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Excerpt from "Old Soldiers Never Die; They Just Fade Away" Speech, April 19, 1951

Published in Congressional Record, 1951

"When I joined the Army even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished. But I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that—'Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.'"

Before World War II (1939–45), Korea was a colony of Japan. With Japan's surrender ending World War II in August 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States divided Korea into two parts at the thirty-eighth parallel. The North was under Soviet communist influence; the South under the influence of the democratic...