Korean War veteran recalls cease-fire like it was yesterday

On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ended. The signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement put into force a cease-fire, established a new border between the nations of North and South Korea and finalized the repatriation of prisoners of war.
Sixty years later, Korean War veteran and Gilroy local Robert De La Rosa recalls the end of the war like it was yesterday.
“We had been in reserve, but then at 8 a.m., everybody was brought to the front lines. Every last shot was fired and bombs were dropped. I remember everything stopped at five minutes before 10 a.m.,” 79-year-old De La Rosa, then a mortar gunner, said with tears filling his eyes.
Unbeknownst to even some of De La Rosa’s friends and former co-workers from the various jobs he held throughout the years, De La Rosa served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, beginning in 1951 at just 17 years old. Although very proud to have served his country, De La Rosa said he tends to keep this information about himself private because it is too emotional for him to talk about.
With July 27 marking the 60th anniversary of the armistice, coupled with the encouragement of his second oldest daughter, Nancy Cologne, De La Rosa decide to open up about his story.
Raised in the small town of Brackettville, Texas, which in the 1940s had a population of 1,000, De La Rosa said there were no work opportunities for him or anyone there and he wanted to get out. He volunteered himself for the Marines and after completing training in Vallejo, CA, he volunteered to go to Korea.
“I thought nothing of it at the time. It wasn’t until I was departing from the pier in San Diego on the boat to Korea when I started to wonder, ‘what if I don’t come back? What if I lose an arm or a leg?’” recalled the veteran.
De La Rosa had been in Korea for three months when he received a letter from his mother saying that his older brother by two years, Carlos De La Rosa, had been drafted into the Army and was being sent to Korea. At the time, the Army was replacing the Marines at the front lines, situated in the mountains approximately four hours away from South Korea’s capital, Seoul.
“They were switching the Army to the front lines and I immediately asked for permission to go searching for my brother because I knew exactly where he was going to be,” De La Rosa said, a tear streaming down his face. “They gave me one day and I found him.”
De La Rosa was able to identify his brother because he knew Carlos was a part of the 25th infantry division. Sitting at the dining room table inside his Gilroy home in Garden Court where De La Rosa has lived for 40 years, he recalled, with visible emotion, how much it meant to him to see his brother’s face in the midst of the war.
“Just being out there was bad,” De La Rosa said. “It was 40 below zero in the winter at night and 120 (degrees) during the summer and we had no place to go. We would eat and drink when we could.”
More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, according to the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office. The Department of Defense reports 103,284 U.S. soldiers wounded in action and 36,574 died.
Both brothers served for a total of three years each until the end of the war, De La Rosa having made corporal rank by the end of his term. He left at the age of 20 as a decorated soldier; sporting two Korean service medals: one national defense medal and one good conduct medal.
The brothers returned uninjured to Texas in 1954 and in the same year, moved to Gilroy because they had family working here. De La Rosa has lived in Gilroy ever since, working a number of jobs up until his retirement in 1996.
“My brother and I did any jobs we could find. For a while, I was building motor homes in Morgan Hill,” De La Rosa said.
Carlos died on Thanksgiving Day in 1959 in a car accident when he was driving home from working in the fields of Watsonville. Having survived the war together, De La Rosa was distraught reminiscing the death of his brother when the Dispatch interviewed him last week.
De La Rosa married his wife, Beatrice, in 1957 and has three daughters and a son who were all raised in Gilroy. Cologne, who now lives in Milpitas, ran for Gilroy Garlic Festival Queen during the pageant’s very first year in 1979 and still deems herself a true Gilroyan.
“I wanted my father’s story to be heard. He doesn’t talk about his experiences in the war too much but sometimes he will share pictures he has,” Cologne said. “He said he joined the Marine Corps because they were the toughest.”
Cologne said she has multiple family members who serve in the military including her nephew, 27-year-old Michael Steven Luja, Jr., a Gilroy High School graduate who recently returned home to Gilroy July 28 after serving in the army in Iraq and Afghanistan.
De La Rosa, knowing he had an influence on his grandson’s decision to join the military, is thrilled about Luja’s return.