No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident

by Robert Bateman and Robert L. Bateman

Book Overview

Compelled by the known fallacies in the Associated Press expose of the alleged American slaughter of South Korean refugees, Major Bateman presents an alternate explanation of the events through the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811717631
• ISBN13: 9780811717632
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Length: 2 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Refutation of Hanley's text: Should be read 2nd

This is an excellent piece of military history in general and Korean War history in particular. Only Appleman's East of Chosin dissects the anatomy of a tragedy in Korea with as much sense of impending, inevitable doom and finality as Bateman's book does. Bateman achieves something few authors and historians do: weave diverse social, political, and military events so that they can hep us understand a major event. Other authors would be content enough to 'merely' point out that Daily, Flint, and Hesselman weren't even near No Gun Ri at the time the alleged atrocities occurred. Thats the 'what did he know, and when did he know it' school of journalism. But Bateman has a much more powerful message. It begins as follows: --American soldiers were never made aware that this area of Korea was rife with guerrilla battles between South Korean communist sympathizers and Rhee's army and militias. They never knew many civilians were armed and aligned with the NKPA. --The American army had no recent experience conducting combat operations in their rear areas. They often left a task to the ROKs, who were notoriously brutal for slaying prisoners. The US army complained they did this so swiftly there wasn't even time to obtain intelligence from the guerrillas! --While infiltration was probably not a tactic used all that often by the NKPA, nonetheless American outrage against its use was not based on racist views. It was based on the moral conviction that it was not a 'legitimate military ruse.' His contrast of German infiltration at the Battle of the Bulge, with that of the Koreans in the Naktong battles, is powerful and moving. It is part of a larger subsection Fear and Military Reality which is an excellent discourse on the moral conflicts presented by the combatants and noncombatants in a military theater. --The famous order 'no refugees to cross front line. Fire everyone trying to cross front line' was never widely disseminated. It was a phone call that never reached the men at No Gun Ri.There is much more. Lack of training at the Battalion level or higher meant the forces were easily dispersed and communications disrupted. The stripping of the units NCOs and Officers (for the 24th infantry division) meant there were not experienced men on site to keep the units coherent and issue their own orders. Commissioned officers would be able to distinguish between legal and illegal orders such as the one above. All this makes his speculation about what happened at No Gun Ri more credible than Hanleys'. Bateman doubts an 'execution style massacre' occurred. Certainly mortar fire was a mistake, but 'two way fire was exchanged' between the Korean refugees and US Soldiers. Calling in an air fighters to strife the refugees? Impossible, says Batemen: US soldiers FM radios could not talk to fighter AM radio sets. Even if an unintentional strafing occurred, says Bateman, casualties would be nowhere near the hundreds Koreans claimed. Nor could a bombing run have 'bent the ra

Brutal Analysis

No Gun Ri, A Military History of the Korean War Incident slams home the vital difference between history and journalism. While one prefers the variations inherent in the spoken word, the other requires evidence in support of oral assertions. Bateman takes the entire Associated Press, up to and including their now-president Boccardi, to task for the utter failure to check their sources. Journalism, good journalism anyway, rests upon the idea of "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy" according to Bateman. Bateman makes it clear that something bad happened at No Gun Ri, something avoidable and something about which the United States should not be proud. But, significantly, it wasn't what the AP wrote about, it bears no resemblence to their version of events. Bateman goes to great lengths to point out that he's in favor of free and open journalism, that he admires the ideas and ideals of journalism. What annoyed him (and apparently led to this book) is sloppy and casual tabloid-like journalism passing itself off as "in depth" or "definitive." It is this sin which he pressed against the AP and their three reporters. In the reporting of their version of the events at No Gun Ri the Associated Press team led by Charles Hanley demonstrated that they were not interested in confirming the identities or presence of their "witnesses" before they published their story to a global audience...something that one would rather expect when writing a story about the one of the largest accusations of deliberate mass murder. In this I have to agree with Bateman. Journalism is a good thing. Some journalists (and in this case the AP as an institution) were downright sloppy. It's a sad statement about the state of the Pulitzer that the historical misdirection the AP passed off as "news" won the Pulitzer. ... One wonders why the AP has not returned their ill-gotten gains (they won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize before the...nature of their sources was revealed by Bateman) nor apologized for the shoddy work they did in thier story and the "advocacy journalism" they foisted off as history in their follow up book.With more than 30 pages of footnotes, allowing any reader to fully reconstruct his research in-depth, Bateman sets the standard for historians working in military history as well as any journalists that confuse the process which results in accurate and reliable (read: reproducible and proveable) history with on-the-spot "gotcha" journalism.

