An old soldier may forget many things: the whir of live bullets overhead or the smell of explosives.

But 47 years after the last shot was fired in the Korean War, Ray Darrow of Kennewick cannot forget the Americans who bled and died in that shell-pocked land, on sodden fields and frozen ground.

The retired Army corporal knows what Americans risked and what many lost. And to this day, he has no doubts about the wisdom of America's involvement.

"We were there to stop communist aggression," the Kennewick man said with pride and conviction.

Darrow and his fellow veterans, survivors of a conflict that tore Korea apart from 1950 to 1953, are a dwindling link to what some call America's Forgotten War, forgotten because it was fought between World War II and the Vietnam War.

But the sacrifices of the men and women who fought in Korea will be remembered in the Tri-Cities on April 14-15 in a series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities. The celebrations, first of their kind in the nation, will continue until 2003, the 50th anniversary of the cease-fire.

Darrow will be chairman of a commemorative parade in downtown Kennewick on April 15.

When Darrow was drafted in early 1951, he and his wife, May, were newly married, and he was working for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Kennewick. He pointed to a picture of the young man he was, smiling back at him out of a photo album.

"My dream then was to be a mechanic, fixing racing cars for a living," Darrow said.

But the word communism was enough to make people willingly march off to war in those days. So, when the United States entered the war at the United Nations' request after communist-backed North Korea's invasion of the South in June 1950, Darrow went to boot camp and to war. It never would have entered his mind to burn his draft card or run away.

"Patriotic?," Darrow said in response to a question. "You're damn right. Always was."

For the next two years, Darrow served as a member of the 765th Transportation Railway Shop Battalion, shuttling trains back and forth across the war zone, from the Yokkok-chon Valley to Chipyong-Ni, from Pork Chop Hill to Heartbreak Ridge.

"For every front-line soldier, there are 21 people backing him up: cooks, bakers, the guys who picked up the dead," Darrow recalled. "I worked the railroads."

His job was to ferry prisoners, the wounded and the necessities of war to wherever they were needed, night or day. It was tough, dirty and dangerous work that went on 16 hours a day, sometimes longer.

"The first thing you think of when you get to the war zone is, 'Gee, those are live bullets they are firing,' " Darrow said. "They can really kill me."

The Army still won't let him talk about some of the things he did behind enemy lines, Darrow said. Other memories are dredged up painfully and with tears.

"What sticks in my mind is to see guys my age, stacked in trucks - dead, frozen, stiff," said Darrow. "You don't forget that."

Besides the enemy, the bullets and the screaming shells, the soldiers faced another agony - the bitter cold.

"If you ask any Korean veteran what he remembers, the first thing he will say is the cold," Darrow said. "It was miserably cold in the winter. It was doggone cold. And in the summer, it was stinking and crawling with flies."

Darrow was not immune to griping when his stomach was empty or counting the days until he could go home. At such times, the common soldier, who always gets the worst of it in war, began to wonder why he was there.

But it was an encounter with a front-line soldier dying in the back of a bus that reassured Darrow that what he was doing was right.

"He was a good-looking kid," Darrow recalled. "He was dying from phosphorus burn. He said he was just married, but he was glad to give his life because it was to stop communism." Darrow paused to wipe his eyes. "That helped me."

One of his most vivid memories involved the prisoner exchange Sept. 4, 1953, at Freedom Village, Panmunjon, at the close of the conflict. His job was to transport Korean prisoners of war by rail to a spot where they would be exchanged for American prisoners.

He said the North Koreans kept the returning American prisoners at some distance from the American lines beyond Freedom Gate. Some of the prisoners had to crawl to make it back to the American lines.

"I remember guys with no legs, missing arms, crawling toward me," Darrow said. "I remember a Marine tried to help one of those fellows and the North Koreans shot him. I don't know what happened to that Marine."

The state of Washington lost 3,536 men and women in the Korean War, with 158 prisoners of war and 17 MIAs.