorial in Washington last year - long after the Vietnam Wall was dedicated.
And we forget that the Korean War is not finished. In a way, we are all like Harry Faulk, prisoners of a forgotten war.
''It's still not over,'' he warned. ''They're still sittin' over there on that line, the 38th Parallel. Sometime or another, it's going to happen again.''
That's something to remember Tuesday - along with all the Korean vets like Jim and Harry, and the ones who never came home.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
