He’s only seen a picture of the memorial in Washington, the 19

He’s only seen a picture of the memorial in Washington, the 19 larger-than-life servicemen on patrol in full combat gear, ponchos protecting them from the Korean rain.

But Jim Logsdon could see himself in that photo.

And he could see another time and place, when he was Army Lt. Logsdon, a tank platoon leader, and he was setting up camp and his poncho was so hot he just took it off and let the rain soak in.

“The picture of those people dressed as they are was like how we were dressed,” the 82-year-old Lincoln man remembered Friday. “Of course, they’re just figures of men who were there.”

The retired machinist is one of 136 combat vets from Nebraska who landed seats on a one-day, expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., in late October. The Honor Flight for Korean War Veterans will visit monuments dedicated to those who served in the Korean War, World War II, Iwo Jima and Vietnam.

The trip’s organizer, Bill Williams, locked down the final donation last week — $10,000 from the Mutual of Omaha Foundation — needed to pay for the Oct. 29 trip.

But it’s been a struggle.

“I knew it would happen. It’s just been more difficult,” he said. “There just isn’t the affection or interest in the Korean guys.”

Williams and his wife, Evonne, raised $1.2 million to take 1,500 World War II vets to Washington on seven Heartland Honor Flights in 2008 and 2009. But that drive was helped by big individual donors, like Dan Whitney (Larry the Cable Guy) and the Peter Kiewit Foundation.

They raised $85,000 for the Korean War flight, mostly through smaller individual donations, although the NebraskaLand National Bank of North Platte gave $20,000.

“I really kind of see this as a down payment in terms of what we really owe the veterans,” said bank President Mike Jacobson.

He takes this obligation personally. When he graduated from high school in 1972, his draft number was 330. So he feels, at times, like he survived a plane crash.

“A lot of my friends from high school who ended up in Vietnam either didn’t come back or came back with issues.”

His uncle and father-in-law served in Korea and, like most vets, didn’t talk much about that time.

“But they gave me enough information to know this was a pretty grisly conflict.”

Bill Williams is grateful for the bank’s donation for a couple of reasons. The money, of course. But a western Nebraska sponsorship makes this flight a statewide campaign, not just a Lincoln and Omaha effort.

The 550 Nebraska veterans who applied for the flight — and the 136 who will get to go — represent all corners of the state, from South Sioux City to Chappell, Scottsbluff to Dunbar. About a dozen live in Lincoln; about 20 live in the Omaha area.

“The hard part is disappointing so many who didn’t make the cut,” Williams said.

He narrowed the list by first excluding veterans from that era who didn’t see combat in Korea.

That left veterans like Logsdon. The tank platoon leader grew up in North Platte and graduated in Hastings. He figured he’d better enlist before he was drafted.

The details of his service are still crisp. Like the day he took off his poncho. They made camp in a clearing and spotted a hole dug into a nearby hillside. Other soldiers ventured in and found a skeleton — and thought it might be a U.S. soldier.

“Because in the same area where he was buried, there were some comic strips from America. ‘Dick Tracy’ was one of them.”

The remains later were determined to be Chinese.

And he recalls being asked to take out an enemy loudspeaker behind a hill and more than a mile away. It was demoralizing the troops, he was told. He didn’t want to waste expensive 90 mm shells, so he aimed his .50 caliber high and started lobbing rounds over the hill.

“I shot way up in the sky and worked it on down, and I knocked out the loudspeaker,” he said.

Today, Logsdon belongs to the DAV and the VFW and the American Legion, but he rarely gets together with other Korean War vets.

Glen Martin, 83, recently gathered a group of them at the Golden Corral in Lincoln.

“And someone asked how many were going to Washington, and there were four or five of us.”

The Wolbach native was drafted in 1951, did his basic training at Fort Riley, Kan., and boarded a boat in Seattle bound for Japan and, ultimately, the battlefield.

“We hit a storm, and boy, I’ll tell you, waves coming over this thing. You couldn’t go out on the deck,” Martin said. “My wife likes to go on these cruises, but I’m not particularly crazy about them.”

He was drafted and trained and sent overseas with Ray, his childhood friend. Martin was assigned to the 40th Infantry Division, Ray to the 45th. The young Nebraskans spent time together on a three-day pass.

Martin was lucky. He got hit and cut by a piece of shrapnel, but it wasn’t serious. He came home, married Ruth, moved to Lincoln and spent 38 years at Cushman. Now he gets a chance to go to Washington to see all of the memorials honoring those who fought, and those who didn’t return.

Like his friend, Ray, killed five days before he was supposed to come home.

http://fremonttribune.com/news/local/nebraska-vets-eager-for-korean-war-honor-flight/article_126771a3-a8d6-5c4f-85da-a8879fab205c.html