MAKING SENSE OF NO GUN-RI
By James Webb
[James Webb was a combat Marine in
I do not know what happened to the civilians at the
bridge near the village of No Gun-ri, although it seems clear from recent
Associated Press reports that many of them died in the early days of the Korean
War as their country was being ripped apart by a communist invasion and the
U.S. Army was thrown into disarray. An
official investigation into the incident, in which members of the U.S. Seventh
Cavalry Regiment are alleged to have gunned down hundreds of Korean refugees,
is forthcoming.
Piercing
questions will be asked, and from the gauzy memories of five decades ago some
answers will be given. Did the refugees
die from American bombs and bullets? If
so, were the deaths deliberate? If they
were, were they the result of battlefield realities that left them caught in
the middle? Were the American soldiers ordered
to keep refugees off the road and away from the bridge so that a retreating
Army could move South before it was annihilated? Were the refugees attempting to move, by day
or night, into the American perimeter?
Or were the American soldiers simply having a little target practice,
shooting off precious ammunition to see if they might kill a woman here and a
kid there as the world was falling down upon their heads? And another question of present day interest: Is some team of lawyers trying to squeeze
millions out of a long-ago tragedy of the sort that seems to always accompany
battles fought where other people live?
For all the
talk of civilian casualties in Vietnam, the war in Korea was far more
brutal. More than two million Korean
civilians perished during the three years of fighting, amounting to some 70% of
the overall death toll. The massive,
sudden invasion from the North flattened every major city, threw hundreds of
thousands of refugees onto the roads, and left little time for American and
South Korean forces to construct firm lines of defense. A retreat was under way in 100-degree heat as
the military sought to re-group far to the South, around the city of
Pusan. North Korean soldiers dressed in
the white robes of farmers frequently mixed among the refugee columns in order
to disrupt American and South Korean units.
The Army’s logistical lines were extended and often interrupted.
Hospital care
and even medivacs for the wounded were usually out of the question. Whole companies ceased to exist, and officer
casualties were particularly high. The
casualty figures provide the starkest evidence of the intensity and confusion
of that first month. In July 1950, the
U.S. Army lost 2,834 soldiers killed (including those who died while captured
or missing) versus 2,486 wounded, probably the highest killed-to-wounded ratio
since the Civil War. (Ratios by the end
of the war were one killed for every four wounded.)
We do know that
during this period American aircraft deliberately strafed columns of refugees
on the roads. We know also that the
soldiers at No Gun-ri were given orders that no refugees were to cross their
lines, and that they were to fire at those who attempted to do so, using "discretion
in the case of women and children." Such
orders, excised from the chaos that created their necessity, fall heavily on
the minds and consciences of those who have never been called upon to make the
Hobson’s choice of combat: "Do I protect
my men and lose my innocence? Or do I
keep my innocence and lose my men?" This
thin, unbreachable line separates those who went to war from those who stayed
behind. America is a lovely place to
have such debates as we sit in brightly lit offices next to our computers under
the whir of air conditioners and HEPA filters and sip on herbal tea or Snapple.
What is a war
crime? On whom shall we pass judgment as
we peer back through the mists of history?
Were civilians killed? Is that
enough for condemnation? What standard
shall we in our wisdom erect for those who had little hope of even seeing
tomorrow when the world turned suddenly ugly and they pressed their faces far
into the dirt while the mortars twirled overhead and the bullets kicked up dust
spots near their eyes?
So, test
yourself. Your men are dying. The lines are shrinking. You are running out of food and even
ammunition, trying to hold a position for a day or two as your army shrinks
ever nearer to Pusan. Civilians are
everywhere, thousands upon thousands of them.
They are starving and they are afraid, and some of them are in fact not
civilians. They clog the roads as the
trucks and jeeps stall in the heat, trying to wend past them. They want to go to Pusan, too. They want to sleep inside your
perimeter. They need your food. They dream of your protection. But the only true protection you can give
them is to defeat the invading enemy. If
you take even 10, you will be unable to care for your own people. And if you take 10, you will be besieged by
10,000. You have a mission to
perform. But they are desperate, and you
cannot speak their language. They are
going to swarm your perimeter.
When they come,
what do you do? Is deliberately killing
a civilian a war crime? It certainly
wasn’t when we fire-bombed Dresden and Tokyo, taking hundreds of thousands of
lives in the name of "breaking the enemy’s will to fight." Perhaps the greatest anomaly of recent times
is that death delivered by a bomb earns one an air medal, while when it comes
at the end of a gun it earns one a trip to jail.
And yet, most
importantly, we are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles that we
proudly carry to the battlefield. The
wanton use of force, and especially the deliberate killing of any soldier or
civilian who is under one’s actual control, is indeed a crime. This was the distinction in My Lai, for
despite the unassailable fact that most of the villagers killed in the massacre
were part of a highly organized Communist cadre, they were under the physical
control of the soldiers who killed them.
In other circumstances, had any of these same villagers ignored the
rigid protocols of war understood by both sides, such as moving near an
American perimeter at night, running from a combat patrol or signaling with
lamps after dark, they would have been killed with impunity. Every American who fought in such highly
contested civilian areas has his own memories.
Few of them are happy.
But wars in
populated areas cannot be fought without such rules. Those who struggled daily…and nightly…with
these incredible moral distinctions were rewarded upon their return from
Vietnam with the same vitriol that is now being directed at the soldiers who
fought at Nogun-ri. One hopes for a
greater sense of wisdom as the facts are assessed and judgments are made. Otherwise, the only lessons seem to be: Make sure you fight in a popular war. Make sure you use bombs instead of bullets. And make sure you win. – James Webb
As a former
combat Marine in the Korean War, my sincere hope is that the investigation of
the alleged incident at No Gun-ri is accomplished in a fair manner, which at
best will be difficult after all these years…and at worst it is being over-seen
by a Commander-in-Chief who has stated he "loathes" the military. So, it leaves one with dire concerns for now
old soldiers who very well may have HAD to kill civilians. – Corky Johnson
####