Cambodia and Korea

When I was twelve years old, my mother and I watched scenes from the Korean War in a German movie theater. The main feature was a comedy, but the newsreel that preceded it was not very funny at all. Impatient to see what we had paid for, I asked my mother: "Why is this happening again - haven't we just finished a war?" Her answer: "Because we haven't learned any lessons from that disaster!"

The dismal reporting record of our war correspondents during World War II had a lot to do with our world's understanding of the nature of war: Thirty years after World War II, Charles Lynch, a Canadian, who had been accredited to the British army for Reuters, put it in a nutshell: "It's humiliating to look back at what we wrote during that war. It was crap - and I don't exclude the Ernie Pyles or the Alan Mooreheads. We were a propaganda arm of our governments. At the start, the censors enforced that, but by the end we were our own censors. We were cheerleaders. I suppose there wasn't an alternative at the time. It was total war. But, for God's sake, let's not glorify our role. It wasn't good journalism. It wasn't journalism at all. (Interview with Charles Lynch, "The First Casualty, by Phillip Knightley, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973, pp 332-333).

Since none of us can really trust our governments, or even the so called "independent media" to tell us the truth, whom can we trust. We owe it to ourselves and the rest of our fellow humans to do our own research, in order to answer that vital question. Please don't say "My country, right or wrong", since you are thereby abrogating your responsibility to influence your government, at least to the extent that this government enables you to express your opinion freely, so that you and your fellow citizens may choose the right path.

After a short interval to bury the dead, those who make a very good living from the misfortune of others find a way to cheat the rest of humanity over and over again of the peace that we all deserve. Mostly, they get us ready by selling the idea that the other side is completely evil, and we have no choice in the matter.

Phillip Knightly, in his important book "The First Casualty" writes that what actually happened in those early hours of the Korean War was never properly established. We do know, that the armies of the United States and our South Korean Allies quickly disintegrated. As Marguerite Higgins wrote: "So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion, it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth. ...It is best to tell graphically the moments of desperation and horror endured by an unprepared army, so that the American public will demand that it does not happen again." (The First Casualty, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, page 336).

When faced with a determined Chinese attack, many UN troops had broken and run. Rene Cutforth of the BBC saw "young GI's of hardly 19 or 20, ill-trained and in total panic, throw down their weapons and run from the front, tears streaming down their faces." (Interview with Rene Cutforth, The First Casualty, page 343)

Why did our South Korean allies not fight well? Under the government of our ally, Syngman Rhee, corruption flourished. The police were blackmailing citizens with the threat of denouncing them as communists, while providing destitute refugee girls to the local brothels, and were protecting the distillers of highly toxic and extremely poisonous liquor.

South Korean conscripts died of starvation in military camps because corrupt officers had sold their food on the black market, and 14,000 political prisoners, jailed without solid evidence, awaited execution in overcrowded prisons. Our South Korean allied executed untold thousands, including women and children, with U.S. supplied weapons and ammunition.

A few correspondents reported the treatment of South Korean political prisoners, and one of them even took direct personal action to stop the executions. When Alan Dower, an Australian and former commando officer, and his cameraman, Cyril Page, were driving into Seoul when they passed a column of women, many carrying babies, and wearing straw masks over their heads, escorted by South Korean policemen. The policemen claimed that these civilians were communists, and were about to be shot.

Dower followed that sad procession to a jail on a hill outside Seoul, and rapped on a peep hole with the butt of his carbine. When a policeman's face appeared, Dower threatened to shoot him unless he opened the gates. Inside, the correspondents saw the women and children kneeling next to a deep, freshly dug pit. On the other side were two machine guns.

The correspondents stormed into the office of the jail's governor, and threatened to shoot him, if his machine guns opened up on the defenseless women and children. They also threatened to seek out and kill him, if he went on with the executions after the newsmen had departed.

Later, United Nations officials pleaded with the news team not to make an international incident out of this. They reponded that they had sent an outline of the story to the newspapers, and would publish "a story that would rock the world", if there were any more executions of civilians.

Were the North Koreans completely evil? Was our side always completely "good"? Of course not. Read Phillip Knightley's book: The First Casualty! Plenty of books available at Amazon.com, some used ones for as little as 44 cents (plus shipping, I presume).

