The Unidentified Soldier in the USO Poster

"The horrors of WWII were still fresh in our minds when the Korean War broke out. June 25, 1950, when the North Korean Communists crossed the Thirty-Eighth Parallel to invade South Korea, changed the course of my life. Betty, her roommate Marian Ott, Richard's old Trenton buddy and roommate Harvey Seeman, and Richard were driving to "Old Man's Cave" which is about a hundred miles southwest of Columbus. It was a day made for poets and we couldn't have been in a more festive mood. The radio was tuned to the classical music station on WOSU when the program was interrupted with the news that the North Korean Communist troops had crossed the Thirty-Eighth Parallel to invade South Korea. Korea? Where's that? Richard flunked his physical for induction into WWII but would pass muster to fight in what was tragically mislabeled as a mere "police action" Richard had proposed marriage to Betty earlier that spring, with plans for a wedding the following December of '50. Little over eight months since their trip to Old Man's Cave, Richard was among the first draftees to enter the war. The title of this book is apt. Had I been identified, it could never have been used as a symbol of American fighting forces throughout the globe. Since it was used as a symbol at the peak of the Cold War, the advertising executive who handled the USO account had no way of knowing that I was not one of the 36,0000 who were KIA in the war. And he also presumed that if I survived the war I could never prove it to be me. The AP release stated the photograph was taken by a man with the initials JM. An elderly woman in the World Wide AP photo department said, "Why, that's Jimmy Martenhofff."--