Retribution

One Hand Clapping ^ | 5/12/2004 | Donald Sensing

[Cannoneer No. 4]

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.

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."

At the industrial, macro level of war, this is quite correct. But if the combat is not soon ended, the terrorists (or so-called "militants" or "insurgents") will learn something else: they have made the war personal. When that happens, the American experience of war shows that our troops will shed the veneer of restraint like a snake's skin. And for every American head Zarqawi severs, he will soon find three of his own men's heads.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

--ckin' Rah, sir.

Sounds like the river south of Rodriguez Range.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Email Direct From Fallujah - "What Happened To Our Country?"

[davisfh]

"...the American experience of war shows that our troops will shed the veneer of restraint like a snake's skin. And for every American head Zarqawi severs, he will soon find three of his own men's heads."

I look forward to that day, that hour, that moment.

[FRMAG]

Still remember a counter to policy jeep trip in the DMZ had a Korean SGM in the jeep with us. As we approached the ruins of a village he became excited and explained that he had fought there in the korean war. The only building partially standing was what had been the city hall.

When we entered the building we found multi lingual crudely painted signs over the doorways that and red crosses and crescents and such.

The SGM explained that the building had been used as a aid station by all sides. The fighting was so heavy that the medics and docs simply evacuated in front of the battle leaving the wounded and their medications and insturments behind to be taken up by the next occupiers.

As new crews came they simply began treating the wounded as their own. That place still haunts me but, again, there was still some vestage of honor between soldiers then.

If memory serves the village was called Chorwon (SP?)

[U S Army EOD]

I've seen the video, we should force all the Iraqis we have as prisoners to watch it and tell them the rules just might be fixing to change.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

I don't remember ever making it to the ville called Chorwon. Spent January of '83 in the Chorwon Valley

[kimoajax]

Was in Vietnam during Tet when the Cong butchered an entire orphanage just outside of Dong Tam, our base camp.

[Khurkris]

bump

[Iscool]

Two close friends, brothers, ended up in Nam at the same time...They show pictures of the two of them sharing a campfire...The younger one tells of what he says is the "real" story of Hamburger Hill...He climbed it about a dozen times...The older one, by two years, showed the pictures of him, M-16 raised over his head while one of his feet rests upon the head of a dead VC that he had just shot...
War will bring out emotions one never knew exhisted...

[rolling_stone]

I've seen the video, we should force all the Iraqis we have as prisoners to watch it and tell them the rules just might be fixing to change.

I think making the iraqui prisoners watch the horrific video might loosen them up more than seeing some some perverted naked "insulting" to them pics......

[sauropod]

Cheorweon. Right up cozy to the DMZ.

[Warthog-2]

I keep wondering when the American people are finally going to get angry enough to take off the gloves and really start kicking ass? We are at war with dogs who hate Americans, but they seem to know that Americans are a pushover and that pretty soon the trash of America will rise up and force the government to pull up stakes and wait for the next attack. I don't think that our military, excluding those perfumed princes, want to turn the other cheek. I also think our Commander in Chief better say to the American people that enough is enough. The time has come to take no prisoners and just destroy everything in sight. During the second world war, and in Korea, until the politicians took over, anyone captured, carrying a weapon, and not wearing a uniform was considered a spy. He was interrogated forcefully to find out what he knew, and then taken out and shot as a spy.
I don't remember any time during wartime that a congressional committee was convened to fact find the nonsensical things that they are doing now. They wouldn't dare under FDR.
The first thing that our government should do here is put into play every type of munition and equipment that we have in our arsenal exclusive of nukes.
Secondly, throw out all of the news media, and have a briefing officer give a rundown of the day's events.
Thirdly, capture some of these ragheads and hang them from the lampposts of every street of the towns that are in contention.
Lastly, inform every Muslims country in the middle east that our patience has come to an end, and if they don't desist from secretly supporting terrorism, then they are our enemies, and will be duly treated as such.
The people of America must understand that we have lost approximately 3,000 lives on 9/11. This was an atrocity that surpasses by far anything that went on in that raghead prison in Baghdad.

[CGVet58]

his words ring true from my stones to my bones (as we say in the Coast Guard).

Walter Russell Mead says it best in his treatise on the four types of American foreign policies - If it is not already upon us (by way of general acknowledgement among the American public) then the time draws very near where us Jacksonians will tell the rest of the gang to step aside as we execute this war completely and - as is likely by the inhuman and cowardly atrocities the enemy is willing to commit - ruthlessly upon them in return. So that in the light of death that comes upon their eyes as they pass, they will know that they picked the wrong country to terrorize.

This is War... until Every! Single! God$%!nned Jihadist is dead and left on the side of the road wrapped in a pigskin for all the world to see...

CGVet58

[U S Army EOD]

John Kerry and Jane Fonda weren't interested in those kind of stories.