Category: Korean War

Making a Stand

In the winter of 1951 the American commanded United Nations’ forces in Korea found themselves in a continuous full scale retreat from the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) that had entered the Korean War in November 1950. Prior to the Chinese intervention into the war, the American commanders and troops expected the war to be over by Christmas 1950 after General Douglas MacArthur’s successful Inchon Landing Operation in September 1950 ultimately crushed the North Korean army and moved the war into the communist north to conduct mop up operations of the remainder of the North Korean military. However, the UN advance into North Korea would be short lived as 600,000 Chinese “volunteers” charged down the North Korean hillsides, inflicting heavy casualties, and putting the UN forces into full scale retreat. Once a retreat is started it is hard to stop especially when many of the soldiers retreating are draftees fighting in a “police action” they hardly understood and had been told just weeks prior that they would be home for Christmas.

It was going to take great leadership in order to stop the retreat and regain the fighting spirit of the United States military. The first sign of great leadership would come from newly installed Eighth United States Army commander General Matthew Ridgeway. Ridgeway was installed as the 8th Army commander after the death of former 8th Army commander General Walton Walker in a jeep accident in December 1950. Ridgeway served as a paratrooper during World War II; most notably as the division commander of the 82nd Airborne Division to include jumping into Normandy with his division during the D-Day Landings in 1944. Before coming to Korea Ridgeway was the commander of the Panama Canal Zone and was thus far removed from the happenings of Korea. Once in theatre Ridgeway quickly discovered how demoralized the American forces were and aggressively began to implement a no retreat policy. He in fact relieved his G3 operations officer when he drew up retreat contingency plans for the general to review. However, it is one thing to say no more retreat and quite another to get soldiers to implement and most importantly believe in this policy. The job to both implement and get soldiers to believe in this policy would fall to a man named Colonel Paul Freeman, at a place called Chipyong-ni.

COL Freeman was the commander of the 23rd US Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division (Yes the same 2ID of taxi cab related incident fame). The regiment had just come off a minor victory over Chinese troops at a place called Twin Tunnels three miles south of the village of Chipyong-ni. After the battle COL Freeman moved the regiment to the village that was located in a flat valley of rice paddies surrounded on all sides by steep hillsides. The regiment’s success at Twin Tunnels followed by their advance to Chipyong-ni had left the regiment ultimately at a tactical disadvantage because the friendly units to their east and west had retreated from the prior Chinese assault, leaving COL Freeman’s flanks exposed to Chinese attack. Once COL Freeman realized his tactical situation he radioed to the 2ID commander that he wanted to withdraw 15 south to secure his flanks with the remainder of the US forces. The 2ID commander approved his request along with the Corps commander, but once the request for COL Freeman’s withdrawal reached General Ridgeway he simply said said something to the equivalent of “F–k No!”

The village of Chipyong-ni was of strategic value to Ridgeway due to the fact it was a key road intersection for all vehicular movement in the area. If any future American offensive operation was to be launched Ridgeway needed to hold on to Chipyong-ni. Most importantly Ridgeway needed to set a tone. The 23rd INF’s earlier success at Twin Tunnels showed that the unit had fighting spirit and good leadership. Ridgeway needed someone to make a stand against the Chinese and show the rest of the US and UN forces that the Chinese were not the unbeatable adversary that most of the demoralized troops thought they were. He was counting on COL Freeman and the men of the 23rd INF to be ones to make that stand.

Next Posting: Preparing for Battle

This week is the 39th anniversary of the USS Pueblo Incident. The USS Pueblo is a US naval ship that was used to intercept signal intelligence from North Korea before it was attacked and captured by the North Koreans on January 23, 1968. This led to an embarrassing year for the United States as the North Koreans maximized the propaganda value of the US captives while gaining a treasure trove of valuable intelligence information from the captured ship. How could the Navy allow such a thing to happen? Was the crew at fault for allowing their ship to fall into enemy hands? To determine the answers to these questions it is important to take a good look at the complete history of the incident.

The USS Pueblo was an old commercial freighter that was converted in 1967 into a US Navy ship capable of gathering signal intelligence. Think of it as the US version of all the Russian fishing trawlers you hear about with antennas popping out all over the ship. After completing initial training on the US west coast in November 1967, the ship traveled to Japan in preparation for a future intelligence gathering mission. The USS Pueblo left the naval port at Sasebo, Japan on January 11, 1968 on it’s first intelligence gathering mission. The mission was to gather intelligence on Russian ships traveling through the Tsushima Straits and intercept electronic transmissions from North Korea.

The ship was under specific orders to not create an international incident and to stay out of North Korean territorial waters. However, an international incident had already occurred that didn’t involve the USS Pueblo when 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated across the Korean Demilitarized Zone to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee. The commandos were intercepted just outside the grounds of the Korean presidents home and all but one of the commandos was killed in a furious gun battle with South Korean soldiers January 21, 1968 in what became known as The Blue House Raid.

Tensions were running extremely high at the time that the USS Pueblo was drifting in international waters only 30 miles from the coast of North Korea. On January 22nd the Pueblo transmitted a situation report to Japan explaining that a North Korean sub chaser and two fishing trawlers had come near the Pueblo in the last two days. Despite the increased tensions and the fact that North Korean vessels were conducting reconnaissance of the Pueblo the US Navy leadership in Japan felt no need to inform the USS Pueblo of the assassination attempt and mounting tensions in the area or increase the ships security level. Throughout the mission the ships threat level was kept at minimum by the Navy. They did make sure to radio the latest NBA scores to the Pueblo though. As far as the crew of the USS Pueblo knew, it was business as usual on the fateful day of January 23, 1968.

Captain of the USS Pueblo Lieutenant Commander Lloyd Bucher

Just after lunch on the 23rd, three North Korean sub chasers were spotted approaching the Pueblo. The North Koreans signaled towards the Pueblo to identify themselves. The commander of the Pueblo, CPT Lloyd Bucher ordered his men to raise the American flag. After the flag was raised the North Koreans signaled that they were going to board the ship. CPT Bucher signaled back that the ship was in international waters. The North Koreans once again signaled that they were going to board the ship. At this time CPT Bucher ordered the crew to maneuver the ship away from the North Koreans. The North Koreans immediately tried to cut off the escape of the ship and opened fire on the Pueblo with their 57mm machine guns. Additionally two MIG-21s buzzed the Pueblo for added emphasis of how serious the North Koreans were. CPT Bucher ordered his crew to begin destroying all classified information and equipment and a distress call was radioed to Japan. Japan radio back that they acknowledged the distress call and that a rescue team would be mounted to assist them.

The North Koreans stopped firing and signaled towards the Pueblo to follow them. CPT Bucher thinking that a rescue team was enroute decided to comply, but only traveled at 1/3 speed in order to buy the ship more time for the rescue to come. However, no rescue was to come. It is important to remember that the United States was heavily involved in the Vietnam War at the time and the naval brass in Japan did not want to be the ones responsible for starting a second major war at the time that could have had disastrous consequences for the United States. They decided before they did anything they would have to get approval from the President of the United States. Before the US President even received word about what happened the USS Pueblo had already been captured.

While the naval brass were waiting for word from Washington the crew of the Pueblo continued to try and delay the North Koreans. However, the North Koreans again strafed the ship with machine gun fire and this time killed crew member Duane Hodges. CPT Bucher new the charade was over and allowed the North Koreans to board the ship. The North Koreans quickly tied up and beat the crew and then drove the ship towards the port city of Wonsan.

SR-71 footage of North Korean boats boarding the USS Pueblo

At Wonsan the 82 crew members of the Pueblo were taken off the ship and continued to receive brutal beatings from their guards as North Korean civilians cheered the capture of the Americans. The last time Americans had been at Wonsan was in 1950 when US Marines evacuated from the port after the Chinese military attacked the US military to aid their North Korean allies during the Korean War. The US Navy battleships had bombarded and destroyed the city before leaving. Wonsan was probably not the best location for an American to arrive in North Korea for the first time.

Here is how one of the captured crew members remembered the reception they received from the North Koreans at Wonsan:

Interspersed with their unintelligible cries, to us anyhow, cries were shouts of “Death to the American Bastards” and an occasional “Gotdam, Gotdam.” I guess this was from folks who had hung out with the occupation troops during the Korean War. (…) God, I felt like terrible. Why couldn’t I just die and be done with this bullshit. Jesus, who were these people? I was beginning to take this personal. They didn’t know me well enough to hate me that much. Welcome to the land of unreasoning hatred and racial discrimination.

