The Wall Street Journal Editorials
The Bridge at No Gun Ri
October 6, 1999
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 perimeters. 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 always to accompany battles fought where other
people live?
Far More Brutal
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 reconstruct firm lines of
defense. A retreat was underway in 100-degree heat as the military
sought to regroup far to the south, around the port 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 medevacs 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) vs., 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 air craft 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 a "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.
Protocols of War
And yet, most importantly, we are 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 can not 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 No Gun 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.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS