Quiet
Heroes of a "Forgotten War"
© 2001-2003 by
Brian McGinn
Close
on half a century earlier, in February 1952, they packed St. Patrick's Cathedral
in Manhattan to honor nine comrades whose remains were en route to Ireland. Now,
on a brisk October morning in 2001, they gathered at Gaelic Park in the Bronx to
once again remember those nine, and 14 newly confirmed Irish soldiers who died
in the Korean War.
Among
the 450 who attended this Requiem Mass and memorial service were sisters and
brothers, pals from home and from emigrant life in the States, nephews, nieces,
and grandchildren. But it was the scores of surviving Irish veterans of this War
that America tried to forget whose dignified and grandfatherly presence paid the
most telling tribute to their fallen compatriots. Only their miniature Purple
Heart pins--discretely displayed on suit lapels-- hinted at the hell they had
endured as they battled Korea's killing cold, brutal terrain, and 300,000
seasoned Communist Chinese soldiers.
Or
how close many had come to being remembered rather than present.
Ask
Pat Maguire about his Purple Heart and
you get a polite Ulster brush-off. That's not important, says the combat-wounded
veteran from Mullaghdun, Co. Fermanagh. Pressed a bit, Maguire reluctantly
admits that his Purple Heart medal has an Oak Leaf Cluster, awarded for his
second wound. Ask Pat's wife or daughter and you realize this self-effacing
hero--in common with countless others--has spared his family the details.
The
Irish Echo dated February 9th, 1952
fills in some gaps. In a report on the previous week's Requiem Mass in St.
Patrick's, Frank O'Connor described how, in June 1951, Donal Harrington from
Cork died in a hard-fought engagement on Korea's Hill 1046.
"On
the same hill", O'Connor revealed, "Patrick Maguire was machine gunned
across the chest and right arm. He spent seven months in hospital and got out
for the first time to attend the Mass for his comrades. He must go back again
for another operation."
The Price Paid
Back
in Eyeries, on Cork's Beara Peninsula, Eileen Harrington clearly remembers the
exact date of the 1952 Mass in New York. By coincidence, February 2nd was the
day she buried her brother Donal.
Eileen also recalls how the Harrington family ended up comforting the man sent
to console them. The escorting officer, who had just represented the U.S. at
another Irish funeral, was himself distraught. Following orders, he had turned
down that grieving family's request for one last look inside their son's closed
casket.
Heart-rending
scenes like this became all too common between 1950 and 1953, as most of the
Irish dead were laid to rest in their native soil. Their homes spanned eleven
separate counties and all four provinces, with the highest tolls--four
casualties each--falling on Cork, Kerry and Limerick, closely followed by Co.
Mayo's three.
Their
ages at death ranged from 21 to 27, with the majority in their early twenties.
Their fathers were predominantly farmers or laborers. Their mothers were
mothers. It was, you might be forgiven for thinking, a simpler and
unsophisticated time. But simplicity can be an insidious and irrelevant conceit.
As if, in the absence of instant messaging, young men could not live and laugh
and love as intensely as their modern, tech-savvy counterparts.
Most
had left Ireland in 1947 and 1948, as emigration reopened in the wake of World
War II. None could have anticipated that a sudden and unexpected war in an Asian
nation that most would have known only as a mission field for the Columban
Fathers would soon profoundly transform their lives. A War whose casualties
would include five Irish-born Columbans. And Sr. Mary Clare, an Anglican nun
from Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow.
Roll of Honor
Among
the military dead, four had volunteered for military service: John
Corcoran from Cork, John Dillon from
Limerick, Michael Gannon from Mayo and Thomas
O'Brien from Tipperary. The rest--like their majority of their American
comrades--were draftees.
But
with one key distinction. Most the Irish were not citizens of the country in
whose uniform they served. After the War, the law was changed to permit
accelerated U.S. citizenship for foreign-born members of the Armed Forces.
The change, however, was not made retroactive. Those Irish soldiers who
served and survived still had to wait the full five years before becoming
eligible for citizenship. One of those men, John
Leahy from Lixnaw, Co. Kerry, has championed the cause of posthumous
U.S. citizenship for the Irish dead. A Bill currently before Congress, H.R.
2623, would extend that honor to all foreign nationals who died in uniform
during all twentieth-century U.S. conflicts.
