The horror, the horror

The new 8th Army refugee plan had been radioed down to the divisions just that morning, essentially contradicting Flint's mission to clear the area and herd the civilians south: "No repeat no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time." Still, no evidence has been uncovered that points to anyone in the chain of command giving a direct order to fire on the refugees at No Gun Ri. "The word" just "came down the line," and most of the troops assumed that someone, somewhere, must have gotten an order, since everyone was shooting.

It continued, on and off, for a couple of days. Many, but not all, of the Garryowens understood that they were to continue to "hold" the railroad bridge against the civilians by firing into the people huddled below it whenever they spotted movement.

Some of the Americans thought they were being sporadically fired on from underneath the trestle, but the bullets they thought were aimed at them were probably from the guns their buddies were firing into the other end of the 40-foot-tall concrete arches. Norm Tinkler, the teenaged machine gunner, detailed how he was able to shoot the refugees under the spans. "I ricocheted them in there," he said. "I knew how to shoot. Oh, I could see about that much of the wall that was going into the tunnel, and I put it on that." In any case, the regimental diary compiled after they withdrew on July 29 reported no guns captured or North Korean soldiers killed at the bridge.

There's a reason that FUBAR ("Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition") began its life as a military acronym. In desperate, fearful situations where confused people -- people toting guns, grenade launchers and mortar tubes -- think their lives are at stake, deaths will occur, usually on a wholesale scale, whether or not they are "supposed" to according to the official rules of engagement.

In any case, as Hanson says from his chilly "Carnage and Culture" viewpoint, the dividing line between "honorable" and "criminal" killing in warfare is essentially arbitrary. "Due to our Hellenic traditions," he writes, "we in the West call the few casualties we suffer from terrorism and surprise 'cowardly,' the frightful losses we inflict through open and direct assault 'fair.'" Incinerating thousands of Japanese civilians in the kind of bombing raids recently cheered in the film "Pearl Harbor" is usually seen by Westerners as not nearly as ghastly as the summary beheading of the parachuting B-29 fliers in China when they were captured.

The whole concept of "civilized warfare" -- the idea that certain forms or targets of military violence are unthinkable or immoral -- is a convenient mythology that not incidentally permits Western military strengths full rein. It also offers opportunities for us to tell good stories about the "devious," "shameful" and "sickening" atrocities perpetrated by our enemies -- and only by our enemies. As with other mythologies, the "civilized warfare" fantasy and the idea that Americans have, can and should practice it, is an article of almost religious faith.

That accounts in large part for the furious reaction of military partisans when incidents like No Gun Ri garner publicity in the West. And then we must assure ourselves, with another good story, that even if such things did happen (My Lai, anyone?), they were "isolated incidents" and that most "civilized" Westerners don't kill unarmed women and children. We can't ever admit the expedient nature of our cherished folklore. Hanson's view of warfare, one that concentrates exclusively on the clash between armed belligerents, only tells part of the story. We believe in the concept of civilized warfare, and that allows us to pretend that civilians are not or should not be targets. Yet they always suffer and die in wars, and in some cases, as in bombing raids on cities, they are also unquestionably targets.

At the same time, Hanson claims that many of the war stories we're telling ourselves these days limit our ability to apply our particularly Western warmongering gifts of annihilating firepower and utter ruthlessness. He takes the story of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam as a case in point. North Vietnam's multi-focal surprise effort, hitting simultaneously at locations all over South Vietnam during a holiday cease-fire (underhanded! dishonorable! Hanson notes), was actually a military failure for the attackers. Few South Vietnamese joined in the staged "uprising," and tens of thousands of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army lives were lost. Their death toll was especially heavy in their expulsion from the "Citadel" at Hui and during the siege at Khe Sanh, and there were relatively few losses on the American side.

Next page: The psychic toll of Tet