Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

Chapter 16 The Experience of Vulnerability in Geriatric Combat Veterans 329
SUMMARY OF KOREAN WAR CASUALTIES
Korean War (1950–1953)
Total U.S. Service Members (Worldwide) 5,720,000
Battle Deaths 33,739
Other Deaths (in Theater) 2,835
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 17,672
Non-Mortal Woundings 103,284
Living Veterans 2,307,000
Table 16.2
From “America’s Wars,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Offi ce of Public
Affairs, 2008.
tened to the news on the radio or saw newsreels at the movies. They saw
their brothers and friends’ fathers return home from war and saw gold
stars in the windows of mothers whose sons did not return as illustrated in
Table 16.2. By 1947, some had joined the Reserves or the National Guard
or had gone into active duty. Those activated to serve in the Korean conflict,
as it was known at the time, were men who had served in WWII and
who were still under the 7-year obligation to serve as Inactive Ready Reserves
(IRR). Reserve units and National Guard units, as well as draftees,
were enlisted into service during this conflict.
This generation went to war with their peers from other countries.
Quietly, they were drafted; slowly, and with less fanfare, they went missing
from their neighborhoods, jobs, and families. Just as quietly, they returned
a year or two later and went about the business of picking up their lives just
as their older brothers and friends’ fathers had before them. This cohort
of American veterans ate WWII rations and for the first 18 months or so of
the war had the wrong clothing for the season. They experienced what no
other soldier had experienced before—a tactic thoroughly counter to any
training, in which thousands of soldiers charged simultaneously and fired
their weapons. This was referred to as human wave attacks. As they moved