Korean War

Never trust anything you see on television about television. I don't know if it's ignorance, laziness, a hopeless addiction to hype or a pathological inability to tell the truth about itself, but TV almost never gets it right when revisiting its past. The A&E cable channel's popular show Biography, which typically features famous personalities, this week focuses instead on television. Part of a series called Cult TV Week, tomorrow night's program showcases M*A*S*H, the dark comedy about life in a medical unit during the Korean War. Biography's take on the landmark series gets too many things wrong to enumerate.

Harry Ratrie Jr., a World War II and Korean War veteran who became a leading businessman in Maryland's highway construction industry, died Dec. 8 of a heart attack at a hospital in Naples, Fla. The longtime Baltimore County resident, who moved to Florida in his later years, was 90. Mr. Ratrie was the retired founder, CEO and board chairman of Bryn Awel Corp., an asphalt paving and highway construction firm and the parent company of smaller construction,...

The Rev. Henry Bruce Land Jr., a retired Southern Baptist minister and military chaplain, died of an infection complicated by Parkinson's disease Oct. 2 at St. Agnes Hospital. The Catonsville resident was 87. Born in Martinsville, Va., he decided to enter the ministry at 17 and earned degrees at Wake Forest College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. During World War II, he took chaplaincy training at the College of William and Mary and joined the Navy. One of his first assignments was preaching three Sunday services to 3,000 new recruits at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

George Dayton Dodge, a mechanic and former fleet manager for the H&S Baking Co. who earned two Silver Stars in combat during the Korean War, died of cancer May 22 at a daughter's Dundalk home. He was 80. Mr. Dodge was born in Terra Alta, W.Va., and raised in Oakland, Garrett County. He enlisted in the Army in 1946, and served from 1950 to 1951 as a staff sergeant with the 195th Ordnance Depot Company near Korea's 38th Parallel, where he experienced fierce enemy action. "I was in two active fire fights.

The crowd at the Glen Burnie Memorial Day Parade may wave flags and cheer as the bands and other marching units go by, but the grand marshal hopes the spectators also will remember men such as his best friend, Sgt. William Ford, who was cut down in the prime of his life in Korea.After all, said Boris R. Spiroff, the holiday is intended to pay "tribute to the people who died, who gave their lives for freedom."The parade committee chose Spiroff for grand marshal because of the wartime exploits described in his book "Korea: Frozen Hell On Earth," said Joseph Corcoran, parade chairman.

LANCASTER, Pa. - On a hot July morning in 1953, when the body of 21-year-old Jay Stoner came back from Korea, his father, Oram, waited until the military men left to beg the undertaker to open the coffin. Since Jay Stoner had left six months earlier on a mission for the National Security Agency, the family knew nothing of where he had been or how he died, and Oram Stoner needed to know that the youngest of his three sons was, in fact, dead. When the undertaker relented, quietly warning the father, "You may only find parts," Stoner wept at seeing the face of his son, his body wrapped in military-issue blankets.

SEOUL, South Korea -- One of the most elusive and maddening mysteries swirling about East Asia concerns the occasional "sightings" of American prisoners of war still supposedly held by North Korea, more than four decades after the end of the Korean War.Now the mystery is becoming even more elusive and maddening. A defector from North Korea claims to have repeatedly visited a top secret prison camp housing elderly white and black men who, the camp guards told him, were American prisoners of the Korean War.The latest account is simply one more in a murky and inconclusive mosaic, and many experts are extremely skeptical that North Korea could have -- or would have wanted to have -- kept American prisoners for so long.

The Counties Four VFW Post 10076 of Mount Airy wants veterans of the Korean War to know that the eligibility dates for their inclusion in a VFW post has been changed.President Clinton signed Public Law 104-3 on March 7 expanding the eligibility dates for Korean War veterans.Previously, only veterans who served from June 27, 1950, to July 27, 1954, and earned a campaign medal for Korea could join a VFW post.The new law extends the dates from June 30, 1949, to a date yet to be determined. American troops who served any time within the new dates in the Demilitarized Zone now can join a VFW post.

The Senate did not vote on whether other nations should comply with other U.N. sanctions. That's not the Senate's problem, or so it thinks.If there remains a reasonable doubt that Bosnian Serb leaders are guilty of crimes against humanity, they are doing their damnedest at Zepa to remove it.Whoever christened the Korean war the Forgotten War forgot that it is not over.

Retired Air Force Col. Frank P. Dunnington Jr. died Tuesda of heart disease at his home on Indian Head Road in Ruxton. He was 83.Colonel Dunnington retired in 1965 as head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for District 12, which handled counterintelligence work in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. He joined the Office of Special Investigations during the Korean War.He was survived by several cousins.