Doubts About a Korean 'Massacre'
American soldiers allegedly slaughtered hundreds of innocent refugees at a place called No Gun Ri. A new review of the facts challenges that claim
In the many discrepancies surrounding the events at the time and in the many news accounts that have been published since, none are as striking as those arising from Edward Daily's story. Daily's motivation for placing himself in the center of the No Gun Ri controversy after the AP story ran is unclear. After two lengthy interviews with U.S. News, Daily refused to discuss the matter further and failed to respond to a telegram containing a detailed list of questions about his actions. Last week, Daily was being treated in a veterans hospital for an undisclosed medical condition and failed to appear for a previously scheduled interview with investigators from the Army inspector general's office.
Daily has for some time been a figure of controversy among two veterans' organizations, the 7th U.S. Cavalry Association and the 1st Cavalry Division Association. (This reporter first learned of the questions about Daily's account of No Gun Ri through his membership in these associations.) In 1987, Daily helped found a separate Korean War Veterans chapter of the 7th Cavalry Association. A year later, that group held its first reunion, in Nashville. Many veterans interviewed by U.S. News say that was the first time they ever met Daily. They remember that he had some good war stories to tell. "I heard his stories, and I just took them at face value," said John Haskell, a retired major who was the operations officer of the 545th Military Police Company in the early days of the Korean War. "When this [AP] story broke, the whole thing surprised me. I couldn't believe it, and I guess I was right not to believe it. We had MPs everywhere . . . . They would have heard about something like this and gotten back to us. But we never heard a word about it," Haskell said, adding, "It is a sad thing. Daily just wanted to be more than he was, I guess."
In introducing Daily at the start of the Dateline broadcast, Tom Brokaw called him "a proud soldier, one with 50 years of painful memories. Ed Daily," the NBC anchor continued, "is a 68-year-old Korean War veteran, a former prisoner of war, a survivor. There isn't a day when Daily doesn't think of Korea. His home in rural Tennessee is like a museum." Hillary Smith, a Dateline spokesperson, said last week: "We are reviewing the records. In the last two days we've seen more supporting documents and spoken to other GIs who told us they remember Ed Daily in Company H at the time of the killings of No Gun Ri. We are continuing to review all aspects of the story, and we will share our reporting with our viewers if there are any new developments."
If Daily's home is like a museum, some of its artifacts may be of doubtful provenance. Daily's claim that he was a prisoner of war, for instance, is not supported by Pentagon records. In a biographical note he prepared in conjunction with a history he published of the 7th Cavalry, Daily said he was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in H Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, when his platoon was overrun by North Korean troops on Aug. 12, 1950, and he was taken prisoner. "With the grace of God," Daily wrote, "[I] managed to escape from the enemy on Sept. 12, 1950, and was held captive only 32 days." Documents from the Army's Personnel Records Center say that during the period cited by Daily, he was working as a mechanic with the Army's 27th Ordnance Maintenance Company. There is no record of Edward Daily's ever having been a prisoner of war. In addition, records show he was discharged from the Army as a sergeant, not as a captain as he had claimed.
advertisement