Stu Russell US Pueblo Crew Member Recalling Arrival in Wonsan

Reading Stu’s words about his experiences in 1968, I think it is safe to say not much has changed in North Korea to this day. The prisoners were eventually taken by train from Wonsan to the capitol city of Pyongyang. While this was going on the US military was conducting a build up of forces around the Korean peninsula. In order to relieve the pressure the North Korean leadership needed confessions from the Pueblo’s crew. Once in Pyongyang the crew was severely beaten and threatened with execution by the North Koreans to confess to being in North Korean waters when they were captured. When a crew member brought up the Geneva Convention he was severely beaten and told they were spies and thus do not fall under the Geneva Convention, plus the North Koreans never signed the Geneva Convention anyway. Despite the beatings and threats the crew members did remarkably well to with stand the beatings as long as they did. Eventually the beatings became to much and the crew agreed to a press conference to “confess”. At the press conference the crew sarcastically admitted to their “crimes” and flipped the middle finger towards the camera, which totally destroyed any propaganda value the North Koreans hoped to get from the prisoners. The North Koreans were not aware of what the prisoners words and gestures really meant and were infuriated when they found out. The crew received more brutal beatings from the guards.

The prisoners were now of worthless propaganda value so the North Koreans eventually worked out a deal with US negotiators for the release of the crew in exchange for a signed letter from the US government apologizing for the incident. The US agreed and the 82 crew members and the body of Duane Hodges were handed back to the United States by crossing over the Bridge of No Return at the Joint Security Area on December 23, 1968; a full 11 months after their initial capture. Immediately after the crew were repatriated, the US retracted the apology they had given to North Korea.

USS Pueblo crew members eating lunch at the JSA after their release.

Upon returning to the United States an investigation was conducted by the navy and CPT Bucher was recommended for a court martial. The Secretary of the Navy rejected the recommendation for a court martial and allowed CPT Bucher to continue his naval career until retirement. However, the initial court martial charges had clearly labeled CPT Bucher as the scapegoat for the USS Pueblo Incident even though blame for this incident could be spread far and wide throughout the naval leadership in Japan.

So why was North Korea clearly trying to provoke an incident? Probably for a couple of reasons. First of all with the Vietnam War raging the North Koreans wanted to test the American commitment to defend South Korea. At this time the North Koreans held a military edge over the South Korean army and the survival of the nation was only guaranteed by the US military. The large US response showed the North Koreans that the US was still committed to the defense of South Korea. A second reason was that the North Korean leadership saw a chance to score domestic political points by appearing to stand up to the Americans with the capture of the USS Pueblo and the subsequent propaganda victories the North Korean leadership was able to show to their own people. It is interesting to think that these two reasons bare similarities to why the North Koreans conducted their nuclear test last year.

Some other reasons that have been speculated is that the Russians wanted the North Koreans to capture the Pueblo in order to capture US codes. I think the capture of any codes was of secondary concern to the North Koreans who were probably more interested in the strategic and domestic reasons I mentioned for the capture of the Pueblo. The Pueblo was just the beginning of a number of provocative attacks between 1968 and 1970 that the North Koreans launched to undermine the United States and South Korea. Shows of strengths by the US in response to these incidents is what was responsible for keeping the peace on the peninsula.

This view is confirmed by this message sent to the USS Pueblo Veterans site from a man working for 8th Army Intelligence:

I was Chief, Intelligence Branch, Military Intelligence Division, AC of S, G-2, Hqs, 8th US Army when the USS PUEBLO was seized on 23Jan68. A few days before the BLUE HOUSE RAID had occurred. Thus there were 2 major incidents… acts of war… in one week. We had intel repts from NK POLLITBURO that NK was going to start second war front when US troop levels reached 500K in Vietnam. I and Bruce K Grant coauthored a memo 5 days before BLUE HOUSE RAID and at least one week before PUEBLO was seized that was used to put UNC on higher alert status. The memo subject matter was elements of RECON BUREAU (NK assassination teams) were coming into SK. Hindsight is 20/20.

At the time I wanted to “backchannel” to J-2 down the hall. My supervisor wanted to go through channels with the memo. In the end, he said I was right and we should not have relied on official channels but walked the memo up the hall to J-2. The immediate response to the seizure was consideration of a tactical nuke airburst over WONSAN to deny access to the PUEBLO. I wrote an 8 point memo: 5 against, 3 for the airburst tact nuke. The memo went out under CINC, UNC signature unchanged. Then we began updating target lists and outlined the contingency plan for nuclear weapons use in the event NK miscalculated and did attack across the DMZ. Knowing what was at stake and NK not knowing and perhaps might miscalculate we leaked it to the CHICOM’s what was at stake: there would be a nuclear weapons response if NK came across the DMZ. Tet occurred shortly thereafter.

We also leaked that if any of the PUEBLO crew were executed or killed we would also use nukes as that would be an act of war even greater than the seizure of the PUEBLO. We truly thought at the time that coupled with the POLITUBURO report that a second front was about to open up. We were 30% TOE and the only way we could defend ourselves was with nukes. It was my understanding that the initial request and idea for airburst tact nuke came down the pipeline from President Johnson.

The threat of nuclear war is probably the only thing that kept these soldiers alive and prevented war. However, in the years after the Pueblo incident there have been many critics of CPT Bucher. They criticize his actions of giving up the boat without a fight, such as not using the .50 cal machine gun. Other criticize the fact that the ship didn’t have a robust plan to destroy all the classified information on the ship. Hindsight is always 20-20, but I really think CPT Bucher did the best he could in the circumstances he found himself in. He brought all, but one of his crew members home and their actions to destroy their own propaganda value to the North Koreans by flipping off the video cameras was down right heroic and these men should be remembered as heroes.

Today the Pueblo sits as museum on the Taedong River that runs through the North Korean capitol city of Pyongyang. Often tour groups are taken to the ship that serves as a great propaganda trophy for the North Koreans. Attempts to return the Pueblo to the United States have been made, but the latest response from the North Koreans is that the Pueblo will only be returned if a high ranking US official such as the Secretary of State visits North Korea. With the ongoing negotiations with North Korea over their nuclear weapons programs, I just have to wonder if the fate of the USS Pueblo is even mentioned in any negotiated settlements with Pyongyang? I believe the return of the Pueblo should be included in any negotiations conducted with North Korea. The men of the Pueblo were abandoned by the government in 1968, but by demanding the return of the Pueblo now would in effect show these brave men who gave 11 months of their lives for their country that their sacrifices are not forgotten. Unfortunately I think the sacrifices of these men are as forgotten now by our country’s leadership as they were in 1968.

UPDATE: I highly recommend everyone read my prior postings on this subject:

• Responding to the Bridge at No Gun Ri
• The Forensics of No Gun Ri
• Revisiting No Gun Ri
• Transcript of Briefing to Seoul Rotary Club
• The No Gun Ri Document Shell Game

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Original Posting:

The Media and No Gun-ri

Here is an article by Yonhap that chronicles a visit to Korea by a group of California college students who during their trip visited the site of the No Gun-ri Tragedy during the Korean War. Here is the background history provided in the article:

More than fifty years ago, the actions of a group of U.S. soldiers in this small village some 230 kilometers southeast of Seoul led to the deaths of hundreds of refugees, who were being escorted from their homes on the pretext of finding a safer hiding place. The troops later sprayed the refugees with bullets while they waited under the village’s cement bridge, with reports claiming hundreds died including scores more in subsequent air raids. The incident took place about a month after the outbreak of the Korean War when the country was in a state of extreme turmoil.

Yonhap of course is pushing the established mythology of the incident prevalent in not only the Korean media but also the US media. Yonhap provides no context in the report such as the fact that North Korean soldiers were often dressed as civilians and regularly ambushed US soldiers especially during the early phases of the war that this incident took place.

Read T.R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War and other prominent Korean War history books for multiple examples of soldiers being attacked by Korean “civilians.” Plus the situation at the time was extremely desperate. The small contingent of US forces on the peninsula were ill prepared for combat and in full retreat trying to delay the North Korean advance while reinforcements continued to arrive in Pusan. In fact the soldiers from H company 2-7 Cavalry Regiment involved in the shooting were in complete disarray at the point of the shooting. They were on the run in a total state of panic when they found themselves in No Gun-ri.

The time this incident took place was during one of the most critical points of the Korean War. If the US forces failed at this time this whole controversy would be null and void because North Korea would have conquered South Korea. A full context of the situation is appropriate before we just condemn these soldiers as heartless killers of civilians.

These soldiers at the time did kill civilians at No Gun-ri. Everyone seems to be agreement on this as the joint US-ROK report on the No Gun-ri incident concludes. The only difference between the US and Korean views is that the US officials believe that about 50+ civilians were killed while the Korean officials believe it to be upwards of 250 people. To determine the actual truth of what happened is extremely difficult as soldiers and civilians allegedly at the scene of the incident have been proven to be liars. The case of Edward Daily is the best example of this. He was the lead witness that started the entire controversy and he was proven rather easily to be a phony yet he was put on all the networks at the time to bash the US military over the incident:

Edward Daily, first mentioned as a principal source in a Pulitzer-Prize winning Associated Press story about the killings at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, has now told the AP he couldn’t have been there and probably learned details of the alleged incident from GIs who were present. In the original AP story Daily gave a chillingly graphic account of the incident at No Gun Ri – an incident in which he insisted he had participated, machine gunning hundreds of Korean civilians huddled under a railway underpass. The AP story, quoted him as saying: “On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.” He added: “The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group. Today,” Daily concluded, “we all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with everyone.”

Nobody bothered checking this guy’s background. A simple background check through the military archives could of found him to be a phony. Yet he was all over the news bashing the army:

As reported in NewsMax two weeks ago, NBC’s Dateline flew Daily to Korea to visit the No Gun Ri site. Daily told Tom Brokaw about receiving the order to fire on the refugees under the railroad trestle. “Just shoot them all,” Daily quoted the order. Brokaw: “You heard that order?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” Brokaw: “Kill them all?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” In February, the Washington Post Magazine put Daily’s picture on the cover and said he “was in charge of the lone machine-gun post” on one side of the railroad culvert. The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News all published stories citing Daily’s account of No Gun Ri.

How can a major network like NBC and Tom Brokaw along with major publishers make such a huge mistake as believing Daily and putting him on the air and on the cover of magazines like this? Simple background checks exposed this guy as a liar and Robert Bateman the author of the book No Gun Ri, actually informed Charles Hanley, the head AP reporter of the original AP article on No Gun-ri, about the unreliability of Daily and other veteran witnesses the AP quoted and Hanley even concurred that he had his doubts about them but made no attempts fix the article. Bateman was surprised at first but understood why the AP would not change their article when it won the Pulitzer Prize.

To NBC’s credit at least they later retracted their report on Daily, but the damage had already been done. Who knows how many people saw the original report and have taken it to be the truth about what happened at No Gun-ri, sliming not only the soldiers of the 7th Cav but all Korean War veterans. Why did the US media jump all over this story like this without doing extensive background checking? It is very similar to the CNN Tailwind scandal that the media jumped on and then CNN had to later retract. The story fit what many in the media wanted to believe, the military is evil.

If I ever had a chance to meet Mr. Hanley the first question I would ask him is why did it take a US Army major sitting behind a desk at West Point, in a matter of days, to uncover a number of inaccuracies and falsehoods in the original AP article? How can people who’s full time job is professional journalism with a multi-million dollar budget with the backing of the world’s largest news organization miss such obvious discrepancies in the article? Could it be because they were more interested in publishing a story line that was more gripping to readers thus the claims of breaking this story and fighting through this great US governmental cover up run by the low level USFK lawyer in Seoul? Could it be they had Pulitzer Prize in mind when they first began writing the article and thus discounted anything that countered their views on this story if it conflicted with winning the prize? Could it be that the remained blinded to all the information out there disputing their article because they so wanted to believe what they did publish due to their own personal aversion and suspicions of the US military?

This instant aversion to the military comes in part to the natural checks and balance of the media of the government and the military. However, many people currently in the US media are from the Vietnam generation and remain suspicious and unsupportive of the draft time military they once knew. They still equate the military with what they remember from Vietnam not realizing how different the all volunteer military of today is. That is why when the military is portrayed in popular culture cliches and stereotypes from Vietnam are used. Many in the US media never miss an opportunity to criticize the military and No Gun-ri was just another example of this.

The No Gun-ri issue was manipulated to fit many reporters’ personal views about the US military while also making the story more sexy to the general public by giving it the air of a government cover up and playing up the emotional story lines of the families affected by this great cover up. It worked because the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to them for investigative journalism even though much of their great investigation could be found in Chapter 12 of the official US Army history of the Korean War.

The Korean media on the other hand is a whole different beast. The objective for many people in the Korean media is pure and simple anti-Americanism. Feel free to comment if you disagree with me but how else do explain the misinformation about No Gun-ri, every little USFK incident turning into front page news, and the constant misinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA agreement. If you disagree with me about the disinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA Agreement you need to check out the USinKorea site that chronicles this issue in great detail.

A perfect example of this is Korea’s popular citizen news service, Oh My News, which published their own version of what happened at No Gun-ri. It is safe to say that this article of “journalism” or should I say docu-fiction tends to focus more on fantasy then the actual facts.

Take this passage here as the first example:

Once the story broke and grabbed headline attention, the victims began to step forward. The Seoul government was placed between a rock and a hard place. Continuing to muzzle the victims would strengthen the notion that the Seoul government was a mere puppet of Uncle Sam. After all, its main reason for suppressing the story was to please him.

What evidence does the author, a Mr. Young Kim offer that the Korean government was trying to suppress the story because of pressure from the US? He has no evidence. Also how is this considered journalism?

Sounds like propaganda to me, but wait there is more:

The massacre of innocent civilians by American troops was, of course, well-known among the victims and their relatives, but the Seoul government had for years labeled anyone mentioning the massacre “communists,” and brutally prosecuted them. Ironically, it took a fair-minded American journalist to disclose the massacre.

Once again he provides no evidence of his claims and then calls the AP reporters “fair minded” when the principle source of their reporting Edward Daily was uncovered as a liar by US News and World Report and the Stars and Stripes newspaper through simple background checks of Daily’s past these journalists uncovered that Daily wasn’t even a combat arms soldier, did not earn the awards he claimed to have won, and wasn’t even anywhere near No Gun-ri at the time of the incident. Daily wasn’t the only one. Other veterans that made key claims about No Gun-ri were later found to have not even been there.

Some how Kim failed to mention all this in his article. Then the claim that this was covered up for decades is absolutely false. As I have shown in my No Gun-ri series, articles from major US newspapers such as the New York Times documents the killing of civilians by US soldiers during the Korean War along with accounts of civilian killings in well known history books about the Korean War and even in the US Army’s official history of the war. This is not new news, but the story needs the air of a great government cover up to catch the readers attention.

I’m all open to fair criticism about the US, but the Korean media seems to rely more on mythology and stereotypes than facts. What bothers me so much about the No Gun-ri criticism in particular, by the Korean media, is that it is an effort to down play the significance of the US military in the Korean War because some people feel the US did not have noble intentions in defending Korea during the war and Koreans should not feel a debt of gratitude to the US for saving the country. Creating a stereotype of these veterans as war criminals is just another way to slowly degrade the Korean public’s image of America and the GIs who fought and died in Korea over 50 years ago.

What is further troubling is that many of these veterans from the war are passing away and cannot defend themselves as this new revisionist history is being created about them. It is a shame and no one seems to be speaking out against it. That is why I found it so important to educate and debate people about what happened at No Gun-ri and hopefully restore some honor to the Korean War veterans that have been tarnished by this tragedy by both the US and Korean media.

The main person trying to set the record straight about No Gun-ri has been Major Robert Bateman. However, these same journalists who cherish their freedom of speech have attempted to silence him. Mr. Hanley contacted Bateman’s boss at West Point and attempted to intimidate his boss into giving him a bad evaluation report. Then after that didn’t work, he then tried to intimidate the publishing company that decided to publish Bateman’s book into not publishing it. That didn’t work either.

The big question is, why is the world’s largest news organization so scared of Bateman that they are willing to go to these extremes to silence him? Could it be because Bateman’s criticisms clearly show that the AP’s Pulitzer Prize was undeserved? The AP makes money on their creditbility, any hint that they are not creditible is going to be jumped on with everything the AP has no matter if they are right or wrong. However, all their attempts to silence Bateman hasn’t worked because Bateman has been relying on facts to present his case. The AP can’t dispute the facts thus they try smear campaigns such as claiming anyone disputing the article is a No Gun-ri denier which isn’t the case. Nobody disputes whether their was a tragic loss of life at No Gun-ri. What is in dispute is the numbers of casualties and motivations behind what happened.

Another curious issue is that the AP relies on witness testimony to back their claims, that they refuse to release to the public. Bateman has been requesting for years for the AP to release the names and the complete transcripts of the witness testimony, but the AP has refused. Could it be that they fear if the testimony is released Bateman and others could find more holes in their testimony like they did with the GI witnesses? Until these questions are answered the AP’s Pulitzer Prize is always going to be viewed as the Barry Bonds homerun record of journalism; with a great, big asterick.

