Washington ? Fifty years to the day after two stony-faced generals signed the armistice that brought the Korean War to an uneasy cease-fire, American veterans once sent to fight on the faraway peninsula gathered on a grassy wedge of the Mall to receive their nation’s gratitude for that service and sacrifice.

Several thousand veterans, their stride slowed, their posture stooped, heard Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz talk of how “the face of Asia was changed dramatically for the better” by the battles that pushed back communist North Korea after it invaded its southern neighbor in a surprise attack. Many applauded as Wolfowitz announced a renewed effort to locate the remains of the more than 8,000 Americans officially listed as missing in action from the three-year conflict.

“The Korean War will not end for us until every American is brought home or accounted for,” he said.

The simple commemoration allowed, before and after, for countless individual reunions of former comrades. It also offered opportunities for picture-taking with uniformed members of the South Korean military. The veterans saluted, shook hands, identified their commands.

The day’s tone, more somber than celebratory, seemed apropos of a war in which the fighting ended but the war did not. After three years, one month and two days of fighting — which killed 33,651 U.S. soldiers, more than half the number of South Korean casualties — the combatants agreed to pull back to their respective sides of the 38th Parallel and establish a demilitarized zone that exists to this day.

The cease-fire was signed at 10 a.m. on July 27, 1953.

Veterans of the Korean War salute during the singing of the National Anthem at the ceremony commemorating the new Korean War Memorial in downtown Mansfield, Ohio. Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the armistice. Other services around the nation included one at the Mall in Washington, D.C., where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz addressed veterans.