[KOREAN-WAR-L:11379] Books

[<charlesjh@att.net>]

An offering in response to Jeff McLaughlin's query about good Korean War books:

``The Bridge at No Gun Ri,'' published by Henry Holt and Co., NY. (For excerpts, reviews and relevant, historically important documents, see the websites http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/index.htm and its link http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/documents.htm )
	Here's one brief review:
	---
The Providence Journal-Bulletin (Providence, RI)
September 30, 2001 
BOOKS - HOW THINGS CAN GO VERY WRONG IN WARTIME  
BYLINE: LUTHER SPOEHR Special to the Journal  
HIGHLIGHT: 
   * THE BRIDGE AT NO GUN RI: A Hidden Nightmare from the * Korean War,
by Charles J. Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe, and Martha Mendoza. Henry Holt. 313
pages. $26.  

BODY: 
   Based on the reporting that won its three authors, all of them
Associated Press reporters, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative
Reporting, The Bridge at No Gun Ri uses a familiar formula to tell a
powerful story about an unfamiliar war. It is also a timely cautionary
tale of what can happen when civilians are trapped between two armies.  

   The formula, perfected by Stephen Ambrose and imitated by countless
others, involves following a small military unit as it comes together,
goes through the crucible of combat, and emerges wounded, changed, and
sobered, but generally triumphant at the end. Think Band of Brothers and
The Wild Blue.  

     It's the history of ordinary Americans _ the grunts, not the generals _
in extraordinary circumstances, and as applied to World War II, ''the
good war,'' at its best it is vivid, moving, and ultimately reassuring:
''we'' did the right thing.  

   Hanley, Choe, and Mendoza apply the formula to a horrific incident in
a more ambiguous war, the Korean ''police action.'' They not only follow
an American unit into action, but also tell the story of the Korean
villagers whose lives were shattered by those soldiers.  

   The unit is the famous 7th Cavalry Regiment (Custer's outfit), which,
as the North Korean army threatened to overrun the entire Korean
peninula in the summer of 1950, was hustled into action from its cushy
base in Japan. Like the rest of their division, they were flagrantly
unready, "raw teenagers led by too few sergeants in the ranks and by men
past their prime at the top." Jittery, with nerves rubbed raw by lurid
rumors, lack of sleep, constant movement, and unexpected contacts with
the enemy, they were a disaster looking for a place to happen.  

   They found that place near the village of No Gun Ri, where, panicked
by the possibility that a column of refugees had been infiltrated by
North Korean troops and convinced that their orders covered their
actions, the 7th Cav pinned down several hundred villagers beneath a
railroad trestle and for more than three days days replete with
''screaming children, ricochets in the concrete underpasses, bodies
piling up in the entrances'' shot and killed as many as 400 civilians,
including many women and children.  

   A half-century later, the effects of that massacre still shape the
lives of the survivors, Korean and American alike. When the Cold War
ended, villagers petitioning the American government for redress got the
attention of the Associated Press. Reporters interviewed more than 500
people and delved deeply into military records, including some showing
that high-ranking officers had authorized firing on civilians.  

   Thanks to its careful documentation, The Bridge at No Gun Ri surely
refutes the 2001 Pentagon report that termed the incident ''an
unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing.''  

   But Hanley, Choe, and Mendoza, whose writing is measured, clear,
to-the-point, and remarkably rhetoric-free, do not demonize the men who
pulled the triggers, whose tortured postwar lives give grim meaning to
the term ''post-traumatic stress disorder.'' If there are villains, they
are higher in the chain of command.  

   Because it graphically describes the violence of the encounter at the
bridge and its agonizing aftermath, this is not an easy book to read.
But it is an important one, especially now, as we prepare to go to war
again. We need to think hard about how things can go wrong when fighting
for the right.  

   Luther Spoehr teaches a course on America Since 1945 at Brown
University.
 
	---
	
	As one of the authors of the above book, I felt compelled to offer this as an antidote of truth to the posting last Wednesday, in response to the McLaughlin query, of a review of a book that is nothing more than a small-minded and mean-spirited slapping together of baseless ``theories,'' fabrications and fantasies about No Gun Ri.
	Thank you.
	Charlie Hanley