Sadly I believe the mythology of the Korean War preached by people from the AP and Oh My News’ Mr. Kim is what many Americans and Koreans now believe. That is the continuing tragedy of this incident. The advocacy journalism these reporters are using to push their anti-military or in the case of Mr. Kim, anti-USFK agendas is truly disturbing. I call this advocacy journalism because that is what Amazon.com has said the AP’s book is. These reporters are actively working to smear the honor of aged veterans who sacrificed their youth to save Korea from communism. If you don’t believe me that Mr. Kim is behind a anti-USFK propaganda campaign than I highly recommend that you read through his dubious Kimsoft site that I have debunked on a number of occasions.

Shouldn’t journalists have some kind of responsibility to verify facts before reporting a story? How can journalists be allowed to accuse people of war crimes when their claims couldn’t even stand up during a quick review by a US Army major sitting behind a desk at West Point, much less in a court of law? It is bad enough the Korean War is considered the Forgotten War in America, but now it is becoming the Revised War in an effort to smear the veterans and in turn Americans themselves.

Prior Posting: The Aftermath of No Gun-riÂ

The Aftermath of No Gun-ri

It should be clear by now for most fair minded people that the incident at No Gun-ri was not a planned execution of Korean civilians. It was what I call the “Perfect Storm” of a multitude of circumstances that ultimately led to killing of the South Korean civilians. First of all there was scared soldiers that had been retreating all night from what they percieved to have been enemy tanks. No one knew that the actual North Korean frontline was actually 15 miles down the road due to the chaos of that night plus the fact the regiment had been operating autonumously due to the piece meal deployment that left them without a division headquarters to relay intelligence information to them.

Secondly the unit had many poorly trained soldiers, who had never done any training above a company level much less training with handling refugees and uncoventional warfare due to the nature of their occupation duties and funding of the division.

Thirdly the 7th Cav was missing adequate leadership due to the few experienced NCO’s they did have being removed from the unit and given to the 24ID. Also the soldiers at the bridge were not in their typical unit structure due to being a hodgepodge of soldiers pulled from the road to form the defensive line which caused a situation where there was a lot of Indians and not enough Chiefs to relay orders. So an order is put out to shoot above the heads of the civilians and others down the line without the benefit of training and leader supervision also begin to fire.

The final factor that contributed to this was the fact that the refugees were there to begin with. 28 refugees from the village claim they were removed from the village of Imgae-ri by US soldiers. This claim is possibly true but unlikely as there was US units within three miles of the village at that time.

Here is a quote from the US Army Report I found noteworthy:

While the U.S. Review Team cannot rule out the possibility that the movement of the villagers occurred as described by the Korean witnesses, there was no sound military reason for soldiers to travel approximately three miles off their designated movement route to the village of Im Gae Ri during a hasty withdrawal for the purpose of encouraging an additional 400 refugees onto the already crowded roads and aggravating further the congested conditions. It is also unlikely that the soldiers would have performed this evacuation given the widespread knowledge and fear of North Korean infiltrators believed to be present in refugee concentrations.

Though it is unlikely because of the many valid reasons stated above in the report, but let’s assume the village was evacuated by US soldiers, they would be wrong to do so. The village should of been evacuated by the Korean National Police who would of then escorted the villagers out of the area. Maybe the soldiers didn’t get the message from higher on how to handle evacuating villages and refugees? They were in a chaotic, unorganized retreat and many of the radios had been lost and what leaders were left with radio contact had little ability to pass out orders with everyone spread out everywhere. The bottom line is that there is no conclusive proof to show that US soldiers evacuated the village, only witness testimony which researchers and critics are not allowed to see because the AP won’t release the witness details or transcripts. However, whatever happened at Imgae-ri that caused the villagers to leave was the final part of the perfect storm that put the villagers under the bridge that day in the line of sights of the hodgepodge of 7th Cav soldiers.

I think it is quite obvious by the evidence that these 7th Cav soldiers were not just sitting on a hill waiting for the next group of helpless refugees to shoot at because they were under orders to do so by some general who just didn’t want to deal with refugees anymore.

I also think that it is obvious that 400 people did not die on the bridge that day. I say a maximum of 50 people died that day. By looking at the bridge myself I estimate that if the bodies were hidden under the bridge possibly no more than 50 could be stacked and hidden from the aerial pictures. This is still a tremendous amount of civilian casualties that should not be discounted. The only way I can see 400 deaths is from a combined total of deaths of civilians in the area at the time and not just at the bridge. I would buy that 400 civilians died overall in that area between crossfire between the combatants, stafings, and artillery fire. This is highly possible and villagers are just assuming their relatives died at No Gun-ri.

However, why is 400 dead at the bridge brought up over and over again instead of 50 which the facts more heavily favor? 50 is still a horribly large loss of life. It is because 400 deaths are what Pulitzer Prizes are made of and $400 million in compensation money is awarded from, which remember was never mentioned in the AP article.

What is the motivation of the many veterans who lied about their involvement in this tragedy. Maybe some of these people were disgruntled at the military, wanted notariety, or maybe just simply with age do not remember the incident accurately. Money has also been found to be a motivator. However, the lies caught up with one veteran only looking for his payday:

Prosecutors successfully proved to the court that Daily had filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on shrapnel injuries he said he received while he was a Korean War veteran. He also claimed POW status. From February 1986 through the end of 2001, Daily received $324,911 in payments wired to his bank, and $87,928 in medical care for service-related disabilities. The war veteran?s fraudulent claims were discovered following a Stars and Stripes investigation of the Associated Press story about Nogun-ri. Investigators with U.S. News also found discrepancies in the testimonies of witnesses named in the Associated Press story. Declassified Army war diaries and other declassified documents showed that Edward Lee Daily was not a member of a 7th Cavalry Regiment line company. Instead, he was a mechanic with the Army?s 27th Ordnance Maintenance Company. Daily?s claim to be a 1st Lieutenant in the Army was also false, according to his own admission in court.

On September 13, 2002, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger pronounced sentence against Daily. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Daily was sentenced in federal court to 21 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. In addition, Daily must repay the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs $412,839?money which he illegally obtained from the government by wire fraud.

I realize that even with the evidence I have displayed some people will never except the possibility that these soldiers were part of what I term a “Perfect Storm” of circumstances that combined to create this tragedy. Some people will continue to maintain these soldiers are racist war criminals and were under orders to kill all refugees and whatever else the current mythology preaches. Some will claim that these guys are war criminals because if they had been there that day they wouldn’t have fired. That is an extremely bold statement coming from someone sitting at home. Getting shot at in a war brings a new perspective to things you cannot even understand unless you are there. Watching Saving Private Ryan doesn’t mean you understand soldiers and the nature of warfare.

Many will also continue to demand compensation for what happened an No Gun-ri. Isn’t the loss of 54,229 (this number includes combat and accidental deaths) American lives, 103,248 wounded, 8,142 MIAs, 3,746 POWs, over 50 years of national security provided by USFK, as well as over 50 years of economic development made possible by the US-ROK alliance enough compensation to Korea? There is nothing more valuable to a country than their youth, and America gave the lives of over 54,000 of their youths plus the ten of thousands of more wounded to give a country no one even heard of before a chance at a better life free from communism. I just hope that fair minded people will give Korean War veterans a chance to restore the honor they have lost by the unfair reporting and sensationalism of this tragedy.

Prior Posting:  What Happened at No Gun-ri?

Next Posting: The Media and No Gun-ri
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I hope I have been able to better educate people that may not know much about the incident to look more into it and to draw their own conclusions because I am quite confident in what I think happened that tragic day in July, 1950. So what do you think? Feel free to place your comments.

Here are some books and links I highly recommend if you have further interest in this topic.

This Kind of War, T.R. Fehrenbach

No Gun Ri, Robert Bateman

The Bridge at No Gun Ri, AP reporters

South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, Roy Appleman

Official US Army Report on No Gun Ri

Korean War Educator

This posting is now out of date.  Please read the updated posting here.  Thanks.
Prior Posting: Who Were the Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry?

Next Posting: The Aftermath of No Gun-ri

Who Were the Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry?

The tragedy at No Gun-ri has been a point of much debate since the publishing of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning article from the Associated Press that suggests that the soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry are heartless killers of helpless Korean civilians while acting on the orders of even greater heartless leaders from above. I believe before condemning soldiers especially those who didn’t even volunteer to go to war, but were conscripted as heartless war criminals it is important to understand the context of the situation that these men were put into. The original AP article dismisses these men as “poorly trained and ill equipped”, I hope to show through closer analysis why these men were ill trained and poorly equipped and how this was one of the factors that led to what I call the “perfect storm” of events that ultimately ended with the tragedy at No Gun-ri.

Before the outbreak of the Korean War the soldiers involved in the tragedy at No Gun-ri, soldiers from H Company, 2 Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment which were part of the 1st Cavalry Divison. They were stationed in Japan conducting peacekeeping operations in the aftermath of World War II. Due to budgetary reasons most of the resources for training soldiers at the combined arms level were diverted to Europe because of the looming Soviet threat there. No one ever envisioned a war in Korea. This lack of vision would become one of many factors that led to the tragedy at No Gun-ri.

The soldiers of the 7th Cavalry did not train at anything above the company level and spent much of their time conducting occupation related duties, not to mention hanging out at the local clubs at all hours of the night. Plus the units were all short of personnel especially noncommissioned officers (NCOs) to keep the Army divisions in Europe fully manned against the more immediate Soviet threat there. The 7th Cavalry was full of young, patriotic, soldiers who grew up on John Wayne movies and were eager to serve their country. However the majority of these young soldiers were not old enough to have served during World War II and lacked combat experience.

There were a few NCOs and officers in the unit that did have combat experience. However, when the war in Korea did break out the experienced NCOs from the 7th Cavalry were pulled to fill units from the 24th Infantry Division that were the first division in Japan to deploy to Korea to delay the North Korean advance that included units such as Task Force Smith.

I have always found this statement from T.R. Fehrenbach (pg102) to best describe the state of the US military leading up the Korean War:

..the abiding weakness of free peoples is that their governments cannot or will not make them prepare or sacrifice before they are aroused.

The military had been under funded for years after World War II and the politicians were unwilling to raise the amount of money necessary to ensure the military was properly trained and equipped. Additionally the initial sanatizing of the war by the government as a “Police Action” did not arouse the citizens of the United States enough to be committed to a full scale war. This failure at the governmental level all had a part to play with the tragedy at No Gun-ri.

From Pohang to No Gun-ri

Once it came time for the 1st Cavalry Division to deploy to Korea, it was deployed in piece meal and not as a complete division due to the nature of limited ports in Korea and the division being spread out all over Japan due to occupation duties. So when the 2-7 Cav’s transport from Japan arrived in Korea on July 22, 1950 they were acting semi-autonomous from the division command structure they were used to, plus they were about to undertake operations they had never trained for because they had never done any training above the company level and were about to undertake operations in a major theater war that featured many uncontemporary operating environment problems, such as security in the rear areas and a massive refugee crisis no one had any prior experience or training to deal with. Refugees was almost a totally new concept because the US military had little experience dealing with a mass refugee crisis during World War II. In Korea the US forces were faced with a refugee crisis of epic proportions that no one expected.

To deal with the refugee crisis the soldiers on the ground were literally making up doctrine as they went through trial and error. To make matters worse they were short NCO’s across the regiment that enforce standards. It was so bad that there was some Private First Classes serving as Platoon Sergeants. The officer ranks weren’t much better as the battalion only had one officer with combat experience at the time and that was the commander of G company, 2-7 Cav, CPT Henry West. This lack of inexperience and training would all have a part to play in the tragedy that would occur four days later.

Almost from the moment the 7th Cavalry regiment unloaded their boats and moved out of Pohang to fight the North Koreans the stragglers of soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division who had been defeated by the North Koreans, and who were retreating South told tales of how the North Koreans were dressing up as civilians to enter the rear areas of the American units to the 7th Cav soldiers.

Here is this report from Robert Bateman’s book, No Gun-ri, that chronicles this fear:

… a civilian woman who appeared pregnant and her male companion who were attempting to pass through American lines. At an American checkpoint there were stopped and searched along with other civilians in the group. At that point the searchers discovered that the pregnancy was not real , and that the bulge covered by the woman’s clothing was actually a two way tactical radio. The woman immediately confessed that she was North Korean and was sent to observe and report American positions and to call for artillery fire on them.

Then reports of American GI’s in the rear found with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head began to circulate among the soldiers as well. Long before the 7th Cav had ever reached their defensive positions near Hwanggan there had been plenty of warning about the dangers of letting refugees through the front lines. This was something that was in the back of all the soldiers minds more than the North Korean Army they had yet to face.

The night of 25-26 July, 1950 these inexperienced soldiers would have their first experience with what was then known as the “bug out” syndrome that happened to US soldiers in the early days of the Korean War. At about 0200 that night one of the last elements of the 24ID that was lost and unaccounted for finally found the proper road to retreat south on. This unit included a company of tanks. The road they moved south on went right through the 7th Cav’s defensive lines.

It was dark, their was no night vision devices back then, no communications with anyone in the 24ID, lack of combat experience, and just plain fear that caused the soldier of the 7th Cavalry to open up fire on the American unit. The 24ID unit just simply drove through the hail of gun fire and continued their retreat south not really knowing who was firing on them. Fortunately no one from the unit was killed.

Many soldiers of the 7th Cavalry thought that the retreating company of tanks was in fact a North Korean armored column moving through their lines and opened fire. Experienced NCO’s could of detected the sound of the tanks as American tanks and not North Korean tanks, but remember all the experienced NCO’s from the division got pulled in Japan weeks prior, to serve with the 24ID, leaving the 7th Cavalry with no experienced NCO’s. Remember there was Private First Classes serving as Platoon Sergeants. The now, even more frightful soldiers, were thinking that the North Koreans were in their rear waiting to kill them and many soldiers just simply “bugged out” after the tanks passed and left their fighting positions and retreated. Nobody in the infantry likes to have tanks in front of them much less behind them as well.

CPT Melbourne Chandler the commander of H/2-7CAV was able to consolidate some of his retreating troops and other stragglers of the 7th Cavalry in the predawn darkness to form a defensive line with this hodgepodge of troops. The defensive perimeter was set up on a small hill overlooking a bridge near a place called No Gun-ri.

Next Posting: What Happened at No Gun-ri?

I have been working on transferring over comments from the old GI Korea Tripod site to my current WordPress site this week when I noticed this comment that had been posted on the old site. The comment was from someone claiming to be Charles Hanley, one of the Associated Press reporters who published the highly flawed No Gun-ri article that won the Pulitzer Prize.  Here is what he had to say:

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Since your blog seems to have an interest in No Gun Ri, perhaps you’d like to see something reality-based (and based on actual professional news reporting). Here it is, published several months ago…

BC-No Gun Ri-Letter

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Ambassador’s 1950 letter says U.S. set policy of shooting refugees

Eds: A multimedia interactive is available in the nogunri folder and a document slugged nongunri.pdf will be available in the _documents folder on Monday.

AP Photos of May 25: NY517-519

AP Graphic NO GUN RI BRIDGE

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and MARTHA MENDOZA

Associated Press Writers

More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war’s chaotic early days has come to light _ a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter _ dated the day of the Army’s mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 _ is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

“If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot,” wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. American soldiers’ estimates ranged from under 100 to “hundreds” dead; Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles southeast of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by The Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded that the No Gun Ri shootings, which lasted three days, were “an unfortunate tragedy” _ “not a deliberate killing.” It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed enemy troops.

But Muccio’s letter indicates the actions of the 7th Cavalry were consistent with policy, adopted because of concern that North Koreans would infiltrate via refugee columns. And in subsequent months, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, documents show.

The Muccio letter, declassified in 1982, is discussed in a new book by American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, who discovered the document at the U.S. National Archives, where the AP also has obtained a copy.

Conway-Lanz, a former Harvard historian and now an archivist of the National Archives’ Nixon collection, was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Award of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for the article on which the book is based.

“With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report’s interpretation (of No Gun Ri) becomes difficult to sustain,” Conway-Lanz argues in his book, “Collateral Damage,” published this spring by Routledge.

The Army report’s own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the Muccio letter. But the 300-page report did not mention it.

Asked about this, Pentagon spokeswoman Betsy Weiner would say only that the Army inspector general’s report was “an accurate and objective portrayal of the available facts based on 13 months of work.”

Said Louis Caldera, who was Army secretary in 2001 and is now University of New Mexico president, “Millions of pages of files were reviewed and it is certainly possible they may have simply missed it.”

Ex-journalist and Korean War veteran Don Oberdorfer, a historian of Korea who served on a team of outside experts who reviewed the investigation, said he did not recall seeing the Muccio message. “I don’t know why, since the military claimed to have combed all records from any source.”

Muccio noted in his 1950 letter that U.S. commanders feared disguised North Korean soldiers were infiltrating American lines via refugee columns.

As a result, those meeting on the night of July 25, 1950 _ top staff officers of the U.S. 8th Army, Muccio’s representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials _ decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward U.S. defense lines, and of shooting them if they did approach U.S. lines despite warning shots, the ambassador wrote to Rusk.

