Photographs taken from the nearest UNC observation post revealed what happened in the next terrible minutes. The North Korean guards surrounding Captain Bonifas wielded pipes and pick handles. Others used axes they had seized from the work party. Captain Bonifas was beaten to death on the ground. Lieutenant Barrett was seen fleeing, with club-wielding North Korean soldiers in pursuit. The melee lasted four minutes before an alert American driver managed to swing his truck out of the area past the wall where most of the unarmed Americans and South Koreans had taken refuge. Lieutenant Barrett was not among the survivors who safely reached a UNC position, battered but not seriously injured. Later in the day, the UNC recovered the bodies of both American officers. They had suffered massive and repeated head injuries. Neither officer had had time to use his personal weapon.
The implications of the murders were clear and ominous. For months, the North Koreans had been provoking incidents along the DMZ. In the Joint Security Area, their guards had repeatedly threatened Americans with death over trivial perceived slights or loss of face. On the morning of August 18, they followed through with those threats. North Korean defectors had spoken of their dictator, Kim Il Sung's, plans to invade the South. Was this bloody incident and the anticipated American reaction to it the final provocation that Kim needed to unleash that invasion?
The UNC commander, U.S. Army General Richard D. Stil-well, could not afford to take any chances. He requested and received permission from Washington to raise the DEFCON (Defense Condition) for the Republic of Korea from the normal level of 4 to 3 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the lowest (no perceived threat), and 1 the highest (attack imminent).
I learned of the emergency at about noon, when word was flashed that a “full-bore” operational situation was underway. All leaves were canceled. Security was visibly increased. With DEFCON 3 in effect on the second morning of the emergency, I was in steel helmet, flak jacket, and web gear on my way with another officer and a driver up to the 2nd Infantry Division's area of operations just below the DMZ. As we passed South Korean camps, I saw field artillery units hooking up their howitzers to trucks and loading ammunition. American and ROK Huey helicopters thumped by overhead. I passed armored personnel carriers (APCs) and M-60 tanks in staging areas on our way north. For a moment I recalled the terrible cacophony of the “Mad Minute” firepower demonstration years before at Fort Benning. If the situation deteriorated along the DMZ, firepower of unimaginable magnitude would be unleashed among the pine groves and fields of millet stubble I was passing. Thousands would die. I was just a minor cog in a huge machine, but my job was to provide the best signal security support possible and be prepared for additional ad hoc missions. In a crisis there is always uncertainty. It was the job of the leader, even a junior leader such as a captain, to reassure her soldiers by making sure they were well briefed on the biggest possible picture as often as feasible.
When the other officer and I met with our counterparts in the G-2 section of the 2nd Infantry Division, they were pleased with the signal security that the soldiers in my unit would be able to provide during this operation. No one wanted an inadvertent mistake over an open telephone line or radio circuit to be the source of a breach in op sec (operational security), should the standoff escalate to violence. This work was not particularly glamorous or demanding, but it was complex and important in the overall scheme of our military operations following the axe murder incident. I felt the deep satisfaction of devoting myself fully to my duty, knowing that in doing so I was making a vital contribution to the American military's effort.
And that effort—Operation Paul Bunyan—was impressive. General Stilwell and the United Nations Command staff had devised a detailed Operations Plan that balanced the full superpower might of the United States with suitable restraint. The goal of the plan was to demonstrate to the North Koreans our resolve, to intimidate them militarily, yet not to provoke any further bloodshed along the tripwire of the DMZ.
The action was to be centered on the Joint Security Area where the murders had occurred. As General Stilwell told his staff, “That damned tree must come down!” He intended to demonstrate to the North Koreans the UNC's authority in the zone in the form of lightly armed security forces, backed up by enough visible in-depth ground and aerial firepower, including infantry, helicopter gunships, tactical fighter-bombers, an aircraft carrier task force offshore, as well as nuclear-armed B-52 bombers, to give Kim Il Sung serious doubts about his aggressive actions.
