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ANNA (WSIL) � July 27 marks 66 years since the signing of the Korean War armistice that put a stop to fighting. Korea-era veterans reflect back on the war with News 3. 

One of those veterans is Beryl Clayton, who grew up just outside of Cobden.

Clayton says he was excited when he was drafted into the army in 1953, "Getting away from the farm I guess (laugh) for a while." 

He trained in Louisville, Kentucky before being sent overseas. 

Many of the soldiers in his company were sent to fight in Korean, but Clayton was relieved to miss combat being stationed in Germany driving a tanker. 

"We were just there, in case something breaks out," he recalls. "Here we go." 

However, Clayton’s brother-in-law and cousin did fight in the war. 

"These guys in battle they don’t like to come home and talk about it," he remembers. "They just don’t want to talk about being shot at or them shooting at somebody." 

Another veteran that felt fortunate to miss action is Bill Eblen. 

Previously, he was a Marine in World War II stationed in the Pacific and can remember hearing about the start of the Korean war. 

"When the Korean War started on a Sunday, I was with my mom and told my mom and all them ‘boy those poor guys are going to go in and going to go through something�", he explains. 

Eblen had to report to the military within 24 hours of being notified and was eventually sent to Shaw Air Force base in South Carolina.

There, he trained around 250 Air force radio operators how to direct fighter planes. 

"I never knew what happened to them after I trained them," he recalls. 

Eblen says he and many other World War II veterans were called back to train or fight in Korea. 

"These guys had been in combat and everything else, did the job," he explains. "Came out now knowing that they were in the reserves." 

Meanwhile, Eblen and Clayton say, Korean War veterans did not get the praise they deserved when they returned. 

"The Korean war, to me, was a forgotten war," Eblen adds. "I felt sorry for those guys." 

During the Korean War, more than 36,000 American men and women died in combat and 103,000 were wounded.