A Las Vegas businessman, a letter and a lesson unlearned from Korea

As this Memorial Day approached, Las Vegas businessman Christoper McMahon received a letter about the Korean War from his 88-year-old father, retired Army Col. Richard McMahon, who earned the Silver Star for valor during the bloody 1950s conflict that then-President Harry Truman referred to as a “police action.”

During the past few years, the professional soldier’s son — born seven years after his father helped take what came to be known as Hill 312 in Korea — says he has begun to get a better sense of how his father has been affected by combat.

“He’s opening up in his latter years,” says McMahon, director of corporate business development for B3 Diagnostic Laboratory. “I think he held it in for so many years, wanting to keep it way from me and my two brothers. But now he wants us to know what he’s learned, what he thinks is important.”

The retired soldier’s recent letter contained a story he wrote revolving around the deaths of 1st Lt. Robert Milton McGovern and 2nd Lt. Francis Jerome McGovern, brothers who died within 11 days of each other during the Korean War.

It is a story that should be told again and again until there is a change in how America involves itself in conflicts.

How the McGoverns’ father reacted to the deaths of his sons, the elder McMahon told me in a call from his Hawaii home, should have delivered a message about commitment not only to politicians, but to the Americans who elect them.

That it hasn’t concerns the old soldier, who has written eight books, including “The Dark Side of Glory,” a novel about the Korean War that was awarded the 2014 Gold Medal for historical fiction by the Military Writers Society of America.

McMahon, who in January 1951 continued to lead his platoon up Hill 312 though seriously wounded by grenade shrapnel, saw a man he trained with, Robert McGovern, heroically leading his platoon on that day, “advancing like a madman … He was caught in a burst of fire, fell, but regained his feet … and continued forward. Another burst of fire shot his carbine out of his hands. He stopped long enough to draw his pistol, and then disappeared over the crest of the hill.”

Eleven days later, Francis Jerome McGovern, unaware that his brother was dead, died while leading a platoon in an assault on enemy positions on Hill 442.

A couple months after the brothers’ funerals, the Army nominated Robert for the highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, and Francis Jerome for the Silver Star. Their father, Halsey McGovern, embittered by what he saw as national indifference to Truman’s “police action,” refused both awards.

The emotion in McMahon’s voice is evident as he recalls that, in his letter refusing the medals, Halsey McGovern wrote that the failure of the U.S. government to support the troops in the field by an all-out war effort “sears the soul.”

“I can understand his anguish,” says the retired colonel who also would go on to fight in an unpopular war in Vietnam.

Halsey McGovern defined the sacrifice of his sons through an inscription on the back of their shared headstone at the Arlington National Cemetery:

To their conscience they were true

And had the genius to be men.

While he has long been a professional military man and emphasizes that the military will always follow orders handed down by the commander in chief, McMahon believes it would be better for the country if war is declared by Congress, as the Constitution mandates, before placing Americans in harm’s way.

He notes that the last time Congress did so, against Germany and Japan, with the overwhelming support of the American people, victories were achieved.

Since then, Americans have grown ambivalent to undeclared bloody conflicts as thousands, including the McGoverns, have died in unwon hostile actions far from our shores.

“Once you follow the Constitution,” McMahon says, “with representatives of the people determining whether war should be declared, then everyone from soldiers to civilians understand the need for sacrifice for a just cause.”

Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Thursday in the Life section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter.