On that barren, almost God-forsaken strip of land known as the western front of Korea, where the troops only talked in hushed whispers at night to avoid detection, the new second lieutenant introduced himself to "Item Company." He said his name was Ben Murray, that he was from Baltimore. For other pertinent background, he graduated from Gilman School and Princeton University.

Pfc Bob Ehrlich was from the same hometown, caught up in a war he was ordered to fight, wondering how much longer he'd be able to survive or if his name would be on the next casualty list to appear in The Sun. "So you went to Gilman," Ehrlich said. "You must be one of those rich boys from the Green Spring Valley."

The lieutenant smiled, put out his hand and, despite the sarcastic tone of the greeting, the change in command was officially recognized. Pfc Ehrlich would be answering to a new officer in charge. They were to become more than brother Marines in combat. A close friendship developed as they looked out as best they could for each other and carried out the chores of war.

Ehrlich soon learned how interested the lieutenant was in horses and how he worked with them on farms back in Maryland during summer vacations with his friends Redmond Finney and Michael Smithwick.

"His mother would send him The Maryland Horse magazine and he'd let me read it. I never heard of Ben Murray until we met but we hit it off like a couple of old friends. I got to admire him for the kind of man he was. I used to kid him and say when we got back home he was going to ride in the Maryland Hunt Cup and that I was going to be there cheering him on."

A rather preposterous promise but, strangely enough, that's precisely the way it happened. Ehrlich, the son of a Baltimore policeman who walked a beat for 30 years, and the well-to-do Marine officer from the social trappings of the Maryland countryside faced some hellish battles, not far from what was called the Korean Bunker Hill, where some Marines insisted the intensity of the fire was comparable to Iwo Jima and Tarawa. Murray took a hit from mortar fire, was pinned down and fragments of shrapnel collected in his head and eyes. He was flown to a hospital in Japan and ultimately sent home to recuperate.

For Ehrlich, it was three more months of duty and then discharge. He took a job selling automobiles for Archway Ford and a considerate owner named Alan Abramson. "I came home one night and my mother said I had a call from a Mr. Murray. I told her I didn't know any Mr. Murray. I didn't realize it was Ben because I went back to my old neighborhood on West Mulberry Street, and he had gone to his home in the valley."

But Ben or "Laddie" Murray wanted to talk to Bob and hoped to see him again. They went to dinner the next night at the Valley Inn, where they each drank a toast of cognac (Bob for the first time) and was told that, yes, Ben would be riding in the Maryland Hunt Cup.

More than that. With Ehrlich as his guest, he not only raced but won the historic event of 1955 with Land's Corner. And he also took the Virginia Gold Cup aboard Uncle Pierre. All that joking on the battlefield in Korea was more than mere conversation. "Laddie" Murray, or Ben to Bob, was riding high.

He had, indeed, won the Maryland Hunt Cup. Such odds of its coming true were beyond normal comprehension. From stark Korea, cut into a foxhole, to a beautiful spring afternoon in Maryland and the joy of the picnic-like crowd.

But, shortly thereafter, Sally Murray, Ben's wife, was killed when the horse she was riding went down. And then more bad fortune. Ben developed cancer and was gone within the year.

Bob wrote to Ben's father to express his sorrow and still has the correspondence. Meanwhile, Ehrlich continued to sell cars, spending 37 years at Archway. One afternoon, the Gilman football coach, Nick Schloeder, came by, and one of the salesmen mentioned that Ehrlich had a 13-year-old son who played for an Arbutus sandlot team.

Schloeder told the Gilman headmaster, Redmond Finney, about the boy. They went to see him play against Wilson Point on a Sunday afternoon and were impressed. For the next three Saturdays, the youngster visited Gilman for difficult academic testing. He fulfilled the entrance requirements and went on to captain the Gilman team and then to Princeton to earn the same honor.

Odd but Bob Ehrlich's son, Bob Jr., was following the identical educational progression as Ben Murray. Gilman and Princeton. Almost as if it had been preordained. Every year, at the Grand National, there's now a commemorative race, the Benjamin H. Murray Memorial Challenge Cup, in honor of this extraordinary gentleman rider, a fitting perpetuation.

It might be appropriate if Bob Ehrlich's son, now Congressman Ehrlich, should view the Murray Memorial and present the silver cup. It would be a glorious touch to a story that, in a way, had its beginning on a remote Korean mountainside amid the shelling when a Pfc and a second lieutenant joked about how "Laddie" Murray was going to win the Hunt Cup.

And the son of Ehrlich, then unborn, would follow Murray to the same alma maters, Gilman and Princeton, and became a congressman because a football coach visiting an automobile showroom thought he could play for his team and gave him the chance.