What really happened at No Gun Ri?

Hanley claims now that Daily is entirely unimportant. He was, Hanley says, neither the first nor the only 7th Cavalry veteran to acknowledge the truth of the AP story about the No Gun Ri incident. Bateman's book, Hanley says, "perpetuates a pointless obsession" with Daily. "He is totally irrelevant against a background of more than 60 American and Korean witnesses."

Bateman argues that Daily remains a significant figure in the debate over what really happened at No Gun Ri because of his influence over the other witnesses. He suspects Daily of inducing wholesale "source contamination" among the other veterans the AP interviewed. Bateman believes that Daily, as an intensely social and prominent member of the 7th Cavalry regimental association, successfully "planted" inaccurate memories of No Gun Ri -- including memories of Daily himself being there. When confronted with the fact that Daily could not have been at No Gun Ri, one of the AP's other notable witnesses, Eugene Hesselman, repeated over and over again, "I know that Daily was there. I know that. I know that."

Hanley counters that many of the veterans the AP contacted were isolated from the 7th Cavalry community over the intervening years, and some of them, like Pfc. Delos Flint -- another veteran whose story Bateman attempts to impeach in his book -- came up with "spontaneous, emotional and isolated recollections" when they were initially contacted. (Bateman in turn argues that Flint could not have been present at No Gun Ri, a claim he bases on a minor difference between two military records made during days that he himself admits were administratively chaotic.)

How and why the shooting started remains a subject of fierce debate. The AP book suggests that someone on the scene gave a direct order to the American soldiers to shoot at the refugees, but the evidence it offers is weak. On the other hand, Bateman's claim that the melee was set off by gunfire coming from the refugees' side is equally unconvincing. Both assertions rely heavily on the conflicting or uncertain testimony of a few soldiers who can be reliably placed at the scene. Both books quote witnesses who report that the Americans' shooting was a spontaneous response to gunfire that came from within the group of refugees, although Hanley's team downplays that possibility.

Bateman states (with a troubling air of absolute certainty) that there were armed communist guerillas or North Korean infiltrators among the civilian crowd. He claims that the entire No Gun Ri area was a known hotbed of Communist activity, and that the Americans had captured both a Japanese rifle and a Russian submachine gun from the area, citing records from the headquarters supply section acknowledging their receipt.

But, Hanley noted in his conversation with me, there is no record at all of where, when, how or from whom the guns were acquired or even which regiment they came from. Another document records the capture of two enemy fighters in the division's area of operations who might have been carrying those weapons. Regardless, it also seems unlikely that armed men within a crowd of several hundred civilians would have fired upon a line of entrenched American forces, knowing the overwhelming response it was likely to draw.

In any case, says Martha Mendoza, another of the AP reporters on the No Gun Ri story, even if shots had been directed at the American troops from somewhere near or inside the group of civilians -- if, say, guerrilla combatants had been deliberately using the people as a human shield -- shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of refugees was still criminal.

Establishing whether the refugees were deliberately attacked from the air and how many died are other thorny problems. Aerial reconnaissance photographs taken Aug. 6, 1950, about a week after the Americans pulled out on their retreat toward the Naktong River, provide significant evidence. One shows signs of recent strafing along two points of the railroad tracks, probably made by aircraft in two separate runs along the same flight path. The photograph also shows what may be signs of mortar explosions closer to the No Gun Ri bridge.

Bateman concedes that American troops dug in near the bridge fired mortar rounds that landed among the refugees fleeing along the tracks, but he says that this was a tragic error ("the initial call for fire from the mortars was perhaps the dumbest possible action that could have been taken"), not a deliberate act of murder. And although veteran witnesses note that someone did give orders to fire warning gunfire over the panicked civilians' heads to prevent them from passing American positions, there was, Bateman insists, no explicit order from any of the officers of the unit to actually shoot at the civilians.

The recent strafing visible in the Aug. 6 photograph could have taken place when the North Korean army passed through the area in pursuit of the retreating Americans. But it also accords with the testimony of the Korean victims, who claim they were strafed and "bombed" while they were walking along the railroad tracks. However, the 7th Cavalry had no ability to "call in" a deliberate strafing run against the refugees, as some allege, since their radios were incompatible with those used by the Air Force.

Bateman, in his book, credibly notes that the relatively brief strafing runs were unlikely to have killed 100 civilians, as some of the American and Korean witnesses claim. But he is wrong when he states that the strafing aircraft would not have made the runs at low altitude because "there was no report of ground fire in the area." If there was little danger from ground fire, a very low altitude strafing run -- and, almost by definition, a more deadly one -- was more likely.

Virtually all the witnesses acknowledge that the 7th Cavalry fired mortars at the refugees (the exploding rounds were probably thought by many of the civilians -- or conflated in memory later -- as having come from the aircraft). Bateman claims that the mortars were only meant to scare the refugees and prevent them from advancing further toward the American lines. Perhaps because the refugees were suddenly running toward the Americans, away from the strafing, or because of a delay in aiming and firing the rounds (Bateman's theory) they didn't land in front of the refugees but among them.

Next Page: Where did the corpses go?

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