Quaker History/War

Ex-soldier keeps Korea in focus

Orlando Sentinel/Orlando/FL/USA/05/29/05

... "War is only about killing," my friend says, remembering that 37,000 Americans were killed in active fighting up and down that Asian peninsula. "It's just insane. Fear then becomes your constant companion," he has written. "You accept the fact: 'I could get killed here.' "

A professional actor with the sensitivity necessary to his craft, Coate has written a 9,000-word account of the Korean War, 1950-1953.

It begins on that haunting, memorable March morning 54 years ago. Rifleman Coate, a veteran of three weeks of combat, has just completed an all-night vigil near the Han River. An Associated Press photographer, James E. Martenhoff, singles Coate out from a squad of equally weary soldiers.

In combat gear, holding his rifle in front of him, Coate poses. The AP wire photo, sent to newspapers worldwide, shows him in dramatic silhouette staring at a hilly Korean landscape. The shot was front-page material across the United States and elsewhere.

Coate, son of a Quaker father and a recent graduate of Ohio State University, had the good sense to chase after the AP man, insisting he write down his name and hometown for the caption. Coate said, in effect: "I want my wife, Betty, to see where I am and that, for now, I'm OK."

There was a secondary motive: to wake up apathetic Americans at home.

The photograph, often called "Korea Watch" or "Soldier's Watch," has had a remarkably long life, enduring today. It's been reproduced to raise funds for the Korean War Memorial in Washington. The USO and others have appropriated it to raise cash and encourage blood donations. In upstate New York, there's an almost life-size rendering of it in granite.

To complete Coate's story of war, Betty Coate, waiting at home, wrote and phoned the Associated Press, refusing to quit until she'd gained the photographer's negative and secured permission to reproduce "Soldier's Watch."

"The photograph, now famous, is a time freeze," Coate says.

Pfc. Coate went on to become clerk of Company E, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. He was responsible, among other duties, for identifying dead soldiers -- some close friends. To honor them, and in gratitude for surviving the war, Coate promised himself he would live a life with purpose. Today, he's campaigning for a Korean War Museum and Library in Illinois.