The bridge at No Gun Ri : a hidden nightmare from the Korean War by Hanley Charles J & Choe Sang-Hun & Mendoza Martha

Author:Hanley, Charles J & Choe, Sang-Hun & Mendoza, Martha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States. Army. Cavalry, 7th, Korean War, 1950-1953, Massacres, Korean War, 1950-1953, Korean War, 1950-1953
Publisher: New York : Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2001-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

156 THE BRIDGE AT NO GUN Rl

or dropped into the river 40 feet below to drown in its muddy waters. For American soldiers already safely across, watching from the riverside paddies, it was another sight lodged in the gallery of memory. But the deaths were not officially noted in any Army unit document.

ON AUGUST 3, NOW ACROSS THE NAKTONG, THE GARRYOWENS' 2ND

Battalion—the riflemen of E, F and G companies, the machine gunners, mortarmen and recoilless riflemen of H Company, the clerks and scouts and radiomen of Headquarters Company—got their gear together and trucked 25 miles southward, to dig into a defensive line near the first blown bridge at Tuksong-dong. Art Hunter's G Company settled in around the apple orchard in front of the hamlet of Samni-dong.

In less than two weeks at war, the 1st Cavalry Division's 11,000 troops had suffered almost 10 percent casualties: dead, wounded and missing. In the 2nd Battalion, the wounded included Wenzel, riddled with shrapnel on July 30, and Bernotas, shot through the wrist on July 31. Both were evacuated to Japan, and both wondered whether they were out of combat for good. The battalion had a new commanding officer, the battle-hardened Lt. Col. Gil Huff, who had been the 7th Cavalry's executive officer. "Whiskey Red," as men began caUing him, took over from a devastated Lt. Col. Heyer. "Herb's tired," Huff remembered hearing from regimental commander Col. Cecil Nist. Heyer was brought to the rear and the regimental staff.

The men hunkering down on the Naktong's eastern banks believed either they would be evacuated from their toehold in southeastern Korea or the full force of the U.S. military would come to their rescue. "You don't have much to worry about," James Hodges, Wenzel's G Company buddy, wrote his sister Juanita on August 10. "Everybody over here is confident that this thing will be over in a couple or 3 months." But the North Koreans, moving troops toward the Naktong in the night, had their own ideas.

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