Commentary; PERSPECTIVE ON WARFARE; 'We Were a Speed Bump for the North Koreans'; If civilians were massacred at No Gun Ri, it was by untrained and under-equipped U.S. soldiers under brutal assault.: [Home Edition]

Did U.S. infantrymen massacre more than 100 South Koreans in 1950 during the chaotic early weeks of the Korean War? A Pentagon investigation now underway must answer that question. Yet the more important questions are: How could young American soldiers do such a thing? Can we keep it from happening again?

The current Pentagon investigation involved H Company, 7th Cavalry. At the time, I was a second lieutenant with L Company, 21st Infantry, about 25 miles east of No Gun Ri.

Our "occupation army" in Japan was not ready, in any sense, for the Korean War. The nuclear bombs that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed to have ended fighting, as the Army understood it. American soldiers were in a state of psychic disarmament. Inertia and the distractions of Japanese "social life" finished our battle readiness. Our weapons were relics, often inoperable. Our communications equipment, radios and wire were too old and beat up to function in heavy dew, let alone in monsoon rains.

We went to fight tanks in 1950 with a piece of failed anti-tank trash (the 2.36-inch "bazooka") that gravediggers in World War II often found ground up in the bodies of GIs because it could not stop tanks. The terror that bazooka-proof tanks...