Rusk, Muccio and Noble, who was embassy first secretary, are all dead. It is not known what action, if any, Rusk and others in Washington may have taken as a result of the letter.

Muccio told Rusk, who later served as U.S. secretary of state during the Vietnam War, that he was writing him “in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States” from such deadly U.S. tactics.

But the No Gun Ri killings _ as well as others in the ensuing months _ remained hidden from history until the AP report of 1999, in which ex-soldiers who were at No Gun Ri corroborated the Korean survivors’ accounts.

Survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment. Troops of the 7th Cavalry followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter under a railroad bridge.

The late Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said he remembered the order radioed across the warfront on the morning of July 26 to stop refugees from crossing battle lines. “What do you do when you’re told nobody comes through?” he said in a 1998 interview. “We had to shoot them to hold them back.”

Other soldier witnesses attested to radioed orders to open fire at No Gun Ri.

Since that episode was confirmed in 1999, South Koreans have lodged complaints with the Seoul government about more than 60 other alleged large-scale killings of refugees by the U.S. military in the 1950-53 war.

The Army report of 2001 acknowledged investigators learned of other, unspecified civilian killings, but said these would not be investigated.

Meanwhile, AP research uncovered at least 19 declassified U.S. military documents showing commanders ordered or authorized such killings in 1950-51.

The Army’s denial that the killings were ordered is a “deception of No Gun Ri victims and of U.S. citizens who value human rights,” Chung Koo-do, spokesman for the victims’ committee, told the AP in South Korea. He called the 2001 finding a “nasty” shifting of blame to rank-and-file soldiers, and called on President Bush to reopen the case.

Even if infiltrators are present, soldiers need to take “due precautions” to protect civilian lives, said Francois Bugnion, director for international law for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, global authority on the laws of war.

After reviewing the 1950 letter, Bugnion said the standard on war crimes is clear.

“In the case of a deliberate attack directed against civilians identified as such, then this would amount to a violation of the law of armed conflict,” he said.

Gary Solis, a West Point expert on war crimes, said the policy described by Muccio clearly “deviates from typical wartime procedures. It’s an obvious violation of the bedrock core principle of the law of armed conflict _ distinction.”

Solis said soldiers always have the right to defend themselves. But “noncombatants are not to be purposely targeted.”

But William Eckhardt, lead Army prosecutor in the My Lai atrocities case in Vietnam, sensed “angst, great angst” in the letter because officials worried about what might happen. “If a mob doesn’t stop when they’re coming at you, you fire over their heads and if they still don’t stop you fire at them. Standard procedure,” he said.

In South Korea, Yi Mahn-yol, head of the National Institute of Korean History and a member of a government panel on No Gun Ri, said the Muccio letter sheds an entirely new light on a case that “so far has been presented as an accidental incident that didn’t involve the command system.”

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AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft in New York and AP Writer Jae-soon Chang in Seoul contributed to this report.

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In response to the AP Article and the AP’s corresponding book, a US Army Major, Robert Bateman was able to find a number of inaccuracies in the AP’s reporting and wrote his own book that clearly shows the inaccuracies in their reporting and uncovered witnesses that were not at No Gun-ri that the AP quoted in their reporting. Based on reading both books and reading endless amounts of articles and material about No Gun-ri I created my own series of posts about what happened.

Judging from Mr. Hanley’s comment he doesn’t seem to like me challenging his findings and appears to think Bateman’s research should be discounted because he is not a professional journalist. He links to his own AP article from May of 2006 as evidence that his views on what happened at No Gun-ri are validated. I had a good debate with Haisan over at the Marmot’s Hole over Handley’s article earlier this year that covered a lot of what I believe about what happened at No Gun-ri, but I’m going to put my thoughts together in a updated series posting for everyone to read over the coming days. I hope this will spark some debate about the actual historical evidence of what happened at No Gun-ri compared to the mythology advocated by many in the media.

Canada’s Contributions to the Korean War

The United States has a long history of sharing the sacrifices of war with our northern neighbor of Canada and the Korean War was no different. With the outbreak of the Korean War the Canadian government did not immediately deploy troops to fight in the Korean War. The far east had never served any strategic national interest for Canada, especially a small, very poor country like Korea, which very few people had ever heard of before. Plus even if the Canadian government wanted to deploy soldiers to Korea, they simply did not have the manpower to do so. The Canadian military was not large enough for a deployment and maintain troop strength at home as well. After World War II, Canada had drastically reduced it’s military to a peace time size that was only interested in home land defense. With the United States as their southern neighbor and only Native American tribes as their northern frontier it didn’t take a very large military to compose a home land defense force.

As the fighting in Korea escalated and the United Nations put out a call to arms from it’s members to defend Korea, the Canadian government began to seek volunteers for what they called the Canadian Army Special Force (CASF) and was to be commanded by Brigadier General J.M. Rockingham. The CASF was to be composed of a full combat brigade of soldiers and it was going to take a few months to raise and train that many soldiers to fight in Korea. While the force was being formed the Canadian government had cargo planes from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) begin transport duty for the UN forces between Ft. Lewis, Washington State and Haneda Airfield in Japan. Ft. Lewis was the major dispatch point of troops and supplies to fight in Korea. The RCAF contributed a total of 22 planes to help transport the needed supplies into the combat theatre. Additionally the Canadian government dispatched three naval destroyers to Korea. The destroyers arrived in July 1950 and would later serve during the September 1950 Inchon Landing Operation.

After General Douglas MacArthur’s successful Inchon Landing Operation it appeared that the Korean War was winding down and that full combat brigade of soldiers was not needed. So instead of deploying an entire brigade it was decided that only one infantry battalion would be deployed to Korea. That battalion would be the second battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) regiment commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J.R. Stone.

PPCLI’s Deployment to Korea

The second battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment sailed from the port of Seattle to Korea on November 26, 1950 and didn’t arrive into the port of Yokohama, Japan until December 20, 1950. However, by the time the ship arrived in Japan the course of the war had changed dramatically. The Chinese military had entered the war and the UN forces were in full retreat from the Chinese onslaught. The Canadians had expected to take part in mop up and peacekeeping duty when they left Seattle, but by the time they reached Japan they discovered they were going to fight in a bloody, full scale war. The battalion was quickly rushed to the Korean peninsula and their first base camp would be in the city of Miryang near Daegu. Here the battalion would conduct training to prepare them for combat conditions in Korea. However, the battalion quickly found themselves in combat against South Korean communist guerrilla forces located in the southern mountains of Korea. After completing it’s actions against the guerrillas the PPCLI was assigned to the British led 27th Commonwealth Brigade which also included units from Australia and New Zealand plus one company of American tanks from Alpha Company 72nd Armor Regiment.

The PPCLI joined the 27th Brigade in mid-February and the Canadians saw their first combat action of the Korean War in late February during the UN offensive to the 38th parallel following the Chinese defeat at Chipyong-ni by the US 23 Infantry Regiment and their attached French Battalion. It was during this advance that the Canadians also received their first combat casualties of the Korean War. In April of 1951 the 27th Brigade was assigned to move south and construct blocking positions in the hills of Myeongjisan mountain just north of the city of Kapyong. The Chinese had launched their Spring Offensive of 1951 to recapture Seoul and the Kapyong valley was one of three high speed avenues of approach to capture Seoul. The other two were the Uijongbu and Munsan corridors. The Chinese had decided that the Kapyong Valley would be where they would concentrate their attack to recapture the Korean capitol. The Chinese command figured that if they recaptured Seoul they could negotiate a ceasefire from a position of strength since they controlled the South Korean capitol.

First Contact

The Chinese main effort during much of the Korean War focused on attacking South Korean frontline units first and then attacking American and UN units from the flanks after crushing the South Koreans. The Battle Kapyong would be no different. On the night of April 22, 1951 the Chinese 60th and 118th Division attacked the ROK 6th Division near the Hwacheon Reservoir just North of the Kapyong valley. The ROK 6th Division folded almost immediately into a full scale retreat back down the valley towards the 27th Regiment. The first column of ROK Army vehicles, equipment, and men flooded the 27th’s line before they had even been able to construct adequate fighting positions. What little obstacles and most importantly the communications wire the 27th had been able to put up were tore down as the South Koreans stormed South down the valley. As the South Koreans passed the 27th lines the retreat was able to be halted 5 miles south of Kapyong. The ROK 6th Division commander reported the next day that he was able to round up and organize 5,000 of his men or about 50% of his combat power from the day before.

