Retribution
I was an artillery second lieutenant in 1978, serving in the 2d US Infantry Division in South Korea. My battalion was in the field one spring day; my battery was moving to a new firing position along a river that wound through the countryside. I don't recall the name of the river. The terrain there was rugged but striking to see - a long, flat valley on our side of the river, on the other steep, tall hills.

We emplaced our howitzers a few hundred meters from the base of a very steep escarpment that reached at least 150 feet into the air. It was a tower, almost, and the river curved sharply around its base. I took some pictures, but Lord knows where they are now.

There was a South Korean unit exercising not far away. By the bye, their sergeant-major walked over to us; he happened to approach me first. He was in his fifties, I guessed, with many years service. He looked to be one tough dude.

He spoke broken English, fortunately, since I didn't speak any Korean. Through gestures and words, he related how during the Korean War he had seen a fight here from across the river. The Chinese had trapped a company of US Marines at the foot of the escarpment. The Marines, entirely cut off, fought until their ammunition was gone. Then they shattered their weapons and waited to be taken captive.

The Chinese swarmed in and yanked the Marines into a single file. They bound their hands behind them. They stripped them of their outer clothing and boots and at bayonet point marched them to the peak of the escarpment. One at a time, they threw the Marines onto the riverbank more than 150 feet below.

"More than one hundred Marines," said the sergeant major. "War very rough." He grimaced. "Marines kill many Chinese after that day. None made prisoner. All killed."

During World War II's Battle of the Bulge, an American patrol came upon a small church that was badly damaged. A corpse of an American soldier was hanging by the neck from a beam across one of the windows. Because of the bitterly cold temperatures, the body was preserved - including bruises and swelling of the face and neck.

The patrol quickly concluded the dead man had been captured by the Germans, beaten while being interrogated, then hanged. The patrol brought him down and covered the body near the church as best they could so it could be retrieved later.

They they went forth in a killing mood. As one of the soldiers later related, the next time a German patrol came to the church, they found three dead German soldiers, hanged by the neck from the same window.

After that day, the Germans murdered no more prisoners in that sector. Neither did the Americans.

I wonder what is going through the minds of American Marines and soldiers in Iraq now. War is bitter, bloody business. The longer it goes on, the more inhibitions are shed. Acts once shunned as cruelty become almost passé. It was Stephen Ambrose, I think, who related that near the end of the second world war a platoon of GIs came upon about 30 German soldiers hiding in a ravine several feet deep. The Germans threw up their hands. The Americans gunned them all down.

An American medic related that in North Africa, the German and American medics would often assist each other in treating all the wounded after a firefight, without regard to nationality. By the time the war moved into France, he said, the medics would shoot at each other.

"War is cruelty and you cannot refine it," said Union Gen. William T. Sherman. He was, I think, the first American general to systemize war. His march from Tennessee through Georgia to Savannah was the deliberate, planned, quality-controlled destruction of almost everything he found in a path sixty miles wide. Sherman's army left Atlanta a burned husk, occupied Savannah and then turned north into South Carolina, where he left Columbia a charred ruin.

D. W. Brogan, commenting on America's entry into WW2, said,

For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for the Axis - an American decision that this is sport, or that it is business.