[HARDCORE]

Being captured in wartime is no guarantee of survival. It is not a ticket to ride a war out, safe from the shot and fire, behind the lines in relative safety and comfort.

If captured, one?s chances of survival are not automatically increased. Nor is the brutality of war left behind, nor is a guarantee of humane treatment at the hands of an often-brutal enemy promised!

For many a POW, the road home from captivity is long, painful and hard. Starvation, beatings, deprivation, disease and the elements are often as brutal an enemy as were the mines, mortars and shells of mortal oblivion!

For those who do make it home from those cages of despair that imprison both mind and body, the scars of captivity are as real and lasting as those inflicted by an enemy?s bayonet or bullet! For these scars eternally mar one?s mind, sanity and soul, and reach deeply into the very core of human existence itself! Outwardly invisible to all but the trained eye and the victim himself, these deep-seated wounds, are injuries that no drug can cure, save for faith and love of country itself!

I have known of several men who spent time in this ?Hell within a Hell? as POWs. Among them were Gregory (Pappy) Boyington, Wilbert (Shorty) Estabrook, and my wife?s uncle, Corporal Melvin H. Morgan.

Boyington and Estabrook returned home to remind the world that a soldier?s war does not end with captivity - in many cases, it merely begins! Many a good man has wasted-away and died behind these bars of war, victims of beatings, starvation, disease, and loss of hope!

Among these, was my wife?s uncle Melvin, a mere kid of 20 when captured with surviving elements of the United States 24th Army Division near Chochiwon, South Korea.

In the early days of the Korean War, these men fought the needed delaying actions that allowed the United States time to build up strength for a counter offensive after the North Koreans initially flooded across the 38th Parallel.

Many of these truly dedicated American kids were killed or captured during their heroic efforts, and many more died along the endless trail to the squalid POW camps, far to the north, along the border with China.

Those who did survive the infamous ?Tiger Death March? survived on polluted water and the little that they could forage along the way! Sick, dead tired and some wounded, those who could not keep up the pace were executed along the route. And what awaited the survivors at the end of this ordeal was not much better by any means!

Daily beatings, medical neglect, and starvation, eventually claimed much of the health of the few prisoners who remained alive to war?s end, and nary a man who did survive, weighed in at over 100 lbs when repatriated, the lucky few who did survived that is!

This ordeal has been no different for POWs in all of America?s wars. Our courageous and dedicated military who are captured in combat, are still at war until freed, either by repatriation or death!

?So is it really too much to ask that we never forget?? That we pay some small homage to those gallant warriors who died in captivity, many of whom have yet to return home, even in death? And the Purple Heart Medal for those who died in captivity is just such a final tribute from a grateful and grieving nation, in my opinion! As our honor as a nation of free men and women, demands that we never forget those who gave it all for God and Country.

?They did not abandon or forget us - can we do any less for them??

VERITAS