Before the outbreak of the Korean War the soldiers involved in the tragedy at Nogun-ri, soldiers from H Company, 2 Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment which were part of the 1st Cavalry Divison, were stationed in Japan conducting peacekeeping operations in the aftermath of World War II. Due to budgetary reasons most of the resources for training soldiers at the combined arms level were diverted to Europe because of the looming Soviet threat there. No one ever envisioned a war in Korea. This lack of vision would become one of many factors that led to the tragedy at Nogun-ri.

The soldiers of the 7th Cavalry did not train at anything above the company level and spent much of their time conducting occupation related duties, not to mention hanging out at the local clubs at all hours of the night. Plus the units were all short of personnel especially noncommissioned officers (NCOs) to keep the Army divisions in Europe fully manned against the more immediate Soviet threat there. The 7th Cavalry was full of young, patriotic, soldiers who grew up on John Wayne movies and were eager to serve their country. However the majority of these young soldiers were not old enough to have served during World War II and lacked combat experience.

There were a few NCOs and officers in the unit that did have combat experience. However, when the war in Korea did break out the experienced NCOs from the 7th Cavalry were pulled to fill units from the 24th Infantry Division that were the first division in Japan to deploy to Korea to delay the North Korean advance that included units such as Task Force Smith which was featured in an earlier Focus On series.

Once it came time for the 1st Cavalry Division to deploy to Korea, it was deployed in piece meal and not as a complete division due to the nature of limited ports in Korea and the division being spread out all over Japan due to occupation duties. So when the 2-7 Cav’s transport from Japan arrived in Korea on July 22, 1950 they were acting semi-autonomous from the division command structure they were used to, plus they were about to undertake operations they had never trained for because they had never done any training above the company level and were about to undertake operations in a major theater war that featured many uncontemporary operating environment problems such as security in the rear areas and a massive refugee crisis no one had any prior experience or training in to deal with. They were literally making up doctrine as they went through trial and error. To make matters worse they were short NCO’s across the regiment that enforce standards. It was so bad that there was some Private First Classes serving as Platoon Sergeants. The officer ranks weren’t much better as the battalion only had one officer with combat experience at the time and that was the commander of G company, 2-7 Cav, CPT Henry West.

This lack of inexperience and training would all have a part to play in the tragedy that would occur four days later.

Tomorrow: From Pohang to Nogun-ri