To our Men and Women in the military in Wyoming, we thank you! (Sheridan: 2009)

[Kristynwy]

All gave some, and some gave all!
Thank you for your service to all who have served in the military! To all of you and your family's, you will be in my reflections, my prayers and thoughts tomorrow!
Don't forget to take the time to reflect and remember those who fought and died to protect our freedom... To our POW's may you never be forgotten...


YouTube - Veteran's Day 2009 - Freedom Isn't Free

[ElkHunter]

However you served, KIA, POW, MIA, Reserve, Active Duty, and even the Civilian support on our baes. Thank you for your time and effort. And to those that gave support from home, waiting for dreaded staff car, the wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Thank you too.

[wyoquilter]

To all those that served, are serving and to their families I want to say Thank-you from the depths of my heart. I feel the words Thank-you just isn't enough for all of the scarifices you all have made and are making, but I do not know of any other way to express mine and my families gratitude. Just know that I, my family, as well as many others have not forgotten what you all have done and/or are doing for us and our country. May God Bless each and everyone of you!!!

[Froggie Legs]

Thank you to all of our military persons for the services, sacrifices, and honor you provide to America!

Blessings to all members of our armed forces! May God be with you!

[jdavid93225]

Originally Posted by Kristynwy

All gave some, and some gave all!
Thank you for your service to all who have served in the military! To all of you and your family's, you will be in my reflections, my prayers and thoughts tomorrow!
Don't forget to take the time to reflect and remember those who fought and died to protect our freedom... To our POW's may you never be forgotten...

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

However you served, KIA, POW, MIA, Reserve, Active Duty, and even the Civilian support on our baes. Thank you for your time and effort. And to those that gave support from home, waiting for dreaded staff car, the wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Thank you too.

Originally Posted by wyoquilter

To all those that served, are serving and to their families I want to say Thank-you from the depths of my heart. I feel the words Thank-you just isn't enough for all of the scarifices you all have made and are making, but I do not know of any other way to express mine and my families gratitude. Just know that I, my family, as well as many others have not forgotten what you all have done and/or are doing for us and our country. May God Bless each and everyone of you!!!

Originally Posted by Froggie Legs

Thank you to all of our military persons for the services, sacrifices, and honor you provide to America!

Blessings to all members of our armed forces! May God be with you!

Well, I don't think I can add anything to what has already been said, except another "Thank You" to all who have served. I am truly grateful for the sacrifices made by those who have fought, and those that are continuing to fight, to protect our liberties.

[debey]

Another "Thank You".

[jody_wy]

http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-brea ... i_13758920
'Your son is held by enemy forces': IN THE 'FORGOTTEN WAR,' CAPITAN'S MAGGIE TRUJILLO DIED A THOUSAND DEATHS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE

[SIZE=3]Julie Carter [/SIZE][SIZE=3]jcarter@ruidosonews.com[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Posted: 11/10/2009 09:28:49 PM MST[/SIZE]


[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"The secretary of the Army has asked me to inform you that the name, Trujillo, Margarito, believed to be that of your son, is included in a list of prisoners supposed to be held by enemy forces," read the Western Union telegram sent from Washington, D.C., to Mr. and Mrs. Nestor Trujillo, Capitan, N.M. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]It was December 1950 and the fact was, Margarito Trujillo - "Maggie" to all that know him - had been taken prisoner by the North Koreans six months earlier. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie was a POW/MIA for 37 months in what is often referred to as the Forgotten War: the Korean Conflict, in which 54,246 died, 103,284 were wounded and 8,177 were missing in action. It was the war that author Philip D. Chinnery named his book for - Korean Atrocity - because of war crimes committed between 1950-1953, crimes that went unpunished because the war was not won, but called to halt by an armistice. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Growing up in Capitan, Maggie, like so many young men, wanted a way out. At 19, he enlisted in the regular Army, did his basic training at Fort Ord, Calif., and soon found himself in Tokyo as part of the occupation forces with the 24th Infantry Division. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"They treated us like kings in Japan," Maggie said of his year spent there. "People treated us nice. Life was good." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]In the early morning of June 25, 1950, 0400 on a Sunday, 90,000 North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel with seven infantry divisions and T-34 tanks, equipped and advised by the Soviets. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"They crossed all over the place and they knew [/SIZE]

[SIZE=3][/SIZE]

