Korean War Veterans Memorial: The Ghostly Patrol

Why is it significant?

Walk slowly along the triangular field of juniper bushes and rough granite slabs, pausing beside the nineteen larger-than-life stainless steel statues of American soldiers.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk slowly along the triangular field of juniper bushes and rough granite slabs, pausing beside the nineteen larger-than-life stainless steel statues of American soldiers. Notice how their wind-whipped ponchos cling to their bodies as they trudge through the mud, their wide, weary eyes scanning the tree line for hidden enemy ambushes.

Sculptor Frank Gaylord created these statues to represent a squad on combat patrol: fourteen soldiers from the Army, three Marines, one Navy corpsman, and one Air Force forward observer. Look at the polished black granite wall beside them: when the nineteen statues reflect in the granite surface, they create the illusion of thirty-eight soldiers, symbolizing the thirty-eighth parallel that divided North and South Korea and the thirty-eight months the brutal conflict lasted.

Look at the silver letters carved into the granite curb of the Pool of Peace at the end of the patrol: Freedom Is Not Free. Dedicated in nineteen ninety-five, this memorial honors the Forgotten War, in which over thirty-six thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands of United Nations allies perished between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty-three.

Head eastward along the Reflecting Pool to the World War II Memorial.