RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington—once so polemical—is now thought by many to be as close to reverential perfection as a war memorial can be. It has had fierce critics. Jim Webb, a Vietnam vet and U.S. senator, called it “a nihilistic slab of stone.” The wall is stark, even accusatory, and a bronze sculpture of three soldiers was added later to shush those who regarded Ms. Lin’s creation as too cerebral—even insufficiently heroic.

As if determined not to stoke such controversy, the Korean Veterans Memorial is, by contrast, stubbornly literal. A demotic American masterwork, it is plain-spoken and realist. It appeals to old-fashioned conceptions of what is heroic and admirable. Unlike the Vietnam Memorial, which yields its richness to those who meditate before it, the Korean Memorial fills even a child with awe—and it does so instantly, on first contact, as I found when I took my son to see it when he was 10 years old, a full decade ago. There is no sight quite like that of a small boy transfixed before statues that tower over him.

The monument—designed by Cooper-Lecky Architects of Washington—has many elements, including a Pool of Remembrance and a low-slung United Nations Wall that lists the 22 countries that joined the U.S. in its “police action” in Korea. Another wall, listing the names of the Americans who died, will be completed next year.

The monument’s true heart is a triangular “Field of Service,” on which stand the sculptures of 19 soldiers, wrought in unpolished stainless steel, each man about 7 feet tall. Early models had them at 8 feet, but this size was thought to come much too close to glorifying war: At a foot less in height they are daunting to behold, but not superhuman; larger than life without surpassing a likeness to it.

The statues are “a case of art rendering argument superfluous,” wrote Benjamin Forgey, architecture critic of the Washington Post, in an early review of the monument. Called “The Column,” they are an irrefutable statement on the harshness, the dread, and the team spirit of battle.

The sculptor was Frank Gaylord —a little-known provincial artist from Barre, Vt.—and he depicted his soldiers in full battle gear. Drafted at age 18, Gaylord served in the 17th Airborne Division in World War II. He sketched his fellow soldiers in the lulls between battles, and the images in his notebooks inspired the faces on the sculptures he did many years later.

Look at the faces of the men and you cannot doubt that they were shaped by a man who fought in a war himself. The faces are lined and battle-weary—perhaps even a little underfed—with some mouths pursed and some agape. The troops are on patrol, spaced prudently apart from one another, lest an enemy shell land in their midst and kill many men at once. You can tell from their insignia that they’re a mix of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, and care was taken to ensure that all races that fought are represented. This racial mix isn’t a hewing to notions of correctness, but an honest portrayal of the men who fought in Korea.

Gaylord’s attention to detail is stubborn. Shoes are cracked and worn-out, tense hands grip rifles or radios. Many of the men carry M-1s, the semiautomatic carbines that were a staple in the war. One man has a Browning Automatic Rifle, an assistant gunner toward the rear carries a tripod, an Army medic has no weapon at all. The men are weighed down by their gear—in contrast to the North Korean or Chinese enemy, who was lightly equipped and fleet of foot in canvas sneakers. Their ponchos cover hefty rucksacks, and Gaylord’s shaping of these ponchos is masterful, their folds undulating, occasionally crinkled, enveloping each man in a cocoon against the Korean weather. The overall effect of the wind-blown ponchos is to make the men seem ghostly. This isn’t triumphal statuary. Every man is on edge.

Arrayed against a gleaming granite wall, the 19 soldiers double to 38 by the magic of reflection. This number is intentional, marking the 38th parallel that separates free Korea from the prison-state to its north. Etched on the wall are thousands of faces of nurses and other support troops, copied from photographs at the National Archives. When the sun allows for reflection, and the statues duplicate themselves on the wall, the effect is thrilling: It is as if a platoon were inching forward to engage an enemy it cannot see. These were men—as the dedication stone at the monument tells us—who “answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.” The memorial to them in Washington cannot possibly do them justice. But it has given us a place where we can pay them our regard, and marvel at the hell and hardship that they faced on our behalf.

—Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.