[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=3][/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]where all the defenses were from information provided by a dedicated spy network that had been in place for years," said retired Colonel Tom Stewart - Lincoln County's manager - who commanded the 17th Aviation Brigade in Korea years later and served in a variety of positions with 101st Airborne Division and the 24th Infantry Division. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The invasion overwhelmed the unprepared South Koreans and chaos reigned. MacArthur flew to Suwon, South Korea, and determined the only way to stop the North Koreans was on the ground. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"We were trained, but not trained for combat that way," Trujillo said. "We were always under strength." Maggie was on the front lines by the 4th of July and by July 5, the North Koreans had begun to outflank the U.S. forces. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The U.S. forces were not armed with weapons that could take on the T-34 tanks and had no armor penetrating rifles and no anti-tank bombs. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Ten days later, on the Kum River, the North Korean troops hit them from the side while the Army troops were moving north. Mass casualties were inflicted and the unit was overrun. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie recalls, "We fought for about three hours. There were too many of them. Then this major, hollered, 'We don't have a chance, give up. They'll kill us all.' So we threw down our arms and they shot him (the major) with a machine gun. They were everywhere, like ants. They got us and tied us up with wire (barbed or communications wire was used to secure their hands behind their backs). There were about 27 of us in that bunch." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Decades later, when photos and documents were de-classified, the horror was revealed: rows of soldiers lying face down, shot, with their hands bound behind their backs. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]It was a hot July and for days the prisoners were refused water, even though they could see the river below them as they were marched north. Maggie said he was never put in an actual camp, but for the three years he was a POW, they marched them from place to place all over North Korea. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Tiger Death March [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The prisoners were forced to live in deplorable conditions with starvation, brutality and neglect defining their days and nights. Beatings were commonplace. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]And, just when they thought that things could not get worse, a brutal North Korean army major, named "The Tiger," took command. No one knew the real name of The Tiger, a testament to his brutality. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]On Nov. 1, 1950, The Tiger ordered the prisoners, a group of 850 and a mixture of military and civilians, to march for nine days over 120 miles of steep Korean terrain. By the time the group gained its freedom in 1953, only 265 were still clinging to life. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"I remember when he took over," said Maggie. "He said, 'I'm going to kill seven of you to let you know I'm the man who will be in charge of you.' " With pleas from the interpreters, The Tiger was talked out of killing seven. However, he did take one officer to a dirt mound and with the prisoners looking on, he shot him in the back of the head. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The weather during the fall of 1950 had been warm, but during the march, the temperature began to drop. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Sick and exhausted prisoners were dropping rapidly in the marches, and their buddies were ordered to leave them for later execution. If a soldier fell out, he was shot. "March 'til they die," The Tiger reportedly said. Records show approximately 500 soldiers died on that march alone. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"The Tiger wouldn't let you look at his face," Maggie said. "When he was around, you had to look down. I don't know what happened to him. After about a year, he disappeared." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Once the prisoners reached the Yalu River and a village used as a camp, Hanjang-ni, even more died. More than 222 soldiers lost their lives during their four-month stay there. Then came one of the coldest winters in history. By March 29, 1951, the remaining prisoners weighed less than 100 pounds and were sick, full of sores from lying on rocks and concrete floors and were consumed by body lice. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie tells of the shacks they were housed in, with about 125 prisoners in a 16-foot-by-16-foot room. "You ate in there, slept in there, sat in there, lived in there," he said. "We would lay like puzzle pieces. We would scrape the ice on the windows for water. The snow was about three feet deep outside. No blankets. Just our fatigues. We used our boots for pillows. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"There was no talking. We didn't have no friends. It was dog eat dog. We'd fight for the food, bugs, a little grass to eat." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The small rations of rice and sorghum was barely enough to sustain life. At one point, they were relegated to picking whole corn from feces to eat it again. "When you are starving, you eat anything. We'd even eat the bark off a tree. The only thing we didn't eat was each other. I didn't even think about that." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"Every day the guard would come to the door and ask, 'How many guys syonarra?' and those two or three guys that died every night would be stripped of their clothes and thrown out in the snow. There was no way to bury them." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Back at home [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie's family continued to write the War Department asking about their son, and each was responded by a telegram reading, "I realize your concern for his safety and I wish to assure that all means practicable are being utilized to determine the status and whereabouts of our men who are missing in action. When further information is received, pertaining to your son, I will communicate with you immediately. You have my continued sympathy." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]His family prayed incessantly and his sisters made a promise to God, that if he'd bring Maggie home alive, they would walk on their knees to the church to give thanks. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Chinese captivity [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]For two years, while battles continued between the North and the South, Maggie endured the brutality, the starvation and the marches. Finally, the prisoners were turned over to the Chinese when the North Koreans could no longer feed them, but his final year in captivity continued to be deplorable. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"The Chinese separated us by rank, by nationality and took the officers somewhere, I don't know where," Maggie said. The communist indoctrination was forced on them daily. "We were paraded through the streets of Pyong Yang (capital of North Korea) and the people would spit on us." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Even in his emaciated, weakened state, Maggie's patriotism and will was strong. He said he told the men, "Let it go in one ear and out the other, don't listen to them. The hell with these goddamned people." He spoke to the men in Spanish and the Chinese couldn't understand him. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"I refused to accept the communist way and all their brainwashing," he said. "They'd take us outside at three or four in the morning when it was 60 below and tell us how our president was sleeping in a warm bed, eating pork chops and how he didn't care about us. They called me a troublemaker be-cause I wouldn't do what they wanted." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]His men called him "Padrino" and the Chinese labeled him an instigator, a ringleader and a "bad influence." The reputation earned him a month in "the hole." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"It was about a 6-foot-by-7 foot hole. Just enough to sleep in," Maggie recalls. "It had a hole at the top of it and a straw roof. They finally got me out of there and put me in a mud shack. My job was to clean the s--- houses, which were just holes with a board over it. It rained so much the holes would fill up with water. So my job was to take my clothes off, get in that hole, and clean that s--- out. I had to do that about every day. The good part of it was, then I could take a bath in the river." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Finally in 1953, as part of the Armistice, the prisoners were released. Mag-gie said he knew something was going on but didn't know what. "There was no more planes going over, no commotion. They came to get me out of the hole at 3 a.m., and I walked by an empty camp. They took to me to a shack with about 10 men in it and I was there for two weeks. I was the last to be exchanged." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Weighing 85 pounds, "nothing but skin and bones," and wearing scars from the beatings and the sores, especially on his hips, Maggie said he thought he was in pretty good shape. "The Chinese were feeding us better," he laughed. "At one time I was nothing but bones." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The POWs were put on a train and sent to a neutral zone in South Korea where they were debug-ged, showered and given food and new clothes. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"We couldn't eat much, our stomachs were too small." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]He was put on a ship to San Francisco and then he and two others were sent to Albuquerque, each with a $20 bill. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"They told us, 'You are on your own, go home the best you can.' We were walking the streets in Albuquerque and the police picked us up and took us down to the stockade. The next morning we hitchhiked to Moriarty. We stopped at a car lot and wanted to buy a car. We had no money, but the man said he'd loan it to us, but we had to come back and buy a car from him. Before we got close to Vaughn, the state police stopped us. We had no licenses, nothing. He made us park the car and he took us to Vaughn. I don't know what happened to the car. He made us leave it by the side of the road." Maggie caught a train to Carrizozo and got home to Capitan from there. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Two other POWS from New Mexico are still living and were with Maggie throughout - Candi Mascarenas and Dan Trujillo. "They went through the same thing I did, captured the same day I was captured and went through the same hell I did. They deserve the same thing I'm getting," said Maggie, who turned 80 last March. There were 189 POWs from New Mexico listed as casualties in Korea. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie's days of "lockup" never seemed to end. "When we were on the ship coming from Korea to San Francisco, there was a fight. Our own soldiers were calling us communists. I thought there was going to be a war on the ship. So they locked us up. We were prisoners on our own ship. They wouldn't let us get close to the other troops." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Keeping a promise [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Remember Maggie's sisters who had made the promise to God? Not knowing if he was dead or alive, they continued to pray. At the time, the church they had promised to go to on their knees was across the street. During the three years Maggie was MIA, a new church was built, five blocks away. The streets were gravel, but they kept their promise, starting out in skirts but going back to change to pants to protect their knees. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie's wife of 55 years, Merlinda, said the hell didn't end for Maggie until decades later. They had not yet given it the name it has today, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it was every bit as real. Maggie fought, ran, cried out and dreamed of the hell he had lived in. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Unable to find work, Maggie went back to what he knew best, being a soldier. He re-enlisted in January 1954 and was sent to Austria, then to Germany for a total of three years. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Last April, when Stew-art became part of the process to seek a Purple Heart and POW medal for Maggie, he discovered Maggie was not on the Department of Defense's POW/MIA list from Korea. Calling the Pentagon, he discovered that when the war records were declassified after the Vietnam War, Maggie's records had not been among them. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The retired lieutenant colonel whom Stewart spoke to told him, "Tom, you need to do all you can to recognize this individual. He is one of the longest-serving POWs of the Korean War. He served 1,095 days in captivity, was captured July 14, 1950, was released Aug. 30, 1953. I verified that he had been left off our listing and we will correct our online data base to add his name. Thanks for bringing the error to our attention." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]In 1993, 40 years after his release, Maggie re-ceived a letter and check for $300 from the DOD. The money, said the letter, was for "lost leave time" while he was a POW and included a "Thank you" from the Secretary of Defense. The letter is framed and hangs in the Trujillo living room. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"At first, I told her (Merlinda) to send it back," Maggie said sardonically. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The couple has four children: Linda, Alex, Renita and Angie; four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Maggie will be honored at 10 a.m., today, at Capitan Schools, where he will be awarded a long-overdue Purple Heart and POW medal. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Asked if he'd do it again for his country, Maggie said, "Hell yeah, I'd do anything for this country. It's the best country in the world. There ain't no other country like this one."[/SIZE]

[ElkHunter]

I missed Veterans Day here at the house. I was ready to fly my flag at half staff.

But I spent it in a much better place that meant something. I spent it at the Sheridan VA Medical Center. But I couldn't enjoy it, I was in the hospital as a patient. But just being there meant so much more then if I'd just spent it at home.