Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Bloody day at No Gun Ri

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999 | 9:50 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

THERE HAS NEVER been a nice, clean war, and the one fought in Korea was far from being a pleasant affair. Civilians caught between battling armies have always been victims. Even those far away from ground battles have become victims from the time air power and missiles entered the fray. What may appear to be almost bloodless air power victories in Desert Storm and later Kosovo don't take into account the suffering of civilian populations.

The recent Associated Press story about the killing of civilians by a U.S. First Cavalry Division unit July 26, 1950, has shocked large numbers of Americans. I don't know what happened at No Gun Ri that day because it was before my time in Korea. Actually the First Cavalry had landed only seven days earlier and were thrown into the fight to keep the North Koreans from getting to Pusan.

During the first few months of the war the American troops used to help South Korea were not in the mental and physical condition necessary to win. Also they came without the leadership and arms needed to succeed. They did succeed eventually because of courage and the air superiority supplied by the Air Force. Nevertheless, over the next three years it was the war of the infantryman who climbed the steep hills and fought despite steamy summer heat and bitter winter cold.

The North Koreans invaded June 25, 1950, and by Aug. 1 the Americans had suffered 6,003 casualties. In "The Forgotten War" Clay Blair writes, "In all, 1,884 Americans were dead, 2,965 were wounded, 523 were missing and 901 were POWs. This carnage was nearly three times that incurred in World War II on D day at bloody Omaha Beach (2,000) and nearly double the American casualties at Pearl Harbor (3,600) and twice those at Tarawa (3,000)."

The recent story about the killing of civilians at No Gun Ri has different versions coming from the Americans involved. Some report that gunfire was coming from the cluster of civilians and others deny hearing gunfire. The numbers of bodies vary from 100 to 300 to "several hundred." Whatever happened was most unfortunate and terrible.

Because I wasn't there, it was necessary for me to research exactly the conditions which would allow such a waste of human life. Joseph C. Goulden in his "Korea: The Untold Story of the War" gives us some insight into what the green troops faced in late July 1950:

"After a month of battle the raw American troops had learned quite a bit about the unorthodox combat techniques of the North Koreans. Some of the tactics made callous use of civilians. In one instance, about 200 women, children, and old men walked into a battle area from the direction of the North Korean lines, 'creating some confusion as they were ... rounded up and processed,' in the words of an army intelligence report. The North Koreans took advantage of the chaos to launch an attack. Some of the refugees said later the North Koreans forced them to walk toward the American lines. The North Koreans had an entire bag of tricks:

Almost 50 years after that day at No Gun Ri, the Pentagon hopes to find out what happened. No matter what they learn it will be difficult for young Americans to understand because it's beyond their experiences. They have only read about atrocities in Kosovo and Kuwait.

Author John Toland's "In Mortal Combat Korea 1950-1953" tells about what some First Cavalry infantry found one day during that first summer shortly after arriving in Korea. Withdrawing North Korean troops "left behind the corpses of 26 captured Americans. After being stripped of equipment and shoes and made to haul water and ammo up the hill, they had been herded into a gully, hands tied behind their backs. Then four Koreans appeared and spat fire from their burp guns onto the helpless prisoners. Private Roy Manring, a 19-year-old from Chicago, managed to burrow under his comrades' bodies and, though wounded in both legs and an arm, crawled to safety to tell his story to shocked troopers."

No, there has never been a nice, clean war fought eyeball-to-eyeball on the ground. It will be interesting to see what the Pentagon investigation will reveal about No Gun Ri.