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No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident. By Robert L. Bateman. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2002. 320 pages. $22.95. Reviewed by Colonel Donald W. Boose, Jr., USA Ret., who served as a rifle platoon leader in the 12th US Cavalry (Infantry), had combat service as an advisor to a Vietnamese infantry battalion, and is currently an Adjunct Professor in the US Army War College Department of Distance Education.
On 26 July 1950, soldiers of the 2d Battalion, 7th US Cavalry Regiment (2/7 Cavalry), fired into a group of Korean refugees at a railroad overpass near the village of No Gun Ri, Korea. According to those living in the village today, survivors of the incident, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press story, the incident was a callous military atrocity: The American soldiers called in air strikes that killed a hundred of the refugees, then drove the survivors into the confined space under the overpass and, at the command of their officers, poured rifle and machine-gun fire into the huddled mass, killing another 200 to 300 of the helpless civilians over a three-day period. This version of the story seemed to be confirmed by American soldiers who participated in the massacre. Later, however, one of these veterans was found to have fabricated both his military record and his involvement, and at least two other key American witnesses were, on the basis of military records, found not to have been present during the incident. A review team established by the Department of the Army Inspector General concluded that Korean civilians were killed and injured by US soldiers in the vicinity of No Gun Ri, but could not confirm that large numbers of refugees were deliberately slaughtered. The members of the review board concluded that what "befell civilians in the vicinity of No Gun Ri in late July 1950 was a tragic and deeply regrettable accompaniment to a war forced...