H-Hour for Operation Paul Bunyan was 0700 on Saturday, August 21, 1976. While the waves of American warplanes off-shore lit up the North Korean radar screens, UNC ground units swung into action. In the Joint Security Area, a United States–ROK guard unit drove directly to the poplar tree, as UH-1 Huey helicopters and AH-1 Cobra gunships of their heavily armed infantry support landed just south of the zone. Part of the unit blocked the North Koreans' approach avenue, while the other element went to work on the tree with chainsaws. Then a UNC engineer team entered the zone and ripped out barriers the North Koreans had illegally placed over the years.
The North Koreans, caught by surprise, finally responded by assembling a guard company armed with AK-47 rifles. But faced by the large and well-supported UNC contingent, the North Koreans made no effort to enter the southern section of the zone. By 0830, the U.N. soldiers had sawed the poplar trunk into sections, thrown them onto trucks, and departed the Joint Security Area. The communist troops made no attempt to interfere, possibly because they faced the awesome presence of the Cobra gunships.
(Those interested in learning more detail of the murders in the Joint Security Area and the subsequent Operation Paul Bunyan can consult the “Extract of the Annual Historical Report, UNC/USFK/EUSA, 1976” and the related report, “A Daily Sequential Listing of Events Between 18 August and 22 September, 1976 Involving Armistice Affairs Division and the U.S. Army Support Group–JSA Which Were Precipitated by the 18 August, 1976 Incident in the JSA.” Copies of these documents are available through the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C.)
But the crisis atmosphere remained palpable over the coming months. Although I managed to get a little more sleep each night, I was still working six or seven days a week, just like the other American soldiers in Korea at that time. I began thinking about my duty as a professional soldier differently during this period. In order to do my job well, I saw that my commitment would have to be all consuming. Conventional concepts about business hours taken from the civilian world meant nothing in such an operational military situation. There was work to be done; once a soldier identifies that work, the amount of effort or time required to accomplish it is not a consideration.
By fall, the level of tension following Operation Paul Bunyan was reduced and the local DEFCON was returned to level 4. I went to my next assignment, executive officer to the commander of the U.S. Army Security Agency Field Station, Korea, in Pyongtaek, south of Seoul. Even though the worst of the crisis had abated, working for Colonel Charles S. Black, Jr., was every bit as demanding as my first six weeks in Korea.
In 1976, Military Intelligence had two operational headquarters, the U.S. Army Security Agency, a signals intelligence and signal security organization, and the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency, which incorporated counterintelligence and HUMINT work. Because I was a woman captain, I was considered a good candidate to become Colonel Black's executive officer (XO).
Colonel Black, aka “the Prince of Darkness” to us (albeit well behind his back), was one of those officers for whom the term perfectionist was minted. When he did not receive absolute perfection from his subordinates, it was an unhappy time for all.
For example, the unit had several remote sites along the DMZ, which by standard operational procedure were to be evacuated in the event of North Korean invasion. Colonel Black insisted on visiting each site by helicopter to personally observe the soldiers rehearse their evacuation within the prescribed time limits. To prepare for these inspection trips, the operations officer had to lay out meticulously detailed maps showing the chopper's ingress and egress routes with exact timing, communications, and alternate routes should weather problems divert the aircraft. The colonel would hunch over his wide desk, studying these maps intently. If he perceived the slightest error, he would fling the sheets onto his carpet and stamp on them with both boots, howling in rage. “Get them out of my sight!” Once he became so livid that he knocked over an intricate, multitiered metallic ornament that a Korean Army officer had presented him, scattering gleaming brass leaves from the coffee table across the entire office.
On another occasion, when the unit sports officer had the temerity to admit that he didn't know when the next softball game was scheduled, Colonel Black had him and me report to his office, delivered a blistering reprimand, and told him, “You're fired.”
Black turned to me. “Captain, take care of this. I want this officer replaced immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and hustled the lieutenant back to my office. I told him to sit down and try to be calm, and I reluctantly returned to Colonel Black.
Did he mean for the lieutenant to be removed from his job, from Korea, or from the U.S. Army? Such was the power of Colonel Charles S. Black, Jr., that we sometimes wondered. It turned out the lieutenant in question was simply relieved from his position as sports officer.
