Jack Blakenbeker, 89, stared at the Korean War Veterans Memorial as if its statues of soldiers were in motion. “See, those are the rice paddies over there,” he said, pointing. “I was in a Raider company. We just chased guerrillas all over the place. I could talk to you all day about this, the things that happened then that you can talk about now.”
“You had a good friend and then the next day you didn’t. Young men. Good men. How I made it, I don’t know,” he continued. “The people who lived in Korea, they paid the ultimate price. I have waited 68 years to see this. I thought I’d never make it but I’m here. I keep crying because it is so very touching.”
At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, veterans were encouraged to find the names of friends on the wall, and several said they were transported for the first time back to the cities, towns and villages of that nation. “It makes you think about what you were doing,” said Lowell Spiker, 74. “Things we did are kind of shocking in a way, but you did them to survive. You understand it a little better now but, by the same token, we are doing them all again.”
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