Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The Fog of War and Peace

By this time the peace talks were underway and things were happening that probably would not have happened earlier. One was the defection of certain personnel. I have a picture of a Polish interpreter being escorted by our Col. White (now I know what the brass in our outfit did) on his way to freedom. The picture I really remember was of the colonel escorting a MIG pilot who was seeking asylum. Sgt. Cordeiro took the picture and it was used on the cover of Life magazine. At least that is what I had been told.

Another incident was caused by the peace talks and establishment of the DMZ. Each side was required to retreat a specified distance from the front lines and hold their position. All equipment, men, vehicles and firepower had to be moved.

A real problem arose when mortar batteries began to pack up and leave. As a matter of expediency during combat, mortar crews pulled the safety pin on several rounds of ammo and stored it next to their pieces. As long as they were used in the course of the fighting there was no danger, they became armed only on impact at the bottom of the mortar barrel and exploded at the enemy’s feet.

Now, however, these shells had to be moved a mile or more out of the DMZ and the odds of one exploding by accident were rather high. Sure enough, a mortar shell did explode during the transfer and it killed two Republic of Korea soldiers and one GI.

Had the story been told properly, it would have been considered an accidental tragedy, under the circumstances, and become old news quickly. A pompous major at battalion level, however, decided the incident would not look good on his record so he put a gag order on information concerning the event.

We only found out about it when some correspondents began asking questions and couldn’t get answers. As I noted before, the stateside newsmen didn’t take censorship very kindly and proceeded to dig for the story. They wired their home offices and they in turn sent reporters to the parents of the slain GI and got the story from them.

This obviously created a stir, with accusations of a “cover-up” and made a big deal out of a story that should have been just routine. It was then decided 8th Army PIO should make an attempt to explain the situation.

I was given the assignment to interview people at the DMZ to explain why the live shells were moved and what caused them to explode. I also had to go to the engineer’s battalion for detailed explanation of the workings of a mortar shell.

You might have thought I was a reporter from the National Inquirer instead of an officer with the U.S. Army. Getting anyone to talk about the incident was nearly impossible. It took some time to do the story but I turned it in as soon as I could. By that time, of course, the story was truly old news and nobody cared why it had happened. To my knowledge, no major papers or wire service picked up the story and my work went for naught.

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