An Authoritative Analysis and Historical Reconstruction

No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident is a excellent work of sound scholarship and public service. In 1999, a team of Associated Press (AP) reported won a Pulitzer Prize for a news story that was not news, and was not entirely true. Robert L. Bateman, though, offers much more than an analysis of the AP story, "The Bridge at No Gun Ri". No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, which destroys the reputation of both the AP and its misguided historical theorizing, has elements of historiography, military history, and personal narrative. If one only reads the concluding chapter of Bateman's book, the flaws so disturbingly apparent in the AP's story are blown wide open. But Bateman also uncovered the fraudulent nature behind the four witnesses` story, which formed the core of the AP story. He also documents his efforts to obtain documents through the Freedom of Information Act, and his correspondence with the AP reporters. Not only were the AP reporters creating a news story that was actually an historical interpretation, they scorned Bateman`s, a trained historian, collaboration. Bateman's account of the AP story's "hero", Edward Daily is chilling. Bateman delivers a neat, detailed reconstruction of the events of July 25-29, 1950, when the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment killed in self-defense, not as part of a pre-meditated massacre, approximately at most thirty-five Korean civilians, at least two of whom, according to Bateman, were most likely armed South Korean Communist guerrillas. To support his contention, Bateman takes the readers through the history of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, military doctrine, the history of journalism, and Korean history. As a former officer of the unit and an associate professor at West Point, Bateman's intimate knowledge of American military procedures lends authority to his reconstruction. The book also contains transcripts of the AP story and the executive summary of the United States No Gun Ri Review, several maps, photographs, 33 pages of notes, and a bibliography, including interviewees. This strength, however, is also the book's greatest weakness. Considering the political divisiveness of the issue, such a partisan identification is a handicap. Also, Bateman admits he does not know Korean, and so did not interview the Korean witnesses, who were suing for compensation, the AP interviewed. Working with translated transcripts of their testimonies, he undermines even the minutest pieces of information in them. Bateman discredits the AP's massacre theory succinctly. No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident is one of the most clear-headed works of analysis and history about Korea, and I hope its evident clarity and quality will dispel misconceptions and animosity.

Superb research, excellent writing, fine book

This book deserves an enormous amount of attention and a wide readership. Based upon impeccable, tough-minded research, the findings are well presented in a readable style--this is an intellectual page-turner. To the benefit of the American people, Bateman, a widely-respected soldier-scholar, undertook to get at the truth about the widely reported "massacre" of civilians by elements of the U.S. 7th Cavalry during one of the most confused periods of the Korean War. What Bateman discovered was a network of shameless, self-serving lies, told first by a fake veteran then amplified by ambitious journalists who preferred a great story to the more mundane--and complex--truth. Now, I am not a journalist-basher (I'm married to one and I write for various newspapers and magazines myself), and I've been impressed by the quality of most serious journalists who cover defense issues--but the media's failure to castigate the dishonest journalists who won a Pulitizer Prize for their wildly-inaccurate reporting is a blot on the profession. And, in the end, Bateman's version of events may be less sensational, but it is far more humanly compelling. The real story--or stories--have to do with the terrible confusions of war, with the fragmentation of memory, and with the basic challenges of soldiering--as well as with false identities, vanity and disgraceful self-promotion, fifty years later, by men who weren't there, but who decided, from their lofty perch in the press, that they knew better than those who had served. The tale also tells a great deal about the lingering willingness among elements--only elements--of the press to believe instantly the worst accusations against our military coupled with a reluctance to investigate those who level those charges. For the journalists, had they been real pros, the real story would have been "the man who wasn't there," the great impostor who had, for years, fooled even military veterans. But it was easier to hammer the G.I.s who had served our country to the best of their abilities. With this fine book, Bateman has rendered a valuable public service. One hopes it will receive the review and public attention it so richly deserves.

Required reading for journalists

"No Gun Ri - A Military History of the Korean War Incident" should be required reading for every journalism school student - as well as for every young working reporter and for every American who values honest media coverage.This book, by historian and soldier Robert L. Bateman, thoroughly debunks the highly-publicized Associated Press story, published in Sept. 1999, that claimed US troops "massacred" up to 400 civilians in the early days of the Korean War. In April 2000, the AP story won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Although serious questions were raised shortly after about the accuracy of the story, AP has insisted its research, sources and facts were accurate and that a massacre was definitely committed at No Gun Ri on July 26, 1950, by troops of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. Robert Bateman's book, based on meticulous, painstaking research and analyses, details events leading to the action at No Gun Ri and what happened there. He gives solid, overwhelming evidence that the AP story was highly exaggerated, if not completely untrue. He tells how the AP initiated and based its investigations primarily on fabrications of Edward Daily, a self-created "war hero." Daily recently plead guilty in Federal Court of being a fraud and swindler of veterans benefits. Robert Bateman describes the AP story and Daily's role in Part Two of the book, entitled "The Story of the Story."One minor fault of the book is that the original AP story should have been placed at the very beginning, so as to provide readers with an early reference, an opening gun, so to speak. Instead, the AP story is in the final chapter, which is aptly entitled "Making (Up) History." An appendix has the executive summary of the US Government's investigation into the "massacre" allegations. The extensive investigation, ordered by President Clinton, clearly shows the tremendous publicity the AP story received.As an old reporter, from the old school -sadly, a fast-vanishing old school that insists on honest, true, accurate, unbiased reporting - I cannot imagine how AP can avoid returning the Pulitzer, just as the Washington Post did some years ago when its prize-winning reporter was revealed to have written fiction instead of fact. The AP's prize-winning "reporters," well, they will have to live with themselves. And the naive Pulitzer Committee will have to live with egg on its face.And then there's Tom Brokaw, who obviously did not learn much about honor when writing "The Greatest Generation." He has not acknowledged that he was totally conned, no less apologized to his millions of NBC Dateline viewers, for featuring "war hero" Edward Daily at No Gun Ri lying how he machine-gunned civilians. We are still waiting for Brokaw's mea culpa and NBC Dateline's retraction. The fact that the AP team did not warn Brokaw and other reporters, and kept secret their suspicions, if not definite knowledge, that their famous "hero" was a fraud who was never at No Gun Ri, is enoug