I’m feeling pretty good about myself today. More specifically, I’m feeling pretty good about what my blog has done for an 86-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, who, having lost her brother in the Korean War in 1950, now can have some sense of closure and a peace of mind knowing what happened to her brother, Robert Golden.

This good feeling that I am experiencing today all started a couple of months ago when someone commented on a post about Task Force Smith. Actually, the post was an article I had written for the Korea Times back in the summer of 2000 when I had gone to Osan to cover a ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of America’s entry into the Korean War with the Battle of Osan. I updated the post on my blog because it is going to be, when I get around to putting it all together, a collection of essays on the articles I wrote on the Korean War Commemoration events from 2000-2003.

In these comments, the person explained that his 86-year-old mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s had lost a brother in the Battle of Osan and was wondering if I knew someone-a veteran who might have been in the same battle or a family member of a veteran who might of known the woman’s brother. The son just wanted to do something for his mom, to lay the rest as it were, the ghosts of that battle and the loss of her brother over 58 years ago.

In July 1950 Task Force Smith-the hastily assembled U.S. response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea one week earlier-was sent from Japan to Korea to halt the North Koreans, or at least delay the advancing army until more reinforcements from the States could arrive.

After landing at Pusan and taking a train to Daejeon (then written Taejon) Task Force Smith encountered the advancing North Korean army on a hill north of Osan on July 5, 1950. It was thought that once the North Koreans saw the presence of U.S. troops they would stop and perhaps even retreat. Nothing could have been further from the truth when the North Koreans and their Russian-made T-34 tanks literally ran over Task Force Smith. The Americans were forced to retreat and would do so all the way to Daejeon and later, further south to Pusan where by August the Pusan Perimeter would be established that prevented South Korea from being overtaken by the North Koreans.