Once, Colonel Black ordered Captain Chet Baker, our unit S-3 (staff officer in charge of plans and training, but in this case, not in charge of operations), to report immediately on a Friday afternoon, after furiously questioning his “manhood” over the telephone concerning some minor infraction. Chet reported outside the colonel's office door as ordered and proceeded to sit there all day for each of the next three days. We brought him sandwiches from the mess hall. But no one dared suggest he leave the colonel's anteroom that weekend.
Colonel Black delighted in dominating his analysts during each highly structured morning briefing. The officers and NCOs would present their detailed reports, and Colonel Black would fire off increasingly demanding questions until each analyst in turn had been reduced to answering, “I don't know, sir.”
We had one senior NCO, Staff Sergeant Denny Preshoot, who prided himself on knowing more about the North Koreans than anyone else in the unit. And this staff sergeant was in fact extremely good. One day, he almost got the best of Colonel Black. Then the good colonel scowled, leaned across the conference room table, and demanded, “Now, tell me about that wart on Kim II Sung's neck.”
Being the XO to a perfectionist like Colonel Black meant my average duty day lasted from seven in the morning to after eight at night. The camp at Pyongtaek offered few diversions, so I hardly missed the loss of free time. Despite his demanding personality, the colonel knew absolutely every aspect of the Military Intelligence profession, and I learned a lot about leadership and management from him. From his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Larry Runyon (later a brigadier general), and Operations NCO Sergeant First Class Odell Williams, I learned the complex substance of the SIGINT business.
It was obvious that the modern battlefield was rapidly evolving into a complex electromagnetic web in which communications such as voice and automatic data links as well as electronic warfare such as target acquisition and counterartillery radar—and the jamming and
counter
jamming of all these emissions—would play a major role in our future war-fighting tactics and strategy. The more I could learn about this challenging discipline, the more I caught up after having missed the first six years of MI service when I was a WAC. So the hours Colonel Black demanded of his staff were proving to be an apprenticeship well spent.
I began to realize he had an important professional goal. The Army was in the process of consolidating its Security Agency and Intelligence Agency into a single United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), which would have units stationed around the world. Colonel Black's mission was to create a plan to forge the two disparate commands into the newly established 501st Military Intelligence Group (Provisional), which would be formed in Korea in 1977. It's a compliment to his vision and thoroughness—his critics would probably say his single-mindedness—that he did earn that command. Just as Colonel Black, like a shrewd chess player, planned far ahead for organizational change, he intervened personally in the careers of selected young officers. This close attention was often as painful as it was helpful, but the colonel was determined that we would learn as much as we possibly could while under his command.
Colonel Black had fought in the Korean War as a young officer and had experienced the bitter seesaw fighting across those bloody mountains. He wanted all of us and his unit to be ready for the brutal reality of combat, should war erupt again.
For myself, the first half of my Korean tour taught me that I did indeed want to specialize in SIGINT.
Having made this important decision, I met my husband over Christmas on the West Coast. It was not a happy reunion. The time apart had made us both realize that we were unsuited for each other. It was a difficult two weeks. Despite seven years of trying to work out a life together, we decided to divorce.
Back in Korea that January, the 2nd Infantry Division had scheduled an elaborate war exercise (WAREX) in its sprawling mountainous training grounds south of the DMZ. Given the ongoing tensions, the American and ROK forces they supported would be deployed in complex mobile operations for a week, simulating a response and counterattack to a North Korean invasion. “Go on up to the WAREX, Claudia,” Colonel Black said. “It's a great opportunity for you to get some tactical experience.” Another reason for my participating in the exercise was to permit the one woman who worked for Lieutenant Colonel Mike Pheneger's G-2 section to go to the field. She had not gone on an exercise previously because she was the only woman in the section. The Army was still at that transition stage in which a woman in the field was an exception and never would be sent alone on such an exercise. Today, at least 15 percent of the 2nd Infantry Division's G-2 section are women, and they routinely deploy on field exercises.