In my last military assignment, before the US Army honored my request for release from active duty, I commanded a 380 man provisional company from Fort Hood, helping to support the cadet training program in Fort Sill. I had two outstanding First Sergants there - nornally a company only has one, but we were spread all over the training areas of Fort Sill.

One of these fine First Sergeants had been an ASA officer in Korea during that war. He had been shot, and the bullet lodged in his body very close to his heart. After his capture, an "enemy" surgeon had worked for many hours to save his life. Then he spent two or three years in a North Korean prisoner of war camp. The guards were a generally unfriendly lot, but there were severe limits on what harrassment they were forced to endure. Food was not plentiful, but there was always enough, just short of the severe starvation my father had to endure in Allied hands at Erbisioul, Belgium, after World War II.

After the Korean War, and repatriation into American hands, my sergeant was forced to choose between leaving the US Army, and resigning his commission and working for our army as an NCO. He chose the latter, and that is why I had the pleasure of working with him before the end of my army service. Through him, I learned a lot about the Korean War, and we were able to compare notes about our work in Vietnam.

Before Suwon fell to the North Koreans, an American Signal Corps sergeant was quoted as saying: "..those sons of bitches are trying to save their own hides - there are planes coming, but the brass won't talk. They're afraid that there won't be room for everybody" [Marguerite Higgins. The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent (New York : Doubleday, 1951) p. 40-42]

While I commanded that company, one of the officers of an infantry battalion camped nearby, and I became good friends. Captain Ge****aux, a Special Forces officer, had served with some Cambodian mercenaries in Vietnam. Apparently, his Cambodian friends had a habit of tearing out a recently slain enemy's liver, and eating it raw, in order to prove their manhood. My friend had been forced to do the same, in order to keep their respect. The first few times, he said that he threw up, but later, he actually became used to this horrible atrocity.

A few weeks after our first meeting, he told me that he had volunteered to return to Vietnam, so that he wouldn't have to continue working for his idiot infantry colonel. After several rounds of drinks at the officer club, I suggested that the real reason was that he could no longer get fresh liver in the states. I think he was about to hit me very hard, and he would have been justified in doing so. I can think of nothing more disgusting or degrading for a sensitive and civilized man, which I assure you he was, not only to resort to canibalism, but even to do so in this vile and despicable manner, ripping an organ from another man's freshly killed body. He told me he had to participate in this vile act, because these mercenaries were such nasty people that he himself, and his team, might have been killed as well. Death will always be an integral part of war, but what excuse can there be for subjecting an honest and decent men to such a dehumanizing and degrading experience?

I regret my response to my friend to this date, but he graciously let me off the hook with the comment: "Perhaps you are right. No fresh liver in the States!" In his book: "My War Against the CIA", page 56, King Sihanouk comments that the the commander of the "Khmer Krom", against whom he struggled in order to protect his government, urged his demented followers to eat human flesh, especially the liver. This demented maniac and his followers are not in any way representative of Cambodian culture, which is based on the continuing search for inner and outer peace, mostly in the style of Buddha.

There is no question that the United States forces and their allies in Korea were entirely unprepared when hostilities broke out on June 25, 1950: The North Koreans used tanks, the US forces were armed with rifles. Naturally, the Americans fell back, then broke and ran. The reporting by a few journalists was accurate, and the US officials resented it.

The war was a big story, and by early August, 270 correspondents from 19 countries were reporting the war. They soon sorted themselves out into those who chose to report from Allied headquarters, and about 60 who wanted to witness the war from the field. Most of the latter were armed, and, according to veteran British correspondent Reginald Thompson of the Daily Telegraph, not all of them were sane. "The dearest wish of a lot of them was to kill a Korean. 'Today I'll get me a gook' was often heard". (Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea, London: Macdonald, 1951, p. 39)

The Allied army got as far as the Yalu River before the communists struck back, and the the attack collapsed. As the United Nations troops streamed south again, news reports became increasingly ridiculous: The "Chinese hordes" were now reported at nearly a million. At one briefing Michael Davidson of the "Observer" asked: "Will you tell us how many Chinese battalions go to a horde, or vice-versa?" (See Thompson, page 36)