Most
of the young emigrants trod well-worn paths to traditional Irish destinations:
New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Others went wherever
brothers, sisters or friends had settled. Michael
Gannon from Achill would have found fellow Mayomen in Cleveland, Ohio. Michael
Fitzpatrick from Cappagh, outside Claremorris, went out to his sister Mary
in Chicago and found work in nearby Whiting, Indiana. Gannon, a field artillery
cannoneer, died in action in South Korea in February 1951. Fitzpatrick, a combat
medic, was killed in action in North Korea in August 1951.
In
Greenwich, Connecticut, Mark Brennan from
Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo joined his sister Helen, brother Martin and John (Gerry)
Gannon, a neighbor from home. Two and a half years after emigrating, Mark was
drafted in August 1951. Trained as an antiaircraft artillery gunner in Ft.
Bliss, Texas, Brennan was assigned to the 78th AAA Battalion stationed at Suwon
Air Force Base, South Korea. He
died, aged 23, in the June 1953 crash of a C-124A Globemaster cargo plane
ferrying him back to his base in Korea after a
week of R & R leave in Japan.
Other
U.S. addresses provide insight into long-forgotten emigrant destinations. In the
late 1940s, Danny Keogh from Drumlish would
have felt quite at home in Sparks, Nevada, where many fellow immigrants from Co.
Longford found work in the rail yards outside Reno. In a moving
tribute to his uncle through marriage, Oliver Fallon relates how
Keogh, a light weapons infantry leader, died in action in North Korea on St.
Patrick's Day, 1953. He was 24.
Brothers and Sisters
Siblings,
says the author Laura Palmer, are often the least understood victims of war.
Although Palmer's analysis is found in Shrapnel in
the Heart a compelling book about the Vietnam War, her words could have been
written for Korea.
"Society,"
Palmer explains, "expects mothers to fall apart and grieve. At least
initially, there is a lot of support for a woman who loses a child. But brothers
and sisters are told they have their whole lives ahead of them. They do not
always get a chance to grieve adequately for the part of their life that is left
behind."
Myra
Dillon Barrs agrees. Her brother John Dillon,
the eldest in a family of eleven, was born in Hartford, Connecticut but raised
in Ireland when his parents returned to their native Limerick. Almost half a
century on, Myra still recalls her big brother with a mixture of hero worship
and a girlish affection undiminished by the passing years.
"He
was very handsome and could sing and all the girls loved him. He was the big
hero in our parish and used to tell everyone at school that he was an American
and not Irish. He sort of swaggered around the playground and I thought he was
marvelous."
Myra
first lost her hero at 17, when John returned to his native Connecticut.
"He was so proud to be returning to the U.S., and I wanted so much to go
with him. It seemed like such a big adventure at the time." She lost him
again at 22. "When he left, it was like the world stopped. When he was
killed, the axis tilted and never regained its balance."
Enduring Lessons
Even
as the veterans gathered to remember Korea, echoes of the terror recently
visited on New York seemed to linger in the air. One of the clergy came to the
service from Lower Manhattan. He had been counseling rescue workers at the World
Trade Center.
The
term "ambiguous loss" was popping up in the New York newspapers.
However well intentioned, it could not possibly capture the unending grief felt
by those bereaved 9/11 families unable to pay traditional respects to the
remains of their loved ones.
Their
pain would be familiar to the relatives of some eight thousand men missing in
action in the Korean War. Among them Maryanne Joyce, the still-grieving sister
of John Patrick White, a U.S. Marine from
Caherdaniel in Kerry. Or Martha Dunbar, who still misses her Belfast-born uncle William
John Mills, a trooper with the famed 7th Cavalry. Billy Mills was declared
missing in November 1951, John White in September 1952.
As
the memorial service ended, rumors of another war, in another Asian land, swept
through Gaelic Park. The bombing campaign in Afghanistan had just begun. Facing
the first war of the twenty-first century, America's soldiers and citizens could
find lessons in endurance, resilience and selfless dedication among these quiet
Irish heroes of Korea.
© Copyright
2001-2003 by Brian McGinn
This
article originally appeared in the November 2001 issue of Dúċas,
the quarterly newsletter of the Irish
American Cultural Institute , based in Morristown, New Jersey. Please
note that all numbers and other data quoted for Irish casualties reflect the
state of research at the time of original publication.
|