After the two Chinese divisions had routed the ROK 6th Division, the CCF 118th Division was chosen to continue the attack down the Kapyong valley to finish off the ROK division. On the night of the April 23, 1951 the lead elements of the CCF 118th had hit the frontlines of the 27th Commonwealth Brigade, which the Chinese commanders had not even realized were there. Thus the 27th though greatly out manned by about 3 to 1 by the Chinese had one advantage and that was surprise, which would help them fend off the Chinese attack.

The Battle of Kapyong

The first Chinese units moved quickly down the valley floor in pursuit of the retreating ROK units and smashed into Australian positions on each side of the valley augmented with the American tanks from Alpha Company 72nd Armor Regiment. The initial contact was chaotic because the Aussies and the Americans at first thought the soldiers coming down the valley were more retreating South Koreans. The fighting that erupted was ferocious, but the Australians and their American allies continued to hold on despite the huge disadvantage of limited obstacles and having no artillery support. The Australians could not communicate with their supporting New Zealand artillery battalion because of the retreating South Koreans ripping out the communications lines. Quickly the Australians were surrounded and the New Zealand artillery had to withdraw from their positions South of the Australians once they came into contact with the enemy. The New Zealand artillery withdrew further south down the valley and set up an artillery support position behind the British Middlesex Regiment.

The Australians requested reinforcements from the British, but the British company sent forward to reinforce the Australians took fire from the Chinese not to far North of the Middlesex Regimental lines and instead of fighting through the fire to aid the Australians the company took up defensive positions on the hillside. Seeing that no help was coming the Australian commander ordered his men and the supporting American tanks to conduct a tactical withdrawal south towards the Middlesex Regimental lines. As the Australians moved southward other supporting elements located behind the Australian lines confused the tactical fighting withdrawal southward as a full scale retreat and began running down the valley leaving their equipment behind. Their was a growing sense of impending disaster as panic mounted. As the Australians moved southward this caused the Chinese to come into increasing contact with the men of the Canadian Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry on Hill 677 commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J.R. Stone.

LTC Stone seeing the increasing amounts of Chinese soldiers trying to encircle his unit decided to move Bravo company which was located near the valley floor and the only road access into the area further up the hillside to protect the battalion’s rear. LTC Stone had turned Hill 677 into a virtual Canadian island surrounded by a sea of Chinese soldiers. Throughout the remaining daylight of April 24th and into the night the Chinese continued to attack the Canadian positions with no success. The commanders of the Chinese units attacking the Canadian lines requested additional manpower to over run the Canadians. Additional Chinese troops that had been pursuing the Australians along the eastern hillsides of the valley came off the hills and began to wade across the Kapyong River to launch an overwhelming assault on the PPCLI’s Eastern flank. LTC Stone seeing the masses of Chinese soldiers fording the Kapyong River in the moonlight called in an artillery strike. Due to their position the Canadian’s communications lines had not been snapped by the retreating South Koreans. The New Zealand artillery pounded the advancing Chinese soldiers that were exposed in the open river valley. The Chinese soldiers that survived the artillery barrage advanced up the eastern hillside where they were met with overwhelming Canadian machine gun fire.

While the Chinese were launching their attack on the East another large Chinese force pressed their attack on the PPCLI’s Western flank by infiltrating along a high saddle that connected to the ridge line that PPCLI’s Delta Company occupied. Unlike the eastern attack, the Chinese forces in the west were attacking from only a slightly lower elevation than the Canadians and had not been degraded by artillery fire before launching their attack. Hundreds of Chinese soldiers poured into the Canadian defensive lines. The fighting became so desperate that the Delta Company commander called in New Zealand artillery fire on his own position. Artillery rained down on the Canadian position. The artillery fire suppressed the Chinese attackers enough for the Canadians to reestablish their defensive lines and begin directing artillery fire on the advancing Chinese units outside of the Canadian lines.

That night, the mighty Chinese Army that had caused an entire 10,000 man ROK Army division to retreat a day prior, had given their best effort to destroy one Canadian battalion and the Canadians did not budge. The heroic defense of Hill 677 allowed the withdrawing Australians and the American tank company to reorganize and rearm behind the Middlesex Regimental lines. At dawn on April 25, 1951 an Australian counterattack led by the American tanks slammed into the eastern flank of the Chinese forces. As the battle continued to rage the surrounded Canadian commander LTC Stone radioed in a resupply request since his men were running short of supplies and ammunition. In an amazing feat of logistical brilliance six hours later an American resupply plane from Japan flew over the Canadian lines and air dropped in fresh stocks of supplies and most importantly ammunition.

The newly resupplied Canadians combined with the Australian and American counterattack was too much for the Chinese to overcome. Their defeat at Kapyong combined with their additional defeat by the British and American units during the Battle of the Imjim led to overall failure of the Chinese Spring Offensive of 1951 to capture Seoul. If it wasn’t for the leadership of LTC J.R. Stone and his brave men from Canada holding Hill 677 the Chinese may have captured Seoul and that would have possibly led to an embarrassing cease fire where the North Korean communists controlled the South Korean capitol.  The modern existence of the Republic of Korea would not have been possible without their current capitol city of Seoul. The Canadians had 10 soldiers killed in action and 23 wounded after the battle, while over an estimated thousand Chinese corpses littered the hillsides from the combined Canadian, Australian, and American defenders. For their actions during the Battle of Kapyong the second battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment including their attached American tank company were awarded the prestigious US Presidential Unit Citation.

Birth of the Commonwealth Division and the Holding of the Imjim River Line

After the Battle of Kapyong the remainder of the Canadian forces had arrived in Korea after completing their initial training at Ft. Lewis, Washington. They were at first assigned to the US 25th Infantry Division and participated in a number of battles to shore up the UN frontline positions just North of the 38th parallel. By August of 1951 the entire Canadian brigade was consolidated into the newly formed British Commonwealth Division. The British Commonwealth Division was assigned the task of holding and patrolling the lower Imjim River as cease fire negotiations dragged on for two more years. During this time the Chinese had challenged the Commonwealth Division a number of times, but just like during the Spring Offensive of 1951 the Commonwealth forces held their ground until the cease fire was signed. Today the strategic, sliver of land on the North side of the lower Imjim River held by the Republic of Korea that borders the DMZ was only made possible by the blood, sweat, and tears of the brave men of the Commonwealth Division.

In total 26,791 Canadian soldiers participated in the Korean War. Of those soldiers 1,558 soldiers were wounded and 516 Canadians were killed fighting for the freedom of the Korean people.

Note: You can read more of the ROK Drop featured series Heroes of the Korean War at the below link:

US soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines have been spending Christmas in Korea for over 50 years.  This year is no different, but no Christmas in Korea was as desperate as during the Korean War.  However, even during the dark days of the Korean War US military personnel still found ways to celebrate Christmas:

Men of Co "B", 4th Signal Bn, X US Corps, prepare to decorate the Christmas tree at Bn HQ. Korea. 11 December 1951.

This Christmas remember not only the brave US military personnel of the Korean War, but also all the US military personnel away from home this Christmas.  I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays.

France’s Impact on the Korean War

After the North Koreans invaded South Korea in June of 1950 an emergency session of the United Nations was convened to gather military support for the Republic of Korea. 16 countries from the United Nations offered military aid that fell under United States command. The total international force of all 16 countries combined only equaled one tenth of the US military’s contribution to the defense of Korea with many of the international soldiers being rear echelon types. So the actual amount of combat soldiers was much lower.

However, countries that did offer combat soldiers usually sent their best. England, Australia, New Zeland, and Canada all sent units that went on to fight heroically in great battles such as The Battle of Kapyong and The Battle of the Imjim. Sword wielding Turkish and Thai soldiers were also highly respected for their combat skills. However, out of all the international soldiers sent to fight in the Korean War, one battalion to me sticks out more than all the others. This is due partly to their combat record and also to the reputation and personality of their commander. That unit is the French Battalion de Coree under the command of the then Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Monclar.

The French Battalion consisted of 39 officers, 172 non-commissioned officers and more than 800 enlisted personnel, the battalion arrived at Pusan on November 30, 1950. During the war 3,421 French soldiers would fight in Korea.

One battalion of soldiers may seem like a small contribution from a country as large and wealthy as France, but you need to look at the historical context of those times. France was deeply involved in heavy combat in Indochine against communists insurgents there, then they had a insurgency in Algeria to combat, plus military commitments to secure their colonies in Africa. Obviously France was spread very thin and could only afford the one battalion. However, the one battalion they did send was an all volunteer battalion composed of some of their top soldiers led by France’s best commander Ralph Monclar.

