A new Korean War monument was unveiled on Memorial Day in Chillicothe, Ohio — an 2.4m by 1.8m black monolith etched with a collage of war scenes and the names of local soldiers fallen in that war. It’s also a disgraceful insult to every serviceman who fought in Korea and every other war.
If you haven’t noticed yet, most of these scenes are not from the Korean War. The monolith — made by some Egyptian company for $US21,550 — includes everything from Desert Storm soldiers to F-16s fighter jets. Here’s a list of all the embarrassing errors:
10 glaring mistakes
1. A Bell UH-1 Huey medical helicopter, which was first introduced in 1959, six years after the Korean War. The Huey was widely used in the Vietnam War and is still in use today.
2. & 3. General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters with the livery of the Thunderbirds, the acrobatic team of the United States Air Force. The F-16 started service in 1978, more than two decades after the end of the Korean War.
4. Soldiers that appear to be wearing modern US Army gear. Indeed, if you look for Korean War soldiers on Google, you will get some Desert Storm soldiers (bad Google but even worse “illustrators.”)
5. If you pay attention, the lazy arse bastard who made this cloned one soldier next to the its original
6. Vietnam War soldiers.
7. M1 Abrams tank, which started service in 1980.
8. A single star drawn on the tank. Whoever did this has watched too many World War II movies.
9. While the soldiers on this scene appear to be from the Korean War, they seem to be walking to a flag pole taken from some modern war memorial: Under the US flag you can see a POW/MIA flag, which was created in 1970.
Update: Reader Spoe tell us that this is actually a photo from the Korean War monument in Washington D.C. A monument within a monument. Pathetic.
10. (Not shown) They missed the names of some of the local soldiers who fell during the war, according to Tina Kutschbach, the niece of one of those soldiers: Army Pvt. John Kutschbach.
Whoever was in charge of pooping this graphic turd even screwed up one of the images actually taken during the Korean War: A photo by Sgt. John Babyak of Marine Pvt. 1st Class Luther Leguire raising the flag at the American consulate in Seoul on September 27, 1950, as soldiers battled in the city streets around him. The Photoshop genius removed the consulate itself, taken any meaning away from it.
But perhaps the worst thing is that the design was well known and publicized before it was made. In fact, Donald Darby — a son of Korean veteran — contacted the memorial committee to highlight all these mistakes. The committee — led by Korean War veteran Herman “Jr.” Strausbaugh — said they will take care of it.
The memorial committee commissioned the monolith to the Southern Ohio Monument Company, which contracted the services of a company in Savannah, Georgia, for its design and production. It seems that the Savannah company then outsourced the production of the stone. The local NBC station reports that an Egyptian company manufactured the stone while the Chillicothe Gazette says that the stone was made in India.
It doesn’t matter. The fact is that nobody in those companies or the committee checked for these mistakes before, during, or after the design and manufacturing of the slab — which was fully paid by citizen donations. It wasn’t that hard. Whoever is responsible for this crap should be ashamed. You can screw a lot of things in life, but when you set yourself to make a monument for those fallen in what’s known as The Forgotten War — or any other war — you better pay attention and get things right.
As Darby told the local NBC station: “This kind of gives you a prime example of why it was called [the Forgotten War].” Indeed it does.