LOUISVILLE, Ky. — This July will mark 70 years since the end of the Korean War. More than five million Americans served, with 500,000 of them still alive today.
93-year-old John Meyers is one of them. He says talking about the war today, "It's just like...it happened yesterday."
His memories are both a blessing and a curse.
"They say war is hell....war is hell," he said. "You see things you just don't...I can't say no more about it."
Meyers' service began as a young boy during peacetime, following World War II. He said he wanted to join the Army when he was 17, so his parents had to sign for him.
Meyers spent the next year and a half in the Panama Canal before he returned home to civilian life. But that didn't last long.
"I just said, I'm going back into the service," Meyers said. That was in 1950.
He was assigned to Japan having no idea of the war brewing right next door.
"Korea was a real shocker. When I was in Japan, I sat down on the bunkbed and thought, what the **** did I do? What did I do this for?"
It was right after World War II, Korea was divided by the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the 38th parallel. The two zones acted as sovereign states, until June of 1950, when North Korea invaded the south.
"The smell there was awful. There was two trucks loaded with dead GIs," Meyers said. "I didn't know what the hell was going on. We had machine gun fire coming at us. That was my first experience right there after about 3 or 4 days there."
Meyers was assigned to the tanks, first as a loader, and then a gunner.
"I took cartridges from the storage shelf in the floor and I loaded the gun, 76mm gun, and the gunner would shoot it," Meyers said. "Our first contact with an enemy tank was in October 1950."
Meyers remembers hearing the sound of bullets hitting his tank. Miraculously, he was never injured.
"We had planes out there that dropped bombs," he said. "Sometimes some would go astray. My tank actually lifted about a foot off the ground."
Back on the road, they headed north, making it further than any other company during the war. Meyers said his crew relied on the hospitality of the South Koreans, who often fed them on their journey.
"The Korean people fed me and my crew chicken," he recalled. "That's how it was the whole way through. You couldn't drink the water, you couldn't bathe in the water. So we actually washed our clothes in our helmets with gasoline."
A year into battle, Meyers was asked to take command of the tank, but never got the chance. He was headed home, and to no heroes welcome as his generation received just a few years earlier after WWII.
"When I came back, it was, oh well, so what," he said. "There was no, high five, or How are you doing?"
Close to 1.7 million Americans fought in the Korean War, often referred to as "The Forgotten War," between World War II and Vietnam. More than 36,000 never made it home.
"I-- you know what battle is and what death is, it's a bad thing. That's why we don't talk about it as much. Nobody could get anything out of you," Meyers said. "But it's good to talk about it now."
On Wednesday, May 17, Meyers will join 83 fellow veterans from multiple wars, as they venture to Washington D.C. on an Honor Flight Bluegrass trip.
The organization is in its 16th year of flying Kentuckiana's veterans free of charge to see their national memorials.
To date, Honor Flight Bluegrass has flown over 2,000 veterans on more than 40 chartered flights from central and western Kentucky and southern Indiana.
You're encouraged to send off our veterans on Wednesday, May 17, at Ali International. You're asked to be there at 9:30 p.m. decked out in red, white, and blue. Don't forget the tissues!
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