Legendary French Foreign Legionaire Ralph Monclar

Now why would their best soldiers volunteer to go fight in Korea? First of all, many French soldiers were still embarrassed by the performance of the French military during World War II. This was an opportunity on an international stage to show that World War II was just a fluke and that the French were back. You had others that simply hated communists. Some fought simply for the glory, others were in it for the money since the battalion’s volunteers were payed quite well. Then you had some that volunteered because they had already been to the hot steamy jungles of Indochine and the cold winters of France and figured that Korea would be a nice year around temperate Mediterranean climate since the 38th parrallel runs through the Mediterranean Sea. How wrong those guys were.

The commander of the battalion, Raoul Charles Magrin-Vernerey, who in World War II shortened his name to Ralph Monclar to be more understandable to Allied forces, was actually a 3 star general before the war and voluntarily took a demotion to Lieutenant Colonel to lead the battalion. He was a veteran of World War I where he was wounded seven times and received eleven awards for valor. After World War I, he was left 90% disabled from his wounds. He was sent to Syria to heal and up and lead soldiers there. By 1924 he was fully recovered and was selected for the French Foreign Legion and led soldiers in Morrocco, the Middle East, and Vietnam. During World War II Monclar and 500 French soldiers joined the Free French forces in England. They went on and fought and defeated the Italian Axis forces in Eritrea. He was on the verge of retirement in 1950 when he volunteered to lead the French battalion in Korea.

Here is how one infantry company commander CPT Ansil Walker, remembered LTC Monclar:

The French soldiers were volunteers from Legion garrisons in Africa and other parts of the world. Their leader was a battle-scarred veteran of the Legion who led them in battle wearing his monocle, a beret, a bright red scarf–and using a cane to compensate for his limp. Sixty-year-old Raoul Monclar, as he called himself, had given up his three-star general’s rank and his true name of Magrin-Venery and had reverted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, since general was too high a rank for a battalion commander. Now, with a nom de guerre and the proper rank to lead a volunteer battalion in combat under the U.N. flag, he and his 1,000-man force had become Colonel Freeman’s “Fourth Battalion.” “This is my finest hour,” Monclar declared.

During the Korean War the French battalion was task organized under the 23rd Infantry Regiment which fell under the US 2nd Infantry Division. The 2ID is the lone US Army Division remaining in defense of Korea to this day. A true legacy of the Korean War. The French Battalion would remain with the 23rd Regiment until hostilities ended on July 27, 1953 with the signing of the Armistice Agreement. During this time the French Battalion would participate in many notable, bloody battles.

The 23rd Regiment was commanded by Colonel Paul Freeman. Freeman and Monclar would become quick friends. It must of felt strange for Freeman to be commanding such a legendary combat veteran as Monclar who had just a few months earlier had been a 3 star general. These two men would be key leaders in three very important battles that would cement their friendship in blood; the Battles Wonju, the Twin Tunnels, and Chipyong-ni.

During the Twin Tunnels battle on January 30, 1951, in the Kumdang Chon Valley, Monclar actually led a company of his men up Hill 453 to secure the northern flank of the regiment. COL Freeman actually commented that the French company was slow in securing the hill because of Monclar. Freeman wanted Monclar to stay behind with the rest of his battalion but Monclar insisted on leading his men up the hill himself. Keep in mind that Monclar is at the time 59 years old with many injuries and prior bullet wounds leading his men up this large mountain. It shows what kind of shape the guy was in for his age. The French company was attacked on February 2nd by an entire regiment of Chinese. Monclar ordered them to fix bayonets and charge the Chinese. Despite heavy odds the Frech drove the Chinese forces back into full retreat off of Hill 453.

Picture of the modern day village of Chipyong-ni.

On the 11-14 February 1951 the 23rd Regiment was ordered to defend the city of Chipyong-ni at all costs against 6 Chinese divisions. The odds were stacked against the regiment 10-1 but 8th Army Commanding General Matthew Ridgeway was determined to make a stand against the advancing Chinese who had won every battle since entering the war and Chipyong-ni was going to be the place. The entire regiment was completely surrounded by the Chinese so the soldiers dug in and prepared for the up coming onslaught.

Chinese positions were located on the hills seen in the distance from the French positions at Chipyong-ni.

The Chinese attacked the night of February 13, 1951 against the defensive perimeter the French Battalion manned. The Chinese during the war liked to blow horns and bang drums to command troops and also for psychological impact against the UN forces. When the Chinese began their bugle calls and drumming to start their attack, the French soldiers began blowing their own air horns and yelling back at them. The French were actually looking forward to a fight and couldn’t wait. When a Chinese platoon attacked the French line, a squad of French soldiers fixed bayonets and charged them. The Chinese platoon had the French squad outnumbered 3-1 but they turned and ran after seeing the French squad charge them with bayonets.

Small hill where the French positions at Chipyong-ni were located.

Here is how another company commander remembers the Chinese assault on the French lines:

The enemy soldiers formed one hundred or two hundred yards in front of the small hill which the French occupied, then launched their attack, blowing whistles and bugles, and running with bayonets fixed. When this noise started, the French soldiers began cranking a hand siren they had, and one squad started running toward the Chinese, yelling and throwing grenades far to the front and to the side. When the two forces were within twenty yards of each other the Chinese suddenly turned and ran in the opposite direction. It was all over within a minute. After this incident it was relatively quiet in the rice paddies near the road cut.

This is how CPT Walker recalled the French actions that day:

A noisy party of Chinese seemed about to fall upon the French in the west. Hearing the preparations, the legionnaires leaped out of their positions screaming a battle cry, fixing bayonets as they charged, and cranking a shrieking Chinese siren of their own. They set upon the surprised and terrified enemy. Survivors turned to escape, only to be tackled, caught, and hauled back by the French as prisoners of war.

The heroic French defense would set the tone for the rest of the defenders of Chipyong-ni that day.

During the battle Monclar and Freeman would move from foxhole to foxhole encouraging soldiers and dodging bullets at the same time. They were very much lead by example type of commanders who did not want to be seen hiding in the rear during a tough fight. The Battle of Chipyong-ni was ferocious and bloody but it proved to be a turning point for UN forces in the war after the 23rd Regiment and the French decisively defeated the Chinese offensive at Chipyong-ni.

The word of the Chinese defeat spread throughout the front lines of the 8th Army and it proved that the Chinese were not invincible and could be decisively defeated. However, this victory would not have been possible without the French Battalion and their legendary commander Ralph Monclar.

Monument to US and French forces that fought in the Battle of Chipyong-ni.

The battalion after Chipyong-ni went on to fight in other pivotal battles in the Korean War including Hongchon and Heartbreak Ridge. In the weeks following Chipyong-ni many of those wild French soldiers that held the line Chipyong-ni would perish in the hills of Hongchon. The French had 40 soldiers killed and 200 wounded in the capturing of a 1000 meter high Chinese fortified hill in -30C temperatures that would eventually open the road for the 8th Army across the 38th parrelell. At Heartbreak Ridge that fall of 1951 another 60 of these brave Frenchmen would die in one month of fighting on the isolated ridgeline.

For their heroics during the Korean War, the French Battalion received three United States Presidential Unit citations, for the battle of the Twin Tunnels, Chipyong-ni, and Hongchon. During the Korean War the French Battalion had 287 soldiers killed in action, 1,350 wounded in action, 7 missing in action, and 12 become prisoners of war. The name of the dead French soldiers can seen today on the wall at the Korean War Memorial in Yongsan commemorating the dead from all the countries that participated in the Korean War. The battalion proved the French was a capable fighting force and won back some of the prestige the French military had lost from World War II not to mention helping to secure the freedom of this now thriving democracy of the Republic of Korea.

General Ridgeway best summed up the actions of the French Battalion during the Korean War with these words given to a joint session of the US Congress in 1952:

I shall speak briefly of the 23rd US Infantry Regiment, Colonel Paul L. Freeman commanding, [and] with the French Battalion. Isolated far in advance of the general battle line, completely surrounded in near-zero weather, they repelled repeated assaults by day and night by vastly superior numbers of Chinese. They were finally relieved. I want to say that these American fighting men, with their French comrades-in-arms, measured up in every way to the battle conduct of the finest troops America and France have produced throughout their national existence.

However the glory this battalion won back for the French would be short lived. After the Armistice Agreement was signed effectively ending the Korean War, the French Battalion was reassigned to Indochine to battle the communist insurgency. The battalion was eventually completely destroyed in a series of ambushes along the infamous Highway 1 which ran parrallel to the coast of Vietnam and was dubbed the Street Without Joy. Though the French Battalion found no joy in Vietnam they did find honor from their actions in Korea.

Note: You can read more of the ROK Drop featured series Heroes of the Korean War at the below link: